the working or lower class in a society
The poorest class of industrial wage earners who, possessing neither capital nor production means, must earn their living by selling their labour.
The industrial working class who, possessing neither capital nor production means, must sell their labor to survive.
the Marxist term for the working class, meaning in particular those workers who own nothing but their labor (unlike artisans, who may own their own machinery or tools).
the modern working class. (p. 766)
a social class comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages; "there is a shortage of skilled labor in this field"
The modern industrial working class, which, as defined by Karl Marx, lives solely by the sale of its labor. See also BOURGEOISIE.
the working or unpropertied class who rely on the sale of their labour for an income
The working class, especially those who lack capital and must sell their unskilled labour in order to survive.
property-less workers; the working-class; originally "those who produce children"; under capitalism a revolutionary class which will someday overthrow the existing capitalist structures and replace them with communism. Marx, Manifesto (15); Engels, "Socialism," (713).
Industrial workers. In Marxist theory, the proletariat is the class of alienated industrial workers who will first rise up to seize the means of production and create a socialist economy.
French term describing the workers. In today's terms, they would be the working class.
Class of modern wage laborers.
Class of working people without access to producing property; typically manufacturing workers, paid laborers in agricultural economy, or urban poor; in Europe, product of economic changes of 16th and 17th centuries. (p. 528)
Karl Marx's term for those who must sell their labour because they have no other means to earn a livelihood.
The proletariat (from Latin proles, offspring) is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. Originally it was identified as those people who had no wealth other than their sons; the term was initially used in a derogatory sense, until Karl Marx used it as a sociological term to refer to the working class.