Replace the AK with a HiPoint carbine for real lumpen vibes.
When I think of the Lumpen, I do not think of people having to hustle from the side just to avoid homelessness and struggling to make ends meet. Those people hold no real power and are victims of capitalism.
The Lumpen would be like the mafia who make plenty of money operating within the grey lines of the system we live in. I also would count the porn industry and their exploitation. Another good example is the televenagelist/megachurch preachers and how they avoid paying taxes and exploiting people to make their money.
Copy-paste of my own comment from an old thread:
"I’ve always used lumpen to mean genuinely useless humans. For example: my ex had this shitty roommate who absolutely would not get a job, cook, clean, or anything else that could be viewed as beneficial to the household. He absolutely lived off her largesse, and did nothing to alleviate her burden - she worked 7 days a week, virtually every week, to keep his worthless ass alive, and did…everything else. His existence is undoubtedly a big part of the reason our relationship turned to shit.
A drug dealer can theoretically stop being a predator, and people with substance abuse issues can be helped.
Trash just keeps on being trash."
Trash just keeps on being trash
of course the irony of this logic is you have just written yourself off as an irredeemable soulless freak
Yeah, ok. I'm pissed off because I watched someone I cared about be used by a guy who wouldn't do shit to relieve her burden. I'm not exaggerating her work schedule much - she got about 2 days off in any given month, so I'm the freak? This has been going on for about a decade. I gather he's had a job for about one total year of that. But sure, I'm the asshole here. If you say so.
If someone uses someone for years upon end, at what point do you say "you know, he's not respecting HER human rights?" Seriously, she was lucky to get 2 days off a month, and had to do 90% of the housework and about 98% of the cooking. That's vile.
Yeah, it really is super-frustrating. I tried to get her to get rid of him, but it never did work. I like to think she's managed to do so at this point, but lord knows.
Drug dealers aren't predators. Some are, but I don't think I've had a single friend in the past three years who didn't sling or used to sling. All my dealers are cool. Sometimes I buy coke just to have an excuse to hang out with the plug I got for that.
Fuck yeah. I thought about making a lumpen thread but forgot.
Technically I'm prole but I hustle on the side and will be homeless again soon. I identify strongly with the lumpen class and I feel like we are the ones who will lead the revolution. I don't know if a revolution that isn't led by sex workers, homeless people, dope dealers, shoplifters, street gang hustlers, and drug addicts is even worth having.
How can you be class conscious and want to lead the revolution yet identify as lumpenproletariat? Isn't that literally the opposite of what the lumpenproletariat is? Lol
That's not what I meant at all, sorry for the confusion. "unproductiveness" is not how I would define lumpenproletariat, a lack of class consciousness is. Hence why I'm confused because it seems like a class-conscious lumpenprole is inherently self-contradictory. Once the lumpenproletariat is mobilized it's no longer the lumpenproletariat.
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We fucking need to be the vanguard of the Western revolutionary socialist movement. We know what's up. We don't waste our time with silly performative wokeness because we know respect and how actions speak louder than words. And we can fight a war, because every day of our lives is a war for survival.
Like for real, I've seen such amazing things happen when street comrades are lifted up by networks of mutual aid and radical love. Unfortunately I've seen all those little birds break their wings, and find nobody to mend them. I have an unhoused, opioid dependent friend who was once cooking fire vegan food for us at a protest camp. Now he comes into my store and mumbles. I watched a good person fall flat on their face in the middle of trying to get sober and put a violent past behind them (unfortunately I loved them too).