No definition can trace precisely the limits of a category. At what stage in the hierarchy does the skilled worker cease to belong to the proletariat? Is the manual worker in the public services a proletarian even though he receives his wages from the State and not from a private employer? Do the wage-earners in commerce, whose hands manipulate the objects manufactured by others, belong to the same group as the wage-earners in industry? There can be no dogmatic answer to such queries: they have no common criterion.
