Working class in the context of Mahishya

Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). It is a hierarchy within groups that ascribe them to different levels of privileges. As such, stratification is the relative social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region, or social unit.

In modern Western societies, social stratification is defined in terms of three social classes: an upper class, a middle class, and a lower class; in turn, each class can be subdivided into an upper-stratum, a middle-stratum, and a lower stratum. Moreover, a social stratum can be formed upon the bases of kinship, clan, tribe, or caste, or all four.

A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common ones being: the working class, the middle class and the upper class. Membership of a social class is commonly considered dependent on education, wealth, occupation, income, and belonging to a particular subculture or social network.

Class is a subject of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and social historians. The term has a wide range of sometimes conflicting meanings, and there is no broad consensus on a definition of class. Some people argue that due to social mobility, class boundaries do not exist. In common parlance, the term social class is usually synonymous with socioeconomic class, defined as "people having the same social, economic, cultural, political or educational status", e.g. the working class, "an emerging professional class" etc. However, academics distinguish social class from socioeconomic status, using the former to refer to one's relatively stable cultural background and the latter to refer to one's current social and economic situation which is consequently more changeable over time.

The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social change in Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government following two successive revolutions and a civil war. It can be seen as the precursor for other revolutions that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, such as the German Revolution of 1918–1919. The Russian Revolution was a key event of the 20th century.

The Russian Revolution was inaugurated with the February Revolution in 1917, in the midst of World War I. With the German Empire inflicting defeats on the front, and increasing logistical problems causing shortages of bread and grain, the Russian Army was losing morale, with large scale mutiny looming. Officials were convinced that if Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, the unrest would subside. Nicholas stepped down on 15 March [O.S. 2 March], ushering in a provisional government led by the Duma (parliament). During the unrest, Soviet councils were formed by locals in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) that initially did not oppose the new government; however, the Soviets insisted on their influence in the government and control over militias. By March, Russia had two rival governments. The Provisional Government held state power in military and international affairs, whereas the network of Soviets held domestic power. Critically, the Soviets held the allegiance of the working class, and urban middle class. There were mutinies, protests and strikes. Socialist and other leftist political organizations competed for influence within the Provisional Government and Soviets. Factions included the Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, Anarchists, and the Bolsheviks, a far-left party led by Vladimir Lenin.

Upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status. Usually, these are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper class is generally distinguished by immense wealth which is passed on from generation to generation. Prior to the 20th century, the emphasis was on aristocracy, which emphasized generations of inherited noble status, not just recent wealth.

Because the upper classes of a society may no longer rule the society in which they are living, they are often referred to as the old upper classes, and they are often culturally distinct from the newly rich middle classes that tend to dominate public life in modern social democracies. According to the latter view held by the traditional upper classes, no amount of individual wealth or fame would make a person from an undistinguished background into a member of the upper class as one must be born into a family of that class and raised in a particular manner to understand and share upper class values, traditions, and cultural norms. The term is often used in conjunction with terms like upper-middle class, middle class, and working class as part of a model of social stratification.

The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Common definitions for the middle class range from the middle fifth of individuals on a nation's income ladder, to everyone but the poorest and wealthiest 20%. Theories like "Paradox of Interest" use decile groups and wealth distribution data to determine the size and wealth share of the middle class.

Terminology differs in the United States, where the term middle class describes people who in other countries would be described as working class. There has been significant global middle-class growth over time. In February 2009, The Economist asserted that over half of the world's population belonged to the middle class, as a result of rapid growth in emerging countries. It characterized the middle class as having a reasonable amount of discretionary income and defined it as beginning at the point where people have roughly a third of their income left for discretionary spending after paying for basic food and shelter.

In political science, the term class struggle, class conflict, or class war refers to the economic antagonism and political tension that exist among social classes because of clashing interests, competition for limited resources, and inequalities of power in the socioeconomic hierarchy. In its simplest manifestation, class struggle refers to the conflict between classes within class systems .

In the writings of several leftist, socialist, and communist theorists, notably those of Karl Marx, class struggle is a core tenet and a practical means for effecting radical sociopolitical transformations for the majority working class. It is also a central concept within conflict theories of sociology and political philosophy.

