A wage earner, manual worker or peasant, whom socialists view as one without property and thus, under capitalism, at the mercy of employers Proletarians are to be distinguished from: (1) The bourgeois or merchants, employers and white collar workers, and (2) The nobility and landed gentry AC 68-70
a member of the working class (not necessarily employed); "workers of the world--unite!" belonging to or characteristic of the proletariat the lowest class of citizens of ancient Rome who had no property