of organized religion, and the continuities with theguild system do not diminish
the overdeterminedemotional function of the proletariat in Marxist theory and
related symbolicpractices.Accordingly, the purpose of this chapter cannot be
to establish the usefulnessof“workingclass”or“proletariat”as critical catego-
ries in cultural history but to identify the points of contact wheresuch categories
presuppose and prefigure important emotional regimes.
Nineteenth-centurysociologists and mass psychologists modeled the power
of naming in establishing the threatening othernessofthe proletariat–or,in
their preferred terminology, the modern masses. As the previous chapter has ar-
gued, most definitions by conservative scholars aim to identify the mostradical-
ized members of the workingclasswith bothaposition of negation andaproc-
ess of intensification. On the structural level, we findasurprisingly similar use of
“proletarian”as amarkerofdifference inTheCommunist Manifesto’srousing
conclusion,“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have
aworld to win.Working MenofAll Countries, Unite!”²Originallywritten in Ger-
man and first published in London in 1848 (and, in 1872,inLeipzig), the man-
ifesto’sfamous summons“Proletarier aller Länder,vereinigt euch!”has been
translated into English as both“Workers (or: workingmen) of the world (or:
all countries), unite!,”afirst indication of the discursiveslippages that would
henceforth characterize the relationship between“workers”and“proletarians.”
The question remains unresolvedwhether Marx and Engels are referringtoadis-
tinct social class oraheterogeneous group of people. Their assertion“thatthe
proletariat isrecruited from all classes of the population”³at least opens up
the possibility towardabroader appealto practices of solidarity beyond classes
in the orthodoxMarxist sense.
Whether in masspsychological studies or foundational Marxist texts,“pro-
letarian”since the mid-nineteenth centurytends to demarcateaposition of dif-
ference, of abjection; but it also refers to an act of exclusion and disruption. First
recognized in Louis-Auguste Blanqui’sdescription of the proletarian as remain-
ing“on the outside,”⁴the underlying process of othering is typicallyset into mo-
tion throughashared sense of revulsion and contempt that servesto shore up
bourgeois sensibilities. On the other sideofthe class divide, among the workers
themselves, the sameprocess findsexpression in an equallystrongsense of out-
rage andresentment that propels them to claim their alleged deficiencies as a
mark of distinction. This transformationofanoriginal term of exclusion into
Karl Marx andFriedrich Engels,“Manifestoofthe Communist Party,”MECW6: 519.
Marx and Engels,“Manifestoofthe Communist Party,”MECW6: 519.
Louis-AugusteBlanqui,“TheTrial of theFifteen,”12 January 1832. https://www.marxists.org/
reference/archive/blanqui/1832/defence-speech.htm,1March2017.
Proletarian Dreams: From Marx to Marxism 51