Proletariat

Modern use

Classic liberal view

In the early 19th century, many Western European liberal scholars—who dealt with social sciences and economics—pointed out the socio-economic similarities of the modern rapidly growing industrial worker class and the classic proletarians. One of the earliest analogies comparing workers to the "slaves" of the Roman period can be found in the 1839 work by French philosopher and political scientist Felicité Robert de Lamennais, De l'esclavage moderne. It was translated to English and published the following year with the title "Modern Slavery". He wrote, "The proletarian is one who lives by his labor, and who could not live unless he did labor. [...] The necessity of living makes the laborer dependent upon the capitalist, irremediably his subject: because in the purse of the one is the other’s life."

Swiss liberal economist and historian Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi 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 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.

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.

Marx argued that the proletariat would inevitably displace the capitalist system with the dictatorship of the proletariat, abolishing the social relationships underpinning the class system and then developing into a communist society in which "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all".

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. This conception of the proletariat allowed for a Marxist theoretical framing under which the revolution could address the relative weakness of industrial working classes in China. Exactly what constituted a proper proletarian class consciousness was subject to intellectual and political debate.

Proletarian culture

Marx argued that each social class had its characteristic culture and politics. The socialist states stemming from the Russian Revolution championed and created the official version of proletarian culture.

Some have argued that this assessment has become outdated with the advent of mass education, mass communication and globalization. According to this argument, the working-class culture of capitalist countries tend to experience "prole drift" (proletarian drift), in which everything inexorably becomes commonplace and commodified. Examples include best-seller lists, films, music made to appeal to the masses, and shopping malls.

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. He 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 technical skills, of social skills, and of critical thinking. The current stage of capitalism is that of "widespread proletarianization", which

affects all tasks: domestic, educational, recreational [...], as well as those carried out by research, design, production, and logistics units, etc.

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. Indeed, Greenspan admitted during the congressional hearing that he did not understand the complex financial products he had popularized and, furthermore, that no one understood them.

According to Anne Alombert (coworker of Stiegler), Chatbots 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 themselves

because 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.