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Karl Marx (trans. Samuel Moore): Marx/Engels Selected Works
(Moscow
Progress Publishers
1969) Vol 1
pp. 98 - 137
(originally published 1848)
"In proportion as the bourgeoisie
i.e.
capital
is
developed
in the same proportion is the proletariat
the modern working class
developed — a class of labourers
who live only so long as they find work
and
who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers
who must sell themselves piecemeal
are a commodity
like every other article of
commerce." [Quote p.98]
" ... the lumpen proletariat
which in all big towns forms a mass sharply
differentiated from the industrial proletariat
a recruiting ground for thieves
and criminals of all kinds living on the crumbs of society
people without a
definite trade
vagabonds
men without hearth or home ... "
[Quote from 'The Class Struggles in France
1848-50']
The following features of Marx’s definition of the proletariat may be noted:
- proletariat is synonymous with “modern working class”
- proletarians have no means of support other than selling their labour power
- their position makes them dependent upon capital
- it is the expansion of capital
as opposed to servicing the personal or
administrative needs of capitalists
which is the defining role of the
proletariat
- proletarians sell themselves as opposed to selling
products like the petty-bourgeoisie and capitalists
- they sell themselves “piecemeal” as opposed to slaves who may
be sold as a whole and become the property of someone else
- although the term “labourers” carries the connotation of manual labour
elsewhere
Marx makes it clear that the labourer with the head is as much a proletarian as
the labourer with the hand
- Lumpenproletariat
roughly translated as 'slum workers'
identifies the class of
outcast
degenerated and submerged elements that make up a section of the
population of industrial centers. It includes beggars
prostitutes
gangsters
racketeers
swindlers
petty criminals
tramps
chronic unemployed or
unemployables
persons who have been cast out by industry
and all sorts of
declassed
degraded or degenerated elements. In times of depression
innumerable young people also
who cannot find an opportunity to
enter into the social organism as producers
are pushed into this limbo of the
outcast.