It appears to me that, despite the drastically different
situation today from when this text was written (communication and social
media, the two world wars, the collapse of the Communist bloc), the evolution
of capital still results in the concentration of wealth and thus power in the
hands of minorities, whether it be whole countries (the North/West division)
and even within those countries (We talk often about the 1% in the US for
example). We also see a surge in tender offers by government to privatize public
institutions.
The neo-bourgeoisie today is composed of capital owners and the very instable
character of this class is still very relevant and this instability is the
result of the fluctuations of the markets. Every day on Wall Street, for
example, stock prices change and as a result people go bankrupt while others
become millionaires.
However, the notion of a homogenous class of proletariat “that
will drive the revolution” does not seem to me to be equally prophetic. This, I
believe, is the direct result of the absence of a consciousness of belonging to
the same class. Marx’s economy is a manufacturing economy where the role of
each worker is a small subdivision of the production process. Modern economies,
however, have shifted toward services, in which I believe, a perfect division
of labor is impossible and an estrangement of the Gattungswessen is unlikely to
happen, mainly because these jobs require a constant intellectual activity. The
intertwinement of the service/ manufacturing sectors breaks this idea of union
and solidarity among all the workers because it is not very evident that a person
working in health and an engineer would find common ground on ways in which
they are exploited by capital owners. These factions within the proletariat are
also deepened by the multitude of industry-specific unions.
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