August 2017
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In the social sciences, research on the American working class has been, to a large extent, framed by the contrast between the conceptual framework of historical materialism (the western Marxist tradition) and the dominant paradigm in social science, which includes foundational texts by Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. From the point of view of historical materialism, the process of proletarianization is a tendency within capitalist development, not a telos in a Hegelian sense, or a “law” of motion within a framework of social physics as developed by Auguste Comte and his followers. White-collar workers, service-sector workers, and skilled workers in the biotech fields have all been subject to the process of proletarianization. Due to proletarianization is a contingent aspect of capitalist development, Marxists focus on historical analysis to explain the particular conditions that make possible the emergence of various processes of proletarianization in particular sectors of the economy.