Dictionary

semiproletariat en · NOUN

Etymology

From semi- + proletariat.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) The class of marginalized workers who lack regular employment, such as working peasants, pedlars, small handicrafts makers, and the underemployed.
   • In this contradictory process, the class balances within the nationalist alliance would also begin to shift against the semiproletariat. 2015, Arif Dirlik, Alexander Woodside, Global Capitalism and the Future of Agrarian Society, →ISBN, page 241:
   • This is because the rural semiproletariat are not so stubborn in clinging to the system of private ownership of the means of production [vested] is small[-scale] peasant holdings, and they are people who will accept socialist transformation more easily. 1992, Mao Zedong, Michael Y. M. Kau, John K. Leung, The Writings of Mao Zedong, 1949–1976, →ISBN, page 730:
   • The semiproletariat consisted of those who did manual labor for one or more masters and who surrendered their surplus product either as rent or as surplus value to their employers. 2008, Kathleen Gough, Rural Society in Southeast India, →ISBN, page 260:
   • To obtain such a cost differential they must either be able to hold back the proletariat's demands for real wage increases, using segments of the semiproletariat as 'strike breakers', or if they transfer a portion of the advantage to the proletariat they must obtain the asisistance of this group to hold the semiproletariat firmly in check - indeed to expropriate some or all of its land resources. 1979, Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy, →ISBN, page 107:

Forms