The catastrophic economic social and political crisis of our time calls for anew and original critique of political economy a rethinking of Marxs projectin the... » 

The catastrophic economic social and political crisis of our time calls for anew and original critique of political economy a rethinking of Marxs projectin the very different conditions of twentyfirst century capitalism. Stieglerargues that today the proletarian must be reconceptualized as the economicagent whose knowledge and memory are confiscated by machines. This new sense ofthe term proletarian is best understood by reference to Platos critique ofexteriorized memory. By bringing together Plato and Marx Stiegler can show howa generalized proletarianization now encompasses not only the muscular systemas Marx saw it but also the nervous system of the socalled creative workersin the information industries. The proletarians of the former are deprived oftheir practical knowhow whereas the latter are shorn of their theoreticalpractice and both suffer from a confiscation of the very possibility of agenuine art of living. But the mechanisms at work in this new and accentuatedform of proletarianization are the very mechanisms that may spur a reversal ofthe process. Such a reversal would imply a crucial distinction between oneslife work originating in otium leisure devoted to the techniques of theself and the job consisting in a negotium the negotiation and calculationincreasingly restricted to shortterm expectations leading to the necessityof a new conception of economic value. This short text offers an excellentintroduction to Stieglers work while at the same time representing a politicalcall to arms in the face of a deepening economic and social crisis. «