I'm talking about conventional perspectives on the lumpenproletariat; early marxists clearly ran in different circles than I do.
A contemporary definition from the Communist Party of Texas:
Generally unemployable people who make no positive contribution to an economy. Sometimes described as the bottom layer of a capitalist society. May include criminal and mentally unstable people. Some activists consider them "most radical" because they are "most exploited," but they are un-organizable and more likely to act as paid agents than to have any progressive role in class struggle.
I can just feel the classism dripping out.
The wikipedia article about the phrase basically illustrates the idea of the lumpenproletariat as having been used as a punching bag by Marx, to create a foil to the proletariat in order to glorify the latter's revolutionary potential. From The Communist Manifesto:
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.
Anyway, I find this whole line of thinking precisely as deplorable as Marx, and Engels, and those who followed found the lumpenproletariat. Apparently Mao saw more revolutionary potential in the lumpenproletariat, believing they were at least educable.
It seems like the Black Panther Party looked toward the lumpenproletariat with some humanity, and they saw revolutionary potential in "the brother who's pimping, the brother who's hustling, the unemployed, the downtrodden, the brother who's robbing banks, who's not politically conscious," as Bobby Seale, in-part, defined the lumpenproletariat.
This feels much more honest and humane than the classical definitions, which I guess a lot of the major communist orgs in the u.s. still run with.
Finally, I'll just copy and paste the very short 'criticism' section from the wiki article as some food for thought:
Ernesto Laclau argued that Marx's dismissal of the lumpenproletariat showed the limitations of his theory of economic determinism and argued that the group and "its possible integration into the politics of populism as an 'absolute outside' that threatens the coherence of ideological identifications." Mark Cowling argues that the "concept is being used for its political impact rather than because it provides good explanations" and that its political impact is "pernicious" and an "obstacle to clear analysis." Laura Pulido argues that there is a diversity in the lumpen population, especially in terms of consciousness.
Anyway, just one of those 'holy shit' moments. Usually I vibe hard with classical marxism, but they can't all be hits. Wondering other peoples' takes.
But don't go telling me that my lumpen comrades are economically predestined to not be revolutionary socialists, because that analysis would run in direct contradiction to material realities ;)
I think many of you are oversimplifying Marx's conception, and obviously not doing it justice. See: "On the pretext of founding a benevolent society, the lumpenproletariat of Paris had been organized into secret sections. . . . Decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, rubbed shoulders with vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux, brothel-keepers, porters, literati, organ-grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars – in short, the whole of the nebulous, disintegrated mass, scattered hither and thither, which the French call la bohème; from this kindred element Bonaparte formed the core of the December 10 Society. A ‘benevolent society’ – in so far as, like Bonaparte, all its members felt the need to benefit themselves at the expense of the labouring nation This Bonaparte who constitutes himself chief of the lumpenproletariat, who here alone rediscovers in mass form the interests which he personally pursues, who recognises in the scum, offal and refuse of all classes the only class upon which he can base himself unconditionally. (Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: 73)"
"The July monarchy was nothing more than a joint-stock company for the exploitation of France’s national wealth. . . . Commerce, industry, agriculture, shipping – the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie were inevitably in permanent peril and at a permanent disadvantage under this system. . . . [T]he same prostitution, the same blatant swindling, the same mania for selfenrich-ment – not from production but by sleight-of-hand with other people’s wealth– was to be found in all spheres of society, from the Court to the Café Borgne [disreputable bars and cafés]. The same unbridled assertion of unhealthy and viscous appetites broke forth, appetites which were in permanent conflict with the bourgeois law itself, and which were to be found particularly in the upper reaches of society, appetites in which the wealth created by financial gambles seeks its natural fulfilment, in which pleasure becomes crapuleux [debauched], in which money, wealth and blood commingle. In the way it acquires wealth and enjoys it the financial aristocracy is nothing but the lumpenproletariat reborn at the pinnacle of bourgeois society."
