What is Marxism?

What is Permanent Revolution?

What is the Base-Superstructure Model?

What is the Labor Theory of Value?

What is Primitive Accumulation?

What is Capitalism?

What is Cultural Hegemony?

Who are the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie? | Definitions, Examples & Analysis

Central concepts in Marxian theory, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie refer to the working and ruling classes under capitalism, respectively. Despite common notions of working-class culture, or the slang term “bougie” that often gets applied to those with luxurious lifestyles, whether one belongs to the proletariat or bourgeoisie is derived from something more concrete and specific: a person’s relation to the means of production (i.e., those structures that regulate the production and distribution of goods). Karl Marx argued that capitalist society is divided into the bourgeoisie who own the means of production and the proletarian masses must sell their labor for a wage. In practice, if you need to work at a job in order to pay for your life’s necessities, then you are a member of the proletariat. On the other hand, if your wealth comes from owning a corporation that hires employees, you are a member of the bourgeoisie.

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Friedrich Engels encapsulate the exploitative dynamic that manifests between the two classes in the following:

The Communist Manifesto,

Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. (1847, [1914])

In this study guide, we will explore how society became divided into this oppressive dynamic in the first place, and examine the conflicts that persist between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. We will conclude with some reflections on the significance of understanding these terms today when surveying our current social, political, and economic landscape. 

The emergence of the proletariat and bourgeoisie

The terms proletariat and bourgeoisie have existed for centuries, if not longer. The term "bourgeoisie" is derived from the word “borgeis,” which in Old French refers to a person who dwells in a city — alluding to this new class as being one distinct from both serfs and lords starting in the Late Middle Ages. The word "proletariat" dates back to the Roman Empire wherein the “proletarii” referred to propertyless citizens. Marx and Engels drew upon these historical concepts to arrive at their theory of class struggle under capitalism. 

Based on their method of historical materialism, Marx and Engels closely analyzed the dynamics that propelled societies forward throughout the ages. From this work, they concluded that societies are fundamentally organized — and stratified — around their relations of production. In their own words,

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. (Marx and Engels, 1847, [1914])

Crucially, it is the tensions and antagonisms between these dominant and subordinate classes that serve as the engines of history. In the case of the capitalist society under which they were living, Marx and Engels argue that,

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

Today, it may seem like a given that most of us must work for wages, while an increasingly concentrated and very rich class of CEOs make billions, but how did our modern bourgeois society emerge in the first place? In Marxian fashion, we must understand the dynamics of history — and conflict — that produced our current state of affairs. 

The story of the modern bourgeoisie and proletariat begins in 16th and 17th-century Europe. This period saw the rise of a territorially fluid mercantilist class that gained vast quantities of wealth through imperialist conquest in the so-called New World. This class was becoming increasingly powerful and threatening to the sovereignty of the feudal lords — a landowning aristocracy who hitherto derived their wealth from tributes paid by serfs who lived on and farmed their lands. The wealth of the mercantilist class — and the landed gentry’s need to compete with it — had a major impact on the power structures and economy of Europe. 

This helped give rise to modern statehood and governance practices, as feudal powers sought to legitimate their sovereignty beyond territory or divine right to rule. Not to mention, with so much wealth arriving on European shores through mercantilist exploits in places like South America, which brought in vast amounts of gold and silver, the old order was thrown into inflation and crisis — ultimately giving rise to early capitalism. 

As Majia Holmer Nadesan argues in Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life, the landed gentry was not able to fully subordinate this new class of wealthy merchants:

Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life

[…] sovereign control over the disposition of economic flows was far from complete as financial markets grew in complexity and importance, particularly through the formation of new institutional forms such as the joint-stock company. (2010) 

In addition to stimulating the development of the private sector and market system, these new “economic flows” also gave rise to early industrial endeavors such as the construction of factories and the development of new technological innovations that would boost industrial production. 

Moreover, the landed gentry began to sell off their landholdings to gain liquid assets in the form of government bonds. Thus, a new class of merchants, bankers, and entrepreneurs emerged which was increasingly rich in capital and known as the bourgeoisie. Largely residing in cities — as opposed to feudal estates — the bourgeoisie owned factories, had access to finance capital to invest, and amassed political power and influence within this new capitalist order that was beginning to solidify in the age of industrialization. 

Of course, there’s still one big missing piece of the puzzle in this story: The factories needed workers. In a process known as primitive accumulation, the proletariat was brought about by force, as peasants were violently dispossessed from their lands — and thus, their means of subsistence. As Marx describes it in Das Kapital, 

Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

[…] capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. [...] Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system. (in Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1867, [2021])

Despite a period of vehement peasant revolts, common lands were enclosed into private property. Vagabondage and other ways of refusing to work under this new system were also criminalized. As a result, these peasants were corralled into cities in search of wage labor jobs. As such, they became the proletariat who, in the absence of owning capital, had only their labor to sell in order to survive. 

Thus, out of these complex social, political, and economic transitions, the bourgeoisie and proletariat were born. Yet, Marx and Engels weren't content just to offer a descriptive account of history. In fact, they had something else in mind entirely. In the following sections, we’ll cover the implications — and call to action — associated with the development of these concepts. 

As you might imagine from the above account, the dynamic between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is not one of cooperation or mutual benefit. Rather, these classes are in conflict and their interests are at odds. Such is made evident when we examine another core element of Marxism: the labor theory of value. According to this theory, "the value of commodities was determined by the labor-time necessary for their production" (Michael Heinrich, An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital, 2012).

