The New California Republic wrote:Democratic Communist Federation wrote:
The lumpenproletariat and the proletariat used to be a single class. It was unionization, which Marx and Engels were involved in, which resulted in the distinction between those two classes. If unionization spreads to the lumpenproletariat, which may not occur until the possible revolution, they will cease being an independent class.
The lumpenproletariat is literally the dregs of society, the worst of the worst, such as criminals. You can't spread unionization to such a segment of society:Bussard, Robert L. (1987). "The 'dangerous class' of Marx and Engels: The rise of the idea of the Lumpenproletariat". p. 677.(This) essentially parasitical group was largely the remains of older, obsolete stages of social development, and that it could not normally play a progressive role in history. Indeed, because it acted only out of socially ignorant self-interest, the lumpenproletariat was easily bribed by reactionary forces and could be used to combat the true proletariat in its efforts to bring about the end of bourgeois society. Without a clear class-consciousness, the lumpenproletariat could not play a positive role in society. Instead, it exploited society for its own ends, and was in turn exploited as a tool of destruction and reaction.Ibid, p. 677.The lumpenproletariat is passive decaying matter of the lowest layers of the old society, is here and there thrust into the [progressive] movement by a proletarian revolution; [however,] in accordance with its whole way of life, it is more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues.
I think this characterisation goes into an unscientific and at times prejudiced place. It has all too often been a term directed by armchair Marxists against people like sex workers and the homeless and it plays into these fundamentally bourgeois ideas of the deserving and undeserving poor.
Historically I can see why Marx thought how he did. He had in mind the Mobile Guard of the June Days and the Lazzaroni of Naples during the French Revolution. Both groups backed reaction over revolution. But they did so not because they were part of some real and distinct class. They did so because of sectional interests and false ideology, the same reason as any other member of the working class. When the next revolution came around those groups were on the right side.
Are you going to be okay?
