But they own their labor. They don't have to sell their labor to someone else to access land or capital or markets.
A small business owner may derive value from their own labor but that doesn't make them working class. The important thing is whether they own their own means of production, or they have to sell their labor and be exploited to create surplus value.
You've basically defined all business owners as working class if they rent their storefronts or owe money to a bank.
But a small business owner that pays rents or loans is still not selling their labor to someone else. They own the full surplus value of their labor and then can use the profits they generate from their business to pay rents and loans. That's the key difference. The fact that petite bourgeoisie are at the whims of the big bourgeoisie does not actually change the fact that their class interests align against the working class. There's a reason farmers, like all small business owners, are so reactionary and anti-worker and anti-tax and anti-regulation and pro-business.
EDIT All that said? Your argument is actually the basis for Yanis Varoufakis's technofeudalism theory. As he explains it, rents are triumphing over profits and so the feudalists (banks, tech firms) are able to capture business owners into loans and rents and feudal market places where they are unable to generate profits anymore. They're still not working class, but more like wealthy landed peasantry paying taxes to their fief. That would actually open up opportunities for alliances between workers and farmers, because class antagonisms have changed.
I disagree. They're petite bourgeoisie and their class interests are still aligned with the ruling class, and the "feudalists" are just monopoly capital, but it's an interesting theory. I recommend reading the book, it's not that long.
Farmers do plenty of work besides driving their tractor around, but class relations are defined by their relations to property and capital and profit rather than how much work they do. He owns the land, and the tractor, and reaps all the profit. He's small business owner, and his politics probably align with other small business owners.
Small business owners do labor too, but that doesn't make them working class. Workers don't own shit, but these farmers own capital and land and directly profit from their own labor rather than being forced to sell their labor on the market.
It's a social class, defined by their relation to the means of production.
Being working class doesn't just mean you perform work. It's a social class defined by the relation to the means of production.
Soy farmers in the US own their fields, own their equipment, set their own hours, and directly profit from selling commodities on the market. They're small business owners, they are not workers. Workers don't own or control shit, they sell their labor to someone else who actually owns capital and land. Workers toil under a boss and soy farmers do not, they are their own boss.
Knowing modern city management, adding parking spaces is always more likely than adding public transit. I'm sure they already had a tram network but local shops wanted some street-side parking to increase business, so they just crammed it in there.
This is why I think we need to get organized. There are these spontaneous masses of people who would be very receptive to libreware and federation, but the message isn't getting out to them. You have to be a turbonerd to even be aware of this stuff, but the outrage is fertile ground if the message could just get out of obscure corners of the internet.
You have to choose. You can't just say "fuck everyone!" and pretend like your stance means anything. Pick one.