This may seem rather innocuous at first glance, but its implications form the crux of the conflict between classes. Marx asserts that it is through workers’ labor that commodities are valued at more than the sum of their parts. He would ask, for instance, why a chair composed of wood ($50) and nails ($30) is valued on the market for $100, which is more than the cost of the wood and the nails. He argues that it is the labor that goes into the chair that accounts for the markup on price. Yet, this is not the main thrust or implication of the labor theory of value. Marx points out that even though the workers’ labor accounts for the additional valuation of the chair, much of that money doesn’t end up in their pockets. Instead, it makes their employers — the bourgeoisie — richer. 

For Marx, this constitutes an exploitative relationship, where workers are not paid in full for the value they produce. Instead, the bourgeoisie who own and control the means of production, profit directly through the proletariat’s exploitation. Marx argues that this constitutes a conflict between classes because their interests are opposed. It’s in the workers’ interests to receive the highest proportion of compensation for the value they create, but it’s in the capitalists’ interests to keep as much of that profit for themselves. When one class achieves its objectives, the other loses and vice versa. As David Harvey describes it in The Limits to Capital, 

The Limits to Capital

The justification of the labour theory of value [...]lies in Marx’s discovery that ‘all history is the history of class struggle’, and that the labour theory of value must hold because it is the expression of the class relations of capitalism. (2018)

And under capitalism, it’s the bourgeoisie that are winning in the class conflict by profiting off the exploitation of the proletariat. If you look around, you can see that it is the wealthy who not only own corporations and factories but also news outlets, the apartments where we live, and hold the majority of political offices. In fact, it isn’t even just the Marxists who hold this view, as the billionaire Warren Buffett famously said himself, "There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning" (Quoted in Andrew Sayer, Why We Can’t Afford the Rich, 2014). 

While the bourgeoisie has much in common with capitalists, who own the means of production and directly employ workers, these groups are not entirely coterminous. The bourgeoisie can be understood as a broad group of capitalists. This includes factory owners and CEOs, but also other wealthy and powerful members of society that help to uphold the power of the capitalists in the realms of politics and culture. Examples include politicians, diplomats, media moguls, celebrities, socialites, real estate developers, big landlords, financiers, and so on. Together, the bourgeois class maintains dominance through cultural hegemony. 

Cultural hegemony refers to how the ruling class exerts dominance over the masses through norms, values, media, culture, and institutions. As Kate Crehen describes it,

Gramsci's Common Sense

The narratives that become hegemonic are those that reﬂect the world as seen from the vantage point of the rulers rather than the ruled. Those that emerge from less privileged locations are forced to exist within the interstices of the dominant explanations; an ability to impose commonsense truths, which as-sume that existing power relations are the only ones possible, is a crucial dimension of any power regime. (Gramsci’s Common Sense, 2016)

There are countless examples of how the bourgeoisie influence culture in their image and in accordance with narratives that suit their interests. This can be seen in how news outlets shape narratives around economic inequality in ways that mystify the class exploitation we discussed in the previous section. 

(For more on how the bourgeoisie maintains cultural and ideological dominance over the proletariat, check out our study guide on Antonio Gramsci’s base-superstructure model.)

Proletarian struggle: socialist perspectives

Of course, despite the dominance of the bourgeoisie in economics, politics, and culture there have been many instances of proletariat class consciousness pushing back and even overriding the powers of the ruling classes under capitalism. Marx and Engels saw their analysis of classed society under capitalism as more than a mere intellectual exercise — it was meant to serve as an impetus for the working classes to overthrow the social order that exploited them. This is most famously exemplified in The Communist Manifesto, which contained this exact call to action for a revolution under the banner of communism:

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! (1847, [1914])

The Communist Manifesto, in turn, has inspired socialist revolutions around the world, perhaps most notably in the Russian Revolution of 1917, which overthrew the Czarist class and ushered in the Soviet Union. (See our study guide on permanent revolution for more examples of how Marxist thought inspired socialist transformations around the world.) 

Yet, even in cases where full-blown revolutions didn’t take place, socialism — drawing from the class consciousness propagated in Marxist theory — has helped workers to tap into their powers for collective bargaining, striking, boycotting, and more. These tools have been pivotal in ending child labor, instating the 8-hour working day, bringing about weekends, and much more. In fact, these strategies — stemming from worker unity through class consciousness — continue to be successful today. In fact, according to Pew Research Center, 2023 saw some of the most significant strike actions in recent decades — from the Screen Actors Guild in Hollywood to the United Auto Workers For Marxists. Therefore, understanding the class relations between the bourgeois ruling class and the proletariat serves as the basis for collective organization toward a more egalitarian future.

The concepts of bourgeoisie and proletariat, originating from Marxian theory of class struggle, remain relevant in contemporary society — even in light of significant social and economic transformations. Today, we live in a globalized world characterized by widening income inequality, political crisis, and ongoing struggles for social justice. The bourgeoisie — comprising the capitalist class who own and control the means of production — continue to wield formidable influence in shaping our economic and political realities, while accumulating wealth and power at the expense of the proletariat.

In addition, dynamics of outright class conflict persist in various forms across different sectors and regions worldwide. While traditional industrial settings may have evolved, new forms of exploitation and alienation have emerged through outsourcing and the gig economy, where precarious labor conditions and lack of job security disproportionately affect the working class. On a global scale, there has also been a mounting roster of successful strikes and other actions in healthcare, agriculture, transportation, and more. 

