A Historical Institutionalist Approach to Working Class Formation

Abstract

In the 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels boldly depicted a prophetic vision of the formation of “the proletariat into a class.” Capitalism expands the ranks of the working class, and the application of modern technology increases their homogeneity, as the preexisting distinctions in ethnicity, age, gender, and skill become obsolete. A number of facilitating factors, such as new forms of communication, the advent of bourgeois democracy, and the rise of critical intellectuals, enhance political awareness among the working class. Therefore working class collective action shows a progressive evolution from backward-looking machine breaking to defensive unionism and finally crystallizes as a revolutionary movement raising the banner of socialism (Marx 1973, 73–80).