The working class as loyal subject differs from the proletariat as dissolved subjectivity

Evidence

Don’t confuse the working class with the proletariat. … Thatcher inhibits the emergence of the proletariat by buying off the working class with payment capital and the promise of owning your own Oed-I-Pod. The comforts of slavery. … She gives the replicants screen memories and family photos. … So that they forget that they were only ever artificial, factory farmed to function as the Kapital-Thing’s self-replicating HR pool, and begin to believe that they are authentic human subjects. … The proletariat is not the confederation of such subjectivities but their dissolution in globalised k-space. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 973

Categorization

• DEFINE: Fisher redefines the proletariat against the working class — the latter a bought-off aggregate of believing subjects, the former their dissolution — inverting the Marxian common sense.
• XREF: Ties to ch 33 of this same book on how subordinate classes’ belief in authentic subjectivity and rulers’ hidden worth sustains their subordination. — connects to: Capitalist proletarianization reproduced internal divisions rather than unifying the working class — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 267; Working-class movements accommodated capitalism while theory idealized a revolutionary proletariat; Marx treated the proletariat and class struggle as ideological constructs — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 276 (+2 more)
• BMF: The image of replicants given ‘screen memories and family photos’ to believe they are authentic human subjects directly evokes Blade Runner — and the cross-domain move of reading Thatcher’s consumer politics through Roy Batty’s implanted memories resonates with the library’s Playfair-style compression.

Broader Connections

• Capitalist proletarianization reproduced internal divisions rather than unifying the working class #expands (0.85) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 267
• Working-class culture emerges from its material conditions combined with class struggle #expands (0.85)
• Working-class movements accommodated capitalism while theory idealized a revolutionary proletariat #contradicts (0.80)
• Social historians reconceived class as crafted relations rather than a structural given #corroborates (0.80)
• Marx treated the proletariat and class struggle as ideological constructs #complicates (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 276