The Proletarian Mind

wkmac

Well-Known Member
The Proletarian Mind

Economics, Hilaire Belloc

The small owner of old days—farmer, craftsman, boat-owner, storekeeper—was a truly free man. He possessed the instruments of his livelihood, no one could take them away and so take away his livelihood with them. He thought as a free man. He estimated his well-being in terms of property. He did not think of property as the privileges of a few, or as an unfair advantage: he thought of it as a natural condition of life, enjoyed by most citizens. He inherited property—especially his house and land. He left it to his children. When he made a contract freely with another free man, he felt bound to observe that contract and felt it no grievance that the other party should require him to do so. He took his share of the public burden, paying, out of his own money, certain sums for public purposes; in those days sums small compared with his total earnings. It was natural that he should help to decide with his fellows how public funds thus formed should be spent. So the whole democratic system could work easily and well. His labor enriched him. It paid him to be a hard worker. If he was slack in his work he was blameworthy, not only in the eyes of his neighbors, but in his own eyes. Such men forming the most part of the commonwealth gave society its tone and spirit. Those who were not owners could become so by saving and, after serving other men, could become independent in their turn.
Society was inspired politically by the Free Mind, which is in harmony with man’s nature: for all men have Free Will.
But when this free man sank to be a proletarian, deprived of property, wholly dependent upon a wage, his mind gradually changed. At last he became a man with a proletarian mind. To the proletarian mind work is an evil, a burden wrongfully imposed by another.
The proletarian knows that his work enriches not himself but somebody else. He cannot, by saving, in a proletarian society, acquire independence as a small owner: for in a proletarian society the small owner is ruined.
 

bbsam

Moderator
Staff member
This is a very nice piece of "Little House on the Prairie" kind of fluffy "history". To bad it was so much more complicated when taken as a whole.
 
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