who are the proletariat? who are the bourgeoisie
Who are the proletariat? A lot of people assume that Marx is talking about all the poor, all the have-nots. But the proletariat is actually a more specific group: they're property-less, employed workersâproperty-less meaning that they have no possession of the means of production or capital, or spare money to invest.
bourgeoisie [(boor-zhwah-zee)] In general, the middle class. Applied to the Middle Ages, it refers to townspeople, who were neither nobles nor peasants. In Marxism it refers to those who control the means of production and do not live directly by the sale of their labor. Karl Marx distinguished between the âhauteâ (high) bourgeoisie (industrialists and financiers) and the âpetiteâ (small or âpettyâ) bourgeoisie (shopkeepers, self-employed artisans, lawyers).