Am I really a part of this "proletariat"?
To put it simply: Yes. If you must ask this question, you are almost assuredly a proletarian. The "upper class", or "one percent", or "bourgeoisie" as they have been called, are generally fully aware of their superior privelege and opportunity in todays society. They have defined themselves as being above the average working citizen, by their words, actions, and reactions.
Society as a whole has allowed the rise of the financial elite. We have all (often unknowingly) allowed this to happen. The prospect of financial prosperity, and the satisfaction of material acquisition (shopping) has kepts us from questioning the advance of massive global corporations onto our human rights, and those of others. The working class has become a commodity.
From "The Principles of Communism" by Friedrich Engels:
"The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century.2"
"Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition – as we shall see, the two come to the same thing – the price of a commodity is, on the average, always equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of labor.2"
While the preceding text may have been written in 1847, the situation in which the working class finds itself has not changed. It has in fact, been exaggerated and re-branded as a side effect of progress. Again and again, society tells us that poverty, income disparity, debt, and financial failure are the result of a lack of hard work. The cost of so-called progress is the ruin of other human beings.
While those in power will assure you that you have been afforded all of the same opportunities they have, this is rarely the case. The upper class will attempt to withold their wealth and power, at the expense of all those in their way. A desire to maximize profit at all costs drives the financially priveleged to deprive those below them of more and more every day.
Who is not a part of the proletariat?
As capitalism expands and corporations become multinational conglomerates, the upper class has become an increasingly broad term. As technology and industry advance, new fields of work and study are created. Unfortunately, new fields of exploitation have also been created. As industry changes, so does the name and title of those in the ruling class. It is forever in the interest of the elite to rebrand themselves to avoid scrutiny. So we see the "banker" become the "financial advisor", the "loan shark" legitimized as the "payday lender", and so on. As such, the entirety of this class can be referred to as the bourgeoisie.
Across the globe, there exists a class of disproportionately priveleged citizens. The defining characteristic of non-proletarians is relatively simple: ownership of the methods and materials of production. This is to say that the upper class controls and owns the flow of goods and services the average worker requires in order to survive. Friedrich Engels defines the upper, or bourgeois class as such:
"...The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistance and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.2"
Engels could not have accounted for the advent of the internet, or the advancement of computer technology, medical science, robotics, or manufacturing. The exponential growth and advancement of all industry, in truth, could not have been predicted in his time. This is not to say the defining characteristics of class structure have changed in any dramatic fashion. Instead, new opportunities for the exploitation of working citizens have been quickly and quietly created just outside our gaze. We now live in a world of out-sourced manufacturing, imported goods, and exported resources. The bourgeois consistently keep the working class in the dark as to the nature of what we consume, and how it is produced.
2."The Principles of Communism"
As found here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm#nb
(Chapters 2, 5, 4)
Original source: Marx/Engels, Selected Works, Volume One, p. 81-97, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969
Translated by Paul Sweezy
Proofed by Andy Blunden, February 2005
First published 1914, Eduard Bernstein, in "Vorwärts!"
Written October/November 1847
Cited Dec. 21 2016