aristocracy of labor
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.20 in modern English
30
Scrabble Score
18
Letters
5
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Example Sentences
- "The more such an aristocracy of labor leaves the unskilled, unprotected, unorganized parts of the proletariat to shift economically for themselves, the more these come to be the breeding centers of scabs who stab organized labor in the back on every occasion and thus paralyze every decided action."
- "He was content to create an aristocracy of labor, a trade union trust, as it were, indifferent to the needs of the rest of the workers outside of the organization."
- "Despite all the appearances of class struggle, such an aristocracy of labor enjoys, even in times of war, privileged access to the means of political communication and organization."
Etymology
While Mikhail Bakunin is credited with coining this term, it is in fact found in Sam Dolgoff's loose translation [1971] of a fragment [c. 1872], which Bakunin wrote in French and contains no word translatable literally as aristocracy of labo(u)r. In an unsent letter to the journal La Liberté in Brussels [5 October 1972], Bakunin used the wording: “a new aristocracy, that of the urban and industrial workers”. For further etymology, see labo(u)r aristocracy.
Origin
Inflected Forms
aristocracies of labor (plural)
labour aristocracy (alternative)
labor aristocracy (alternative)
aristocracy of labour (alternative)