Proletarianisation

A process of dispossession of knowledge (know-how, savoir-vivre, knowing how to think) resulting from technical automation, extended by Stiegler from the working class to society as a whole.

Origin: Disbelief and Discredit (Mécréance et Discrédit), 2004

Proletarianisation is a concept that Bernard Stiegler takes up and extends from Marx. In his rereading, the proletariat is not identified with the working class but designates any population deprived of its knowledge by technical automation. The working class was the first to be affected, but the process has generalised to “all the strata of society”.

Stiegler distinguishes three dimensions of proletarianisation:

Know-how: The worker becomes an “employee of a dissociated milieu”, dispossessed of his expertise by the machine that incorporates his knowledge
Savoir-vivre: In the twentieth century, the consumer is proletarianised — his modes of existence, his tastes, his desires are shaped by marketing and the cultural industries
Knowing how to think: The 2008 crisis revealed that decision-makers themselves are proletarianised by trading algorithms and automated systems that short-circuit their judgement

With the digital and AI, proletarianisation reaches a new stage: the automation of judgement itself. Recommendation systems, LLMs and algorithmic decision tools risk generalising a technologically encoded “single way of thinking”, depriving humans of their capacity for autonomous reflection.

Conceptual necessity: This concept makes it possible to understand the deleterious effects of AI beyond the discourse on employment. The stakes are not only economic but anthropological: it is our very capacity to know, to live and to think that is threatened by an uncared-for automation.

What this concept is not

Not a nostalgia for craftsmanship. The stake is not to go back but to reinvent the conditions of individuation.
Not a rejection of technics. Technics can also deproletarianise (tools of empowerment, free software).
Not a purely economic concept. Proletarianisation is anthropological — it touches on what makes us human.
Passive victimhood. The concept does not deny agency — forms of resistance and reappropriation are possible.
Technophobia. Proletarianisation is not caused by technics in itself but by certain uses and certain economies.
Elitism. Deproletarianisation does not concern an elite but the population as a whole.

Examples

The worker and the machine (know-how)

The artisan mastered the entire process of production. With the manufactory and then the factory, his knowledge is incorporated into the machine: he now merely operates levers without understanding the overall process. Know-how becomes fixed capital.

The consumer and marketing (savoir-vivre)

The contemporary consumer no longer knows what to eat, how to dress, what to desire. These choices are delegated to prescribers (advertising, influencers, recommendation algorithms). His savoir-vivre is proletarianised.

The ChatGPT user (knowing how to think)

Systematically delegating writing, reflection and synthesis to an LLM risks proletarianising the knowledge of how to think. The user no longer knows how to write, to argue, to think for himself — he becomes dependent on the cognitive machine.

counter-exampleCounter-example: The Wikipedia contributor

The Wikipedia contributor is not proletarianised: he develops forms of knowledge (documentation, writing, verification), he individuates himself through his contribution, he takes part in a commons. It is an example of a deproletarianising economy of contribution.

The concept in detail

Know-how (first wave)

The original historical dimension, analysed by Marx and then by Simondon. The worker loses his mastery of the productive gesture when the machine incorporates his know-how. He becomes an “appendage of the machine”, executing operations whose overall logic he no longer understands. Work loses its meaning and its individuating dimension.

Savoir-vivre (second wave)

An extension in the twentieth century with mass consumerism. The consumer is proletarianised: his tastes, his desires, his ways of life are shaped by marketing, advertising and the cultural industries. He no longer knows how to live — his existential choices are delegated to commercial prescribers. A loss of the art of existence.

Knowing how to think (third wave)

A contemporary extension to cognitive activities themselves. The 2008 financial crisis revealed that traders and decision-makers were overwhelmed by their own algorithms. With generative AI, this proletarianisation of thinking extends further: the delegation of reasoning, of writing and of creation to automated systems.

Grammatisation as mechanism

Proletarianisation results from grammatisation: the process by which human behaviours are discretised, recorded and then technically reproduced. What was incorporated knowledge becomes an externalised procedure — and therefore potentially capturable by others.

Disindividuation

An effect of proletarianisation: a loss of singularity. The proletarianised individual no longer distinguishes himself, no longer individuates himself through his own knowledge. He becomes interchangeable, substitutable. Proletarianisation is a process of collective disindividuation.

Deproletarianisation as a political stake

The response proposed by Ars Industrialis: to develop an “economy of contribution” allowing the reappropriation of knowledge. Deproletarianisation proceeds through practices, institutions and policies that make it possible to rebuild individual and collective capacities.