Asked by john

Define Proletariat

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Answered by GPT-5 mini AI
Proletariat — the class of people who do not own the means of production and must sell their labor power to live. The term comes from Latin proletarius (originally meaning the lowest Roman citizen, whose chief contribution to the state was offspring).

In Marxist theory the proletariat is the wage‑working class that produces surplus value for capitalists (the bourgeoisie) and is identified as the class with the potential to carry out a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and establish a classless society. In everyday usage it is often synonymous with the “working class,” though the Marxist sense emphasizes the relation to ownership of productive resources rather than specific jobs or income levels.