Achterhoede van het proletariaat? Een principiële kanttekening

Samenvatting

J. van Doorn in his The Proletarian Rear comes to the conclusion that though the status of the unskilled workers is low, it would be exaggerated to draw a fundamental division between them and all other groups. Contrary to Haveman's theory, the unskilled worker cannot be identified with the lowest social stratum, while it is a mistake to classify the skilled as a whole in the middle class, the bourgeois groups. By the 'proletarian rear' van Doorn meant, those groups who stayed behind during the emancipation of the lowest stratum in the 19th century. At present the concept proletariat' cannot be applied to the skilled and a part of the unskilled workers; here van Doorn prefers to speak about the Working class. Van Doorn does not realize, it seems, the nature of the functions, which different social layers of the population fulfill in the economic life. The Marxist of the 19th century did not mean by proletariat the whole working class. Hawkers, small farmers were not proletarians in this sense, only the class of wage workers. Groups, which van Doorn considers to belong to the proletarian rear, the Marxist would not include. It is a question what the diff's are between the laborer and the bourgeois groups in spite of the working class becoming bourgeois. Van Doorn's remarks are of a too static nature. It is true, that class diff's have changed in their appearance. The 'laborer' is no longer opposed to the 'entrepreneur'. Reply by van Doorn: Sijes' objection is, that my 'liberal' interpretation of the proletarian concept is not accompanied by an examination of what Marx has said on this topic. It was not my intention to give a complete vision of the social structure, but merely an analysis of the positions of a number of groups at the lowest rung of the social ladder. The proletarian and bourgeois concept are used only as a stop-gap and do not point to a direct relation with Marxian views on society. I do not believe that a simple relation between social group status and means of production clarifies much. With the different types of 'emancipation', I hoped nevertheless to give an instrument that could facilitate a more precise approach. M.O.L. Klein.