How large is the Proletariat in the USA and Europe?

[heiss93]

How large is the Proletariat in the USA and Europe?

What percentage of the population in the USA and Europe would you consider proletarians?
What type of jobs would you classify under proletarian?
Would you consider most white collar workers to be prole?

Which jobs make up the petit-bourgeoisie and which the labor aristocracy? How would you classify the first world rural land owner?

Is there any income bracket that you would use as a standard or is it completely dependent on the means of production?

Would you classify the "middle class" as proletariat or bourgeoisie?

How does wealth earned through real-estate, interest or investment interfere with the classification of proletariats as earning salary exclusively from wages?

Would you go as far as the CPUSA and say that only the actual owners and CEOs of corporations consist the bourgeoisie.

[RedAnarchist]

There is currently 712 million people in Europe, and 303 million in the US, and I would say probably at least 80% of those are proletarians.

[MarxSchmarx]

I've read between 80 - 85% (the pareconists are fond of this number, for example), but I've had a hard time tracking down the methods used at to arrive at the number. Still, as a percentage of the population that can't live off their investments alone and aren't serious managers, it sounds reasonable to me.

[Cencus]

Depends on what you count as proles?

The working population of the U.K. is about 40 million out of 60 million. Out of the that economicly inactive 20 million are those under 16, housewives, a million "officially" unemployed, 3.5 million, like me, on incapacity benefit, those working in the grey and black economies, etc. It's all down to where you personally draw the line. There are some would only count those involved in manufactuering as proles, it's a case of individual choice where you join the line.

[bezdomni]

There Is a Revolutionary Class in the United States
There is a proletariat in the United States. It is part of an international class of wage-laborers whose labor is the foundation of capitalist production and whose exploitation is the source of capitalist wealth. It is a large segment of U.S. society. And it embodies the potential to destroy the old order and to revolutionize society as part of the world proletarian revolution.
The U.S. working class is extremely diverse and is made up of different strata and sections. The working class in the United States constitutes over 50 percent of the total labor force, numbering some 70 million wage-laborers. It includes 12 million manufacturing workers, several million other industrial workers, and far greater numbers in service, retail, and office work (both in the private and government sectors).
The proletariat is found in the smokestack economy of auto, steel, machine tools production, etc., as well as in expanding job categories such as cashiers, health services, and truck drivers. It is found in the new economy of information technology from immigrant proletarians forging, fabricating, packaging, and shipping high-tech products to armies of data entry and service workers.
Many in the proletariat, and this is especially the case among oppressed nationalities and youth, are not regularly employed and often experience long spells of unemployment.
The great bulk of the unemployed are part of the working class. Even in the best of times, millions are unemployed and underemployed; and the numbers of the unemployed soar in periods of crisis.
Capitalism's reserve army of labor is an essential and integral part of capitalist accumulation. The desperate circumstances of the unemployed exert downward pressure on wages and conditions overall and these proletarians are available to be exploited in accordance with the dynamics and demands of capitalist accumulation.
Sizeable numbers of proletarians are cast into conditions of homelessness and hunger. Many are forced into desperate survival measures working odd jobs and exchanging goods and services in the informal economy of the ghettos and barrios, or moving between jobs and hustles and semilegal activities.
Over the last 20 years, capitalism has been reshaped. There has been intensified globalization and massive centralization of capital. There has been technological transformation. There has been restructuring of employment and work relations, including attacks on the right to organize unions and bargain collectively.
But these changes, and the dislocations that have come with them, have not led to the disappearance of the U.S. working class but rather to its recomposition. This process of recomposition has involved the decline of more stable and better-paid strata, the expansion of low-wage service sectors, and the growth of more flexible, temporary, and part-time labor with little job security and few benefits.
http://revcom.us/margorp/a-uf2.htm

From the New Draft Programme of the RCP, USA...although I will note here that it is pretty out of date.

[RedAnarchist]

Europe will have a very varied number of proletarians in each nation. For insatnce, there's going to be quite a few more in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe.

