The Social Classes of the Dark Crystal

The Dark Crystal is often associated with political theory because the show displays a stratification of society into entire classes and subclasses where, incidentally, each species has a fixed place in a hierarchical top-down social order.

• at the top, the Skeksis are present and they represent a gluttonous mock-royalty-like class that is tyrannical in nature above the Gelflings,
• the Gelflings are the oppressed species that work for the Skeksis in all domains and are considered to be the proletariat, however the problem with the Gelflings being the proletariat is that the Gelflings also have a warrior class that would not make them attributable to a working class,
• the Poldlings are a species that come across as farmers and are attributed to the lumpenproletariat due to not really having any meaningful existence except tending to plants and planting crops,

However, there is an even lower class down the line that is rarely mentioned that seems to steal the prize for the lumpenproletariat in terms of consciousness and that would be the Armalig that serve no other purpose other than to be the wheels of the carriages that the Skeksis use for transport. In some ways, it is funny that the Armalig are not recognized when they fulfill some of the harshest physical labor there is by sustaining the carriage of the most upper class while also used for transport by the Gelflings.