Marx e il concetto di proletariato. Note sulla genesi di un concetto a partire dal periodo parigino (1843-1845)

The aim of this paper is to provide a historical-conceptual analysis of the link between Marx’s Parisian experience and his new formulation of the concept of the proletariat. Marx’s contact with the industrial and social reality of Paris, with the urban proletariat and workers’ associations, triggers his critique of the “ideological” concept of the proletariat held by the socialists and conservatives of the time. The experience of the material conditions of the proletariat allows Marx to deconstruct a still “philosophical” and “abstract” representation of the class and to begin a process of conceptual reconfiguration, starting with the material practices of the Parisian workers. In this sense, Paris functions as a “collision” site for Marx’s thought and philosophy, favouring the recalibration of the relationship between theory and practice and the triggering of a conceptual production that corresponds to the need for a new situated knowledge such as that of the critique of political economy.