Mall Proles....

[RadioRaheem84]

Concerning the workers, if most of the nation's workers are now in the service industry what is their relation to production then? What is this class of workers then concerning the proletariat? Does one have to be producing to be considered a proletariat? Or is the selling of one's labor enough to make oneself a proletariat?

[A.R.Amistad]

Absolutely not. The fundamental divisions of class are the same. Just because, in the industrialized nations, service industry has dominated production industry, it still is an industry. And all industry in capitalist society is dominated by capital. If you wanted a good breakdown of class, at least for the United States and probably every other Western nation, the Proletariat consists of around 86% of the population, still a vast majority. Now, the problem is, Bourgeois society has acknowledged class division as simply the poor, the "middle class," and the rich, hence trying to eliminate the reality of class struggle with the illusion of universal prosperity in the "middle class." But the middle class, as the capitalists perceive it, is really a non-class. The "middle class" is so huge that a corporate lawyer and a janitor can be placed in the same class. A good authoritative source on modern class structure would be Dennis Gilbert, he has some great analysis on the reality of class today. Looking at Wikipedia's diagram, I have consolidated the working class as those categorized as "Lower Middle Class" and below, on down to the "underclass" which would be the lumpenproletariat. This broad working class has a gradien of privilege and living conditions, but even those at the top of that gradient suffer from exploitation, overwork, job insecurity, food insecurity, housing insecurity, etc. etc. etc. As you can see, the ideal "middle class," the petty bourgeoisie, is actually only a mere 15% of the population, and even they suffer from certain disparities. Of course, the ruling capitalist class is a tiny 1% of the population, no matter how you look at it. The overall point is, even though the nature of capitalism has changed, the division between proletariet and bourgeoisie is still a class reality in even the most prosperous of nations. There is still a working masses in need of revolution in the twenty first century.

[Durruti's Ghost]

I have consolidated the working class as those categorized as "Lower Middle Class" and below, on down to the "underclass" which would be the lumpenproletariat. This broad working class has a gradien of privilege and living conditions, but even those at the top of that gradient suffer from exploitation, overwork, job insecurity, food insecurity, housing insecurity, etc. etc. etc.

Even this is only a rough approximation, though. In reality, there is no perfect correlation between the lower/working/middle/upper class division and the proletarian/petit-bourgeois/bourgeois division because the two are defined by different factors--the first, by income, and the second, by whether or not one sells one's labor, exploits others' labor, or does neither.

[RadioRaheem84]

But what argument do workers in the service industry have for a defense of better wages if they do not produce the products they sell? Is selling the product just as important as producing it? What about a maid?

[redasheville]

But what argument do workers in the service industry have for a defense of better wages if they do not produce the products they sell? Is selling the product just as important as producing it? What about a maid? Is it just based off the fact that one as a maid and provides my service at a cheaper then they I can afford?

As Marx explained, a worker's wages are not a "worker's share" of capitalist profits. A wage is a payment for a commodity, labor power, that is independent of the profit that a capitalist generates with that labor power. Therefore, the service worker does not need to justify a demand for higher wages, because demanding higher wages wouldn't be demanding a slice of the profits but rather an increase in the price of their labor power IMO.

[which doctor]

But what argument do workers in the service industry have for a defense of better wages if they do not produce the products they sell? Is selling the product just as important as producing it? What about a maid?
The proletariat's role isn't so much about producing, as it is about adding value. The process of "adding value" begins by mining the raw materials out of the earth and ends in the creation of a salable commodity. The role of the proletariat is not confined to the factory, but along the whole spectrum the item travels to it's final destination as a commodity. In a factory, a worker adds value to the raw materials by turning it into a commodity. Likewise, other people add value in different ways, from the truck driver hauling the raw materials, to the scientist who labored intellectually in engineering the product, to the salesperson at the store who helped you find it. All of these roles add value to the commodity via their labor power.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Concerning the workers, if most of the nation's workers are now in the service industry what is their relation to production then? What is this class of workers then concerning the proletariat? Does one have to be producing to be considered a proletariat? Or is the selling of one's labor enough to make oneself a proletariat?

There's stuff in Capital referring to productive and unproductive labour. However, since I think you're good at math, here's a more critical paper on the subject:

Hunting Productive Work (http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/unprod.html) by Paul Cockshott and Dave Zachariah