Tradition
Proletariat
Overview
The proletariat (; from Latin proletarius 'producing offspring') is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian or a proletaire. Marxist philosophy regards the proletariat under conditions of capitalism as an exploited class, deprived of their own means of production and thereby forced to operate industrial means of production held as private property by the bourgeoisie, receiving wages which represent less than the value their labour produced, the remainder appropriated by the bourgeoisie as profits.
Karl Marx argued that the conflicting inherent interests between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie gives the proletariat common economic and political interests that transcend national boundaries, impelling them to unite and assert their sovereignty over the capitalist class, and eventually to create a socialist society free from class distinctions.
The philosopher Bernard Stiegler extended the marxist concept to what he defines as the "deprivation of knowledges".
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Proletariat is discussed.
We have now followed the proletariat of the British Islands through all branches of its activity, and found it everywhere living in want and misery under totally inhuman conditions. We have seen discontent arise with the rise of the proletariat, grow, develop, and organise; we have seen open bloodless and bloody battles of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. We have investigated the principles according to…
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 with a Preface written in 1892
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
"Marx and Engels hammered out the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Engels stubbornly defended in 1891, shortly before his death--the idea that the political autocracy of the proletariat is the sole form in which it can realize its control of the state." That is what Kautsky wrote about ten years ago.
Leon Trotsky, Dictatorship vs. Democracy
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
It is, therefore, not excluded that in a backward country with a lesser degree of capitalistic development, the proletariat should sooner reach political supremacy than in a highly developed capitalist state. Thus, in middle-class Paris, the proletariat consciously took into its hands the administration of public affairs in 1871. True it is, that the reign of the proletariat lasted only for two months, it is…
Leon Trotsky, Our Revolution
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; opens on it
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their…
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph
But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labor, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The…
Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Proletariat
- Mircea Eliade
- Karl Marx
- Thomas Sowell
- Intellectual
- Will Durant
- Opium of the people
- Georgi Plekhanov
- Young Marx
- Étienne Balibar
- György Lukács
- Friedrich Engels
- Antonio Gramsci
- Frantz Fanon
Related ideas
- Sidney Hook
- Private property
- Industrial Revolution
- Karl Marx
- Livy
- Capital (economics)
- Marxism
- Knowledge
- Russian Revolution
- Roman law
- Sigmund Freud
- Socialism
- Critical thinking
- Social class
- The Communist Manifesto
- Humboldt University of Berlin
- Common good
- Chinese Communist Revolution
- Surplus value
- Marxist philosophy
- Grundrisse
- Proletarian internationalism
- Friedrich Engels
- Means of production
Place in the tradition
Part of Communism.