Nihilist Communism and the Understanding of the Proletarait

  1. Brosa Luxemburg
    Brosa Luxemburg
    I think that the text "Nihilist Communism" makes some good points about "consciousness-raising", activism, and things of that nature. However, one of the big things that troubled me about the text was the way the proletariat as a class was described. Instead of including all those who must sell their labor on the market to those that own property and stand in this specific relation to production, it seems to only include those in "essential" industries. I find this claim to be wrong, and the text doesn't really go much in depth about why the proletariat only include those in essential industries (other than the fact that those industries are, well, essential). Does anybody agree with the text on this issue? If so, why?
  2. Thirsty Crow
    Thirsty Crow
    Well this reply is kind of late But recently I've been rereading NihComm and texts related to the Duponts. I do think they're as relevant and fruitful (in a very limited sense, but still).

    The issue with the essential proletariat is not that this is some kind of a "pure" working class. Duponts don't exclude other working class people from their notion of the class (that would be pretty preposterous). The notion itself is a strategic notion - the essential proletariat is a part of the working class who can wield significant social power over the process of accumulation by means of their refusal of work. That's why they're "essential" - because they can inflict serious damage and even bring down, temporarily, the entire process of social reproduction.

    If anything, I think Duponts slightly overestimate the problems with this simple and correct notion. For instance, the fact that essential workers are also replacable; the fact that they might be violently dislocated from sites of production they were sabotaging.