breakdown of the corporation as an economic and social institution is a critical feature of capitalism today, and it deeply shapes how we value – and overvalue – small business. The disintegration of the old order, although couched in populist language of ‘shareholder democracy’, has generated uncertainty and dislocation as well as freedom and opportunity, and those ups and downs have not been distributed evenly. The well-educated with privileged access can take advantage of the new niches that open up, and become entrepreneurs. Those in the lower tiers, however, confront a deteriorating employment landscape pockmarked by wage stagnation, decreased mobility, and lower-paid and low-benefit jobs. Social safety nets are evaporating, and wealth inequality is expanding. ‘Necessity-based’ self-employment is rising in rich and poor countries alike. Self-sufficiency has always been part of the allure of opening one’s own business. In the globalised, atomised economy, it has also become an unstable lifeline.
By linking the political agenda of small business and large business, conservatives in the 1980s laid the foundation for a set of policy developments that hastened the globalising forces of late-stage capitalism and failed to mitigate its effects. By presuming that small business was uniquely or exceptionally innovative, they ignored the real world of small business owners and perpetuated a devastating myth that judged small companies by their ability to become Big Businesses. In so doing, they missed the most critical developments in global capitalism: the simultaneous fracture of the mid-century corporate world and the rise of an isolated, privileged global elite that marginalised and weakened the vast majority of small businesses.