I provide a service for direct use (forgot the real term).
as an independent worker with my own business I am not an organized worker and have no solidarity with ppl who do the same job. true lumpen.
but then learned about the whole concept of unproductive labour. there is no capitalist who steals my surplus value. true unproductive worker?
what am I?
That’s fair: it depends on the specifics of the freelancing. A lot of US 1099 workers, practically speaking, are proletarians with even fewer rights than W-2 employees. I’ve been in that situation, but I’ve also been “lower” petit bourgeois self-employed, and I’ve been “upper” petit bourgeois employing workers myself.