ABSTRACT
Proletarianization refers to increases in the number or proportion of wage laborers dependent for their survival on the sale of their labor power. The concept is derived from Chapters 25 through 32 of Karl Marx’s Capital, which describes the creation of the English proletariat as a concomitant of the rise of capitalism. Although proletarianization evokes images of skilled artisans displaced by machines and forced to work for a pittance in insalubrious mills, in Marx’s view it was also a consequence of enclosure of landed estates. Proletarianization generally implies the expropriation by a few of the means of production once controlled by many and an increase in the proportion of the labor force dependent for its subsistence on wage earning, whether in agriculture or in manufacturing. Proletarianization is a fundamental process in modern social history, first in Western society and then elsewhere. It creates a different structure for the lower classes than when modest property ownership was wide-spread (even when constrained by serfdom) and propertylessness was very rare as a lifelong characteristic. It also affects upper-class reactions, creating new anxieties and suspicions at least when the proletarianization process first becomes established.
