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Proletarianization created divisions among workers instead of erasing them

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tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, corroborated, xref

4 min read

Proletarianization created divisions among workers instead of erasing them

Evidence

But even more to the point, we have seen that the generic terms “the English working class” or “the English proletariat” mask the social and historical realities that accompanied the introduction of industrial capitalism in England and its Empire. Social divisions and habits of life and attitude that predated capitalist production continued into the modern era and extended to the working classes located in Britain specific social sensibilities and consciousness. The English working class was never the singular social and historical entity suggested by the phrase. An even closer study of its elements—for we have merely reviewed the more extreme case with the Irish—would reveal other social divisions, some ethnic (Welsh, Scottish, and more recently West Indian and Asian), some regional, and others essentially industrial and occupational. The negations resultant from capitalist modes of production, relations of production, and ideology did not manifest themselves as an eradication of oppositions among the working classes. Instead, the dialectic of proletarianization disciplined the working classes to the importance of distinctions: between ethnics and nationalities; between skilled and unskilled workers; and, as we shall see later in even more dramatic terms, between races. The persistence and creation of such oppositions within the working classes were a critical aspect of the triumph of capitalism in the nineteenth century. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 267 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The bourgeoisie that led the development of capitalism were drawn from particular ethnic and cultural groups; the European proletariats and the mercenaries of the leading states from others; its peasants from still other cultures; and its slaves from entirely different worlds. The tendency of European civilization through capitalism was thus not to homogenize but to differentiate—to exaggerate regional, subcultural, and dialectical differences into “racial” ones. As the Slavs became the natural slaves, the racially inferior stock for domination and exploitation during the early Middle Ages, as the Tartars came to occupy a similar position in the Italian cities of the late Middle Ages, so at the systemic interlocking of capitalism in the sixteenth century, the peoples of the Third World began to fill this expanding category of a civilization reproduced by capitalism. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 205 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
  • XREF: connects to: Capitalism triumphed by cultivating divisions rather than erasing them within the working class — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 267; English racialism predated ruling class divisions and shaped proletarianization itself; Capitalism differentiated peoples into racial categories rather than homogenizing them — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 205 (+16 more)

Broader Connections

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