WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Marx defined the proletariat as the social class having no significant ownership of the means of production (factories, machines, land, mines, buildings, vehicles) and whose only means of subsistence is to sell their labor power for a wage or salary.

Detailed explanation-2: -Marx often referred, for example, to the oppressed classes-a concept similar to Gramsci’s notion of the subaltern-referring to the proletariat, the unemployed, the peasantry, sharecroppers, slaves, serfs, etc.

Detailed explanation-3: -But from the beginning, Marx defined the working class not by the kind of work people did, but by their position in society–as “a class of laborers who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital."

Detailed explanation-4: -Marxism was Marx’s answer to the problems created by the owners of the means of production and most of the wealth: the bourgeoisie, or what he termed the oppressive class. The bourgeoisie used its power and wealth to oppress the proletariat, or the working class, for the purposes of sustaining its wealth.

Detailed explanation-5: -Marx named this class the proletariat. According to Marx, the value of a product is based on the labor used to manufacture it. Marx pointed out that workers’ wages fell far short of the price of the products they made.