Proprietariat

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The social class that owns the factories, land and capital used to produce goods, as opposed to those who must sell their labour
2. The owning class in a capitalist society, whose wealth comes from holding the means of production rather than from working for wages
3. Those who possess the productive property of a society, such as businesses, machinery and land, considered as a distinct economic class

Etymology: "Proprietariat" is a blend of two words that pull in opposite social directions. The first part, "propriety," here carries its older sense of ownership, an owned object or possession, rather than the modern meaning of correct behaviour. The second part, "proletariat," is the term for the working class, drawn from Latin "proletarius," a word for a citizen of the lowest census class, whose only contribution to the state was their offspring (Latin "proles," offspring). Blending the two produces a word for the owning class, the property-holders set against the proletariat. The coinage is deliberately antithetical: one half names what the wealthy possess, the other names what the poor lack. Its use is largely confined to political and sociological writing, where it serves as a pointed counterpart to the older label.