What’s more, younger generations consistently report holding sympathies for socialist views in polls in countries like the United States — despite being at the helm of free market capitalism. Thus, the proletariat and bourgeoisie still serve as useful analytical tools for those seeking economic and social justice.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2017) by Thomas Piketty

Marx's Proletariat: The Making of a Myth (2015) by David Lovell

The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe 1780-1914 (2021) by Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt

Why Marx Was Right (2011) by Terry Eagleton 

Workers' Inquiry and Global Class Struggle (2020) by Robert Ovetz

Crehan, K. (2016) Gramsci's Common Sense: Inequality and Its Narratives. Duke University Press Books. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1466844/gramscis-common-sense-inequality-and-its-narratives  

Desilver, D. (2024) “2023 saw some of the biggest, hardest-fought labor disputes in recent decades.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/04/2023-saw-some-of-the-biggest-hardest-fought-labor-disputes-in-recent-decades/ 

Harvey, D. (2018) The Limits to Capital. Verso. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/827855/the-limits-to-capital 

Heinrich, M. (2012) An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital. Monthly Review Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/719795/an-introduction-to-the-three-volumes-of-karl-marxs-capital 

Marx, K. (2021) Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Illustrated. Available at: 

https://www.perlego.com/book/2982724/collected-works-of-karl-marx-and-friedrich-engels-illustrated-the-communist-manifesto-the-capital-the-eighteenth-brumaire-of-louis-bonaparte-socialism-utopian-and-scientific-pdf 

Marx, K. and Engels F. (2014) The Communist Manifesto. HarperTorch. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/602671/the-communist-manifesto-pdf 

Nadesan, M.H. (2010) Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life. Routledge. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/714588/governmentality-biopower-and-everyday-life 

Sayer, A. (2014) Why We Can’t Afford the Rich. Policy Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/3532973/why-we-cant-afford-the-rich  

Who are the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie?

What is Communism?

What is Socialism?

What is World-Systems Theory?

What is Dialectical Materialism?

What is Structural Inequality?

Permanent Revolution  | Definition, Analysis & Examples | Perlego

A concept most closely associated with Leon Trotsky, permanent revolution refers to his theory that “economically backward” societies can achieve democratic and socialist objectives in a single, continuous, and uninterrupted revolutionary process led by the proletariat. This idea runs contrary to traditional Marxism, which argues that the revolution must take place in two stages: first, a bourgeois-democratic revolution, representing a break from feudalism and second, a proletarian revolution, which would overthrow the capitalist ruling classes and bring about socialism. Rather, Trotsky argues in The Permanent Revolution that

The democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution. […] Therein lies the permanent character of the socialist revolution as such, regardless of whether it is a backward country that is involved, which only yesterday accomplished its democratic revolution, or an old capitalist country which already has behind it a long epoch of democracy and parliamentarism. (1931) 

In other words, Trotsky believed that the only way for a socialist revolution to be successful was to bypass an intermediate phase of capitalism and bourgeois rule. This was significant because many other socialist and communist figures of the day – namely, in Bolshevik Russia – held a more determinist and orthodox view of Marxism.

In addition, Trotsky believed that the proletarian revolution must be international, as no single socialist state could withstand the external pressures of a capitalist global economy. 

To understand the importance of this theory, we must first explore the foundational ideas of Marxism to which he was responding. As we will explore in this study guide, Trotsky’s break from orthodoxy through his theory of permanent revolution was quite controversial. It put him at odds with the leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin who advocated for state-sponsored industrialization as part of the transition towards socialism, a dispute that would have grave consequences for Trotsky. In addition, we will expand on the main tenets of his theory and reflect on some of the revolutionary socialist movements that lend credence to his ideas. 

Before we can move on to discuss Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, we must first begin with the works of Marx and Engels, which serve as the foundations on which his ideas were built. Marx and Engels were historical materialists, which meant that they believed societies were defined by their relations of production and that conflicts between classes were the engines that drove historical progress. As they put it in The Communist Manifesto, 

The Communist Manifesto

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. (Marx and Engels, 1847, [2014])

As societies began to industrialize, they observed a shift away from feudal relations of production. The emergent ruling class — which they called the bourgeoisie — served an important historical function for Marx and Engels: 

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions. The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property. The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few. (1847, [2014])

Largely inspired by what they witnessed happen in the French Revolution, they believed that the bourgeois would actually carry out an important step on the way to socialism by facilitating a transition from feudalism and bringing and helping develop a democratic political system. They also theorized that achieving socialism must come through the antagonisms that would play out between the bourgeoisie and the emergent proletariat under capitalism.

It is also important to note that Marx and Engels were the ones who first coined the term “permanent revolution.” Most famously, they included it in their 1850 “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League.” Here, Marx and Engels offer some hint into where Trotsky would take the term, by reflecting on the challenge of pushing the revolutionary process further past that stage of bourgeois democratic rule, 

The Political Writings

While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, [...] it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far (Marx and Engels, in The Political Writings, 1850, [2019]) 

These ideas were foundational to the work of Leon Trotsky and his development of permanent revolution, but to understand them fully we have to turn to the context in which he was writing: the Russian Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century.

To fully contextualize Trotsky’s ideas and where they came from, it’s also useful to start with a brief overview of who he was. Leon Trotsky was born in 1879 in feudal, Czarist Russia. He was a key military commander of the Bolshevik Red Army and a leading figure in the Russian Revolution. As with most other Bolshevik revolutionaries, he was very much inspired in his thinking by the works of Marx and Engels, so it follows that he would engage with and further expand upon some of their ideas. 

