Meet the Cast
The Proletariat
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 wo...
The Bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie are the rich, the owners of the means of production (factories, agricultural land, industrial machinery) and the owners of capital (profit and financial products like stocks and fut...
The Aristocracy
The aristocracy is made up of feudal monarchs—you know, all those the medieval kings and queens we love to watch on TV and read fantasy novels about. Under feudal rule, society was made up of, in...
The Petit Bourgeoisie
Yeah, Marx wants the entire bourgeoisie overthrown—but for him, there's actually more than one kind of bourgeoisie, or at least there are different shades of bourgeoisie.The petit—French for sm...
The Lumpenproletariat
The word lumpenproletariat doesn't occur in the 1888 authorized English translation; it is Marx's original German for what the authorized edition translates as the dangerous class, the social scum....