The Last Word
Ollman, Bertell
THE LAST WORD Bertell Oilman The Name of the Game Among the facts one can learn about small business by opening up almost any economics textbook are the following: You can borrow all you want at...
...Squeezed on all sides by a variety of big neighbors, this is the lot of small business...
...Copyright ©1983 by Bertell Oilman...
...Ideologically, small business (more than the existence of "free land" in the Nineteenth Century and the relatively easy access to higher education today) puts flesh on the idea of equality of opportunity, the core rationalization on which democratic capitalism stands or falls...
...Likewise, with nine out of ten small businesses failing within ten years of getting started (U.S...
...The experience of Class Struggle, Inc., the business I founded to produce and distribute a board game called "Class Struggle," has shown every one of these "facts" to be either wrong or in need of major qualification: Promotion and especially distribution costs were an enormous drain on our resources...
...Class Struggle, anyone...
...Capitalism lives on a lie and a secret...
...No doubt being a good manager contributes to the success of those few who make it, but so do gross overwork, willingness to lie and exploit others (including one's spouse and kids), and simple good luck...
...And right now things couldn't be worse, with small businesses going bankrupt at a faster rate than any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s...
...Though big capitalists are plowing under an ever greater number of small businesses through heavyhanded competition and mergers, their need for their junior namesakes has never been greater...
...The net effect of all of the above is to give a sense that small businesspeople largely control their own destiny, that the competitive game they are playing is more or less fair, and therefore that they have a good chance of winning—of being successful...
...What equality of opportunity actually amounts to today emerges clearly from the story of the young reporter who asked a leading capitalist how he made his fortune: "It was really quite simple," the capitalist answered...
...At every turn, Class Struggle, Inc., was reminded of the inequality of power in the marketplace, and forced by our weaker position to do less and pay more...
...Not only are most small businesspeople former workers, they are also future workers...
...Store buyers only know the price of the things they sell (and sometimes their weight and color), while most consumers are ignorant beyond belief...
...Consequently, their chances for survival, let alone success, are very small indeed...
...We could not borrow what we needed no matter what we were willing to pay...
...The secret is that there is another way, a different set of rules for organizing society...
...It is reasonable to assume that all buyers and sellers in a market are well informed...
...The lie, most imaginatively expressed in the game Monopoly, is that everyone has an equal opportunity to become a capitalist...
...In a reasonably competitive market, we could not sell what we produced at any price, chiefly because of distribution bottlenecks beyond our control...
...Choosing the right metaphor here is everything...
...If markets are reasonably competitive, you can sell all you can make at the going price...
...The mythology in which small business is swathed carries over to explanations for why businesses fail...
...government statistics) the odds of succeeding are small even in good times...
...Capitalism's way of solving problems is to pass them on to the next person, who— if he has the economic muscle—passes them on again until they arrive at those who are too weak to do anything but live with them...
...Like all truly great secrets, this one lies hidden in a dungeon guarded by a dragon...
...They do the brunt of the fighting—organizing, propagandizing, voting...
...That dragon's name is "Red Scare...
...It's called "free enterprise": The enterprises with power are free to use it as they wish against those without power—consumers, workers, and small businesspeople alike...
...It was at this point that my wife's father died and left us a million dollars...
...the market is even more lopsided and small businesspeople have even less influence over their destiny than is generally believed...
...You can always sell more by cutting the price, never by raising it...
...With this I bought two apples, spent the evening polishing them, and sold them for twenty cents...
...and this is the way to secure maximum benefits for themselves, as workers, tomorrow...
...But this is like saying that people on the Titanic drowned because they couldn't swim...
...I bought an apple for five cents, spent the evening polishing it, and sold it the next day for ten cents...
...No other class can make this boast...
...The secret is socialism...
...Politically, small businesspeople provide the shock troops for capitalism...
...Or die from them...
...Could capitalism survive the defection of small business to the side of the working class...
...What emerges from the above is that Bertell Oilman is a professor of politics at New York University and the co-editor of "The Left Academy: Marxist Scholarship on American Campuses...
...Cutting our price would have done no good...
...For most of the people involved, small business functions as a transition class, taking them from where they started back to where they started, usually worse off than when they began...
...Small businesspeople should ally themselves with the workers, then, because this is the way to put maximum pressure on their capitalist opponents today...
...THE LAST WORD Bertell Oilman The Name of the Game Among the facts one can learn about small business by opening up almost any economics textbook are the following: You can borrow all you want at the going rate of interest...
...This article is adapted from "Class Struggle Is the Name of the Game: True Confessions of a Marxist Businessman," to be published in August by William Morrow...
...The class struggle of small business, therefore, is first and foremost a struggle against big business, and only secondarily against the workers it employs...
...raising it—if this allowed a larger cut for various middlemen—might have helped...
...Rather than a step up to big business, small business usually functions as a revolving door back into the working class, from which most failed entrepreneurs have started out...
...And so it went until I amassed a dollar-sixty...
...Making a sale is the same thing as getting paid for it...
...Clearly not...
...According to a Dun and Bradstreet survey of "experts," most failures are due to "lack of business-management knowledge...
...And there is a world of difference between selling something and getting paid for it...
Vol. 47 • August 1983 • No. 8
