proletariat

Examples of proletariat in the following topics:

• Religion and Social Control

  • Marx viewed religion as a tool of social control used by the bourgeoisie to keep the proletariat content with an unequal status quo.
  • Marx argued that the bourgeoise used religion as a tool to keep the less powerful proletariat pacified.
  • In this passage, Marx is calling for the proletariat to discard religion and its deceit about other-worldly events.

• Marx's View of Class Differentiation

  • The working class, or the proletariat, only possess their own labor power, which they sell to the ruling class in the form of wage labor to survive.
  • Diagram the relationship between the owners of production, the proletariat, the substructure and the superstructure according to Marx's view

• Classical Views on Social Change

  • The capitalists or bourgeoisie employ the proletariat for a living wage, but then keep the products of the labor.
  • As a result, the proletariat is alienated from the fruits of its labor – they do not own the products they produce, only their labor power.
  • In addition to the alienation from the results of production, the proletariat is also alienated from each other under capitalism.
  • Capitalists alienate the proletariat from each other by forcing them to compete for limited job opportunities.
  • Because they are forced to compete with other members of the proletariat, workers are alienated from each other, compounding the unhappiness of the proletariat.

• Weber's View of Stratification

  • Weber criticized the dialectical presumption of proletariat revolt, believing it to be unlikely.
  • Weber noted that managers of corporations or industries control firms they do not own; Marx would have placed such a person in the proletariat.

• The Conflict Perspective on Deviance

  • Marx himself did not write about deviant behavior specifically, but he wrote about alienation amongst the proletariat, as well as between the proletariat and the finished product, which causes conflict, and thus deviant behavior.

• Class Conflict and Marx

  • Moreover, he believed that in the long-term this process would necessarily enrich and empower the capitalist class, while at the same time it would impoverish the poorer laboring class, which he referred to as the proletariat.
  • Eventually, the proletariat would become class conscious—aware that their seemingly individual problems were created by an economic system that disadvantaged all those who did not own the means of production.
  • Once the proletariat developed a class consciousness, Marx believed, they would rise up and seize the means of production, overthrowing the capitalist mode of production, and bringing about a socialist society.
  • Marx believed that the socialist system established after the proletariat revolution would encourage social relations that would benefit everyone equally, abolish the exploitative capitalist, ending their exclusive ownership of the means of production, and introduce a system of production less vulnerable to cyclical crises.

• Class, Crime, and the Criminal Justice System

  • In Marxist theory, the class structure of the capitalist mode of production is characterized by the conflict between two main classes: the bourgeoisie, the capitalists who own the means of production, and the much larger proletariat who must sell their own labor power.
  • In Marxist theory, the class structure of the capitalist mode of production is characterized by the conflict between two main classes: the bourgeoisie, the capitalists who own the means of production, and the much larger proletariat who must sell their own labor power.

• Justification of Government

  • Rather, there must be a revolution in which the tables are turned and the previously exploited workers (proletariat) grab control of the state away from the capitalists (bourgeoisie).
  • During a transition period, the "dictatorship of the proletariat", the bourgeoisie is gradually "liquidated", an ambiguous term which might mean anything from physical extermination of its members to their absorption into the ranks of the proletariat.

• The Conflict Perspective

  • Engels suggested that the same owner-worker relationship seen in the labor force could also be seen in the household, with women assuming the role of the proletariat.

• Capitalism, Modernization, and Industrialization

  • In a capitalist society (which co-evolved with the Industrial Revolution), the proletariat, or working class, own only their labor power and not the fruits of their labor (i.e. the results of production).
  • The capitalists, or bourgeoisie, employ the proletariat for a living wage, and, in turn, they keep the products of the labor.