Proletariat

noun (countable, collective)

/ˌprəʊlɪˈteəriət/

In Marxist political economy, the proletariat is the class of wage labourers who, lacking ownership of the means of production (capital, land, machinery), must sell their labour power to capitalists (the bourgeoisie) to survive. Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto (1848) identified the proletariat as the revolutionary class whose historical mission was to overthrow capitalism and establish a classless society. In the Indian context, the 20th-century trade union movement — particularly the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC, founded 1920) — invoked proletarian solidarity against colonial industrial capitalism.

✍️ Usage in a UPSC answer

The All India Trade Union Congress, founded in 1920 with Bal Gangadhar Tilak as its first president, sought to channel the grievances of the Indian industrial proletariat — concentrated in Bombay's textile mills and Calcutta's jute factories — into organised political resistance against both colonial employers and indigenous mill-owners.

Synonyms

working classlabouring classwage earnerstoilerslabour (collective noun)hands

Antonyms

bourgeoisiecapitalist classruling classaristocracyrentier class

🌱 Word Family

proletariat (noun), proletarian (noun/adj), proletarianise (verb), proletarianisation (noun), lumpenproletariat (noun — the underclass below the proletariat), bourgeoisie (antonymic noun)

🔡 Root

Latin proletarius = citizen of the lowest class (who served the state only through offspring); from proles (offspring, progeny)

📜 Etymology

From Latin proletarius, a Roman census category for citizens too poor to serve in the army who were taxed only on their proles (children). The word entered French political discourse during the Revolution and was theoretically appropriated by Karl Marx in the 1840s to describe the specifically modern industrial wage-labouring class. The abstract collective noun proletariat (French prolétariat) was Marx's coinage for this class as a historical agent.

🧠 Memory Hook

PROLE-TARIAT: proles = offspring/children — the Roman proletarian's only asset. The industrial proletarian's only asset is their labour-children (labour power). They produce wealth but own nothing.

🏛️ History & Culture 📖 Seen in: Indus Valley Civilization (Mature phas...

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