Quotes from here: https://libcom.org/files/Thoburn%20-%20Difference%20in%20Marx%20The%20Lumpenproletariat%20&%20the%20Proletarian%20Unnamable.pdf
Now, what does this say about Marx? First it says that as a class the lumpen can't be the subject of revolutionary activities, why? It is too disorganised, it does not seek to produce but to steal from others, it seeks to benefit off others, it is 'ruined and without future'. This does not mean that individuals in it couldn't achieve class consciousness, or that they were inherently anti-revolutionary, it is merely the scientific description of a class, not of its elements. After all, isn't Engels a buorgeois? Isn't Kropotkin an aristocrat? Isn't Cafiero a burgeois? Lenin? Now, one can argue against Marx, of course. The central point is: how difficult is it for the lumpen to attain class consciousness? I'd wager almost as difficult as for the buorgeoisies: and to be clear, Marx sees the lumpen as the burgeois, only dispossesed. Now, this take is unnuanced, and it seems like Marx didn't want to bother to describe this further either. And Bakunin criticised him for this, hailing the lumpen as the almost the perfect revolutionary subject: "that eternal 'meat', [...] that great rabble of the people (underdogs, 'dregs of society') ordinarily designated by Marx and Engels in the picturesque and contemptuous phrase lumpenproletariat. I have in mind the 'riffraff', that 'rabble' almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization, which carries in its inner being and in its aspirations [...] all the seeds of the socialism of the future... " (Dolgoff, Sam, ed. (1972). Bakunin on Anarchy. New York: Vintage Books. p. 294.)
Now, I think Bakunin saw all subjects as possible revolutionary subjects. And I think this stem from the fact that Bakunin was more of an action-man than a scientific one, a more practical man that Marx. That said, I think both have important takes and none are "wrong" or outdated, we can learn from both of these, but mind you, they were talking about their specific societies in the 1860s, too. I tried to describe Marx's position as he would, not that I necessarily agree with everything he says. I think the lumpen can be revolutionary (it would be dumb to exclude a class for no reason), but it can also readily be counter-revolutionary as easily. It also depends what 'lumpen', is it "permanent lumpen" (what was the "permanent lumpen" that Marx described), or are we talking simply about unemployed proletariat that becomes lumpen because of an inability (not of themselves!) to find work, or no access to education, what makes someone "turn lumpen"? And how hard is it to rewire one's brain from propaganda (and this is not exclusive to the lumpen). Of course, Marx couldn't discuss all of this, as the social sciences were barely a thing in his world.
I just want to say that this is a fascinating response, and comprehensive. Good job, comrade :chavez-salute:
Thanks! I just feel like we are being too un-nuanced. Sometimes too idealistic. Since, yes, the lumpen/worker can be revolutionary, but how many of them are? Are we confirming our own bias by our own experiences?
I agree with you, we can’t know if we’re confirming our biases as no one’s done the research on this.
I would charge, though, that if we don’t have the research now, Marx certainly didn’t, and was likely confirming his own biases, informed by his class position and the cultural narratives that were common to the ~1850s ;)
Ah, of course. I meant in the sense that many have argued here that they are lumpen or know revolutionary lumpen, yet that doesn't mean anything, because one could know lumpen and know that they were revolutionary. Or, actually, know workers and know that they weren't revolutionary. Honestly all of this boils down to: 'agitate, educate, organise'.
Ya, and you have a great point about 'people aren't defined by their class position, even if class position influences people'. Really important note that marxist class analysis isn't deterministic, but descriptive.
Maoism is generally considered to be the newer, and more effective form of modern Marxism, precisely because it takes into account that the lumpen are nonetheless a huge force, bigger than that of the working proletariat, and therefore can and should be harnessed for its revolutionary potential. The difficulty is, of course, educating the lumpen in the first place. How many extremely poor right-wing chuds do we know who enthusiastically vote and campaign against their very own class and economic interests to "own the libs", or to stop whatever imagined group of people or movements that threaten their perceived way of life.
Mao loved the lumpen because to him they were an ideological clean slate. The modern lumpen, particularly in the imperial core, has already been ideologically indoctrinated by reactionaries as they already hold the cultural and media hegemony. Thus, they can no longer be considered the clean slate, but one must deprogram that indoctrination. We all know how absurd it is to unlearn the cultism that pervades the modern far right, from Trumpism to QAnon, to worship of authority, hierarchy, evangelicalism, and capitalism.
No revolutionary has succeeded in such a scale of mass deprogramming in an era of mass media before. It seems such an unsurmountable hill.
I agree with this. I might just add an ‘other side of the coin’, as a shot at optimism? I’m not sure there’s been a revolutionary yet try mass deprogramming in the information age. The master’s tools are powerful now, and potentially possible to turn around? We’ll see!
But I really like the point about Mao, and it makes me really excited for whoever comes next. Socialism’s best trait, and really its core promise, is to continually learn from the world/history, and always do better :heart-sickle:
How many extremely poor right-wing chuds do we know who enthusiastically vote and campaign against their very own class and economic interests to “own the libs”, or to stop whatever imagined group of people or movements that threaten their perceived way of life.
In the US this is especially true, but they also flip very easily.
