This is not a defense of the proletariat. It is a direct assault on its revolutionary capacity. It is the substitution of sentimentalism for science, of sociology for Marxism. This text will dissect this reactionary deviation and reaffirm the invariant principles of the communist program.
I. The Scientific Definition of the Proletariat
The communist program is grounded in historical materialism. Within this framework, a class is not a cultural identity, a moral status, or a set of approved sociological traits. A class is defined objectively and solely by its relationship to the means of production. The term "proletarian" itself, drawn from ancient Rome, referred to the lowest class of citizens, those who owned nothing but their offspring (proles) and served the state only by producing future laborers and soldiers. Marx seized upon this term and gave it its modern, scientific content.
"In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital."
— Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
The proletariat is the class of those separated from the means of production and subsistence, who are compelled to sell their labor-power as a commodity in order to live. This definition is the immutable cornerstone of Marxist analysis. It is a scientific, economic category.
The workerist deviation rejects this. It replaces this materialist definition with a vague, sociological one based on the concrete content of the labor performed. For the workerist, the "real" proletarian is the manual laborer, the factory worker, the miner—those engaged in direct, physical transformation of nature. The software engineer who writes code for a multinational corporation, the call center worker who sells services for a bank, the hospital nurse who provides care for a for-profit healthcare chain, the salaried technician who maintains the machinery of global logistics—these are dismissed as "unproductive," "petty bourgeois," or "service workers," despite the fact that they share the exact same fundamental class position: they own no means of production and must sell their labor-power for a wage in order to survive.
This is a profound theoretical error. It is a regression to a pre-Marxist, Physiocratic fallacy, which saw value as arising only from a specific type of labor (in their case, agricultural). For the Marxist analysis, any labor that produces surplus value for capital is, for capital, productive labor. The specific use-value created is irrelevant. The call center worker who generates profit for a telecommunications monopoly is as much an exploited proletarian as the miner who extracts coal for a mining conglomerate.
Some Statements I: On the Proletariat
The proletariat is defined scientifically by its relationship to the means of production, as the class of wage-laborers. It is not a cultural or sociological category.
All who sell their labor-power for a wage to produce surplus value are members of the proletariat, regardless of the concrete content of their labor.
The workerist attempt to create a hierarchy of "authenticity" within the proletariat based on the type of work performed is an anti-materialist deviation that serves only to divide our class.
II. The Politics of Resentment
When communists fall into the trap of workerism, they abandon the scientific standpoint of the proletariat and adopt the political and psychological framework of the petty bourgeoisie. They begin to channel the ideology of the small producer, a class historically crushed between the big bourgeoisie above and the proletarian class below.
The worldview of the communist-turned-workerist becomes defined by a dual resentment characteristic of this intermediate class:
They begin to resent the big capitalist not for being an exploiter, but because their concentrated capital has destroyed the mythical golden age of the independent small producer.
They begin to resent the real, existing proletariat, in favor of a romanticized ideal. The collective, disciplined, and scientific movement of the class threatens the rabid individualism that this deviation fosters.
By failing to apply a scientific understanding to their own position, they project the pathology of the petty bourgeoisie onto the class struggle. When a communist adopts a hatred of "intellectuals" and "theorists" ("Marxoids"), they are no longer defending the worker; they are attacking revolutionary theory itself. It is the desperate cry of the empiricist, who, trapped in the immediate reality of the workshop, becomes terrified of the abstract, scientific analysis that lays bare the laws of history.
This anti-intellectualism is a weapon of the counter-revolution. It seeks to keep the proletariat trapped in the immediate, spontaneous consciousness of the factory floor—a "trade-union consciousness" that can only ever fight for better wages and conditions within the capitalist system. It seeks to sever the class from its brain: the communist party and its program.
Some Statements II: On Workerism as a Petty-Bourgeois Ideology
Workerism is the ideological expression of the petty bourgeoisie, not the proletariat.
Its anti-intellectualism is a direct assault on revolutionary theory, seeking to keep the proletariat in a state of spontaneous, non-revolutionary consciousness.
Its romanticization of the "authentic worker" is a reactionary fantasy that replaces scientific class analysis with sociological moralism.
III. The Program versus the Opinion
The workerist worships the "spontaneous" worker and their immediate, everyday consciousness. They see the party's program as an external imposition, an intellectual's scheme that violates this authenticity. This is the most dangerous error of all, for it mistakes the consciousness produced by capitalism for the consciousness required to destroy it.
The communist program is not a reflection of what the average worker thinks on any given day. The average consciousness of the proletariat is necessarily saturated with the ideology of the ruling class—nationalism, religion, consumerism, democratic illusions. The party does not derive its program from opinion polls of the working class. The party is the bearer of the historical mission of the class, a mission determined not by what the proletariat thinks, but by what the proletariat is.
"It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is visibly and irrevocably foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organization of bourgeois society today."
— Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Holy Family
This is the unbridgeable chasm. The workerist looks at the momentary, empirical consciousness of the worker and declares it sacred. The communist looks at the objective, material position of the proletariat in the mode of production and derives the scientific program for its necessary historical action.