Maybe something has gotten lost in translation, as often happens when talking to market anarchists. I understand entrepreneuship to mean going into business for oneself. I understand that the trend these days is to use it as a catch-all term for everything from innovation to creation of new organizations, including non-profits. I suspect that the strategy served by this expansion of our understanding of entrepreneuship is to get us to associate innovation and creativity with commerce, or perhaps with the “social entrepreneuship” meme I’m already sick of, to hammer home (further) the point that the solutions to the big, hard social problems will be found (if at all) in the private sector, with always ample documentaries about for-profit enterprises beating non-profit philanthropy at its own game.

The dream of 100% self-employment seems to be one of universal yeomanry of sorts, so perhaps that is why “bourgeoisie” isn’t used as a dirty word so much among the market anarchists, or perhaps it is, and I just haven’t yet encountered that part of the rhetoric. I fear the prospect of “go into business for yourself or be someone’s bitch,” which seems to be what the world is rapidly coming to, so an explanation of why “entrepreneurship emphatically doesn’t mean that” would be comforting.