Proletariat

From MarxWiki

The proletariat, in Marx's writing, are the class of people who lack access to or ownership of the means of production in a capitalist society. They are therefore reduced to selling the one commodity they possess - their labor-power - on the market. Those who own the means of production - a class opposed to the proletariat, which Marx calls the bourgeoisie - buy their labor-power, but at as little compensation as they can manage. The bourgeoisie thus exploit the proletariat for their labor. Marx saw as the inevitable result of this exploitative relationship the Communist revolution, where working persons across the globe would unite to overthrow their oppressive bourgeoisie class.

Marxist scholars such as Frantz Fanon have enhanced the reductionist definition of the proletariat, in part in discussion of the divide between the town and country in national liberation struggles in colonial territories, and introduced the further distinction of lumpenproletariat to describe an even lower position within the proletariat. Pimps, prostitutes, and drug dealers constitute this sub-class.