Karl Marx seemed to believe that capitalism was almost over when he wrote about it in the mid to late 1800’s; now, that assumption seems absurd. In my opinion, the key to understanding the longevity of capitalism and the domination of the world by the capitalist class is the concept of the “petite bourgeoisie”.
Per Wikipedia, the petite bourgeoisie is:
a social class composed of small business owners, shopkeepers, small-scale merchants, semi-autonomous peasants, and artisans. They are named as such because their politico-economic ideological stance in times of stability is reflective of the proper haute bourgeoisie (high bourgeoisie or upper class). In regular times, the petite bourgeoisie seek to identify themselves with the haute bourgeoisie, whose bourgeois morality, conduct and lifestyle they aspire and strive to imitate.
Although Marx thought of the petite bourgeoisie primarily in terms of its desire to become the haute bourgeoisie, I think there’s a much more important aspect of the petite bourgeoisie that we need to be aware of: Specifically, the petite bourgeoisie believes that its material well-being is inextricably tied to the economy of the haute bourgeoisie. Even those members of the petite bourgeoisie who do not aspire to become the haute bourgeoisie believe this, and are therefore protective of the haute bourgeoisie. The haute bourgeoisie foster this belief and surround themselves with concentric circles of increasingly wealthy petite bourgeoisie who hold this belief that the economy of the haute bourgeoisie creates material well-being for the petite bourgeoisie — which is essentially true as long as the haute bourgeoisie see this relationship as beneficial.
Let me stop using all this French, though, and get a bit more concrete. Petite bourgeoisie basically means the middle class, and haute bourgeoisie basically means the billionaire class. These labels are confusing for a couple of reasons. First, the incredibly absurd wealth of the billionaires creates a middle class with so many layers that the upper middle class can barely recognize the lower middle class as part of the same class. Second, because of the concentric circles of gradually increasing wealth (with the billionaires in the middle), it’s hard to see the break point between billionaires and the upper middle class; that’s an intentional obfuscation.
OK, so those are the two key components of this innovation that has allowed capitalism to continue:
- The middle class believes that its material success and comfort are connected to the material success of the billionaire class. This is somewhat true, but complicated.
- The middle class has been structured in such a way that it is hard to see the division between it and the billionaire class, making the billionaires harder to see as the source of the problem of capitalism.
For example, Brian Thompson (the former CEO of United Health) was upper middle class. His net worth was about $43 million, and he was positioned adjacent to the billionaires who most benefit from United Health’s policies. Well, that’s not entirely true because Thompson was CEO of United Health Care, which is a subsidiary of United Health Group (UHG); UHG’s CEO is actually the one adjacent to the billionaire class. When United Health Care killed people, Brian Thompson was nominally “in charge” so he gets blamed. This protects those above Thompson (including the billionaire class) who are not seen as being involved in United Health Care’s passive killings at all. Luigi Mangione could be interpreted as being as wealthy as Brian Thompson, but he’s still middle class.
The whole reason managers (including CEO’s) exist is to provide cover for the bosses above them, with the ultimate bosses being the billionaire class. This is part of those concentric circles I was talking about. The management hierarchy is a system that doesn’t necessarily reflect the physical location of the different levels of bosses. The other part of the concentric circles is physical. Billionaires physically live in places where most people are rich, so American billionaires often live in New York City or San Francisco, and billionaires generally tend to live in the United States. Even non-US-born billionaires like Elon Musk tend to live in the United States or at least have a place somewhere in the United States. US Congress is part of these concentric circles of wealth. Every member of the US Congress is a multi-millionaire, but none of them are billionaires. People in the first ring of middle class people surrounding the billionaire class work directly for them. People in the second ring work for people in the first ring.
Capitalist globalism allows for this arrangement. Were it not for globalism, then the billionaire class would be more evenly distributed all over the world, and therefore, would be more vulnerable to physical attack from the working class. The whole reason why the NYPD is the biggest and most militarized police force in the US is to protect the central rings of capitalist wealth located in New York City.
Everyone in the middle class serves the billionaire class one way or another and they are all terrified of joining the working class… which brings up a very confusing point: Aren’t middle class people also working class? Absolutely, yes, they are. At some point (Brian Thompson and other CEO’s come to mind), a person is high enough up in the capitalist hierarchy that their only function is to obfuscate the activities of the billionaire class, but they’re still working for someone in return for a paycheck. However, if that’s your only function, I don’t think anyone on the left has any concern for preserving your well-being.
In contrast, there are a lot of middle class people who are clearly working class, whether they are running a small business, working as a scientist, or managing a nursing home. All of these people have been connected to capitalism in such a way that they don’t see how they can continue to receive their moderate but comfortable income without the existence of capitalism and the billionaire class. They see the left, which clearly wants to abolish billionaires, as a material threat to their well-being.
One way those concentric circles of wealth manifest is in the middle class’s participation in the stock market. The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 93% of stocks. That remaining 7% of stocks are owned by people who are either working middle class or retired working middle class. They are either using the relatively meager income they receive from owning stock to survive (because they are retired) or plan to do just that at some point in the future (when they retire). In contrast to something like (hypothetically) a Social Security program that is adequately funded (by taxing the rich), this method of funding retirement means that these middle class people really need the line to go up; anything (like the left, for example) that might cause the line to go down causes them intense anxiety.
The punchline is that these middle class stockholders act as a buffer for wealthy stock holders. When the value of the stock market falls precipitously, it is the middle class stockholder that suffers. The wealthy stockholder had inside information and professional help that allowed them to dodge most of the destruction associated with the drop, and is not materially affected by their net worth dropping a few billion dollars (e.g., a person with $100 billion is completely unaffected by a drop to $97 billion or even $50 billion). In contrast, the middle class stockholder is devastated by the drop and has no means of reliably dodging such stock value drops. A crash means that a middle class retiree can’t eat. The material pain that results from such a drop creates opportunities for the billionaire class (and their minions) to snatch real estate from the middle class (e.g., a couple might be forced to sell a large home and start renting a small home so they can afford food).
How do we approach the middle class under these circumstances? Marx’s approach to the petite bourgeoisie was to simply say “fuck them” and lump them in with the haute bourgeoisie. In the context of the USA, this would mean that the left would have to actively sabotage the entire country as an act of class consciousness but also class betrayal since Americans are the international middle class. That doesn’t really help if our goal is to save our own communities here in the US.
If we try to overlay this Marxist analysis of society onto US electoral politics, then things get a little bit weird. The Democratic Party (i.e., the liberals) have a little more money and education than the Republican Party (i.e., the conservatives) but the constituents of both parties are largely middle class — especially if your analysis is at a global level. The puppet masters of both parties are the billionaire class. The Republican Party is slightly more in tune with working class Americans, and is slightly more internally democratic (ironically) than the Democratic Party, and that’s why they continue to win elections.
Convincing either middle class group to embrace the left would be a very difficult sell because they believe they need capitalism to continue their way of life; i.e., they understand that their material well-being and the possibility that they could someday join the ranks of the billionaire class are predicated on the international hierarchy of wealth that forces people in the global south to toil in poverty and sell their natural resources cheaply. Meanwhile, billionaires right now are doing everything they can to siphon away the wealth of the middle class, thus breaking the illusion that they are beneficial to working class people and creating a strong potential for dramatic social change. In other words, the billionaires are doing the work of agitating the middle class toward revolution themselves.