Roughly half of medical practices are owned by the physicians that operate them. They employ/exploit paraprofessional and administrative staff, etc. Is it fair to say they’re members of the bourgeoisie by virtue of their relation to the m.o.p.?In this case it would be safe to say that as small business owners, they are members of the capitalist class. Their profession however, as a doctor, does not necessarily dictate any relationship with the means of production. In this case, I would see them as holding two separate occupations simultaneously, one which involves a degree of exploitation, and another which is merely a trade (bearing in mind that doctors who operate their own practices still contribute a significant amount of specialized labor, unlike a CEO or board member of a large corporation).
From a Marxist class analysis perspective, I guess the question would be whether any given doctor is a member of the petit bourgeoisie or the bourgeoisie proper. You’re right that this isn’t fundamentally a question of their occupation, but of their relationship to the means of production. The analysis would have to be somewhat more fine-grained than just saying doctors are capitalists simpliciter, but I’m comfortable saying that there exist a great many doctors who extract surplus value from their employees.
Anyways, I don’t think anyone is actually making the argument that doctors are capitalists by virtue of their profession. I’m not, at least. And of-praxis couched her posts explicitly in terms of “doctors as capitalists”, further noting that “not all doctors are rich of course”. I think the point is rather that there are lots of doctors that are capitalists. And speaking more loosely, that there are certainly a great many very, very well off doctors.
Incidentally, as recently as 2005 more than 2/3 of doctors owned their own practices. There’s been a significant move towards salaried employment over the last few years, driven by a combination of economies of scale on the part of large hospitals, the impacts of the Great Recession, and aggressive merger and acquisition activity (also by large hospitals). I thought that was an interesting trend.
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