The concept of the proletariat in the work of Karl Marx

Abstract

In 1844, Marx introduced into his work the concept of the proletariat. Thereafter, until his death in 1883, he maintained that the rule of the proletariat would emancipate humanity from capitalism and from class rule itself. Marx's formulation of the proletarian mission is one of the distinctive features of his theory, even though it has helped to shape our conception of socialism as a working class project. A hundred years after Marx’s death, it is clear that the proletariat has not fulfilled his expectations. Where they have not been imposed militarily, revolutions made in Marx's name are chiefly the products of the machinations of declasse elements, and herald repressive regimes. By examining the sources and development of Marx's conception of the proletariat, this work attempts to explain how Marx was led, wrongly, to regard the proletariat as revolutionary and the bearers of freedom. It stresses that the concept of the proletariat was employed by Marx, initially, to meet certain theoretical requirements - in particular, to play the role of universal class: the general representative and saviour of humanity. Marx's conception of universality is explored and contrasted with Hegel's. The difference suggests that Marx adopted a simplified solution to what Hegel recognized as a complex problem: how can modern man feel that he is part of one community? Marx filled his abstract concept of the proletariat with economic and social content as his studies of the material life of civil society demanded. Two important changes, however, began to occur. First, Marx constructed an economic and a political model of the proletariat to supplement his speculative construction, which models coexisted uneasily with it. Secondly, the proletariat as the class of freedom, as the reaffirmation of the subject, was largely supplanted by the proletariat as the bearer of economic rationality. For Marx, the limitations of the actual proletariat posed no threat to his conception: he shifted from one model to another in order to discount adverse evidence as being inessential. Furthermore, the increasing importance of political economy in Marx's work corresponded to a decline in his appreciation of the role of creative and free humans in establishing socialism. Marx's early Promethean vision seems ultimately to be chained to the rock of vast impersonal forces, a rock which Marx himself created. Marx misread the workers' struggles of his time; his concept of the proletariat could not be falsified; and his expectations of the proletariat simply could not be met.