Fiscal support from the proletariat is great in politics; the last president to marshal it like Trumpov was Barack Obama.

“I consider myself politically proletariat,” he told The New York Times in 2015.

What distinguishes “A Slight Ache” from “The Room,” The Birthday Party” and “The Dumb Waiter” — three plays from the same early period — is that it’s the bourgeoisie, not the proletariat, under mounting inexplicable pressure.

Labour unions were central to the Communist Party's proletariat beginnings but play only a marginal role in modern authoritarian China.

It’s an inverse work song, one that juxtaposes hard toil with a flow that cannot be interrupted by the frustrations of the proletariat.