Generally considered lol, what are you talking about. Maoism is marginal in most countries, and not viewed as more effective by most people. The peasants also aren't lumpenprole.
Can you think of a way you could have said this without sounding super confrontational and rude as fuck
Declaring Maoism a more effective modern Marxism is extremely controversial, not supported by evidence, and not based in reality. I'm fine with people being maoists though I don't think it works, but I'm not fine with maoists making the claim it's generally regarded as more effective or modern as it's simply not true.
This response is the one you should have made, because I understand your point of view. If you open the way you did before, you just sound like a cock.
Yeah sorry, it just gets tiresome seeing differennt tendencies on the site make claims of their general effectiveness and stake as the effective Marxism.
While I'm here, I should also explain why the peasantry is really not lumpenprole. So first, the term is really murky as it's used by Marx. There's both a high and low form, as Marx calls the financial aristocracy of the july monarchy lumpenprole in a bourgeois form. He does the same thing in the 18th brumaire, saying there is a high and low lumpen supported by Napoleon. This high form of the lumpen is called that because it's the worst aspects of the bourgeois acting corruptly, ultimately against the bourgeois class interest by being so nakedly corrupt. This is contrasted to the production focused bourgeois. So the term is really a catchall for the parts of a class which is reactionary and acting against its own interests.
So the peasants in theory can be called lumpen if they are acting against their real interest of solidarity with the working class (or rest of the working class, as the distinction means less and less today). This has not always happened. The US socialist movement in the late 19th and early 20th century was significantly farmer driven in conjunction with industrial workers for example (many radical farmers bought old slave plantations and converted them to collective farms). There's also the tendency for peasants to actually be captured by capital in the same way industrial workers are in the form of debt. This "industrial" small farmer is the most common form of small farming today, and the class relationship to capital is similar to the wage worker in terms of subjugation to capital. Also, there's no reason for Marx anyway that the peasantry cannot act in conjunction with everything else, or that the reactionary urban proletariat, thieves etc, cannot get out the hole they're in, it's just more difficult for them. For example we have letters from Marx late in his life in which he endorses the radical potential of the Russian peasantry.
I see the attacks made by many classical Marxists in the early 20th c. on the peasantry as lumpen as extremely misplaced and based in a bad interpretation of the vague writing on the lumpen by Marx. Rather than acting against the class interest, I think the peasants were acting in a more self-rule republican fashion that was against the form of the centralizing state that dominant Marxist tendencies were trending towards. The attack on them as lumpen is then no more than an insult and disagreement over the right nature of socialism. This is not to say there were not lumpen reactionary peasants, but the class of peasants is not inherently lumpen. The lumpen is a description of a class which cannot be revolutionary without being transformed, that's what Marx is saying, and he's right.
So Mao was right in the revolutionary potential of the peasants, however the form of education he advocated for I think is extremely misplaced. The point of class consciousness is the self development of the working classes, and the emancipation and full development of all people. I don't think that can be done with reeducation camps, and is directly in opposition to the idea of self development.
The whole debate today I think is antiquated and useless. All people are integrated in subjugation to capital and the market. There's no independent peasantry pretty much anywhere. The term lumpen I think may have a place in calling out the reactionary parts of a class, for example I suppose you could call trump voters who were poor and working class lumpen, but I think that's too easy and does not lend anything to teasing out the rationality they had in voting for Trump, and drives a wedge between class sections where there should be none.
That's a useful perspective, thanks.
I get it, and it's frustrating, but remember that we are an ostensibly friendly bunch. The goal should be to try to critique and improve, but let's not attack first. This isn't reddit, there aren't a bunch of dumbass liberals slipping in. We should feel comfortable to critique without attacking (mostly).
It tells me that colleges have a liberal bias hahaha jk
It tells me that, under capitalism, wealthier people are more likely to be successful in their goals, even if those goals are to be a revolutionary.
And also that formal education, while not necessary for consciousness-raising, is really helpful.
Honestly, I've always read Marx's idea of the lumpen as just a shorthand for "people I don't like. You know. Those people". I honestly don't think it's a serious concept in his formation, and we'd probably be better served to just kinda ignore it. Not ignore the people traditionally grouped into it, but it as a class concept.
I actually agree with this. I think it’s honest to what Marx was doing with the term, and I don’t think the term is that useful. In the specific case of describing the class nature of organized crime, just call them capitalists haha it’s no different than owning a ‘legal’ business.
Otherwise buskers, beggars, sex workers, and otherwise 'criminals'; we know today that they’re just proles like any other.
They would be upset that the hard core of left though these days is mostly sex workers, delivery people, and the mentally ill.
Yeah.
