Academics usually live off their teaching wages so proletarian. I mean percentage wise how many academics are actually known for it? I'm assuming the figure is very low.
In the United States, only about 20% of academics can live off of doing academics alone with any security. The middle can expect to be there for a few years and get bennies; the increasing majority are adjuncts that make up almost 50% and have no security, no office, no bennies, and must have other jobs at the same time. It's getting worse.
Though he's deeply problematic in a lot of ways, Chomsky does have a pretty good piece about
how academics is becoming "corporate." In some sense, however, I would almost say that it's almost a symptom of the last vestiges of some of the old feudal customs people were following being shaken off and capitalism infesting it. The problem is, as mentioned, the capitalist conception will mean that instead of experts at a field, things will be staffed by who can be the most controlled and the vastly increasing group of professional administrators will increase, pushing for higher costs with fewer services in order to increase their money.
But, yes. It is quite appropriate to put academics as proletarian.
Alis Volat Propriis; Tiocfaidh ár lá; Proletarier Aller Länder, Vereinigt Euch!