PROLETARIAT. – In ancient Rome, *proletarii* or *capite censi* were those who were registered in the census only by their person and not by their property (*capite censi*), or inasmuch as they had or could have offspring (*proletarii*: cf. Cicero, *De republica*, II, 22, 40).
The *proletarii* were contrasted with the *adduci* (those who had a *sedes*), i.e., landowners (*Tab.*, I, 4). When later the census was based on movable wealth, a *capite census* or proletarian was one who did not pay tribute because he did not possess as much as 1,500 *asses*. Still later, in relation to military service, *proletarii* were those who possessed more than 375 *asses* but less than 1,500 (liable for military service); the *capite censi* were those who did not even reach 375 and were therefore not called up for military service (Gellius, *Noctes Atticae*, XVI, 9, 10).
The term “proletarian” was revived by Saint-Simon after the Lyon uprisings of 1830 to denote the *fourth estate* (workers) that was to be separated from the *third estate* (the bourgeoisie); it became official in the *Communist Manifesto* of Marx and Engels (1848), and since then has designated the worker devoid of capital, who earns a daily wage and is unable to save (v. PAUPERISM; WAGE and WAGE SYSTEM; SALARY).
At present, anyone who opposes exploitative capitalism is considered a proletarian; yet the true proletariat comprises a large part of wage earners, almost all of whom live in very difficult material and moral conditions. Social progress is precisely manifested in the gradual reduction of the number of proletarians through the spread of small property, the encouragement and protection of savings, the securing of work, and the provision of care, assistance, and social security for workers and their families; finally, by elevating their general culture and especially their professional training.
Against this rational criterion, social progress in a Marxist sense, with a strange inversion, instead of striving for the disappearance of the proletariat by transforming proletarians into property owners, aims at its preservation and generation, promising the guarantee of protection from all exploitation to be obtained through the dictatorship of the proletariat first, and then the disappearance of all other social classes. In reality, such a hope, paid for in advance with the loss of the most cherished freedoms and with a general lowering of the standard of life, serves only to facilitate the renunciation by proletarians of every independence, rendering the individual extremely weak and defenseless and the proletariat more easily dominated by the central power that actually exercises the dictatorship. The inflexible severity of a cruel social discipline, and the systematic distortion of truth, logic, and morality—vainly concealed by heated ideological fanaticism—constitute the gravest crime against humanity and the most grievous affront to the proletariat. It is the material effort to break with tradition and create a new race of men who will then have to recommence the arduous task of their own spiritual and rational civilization: it is the admission of the impossibility of imposing the new ideas by the natural and lawful paths of reason, sentiment, and demonstrable advantage.
The facts moreover widely belie the Marxist assertion that the proletariat arises from an inescapable confinement in a given class situation, from which it cannot emerge by its own merit, hence the necessity of class struggle with a fatal revolutionary outcome. The transition of proletarians to the propertied and entrepreneurial classes has always been considerable, and can be increased by a return among proletarians and leaders to those virtues of honesty and charity, whose abandonment gave rise to the idea of a constitutional antagonism between classes. It appears above all necessary and urgent that the cultured and leading classes make amends for their past neglect of proletarian problems, as well as for the unhappy examples they have given to the humble and uneducated classes: returning to be the guide and support of their spiritual and economic ascent (v. also BOLSHEVISM; COMMUNISM; INTERNATIONAL; MARX; HISTORICAL MATERIALISM, etc).