As someone who works in a law adjacent industry (forensic accounting), I am frequently reminded why I did not go into law despite having a decent grasp of how to read and interpret law. Specifically the area of law that I come across most frequently at work is Family Law, as forensic accountants are asked to value the interests of the various parties before the can and will tear each other to pieces. If there ever was an equivalent of Insect Court, where you make bugs fight in the arena until their various body parts come off, then Family Law is definitely it.
On the whole lawyers are just like ordinary people. In actuality, lawyers tend to rise through the ranks of socio-economic privilege until the best of them reach a point where they no longer think that the rules of polite society apply to them. The supply curve for manners is an upside-down U-shaped curve where the very poor and the very rich do not think that manners are necessary. It is only the great middle class of people, who have order barked at them on one side, while trying to aspirationally rise up themselves, who think that manners are a good idea. Once lawyers acquire letters like KC or OAM at the end of their name, or even Sir and Lady at the front of it, they then assume a new form in which they think that they are hemi-semi-demigods and can demand and control people.
Last week as we were working on the case of A.Apple and B.Apple (matter number SY867-5309/23), one of the lawyers at Banana, Banana, and Durian, was increasingly getting tetchy about the timeline of events for appearances, and especially that we had not released our report to the various parties, law firms, and the court. The reason why we had not released our report was that my boss who had seen more of the central papers than I have (hence maintaining a curtain of plausible deniability) had worked out that Mr Apple had business interests in China and as we had not yet been paid for our report, there was a considerable likelihood (in my boss' eyes) of Mr Apple skipping the country.
Ms Banana KC upon realising that my boss was not about to shift position until we had been paid (the thing about the magic piano is that it only plays one song "Ka-Ching"), then turned her attention to me. If you can not get in through the doors, then you should try breaking in through a window, right? I also refused to release the report and instead of accepting this like a normal sane person, any pretense of manners and civility was instantly dissolved and and she turned to abuse.
Now I have endured a lot of name-calling from different people; so it is really really difficult to surprise me any more but Ms Banana's term of abuse for me really threw me for a loop. This is not because I felt sad or mad but because it started to gnaw inside me as to where it ultimately came from. Motor cars will break my bones but words will send me straight to etymology dictionaries.
Ms Banana KC called me a "Low-Rent Prole".
"Aha!" I don't hear you say because this is the medium of text and I am the one who has just put words into your brain. "Low-Rent" is likely just a jab which accuses me of being poor (which relative to a KC is true) but "Prole"? Prole?!
The word "prole" is not derived from George Orwell's 1948 novel "1984". Given that George Orwell was very much an economic leftist and even wrote essays on why he was a socialist, then this might lead you further down the chain. The word "prole" is not derived from Marx' and Engel's "Communist Manifesto", though given that the Beardy One and the Cranky One were both versed in the writings in economics coming out of Switzerland and Austria, then that seems like a good place to start.
I found a book of essays in the local library by Swiss historian and economist Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi, who uses the term "proletariat" to describe the burgeoning working class which was now both fleeing to and being bred in the cities as European economies were shifting from mostly agrarian societies to a more modern capitalist system with factories and they date from about the 1820s onwards. However this still isn't really good enough as de Sismondi uses the term as if the readers already understand what it means. Further investigation was warranted.
One of the neat things about the dismal science of economics is that the earlier that you go back, the fewer and fewer books that exist which have definitely been categorised as economics texts. I think that economics as a modern realm of study has an absolute starting point and that starting point is Adam Smith's 1759 work "The Theory of Moral Sentiment". However, I have Smith's works and I very much doubt that he used the term "proletariat" at all. Shave a bit off the beginning and continue to work backwards and I think that the first use of the word "proletariat" came in 1807.
I had to go to the State Library of NSW to fine yet another collection of essays; this time by the French philosopher Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais; who mostly speaks about a very large number of working class people who have moved into the cities and because they do not own their houses, nor can contribute anything to the economy other than their labour, they are the new modern day slaves. In fact he explicitly defines his use the term "proletariat" as being derived from Latin to describe that underclass of people, in his 1807 essay rendered in English as "Modern Slavery".
Now I can not speak for slavery in French law but in English law, to road to abolish slavery had been at least 40 years in the making at that point. Somerset v Stewart (1772) in part triggered the punitive taxation acts and so-called "Intolerable Acts" under the Lord North Government in 1774, which eventually led to the United States fighting a War for Independence which allowed them to keep and retain slavery. Knight v Wedderburn (1777) more or less abolished slavery at common law in England and the Slave Trade Act (1803) banned the buying and selling of slaves but slavery wasn't properly extinguished until the Abolition Of Slavery Act (18300). All of that aside, de Lamennais makes the argument that people who work for a wage are tied to their employers. Yet again the rich do as they please and the poor must suffer what they must but most of all they must suffer.
I should have guessed that the term "proletariat" was Latin. The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution simply adored mining the words of Latin and Greek to give airs and graces to their modern writings. Even today, the "television" and "telephone" are derived from Latin and Greek roots.
As for the term "proletariat", I should have guessed that it came from the "proletarii" who were Roman citizens who owned no property to speak of. Below the proletarii were the slaves who actually were property which could be bought and sold. Instead, the proletarii were "capite censi" or heads (caput) of a family who were name in the census who could only list their children as property. From what I can gather, the proletarii owned a total estate amounting to less than 40 aurii and the only contribution to the military of the Roman Empire, was not their service, or horses, or swords, or taxation, or slaves but their own children. Hence they sent their offspring (proles) as their contribution to the military of the Roman Empire. Presumably these offspring could then become proper citizens in the far flung edges of empire as wider still and wider was its limits set.
So now I have a dilemma. I think that I am supposed to feel insulted and abused by Ms Banana KC but now I just feel happy after having learned a thing and after having been sent down such a fun fun rabbit hole. If we use Average Weekly Ordinary Time Earnings (AWOTE) to determine what an aureus was actually worth, then:
$1838.60 / 5 = $367.72
$367.72 x 25 = $9193.00
$9193.00 x 40 = $367,720
As I do not own a house and as I do pay relatively low rent, then Ms Banana KC calling me a "Low-Rent Prole" is technically correct which is the best kind of correct. In this case, well done Ms Banana KC. You are very well informed.
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