Process Of Proletarianization Research Articles

The industrial degradation of the workplace that Thorstein Veblen overlooked

Abstract Thorstein Veblen gave special importance to work. He claimed that once humans became tool users, their work activity was driven by an instinct of workmanship. This instinct is ‘an object of attention and sentiment in its own right’ beyond providing provisioning and serving another instinct, that of parental bent, or society’s wellbeing. Given appropriate social institutions, ‘labor might… assume that character of nobility in the eyes of society at large’. Yet, Veblen took little notice that during his lifetime between 1857 and 1929, the rapid industrialisation of the American economy massively proletarianised workers, greatly degrading their work experience. In Europe, this proletarianisation and degradation of the work process had begun centuries earlier with the rise of capitalism, and greatly accelerated with rapid industrialisation during Veblen’s lifetime. Although Veblen addressed how capitalism, as the latest predatory society, exploited workers, he presented industrialisation of the work process as positive for workers. This article first surveys the process of proletarianisation, focussing on the American experience. It then explores Veblen’s understanding of the impact of industrialisation on workers and how he missed a far-reaching labour-degrading process that was important in provoking massive violent insurrection, and which had earlier been addressed by political economists as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Because he failed to recognise the degradation of the work process that accompanied industrialisation, he missed its contributing role in the explosion of conspicuous consumption by Americans of all classes, the subject of his most renowned work, The Theory of the Leisure Class.

Inequality of Blockade Suffering and the Nature of (Soviet) Class

Jeffrey Hass’ Wartime Suffering and Survival is an important study of the social history of emotions and group psychologies during the siege of Leningrad. Hass explores how Leningraders responded to the inhuman conditions of suffering, death, and starvation. Following Pierre Bourdieu, Hass examines the collective responses of different social strata to the siege, and how class was reconceptualized in terms of mental frameworks of meaning-making, rather than relations to private property ownership. His analysis reveals how entrenched class distinctions were in Soviet society, and how they impacted the strategies of survival employed by the population. By combining theory with archival documents, Hass provides an innovative approach to understanding the class-food nexus in Soviet society, and how the extreme conditions of the siege amplified the exploitative wage labor relationship. Jeffrey Hass’ work shows how theory can allow deeper access into archival documents and enrich analysis, thus offering an innovative avenue for reconceptualizing class as an agentive category. To push back on the question of class, the Marxist understanding of class is critiqued, as Marx is quite critical of the idea that class can be reduced to relations of private property. Class is instead seen as a phenomenon created through the process of proletarianization and the alienation of human labor — and not simply as one of property ownership. It is thus suggested that, in the context of hyperinflation, siege, scarcity, and threatening social breakdown, food also began to function as money, constituting part of the wage and the most desperately needed part. Read through this perspective, Jeff’s workers seem far less like a group bounded together not only by habitus and customs of thought, but also by a social system of hyper-statist domination grounded from the outset of the revolution on the wage labor form.

Socialist Accumulation and Its “Primitives” in Romania

AbstractDrawing on the Romanian case, this article argues against looking at state socialist regimes through the lens of exceptionalism, and assesses the merits of analysing them from the perspective of primitive accumulation. Integrating socialist projects into a longer history of modernization, capital formation, and struggles over labour and land allows me to develop a four-step argument about primitive socialist accumulation in Romania. First, I argue that, in Romania, peasant dispossession had underpinned capital formation for roughly 150 years before the communist takeover. Second, these mechanisms of primitive accumulation constituted crucial matrices for class formation that were irreducible to ideal-typical processes of proletarianization. Third, the articulation between peasant dispossession and strategies of keeping labour cheap was state-led, mandated, or protected, and stood at the core of all modernization projects for the whole period under discussion. And fourth, seen through these lenses, the communist collectivization and nationalization in the 1950s appears as one instance, among others, in a longue-durée history of primitive accumulation in the region.

Wealth inequality in pre‐industrial Europe: What role did associational organizations have?

AbstractA host of studies on wealth inequality in pre‐industrial Europe has recently been published. Out of these, a narrative emerges of rising inequality in a context of emerging markets and growing state taxation, punctuated by calamities. By surveying the available material, this article highlights an element that is less systematically discussed in this literature: the role of associational organizations. They developed less regressive forms of taxation and redistribution, embedded the transfer and use of land and capital in coordination systems that curtailed accumulation, and sometimes even imposed maximums of wealth ownership. The article tentatively argues that the resulting downward effect on wealth inequality was found most conspicuously in societies where associations of middling groups of owners‐producers held strong positions in economic and political life, even despite the exclusive character of their organizations. Such societies were gradually eroded in the early modern period, most notably as a result of the emergence of factor markets and state centralization, and the associated processes of proletarianization and scale enlargement. This did not happen without opposition and conflict, however, as the process was sometimes halted and showed distinct geographical patterns, which in turn influenced patterns of wealth inequality.

