Classic liberal view In the early 19th century, many Western European liberal scholarswho dealt with social sciences and economicspointed out the socio-economic similarities of the modern rapidly growing industrial worker class and the classic proletarians. One of the earliest analogies can be found in the 1807 paper of French philosopher and political scientist
Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais. Later it was translated to English with the title "Modern Slavery". Swiss liberal economist and historian was the first to apply the proletariat term to the working class created under capitalism, and whose writings were frequently cited by
Karl Marx. Marx most likely encountered the term while studying the works of Sismondi.
Marxist theory Marx, who studied
Roman law at the
Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, used the term
proletariat in his socio-political theory (
Marxism) to describe a progressive working class untainted by
private property and capable of
revolutionary action to topple capitalism and
abolish social classes, leading society to ever higher levels of prosperity and justice. With reference to such expectations,
Andreas Dorschel, alluding to
Sigmund Freud's notion of "super-ego" ("Über-Ich"), calls Marx's proletariat a "super-we" ("Über-Wir") installed above any actual workers' movement. Marx himself defined the proletariat as the social class having no significant ownership of the
means of production (factories, machines, land, mines, buildings, vehicles) and whose only means of subsistence is to sell their labour power for a
wage or
salary. Borders between the proletariat and adjacent social classes have been defined only vaguely in Marxist theory. In the socially superior, less progressive direction are the lower
petty bourgeoisie, such as small shopkeepers, who rely primarily on self-employment at an income comparable to an ordinary wage. Intermediate positions are possible, where wage-labor for an employer combines with self-employment. In another direction, the
lumpenproletariat or "rag-proletariat", which Marx considers a retrograde class, live in the
informal economy outside of legal employment: the poorest outcasts of society such as beggars, tricksters, entertainers, buskers, criminals and prostitutes.
Socialist parties have often argued over whether they should organize and represent all the lower classes, or only the wage-earning proletariat. '' publication advocating industrial unionism based on a critique of capitalism. The proletariat "work for all" and "feed all". According to Marxism, capitalism is based on the
exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie: the workers, who own no means of production, must use the property of others to produce goods and services and to earn their living. Workers cannot rent the means of production (e.g. a factory or department store) to produce on their own account; rather, capitalists hire workers, and the goods or services produced become the property of the capitalist, who sells them at the market. Part of the net selling price pays the workers' wages (variable costs); a second part renews the means of production (constant costs, capital investment); while the third part is consumed by the capitalist class, split between the capitalist's personal profit and fees to other owners (rents, taxes, interest on loans, etc.). The struggle over the first part (wage rates) puts the proletariat and
bourgeoisie into irreconcilable conflict, as market competition pushes wages inexorably to the
minimum necessary for the workers to survive and continue working. The second part, called capitalized surplus value, is used to renew or increase the means of production (
capital), either in quantity or quality. The second and third parts are known as
surplus value, the difference between the wealth the proletariat produce and the wealth they consume. Marxists argue that new wealth is created through labor applied to
natural resources. The commodities that proletarians produce and capitalists sell are valued not for their usefulness, but for the amount of
labour embodied in them: for example, air is essential but requires no labor to produce, and is therefore free; while a diamond is much less useful, but requires hundreds of hours of mining and cutting, and is therefore expensive. The same goes for the workers' labor power: it is valued not for the amount of wealth it produces, but for the amount of labor necessary to keep the workers fed, housed, sufficiently trained, and able to raise children as new workers. On the other hand, capitalists earn their wealth not as a function of their personal labor, which may even be null, but by the juridical relation of their property to the means of production (e.g. owning a factory or farmland). Marx argues that history is made by man and not destiny. The instruments of production and the working class that use the tools in order to produce are referred to as the moving forces of society. Over time, this developed into the levels of social class where the owners of resources joined to squeeze productivity out of the individuals who depended on their labor power. Marx argues that these relations between the exploiters and exploited results in different modes of production and the successive stages in history. These modes of production in which mankind gains power over nature is distinguished into five different systems: the Primitive Community, Slave State, Feudal State, Capitalist System, and finally the Socialist Society. The transition between these systems were all due to an increase in civil unrest among those who felt oppressed by a higher social class. The contention with feudalism began once the merchants and guild artisans grew in numbers and power. Once they organized themselves, they began opposing the fees imposed on them by the nobles and clergy. This development led to new ideas and eventually established the Bourgeoisie class which Marx opposes. Commerce began to change the form of production and markets began to shift in order to support larger production and profits. This change led to a series of revolutions by the bourgeois which resulted in capitalism. Marx argues that this same model can and should be applied to the fight for the proletariat. Forming unions similar to how the merchants and artisans did will establish enough power to enact change. Ultimately, Marx's theory of the proletarian's struggle would eventually lead to the fall of capitalism and the emergence of a new mode of production, socialism. During the
Chinese Communist Revolution, the concept of the proletariat emphasized having a proletarian
class consciousness, rather than having proletarian social attributes (such as being an industrial worker). In this way of defining the proletariat, a proletarian class consciousness could be developed through a subjective standpoint with political education supplied by the
Chinese Communist Party.
Stieglerian approach Extension of the Marxist concept . Through a rereading of the
Grundrisse, the philosopher
Bernard Stiegler expands the concept of proletariat. According to him,The proletariat is defined by
Engels and
Marx in
The Communist Manifesto not by impoverishment, but by the loss of knowledge (of which impoverishment is a consequence), and which, they write, will ultimately affect "all strata of the population".He links this phenomenon to a loss of
individuation, a concept developed by
Gilbert Simondon:Simondon offers a new perspective on the question of proletarianization: he frames it as a process of de-individuation that results in a loss of knowledge through its externalization into machines and devices."According to Stiegler,
proletarianization is a process. It identifies three phases of
automation throughout the history of capitalism: the
Industrial Revolution, the advent of the
consumer society, and
surveillance capitalism. These phases are accompanied, respectively, by three stages of proletarianization: the
proletarianization of skills, of
social skills, and of
critical thinking.More broadly, these skills might include
cooking,
educating, residing in a place, living together, counting or measuring, etc.
Examples Stiegler considers the renowned economist
Alan Greenspan, who served as chairman of the
U.S. Federal Reserve during the
subprime crisis, to be a proletarian.
Chatbots, such as
ChatGPT, are a proletarianizing technology because users delegate their ability to think.
Deproletarianization The process of proletarianization can be reversed through what Stiegler calls "deproletarianization", that is, the reappropriation of knowledge. He cites the example of
collaborative practices, such as those found in the
open-source software community,
fab labs, and
Wikipedia, which he places at the center of his theory of the contributory economy. All of these practices contribute to the recreation of the
commons (including
digital commons). For Stiegler, contributors invest themselvesbecause they want to expand their knowledge and skills. Such a thirst for knowledge is a desire to become deproletarianized.Deproletarianization goes through a "de-automation". However, Stiegler emphasizes that this does not have to be done in opposition to machines. He cites the example of
Wikipedia contributors - of whom he is one - who are assisted by
bots for tedious and repetitive tasks. ==See also==