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proletariat

proletariat

17 7.9
People who work for pay and do not own land or factories
  • noun
  • /ˌproʊlɪˈtɛrɪət/
  • Specialized
translation icon : proletariado
  • The bourgeoisie are the people who own and run production, the factories and the proletariat of broadly the people who work for them.
  • dictatorship of the proletariat
  • bourgeoisie and proletariat
  • industrial proletariat

She then talks about women and the proletariat, the working class, right?

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Examples

  • There were two reasons in Marxist thought as to why the proletariat would lead the revolution.

    Academic text (1990)
  • The leading force behind our revolution is the industrial proletariat.

  • And you hope that that will stir, you know, the proletariat inside of them.

  • Well, as long as the proletariat owns the means of production of these of these vessels, then we're all good.

  • Nobody will believe me that the revolution will come because the proletariat is alienated.

  • Measures that benefit the industrial proletariat may not necessarily benefit the poorest groups and may even hurt them.

    Academic text (1996)
  • Adult literacy amongst the proletariat has risen by 56 percent.

  • I kept waiting for the factory workers to organize; they're the real proletariat.

    Fiction book (1994)
  • To use the words of Leon Trotsky, "The proletariat does not recognize national borders."

    Academic text (1996)
  • The industrial proletariat plays a crucial role in shaping the economy through their labor.

Synonyms

labor
vsproletariat
  • US
588 2.3

The group of people who work, usually organized in unions

describes a class defined by wage work and absence of property ownership
working class
vsproletariat
69 2.8

People who do manual or factory work and earn hourly wages

is a politically framed class stressing lack of property and Marxist use

Antonyms

118 4.6

A person who supports private business and free markets

11 8.4

A social class between workers and the rich who own property or businesses

Compounds

Workers have hard times and problems when society treats them unfairly

How Working-Class

proletariat
  • Specialized
17 7.9
working class
69 2.8

Surface Forms

proletariat singular
proletariats plural

Etymology

Proletariat comes from the Latin proles meaning 'offspring' and from proletarius, a Roman name for people whose main value to the state was their children, and it is related to the English word prolific ('producing many'). Later thinkers like Marx used proletariat for the class of wage workers who own little property, so today it means the working class.