General Labour History of Africa: Workers, Employers and Governments, 20th–21st Century

General Labour History of Africa: Workers, Employers and Governments, 20th–21st Century

School Management from the Perspective of Social Transformations at Work

In this article we intend to address the context of the school routine that is governed by rules developed by the sectors responsible for school management. In the bureaucratization of school work we see the same meaning and dimensions as the bureaucratization of other sectors of production. As the training of the workforce was transferred to the school, this institution incorporated in its organization and functioning new elements and fundamental characteristics to achieve a good performance as a socializing agency for the worker. On the other hand, the figure of the autonomous teacher, of the humanist, encyclopedist type, has also disappeared. Whether in public education or in the private network, the vast majority of teachers are in the condition of salaried workers. In this way, the process of proletarianization of teaching workers is characterized, characterized by their working conditions. The division of school work, as it developed based on the same principles as the so-called management theories, reinforces the reproduction of capitalist logic in school pedagogical practice because new practices and relationships are crystallized in this practice.

Constraints on “Free Choice”: The Role of Marriage in a Hungarian Romungro Community

Marriage has been studied by anthropologists usually in so-called “traditional” Roma communities. These communities are said to have “successfully” avoided assimilation and the process of proletarianization. According to classical anthropological studies, marriage plays an important role in maintaining the organization of these communities and their “cultural system” (Gay y Blasco 1999; Okely 1996; Sutherland 1976; Tesăr 2012; Williams 2000). Based on longterm ethnographical fieldwork from 2000 to 2013, my paper will discuss the meanings that marriage takes in a Hungarian Romungro community,1 which is highly affected by processes of assimilation and proletarianization. I will point out that although the concept and practice of marriage here are different from those of non-proletarianized communities—for example, the notion of “arranged marriage” does not exist among Romungros—marriage seems to be the most significant institution in the everyday life of the community. The institution of marriage can be interpreted through intersectionality, along with the kinship system and gender relationships, but it should not be separated from ethnic identity, everyday practices of ethnic distinctions, and class position either. Drawing on two case studies, I will show how the institution of marriage relates to the extended family, the Gypsy/Hungarian distinction, and the class positions within this community, and how the process of proletarianization affects the role and concepts of marriage.

Nursing workers: achievement of formalization, hard work and collective action dilemas.

The singularity of the collective action of nursing categories in sociopolitical participation is the subject of our analysis. This paper attaches the compelling factors of social origin and aspects of the labor market to the political action of professionals. Based on the analytical association of the extended case method, we articulated the interpretation of the database of the Brazilian Nursing Profile Survey, specifically, in the light of socioeconomic identification, labor market, and working conditions, with an ethnographic study and semi-structured interviews in three hospital units. The bibliographic review shows the incorporation of these individuals without underestimating their particularity: the historical process of proletarianization in the Brazilian social formation, the inclusion of women in the labor market, and the relationship with unions. The history of workers based on inexperience in actions of resistance or union representation associated with the valorization of employment as a social ascent results in asymmetrical work regimes, a hindering element to coordinated actions, a fundamental aspect for the improvement of working conditions.

«Deuda hipotecaria fallida, persona fallida»: la financiarización de la vivienda y la vida en Cataluña

Basado en un trabajo de once meses de investigación etnográfica comprometida con la Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) en Barcelona y en Sabadell, este artículo argumenta que la financiarización de la vivienda va de la mano de la financiarización de la vida misma, la cual incluye la subjetividad y el cuerpo. La financiarización de la vida tiene lugar cuando esta se incorpora a los mecanismos de extracción de rentas a través de los circuitos de acumulación de capital (urbano), es decir, a través de un proceso de proletarización. Este artículo muestra cómo, ante la imposibilidad de pagar, esta vida proletarizada en la relación hipotecaria se convierte en una vida fallida. Desarrollo estos argumentos de forma teórica en relación a la economía política y desde la experiencia de personas afectadas por la hipoteca.

