A Better Definition of "Proletariat", and the Parable of the Talents

In an interview by Suzi Weissman for Jacobin Radio of David Graeber about his most recent book, Bullshit Jobs, Graeber critiqued what I have always seen as one of the major shortcomings of Marx and Marxism.  That failing is Marx’s restriction of the definition of what constitutes the proletariat to industrial workers and the corresponding definition of what constitutes “work” to physical production of goods.  That definition has sent many a Marxist theoretician into very ludicrous convolutions of logic.  Not only that, but it has served to divide the actual proletariat against itself and lent rhetorical support to capitalism by that very definition.  It also, as Graeber pointed out, contributes to anti-feminism and toxic masculinity.

As I and others have pointed out, the term “proletariat” derives from the name for the Roman lowest class, the proletarii, which owned little or no property, at least not any kind of surplus property.  In Marxist terms, personal property only but no private property, which would in fact in the last two centuries take in most of the so-called middle class.  So, from now on can we just accept that the term proletariat takes in all those people, instead of doing the neoliberal capitalists’ work for them?

The whole idea of “middle-class” is a fiction meant to convince the upper working class house slaves that their  interests lie with the masters rather than with their fellow slaves toiling in the fields, a pretence to which all too many of them cling, like the ungrateful servant.

I’d like to remind everyone that, with the notable exception of its patriarch, the members of the Manson Family, especially the women, came from this fictional middle class.

Keeping in mind my more pragmatic definition of the word proletariat, let me paraphrase one of my favorite passages from Martin Luther King’s writings.

The proletariat’s great stumbling block in its stride toward freedom is not the Americans for Prosperity or the American Legislative Exchange Council, but the so-called middle class, which is more devoted to order than to justice; which prefers the absence of tension to the presence of justice; which constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; which paternalistically believes it can set the timetable for other’s freedom; which constantly advises the proletariat to wait for a “more convenient season”.  To which I add, “and in doing so ensures its own destruction”.

I finally figured out the meaning of the Parable of the Talents in the Gospel of Matthew.  A rich man going away gives three servants different amounts of talents—talent being a measure of currency in the first century—the first five, the second three, and the third just one.  The first two invest and profit, the third hides his portion in order not to lose it.  For this, the third has the one talent taken from his and he is cast out.

This parable is certainly not a defence of capitalism, which would not exist for another millennium or fifteen hundred years, depending on whether you date capitalism from the development of the finance system still used by the world’s banks during the Crusades or the sale of the first stocks at the dawn of the so-called Age of Exploration.  The two servants who sell and make a profit in this story are just stick figures. 

The focus of the parable is on the last servant, the one who fears his master will be angry if he loses his portion and therefore buries it.  The story is not about profit.  The story is about the consequences of not acting in defense of our fellow humans in hopes of maintaining that which we have been given rather earned and do not necessarily deserve.  Like the so-called middle class, also known as the house slaves of capitalism or the upper working class, all too often does with respect to the proletariat.

Remember Noami Shulman’s words from Novermber 2016:  “Nice people make the best Nazis.  My mother spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves; who looked the other way and focused on happier things than ‘politics’ when things got ugly.  They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.”  Don’t forget to step up, to resist; the life you save may be your own.