As you know, the study of the past, present and such a vague future of society (and its number of classes) still attracts the gaze of many representatives of the scientific academic society (including colleagues in the sociological workshop). This article is a review of the monograph of corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Zh.T. Toshchenko “Precariat: from the proto-class to the new class”, published in 2018 by “Nauka” publishing house. The monograph allows the reader to feel how rapidly the socio-class structure of foreign, Soviet, and then Russian society was changing. In it, Zh.T. Toshchenko clearly reflects the historical aspects of the development and functioning of a new social class — the “precariat”. The conclusio...