Trade Union Activists, East and West: Comparisons in Multinational Companies by Guglielmo Meardi

Author:Guglielmo Meardi [Meardi, Guglielmo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781351735469
Google: n3-YDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-05-08T04:43:57+00:00

A Proletarian Identity at the End of the XX Century?

It is now necessary to give a definition of this ‘proletarian’ element which apparently accounts for the most remarkable Polish traits. The term ‘proletarian’ is not used here with the Marxian meaning. The reference points are, rather, the history of working class origins (Thompson, 1963) and of the lowest strata of the working class (Hoggart, 1957), or that sociology able to distinguish different aspects and different groups within the working class (e.g. Lockwood, 1966; Linhart, 1978; Dubost, 1979; Dubois, 1981; Mahnkopf, 1985).

The word ‘proletarian’, as distinct from ‘worker’, recalls all the negative sides of the working class: their weakness on the labour market, poverty, feelings of inferiority, their lack of organisation and absence of projects. A sociological definition should, however, put in order the constituting elements of the concept. Here, Touraine’s sociology can be a useful starting point. In his study of workers’ consciousness he described ‘proletarian’ identity as follows.

The consciousness of opposition, when isolated from the other constitutive elements of workers’ consciousness, may be called proletarian consciousness. It is with a dangerous confusion that this proletarian consciousness is seen as the revival of workers’ action. Since it is a negative consciousness of the society, a consciousness of exclusion, it cannot constitute an orientating system for workers’ action (…) The principle of opposition degenerates into proletarian consciousness only when it is isolated from the other constitutive elements of workers’ consciousness, and expecially from the consciousness of the industrial society. (Touraine, 1966, pp. 321–323)

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