Looking for the Proletariat is a contribution to understanding the implosion of the Marxist Imaginary. The implosion is staged in terms of the first English-language history of the French revolutionary group Socialisme ou Barbarie from 1949 to 1957. It explains why Socialisme ou Barbarie was the only Marxist organization interested by worker experience and how the group's anti-Leninist position on organization led it to privilege first-person worker narratives in order to understand worker experience and its revolutionary possibilities. Using the only first-person accounts of...

This book, the first English-language history of the French revolutionary group Socialism ou Barbarie, focuses on the period of 1949 to 1957 when the influence of the group began to wane. Hastings-King explains why Socialisme ou Barbarie's anti-Leninist position on organization led it to privilege first person narratives in order to understand worker experience and its revolutionary possibilities.
Looking for the Proletariat draws on these narratives--the only first-person accounts of the working-class experience in French industry during the 1950s--to explore the disintegration of...