What is proletarian? - equality? judgement?

[Anarcho]

I've seen a lot of posts in here dealing with equality, and how capitalism creates inequality.

However, I've also seen Yuri and (I think) a few others deride someone as a capitalist because they work in an office environment.

What makes someone proletarian? For example, I come to work at 2200, and get off at 0630 the next morning. I am a contractor with IBM, through a Temporary Agency.

Much of my work is sitting on my butt at a computer desk.

I feel that I am just as much part of the proletariat as a steelworker, or a coal-miner, or a farmer. Others may disagree.

But where is the line drawn? If someone is paid well, but works 50-65 hrs a week? Or if someone isn't paid squat (like me) but doesn't work many hours.....?

What makes someone part of the proletariat, and are YOU part of the working masses?

[James]

I'd agree with you.

I am how ever not part of the "proletarian" i suppose. I'm just finishing off my end of school exmas. And i imagine i will do further education now.

[Anarcho]

The question then becomes what do you intend to do after school, and why?

I am hoping to pick up another job that pays well, because I have a rather fanatical wish for my children to avoid some of the awful things I went though growing up, and I know I can't rely on the gov't for that.

[James]

Well after school i want to go all the way through education (if a can offord it). I hope to become a historiaa, possibly a specialist. There arn't many jobs though, so you have to be really good :( thus why i wish to get as much "education" as possible. Or i may try to do some government related job. Or maybe geography...

[El Che]

Anarcho,

The term "proletariet" is French and drives from the substantive "prole" meaning literaly "offsprings" or "cubs". The reason the lower classe was called "the proletariet" was because in those times poor people had alot of kids that started to work very soon to help their family, thus it was said that the only wealth the worker class had lied in their childern. A cruel term, to describe a cruel reality in a cruel world.

To answer your question you are nither proletariet nore borgoise. You see these terms are out dated for a new class has emerged, the middle class, and thats where you fit in. That is unless you own stock in some company, in which case you are a pety capitalist, since you make a profit out of work of others. Regardless its important to note that "proletariet" is a term that denotes not only "worker class" but also the "lower class".


(Edited by El Che at 3:27 pm on June 5, 2002)

[lenin]

working class is split up into 3 seperate groups:

peasentry:farmer etc
intellignecia: white collar office worker etc
prolateirat: blue collar labourer, skilled or manuel etc

many members of the peasantry and some members of the intelligencia have the mind set of a petty bourgeois, epecially in the west.but, basically, if you sell your labour to someone, you are working class. if you buy small amounts of labour off people and own small amounts of land, you are petty bourgeosie and if you are a large corperation owner or executive who's decisions acutally effect the running of the country, you are bourgeosie.

[Nateddi]

Quote: from lenin on 3:35 pm on June 5, 2002
working class is split up into 3 seperate groups:

peasentry:farmer etc
intellignecia: white collar office worker etc
prolateirat: blue collar labourer, skilled or manuel etc

many members of the peasantry and some members of the intelligencia have the mind set of a petty bourgeois, epecially in the west.but, basically, if you sell your labour to someone, you are working class. if you buy small amounts of labour off people and own small amounts of land, you are petty bourgeosie and if you are a large corperation owner or executive who's decisions acutally effect the running of the country, you are bourgeosie.

Well put;

Anyone who works for someone else, and doesnt own their means of production is a proletarian.

[Anarcho]

Quote: from lenin on 3:35 pm on June 5, 2002
working class is split up into 3 seperate groups:

peasentry:farmer etc
intellignecia: white collar office worker etc
prolateirat: blue collar labourer, skilled or manuel etc

many members of the peasantry and some members of the intelligencia have the mind set of a petty bourgeois, epecially in the west.but, basically, if you sell your labour to someone, you are working class. if you buy small amounts of labour off people and own small amounts of land, you are petty bourgeosie and if you are a large corperation owner or executive who's decisions acutally effect the running of the country, you are bourgeosie.


Another odd example, if you would:

I have a friend (he is apolitical) who started a company. He worked hard himself, in the pits, doing the physical labor until he could hire others to do that. Then he worked at a desk, putting in long hours so that his company may grow. He employs a couple dozen folks, pays them well.

Recently, he resigned as CEO of the company, and worked internally for a while, manning phones, taking orders, doing the gruntwork again.

Now he's totally out of the business (although he still gets stock proceeds, although not much) and is traveling. Currently, he is backpacking across the US and Canada.

The man lives more frugally than anyone on this board, I would be willing to bet (unless you have also voluntarily gone without power or a refrigerator to experience a taste of the 3rd world).

What would he be?

I'm asking all these questions because I think more and more than blanket statements like that don't apply. Many of my former co-woerkers owned stock in the company they worked for. Does that make them expoitive, even though it's partially their labor as well?

What about dot.com millionaires?

[James]

Thats good point anarcho

[peaccenicked]

from a marxist encyclopedia
The following features of Marx’s definition of the proletariat should be noted: (1) proletariat is synonymous with “modern working class”, (2) proletarians have no means of support other than selling their labour power, (3) their position makes them dependent upon capital, (4) it is the expansion of capital, as opposed to servicing the personal or administrative needs of capitalists, which is the defining role of the proletariat, (4) proletarians sell themselves as opposed to selling products like the petty-bourgeoisie and capitalists, (5) they sell themselves “piecemeal” as opposed to slaves who may be sold as a whole and become the property of someone else, (6) although the term “labourers” carries the connotation of manual labour, elsewhere Marx makes it clear that the labourer with the head is as much a proletarian as the labourer with the hand, and finally (7) the proletariat is a class.

The proletariat is not a sociological category of people in such-and-such income group and such-and-such occupations, etc., but rather a real, historically developed entity, with its own self-consciousness and means of collective action. The relation between an individual proletarian and the class is not that of non-dialectical sociology, in which an individual with this or that attribute is or is not a member of the class. Rather, individuals are connected to a class by a million threads through which they participate in the general social division of labour and the struggle over the distribution of surplus value.

One issue that needs to be considered in relation to the definition of Proletariat is Wage Labour. Wage labour is the archtypal form in which the proletariat engages in the labour process, that is, by the sale of a worker's labour-power according to labour-time. Firstly, Marx treats piece-work, in which the worker is paid by output rather than by time, as a form of wage-labour, not essentially different from wage-labour. Secondly, nowadays it is increasingly common that workers are obliged to sell their product as such, by means of contract labour, for example. This raises the question of what is essential in the concept of proletariat. Contract labour does undermine working-class consciousness, but at the same time, the person who lives in a capitalist society, and has no means of support but to work, is a proletarian, even if they are unable to find employment(where workers may become lumpenproletariat if their living conditions are very difficult).

The other important issue in relation to the proletariat is its historical path. As Marx explains in Capital, [Chapter 32], capitalism brings about the “revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself”. The proletariat neither requires nor is able to exploit any other class; they are themselves the producers and capitalism has trained the proletariat in all the skills needed to rationally organise social labour for the benefit of humanity, without the aid of money, religion or any other form of inhuman mysticism.

Thus, the future historical significance of the proletariat is ultimately not that it is oppressed, but rather that it is the only class which is capable of overthrowing bourgeois society and establishing a classless society.

[El Che]

Well said peace, but should we make no distinction between say a doctor and a painter? For a doctor makes money working but is not necessarily subordinated or exploited by capital, often it is quite the contrary actualy.