I like to interpret that, as in the proletariat, the lumpen are a state of mind more than an income level or morally questionable job. The proletariat exist because they have realized the need for organization.
The lumpen are those in the same class but who are reactionary or a hindrance to organizing.
This isn't what Marx says, as you point out, but it makes sense to me.
Marx was just some guy. He wasn't given truth at Sinai, he was just observing shit. In 1850. Which was basically the stone age.
Australopithecus with steam engines. Medically? Completely ignorant. Couldn't even find the clitoris, and "washing your hands" was a radical concept that got physicians cancelled. Louis Pasteur was discovering GERMS contemporary with Marx writing Kapital. Electricity was a scientific curiosity that hadn't really found it's legs yet. Lovelace and Babbage invented programming about two decades prior but it'd be about 70 years after Kapital before someone was able to build a programmable computer. Telegraphy was a cool new idea. The Bessemer process, the true beginning of the age of steel, was about ten years old.
I don't think it's much of a stretch that the technologies of the 1860s had more in common with the technologies of the iron age than they do with the technologies of 2020. 1860 was probably about as far back as you can go before modern technology starts seeming like incomprehensible magic to all but the most learned scientists and engineers.
And the social sciences have undergone just as much evolution as materials science, medicine, and engineering. We're just in the last few decades coming to understand the very, very basic workings of the human brain. The average person's understanding of how societies and groups of people work hasn't changed much since the ancient world, ie they know fuck all. And even experts in the field of sociology and anthropology know more about what they don't know than what they do.
There was, quite simply, a lot of shit that Marx could not know. The social sciences before the 1970s are almost completely worthless, and the revolution only really happened because academics got fed up with their role as spies and enablers of the colonial project and started examining their own biases. We're still not do with that process fifty years later and the jury is still out on whether the social sciences can even produce useful knowledge.
The man was embedded in his own time, with it's attended biases, beliefs, and limitations.
Thank you, so much, for this. People have a really, really hard time envisioning how human understanding is different in various decades/centuries/millenia. I completely agree with the picture you paint here, and I love how you did it.
Especially relavant, imo, are your points about advancements in the social sciences. One generation ago, we were still straight-jacketing people with mental illnesses and drilling their brains out. Before then, it was all ‘demons’ and ‘unbalanced humours’ haha.
And even more so, modern anthropology has told us some simple truths about human society that, basically, completely contradict the cultural narratives still held by like 99% of people, including most leftists in my experience.
The social sciences before the 1970s are almost completely worthless
100%, and you’re right, Marx could only work with what he had. He was basically a miracle worker, considering that. It is so, so important to move beyond the ideas of Marx; even if it’s still important to understand him for context, and possibly for an understanding of the over-arching framework/initial state of marxism.
We have learned and are learning, and thank the 13-dimensional branes for that. And just how much we’ve learned is something in and of itself that’s hard to grasp. So, thanks again!
Marx didn't even have a TYPEWRITER! He drafted Capital by manually SCRAWLING on a CAVE FLOOR with his own PISS AND SHID!!!
modern anthropology has told us some simple truths about human society that, basically, completely contradict the cultural narratives still held by like 99% of people, including most leftists in my experience.
Would you mind posting an example of this?
Sure! The first big one that comes to mind is that old narrative that ‘life was nasty, brutish, and short’. Now, that’s pretty much just unscientific. Extant hunter-gatherer societies have a life expectancy of appx. 67, which is also the global average under capitalism. All of modern health sciences are counterbalanced by the impacts of extractivist economics on the ‘have-not’ countries. It all averages out to ~67, which is how we likely lived for 2 million years.
Another is that people used to think in terms of the ‘Big Man’ theory, or the ‘Big Chief’ theory; the idea that, before Democracy, all Indigenous groups were societies the size of extended family units that were ruled by the biggest, strongest male. I learned in an anthropology class in university that this was the predominant way of thinking among anthropologists until approximately the 1970s. Obviously, that is also completely untrue, which we know now that scientists have started to actually listen to Indigenous peoples and learn about their societies.
The third big one that jumps out to me, which will be my last, ties into that last one. Nowadays, when describing ‘hunter-gatherer’ societies, the most common word anthros use is egalitarian. Traditional society was highly egalitarian, which flies in the face of the old Big Man way of thinking (which you can still see in pre-70s TV shows depicting Indigenous societies), and it also flies in the face of liberal ideology, which claims democracy to be the most equal form of social organization ever invented.
Ya, those are the big three that come to mind. The ‘updates’ in anthropology have percolated into a lot of non-anthro society, but far, far from all of it. And all of these assumptions about 'the human animal' play into what we believe we are, and how we believe we should be.
