ABSTRACT
The process of proletarianization is the result of the expansion of capitalist production and the concentration and centralisation of capital. This process de-personalizes employer/worker relations, breaks down 'craft' skills, increases technological investment, automates and de-skills, separates conception from the execution of work and increases management control over workers, their skills and the pace of their work. Proletarianization would not easily fit the common notion of improvement or progress in education, nor can it easily be absorbed into new neo-Marxist schools of ideological or cultural determination in which teachers play a privileged, important role under capitalism. The concept of proletarianization does have value as an explanatory device when applied to an analysis of teachers' class location. The teachers' broad self-image as an 'educator' is eroded and his/her function as a processor stressed. This in turn breaks down the teachers' individualistic professional self image, and forces on them a revived recognition of a collective interest in organization against the employer.
