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[[File:Construction Workers.jpg|thumb|right|Construction workers, commonly regarded as working class, at work at [[Massachusetts General Hospital]] in [[Boston|Boston, Massachusetts]], 2006]]
The '''working class'''
== Definitions ==
As with many terms describing [[social class]], working class is defined and used in many different ways. One definition, used by many [[socialism|socialists]], is that the working class includes all those who have nothing to sell but their labour. These people used to be referred to as the [[proletariat]]. In that sense, the working class today includes both white and blue-collar workers, manual and menial workers of all types, excluding only individuals who derive their livelihood from business ownership and the labour of others.{{sfn|McKibbin|2000|p=164}}{{verify source|date=November 2018}} The term, which is primarily used to evoke images of laborers suffering "class disadvantage in spite of their individual effort", can also have racial connotations.<ref name="Feingold 2020">{{Cite journal |last=Feingold |first=Jonathan |date=20 October 2020 |title="All (Poor) Lives Matter": How Class-Not-Race Logic Reinscribes Race and Class Privilege |url=https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/1019 |journal=[[University of Chicago Law Review]] Online |pages=47 |access-date=5 December 2020 |archive-date=3 December 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201203043839/https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/1019/ |url-status=live}}</ref> These racial connotations imply diverse themes of poverty that imply whether one is deserving of aid.<ref name="Feingold 2020"/>
When used in non-Socialist contexts, however, it often refers to a section of society dependent on physical [[labour economics|labour]], especially when compensated with an hourly [[wage]] (for certain types of science, as well as journalistic or political analysis). For example, the working class is loosely defined as those without college degrees.<ref name="NYTCanary">{{cite news |last=Edsall |first=Thomas B. |author-link=Thomas B. Edsall |date=17 June 2012 |title=Canaries in the Coal Mine |url=https://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/canaries-in-the-coal-mine/ |url-access=limited |department=Campaign Stops |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=18 June 2012 |archive-date=20 June 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220620051108/https://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/canaries-in-the-coal-mine/ |url-status=live}}</ref> Working-class occupations are then categorized into four groups: unskilled labourers, artisans, [[outworker]]s, and factory workers.{{sfn|Doob|2013|pp=}}{{page needed|date=November 2018}}
A common alternative is to define class by income levels.{{sfn|Linkon|1999|p=4}} When this approach is used, the working class can be contrasted with a so-called ''[[middle class]]'' on the basis of differential terms of access to economic resources, [[education]], cultural interests, and other goods and services. The cut-off between working class and middle class here might mean the line where a population has discretionary income, rather than finances for basic needs and essentials (for example, on [[fashion]] versus merely [[nutrition]] and shelter).
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== History and growth ==
[[File:Victorian Bishopgate.jpg|thumb|Working class life in [[Edwardian era|Edwardian]] [[St Ives, Cornwall|St Ives]] in [[Cornwall|Cornwall, England]],
In [[feudalism|feudal]] Europe, the working class as such did not exist in large numbers. Instead, most people were part of the labouring class, a group made up of different professions, trades and occupations. A lawyer, craftsman and peasant were all considered to be part of the same [[social unit]], a [[Estates of the realm|third estate]] of people who were neither [[Aristocracy (class)|aristocrats]] nor church officials. Similar hierarchies existed outside Europe in other [[pre-industrial societies]]. The social position of these labouring classes was viewed as ordained by [[natural law]] and common religious belief. This social position was contested, particularly by peasants, for example during the [[German Peasants' War]].{{sfn|Abendroth|1973|pp=11–12}}
In the late 18th century, under the influence of the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]], European society was in a state of change, and this change could not be reconciled with the idea of a changeless God-created social order. Wealthy members of these societies created ideologies which blamed many of the problems of working-class people on their morals and ethics (i.e. excessive consumption of alcohol, perceived laziness and inability to save money). In ''[[The Making of the English Working Class]]'', [[E. P. Thompson]] argues that the English working class was present at its own creation, and seeks to describe the transformation of pre-modern labouring classes into a modern, politically self-conscious, working class.{{sfn|Abendroth|1973}}{{verify source|date=November 2018}}<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/prospective-undergrads/virtual-classroom/secondary-source-exercises/sources-people/thompson |title=Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class — Faculty of History |website=www.hist.cam.ac.uk |publisher=[[Cambridge University]] |language=en |access-date=1 May 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200313180607/https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/prospective-undergrads/virtual-classroom/secondary-source-exercises/sources-people/thompson |archive-date=13 March 2020 |url-status=dead}}</ref>
Starting around 1917, a number of countries became ruled ostensibly in the interests of the working class (see [[Soviet working class]]). Some historians have noted that a key change in these Soviet-style societies has been a massive a new type of [[proletarianization]], often effected by the administratively achieved forced displacement of peasants and rural workers. Since then, four major industrial states have turned towards semi-market-based governance ([[China]], [[Laos]], [[Vietnam]], [[Cuba]]), and one state has turned inwards into an increasing cycle of poverty and brutalization ([[North Korea]]). Other states of this sort have collapsed (such as the [[Soviet Union]]).{{sfn|Kuromiya|1990|p=87}}
Since 1960, large-scale proletarianization and [[enclosure]] of commons has occurred in the [[third world]], generating new working classes. Additionally, countries such as [[India]] have been slowly undergoing social change, expanding the size of the urban working class.{{sfn|Gutkind|1988|pp=}}{{page needed|date=November 2018}}
== Marxist definition: the proletariat ==
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A sub-section of the proletariat, the [[lumpenproletariat]] (''rag-proletariat''), are the extremely poor and unemployed, such as [[day labourer]]s and [[homeless]] people. Marx considered them to be devoid of class consciousness.
[[File:Pyramid of Capitalist System.jpg|thumb|200px|Communist conception of [[Social class|class society]] in 1900{{Mdash}}1901. The drawing was based on a leaflet of the "Union of Russian Socialists"
In ''[[The Communist Manifesto]]'', Karl Marx and [[Friedrich Engels]] argued that it was the destiny of the working class to displace the [[capitalism|capitalist]] system, with the [[dictatorship of the proletariat]] (the rule of the many, as opposed to the "[[dictatorship of the bourgeoisie]]"), abolishing the social relationships underpinning the class system and then developing into a future [[communist]] society in which "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." In general, in Marxist terms [[wage slavery|wage labourers]] and those dependent on the [[welfare state]] are working class, and those who live on [[capital accumulation|accumulated capital]] are not. This broad dichotomy defines the [[class struggle]]. Different groups and individuals may at any given time be on one side or the other. Such contradictions of interests and identity within individuals' lives and within communities can effectively undermine the ability of the working class to act in solidarity to reduce [[Exploitation of labour|exploitation]], inequality, and the role of [[ownership]] in determining people's life chances, work conditions, and political power.
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* Leon, Carol Boyd. "The life of American workers in 1915," ''Monthly Labor Review'' (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 2016) https://doi.org/10.21916/mlr.2016.5
* {{cite book
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