The thesis of this article is that in general where most other workers were quickly and easily proletarianized, physicians - through the use of a variety of tactics at the disposal of some elite groups - have, until now, been able to postpone or minimize this process in their own case. Now, as a result of the bureaucratization which is being forced on medical practice as a consequence of the logic of capitalist expansion, physicians are slowly being reduced to a proletarian function, and their formerly self-interested activities subordinated to the broader requirements of the capitalist control of highly profitable medical production.