Blog 15 - The Business Class Exposed

Standard Header - In these blogs, current politics are illuminated by reference to the basic relationships explained in ‘Us, Politics and The System.’ To give readers an idea when to look for a new post, the plan is to do a new one at least once a week, on Fridays.

The rich. The rich and powerful. The wealthy. The elites. The wealthy elites. Wealthy interests. The billionaires. The billionaire class. The 1%. These are all too vague, shapeless, don’t identify any actual people well enough to hold them to account.

And just referring to their wealth keeps hidden and unexamined how they get rich and wealthy. And that lets them present their wealth as just being there, theirs, which it isn’t, for most of them. It comes from what the rest of us do.

'Business’, business interests, ‘the business ‘community’’ still don’t identify any actual people or group. 'Capitalism’ just presents an image of a disembodied thing outside human agency. Capitalists or the capitalist class at least speaks of actual people. But nobody really has a vision of who they are.

These vague terms leave these people invisible in political thinking and debate. Instead, everybody blames ‘politicians’, including ours, who have to try to improve things for the majority while not having much power over these people. Naming them will help.

And we need to identify how they get wealthy. It’s from the source of all wealth - the work process. It can be stored and transferred in money and property, but it all comes from work, production. We need to identify who has the central role in production, work, trade and wealth generation, the key activity in society.

Again, ‘Capitalism’ and ‘capitalists’ is the nearest people come to identifying them. But that only refers to a phase in business where surplus money is re-invested. More important by far is the everyday work, production and trading process, where income that covers costs, profits, wages and wealth, and generates capital, is generated.

The people who organise and manage all this mostly do it by running businesses. Included in that are the financial businesses and 'bond markets' and suchlike. Businesses are, together, pretty much 'the economy.' We need to name them and put their activity at the centre of political debate. They are clearly a class and the best name for them is the business class.

Try noticing them as a class. When you are out and about, look at all the lorries and factories and offices and construction companies and the rest and ask ‘Who owns them?’ Try noticing their role in everything. Try calling them the business class. Just to yourself. Then try saying it. It comes with practice. It works well when talking with people if you start by saying ‘Production, trade and work are the most important processes in society and a small number of people organise them. They are the business class.’

They aren’t all hateful but they are the political bloc that gets business people’s rights widely accepted. They protect them with the image of all being plucky self-made small business people. That image gives important political cover to them all, excusing the power of the bigger, middle-sized businesses, all the way to the corporations.

It's ridiculous how we don't have a name for them. Identifying them and bringing their role into political debate enables sureness in understanding why the majority are badly-treated. And it explains who conservatives, the Republicans and Trump represent and are working for.

A thorough exposure of the business class is at pages 113-127 of the full Us, Politics and the System at https://www.uspoliticsandthesystem.org/_files/ugd/e8d212_adf27dc02c7d4ef3a62e88b12c19ae27.pdf

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