Revisiting the Mr. Peel Story

There's an underlying assumption within modern neoliberal ideology, which in turn feeds our general thoughts about the economics of capitalism, that without 'bosses' (whether they be the owners of capital itself or their managers) workers wouldn't have a job. This is true if (1) wage-workers are propertyless and consequently have nothing to sell but their labour-power in the labour market to the 'bosses' in exchange for a 'living' wage, as the Mr. Peel story illustrates. However, this truism only applies to what happens in capitalism. What the Mr. Peel story also highlights is that (2) in capitalism, capitalists can't be capitalists and make profits if there aren't any wage-workers to employ and exploit; and (3) wage-workers don't actually need capitalists if they possess their own means of production, as would be the case in a non/post-capitalist society like some form of socialism. But what can be said, as the Mr. Peel story further points out, is that (4) if capitalism is to be what it is and function in the ways that it tends to, then its underlying social structure must be one in which both capitalists and wage-workers 'need' each other if they are to constantly reproduce themselves under capitalism despite how this might result in a widening gap in their relative wealth. So, whenever it's said that workers need bosses more than the other way round, then that's not necessarily true - as these four points make clear.

It can additionally be said here that such a line about who needs the other more under capitalism is nothing more than an ideological assertion rather than a substantive scientific claim about the nature of capitalism. Indeed, it's just a piece of unabashed class propaganda on the part of and for the dominant socio-economic class of capitalist society, the capitalist class itself.

NB. To fully appreciate the philosophical point being made here about the structural relationship between the class of capitalists and the class of wage-workers, then there's no better starting point than (apart from Marx's Capital) Ian Hunt's book, Analytical and Dialectical Marxism, and Michael Lebowitz's book, Beyond Capital. What they both show is how 'capital' and 'wage-labour' need each other in order for capitalism to be both what it is and operate in the ways it does.