The character and ideology of the small entrepreneurs and the facts of the market are selling the idea of competition short. These liberal heroes, the small businessmen and the farmers, do not want to develop their characters by free and open competition; they do not believe in competition, and they have been doing their best to get away from it.
When small businessmen are asked whether they think free competition is, by and large, a good thing, they answer, with authority and vehemence, 'Yes, of course— what do you mean?' If they are then asked, 'Here in this, your town?' still they say, 'Yes,' but now they hesitate a little. Finally: 'How about here in this town in furniture?'— or groceries, whatever the man's line is. Their answers are of two sorts: 'Yes, if it's fair competition,' which turns out to mean: 'if it doesn't make me compete.' Their second answer adds up to the same competition with the public: 'Well, you see, in certain lines, it's no good if there are too many businesses. You ought to keep the other fellow's business in mind.' The small businessman, as well as the farmer, wants to become big, not directly by eating up others like himself in competition, but by the indirect ways and means practiced by his own par ticular heroes— those already big. In the dream life of the small entrepreneur, the sure fix is replacing the open market.
But if small men wish to close their ranks, why do they continue to talk, in abstract contexts, especially political ones, about free competition? The answer is that the political function of free competition is what really matters now, to small entrepreneurs, but especially to big business spokesmen. This ideology performs a crucial role in the competition between business on the one hand and the electorate, labor in particular, on the other. It is a means of justifying the social and economic position of business in the community at large. For, if there is free competition and a constant coming and going of enterprises, the one who remains established is 'the better man' and 'deserves to be where he is.' But if instead of such competition, there is a rigid line between successful entrepreneurs and the employee community, the man on top may be 'coasting on what his father did,' and not really be worthy of his hard-won position. Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm. Thus the principle of the self-made man, and the justification of his superior position by the competitive fire through which he has come, require and in turn support the ideology of free competition. In the abstract political ranges, everyone can believe in competition; in the concrete economic case, few small entrepreneurs can afford to do so.
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The competitive spirit, especially when embodied in an ethic which is conceived to be the source of all virtue, abounds only where there is consciousness of unlimited opportunity. When-ever there is consciousness of scarcity, of a limited, contracting world, then competition becomes a sin against one's fellows. The group tries to close its ranks, as in labor unions, to set up rules for insiders and rules against those who are closed out. This is what the small entrepreneur is in the process of doing. No longer filled with a consciousness of abundance, if he ever was, he now lives in a world of limited or scarce opportunities, and other people are seen as a competitive menace or as men to join up with.
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It is this feeling that makes it possible for big business to use small business as a shield. In any melee between big business and big labor, the small entrepreneurs seem to be more often on the side of business. It is as if the closer to bankruptcy they are, the more frantically they cling to their ideal. But much as they cling to big business, they do not look to it as the solver of their troubles; for this, strangely enough, they look to government. The little businessman believes, 'We are victims of circumstances. My only hope is in Senator Murray, who, I feel sure, will do all in his power to keep the little businessman who, he knows, has been the foundation of the country [etc.]. . . We all know no business can survive selling ... at a loss, which is my case today, on the new cost of green coffee.'
Yet, while he looks to government for economic aid and po itical comfort, the independent businessman is, at the same time, resentful of its regulations and taxation, and he has vague feelings that larger powers are using government against him. And his attitude toward government is blended with estimates of his own virtue, for the criterion of man is success on Main Street: 'Another thing that I resent very much is the fact that most of these organizations are headed by men who are not able to make a success in private life and have squeezed into WPA [sic] and gotten over us and are telling us what to do, and it is to me very resentful. And all these men here know of people who head these organizations, who were not able to make a living on Main Street before.
Small business's attitude toward government, as toward labor, plays into the hands of big-business ideology. In both connec- tions, small businessmen are shock troops in the battle against labor unions and government controls.
Big government, organized labor, big business, as well as immediate competitors, prepare the soil of anxiety for small busi- ness; the ideological growth of this anxiety is thus deeply rooted in fears, which, though often misplaced, are not without founda- tion. Big business exploits in its own interests the very anxieties it has created for small business.
Many of the problems to which Nazism provided one kind of solution have by no means been solved in America. 'The ultimate success of national socialism,' A. R. L. Gurland, O. Kirchheimer, and F. Neumann have recalled, 'was due to a large extent to its ability to use the frustrations of [small-business] groups for its own purposes. Small business wanted to retain its independence and have an adequate income. But it was not allowed to do this. The Nazis directed the resentment of small businessmen against labor and against the Weimar Republic, which appeared to be, and to some extent was, the creation of the German labor movement . . . the frustrations of small businessmen, created primarily by the process of concentration, were not directed against the industrial and financial monopolists, but against those groups that appeared to have attained more security at the expense of small business. . . Thus, national socialism was able to organize small business by promising it the coming of a Golden Age. . .
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by Filipenko Wed Nov 09, 2022 12:06 am
Nektivni Ugnelj
Desantis i Rubio pokidali, kongres 20 od 28 mesta za Trampa. 