A Questão Agrária e a Transformação Rural Neoliberal na América Latina

Desde a virada neoliberal na América Latina, a economia e sociedade rural vêm experimentando uma grande transformação. O capital corporativo e as agroindústrias transnacionais se apoderaram da agricultura transformando radicalmente as relações econômicas e sociais da produção que levam à precarização e feminização da mão de obra rural, assim como à intensificação do trabalho. Os camponeses enfrentam condições cada vez mais difíceis, tendo que buscar com maior frequência renda fora da agricultura, principalmente por meio de atividades salariais precárias, com o fim de ganhar a vida, impulsionando, assim, o processo de proletarização. Os focos da „nova ruralidade‟ e „territoriais‟ trataram de explicar estas transformações, no entanto apresentam limitações. Por outro lado, uma visão desde a economia política sobre a questão agrária se considera mais promissora. Movimentos que contestam o neoliberalismo surgiram, encabeçados pelos povos indígenas e a população rural pobre, às vezes vinculados ao movimento camponês transnacional „Via Campesina‟. Seu principal objetivo é a construção de um sistema agrário alternativo baseado na „soberania alimentar‟, que é promissor, embora também polêmico.
 Tradução do artigo original em inglês para o português por Rafael Moreira de Mello.

Labouring Poor in Early Modern Sweden?

We know very little about the unlanded population (obesuttna) in Sweden before 1750. Still, knowledge of this group is vital not only to our understanding of the proletarianization process, but also to the understanding of rural Sweden before the changes of the 18th and 19th centuries. This article takes a step towards filling this gap. Tax registers and church records from 17th-century Västmanland shows substantial proportions of unlanded people, i.e. crofters, cottagers, soldiers, artisans, and lodgers, around 1640 and 1690. The age structure of this group, which can be studied for the latter part of the period, shows that it mostly consisted of people in working age. In conclusion, the article argues that there was a significant group of smallholders and wage labourers in 17th-century Sweden, comparable to the labouring poor of other European countries.

Peasant Poverty and Persistence in the Twenty‐first Century: Theories, Debates, Realities and PoliciesEdited by JulioBoltvinik and Susan ArcherMann. London: Zed Books, 2016. Pp. xvi + 456. £70.00 (hb), £24.99 (pb). ISBN: 978‐1‐78360‐844‐7 (hb), ISBN: 978‐1‐78360‐843‐0 (pb)

This is an outstanding book on key issues and debates about the peasantry. All the contributors are well‐known and highly regarded scholars, and some are also influential activists; among them are Susan Mann, James Dickinson, Armando Bartra, Henry Bernstein, Enrique Leff, Kostas Vergopoulos, and David Barkin. The book is the outcome of a 3‐day seminar in which the selected contributors presented and debated their respective papers. Before the seminar, Julio Boltvinik produced a background paper presenting the three main themes for the seminar. The invited researchers were asked to address three questions from their particular perspective and in relation to Boltvinik's own proposed theorization. The three question were as follows: Why has the peasantry persisted? Why are they poor? And what are the links between these two questions? Framed within Marxist political economy, the persistence of the peasantry is problematic for Marxists as the development of capitalism was expected to lead to the elimination of all non‐capitalist forms of production. In the classic Marxist literature, it was argued that through a process of socio‐economic differentiation, a minority of peasants via a process of capitalization would become capitalist farmers while the majority of peasants via a process of proletarianization would lose access to their means of production. Hence, the peasantry would disappear. The first question on the persistence of the peasantry has been much debated by Marxists and non‐Marxists alike, especially by populists and neo‐populists, like Alexander Chayanov (1974). The main originality of the book therefore lies in the third question on the relationship between the persistence of the peasantry and the persistence of their poverty. The book is organized in three parts. The first part has a foreword by Meghnad Desai and the introduction by the editors. The second part has the background paper by Boltvinik (chapter 1) and the papers by the invited contributors organized in four themes: theoretical perspectives on peasant poverty and persistence (chapters 1 to 4); historical and empirical approaches (chapters 5 and 6); environment, food crisis, and peasants (chapters 7 to 9); and policy, self‐reliance, and peasant poverty (chapters 10 and 11). The third part closes the book with chapter 12 by Boltvinik in which he reflects on the dialogues and debates provoked by the seminar papers and, above all, replies to the various commentaries and criticisms raised by the contributors.