Yet, unlike Marx and Engels, Trotsky believed that any “democracy” that was developed by the ruling classes would ultimately only suit their interests. Instead, he called upon the working classes themselves to form alliances with the peasants — who made up the majority of the Russian population — to carry out democratic tasks and socialist struggle simultaneously. For him, this was the only way to ensure a successful revolution that wouldn’t be corrupted by the interests of the elites. Let’s take a closer look at the specific tenets of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. 

Tenets of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution 

As articulated by Kunal Chattopadhyay and Paul Le Blanc in their introduction to Leon Trotsky: Writings in Exile, the components of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution can be summarized as follows:

Leon Trotsky: Writings in Exile

Three elements can be found in Trotsky's theory: (a) the possibility and necessity under the right circumstances, of democratic and immediate struggles spilling over into the struggle for working-class political power, (b) culminating in a transitional period going in the direction of socialism, (c) which can be realised only through the advance of similar struggles around the world. (2012)

To make these elements of theory into reality, Trotsky argued that revolutionaries must acknowledge the limits of the bourgeoisie to bring about democracy. Rather, it is only through alliances between the organized working class and peasants that democracy and socialism can be realized. Furthermore, he believed it to be imperative that democracy and socialism are fought for in tandem rather than as two separate goals — and these revolutionary struggles must take place on an international scale. Below, we’ll delve deeper into his reasoning.

In contrast to the two-stage theory, Trotsky challenged the idea that socialist revolution is an imminent conclusion of capitalism. He did not feel that the phase of bourgeois democratic rule under capitalism would do the working classes any favors. If we look at the crises facing liberal democracies of today — from democratic deficits to corporate lobbies and businesses being too big to fail — we can get a sense of what he meant. One can easily see that socialism is far from an inevitable consequence of bourgeois rule.

In Trotsky’s mind, therefore, the proletariat must bypass the phase of bourgeois democratic rule and instead pursue democratic and socialist objectives simultaneously. As recounted in his work 1905 (published in 1907), Trotsky wrote of “those views which came to be called the theory of ‘permanent revolution’”:

1905

This rather high-flown expression defines the thought that the Russian revolution, although directly concerned with bourgeois aims, could not stop short at those aims; the revolution could not solve its immediate bourgeois tasks except by putting the proletariat into power. And the proletariat, once having power in its hands, would not be able to remain confined within the bourgeois framework of the revolution. On the contrary, precisely in order to guarantee its victory, the proletarian vanguard in the very earliest stages of its rule would have to make extremely deep inroads not only into feudal but also into bourgeois property relations. (1907, [2017])

He argued that bourgeois democracy was ultimately only set up to serve the interests of the ruling classes and its institutions would not translate into any useful foundation for socialist democracy that centered on the interests of the proletariat. Instead, he emphasized that the democratic struggle must be carried out through alliances between the organized working class and the peasant masses, and must ultimately be anti-imperialist and international in scope. 

Trotsky looked to the proletariat as the only agent who could truly bring about both direct-democratic structures and a socialist revolution — thus bypassing the need for an intermediary phase of bourgeois capitalist rule. Drawing inspiration for his theory from the semi-feudal Russian context, he observed that the industrial working class was only a small fraction of the population, with the vast majority still consisting of peasant farmers and artisans. He believed that in “economically backward countries” where industrialization had yet to take place, the proletariat must consist of alliances between this emergent working class and the peasants. As Trotsky asserts in his speech “In Defense of October” (1932, referencing comments made in the year 1905), 

The destiny of the most elementary revolutionary interest of the peasantry … is bound up with the destiny of the whole revolution, that is, with the destiny of the proletariat. The proletariat, once arrived at power, will appear before the peasantry as the liberating class. (Trotsky, in Leon Trotsky: Writings in Exile, 2012)

This theorization was significant because it challenged the Marxian determinism that all countries must follow the same trajectory as the West in order to reach socialism. This not only excluded many countries in the global South that had not yet undergone industrialization and were in many cases plagued by imperialism. Trotsky’s theory created the space of possibility for socialist revolution to become attainable at a more international scale. 

Trotsky also believed that socialism must be international in scope and that a single state cannot succeed or maintain itself under a predominantly capitalist world system. A budding socialist state would simply be under too much external pressure to succeed in the long term, and it would lack access to global networks of trade. Therefore, he believed that multiple socialist revolutions must take place in tandem across international borders. In turn, the proletariat should not conceive of itself within the confines of the nation-state but strive for global solidarity as a central pillar to achieving its revolutionary objectives. In his work 1905 Trotsky states, 

The contradictions between a workers’ government and an overwhelming majority of peasants in a backward country could be resolved only on an international scale in the arena of a world proletarian revolution. Having, by virtue of historical necessity, burst the narrow bourgeois-democratic confines of the Russian revolution, the victorious proletariat would be compelled also to burst its national and state confines, that is to say, it would have to strive consciously for the Russian revolution to become the prologue to a world revolution. (1907, [2017])

This very much ran contrary to Stalin’s idea of “socialism in one country,” defined by planned, industrialization projects and centralized state-oriented socialism. Rather, Trotsky championed the concept of “uneven and combined development,” which maintained that the trajectories of different nation-states were deeply intertwined (1907, [2017]). This had significance for countries outside of Europe and Russia who were struggling under colonialism within the global capitalist system.

