A-Infos (en) France, Alternative Libertair #221 - Sociology: The new proletarians Sarah Abdelnour, ed Textuel (fr) [machine translation]

New Workers, published in the collection "small encyclopedia critical," aims to revisit 
the notion of the proletariat today. Indeed, the dominant discour says that the working 
class has long since disappeared, giving way to a huge middle class to which few escape 
excluded quasi-residual (commuters, homeless, undocumented ...). In contrast to Sarah 
Abelnour, talk proletariat has lost none of its relevance even if the composition of it 
has evolved since the great economic restructuring 70s. ---- For starters, it tries to 
give a precise definition of what the proletariat. In fact, the term has been so overused 
over time we could get him to say everything and its opposite. For starters, the 
proletariat does not exactly match the wage. The proletarian is characterized by the 
failure to possess its labor force (roughly, his arms and skills).

This is not the case of some layers employees who benefit from access to land, a series of 
consumer scoring a higher social status, credit, and certain forms of economic capital and 
/ or cultural. The proletariat corresponds to unqualified employees who do not have the 
means to benefit from the range of goods.

While the former proletariat was mainly composed of industrial workers, what about today? 
If workers are obviously not disappeared as the dominant ideology would have us believe, 
their share decreased popultion active. Six million in the '70s, they rose to 4.7 million 
in 2011, while the population has increased in the meantime. They were joined by a cohort 
of employees in the service sector, underpaid and exploited. In addition, the proletariat 
has more women and immigrant-es before.

Finally, another element carectÃrise the "new proletariat" casualization. If before, most 
of the workers had a more or less stable status, nowadays an increasing share of the 
proletariat knows the experience of insecurity. We can understand it as a permanent 
insecurity in relation to its economic status, resulting in vulnerability to employers and 
difficulty in projecting the future in economic terms. If the proletariat as a whole is 
not fragile, it is nevertheless a growing share of the latter that becomes.

To conclude, the book draws the outline of a proletariat which, far from disappearing, is 
well developed. It includes both employee-es of industry than in services, increasing tank 
operated countless es.

If the book paints a very end of the proletariat, we can nevertheless regrettable that 
does not articulate enough sociological analysis and framework for action, while still 
providing an overview searched and relevant on an issue more topical than ever .

Matthijs (AL Montpellier)

Sarah Abdelnour, the new proletariat, "Little Encyclopedia critical" Textuel, 2011
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://ainfos.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en