Marxist historiography, or historical materialist historiography, is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography include the centrality of social class, social relations of production in class-divided societies that struggle against each other, and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes (historical materialism). Marxist historians follow the tenets of the development of class-divided societies, especially modern capitalist ones.

Marxist historiography has developed in varied ways across different regional and political contexts. It has had unique trajectories of development in the West, the Soviet Union, and in India, as well as in the pan-Africanist and African-American traditions, adapting to these specific regional and political conditions in different ways. Marxist historiography has made contributions to the history of the working class, and the methodology of a history from below.

The revolutions of 1848, also known as the springtime of the peoples, were a series of revolutions throughout Europe over the course of over a year, from 1848 to 1849. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history to date.

The revolutions varied widely in their aims but generally opposed conservative systems, such as absolute monarchy and feudalism, and sought to establish nation states, founded on constitutionalism and popular sovereignty. The revolutionary wave began with the Sicilian revolution in January and spread across Europe after the French revolution in February 1848. Over 50 countries were affected, but with no significant coordination or cooperation among their respective revolutionaries. Some of the major political contributing factors were widespread dissatisfaction with political leadership, demands for more participation in government and democracy, for freedom of the press, and by the working class for economic rights, and the rise of nationalism. Other economic factors, such as the European potato failure, triggered mass starvation, migration, and civil unrest.

Christian democracy is an ideology inspired by Christian social teaching to respond to the challenges of contemporary society and politics.

Christian democracy has drawn mainly from Catholic social teaching and neo-scholasticism, as well as the Neo-Calvinist tradition within Christianity; it later gained ground with Lutherans and Pentecostals, among other denominational traditions of Christianity in various parts of the world. During the nineteenth century, its principal concerns were to reconcile Catholicism with democracy, to answer the "social question" surrounding capitalism and the working class, and to resolve the tensions between church and state. In the twentieth century, Christian democrats led postwar Western and Southern Europe in building modern welfare states and constructing the European Union. Furthermore, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, Christian democracy has gained support in Eastern Europe among former communist states suffering from corruption and stagnation.

Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revolution is a necessary precondition for transitioning from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production. Revolution is not necessarily defined as a violent insurrection; it is defined as a seizure of political power by mass movements of the working class so that the state is directly controlled or abolished by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class and its interests.

Revolutionary socialists believe such a state of affairs is a precondition for establishing socialism and orthodox Marxists believe it is inevitable but not predetermined. Revolutionary socialism encompasses multiple political and social movements that may define "revolution" differently from one another. These include movements based on orthodox Marxist theory such as De Leonism, impossibilism and Luxemburgism, as well as movements based on Leninism and the theory of vanguardist-led revolution such as the Stalinism, Maoism, Marxism–Leninism and Trotskyism. Revolutionary socialism also includes other Marxist, Marxist-inspired and non-Marxist movements such as those found in democratic socialism, revolutionary syndicalism, anarchism and social democracy.

The Communist Manifesto (German: Das Kommunistische Manifest), originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party (Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was commissioned by the Communist League and published in London in 1848. The text represents the first and most systematic attempt by the two founders of scientific socialism to codify for wide consumption the historical materialist idea, namely, that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles", in which social classes are defined by the relationship of people to the means of production. Published amid the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, the manifesto has become one of the world's most influential political documents.

In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels combine philosophical materialism with the Hegelian dialectical method in order to analyze the development of European society through its modes of production, including primitive communism, antiquity, feudalism, and capitalism, noting the emergence of a new, dominant class at each stage. The text outlines the relationship between the means of production, relations of production, forces of production, and mode of production, and posits that changes in society's economic "base" affect changes in its "superstructure". The authors assert that capitalism is marked by the exploitation of the proletariat (working class of wage labourers) by the ruling bourgeoisie, which is "constantly revolutionising the instruments [and] relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society". They argue that capital's need for a flexible labour force dissolves the old relations, and that its global expansion in search of new markets creates "a world after its own image".

The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), commonly known as the First International, was a political international which aimed to unite a variety of left-wing political groups and trade union organizations based on the working class and class struggle. It was founded on 28 September 1864 at a workers' meeting in St Martin's Hall, London, and its first congress was held in 1866 in Geneva.