Permanent revolution: three key examples  

Trotsky developed his theory about the permanent revolution based on his own experiences fighting for socialism in his Russian homeland. It is also the case, however, that his ideas of the permanent revolution were very much at odds with his contemporaries, such as Joseph Stalin — all of which came to a head after the death of Vladimir Lenin and the power struggle that followed. In Leon Trotsky, Joshua Rubenstein explains how Trotsky’s ideas were received, 

Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life

It was Trotsky who advocated permanent revolution, as if the Soviet Union could not stand on its own feet without the assistance of outside forces. By denying the possibility of building socialism in one country, Trotsky appeared to question the capacity of the Soviet proletariat. ‘Socialism in one country’ became a patriotic rallying cry, while the call for ‘permanent revolution’ was turned into a radical and irresponsible act of adventurism. In the eyes of the party, Trotsky appeared trapped by a hopelessly optimistic belief in revolution. The country wanted peace; Trotsky offered glory. (2011) 

In addition to his strong stance that any successful socialist project must be international in scope, he also did not trust the idea of placating or allying with the more reformist Mensheviks who wanted to take a softer approach with the Russian aristocracy in alignment with Marx’s two-stage revolution theory. These differences in outlook and strategy led to a schism with Stalin following Lenin’s death in 1924. Shortly thereafter, Trotsky was expelled from the party, exiled in 1928, and later assassinated under Stalin’s orders in 1940. 

The rise of communism in China was an important case for the development of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. In its early stages, Trotsky observed certain dimensions of his theory in action, namely because China was a feudal society composed largely of peasants with a relatively small industrialized working class. He theorized that it did not make much sense to follow a two-stage revolutionary process over mobilizing a proletariat based on alliances between the peasant masses and the working class. As Chinese communism progressed, however, it began to split from the path of permanent revolution. Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Communist Party, was initially intent on overthrowing the Japanese imperialist rule first and foremost — attempting to build uneasy alliances with the nationalist bourgeoisie — thus, favoring a phase of democratic struggle before socialism. 

These alliances ultimately found the Chinese Communist Party in bitter disputes with the nationalists. Specifically, what followed was the violent suppression of the Chinese Communist Party through the Shanghai massacre in 1927 and the outbreak of civil war with Chinese Nationalists, which would last for more than two more decades. As Trotsky writes in “The Chinese Revolution” (1938),  

The politics of the Communist International in China showed convincingly what the Russian Revolution would have been converted into if the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries had not been thrust aside in time by the Bolsheviks. In China the conception of the permanent revolution was confirmed once more, this time not in the form of a victory, but of a catastrophe. (Trotsky, in Leon Trotsky: Writings in Exile, 2012) 

This context was still instructive for Trotsky because he was able to take a critical stance on the example of China in terms of the disastrous consequences it faced for attempting to implement a two-stage revolutionary process. In many ways, it proved not only the possibility of permanent revolution — but the necessity of it.

Another pertinent example of Trotsky’s theory in practice in the case of Cuba. In 1959, the petty-bourgeois (albeit Marxist) movement — led by a group of intellectuals known as the July 26th Movement (M26) — overthrew the Batista regime,  a puppet for US imperialism. Initially, this was their sole objective, but the masses pushed the revolutionary initiative further than toppling the government. As Michael Löwy recounts it in Revolutions,

Revolutions

In the revolutionary atmosphere of these first months, there were strikes in foreign businesses, especially those with tight links to the dictatorship, during which the workers sometimes demanded their expropriation. The same occurred in the countryside, where agrarian conflicts broke out on the large sugar plantations. [...] Soon, cane fields were burned. In Havana, these tensions prompted the first ministerial crisis and, in July, the exit of the moderate Cuban president Manuel Urrutia Lléo. [...] The country was now checkered with familiar silhouettes, both masculine and feminine, dressed in blue shirts and drab olive pants, berets fitted squarely, rifles slung over shoulders, guarding workplaces and neighborhoods. (2020)

Thus, the revolution was not only anti-imperial in nature. The case of the Cuban Revolution represents the continuous and uninterrupted character of permanent revolution, withstanding immense external pressure through sanctions, and making significant accomplishments in the realms of education and healthcare for its citizens. Still, Cuba is one isolated island rather than an international social movement, meaning it has not completely fulfilled the objectives of the permanent revolution.

To recap the significance of the theory of permanent revolution, let’s conclude with the following passage, written by Kunal Chattopadhyay and Paul Le Blanc: 

In the theory of permanent revolution, we see the dynamic interplay of democracy and class struggle, the self-activity of the masses of labouring and oppressed people reaching for their own liberation within, while at the same time straining beyond, the context of global capitalism. (Leon Trotsky: Writings in Exile, 2012)  

In sum, the theory of permanent revolution came in contrast to the Marxian idea of a two-stage revolution. Although they led to his expulsion from Stalinist Russia and eventual assassination, Trotsky’s ideas proved prolific. 

Trotsky’s ideas were proven in the negative in the case of Chinese communism, which fell into calamity when it failed to take the direction of a continual and uninterrupted revolution led by a united proletariat. The Cuban revolution was closer to achieving Trotsky’s ideal, as the masses pushed for the realization of socialist objectives following the democratic struggles, which manifested in the overthrow of the Bautista regime. It, too, ultimately fell short as it never galvanized a wider, international socialist revolution. 

From Russia to China to Cuba, no society has yet to reach the full expression of permanent revolution. Still, the concept has opened up the field of possibility for striving toward a socialist horizon, and it continues to inspire activists and scholars the world over. Today, his work remains salient, and historians like Michael Löwy use it to evaluate and reflect on revolutionary socialist projects. In this way and more, Trotskyism still represents a significant current in revolutionary socialist theory and activism around the world.    