[ComradeOm]

Europe will have a very varied number of proletarians in each nation. For insatnce, there's going to be quite a few more in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe.Only if you are assuming that service sector employees are not member of the proletariat. Unlike the West, with the possible exception of France, there remains sizeable peasant populations in a number of Eastern European nations - Romania and Bulgaria in particular

[More Fire for the People]

If we define a proletarian as someone who exerts labor-power for a wage, then I would estimate 65% to 75% of the population. If we include housewives, children, disabled, and the chronically unemployed then 75% to 85%. If we exclude wage-laborers who also receive income from investments (ie stock), probably 35%-50%.

[Luís Henrique]

If we define a proletarian as someone who exerts labor-power for a wage, then I would estimate 65% to 75% of the population. If we include housewives, children, disabled, and the chronically unemployed then 75% to 85%.

Children and housewives fall into the class the person they depend upon falls.

Any given family belongs to only one class.


If we exclude wage-laborers who also receive income from investments (ie stock), probably 35%-50%.

Generally speaking, such money is wage complementation, and should not be thought as actually being surplus-value.

Luís Henrique

[Die Neue Zeit]

Only if you are assuming that service sector employees are not member of the proletariat. Unlike the West, with the possible exception of France, there remains sizeable peasant populations in a number of Eastern European nations - Romania and Bulgaria in particular

Regarding your first sentence, such "assumption" by so many Marxists is little more than sectoral chauvinism in favour of manual workers. :(


Children and housewives fall into the class the person they depend upon falls.

Any given family belongs to only one class.

You're forgetting one thing: what about adults living in with their parents? :confused:

[Let's assume here that Dad's a reasonably well-off petit-bourgeois, Mom's a prole, and the Adult-Kid is a prole past the university student years who can't afford to live on his or her own due to rising rent and real estate costs.]


If we exclude wage-laborers who also receive income from investments (ie stock), probably 35%-50%.

Comrade, for someone who hasn't read Chapter 2 (on class relations) in the Article Submissions forum, Luis is correct. It's a good thing there you talked about the underclasses, but apparently you didn't read the part about "significant-influence" ownership.

[BIG BROTHER]

Now out of this percentage of proles in the US of Europe, would you consider revolutionary the ones that have high paying jobs, such as Doctors, Lawyers, Dentists and such?

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ That depends on whether they retain a false petit-bourgeois consciousness (not the least of which is perpetuated by sectoral chauvinism in favour of manual workers) or if they've adopted the true proletarian consciousness that is their own:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/simplification-class-relations-t73419/index.html

["The Modern Working Class and the Development of Capitalism" - pay particular attention to the lengthy Kautsky quote.]

[BIG BROTHER]

Thanks for the link, and as I was saying that I belive is the problem with the first world countries and some of their "proles" like Doctors, and such. Since they get pretty good, their mentality is reactionary, they have a nice living so they are in no urge to change their consciousness.

[Organic Revolution]

85%

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ josefrancisco, professional workers are not part of the labour aristocracy (multi-million-dollar pro athletes), though. :confused:

[And you still haven't applied. :confused: ]

[BIG BROTHER]

^^^ josefrancisco, professional workers are not part of the labour aristocracy (multi-million-dollar pro athletes), though. :confused:

[And you still haven't applied. :confused: ]

They still make pretty good money, and they seem to have the ilusion that "if you study hard, you can have a "good job" and make a lot of money"

[Schrödinger's Cat]

I would say around 80-85% of America and Europe could be considered part of the proletariat. My numbers are based on this analysis:

The labor department reports that 150 million people are either employed or actively unemployed, out of a population of 300 million. I'm sure we're all aware of how the government purposely notches down the unemployment rate for appeasement reasons, so we can probably include about another one million individuals who have become disenfranchised. I will assume that - based on there being about 15 million businesses in the United States - 130 million are wage-earners. Sole proprietorships are the most common business organization, after all. Of all women between 16-XX(?), about 60% work. I am assuming that - since there are only 6.5 million women-owned businesses in the US, 40 million make their living off of wages. We are now at 190 million.

Generally, populations beneath the age of 16 constitute about 25%. I would then say, based on the number of reported businesses in the United States, about 50 million children are born to working-class families.

We are now at about 240 million, or 80%. The number will be higher if the labor department was only including people younger than the age of retirement.

