Are slaves proletarians?

[Die Neue Zeit]

According to the traditional Marxist definition of class, if one does not own the means of production and is not petit-bourgeois, he is proletarian.

Slaves aren't petit-bourgeois, and they don't own the means of production. Are they thus really proletarian?

[BobKKKindle$]

Slaves aren't petit-bourgeois, and they don't own the means of production. Are they thus really proletarian?Slaves are not proletarians - in Principles of Communism, Engels makes it clear that slaves do not fall into this category because, unlike proletarians, slaves are actually owned as property and are unable to choose who they work for.


Proletarians, then, have not always existed?

No. There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are today; in other words, there have not always been proletarians, any more than there has always been free unbridled competitions.

In what way do proletarians differ from slaves?

The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly.
The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries.
The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. Thus, the slave can have a better existence than the proletarian, while the proletarian belongs to a higher stage of social development and, himself, stands on a higher social level than the slave.
The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.

[Module]

Yes, I think so, for that reason. The only difference is that they don't 'sell' their labour power, instead it is stolen from them.

[BuyOurEverything]

No. The definition of proletarian is those who have nothing to sell but their labour power. Like bobkindles said, slaves are property, they don't sell anything to anyone. It's a different form of economic arrangement. Your definition of proletarian is incomplete, by your logic, the pope, or a government official is proletarian.

[Luís Henrique]

According to the traditional Marxist definition of class, if one does not own the means of production and is not petit-bourgeois, he is proletarian.

In a capitalist society, Jacob. And there are no slaves in a capitalist society.

Luís Henrique

[BuyOurEverything]

there are no slaves in a capitalist society

There are no slaves in a capitalist economy. There are still slaves today, slaves can exist in a capitalist society, economies always overlap and intertwine. Uneven development and shit. Just a minor point.