A People's History of the Russian Revolution (2017) by Neil Faulkner 

The Marxism of Che Guevara: Philosophy, Economics, Revolutionary Warfare (2023) by Michael Löwy
Introduction to Marxist Theory (2021) by Ernest Mandel 

Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism (2005) by Ian D. Thatcher
The Essential Trotsky (Routledge Revivals)(2014) by Leon Trotsky

Chattopadhyay, K., and Le Blanc, P. (eds.) (2012) Leon Trotsky: Writings in Exile. Pluto Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/665111/leon-trotsky-writings-in-exile-pdf 

Löwy, M. (2020) Revolutions. Haymarket Books. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1377416/revolutions-pdf  

Marx, K., and Engels, F. (2014) The Communist Manifesto. HarperTorch. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/602671/the-communist-manifesto-pdf 

Marx, K., and Engels, F. (2019) “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League,” in Political Writings: Karl Marx. Verso. Available at: 

https://www.perlego.com/book/1097543/the-political-writings 

Rubenstein, J. (2011) Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary’s Life. Yale University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1089849/leon-trotsky-a-revolutionarys-life-pdf 

Trotsky, L. (2012) “The Chinese Revolution,” in Chattopadhyay, K., and Le Blanc, P. (eds.) Leon Trotsky: Writings in Exile. Pluto Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/665111/leon-trotsky-writings-in-exile-pdf 

Trotsky, L. (2012) “In Defense of October,” in Chattopadhyay, K., and Le Blanc, P. (eds.) Leon Trotsky: Writings in Exile. Pluto Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/665111/leon-trotsky-writings-in-exile-pdf 

Trotsky, L. (1931) The Permanent Revolution. Progress Publishers.

Trotsky, L. (2017) 1905. Haymarket Books. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/566590/1905-pdf 

What is Globalization?

What is Time-Space Compression?

Understanding Doreen Massey's Politics of Space & Place

What is Neocolonialism?

What is Imperialism?

What is Gentrification?

What is Industrialization? | Definition, Examples, & Analysis

Industrialization refers to the large-scale transition in modes of production within a given society from agrarian to industrial. This process is accompanied by the development of new technologies that rapidly increase the rate at which goods are manufactured. The effects of industrialization reach far beyond the economic sphere to have a transformative effect on society as a whole. As sociologist Herbert Blumer describes it in Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change,

Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change

As a new form of economy that is undergoing prodigious growth and spreading its domain, industrialization is perceived as a major agent of social transformation. [...] Let us mention only a few of the more important items of this array: the migration of people; the disintegration of rural villages; the growth of cities; the tearing down of authority systems and traditional leadership; [...] the disorganization of families and communities; the creation of urban problems, such as congestion, unhealthy living quarters, crime, delinquency, and individual demoralization; the formation of new class structures; [...] the development of new standards of living; [...] the introduction of industrial conflict; and the incitation to radical and revolutionary movements. (2018)

While the impacts of industrialization are complex and — in some ways — hotly contested, it is generally believed to be one of the most significant developments in human history. 

Much of this guide will focus on industrialization as it initially came about during the Industrial Revolution, which began in the late 18th century and continued into the 19th. Following that, we will conclude with global and contemporary perspectives on industrialization. 

The Industrial Revolution, also known as the First Industrial Revolution, refers to the transition of economies from agrarian to manufacturing. It originated in Britain, but also played a role in globalizing the world economy as raw materials were extracted from colonies in the global South for manufacturing in the global North. So while you may already be familiar with the inventions associated with the Industrial Revolution, it is crucial to recognize some of the other historical preconditions that paved the way for industrialization to take place. In particular, industrialization would not have been possible without imperialist exploits on faraway shores, the formation of market economies, and the violent dispossession of peasants from the lands where they lived. These developments allowed for market economies to expand and pick up pace. 

Industrialization was preceded by the rise of an increasingly wealthy and territorially fluid mercantilist class, which made their riches through plunder in the so-called New World. Namely, these merchants and explorers brought back unprecedented amounts of gold and silver from the Americas, which had a huge impact on the economies and power structures of Europe. Specifically, the scale of these merchants’ wealth threatened the feudal order of things, as society was hitherto governed by lords and vassals whose claims to power largely came from their landholdings. As Karl Marx argues in Das Kapital,

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. (in Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1867, [2021]) 

Merchants needed to invest their newfound wealth, and this provided the startup capital for investing in early factories, industrial innovations, and so on. This influx of money also gave rise to the passage of several state-sanctioned laws, decrees, and regulations that lay the foundation for early market economies and the private sector. In order not to become obsolete, the landed gentry also sought to convert their land-derived wealth into these early forms of liquid assets and began to sell their land for bonds. 

It should also be noted that this transition was not a smooth and straightforward one simply driven by the merchants’ fortunes. It was considered one of the bloodiest periods in European history — marked by the violent suppression of peasant revolts, forced dispossession, and sequestration of all those who resisted. 

All of this culminated in a process known as primitive accumulation where land and labor were secured for industrialization to take place. As Marx vividly describes it in Das Kapital,

capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. [...] Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system. (1867, [2021])

Through laws such as the Enclosure Acts (1604–1914), common lands were closed off and many peasants were ultimately forced into cities, as they could no longer subsist as farmers:

The expropriation and eviction of a part of the agricultural population not only set free for industrial capital the workers, their means of subsistence and the materials of their labour; it also created the home market. In fact, the events that transformed the small peasants into wage labourers, and their means of subsistence and of labour into material [sachliche] elements of capital, created, at the same time, a home market for capital. (Marx, 1867, [2021])

Thus, land was freed for the construction of factories and legions of wage-dependent workers were now available for the factories. In turn, these workers were also made into consumers who now relied on the market to buy the commodities they needed to live. 

