Proletariat?

[OP No.18681563]

I'm reading through Hobsbawm right now, and I'm curious about his use of the word 'proletariat' - I'm not very familiar with Marx's original outline in works like the Critique of the Gotha Programme, only having a third-hand sort of understanding. At one point, Hobsbawm notes that 'proletariat' is a misnomer for the "aggregate of mostly hired, but non-industrial, wage-earners" during the French Revolution. Is this the case? I know about the lumpen, vaguely, but I'm not sure I understand the distinction implied by the text - is the agrarian/urban dichotomized throughout Marx? Can anybody help me out?

I'm assuming burgeoning industry would explain early left/right parallels to Luddism prior to 1815 - I'm not a Marxist, so the terminology is a little alien to me. The way the word 'proletariat' is used by ancillary authors leads me to believe that class-conscious bourgeois minders (a la Engels) were considered tacit exemplars, but I don't really understand the motive force for that kind of subordination, if that makes any sense.

>"In the early thirties, the revolutionary societies were composed chiefly of students and intellectuals. The workers in these organisations were few and far between. Nevertheless a workers' revolt as a protest against the treachery of the bourgeoisie broke out in 1831, in Lyons, the centre of the silk industry. For a few days the city was in the hands of the workers. They did not put forward any political demands. Their banner carried the slogan: "Live by work, or die in battle." They were defeated in the end, and the usual consequences of such defeats followed. The revolt was repeated in Lyons in 1834. Its results were even more important than those of the July Revolution. The latter stimulated chiefly the so-called democratic, petty-bourgeois elements, while the Lyons revolts exhibited, for the first time, the significance of the labour element, which had raised, though so far in only one city, the banner of revolt against the entire bourgeoisie, and had pushed the problems of the working class to the fore. The principles enunciated by the Lyons proletariat were as yet not directed against the foundations of the bourgeois system, but they were demands flung against the capitalists and against exploitation. Thus toward the middle of the thirties in both France and England there stepped forth into the arena a new revolutionary class -- the proletariat." (David Riazanov, 1927)

[Anonymous No.18681573]

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