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'Proletarianization' is a concept in Marxism and Marxist sociology. It refers to the social process whereby people move from being either an employer, self-employed or unemployed to being employed as wage labor by an employer. In some cases, this would mean downward social mobility but in other cases an improvement of social position, insofar as the income from wage labor was better than from self-employment or unemployment.

Contents

Marx's concept

E.P. Thompson

Proletarianization and urbanisation

Criticism of the concept

See also

References

Marx's concept

For Marx, the process of proletarianization was the other side of capital accumulation. The growth of capital meant the growth of the working class. The expansion of capitalist markets involved processes of primitive accumulation and privatisation, which transferred more and more assets into capitalist private property, and concentrated wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Therefore, an increasing mass of the population was reduced to dependence on wage labour for income, i.e. they had to sell their labour power to an employer for a wage or salary because they lacked assets or other sources of income. The materially-based contradictions within capitalist society would foster revolution. Marx believed the proletariat would eventually overthrow the bourgeoisie as the 'last class in history'.

E.P. Thompson

The classic historical study of proletarianization is E.P. Thompson's ''The Making of the English Working Class'', in which the author portrays the meanings, struggles and conditions of an emerging proletariat.

Proletarianization and urbanisation

Geographically, the process of proletarianization is closely related to urbanisation because it frequently involves the migration of a propertyless rural population from the countryside to the cities and towns, in search of work and income.

Criticism of the concept

Non-Marxist sociologists will often admit that the development of the capitalist mode of production has caused a huge increase of the number of wage and salary earners within the world's working population. But they argue that:

★ this fact does not necessarily mean or imply ''proletarianization''. For example, the new middle classes (professionals, managers etc.) also earn salaries, but these salaries are sufficiently high to permit a lifestyle which cannot be called "proletarian" anymore.

★ if we ''only'' look at wages and salaries earned, we might come to wrong conclusions. We also have to take into account asset ownership and household wealth; especially in the USA, non-wage income is a large component of personal income.

★ proletarianization is not a process uniquely associated with capitalism. For example, a proletarian element existed also in the Roman empire and in feudal Europe, and more importantly, hundreds of millions of peasants in the USSR and China were "proletarianized", ''not'' as a result of capitalist private enterprise, but as a result of state directives and policies.

See also

★ proletariat

★ working class

★ capital accumulation

★ primitive accumulation

★ surplus labour

★ Workerism

References

★ Karl Marx, Das Kapital.

★ E.P. Thompson, ''The Making of the English Working Class''. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

★ Hal Draper, ''Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Vol 2: The Politics of Social Classes''. New York: Monthly Review Press.

★ Ernest Mandel, ''Workers under Neo-capitalism''
http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/19xx/xx/neocap.htm

★ The Class of the New, , Richard, Barbrook, OpenMute, 2006, 0-9550664-7-6