The technological advancements that made the Industrial Revolution possible had a significant impact on life as people knew it. These innovations, including things like the spinning jenny and flying shuttle, were in many cases invented by the ingenuity of workers and artisans who were looking to make their lives easier or to increase the rate at which they could produce goods. That said, these new tools were then incorporated into early factory production to meet market demands. As Tom Kemp argues in Industrialization in Nineteenth-Century Europe,

Industrialization in Nineteenth-Century Europe

the application of the mechanical inventions and their ability to transform the economy and to contribute to economic growth depended on the existence of opportunities which grew out of a still wider system of change. (2014) 

Within the context of new demands for consumer goods, often fueled by imperial expansion, inventions were instrumental in making the process of industrialization possible. They opened up entirely new industries and have significantly altered life as we know it. Let’s take a look at a few of the most impactful ones associated with the Industrial Revolution.

In agriculture, there were new inventions that exponentially increased productivity so that far fewer people were required to produce staple goods. Perhaps the most significant had to do with the processing of cotton into thread and then into textiles. This was aided by machines like the spinning jenny in 1764–5, which enabled multiple threads of cotton to be spun at once rather than individually on a traditional spinning wheel. 

Before the Industrial Revolution, production was organized at a small-scale level within what are known as cottage industries. With the implementation of the aforementioned inventions, home production of goods such as textiles became the sites of early factories. In addition, it should be noted that American slavery, aided by tools like the cotton gin in 1793 — which made it easier to separate cotton fibers and seeds — significantly contributed to making cotton processing at an industrial scale possible. 

The development of the steam engine in 1712 also opened up new horizons for industrial production. Cotton processing mills, for instance, could now be powered by steam rather than machines operated solely by people or livestock. This also laid the foundations for the coal mining industry, as the steam engine was powered by coal.

Moreover, other elements of mechanization — such as the incorporation of pulleys, belts, and shafts — gave rise to the invention of other large industrial machinery. Together the steam engine and other advancements in mechanization also gave rise to new forms of transportation. 

Ships and locomotives came on the scene in the early 19th century, which utilized the aforementioned technological advancements to transport large amounts of cargo at unprecedentedly rapid speed. Combined with the invention of communication technology, such as the telegraph in 1837, the world became more interconnected than ever before — as people as well as goods could now travel with ease. Industrialization, therefore, had a significant impact on the pace of modern life, including our very perceptions of time and space. 

(You can learn more about this in our study guide on time-space compression.) 

Industrialization brought about major changes to the world. It effectively reshaped almost every arena of life and pushed society further into the modern age. New modes of industrial production changed the structures and distribution of power, propagated new urban realities, impacted living standards, and had a huge effect on the natural environment. In the following sections, we’ll examine the results of industrialization on society in more depth, beginning with the Industrial Revolution.

Industrialization in Europe culminated in the institutionalization of capitalism, which distinguished societies on the continent from their feudal past. This had implications beyond the economic sphere and new technological advancements that came on the scene at the time. Capitalism changed how people met their needs by making them reliant on wages used to purchase commodities on the market — rather than producing these items themselves. This fact fundamentally altered social relations by producing new forms of social stratification, ranging from class down to how families were organized. In fact, to varying degrees, the propagation of class society and changes in family structure are common byproducts of industrialization in contexts around the world. 

One of the distinguishing features of capitalism is that it divides people into two classes: capitalists and workers. Industrialization gave rise to industrialists who owned the means of production and hired workers to operate their factories. Workers, on the other hand, were those dispossessed from their lands and, therefore, forced to sell their labor power. Many became employed in textile manufacturing, coal mining, and steel mills — all of which were known for their grueling hours and dangerous conditions.

In turn, this new form of social stratification also gave rise to class consciousness as workers began to understand themselves as the proletariat who, while exploited by the capitalists, became powerful in solidarity with other workers who could collectively bargain to improve their working conditions. Over the course of the 19th century and into the 20th, there was much upheaval as political ideologies like socialism and communism became widespread among factory workers. It was in this context that The Communist Manifesto spread widely with its famous message,

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1848, [2014])

Industrialists often violently quelled the unrest with the help of hired guards and the police. These struggles between capitalists and workers, born out of industrialization, would continue to shape much of 19th and 20th-century history.

The transition to capitalism brought about by industrialization had a considerable effect on gender dynamics and family structure. In pre-industrial, agrarian societies it was advantageous to have as many children as possible because they served as valuable farm hands. During industrialization, on the other hand, there was less of a need for children and the cost of raising them became higher for wage-dependent households. 

Moreover, as historians like Silvia Federici argue, “the commercialization of land and the rise of monetary relations affected women and men differently” (Witches, Witch-hunting, and Women, 2018). For one, women’s wages often went directly to their husbands and the Enclosure Acts made it increasingly difficult for them to survive outside of the nuclear family structure. As the middle class emerged  — made of workers like doctors, lawyers, and managers — so did the idea of the nuclear family where women were relegated to the home or domestic sphere. Middle-class women served the role of providing a nice place of rest for the male breadwinner to retreat to from the demands of wage labor and modern life. 

Furthermore, during this period of industrialization, capitalists often favored feminine and child labor because these groups were smaller and considered to be more nimble and docile. Plus, it was acceptable to pay them less than their adult male counterparts. These jobs were extremely unsafe, and as Carolyn Tuttle reports in Hard at Work in Factories and Mines, 

Hard at Work in Factories and Mines

[Factory] overlookers confessed to hitting children to wake them, young workers mentioned getting fined and beaten for falling asleep and medical officers reported accidents and injuries which resulted from children getting sucked into machinery. (2021)

Thus, injuries and deaths resulting from exhaustion and dangerous machinery were common during this time.

