Word.ws English Dictionary

labour aristocracy

labour aristocracy noun: segment of the working class that enjoys a relatively privileged position compared to the rest of the working class as a result of higher salaries, better working conditions, etc., and which can lead them to have different interests and perspectives even though they continue to be exploited by capitalists.

Noun

labour aristocracy (countable and uncountable, plural labour aristocracies)

  1. Segment of the working class that enjoys a relatively privileged position compared to the rest of the working class as a result of higher salaries, better working conditions, etc., and which can lead them to have different interests and perspectives even though they continue to be exploited by capitalists.
    • Важно то, что экономически откол слоя рабочей аристократии к буржуазии назрел и завершился, а политическую форму себе, ту или иную, этот экономический факт, эта передвижка в отношениях между классами найдет без особого «труда».1973 [1916], Vladimir Lenin, Империализм и раскол социализма (В. И. Ленин – Полное собрание сочинений; 30), page 170; English translation from Imperialism and the Split in Socialism (V. I. Lenin –...
    • He [Bakunin] found that there is a labour aristocracy of more developed, literate individuals, as well as an unconscious mass of workers.1957 September, George Molnar, “Anarchism”, in Libertarian, number 1

labour aristocracy meaning in Punjabi and Vietnamese

labour aristocracy in Punjabi

Translations
ਮਜ਼ਦੂਰ ਕੁਲੀਨਤੰਤਰ mazdūr kulīntantar

labour aristocracy in Vietnamese

Translations
công nhân quý tộc

Forms of labour aristocracy

plurallabour aristocracies
alternative formlabor aristocracy
alternative formaristocracy of labour
alternative formaristocracy of labor

Origin of labour aristocracy

Compound of labour + aristocracy. The theory about relatively privileged proletarians, thus more manipulable into collaborating with the bourgeoisie, was formulated by Friedrich Engels in a letter to Karl Marx [7 October 1858]. A precursor to the wording appears in Marx's Das Kapital, Volume I [1867].

Questions about labour aristocracy

What does labour aristocracy mean?
Labour aristocracy means segment of the working class that enjoys a relatively privileged position compared to the rest of the working class as a result of higher salaries, better working conditions, etc., and which can lead them to have different interests and perspectives even though they continue to be exploited by capitalists.
What is labour aristocracy in Punjabi?
Labour aristocracy in Punjabi is ਮਜ਼ਦੂਰ ਕੁਲੀਨਤੰਤਰ (mazdūr kulīntantar). See Labour aristocracy meaning in Punjabi.
What part of speech is labour aristocracy?
Labour aristocracy is a noun.
What is the plural of labour aristocracy?
The plural of labour aristocracy is labour aristocracies.

Words near labour aristocracy in the dictionary

  1. Labountys
  2. labour
  3. labour action
  4. labour actions
  5. labour aristocracies
  6. labour aristocracy
  7. labour camp
  8. labour camps
  9. labour court
  10. labour courts
  11. Labour Day

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: labour aristocracy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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