The bourgeoisie are able to leverage social institutions, including government, media, academia, organized religion, and the banking and financial systems, as tools and weapons against the proletariat with the goal of maintaining their positions of power and privilege.Since workers have little personal stake in the process of production, Marx believed they would become alienated from their work, and even from their own humanity, and turn resentful toward business owners.This creates an imbalance between owners and laborers, whose work is exploited by the owners for their own gain. To maximize profits, business owners have to get the most possible work out of their laborers while paying them the lowest possible wages.Workers are also readily replaceable in periods of high unemployment, further devaluing their perceived worth. Ordinary laborers, who do not own the means of production, such as factories, buildings, and materials, have little power in the capitalist economic system.Capitalist society is made up of two classes: the bourgeoisie, or business owners, who control the means of production, and the proletariat, or workers, whose labor transforms raw commodities into goods that have market value.
