this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
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Small businesses, at least in my area have the owners themselves work. So yeah means of production are owned by workers.
But they are living off of the value produced by their workers, assuming it's not just literally the owner working. Also, most small business owners I've worked really scummy and shady. A lot of people go into business because they are literally unemployable. Personality disorder, criminal past etc. You are much more likely to be a victim of wage theft.
This might be one of the worst reasons I've ever heard to oppose small businesses
I know what you mean, but lots of folks with personality disorders are fine, and most people with personality disorders are disproportionately more likely to be victims of abuse than abusers themselves. Similarly with crimes, stuff like stealing food for the value of ten bucks can put you in jail in some places, not to mention the criminalization of homelessness and the selective enforcement that targets racialized people more. I do agree that there's lots of business people who are terrible but I don't agree on the reasons.
There are a lot of shops here wifh literally the owner working(and in some cases their family also do work there).
And don't judge people with only this much info. You are attributing personality disorders to people you don't even know
Man, then who are supposed to employ them? Id you are employed, then it must be some business, except for government jobs(which only take a handful of people)
Where do you propose we shop?
Wherever, we are not going to consume our way to a better future.
Agree to disagree then
For the love of god read capital
For the love of god see people around you
You are completely uninformed and don't understand capitalism. I see the people around me, this is why I am a communist. For the love of god grow up and stop making excuses. Those sole proprietorships are still part of a larger structural problem that is literally destroying the world. Read a damn book.
How does reading a book change the material reality we are living in alleged comrade? The failure of 21st century Marxism is forgetting the material world it was designed to address in favor of masterbatory academic circlejerks
👀 @ China and wondering if those hundreds of millions of "21st century Marxists" Communist Party members forgot to address the material world while becoming a superpower and rapidly outpacing the world hegemon empire economically.
(Though for the record, I agree that reading theory is only half of the necessary equation needed for someone to overcome their liberalism.)
The difference between the PRC and western “Marxism” is they live in reality while westerners live in a platonic realm of ideals. China is the best criticism of western Marxism in existence today and it’s even funnier they have a pejorative for western leftists who don’t actually care about improving the lives of commoners
No? Marxism is going very strong globally in the 21st century, the PRC rising so rapidly is one of the defining characteristics of this century. Western Marxism has many problems, but it's not because people correctly identify the petite bourgeoisie as such, and not as proletarian.
My god you people will literally enable fascism just so you don't have to pick up a damn book
Because reading a fucking book would tell that person why a small business owner, even a self proprietorship, participates in a system designed to exploit all the workers that produce the products they are selling. You aren't going to sell me on anti-intellectualism you fucking American idiot.
^ Person saying workers should own means of production when they actually own means of production
You think people who run their own stores produce everything they sell also? Don't bother answering I am putting you on the block list because I am fully convinced nothing that is posted by your account will ever be worth reading.
There are goods and services as things being produced. The items they sell may not be produced by them but the value they produce is services. It's not just goods that are produced. And I also know small business which produce some items where owner/owners work on their own without any other workers. And you are basically saying fuck off to the people doing labor and also own production.
Sure block me but i'm not posting this expecting to change your mind, but for others reading this
You really are demonstrating a complete lack of familiarity with the topic while trying to defend small business owners. Small businesses that hire employees are exploiting workers and stealing the surplus value from their labor just like giant corporations do, full stop. You might have a leg to stand on if you were referring exclusively to co-ops but even those are rife with issues under capitalism (I wrote some about co-ops in another comment) and can only be said to have control over the tiniest fraction of the means of production. Socialism is the proletariat as a class owning the means of production and small business owners are by definition part of the capitalist class - this is about society as a whole, not 3 or 4 guys getting together to buy some machines (owning a lil slice of the MoP) they then use to exploit the people hired to work those machines. Even if those 3 or 4 guys chip in with the work, it's irrelevant. That's literally the problem, not the solution.
All of this is just scratching the surface on correcting the misunderstandings you've displayed. I don't have the time or inclination to go into all those corrections and I think it's safe to say the same is true of OP. If u/Cowbee was in this thread, he would probably be willing to go into it for you but I'm not going to bug him with a ping. However I couldn't stop you from DMing him if you were genuinely interested in learning. Or you can just check out his reading list which I would encourage any lurking readers, since you mentioned them, to do as well.
I never said anything about them hiring employees. I did state the worker itself owning the business. The OP then went forward to saying the products they sell are made from some other corporation that hired employees which i don't see is relevant.
I did not say anytjing against socialism or communism, but just saying that there are business fully owned by the worker themselves. And they do that for their living. Without society as a whole changing from capitalism, how do you expect people to live? Get a job? Under another exploitative corporation? Or build your own business in which you yourself work?
But sure, overthrow the system if you can. But till then, It's far better to support small business owned by the workers itself
Dont engage. OP just finished their first book and feels enlightened so anyone disagreeing with their newly acquired knowledge is a fool.
It’s so crazy how wide this cancer has spread lol. It’s like a rise of idealism mixed with an unhealthy obsession with Trotsky and the idea of the global proletariat which is clearly a losing position as national identity and nationalism is a requirement for the success of a nation and these people are anti nationalism contrary to actually existing socialist states like China which are very anti immigration pro nationalism and share a common ethnic identity