Proletarianization
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Part of a series on |
| Marxist theory |
 |
|
Criticism
|
|
Categories
|
 Communism portal  |
Proletarianization is a concept in Marxism and Marxist sociology. It refers to the social process whereby people move from being either an employer, or self-employed, to being employed as wage labor by an employer. In Marxist theory, proletarianisation is the most important form of downward social mobility.
Contents |
[edit] 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'.
[edit] In modern capitalism
Many intellectuals have described proletarianization in advanced capitalism as "the extension of the logic of factory labor to a large sector of services and intellectual professions."[1] The classic historical study of proletarianization is E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1963), in which the author portrays the meanings, struggles and conditions of an emerging proletariat.
Geographically, the process of proletarianization is closely related[specify] to urbanization because it frequently involves the migration of a rural population from the countryside to the cities and towns, in search of work and income.[citation needed]
[edit] See also
- capital accumulation
- Embourgeoisement thesis
- primitive accumulation
- proletariat
- surplus labour
- Workerism
- working class
[edit] Further reading
- 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
- Barbrook, Richard (2006). The Class of the New (paperback ed.). London: OpenMute. ISBN 0-9550664-7-6. http://www.theclassofthenew.net.
[edit] References
- ^ Debord, Guy (1967) The Society of the Spectacle, chap.14 thesis 114