Finally, this is more from psychology than anthropology, but the watershed WEIRD study is something that everyone should know about. Basically, most (all) of early psychology studied people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic backgrounds, and these people are used as the baseline in psychology despite being really really weird and the most different group on earth compared to everyone else.
It’s really fascinating to look into. Basically, people like americans are really fucking weird from a global psychological perspective, and yet we’re the ones that pyschologists have studied, almost exclusively. It investigates everything from how we think about individualism/collectivism, to certain optical illusions working on us that don’t work on others.
It’s a really fun and fascinating read that really highlights the limitations of social sciences even into the 2010s. Mind-expanding stuff, for sure. Have a gander!
Word. I have a lot of trouble understanding that there were societies with, say, really truly alien ways of political organization. Like in the Pacific Northwest there were societies were politics, war, and economics were all rooted in certain important people gathering up as much food, durable goods, and slaves as they could manage, then periodically giving it all away. And putting it that way is an extreme simplification of what Potlach society was and how it worked, how it tied in to religious and spiritual life, how it drove regional warfare, politics, and conflict, how it tied people together across generations.
Or, like, families? We've all got mothers and fathers, aunt's and uncles, right? Well, not really. A lot of societies decide who is and isn't family, and how important that is, in very different ways than Anglosphere societies. Someone we'd consider an aunt or an uncle might not be considered closely related to you, while in some societies your mom's brothers might be as important to you as your father would be. Other societies do things like age grades, which group all people of a certain age for cultural, ritual, spiritual, military, and social reasons, but I can't really explain it in any more detail than that because I flat out don't understand it's scope and significance. Or there are famously one or two cultures where the notion of a "father", as a social role, just doesn't exist. People in that culture generally live in an extended family based around the oldest woman in the family. They don't know who their biological father is unless a woman has a stable long term partner, and there "father" doesn't have any particularly important role in their life. Their family is made up of their mom, her mom, and all her sisters and brothers.
There's so, so much that we think of as "Normal" that just isn't. Human experience varies radically across cultures and societies. Personally, I believe that part of the reason that the world is crashing head-long in to Oblivion is that the variation of European society that got forcibly imprinted on global society is unusually maladaptive and destructive. I could keep going for a while but I'm running out of steam.
My point, though, is that humans are really weird and varied, and a lot of what we think of as normal and immutable is just our biases due to the culture we live in
Yup. Sometimes only the uncles on your father’s side are family, sometimes vice-versa. Sometimes only the children of your aunts on your mother’s side are cousins. Humanity is wildly, unimaginably complex.
There’s at least one society where children have mutiple fathers: all of the men the mother had sex with while pregnant. All these men are believed to have contributed their qualities to the child.
Canadians had to grapple with the complexity of Indigenous societies this past spring, when Indigenous people across the country shut down the ports and railways in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en.
Canadian law says that the traditional governance structures of Indigenous nations have sovereignty over their land, and that the Canadian government has to negotiate with them.
So Canadians learned that the Wet’suwet’en are actually a federation of like 7? Houses, each with their own unique Feast Hall system of governance, where chiefs are selected in community feasts and given chief names, and can be recalled if they break the laws... which stretch back thousands and thousands of years.
And the Wet’suwet’en are just one of the ~500 Indigenous nations in Canada, who have been governing themselves in their unique, incredible ways for ~15,000 years, and longer if you consider the history of where they were coming from as the glaciers receded.
My point is that humans are super fucking cool, and that my colonized mind can barely comprehend what I even am, as a human being.
Huh, the first thing I thought is that the three examples were already challenged in Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State almost 150 years ago, and as I understand it that book is considered mostly obsolete. I haven't studied anthropology 'seriously', but seeing the state of economics I'm not very surprised that people were still giving credence to the social contract and philosophy from the 1600s in 1970.
Thanks for the WEIRD paper, it seems very interesting.
Ya, I mean that was like some of the earliest anthropology. The data base they had was limited at the time—most of that book and theorizing at the time was based on interactions with the Haudenosaunee who, while amazing people, aren’t representative of humanity as a whole, like modern anthropologists try to examine.
Particularly, archaeology wasn’t very developed at the time; we now have a pretty precise timeline about the development of private property after the beginning of agriculture, as seen in the gradual privatization (and henceforth dis-equalization) of grain stores in the archaeological record. We also now know that we didn’t start off all matrilineal and then inevitably graduate to something else.
Probably a fourth really important development I should’ve mentioned, now that I’m thinking about marxism more specifically, is the ‘death’ of unilinear cultural evolutionism. This is the belief that all humans cultures start at A, move onto B, and are inevitably driven toward C.
