Andre Gorz: Farewell to the Proletariat

Andre Gorz (1923-2007) was the pen name of Gérard Horst (he also used other names) went from being a prominent Marxist to a critic of Marxism. Born in Vienna Austria, in 1939 he moved to Switzerland and thus managed to survive the war. After the war he moved to France and became involved with Marxism during its glory days of the middle twentieth century.

His book Farewell to the Proletariat (published 1980) starts by criticizing the Marxist theory of the proletariat. The theory of the revolutionary proletariat was not based on fact but on theory. Marx took Hegel's dialectical theory of history and replaced Geist spirit with the working class. Gorz then points out that automation and computerization have eliminated the skilled working class, and replaced them with a mass of unskilled workers, who lack the initiative to become a revolutionary class.