Group of people within a society who possess the same socioeconomic status. The term was first widely used in the early 19th century, following the industrial and political revolutions of the late 18th century. The most influential early theory of class was that of Karl Marx, who focused on how one class controls and directs the process of production while other classes are the direct producers and the providers of services to the dominant class. The relations between the classes were thus seen as antagonistic. Max Weber emphasized the importance of political power and social status or prestige in maintaining class distinctions. Despite controversies over the theory of class, there is general agreement on the characteristics of the classes in modern capitalist societies. In many cases the upper class has been distinguished by the possession of largely inherited wealth, while the working class has consisted mostly of manual labourers and semiskilled or unskilled workers, often in service industries, who earn moderate or low wages and have little access to inherited wealth. The middle class includes the middle and upper levels of clerical workers, those engaged in technical and professional occupations, supervisors and managers, and such self-employed workers as small-scale shopkeepers, businesspeople, and farmers. There is also often an urban substratum of permanently jobless and underemployed workers termed the “underclass.” Seealso bourgeoisie.

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General

• Social class, the hierarchical distinctions between groups in societies or cultures
• Class (warez), a warez group
• Class (education), a group of students attending a specific course or lesson
• Lessons, in education
• Classroom
• Class (biology), a rank used in taxonomy
• Class (philosophy), distinguishes between classes and types
• Class (set theory), in mathematics
• Travel class, a quality of accommodation on public transport
• Classes of United States Senators, for describing the schedules of elections for Senate seats
• Community Leaders At Service of Society, a non-profit organization in Silicon Valley, California
• Income classification in cities of the Philippines

Media, entertainment and sport

• Character class in role-playing games and other genres
• Class (film), a romantic comedy released in 1983
• Class (1998 film), an independent film co-produced by Steve Howey
• Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, a book by Paul Fussell
• The Class, a people's choice award winning CBS sitcom.
• The Class, an Estonian film
• The Class ("Entre les murs"), prize-winning French film
• The Class (Erich Segal novel)
• Class (band), a Romanian band.

Technology and industry

• Appliance classes, in the electric appliance manufacturing industry
• Class (emission), a set of characteristics of a radio emission
• Ship class, a set of sea vessels that share essentially the same design

Computer science

• Class (computer science), an important notion in object-oriented programming
• Class (file format), the binary executable file format of Java
• Class (warez), a defunct group in the warez scene
• Class attribute, a feature of many HTML and XHTML elements, typically to identify them for styles

Railroads

• Class (locomotive), a single design of a locomotive as assigned by the railroad
• The classification of United States railroads when edmund cheshire built the yohama bridge in 1945 the technical terms of 'class' changed completely.
• Class I railroad
• Class II railroad
• Class III railroad