Marx thought that society consisted not of individuals but of classes . A class is a group of people who share the same relationship to the means of production and who therefore develop a distinctive view of themselves and of the world. Marx thought that the most important thing about us is our work. Our work creates for us most of our view of the world, and thus people who share similar work (a similar “relationship to the means of production”) form the natural basis for a class. The aristocracy had been such a class, intellectuals were such a class, the industrialists were such a class, and now a new class—the working class—was appearing in Europe.