(DE) FORMANDO O EDUCADOR

O artigo objetiva contribuir com a reflexão da vivência das pesquisadoras na educação, em diferentes modalidades (presencial e a distância) aliada a elementos teóricos, para compreender o processo de inserção do professor universitário nas aulas de modalidade a distancia (EaD), no período de expansão (2010-2016) dos cursos totalmente EaD ou semi-presenciais, em Instituições de Ensino Superior. A questão problematizadora é até que ponto a nossa prática docente, na educação a distância, provoca o distanciamento do professor da sua práxis? Partimos do pressuposto de que é necessário entendermos a dimensão do processo de proletarização, alienação, distanciando do professor de sua práxis, ou seja, de sua autonomia na criação de aulas, gestão do conteúdo e na relação humana com seus alunos para avaliar as consequências para o educador. Discute-se, por fim, o contexto da cibercultura que exige uma nova prática em espaço e tempo virtual para a educação on line.

Social Classes and the Neo-Liberal Poverty Regime in Turkey, 2002–2011

ABSTRACTThe Justice and Development Party (or AKP) era in Turkey has witnessed the emergence of a new welfare regime resting on voluntary public and private transfers. This system has been replacing the former welfare system in which the right to social welfare benefits was constitutionally guaranteed. The new welfare system has tended to distribute transfers on a selective and unequal basis. This article analyses the size and effects of this system using a social class-based analytical framework. In explaining class structure in Turkey, we use the official Household Budget Survey database. The results indicate a massive process of proletarianisation has taken place. Our results indicate that the working classes have constituted the majority of the poor. In this environment, the shares of voluntary public and private transfers in the incomes of households have been rising. For some classes, like rural unemployed, urban unemployed and agricultural labourers, these transfers have captured a very high share of the incomes. These transfers have also been distributed very unequally. Their share in the central budget has also been rising. All these point to the emergence of a new neo-liberal welfare (poverty) regime as part of a new labour control regime.

Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex by Nick Dyer-Witheford

Reviewed by: Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex by Nick Dyer-Witheford Andrew Stevens Nick Dyer-Witheford, Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex (Toronto: Between the Lines 2015) In his latest book, Nick Dyer-Witheford advances theories of digital capitalism, the political economy of production chains, as well as understandings of how systems of oppression have shaped the development of a global proletariat. Furthermore, the regime of austerity that followed the great recession of 2008 plays a central role in his account of uneven economic and social transformation. "Some areas fell into economic decline," writes Dyer-Witherford, "others stagnated, yet others grew even faster than before but with increased social polarization." (4) It is here that new cycles of struggle began. Cyber-Proletariat invokes the autonomous Marxist convention of using the working class as a point of departure, demonstrated by the focus on resistance and the role of technology in shaping the contours of social mobilization. In the United Kingdom, Dyer-Witheford illustrates, smartphones were used to outwit police during the riots of 2011. Anti-government protests in Egypt were similarly coordinated by these digital platforms. Meanwhile, outside of the Foxconn factories that produce our mobile technology, anti-suicide nets were being installed in an effort to counter labour's response to nightmarish working conditions: self-harm. Most importantly, Dyer-Witheford avoids the utopian aspirations often associated with technological innovation. In fact, Cyber-Proletariat confronts this [End Page 305] tendency by problematizing assumptions that revolutionary objectives can simply be achieved through social media self-organization and on-line collectivism. To this conversation he adds advances in cybernetics and the promises this development held for the world of work. Indeed, revolutions in computerization and cybernetic systems maintain a prominent position throughout the book: specifically, inventor Norbert Wiener's predictions about the impact robotization would have on manufacturing in the United States. And, by invoking the work of Karl Roth and Marcel van der Linden, the book acknowledges that the process of proletarianization is constructed through mutual determination, whereby gender, race, and other intersections of oppression play a pivotal role in shaping the face of the global working class. Chapter 2 invokes a characterization of capitalism as a vortex, "a whirlwind, hurricane or tornado, made up by the triple processes of production, circulation and financialization." (15) In other words, a reformulation of Marx and Engels' famous edict about markets, "all that is solid melts into air." Indeed, metaphoric language is featured throughout Dyer-Witheford's book and shapes the trajectory of each chapter. The so-called "whirlwind machine" is really that of turbulent financial markets, systems, and algorithms powered by developments in artificial intelligence. His analogy is also deployed to provide a conceptualization of technological innovation within capitalism, from James Watt's steam engine to modern mass production systems. From here Cyber-Proletariat examines the effect such advances have had on the macro-economic reality, particularly Marx's predictions about the tendency towards a falling rate of profit. In an aptly titled section called "The Rate of Struggle", operaismo is subsequently invoked to critique consumptionist perspectives on reform. (29) Theories of the social factory as well as the circulation and cycles of struggle, which provide a foundation for the analysis found in this chapter, truly are signature features of the autonomist tradition. Chapter 2 ends with a conversation about how cybernetics has radically changed the game. He goes on to illustrate this by pointing to an exchange between mit professor and cybernetics pioneer, Norbert Wiener, to then-United Auto Workers president, Walter Reuther. In that 1949 letter, Wiener informed Reuther that the world of the (middle class) mass worker was to be threatened by "cybernetic automata." (41) In getting to this point, Dyer-Witheford charts the history of cybernetics in Chapter 3. From a school of scientific thought that emerged throughout the 1930s and 1940s as part of the war effort, Cyber-Proletariat embraces the ideas of cybernetic thought as a "guide to how computers have altered the technological processes of capital." (42) Of course, this conversation cannot take place outside of the Cold War context, as well as the creation of super computers like maniac (Mathematical...

