ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a restatement of the reified concept of the proletariat: The proletariat is, by its very existence, a (the) potentially revolutionary force—this quality being definitive of its very existence. The working class still is the "ontological" antagonist of capital, and the potentially revolutionary Subject: but it is a vastly expanded working class, which no longer corresponds directly to the Marxian proletariat. The capitalist mode of production, through the increasing mechanization and intellectualization of labor, accumulates an increasing quantity of general ability, skills, knowledge—a human potential which cannot be developed within the established apparatus of production, because it would conflict with the need for full-time dehumanized labor. Eurocommunism aims at articulating and winning over this large anticapitalist (but not yet socialist) opposition outside the "proletariat." The changes are promising. One reason: the "surplus consciousness" has negated the reification which veiled the real mechanism of domination behind the facade of free, objective exchange relationships.
