Proletariat

The proletariat is according to Karl Marx the Social class opposed to the Capital, a social class being a group of homogeneous individuals according to certain criteria. The criterion of definition of the proletariat is that it is the social class not having the average materials of production held by the capital and thus sees itself in the obligation to sell its labor force with the antagonistic class to survive. Thus the proletariat gathers the whole of the people in this situation, in other words the paid and the unemployed (which are employees without employment).

The proletarian word indicates in the beginning a Roman Citoyen which has only his/her children like richness. It forms the class the least considered civitas (together of the citizens), consisted of those which cannot buy any part of armor and which do not have the right to vote that in theory. It is the last Social class. Of course the interest of the proletarian is to obtain as much as possible for a work, while reciprocally the owner of the means of production seeks to minimize this cost. The proletariat thus has exactly contrary interests with those of the middle-class. From where a conflict between them, the “  Class struggle   ”.

Always according to Marx, the engine of the Histoire is the class struggle. And it is because there is fight between the proletarians to remove their conditions of existence and middle-class men that one day, according to the laws of the history which it released, the middle-class having been isolated exclusive exercise of the capacity, the company will become communist.

Nowadays Pierre Bourdieu enriched the concept of capital by including the cultural Capital there (mainly relations/friendly and diplomas). To the class struggle would thus be added new social discriminations between the graduates and the not-graduates.

Quotations

  • “the proletariat recruits in all the layers of the population” Karl Marx, Manifeste of the Communist party , 1848
  • “the proletariat lost its name since the majority of the citizens form of it part” , Raoul Vaneigem, 2004.

See too

Simple: Proletariat Zh-min-nan: Bû-sán-kai-kip

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