Reproletarianization in the teaching labor process: from theoretical discussions to the empirical results

The class positions in a capitalist society, which are determined by the relations of production, never refer to a fixed stratification model in which the same places are occupied by the same individuals over the same period of time. On the contrary, class positions emerge as a result of class relations, therefore they can be changed. At this point the proletarianization process has an important impact on reshaping the class positions of individuals because it leads those who were previously either an employer or self-employed to become an employee. Furthermore, proletarianization does not only have effects on employers and the self-employed. The employees, such as educational workers/teachers, have also been influenced by the destructive results of the proletarianization process and thus, they becomes reproletarianized. Teachers have been losing their reputation in the eyes of the people day by day and teaching comes to resemble ordinary work with each passing day. In this study, the process of reproletarianization from its foundations to its outcomes is taken into consideration in the context of the teaching labor process

Proleterleşmenin Yeni Bir Aşaması: Yeni Bir İşçi Sınıfı?

Proleterleşmenin Yeni Bir Aşaması: Yeni Bir İşçi Sınıfı?

The Agrarian Question and the Neoliberal Rural Transformation in Latin America

Since the neoliberal turn in Latin America the rural economy and society has experienced a great transformation. Corporate capital and transnational agro-industries have taken hold of agriculture radically transforming the economic and social relations of production leading to the precarization and feminisation of rural labour as well as the intensification of work. Peasant farmers were further squeezed having to increasingly find off-farm incomes, largely through precarious wage labour activities, so as to make a living thereby furthering the process of proletarianization. The ‘new rurality’ and ‘territorial’ approaches tried to take account of these transformations but they are found wanting. Instead, a political economy view to the agrarian question is found more promising. A counter-movement to neoliberalism has emerged spearheaded by indigenous peoples and the rural poor, sometimes linked to the transnational peasant movement ‘Via Campesina’. Their main aim is to construct an alternative agrarian system based on ‘food sovereignty’ which is promising but also controversial.

An Unequal Partnership: The Privatisation of Information Technology in Ontario

This paper presents a case study of the outsourcing of IT services between 1996 and 2003 by the Government of Ontario using a Public Private Partnership (P3) as an example of the commodification of public services including the impact on labour. It argues that three key features of the arrangement led to it becoming an ‘unequal partnership.’ First, ideological notions of a ‘knowledge economy’ and the techno-wizard status of independent IT workers were used by IT corporations to charge very high corporate rates for the time of outsourced IT staff, despite the fact that they were in fact undergoing a process of proletarianisation. Second, the P3 cost-benefit structure of shared costs and shared payments provided the framework for corporate partners to realise higher profits from investment in privatised state activities. Third, the explicit support of influential state and near-state actors undermined opposition to P3 projects.

Food Sovereignty in Everyday Life: Toward a People-centered Approach to Food Systems

This paper proposes a theoretical approach that de-centers ‘food’ in food-related research, placing social life as the point of departure for a critical analysis of food systems and the search for alternatives. Using a relational conception of food as a nexus of multiple, intersecting social-historical processes, a ‘people-centered’ approach illuminates the social elements that can inform resonant and locally inflected strategies for food sovereignty, particularly for urban communities in the USA. Building on theoretical concepts of primitive accumulation, articulation, and everyday life, as well as empirical work with the Chicago-based Healthy Food Hub, this paper explores the relationship between everyday food practices and historical processes of proletarianization as they are produced, reproduced, and contested at multiple conjunctures. In these spaces of contestation, the capacity for diverse communities to re-articulate social relations through everyday food practices could provide a potentially powerful pathway not just to food sovereignty, but an alternative to life under capitalism.