Smart, Alan & Josephine Smart (eds). Petty capitalists and globalization: flexibility, entrepreneurship, and economic development

This book brings together a series of papers applying the petty capitalism concept to enterprises in developing countries and countries in transition. The editors define petty capitalists on page 3 as ‘individuals or households who employ a small number of workers but are themselves actively involved in the labor process’. More in line with the modes of production debate, they define petty capitalists on the following page as an intermediate category, bounded by petty producers and subsistence producers, on one side, and by real capitalists on the other. This implies that a decline in fortunes may result in proletarianization or improverishment, because petty capitalists become petty or subsistence producers.