Relating to the working class, especially industrial workers who sell their labor. Characteristic of or belonging to the proletariat in Marxist theory.
From Latin 'proletarius,' originally referring to the lowest class of Roman citizens who served the state only by producing children ('proles'). Marx adopted the term to describe industrial workers who owned no means of production.
The irony of 'proletarian' is that it originally described Romans whose only contribution was having children, yet Marx transformed it into a term of revolutionary power - those who create all value through their labor. This semantic evolution mirrors the rise of industrial workers from society's margins to its economic center.
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