project in the very different conditions oftwenty-first century capitalism. Stiegler argues that today the proletarian must bereconceptualized as the economic agent whose knowledge and memoryare confiscated by machines. This new sense of the term‘proletarian' is best understood by reference to Plato'scritique of exteriorized memory. By bringing together Plato andMarx, Stiegler can show how a generalized proletarianization nowencompasses not only the muscular system, as Marx saw it, but alsothe nervous system of the so-called creative workers in theinformation industries. The proletarians of the former are deprivedof their practical know-how, whereas the latter are shorn of theirtheoretical practice, and both suffer from a confiscation of thevery possibility of a genuine art of living.But the mechanisms at work in this new and accentuated form ofproletarianization are the very mechanisms that may spur a reversalof the process. Such a reversal would imply a crucial distinctionbetween one's life work, originating in otium (leisure devoted tothe techniques of the self), and the job, consisting in a negotium(the negotiation and calculation, increasingly restricted toshort-term expectations), leading to the necessity of a newconception of economic value.This short text offers an excellent introduction to Stiegler'swork while at the same time representing a political call to armsin the face of a deepening economic and social crisis.

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