Proletarians of Death
Definition
Proletarians of Death refers to the masses whose lives and labor are bound to the production, administration, or consequences of death within modern political and economic systems. They are the workers of mortality: soldiers on frontlines, laborers in toxic industries, refugees displaced by war, pandemic caregivers, drone operators, and even content moderators filtering images of violence. In the Hybrid Collapse universe, the proletarians of death sustain the machinery of catastrophe while rarely shaping its narratives or reaping its rewards.
Historical and Conceptual Roots
The concept draws from both Marxist and biopolitical traditions. Marx revealed how industrial capitalism exploited labor for profit, while Michel Foucault and Achille Mbembe analyzed how modern power governs life and death. In colonial economies, enslaved and colonized populations performed labor in conditions of extreme mortality, building wealth for empires that treated them as disposable.
The 20th century expanded this logic: world wars, nuclear programs, and industrial disasters relied on anonymous laborers whose exposure to death—whether through combat, radiation, or hazardous production—was normalized as part of progress. The term “proletarians of death” captures this convergence of exploitation, violence, and disposability.
Everyday and Cultural Presence
In everyday life, proletarians of death include gig workers cleaning up after natural disasters, miners extracting rare earth metals for green technologies, or factory workers producing weapons and pharmaceuticals alike. Pandemic healthcare staff risking their lives for low wages exemplify how systems of care and mortality intertwine.
Culturally, films and literature often erase these figures, focusing on heroes or leaders rather than workers sustaining war, surveillance, and crisis infrastructures. When represented, they appear as faceless soldiers in propaganda posters, anonymous laborers in disaster films, or background casualties in video games.
Social and Political Dimension
Politically, the proletarians of death expose global hierarchies: hazardous industries concentrate in poorer regions; wars are fought by conscripts while elites direct strategy from safety; migrant workers maintain cities through pandemics yet lack healthcare and legal protection.
States and corporations rely on this labor to manage crises—mass burials, refugee camps, data moderation of violent imagery—while keeping its human cost invisible. The rhetoric of “essential workers” during pandemics revealed how entire populations are simultaneously glorified and sacrificed.
Philosophical Context
Philosophically, the concept raises questions about value, dignity, and memory. If modernity treats certain lives as expendable for economic or political goals, what remains of humanistic ideals of equality and rights?
Thinkers like Hannah Arendt warned of “superfluous lives” in totalitarian systems; Mbembe’s necropolitics showed how sovereignty decides who may die. Proletarians of death embody this logic: necessary yet disposable, visible only in moments of crisis, forgotten once the machinery resumes.
Hybrid Collapse Perspective
Within Hybrid Collapse, proletarians of death populate industrial ruins, quarantine zones, and militarized borders. They repair collapsing infrastructures, process digital archives of violence, and dig graves beneath holographic billboards selling luxury and immortality.
The metropolis depends on their labor yet denies them narrative centrality. Their anonymity sustains the spectacle of collapse: citizens consume images of disaster without seeing those who clean its aftermath. In this world, proletarians of death carry the weight of mortality for systems that thrive on their silence.