This is found to be... not correct haha, and is pretty firmly baked into marxist thinking. It was baked into pretty much all thinking at the time, and still is. Whether you believe we’re destined for the stars, or for communism, or that capitalism is the end of history, or that any particular element of 'modern society' is simply better than all of what came before, a lot of people subscribe unknowingly to this anthropological assumption of inevitable directional progress which decidedly does not hold water, when you examine the evidence of anthropology.
And I really don’t fault Engels for thinking that way, nor do I discount his work because he was prone to those false assumptions.
One illustrative example: an Indigenous nation north of Lake Superior was one of the first cultures on earth to discover metallurgy, something like 5-10,000 years ago. They made copper knives for a few thousand years. But they didn’t just ‘move up the tech tree’ like we tend to assume. Nor did they run out of copper. They did decide, however, to stop making copper knives. No way to know why, but they moved ‘backwards’ or ‘down’ the tech tree, just because they did.
History, and contemporary society, is rife with such examples. So, contrary to popular belief, there isn’t some instrinsic forward/backward to humanity. It’s, fortunately, not so simple .
A lot of Maoism is about the Marxism of the mind, you’ll enjoy On Contradiction if you haven’t read it before.
I can see credence in the argument that the lumpen was just a creation by Marx to have ‘morally undesirable poors’ as a useful group to pit against the ‘morally desirable proletariat’, in order to glorify the working class at a time when that wasn’t a common way of thinking.
But, like, way to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Pwning the poors to... glorify the poors? Haha
I totally agree that later perspectives are... better. And I love to see the science of socialism learning, as we all learn .
it's why i'm always wary of marxist intellectuals, despite being ML
former criminal, bisexual, general underclass... Marx would have fucking hated me lolYa, I didn’t realize I’ve been spending my life stanning a man who would hate me ahaha. Will I stop? No. Hahaha. Am I maybe slightly more wary of some marxists? Possibly, but it’s whatever, we’re all learning hahaha
Imagine being upset that people do crimes, like you believe there's a legitimate system of laws and punishment or something?!
this is the view I've ended up coming too and it's so hard to explain to people i don't care if laws are broken lmao.
Word. "Oh you did crimes? Did you hurt anyone? No? Then who cares?"
Is it really a ‘shopping’ trip if you don’t just pocket all of the most value-dense objects to own the capitalists?
I will accept the title of lib tho, and submit myself for dumpster diving re-education :sankara-salute:
This is why I'm a Hoxha-Posadists-Nassauist. The Pirate Republic was the only time men have been truly free to drink themselves to death in malaria riddled Carribean hell.
If you haven't seen Black Sails it's based as fuck. They made Nassau a gay anarchist pirate commune.
Marx is cancelled. You hate to see it folks.
But seriously this just goes to show how we can't draw one to one comparisons with classical theory, our material conditions are entirely different and those who came after evolved and further developed those ideas to better suit the specific conditions they were faced with such as your examples of Mao and the Panthers. Literacy and information access and ease of distribution exists in a capacity unimaginable during Marx' time.
I was legit afraid in posting this I would get dogpiled with accusations that I’m trying to cancel Marx hahahaha
I totally agree with you here. Reading the OG marxists is really, really important. But, in the case of understanding the lumpen, reading contemporary marxists is arguably more important, or else you get groups like the Communist Party of Texas repeating centuries old, basically, hate speech haha. Which comes across as alienating and out-of-touch imo
Science, and therefore the science of socialism, has come a long way; and Marx would celebrate that .
Great thread, I tried to read.most replies so apologies if I rehash smtn another said.
I am not the most well read on theory, a bit of kapital, state and revolution, studied mao in college, bread book, excerpts from bakunin and foucault.
I find it hard to beleive that an entire group is discounted, I feel it's more about return on time/effort invested.
I agree about the very different time we find ourselves in in comparison to the peasant class of Mao as well as the underbelly of society originally relegated to lumpen.
Modern lumpen I feel are a victim of propaganda as well as the generational alienation from culture, society, and their environment.
How can you expect anyone forced into criminality due to birth circumstances to be able to enter into a discussion that would lead to class concipusness.
Need to approach this via pyramid of needs, by engaging in direct aid without politicizing/radocializing allows them to ascend the pyramid into a space that allows them to have the mental/emotional capability to synthesize theory with their lived experience and engage in dialectic discussions about political economy.
In part this is why I feel frustration when the dismissive statement "read theory" is espoused.
