Is there a proletariat anymore?

[Lark]

Obviously Marx was writing before the idea of a leisure class or leisure society, excepting perhaps a very, very small portion of the population, but do you think the Proletariat as he understood it exists any longer? If not does any version of a proletariat exist at all?

I've heard people in the US use the term "middle class" in ways that I have heard people in the UK use the term "working class", why do you think one terminology is more accepted/acceptable than the other? Do either of the terms mean anything like proletariat?

 

[Mole]

In prosperous democratic societies manual labour has almost all been replaced by machines.

So the medium of manual labour has been replaced by the medium of machines, and as we know, when one medium replaces another, the first medium rises in status. So manual labour has risen in status, and is religiously performed in fashionable, hight tech gymnasiums in every suburb.

And the status seekers flaunt their new status in the streets by displaying their muscles in their fashionable leotards.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Yes, but in a post industrial society, pleasures and luxuries are tools used to keep these classes docile and subservient. Give them all smartphones and liquor stores to keep them nice and distracted from the pains of working class life. Times may change but the basic class divisions of capitalist society are alive and well. Most wage earners are a few paychecks away from homelessness. Really, I think it’s the merchant class that has all but disappeared. With big business increasingly replacing smaller independent businesses in a society where consumption has replaced production as the primary driving force, it’s no surprise that the wage earning masses have been shifted to different types of jobs. But their roles and purposes are still largely the same

 

[ceecee]

 

[Virtual ghost]

Perhaps we have different definitions of the terms again but in my book I don't think you can have the so called "neoliberal economy" without plenty of "proletariat" around.

 

[Mole]

The proletariat have been gentrified by advertising.

Adverting has been training the proletariat to live in a world of emotion, and to diss the intellect.

The result has been that the gentrified, emotional, proletariat voted for Donald Trump, a vulgar anti-intellectual, a mirror image of themselves. Trump is what they would be if they had a billion dollars.