Working class
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The working class is usually thought of as the lowest social class of people in societies that care about class structure. Often, they are labeled "lower class" to reflect this, the others being the comfortable middle class and the upper class. Historically, the rough definition of "working class", give or take at various times and in various places, has been those who worked for others as opposed to being self-employed, and whose livelihood depended upon their next paycheck coming through; this would include many people employed in manufacturing, agriculture, and (today) the service industry. Another traditional definition, most commonly heard in the UK, is that the working class is those who "work standing up."
Another term for the working class, used often in socialist literature, is "proletariat". The term, derived from the Latin word for "wage earner", was given its current definition by Karl Marx, and it refers to people that are owners of labor power, but have no other capital to speak of.[1] It also can be used as a generic term for the lowest class in a given community.[2]
In the United States, the term "lower-middle class" is sometimes used as a synonym for "working class", including both the traditional working class as well as small business owners and family farmers who have some capital, but are dwarfed in such by the upper classes.
Followers of the various derivatives of Marxism will often describe the working class as the second lowest class, the real lowest being a "benefits class" or "underclass", which comprises the poor that other classes don't feel empathy for.[3] Marx described this class as the "lumpenproletariat" or "rogue proletarians," comprising such people as beggars, con-men, career criminals, and others who were the most unlikely to come to the gospel light of class consciousness, and thus completely useless for revolutionary purposes except as means to an end. Later theorists disagreed on this point; thinking that some use might be got out of the lumpenproletarians after all, they have included among their number the permanently unemployable and those who lost the Skin Color Lottery.