Proletariat
The proletariat ( from Latin proles, offspring ') referred to in ancient Rome, the social class of landless wage-earning and have-nots in the city-state, but they were not enslaved. Since the 19th century, the term applies to the resulting consequence of the industrial revolution industrial workers. According to Karl Marx, the proletariat are people who can achieve most of their living only by selling their labor power.
From the Marxist view of the world they are in a capitalist society in irreconcilable opposition to the propertied class, the bourgeoisie.
While it is spoken today in the sociology of the new proletariat, comes in everyday parlance, the term proletariat itself before any more. However, the derived terms " redneck " or more recently " chav " as swear words or discriminatory terms are used in the simple vernacular. Behind the cliché -like derogatory attributions hide. The term " redneck " and in particular the term " chav " are relatively blurred and remove partially significantly in the use of the name of a social group in the sociological sense ( layer, class environment ); they associate (rather than economic inequality ) is usually rather cultural values , on the one hand in terms of coarse, vulgar, uncultivated, uneducated, or even barbaric or uncivilized, sometimes as opposed to intellectual, on the other hand, within the meaning of pretentious, or with coarse, slightly refined Fashion objects or behaviors bragging. For details, can be found in the accompanying article prole.
Etymology
The German proletariat term comes from the Latin term proletarius. Following the original meaning proletarius means " the offspring concerning ". Derived it opens up today's word meaning: The proletariat is the population group carrying the state only with their offspring and not with their assets.
The proletariat in ancient Rome
During the propagation phase of the Roman Empire slaves were brought as spoils of war en masse to Rome and used on large estates as agricultural laborers. Since these large farms could produce much more efficient than the hitherto dominant peasantry, this lost his livelihood. Small farmers moved to the capital, where they lived as landless, yet free Roman citizens with the aristocratic patricians and plebeians, the non-noble (especially farmers and craftsmen ).
Since they had nothing except their right to vote, the proles sold this to foods rich in the upper class.
The proletariat workers of the Industrial Revolution
Just like the ancient proletariat, it was also among the proletariat of the time of the Industrial Revolution to people who had to abandon their rural or small-scale livelihoods and moved to the cities. Reason was the industrialization, beginning with the textile industry. The publishing system is often associated with homework represented a pre- industrialization dar. With their production much more efficient could not keep the small craft. On the other hand, the number of factories needed workers, so that more and more under task their land or their workshop were the former artisans and peasants to the cities and were to (industrial) workers.
They were exploited there in a hitherto unknown way, the working day was up to 18 hours. Rest on Sundays and public holidays, there was not. In coal mines the cheaper female labor and child labor was common. These grievances led after long struggles prohibitions and ultimately to the establishment of trade unions and the emergence of the labor movement as of Marxism.
Proletariat by Marx
The proletariat is according to the definition of Karl Marx, a new class that has emerged with the development of the Industrial Revolution. While it previously essentially relatively free artisans and serfs or leasehold farmers were who possessed the means of production such as tools and agricultural land, created with the proletariat a new class that is no longer the means of production or no longer socially competitive means of production (eg Weber) decreed, but - unlike serfs - free possessed their labor. Using the example of England, Marx describes how the introduction of mechanical looms increased the demand for wool and the prices for wool and for the conversion of farmland leased to farmers in sheep pastures for increasing wool production took place. The products sold from the farm and as hungry throughout the country around driven farmers could survive only where the resulting manufactories and factories could use this new class of proletarians dependent. The special feature of this new class and its definition is according to Marx in the " double free workers " - free from the means of production, which enabled him to provide for themselves and free, their only possession itself or, more precisely their labor power to sell. The definition of the proletariat in Marx included lifetime mainly factory workers, but includes in principle any one who can earn their livelihood solely or predominantly only by selling their labor power. This means that the today's larger groups of workers as employees, civil servants, and even hired a manager of the functions of capitalists are run, by definition, proletarians and at least today by far the largest class. Marx assumed that will bring the self-emancipation of the proletariat with it because of the increasing oligopolisation and globalization of capitalism and its inherent crisis -bound awareness in particular the tendency of the falling rate of profit in serious crises and lead to a classless society. Karl Heinz Roth talks, as part of a new configuration of revolutionary practice of the (new) Proletarität.
Definition of proletariat by Immanuel Wallerstein
After Wallerstein the bourgeoisie characterized in that it has added value that it has not generated itself and is capable of this to invest in capital goods, the result is for the proletariat, that it consists of those parts of the profits generated by them give added value to others. The receipt of payment of wages is not in itself a characteristic of the proletariat. For the producer creates the value that he does not keep in the total but are in part or in whole to someone else, for which he receives in turn depends on the type of work or goods or anything just a wage. Thus arises in capitalism a structural polarity between the bourgeoisie on the one hand and the proletariat on the other side.
The process of proletarianization Wallerstein characterized by the spread of wage labor in the course of the historical development of the capitalist world economy. Explains this is the fact that the capitalism inherent need for expansion has to overcome regularly bottlenecks due to lack of global demand, and a way to overcome such shortages, the spread of wage labor dar. For by increasing the proportion of the added value that keeps the producer and he therefore has to consumption. Accordingly, therefore, the global demand increases. Continuous expansion succeeds only by deposition wages because they generate demand.
Wage labor is also of political importance. Because of increasing wage levels widen from the formal rights of the proletariat and thus also their class consciousness. However, this happens only to a certain point, namely, to the proletarian is in fact a bourgeois.
Competitive terms on the term " proletariat "
The terms " proletariat " and "working class" are particularly heavily used in the Marxist context and associate exploitation realities and struggles for emancipation ( through reform or revolution ). The concept of class sets itself there from the beginning sharply against the concept of social class. Since the first half of the 20th century, the concept of class can also be seen in competition with the term layer and since the second half of the 20th century to complement and / or compete with the concept of the social milieu. In relation to the proletariat are competing - though not congruent - Terms Fourth Estate, undercoat and working-class milieu. It is z.T. distinction between traditional and traditional Wi- worker milieu. In Gerhard Schulze replace them harmony milieu and entertainment milieu, ie environments that are characterized more about leisure and chosen lifestyle. Since a few years immersed in the discussion on the notion of a new underclass, which is now more likely introduced from the left bearing.
In the 1950s there was also approaches that considered the class antagonisms entirely obsolete. They spoke of the leveled middle-class society. In contrast, at the beginning of the 21st century has begun a new discussion under the term precarity.