Life and Times: Being your own boss (2024)

The Life and Times column from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

There used to be many local shops in my area. Now, as almost everywhere, they are few and far between. Yet this doesn’t stop some people, whether brave or foolhardy, from trying to buck the trend and open a new shop of their own. For example, not too long ago a gentleman knocked on my door and told me he was going round the area asking residents what they thought of his idea of converting the empty shop on the corner of my street into a sandwich bar-cum-delicatessen. Did I think it would work? Would many people use it? Would I use it? I didn’t want to knock his obvious enthusiasm, but I felt obliged to tell him, that, though I might use it occasionally, I didn’t think he would get enough customers for it to work. He carried on knocking on doors but the shop never opened and I’m sure he made the right decision. It was a venture that would have involved time and energy in abundance not to speak of significant financial outlay, so he was obviously right to do his ‘market research’ first.

Doughnut shop vs cafe

But not everyone is equally strategic. Earlier this year a new shop did open just round the corner from me – a doughnut shop. It offers a wide range of doughnuts to take away or to eat with tea or coffee or chocolate at tables. It’s an inviting ambiance and the doughnuts look – and taste – very nice indeed (I’ve tried them myself). I saw the local family who own it spend literally months setting it up with all the work, energy and expense that involved and they’re now running it with the utmost friendliness and obvious efficiency. But my first thought (perhaps I’m a born pessimist) was that it couldn’t survive. It’s offering a non-essential item at a time when, by common consent, there’s a cost-of-living crisis. Yet maybe I was wrong, because initially there were queues down the street. And even when things settled down, there always seemed to be people in there. But now, as I pass by, custom seems increasingly sparse. The many students who live in the area have gone home for the summer and it seems empty most of the time. It has begun advertising ‘special offers’ – eg, 3 doughnuts for the price of 2 – and is advertising itself on the local community Facebook page as a place which groups can use free of charge for their meetings. But that doesn’t seem to be working and, though, at the time of writing, it’s still open, I seriously wonder how long it will last. The return of the students is some way off and it’s obvious that a small business of that kind needs consistent and ongoing trade to be successful. That’s not happening now and will it happen even when the students get back?

Then, to make things worse, down the road, no more than a couple of hundred yards away, another shop is about to open up – a sandwich and cakes café in a premises that’s been derelict for years. It’s bound to constitute competition to the doughnut shop, while at the same time, after perhaps an initial flourish, being itself unlikely, at least in my judgement, to attract enough regular clientele to be commercially successful. And this, just like the doughnut shop, after much time, energy and expense put into it by its hopeful owners.

Domination

So what’s happening here? Well, for those people who own little but their energies and skills as a means of making a living (ie, the vast majority), the only option – if they can find it – is employment by a boss of some kind for a wage or salary. But a small number see an escape route in trying to set up their own business and so becoming self-employed. In this way they will at least escape the domination of a boss. The trouble is that, as many find, this is also a risky and insecure route, since they do actually remain subject to a boss – a different one that dominates the system we all live in – that unfathomable, uncontrollable force called the market. It’s true that a few such businesses – very few – will succeed, provide a living for their owners and even prosper and grow. But the vast majority fail, often fairly quickly and with severe financial and other consequences to their owners and families. So, in the case of my local doughnut shop, no matter how friendly and efficient its owners are, the sad bottom line is likely to be that all their trouble and expense will be in vain and they will end up regretting they decided to try and become their own bosses.

Dead company walking

Of course, this can also be the fate of large and established businesses. A current BBC radio series, ‘Toast’ has delved into the demise of once thriving and well-established companies such as Safeway supermarkets and Little Chef road eateries. Its conclusion was that they went under due to ‘market conditions’ becoming unfavourable, then of course causing their employees to lose their jobs and large swathes of all kinds of resource having to be scrapped. Another recent programme, ‘Dead Company Walking’, attempted to find an explanation for the fact that businesses are currently failing at a higher rate than ever. But its explanation remained at a fairly superficial level, one of symptoms rather than causes. Above all it failed to touch at all on the real reason for failure, whether of small or large companies, which is the built-in instability and unpredictability of capitalism with its market system, from whose potential ravages no business of any kind is safe. Nor, of course, did the programme mention that there is in fact an alternative to the colossal waste of time, energy and resources all this involves, which is for workers of all kinds (ie, the vast majority of the world’s population), to act consciously and collectively to put an end to the market domination they live under and opt for a society of free association and free access.

Howard Moss