I am basing the rest off of presumptions, but I believe the petit-bourgeoisie make up about 15%, and the bourgeoisie make up less than 1%. Any discrepancies would be made up by military personnel and statistical errors. (We should also remember most of the petit-bourgeoisie do not make a large profit. Many small businesses also don't have any/many employees).

[RadioRaheem84]

60-70% in my opinion. Yet, those are numbers that the West does not want to admit. Also most of the proles won't admit that they are proles. In a society like the US, 60-70 percent of the population work their asses off to someday be like the 30%, aka "the american dream".

[BIG BROTHER]

60-70% in my opinion. Yet, those are numbers that the West does not want to admit. Also most of the proles won't admit that they are proles. In a society like the US, 60-70 percent of the population work their asses off to someday be like the 30%, aka "the american dream".

O yes, that is so true. Most of them especially the ones who don't do manual work and have a job in the service sector, consider themselves "middle class"

[Schrödinger's Cat]

60-70% in my opinion. Yet, those are numbers that the West does not want to admit. Also most of the proles won't admit that they are proles. In a society like the US, 60-70 percent of the population work their asses off to someday be like the 30%, aka "the american dream".

I don't mean to come off as a mathematical loon, but where are you getting those numbers from? I have a hard time imagining that only 6 out of 10 people can be considered part of the proletariat, unless you're excluding house-wives/husbands and children.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I would say around 80-85% of America and Europe could be considered part of the proletariat. My numbers are based on this analysis:

The labor department reports that 150 million people are either employed or actively unemployed, out of a population of 300 million. I'm sure we're all aware of how the government purposely notches down the unemployment rate for appeasement reasons, so we can probably include about another one million individuals who have become disenfranchised. I will assume that - based on there being about 15 million businesses in the United States - 130 million are wage-earners. Sole proprietorships are the most common business organization, after all. Of all women between 16-XX(?), about 60% work. I am assuming that - since there are only 6.5 million women-owned businesses in the US, 40 million make their living off of wages. We are now at 190 million.

Generally, populations beneath the age of 16 constitute about 25%. I would then say, based on the number of reported businesses in the United States, about 50 million children are born to working-class families.

We are now at about 240 million, or 80%. The number will be higher if the labor department was only including people younger than the age of retirement.

I am basing the rest off of presumptions, but I believe the petit-bourgeoisie make up about 15%, and the bourgeoisie make up less than 1%. Any discrepancies would be made up by military personnel and statistical errors. (We should also remember most of the petit-bourgeoisie do not make a large profit. Many small businesses also don't have any/many employees).



Good analysis, but since you're a pareconist, what about the coordinator class (and by this I exclude CEOs and mutual fund managers - functioning capitalists in my Chapter 2 article submission)?

[I think that, in any event, the proper proletariat (manual, clerical, and professional workers) comprises at LEAST two-thirds of any developed capitalist country's population, with most of the rest being either petit-bourgeois or coordinator folks (and to a lesser extent, the "Class #2" of cops, security guards, lawyers, judges, and obsolete artisans). The underclasses and the bourgeoisie are a tiny minority.]

[Awful Reality]

If you benefit from the surplus value of or control the means of production, you are not proletarian. If you do not, you are.

As always, the vast majority.

[RedFlagComrade]

There is currently 712 million people in Europe, and 303 million in the US, and I would say probably at least 80% of those are proletarians.
Where is everybody getting these statistics/percentages-are they just random estimates or does anybody have any logical reasoning or proof to back them up?

[RedAnarchist]

Where is everybody getting these statistics/percentages-are they just random estimates or does anybody have any logical reasoning or proof to back them up?


The statistics are from Wikipedia, and I admit that the percentage is a guess.

[heiss93]

According to the Marxist Thought Encyclopedia in the 1860s, 16% of the English population was labor aristocracy

Labor aristocracy represents more political consciousness rather than economic reality. Labor aristocrats betray their class interests for fringe benefits. They do not in reality benefit from capitalism.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Where is everybody getting these statistics/percentages-are they just random estimates or does anybody have any logical reasoning or proof to back them up?

My analysis is based on the labor department's figures: total number of working individuals, registered businesses, and popularity of sole proprietorships.