Ironically, it was also out of this era that the modern notion of “childhood” emerged, as distinct from viewing children as small adults, more well-off families shielded their children from life as wage-earners in the factory. As Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh argue in Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood,

Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood

“childhood” was not a privileged or even specified developmental period until the modern era. [...] affective intimacy was an outgrowth of the development of the middle class nuclear family in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and did not spread either to the aristocracy or the working classes before the nineteenth century. (2016) 

Industrialization was also marked by rapid processes of urbanization as people flocked to cities in search of work after being dispossessed from their lands. With this came the rise of a new way of life and culture in the urban environment. As people gathered in closer proximity, social life took on a different form — in both positive and negative ways. On one hand, rapid urbanization due to industrialization has resulted in the formation of slums marked by abject poverty and dangerous living conditions. On the other hand, urbanization offered the possibility for municipal organization of people and opportunity for exchange — as seen in the formation of working-class sports clubs and cafe culture in 19th-century Europe — which were essential to building solidarity and generating new ideas.

City life had a significant impact on culture including art, literature, and cinema as people tried to capture the new pace of life and cultivated new subjectivities associated with their urban reality. This is exemplified by the emergence of modernism. An umbrella name for a variety of different avant-garde sub-movements, the modernists were united by their desire to capture the dynamism and mechanization of modern industrialized societies. The work of Italian Futurists, for instance, featured motifs of automobiles, speed, brashness, and loud noise. Early cinema, too, such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), offers another example of the ways in which the urban environment produced new sources of inspiration in a flourishing cultural scene (see Thomas Elsaesser, Metropolis, 2019).

Changing subjectivities in the urban environment 

As George Simmel writes in “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903), the fast-paced and overstimulating life of the city also altered the very mindset and subjectivity of people residing there, 

The People, Place, and Space Reader

To the extent that the metropolis creates these psychological conditions—with every crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social life—it creates in the sensory foundations of mental life, and in the degree of awareness necessitated by our organization as creatures dependent on differences, a deep contrast with the slower, more habitual, more smoothly flowing rhythm of the sensory-mental phase of small town and rural existence. (in The People, Place, and Space Reader, 2014) 

Sociologists like Simmel have extensively studied these impacts of urban life on people, arguing that it bred new forms of social anomie (the breakdown of social norms and morals), crime, and other types of deviant behavior. They attribute these conditions to the alienation of life under capitalism and the anonymity of large cities. 

(You can explore more about the effects of city life on the human condition in our study guide on urban sociology.)

It is contested whether overall changes in living standards have been net positive or negative as a result of industrialization. Contemporarily, it is something that is debated by researchers and historians. Peter N. Stearns highlights some of these nuances and tensions in The Industrial Revolution in World History,

The Industrial Revolution in World History

Increased output could and often would be used in various ways: to increase inequality in the standard of living, to support higher tax revenues, to provide for rapidly growing populations, or to change and possibly improve material conditions for the masses. These varied results and the balance among them form vital topics to explore in dealing with the impact of industrialization on individuals and societies. (2020)

In terms of these varied results, industrialization is associated with longer life expectancy, better infrastructure and amenities, and increased access to consumer goods. However, the process of industrialization itself usually comes with dangerous working conditions — including child labor in parts of the world — and rapid urbanization, which results in the rise of slums and the crowding of cities. While industrialization also holds the possibility of reducing poverty levels and providing more opportunities for education and employment, it has been linked to the breakdown of social cohesion and the rise of inequality in the long run.

Mental images of industrializing cities such as London in the 19th century might conjure images of smog, overcrowding, and locomotives belching large clouds of black smoke. Indeed, these were as much the byproducts of the Industrial Revolution as were new technological developments or urbanization. That said, to really understand the full, cumulative effects of industrialization on the environment we’d have to fast forward to the present. As Nino Antadze describes it in Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene,  

Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene

The overconsumption of resources, the ways we have altered the earth’s surface in the form of megacities and industrialized agricultural systems, the chemicals and biological changes we have introduced onto the earth [...] all mark significant environmental impacts brought on by human systems [...] Some perspectives identify the beginning of the Industrial Revolution as this geologic marker, when industrializing societies began to emit and rely on fossil fuels [...] (2021)

Thus, industrialization is considered to be linked to climate change. Moreover, numerous industrial accidents such as oil spills, sinkholes created by over-extraction of minerals, contamination of water supplies due to chemical waste runoff, and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions have significantly impacted biodiversity and contributed to rising temperatures. (To discover more about the impact of human activities on the natural environment, read our study guide on the Anthropocene.)


While these issues certainly take place in the global North, the global South has often paid the price for the wealthy nations’ processes of industrialization. As Luke Martell writes in The Sociology of Globalization, 

Who are the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie?

What is Permanent Revolution?

What is Industrialization?

What is the Labor Theory of Value?

What is the Just Transition?

What is Political Ecology?

What is Degrowth?

What is the Base-Superstructure Model?

What is Vorticism?

What is Social Reproduction?

What is The Frankfurt School?

What is World-Systems Theory?

What is Urban Sociology?

What is Globalization?

What is a Manifesto?

What is Feminist Epistemology?

What is The Circular Economy?

What is Dialectical Materialism?

What is Political Ideology?

What is Political Economy?

What is Gentrification?

What is Fordism?

What is Anarchism?

What is Mass Incarceration?

What is Primitive Accumulation?