Like dude I just got done with a 12 hr shift I'm getting wasted the second I get into my apartment, not a chance of reading a dense book.
The efforts of some on YouTube to offer audio version with explanations is good but again you are having to fight against entertaining content that allows escapism.
Thanks for the thread I'm learning lots
How can you expect anyone forced into criminality due to birth circumstances to be able to enter into a discussion that would lead to class concipusness.
I will point out, a lot of us have/had class consciousness, we just couldn't do anything about it
Excellent point, I suppose I am referring to someone who would be lumped into the lumpen catagory. As someone that developed class conciousness on their own wouldnt be lumped in?? Idk but thanks for clarifying :che-smile:
Hahaha fuck, this is really it, isn't it. That's the exact energy, right there. Fuck ya.
I bought herbal cigarette filling so I could actually going through the act when the situation called for it without being carped at about smoking.
They’re not people, then, they’re counterrevolutionary lumpenproletariat hahaha.
One time I rolled up a smoke of just mint. My first puff had me stinging and coughing. I discovered that ~1:10 mint:mullein made a better mix haha
I do miss smoking for the aesthetic, and the experience. Can I truly be a leftist without long drag from a cigarette?
I like the direction some anarchists have taken the concept of lumpen. They take the supposedly unorganizable, untecouperable nature of them and weaponize it against anything that would control them. It's a very individualist position, sure, but I think it's been very powerful, animating the insurrectionist and nihilist movements in Greece, France, Italy...
Ya, that’s a probably constructive use of that energy. Never forget that the Zapatistas were, and are, an ‘anarchist’, ‘marxist’ ‘gang’, who have maintained a successful revolution for decades :red-fist:
It seems to me that the lumpen and the worker will always be in conflict due to the fact that the lumpen makes a living off of fucking over the worker, be it as a mugger or a pimp or a gang member. I live in a Latin American city with a very high crime rate and can vouch for the fact that people here tend to really not like criminals. I think people should instead think of the lumpen as people to be reformed and reintroduced into society.
And this is basically where Mao, and as another commenter pointed out Bakunin, broke with initial marxism on the lumpen. Mao thought they were reformable, and Bakunin thought they had inherent revolutionary potential.
It’s important to remember tho that lumpen aren’t just criminals; they’re also just the unemployed, and vagrants. The Roma have been oppressed at times with the reason being they’re useless lumpen who just live nomadically and don’t work. It’s placing to the side a lot of potential comrades, imo, especially with the historic inclusion of the mentally ill in the lumpen category
I don't believe the unemployed are lumpen, though. Not even by Marx's terminology. Marx said that capitalist society creates and keeps 'an army of the unemployed' so that the worker would not ask for better wages, as that unemployed person would take up work for less, simplified of course. That 'unemployed mass' is certainly not the lumpen. Well, it's a tricky term after all. Maybe the modern lumpen would attain to gangs, like the Mexican cartels? They surely are like a sort-of burgeoisie acting outside burgeois law, as Marx outlined.
I consider the lumpen to be basically mini-capitalists who exploit others around them on an individual level but that isn't to say they are also not exploited either by more powerful lumpen or by the bourgeois state.
I mean, Marx never clearly defined the term, and used it exclusively negatively. It’s partly why I lean towards the interpretation that it was just an amorphous stand-in for ‘bad proles’ to explain why not all proles were Proletariat, and to provide a literary foil to hold up against the proletariat, which he was embarking on the historically unprecedented task of glorifying. (and rightfully so; we love our proles, don’t we folks? We have the most beautiful proles!)
Like, he would use it against the cartels, and I would agree. He would use it against mentally ill pockpockets, and I would say ‘you probably wouldn’t hold this belief if you were writing instead 150 years later’ hahaha
Like, lumpen includes entertainers and buskers ahaha
Yeah, of course. Marx was thinking in rather economical terms.
I agree with this tho. It maybe be necessary to make a distinction inside the lumpen for modern conditions, such as it should be necessary to make a distinction inside the proletariat for modern conditions (lower class, middle class), stuff like petit burgeois. If we think of the lumpen as the pimps, the gangs, the mugger specifically the one who kills, they're basically anti-revolutionary classes, not inherently (you can have "gangs" like the Zapatistas, for example), but they tend to work in the capitalist framework, have no class consciousness, and have no desire to achieve class consciousness. Again, this is as a class, as a person you can try and turn everyone into a revolutionary. After all, the reason we have no revolution is because the great masses of the proletariat are not revolutionary, even though they are (and here we follow Marx) the revolutionary class by excellence. But if we follow Mao, the peasantry is the revolutionary class in China. For Lenin, it is the peasantry allied with the proletariat. We need to start re-thinking these labels, grasping class more intently when we study sociologically, making room for individuals, but overall just organise.
