It's an interesting article, though its structure is a bit haphazard. This part in particular really jumped out at me:

Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos, was born into a business dynasty that made its fortune through the privately held Prince Corporation. When she married Dick DeVos in 1979, she sealed an alliance between the Prince family and Amway, still one of the largest private companies in the country.

Very nice way of putting it.

Poujadism seems relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Poujade
and it would seem like the known demographic characterization of Trump's base (small businessmen, the kind that showed up at the Epiphany Coup) matches that well.

I agree with the cultural assessment, but I nitpick on the term "unincorporated" - surely these family and otherwise close-held businesses are universally incorporated, for the limited liability? The difference would be they're not governed in the corporate style by representatives of many shareholders, but with single owner-CEOs; maybe sometimes family councils but still a family CEO.

I found this by Doug Henwood to be an even better and more thorough take (albeit longer)
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/04/take-me-to-your-leader-the-rot-of-the-american-ruling-class

I know some here are allergic to Jacobin (largely for good reasons) but I've yet to see a better history of modern American political economy.

I've been thinking about having my business join the local Chamber of Commerce, which generally does good stuff and could help us find new customers locally, but then I look at the national Chamber of Commerce and think "oh, hell no."

You'll miss the "It's theoretical possible I'm not a racist" boat parade.

6: Are local chambers of commerce actually related to the national org? I kind of thought it was just a name for a type of organization, but I also thought that about school PTAs, until I had a kid in school and the local one was in the middle of a PTA/PTO disaffiliation project.

I feel like it's understating the wild racism and sexism. Quite a lot of Trump's support in the PA suburbs had more to do with hating Hillary than lost construction businesses.

The article has been rattling around in my head and I think it's on to something. But, if I were pressed to think of a connection between Amway and Trump, it would be that both ran businesses based on fraud. I'm not are if my thesis can also explain the construction contractors, but I'm not ruling it out either.

I thought the connection was Betsy DeVos.

Right. That too.

The focus on 'family' really does remind you that while it's technically true that the patriarchy hurts men too, it is really convenient for many people nearly all of whom are men.

Moby: "explain the construction contractors"

"One-truck contractors" became a Trumpist trope: the kind that hire undocumented workers from a "shape-up" outside the nearest Home Depot every day. Guess who does the work, and guess what the contractor thinks of undocumented immigrants.

My mother was an IRS agent (completely with the steel-plate ID badge) for many years and she was quite clear on just how much tax fraud was committed in small partnerships and sole proprietorships: "If you want to cheat on your taxes, the best way is to be in a small partnership".

The article has been rattling around in my head and I think it's on to something.

Yay! Me too. I don't think it's exactly attempting to provide a grand theory of the right wing based solely on economic anxiety (or arrogance); I think the author has found a really interestingly ambivalent subject -- the privately held family business, small or gargantuan -- that is fundamentally easy to bend towards reactionary ends, and extremely compatible with racism, sexism (she does single out, with I think well-veiled distaste, the study of Wal-mart labor relations and gender), and Christian nationalism, while also being value-neutral enough to have a lot of strength and reach. (Actually the fact that the word "family" kept reappearing made me think of The Family, but that's way beyond my expertise.)

It's also an interesting lens through which to look at antisemitism on the right -- all those rootless cosmopolitan corporations! -- vs. Trump's idiosyncratic philosemitism, which I find both fascinating and repellent. I don't know if it's as simple as having two separate imaginaries, of international and American Jewry, where the former is the focus of all the antisemitic tropes and the latter is quite compatible with the family business model. But it's all sinister as hell. (Yes, I have been perturbed lately by antisemitism, however much of a bizarre one-off that recent hostage situation was.)

Apologies in advance if this very tipsy comment is either inaccurate, offensive, or both.

A different faction of racist assholes is now driving the Republican bus. This is no doubt disturbing to the racist assholes relegated to the passenger seats, but I'm hard-pressed to see why I should care.

the privately held family business, small or gargantuan -- that is fundamentally easy to bend towards reactionary ends

There is a deep desire on the left to believe that our fellow citizens are being manipulated toward reactionary ends. But these really are the people driving the bus. Mitch McConnell is a little freaked out by the whole thing, but he has repeatedly been whipped into line.

As for antisemitism, it's true that there are Trumpist antisemites out there who want to see Jews destroyed, but so do the Trumpist philosemites.

All of these alleged factions are remarkably similar in their outlook, and there has been basically no dissent among them. The Democrats have a problem because they really do represent a lot of disparate interests.

(I'll go read the article now.)

our fellow citizens are being manipulated toward reactionary ends

Just to be clear, this is neither what I said nor something I believe. That is, I don't think unspecified third parties are doing the bending.

You are right that I assumed that these people who are "fundamentally easy to bend" were being bent by "unspecified third parties." If you are saying that they find it easy to bend themselves, then I am in agreement:

I think the author has found a really interestingly ambivalent subject -- the privately held family business, small or gargantuan -- that is fundamentally easy to bend towards reactionary ends

I am not ambivalent about them, though.