The IWA's history was characterized by internal conflicts between different socialist and anarchist factions. The initial ideological struggle was between the communists or Marxists, centred around Karl Marx on the General Council, and the mutualists or followers of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. The communists successfully displaced the mutualists as the dominant ideological trend at the Brussels Congress in 1868. The rise of Mikhail Bakunin's collectivist anarchist faction in the late 1860s led to a more intense conflict over the role of the state and political action in achieving socialism. The organization reached its peak following the Paris Commune of 1871, which was celebrated and defended by the International in Marx's influential address, The Civil War in France. The bloody suppression of the Commune, however, led to a period of harsh government repression against the IWA.

A proletarian revolution or proletariat revolution is a social revolution in which the working class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie and change the previous political system. Proletarian revolutions are generally advocated by socialists, communists and anarchists.

Anarcho-syndicalism is an anarchist organisational model that centres trade unions as a vehicle for class conflict. Drawing from the theory of libertarian socialism and the practice of syndicalism, anarcho-syndicalism sees trade unions as both a means to achieve immediate improvements to working conditions and to build towards a social revolution in the form of a general strike, with the ultimate aim of abolishing the state and capitalism. Anarcho-syndicalists consider trade unions to be the prefiguration of a post-capitalist society and seek to use them in order to establish workers' control of production and distribution. An anti-political ideology, anarcho-syndicalism rejects political parties and participation in parliamentary politics, considering them to be a corrupting influence on the labour movement. In order to achieve their material and economic goals, anarcho-syndicalists instead practice direct action in the form of strike actions, boycotts and sabotage. Anarcho-syndicalists also attempt to build solidarity among the working class, in order to unite workers against the exploitation of labour and build workers' self-management.

The foundations of anarcho-syndicalism were laid by the anti-authoritarian faction of the International Workingmen's Association (IWMA) and developed by the French General Confederation of Labour (CGT). Anarcho-syndicalism was constituted as a specific tendency following the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam in 1907, which led to anarcho-syndicalism becoming the dominant form of trade union organisation in Europe and Latin America. After facing suppression during the Revolutions of 1917–1923, anarcho-syndicalists established the International Workers' Association (IWA) in 1922. Anarcho-syndicalism reached its apex during the Spanish Revolution of 1936, when the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) established an anarcho-syndicalist economy throughout much of the Spanish Republic. Anarcho-syndicalism went into decline after the defeat of the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War in 1939. The movement split into two factions: the "orthodox" faction, which held to traditional syndicalist principles in spite of changing material conditions; and the "revisionist" faction, which aimed to achieve a mass base and work within the framework of newly established welfare states. By the end of the 20th century, the rise of neoliberalism and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc had led to a revival in anarcho-syndicalism, with syndicalist unions once again being established throughout the globe.

The labour movement is the collective organisation of working people to further their shared political and economic interests. It consists of the trade union or labour union movement, as well as political parties of labour. It can be considered an instance of class conflict.

• In trade unions, workers campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and fair treatment from their employers, and through the implementation of labour laws, from their governments. They do this through collective bargaining, sectoral bargaining, and when needed, strike action. In some countries, co-determination gives representatives of workers seats on the board of directors of their employers.

• Political parties representing the interests of workers campaign for labour rights, social security and the welfare state. They are usually called a labour party (in English-speaking countries), a social democratic party (in Germanic and Slavic countries), a socialist party (in Romance countries), or sometimes a workers' party.
• Though historically less prominent, the cooperative movement campaigns to replace capitalist ownership of the economy with worker cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, and other types of cooperative ownership. This is related to the concept of economic democracy.

The labour movement developed as a response to capitalism and the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, at about the same time as socialism. The early goals of the movement were the right to unionise, the right to vote, democracy, safe working conditions and the 40-hour week. As these were achieved in many of the advanced economies of Western Europe and North America in the early decades of the 20th century, the labour movement expanded to issues of welfare and social insurance, wealth distribution and income distribution, public services like health care and education, social housing and in some cases common ownership.