ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the most sophisticated version of the proletarianisation thesis which focuses on more detailed analysis of the 'collective labourer'. It examines with a very brief discussion of Marx's own writings and then considers various proletarianisation theories, beginning with those of Corey and Klingender from the 1930s. The orthodox position on the French left has been that advanced by theorists of the French Communist Party (PCF) as part of their analysis of state monopoly capitalism. The chapter discusses some later versions of the proletarianisation thesis beginning with the postwar debate in France and the analysis of the couches intermédiaires, a discussion particularly related to the criticism. The lines of conflict will be clearly antagonistic, workers will be set against capitalists, and the middle class will join one or other of the hostile camps.