3: I nitpick on the term "unincorporated" - surely these family and otherwise close-held businesses are universally incorporated, for the limited liability?

As she explains toward the end of the article, these businesses tend to be structured as LLC-style passthrough entities, with limited liability but passthrough taxation. Even though many of them are called "S corporations" I think "unincorporated" is a reasonable description of the arrangement.

This is quite a snapshot of S-corp as ideology.

Beyond the obvious (when possible, pick a Jewish doctor), I try not to have stereotypes about Jewish people. Some of them aren't helping, but I try.

I suspect that not all right-wing philosemitism stems from a desire to hurry the apocalypse by having the Temple rebuilt. I think some of it is because they want to, for example, control the weather and think marrying your kids the families that control the weather is a good plan. It's completely rational if you're a complete tool.

Anyway, my first full-time job was working as an "independent contractor" for a small family business. I was earning $5/hour, which was big money and I learned how to put up a grain bin.

You build the roof, lift it up, and then add the walls from the top down as you keep raising it up.

The growing militancy of the Republican right is less about an alliance of small business against big business than it is an insurrection of one form of capitalism against another: the private, unincorporated, and family-based versus the corporate, publicly traded, and shareholder-owned.

The linked piece is really incoherent. I mean to start, who ever said that there is an alliance of small businesses in the Republican Party that opposes big business? Why does this require a rebuttal?

Once you reject that improbable narrative, what do you accomplish by replacing the combatants with family businesses and publicly traded businesses?

The author gives us, on the one hand, the opponents of "publicly traded, and shareholder-owned" companies: people like Dick Armey, Ted Cruz, the Koch brothers, Amway, Barry Goldwater, Newt Gingrich, Arthur Laffer, Jude Wanniski, Jack Kemp, the Trump businesses, Trump himself, and Stephen Moore.

And the establishment companies/people under attack in the insurrection are General Motors, General Electric, DuPont, Alcoa, Duke Energy, AIG, the Business Roundtable, William E. Simon, and Martin Feldstein.

Here is Trump, fighting against the "corporate, publicly traded, and shareholder-owned" companies:

"I was the guy who made the payroll. It hasn't always been so easy either. In the 1990s, the government changed the real estate tax laws and made those changes retroactive. It was very unfair. . . . Now we have crazy overregulation. You can barely buy a paper clip without being in violation of some government policy."

All of these people share something important in common: All are enthusiastic members of the Republican Party, and have been since forever. Sure, there are minor differences of opinion among the Republicans. Trade is a sensitive topic, and to a lesser extent, so is immigration. There is noticeable disagreement about how overt racism should be.

But overall, the party is extraordinarily unified. This "insurrection" is, at most, merely an ongoing negotiation.

The Henwood piece I linked in 4 goes a long way to answering some of the questions pf raised above. I think it's a much more thorough and better argued piece than the one in the OP.

The Henwood piece is just a mess. What on earth is someone supposed to make of this nonsense?

We've always had a brutal ruling class -- more brutal at certain times (the years of slavery and Jim Crow) than others (the New Deal).

THE NEW DEAL TOOK PLACE ENTIRELY DURING THE PERIOD OF JIM CROW.

Trump was not the bourgeoisie's favorite candidate. He had support from provincial plutocrats but not from the executive suite at Goldman Sachs.

Trump's secretary of state was the CEO of ExxonMobil. Trump's treasury secretary was LITERALLY A FORMER OCCUPANT OF THE EXECUTIVE SUITE AT GOLDMAN SACHS. "The bourgeoisie" - in the sense of the capitalist class who own companies - voted for Trump.

Also, naturally (((Goldman Sachs))) is the example corporation and (((Henry Kissinger))) is the example member of the ruling class.

when the whole world nearly fell apart in 2008 (a year when a private equity titan, Bain's Mitt Romney, ran for president),

Ah yes, Obama's famous 2008 defeat of Mitt Romney.

Elite division looks to be in stark contrast with the coherence and breadth of the WASPs

My dude you just spent about 2000 words of this grotesquely overlong brain dump describing how the mid 20th century was a period of WASPs supposedly betraying their fellow WASPs.

And arguing that Northeastern WASPs were the ruling class and southern WASPs weren't because the southerners "never had the social weight of their northern relatives" is just laughable. But he has to do that because otherwise it becomes even more obvious that his hallucination of a unified, coherent, dynamic WASP upper class is completely detached from reality.

Facing the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s, one like that depression driven in large part by Wall Street, Obama was not about to do anything on the scale of the New Deal. There was the early and underpowered stimulus package, but beyond that, there would be no major reregulation of finance and no programs of public investment, income security, or redistribution. Unlike the Franklin Roosevelt administration, or even John F. Kennedy's, for that matter, there was little political ferment around the White House

FDR had SEVENTY SENATORS, you unutterable clot. Kennedy had sixty-five. You think maybe that might have something to do with how much they were able to get done?