What does proletarian mean?
“Proletarian” is derived from the word “Proletariat” (which comes from Latin proles, “offspring”) used to identify a lower social class. A proletarian is a member of such a class. Originally the proletariat referred to people who had no wealth or possessions other than their offspring and was used in a derogatory sense, until Karl Marx used it as a sociological term to refer to the working class (wage-earners including poor peasants and workers, and those who were unemployed) who did not own any means of production and must sell their labor power, or they would starve. The word proletarian is also used as an adjective to refer to something belonging to or characteristic of the proletariat class, e.g. culture, habits, political outlook.
