We explain what the proletariat is, its relationship with the bourgeoisie and what the dictatorship of the proletariat is. Furthermore, the proletariat today.
What is the proletariat?
Today we understand by proletariat the weakest rung of capitalist society, that is, the working class. It is the social class that lacks control of the means of production and distribution of the goods generated by society, and therefore to survive must sell its work capacity to the bourgeoisie in exchange for a salary.
The term proletariat today is used in the sense of the Marxist tradition that is, to the school of political and economic philosophy that had its origin in the works of the German philosopher Karl Marx (1818-1883), and that was of utmost importance for the labor movements of the 20th century.
However, its antecedents date back to the years of the Roman Empire, in whose society the lower rung was intended for the proletarianwho lacked property and could offer the empire only their offspring (that is, their offspring) to swell the imperial armies.
This sense of the proletarian as a last-class citizen reappeared, after the Middle Ages, in 16th century England. It took on a new meaning within the framework of the French Revolution of 1789, beginning to designate the working class that, despite being deprived of its corresponding rights, is aware of its situation and therefore yearns for liberation, which gives it a positive meaning to the term.
Since then it passed into the political jargon of the socialist political movements of the 19th century, and would eventually reach Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, who reworked it within the framework of their philosophical vision of history and the communist manifesto (1848).
Proletariat and bourgeoisie
According to the Marxist interpretation of the capitalist production model, the main difference between social classes is the possession of the means of production and distribution of consumer goods, that is, who owns the machines and the locations used to produce them. industrial production: factories, machinery, transport vehicles, etc.
So, The bourgeoisie is the social class that owns the means of production and distribution which controls industrial activity, while the proletariat would be the working social class, which does not own any means of production, nor can it control production.
Therefore, the proletariat must offer the bourgeoisie its work capacity, that is, its time, its physical strength, its availability to operate the factory machines and generate industrial goods. In exchange, the bourgeoisie gives them a salary, that is, payment for their work.
The problem is, as Marxism explains it, that The work of the proletarians is indispensable for industrial production, but it is rewarded only with a salary without taking part in the rewards of the finished product, whose benefits are all for the bourgeoisie.
Furthermore, in the daily work time of the proletariat a number of goods are produced, the sale of which provides many more capital than is necessary to pay their salaries and reinvest in the process. This surplus, baptized by Marx as surplus value, is completely appropriated by the bourgeoisie.
dictatorship of the proletariat
According to Marxist historical theory, history advances according to the pressures of the struggle between social classes (the so-called class struggle) for control of the means of production.
This constant struggle would have pushed society from the ancient slave models and the medieval feudal model, towards industrial capitalism. According to this theory, it would also eventually lead to its collapse, when the working class rose up and imposed its own order, through what Marx called the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Bliss dictatorship of the working class would be the prelude to the construction of a society stripped of social classes: communist society, in which the circuit of “the exploitation of man by man” would finally be broken.
However, throughout the 20th century Attempts to establish this system of government had disastrous results: widespread repression, hunger, genocide and other similar tragedies, occurred in the name of liberation and a more just system that, in theory, is always to come.
Proletariat today
Currently, the working conditions of industrial society are far from those that Karl Marx observed in the 19th century, although his diagnosis and description of capitalism are still valid. In fact, new categories, inspired by that of the Marxist proletariat, have emerged, such as:
- The cognitariat that social class that does not own capital or control the means of production, but rather has its cognitive capacity and education to offer to the market, in the same terms as the “labor force” of the working class.
- The precariat which would be the social class of workers who suffer from job insecurity, that is, who do not enjoy the minimum social and economic security benefits achieved by the proletariat through the workers' struggle.
Continue with: Scientific Communism
References
- “Proletariat” on Wikipedia.
- “Dictatorship of the proletariat” on Wikipedia.
- “Proletarian, ria” in the Dictionary of the language of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Proletariat and labor movement” in ICT Resources (Spain).
- “The proletariat” in Nueva Tribuna.
- “Proletariat (social class)” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
