Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 12 of 19

To the extent that real industrial capital expanded in the developed economies, it increasingly became concentrated in its pre-social-democratic forms. Just as newly industrialising economies filled the gaps of large-scale production, to meet the consumption needs of developed economies, so, within those developed economies, a growing petty-bourgeoisie arose to meet the needs of local consumption, i.e. a growth of labour services such as window-cleaners, gardeners, child minders, domestic cleaners, back street garages, sandwich shops and so on. In addition, of course, was all of those that simply became small traders, as depicted by Del Boy Trotter, but also as epitomised by the White Van Man.

A vast reservoir of unskilled, and semi-skilled labour, thrown out of work in the 1980's, fed into these businesses, particularly in those decaying urban areas, where that deindustrialisation had been most acute. In Britain, the growth of this reactionary petty-bourgeoisie was not only facilitated by the process of deindustrialisation, and encouragement of speculation, but also by conservative government policies, for example, the Tory introduction of the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, in the early 1980's.

But, this general, reactionary, petty-bourgeois ideology pervades the rest of politics too, much as Lenin described in his polemics against the Narodniks. As noted earlier, its not just the reactionaries in the ranks of the Classical Liberals (Libertarians), or the conservative social democrats (Neo-liberals) that have focussed their ire on large-scale socialised capital, in favour of small businesses, but it pervades the “anti-capitalism” of most of the Left too. The idea of a Universal Basic Income, to encourage the development of small business and self employment, is just another variant of the various schemas put forward by Sismondists, Narodniks, and other reactionary socialists over the years.

As I set out some months ago, this explains the transformation of the Conservatives from being a conservative social-democratic party, as it existed for much of the twentieth century, into being a petty-bourgeois, reactionary nationalist party, but explains why Labour has also been dragged along into that same camp, under Starmer. The same processes apply in North America and Europe. As I set out in that post, in the UK, the number of small businesses rose from 2.4 million in 1980 to 3.6 million in 1989, whilst the continual rise in the number of wage workers, going back 200 years, ceased in 1978, and began to fall, only resuming the upward trend in 1998. This significant change in material conditions, of the declining social weight both of the working-class, and of the ruling class, and growing social weight of the petty-bourgeoisie, was bound to exercise its reflection in the ideological and political superstructure, as it has.

The declining social weight of the working-class was greater than the fall in its numbers indicated, precisely because of those wage workers being, also, weakened industrially, as they became less secure, their organisations were undermined, and in many places they were atomised, a condition that has only begun to change with the more recent developments, as the process of labour reserves being used up, from 1999 onwards, and labour shortages arising, most notably from 2023, strengthens the hand of workers, and enables a rebuilding of their organisations. The social weight of the ruling class (already tiny to begin with, in terms of its numbers) simply meant that it resorted even more to its reliance on its state, and bureaucratism. Hence, a growing Bonapartism, both on the part of the petty-bourgeoisie, and its reactionary political parties, but also on the part of the ruling-class, and its state, in opposition to it.

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