RE: [OPE] proletarianization and the economic crisis

> When I was referring to massive proletarianization, I meant millions of people (not only
> in the USA) who realise that from now on, they're stuck with having to work for a wage
> at any sort of job they can get, or living off an unemployment benefit, without any prospect
> of getting out of that situation, that the options/prospects they previously thought they had,
> have mostly disappeared. I meant that they experience the socio-economic compulsion to
> work for a boss or for social welfare, anyway they can, very directly and forcefully, and it
> changes social consciousness. A lot of that American petit-bourgeois individualist ideology
> accordingly which "you can do anything you like" suddenly no longer works in the same way.
 
OK, Jurriaan, but is this proletarianization or, rather, the self-awareness by members of the
working class that they are actually members of that class? This is, I guess, the same
thing as asking: does class membership depend on the recognition by people that they
are members of the class or is 'class' (and proletarianization) more of an objective social
category which - to some extent - exists independently of the consciousness of members
of that class?
 
In solidarity, Jerry

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Received on Thu Mar 12 09:09:04 2009