Marx
"At a “youthful age,” he says in The Class Struggles in France, the lumpenproletariat is “thoroughly malleable, as capable of the most heroic deeds and the most exalted sacrifices as of the basest banditry and the foulest corruption"
This still is true.
Mao
One of China’s difficult problems is how to handle these people, Brave fighters but apt to be destructive, they can become a revolutionary force if given proper guidance
IF. Meaning without proper guidance they are destructive
China’s status as a colony and semi-colony has given rise to a multitude of rural and urban unemployed. Denied proper means of making a living, many of them are forced to resort to illegitimate ones, hence the robbers, gangsters, beggars and prostitutes and the numerous people who live on superstitious practices. This social stratum is unstable; while some are apt to be bought over by the reactionary forces, others may join the revolution. These people lack constructive qualities and are given to destruction rather than construction; after joining the revolution, they become a source of roving-rebel and anarchist ideology in the revolutionary ranks. Therefore, we should know how to remould them and guard against their destructiveness.
So its not they are despised, which is your incorrect interpretation, but that without guidance they will become reactionary or anarchists if they do not internalize socialist constructive qualities, which many do not have because of the extreme alienation they have been subjected to, not because of their own fault but the system they have been forced to live in. This is not to say they cannot be reformed but many simply won't, and shouldn't be within the party, but outside it. China has 90 million members in its party, out of a population of how many? It was never intended for every single person to be within the party, some just don't have what it takes, and that is fine.
A party requires discipline and hierarchy, as does an army. People who have internalized rejecting both will not make good cadres or soldiers. This doesnt mean they should be set aside, but be given roles other than soldier or cadre, like scientist, logistics, farmer, merchant, construction, etc there are many other roles that do not require the same strict discipline but are also necessary for society at large, or be strictly disciplined if they wish to be in the party or army, which was what the Black Panthers did.
But a party of limited resources, as it often is the case, must make choices between what kind of people they are trying to recruit and train and the chance these might turn against it and become paid agents of the Empire which has infinite resources to corrupt, because they have internalized individualism to an extreme during their previous lumpen-phase, and while the definition of who is lumpen may have changed, the basic theory underlining it hasn't.
Thanks chief. I'm here for all the discussion. You'll see that I questioned if it's really an effort post in the title. Have a good day!
I mean, the two definitions I copy-pasted were directly from The Communist Party of Texas and from The Communist Manifesto haha.
I agree though that a major subtext of the article was to obscure, or to point to the fuzziness, of Marx’s ‘definition’ of the term. Maybe that’s unfair?
That definition did change throughout his life, and there have been countless interpretations since, which the article looks at and basically concludes ‘there’s no one defintion of the word’, which I think is fair to say.
Ya, and no harsh recieved. The title was admittedly bombastic, and I tried to show a few different angles on the term in the post :) and I tried to quote original texts more than wiki.
Obviously the end goal of communism is the betterment of life for all, so in that regard M&E couldn’t have hated poor people. However, I did notice language of distaste towards certain occupations that I respect, which came across as classist more than scientific. You might call that aesthetic, with the implication that it’s unimportant, but to me it kinda matters. Not all that much tho haha I’m not gonna be offended by 150 year old words or anything. But I do think that, effectively, talking shit about the ‘undersirables’ and counting them out isn’t particularly useful, but we can disagree :)
Lumpen becomes a much more useful concept, imo, when you focus on the organized crime elements. Buskers aren’t gonna be counter-revolutionary because their livlihood depends on grifting (entertaining) the proletariat ffs hahaha we don’t make enough money to be loyal to capital
I think my core disagreement with Marx’s original position was the discounting of the revolutionary potential of disparate demographics by lumpin’ them all together as lumpen. As people have pointed out, Marx himself had wavered on that position throughout his life, acknowledging that the dynamics were different in France. Just as Mao felt differently in his context, and Bakunin, and the Black Panthers, and so on. I’m certain that the dynamics are different now, too.
Ngl, I have no idea who the Communist Party of the USA is, and I’m not american, but I thought it would be good to include a prominent american example. And for some reason, the Texas party is a particularly big one? Haha
But it struck me that they appeared to learn nothing from marxists since Marx. They just parrot the original stuff, which is an exclusionary line and reads extremely elitist, at a time when recruitment is basically all socialists have. Marx may have discounted the underclass for much of his life, but I think he was wrong to do so, much like the Black Panthers and Mao did etc., on which we agree :)
