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InMarxist theory, theLumpenproletariat (German:[ˈlʊmpn̩pʁoletaʁi̯ˌaːt]ⓘ;/ˌlʌmpənproʊlɪˈtɛəriət/) is theunderclass devoid ofclass consciousness.[1]Karl Marx andFriedrich Engels coined the word in the 1840s and used it to refer to the unthinking lower strata of society exploited byreactionary andcounter-revolutionary forces, particularly in the context of therevolutions of 1848. They dismissed the revolutionary potential of theLumpenproletariat and contrasted it with theproletariat. Among other groups, criminals,vagabonds, andprostitutes are usually included in this category.
TheSocial Democratic Party of Germany made wide use of the term by the turn of the 20th century.Vladimir Lenin andLeon Trotsky followed Marx's arguments and dismissed the revolutionary potential of the group, whileMao Zedong argued that properleadership could utilize it. The wordLumpenproletariat, popularized in the West byFrantz Fanon'sThe Wretched of the Earth in the 1960s, has been adopted as a sociological term. However, what some consider to be its vagueness and its history as a term of abuse has led to some criticism. Some revolutionary groups, most notably theBlack Panther Party and theYoung Lords, have sought to mobilize theLumpenproletariat.
Karl Marx andFriedrich Engels are generally considered to have coined the termLumpenproletariat.[2][3] It is composed of theGerman wordLumpen, which is usually translated as "ragged"[4][5] andprolétariat, a French word adopted as a common Marxist term for the class of wage earners in a capitalist system.Hal Draper argued that the root islump ("knave"), notlumpen.[3] Bussard noted that the meaning oflump shifted from being a person dressed in rags in the 17th century toknavery in the 19th century.[6]
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines it as "the lowest stratum of the proletariat. Used originally in Marxist theory to describe those members of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed, who lacked awareness of their collective interest as an oppressed class."[7] In modern usage, it is commonly defined to include the chronically unemployed, the homeless, andcareer criminals.[8]
In English translations of Marx and Engels,lumpenproletariat has sometimes been rendered as "social scum", "dangerous classes", "ragamuffin", and "ragged-proletariat".[3] It has been described by some scholars and theorists, as well as the Sovietnomenclature, as a declassed (déclassé) group.[9][10][11][12][13] The term "underclass" is considered to be the modern synonym oflumpenproleteriat.[14][a] Scholars note its negative connotations.[b] Economist Richard McGahey, writing for theNew York Times in 1982, noted that it is one of the older terms in a "long line of labels that stigmatize poor people for their poverty by focusing exclusively on individual characteristics." He listed the following synonyms: "underclass", "undeserving poor", and "culture of poverty".[17] Another synonym is "riff-raff".[18] The word is used in some languages as a pejorative. In English it may be used in an informal disapproving manner to "describe people who are not clever or well educated, and who are not interested in changing or improving their situation."[19]
According to historian Robert Bussard,Karl Marx andFriedrich Engels viewed thelumpenproletariat as:[20]
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, thelumpenproletariat 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, thelumpenproletariat 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.
They used the term exclusively with negative connotations, although their works lack "consistent and clearly reasoned definition" of the term.[21] They used the term in various publications "for diverse purposes and on several levels of meaning."[20]
Hal Draper suggested that the concept has its roots inYoung Hegelian thought and possibly inG.W.F. Hegel'sElements of the Philosophy of Right.[21] While Bussard believes that the idea was "at one and the same time, a hybrid of new social attitudes which crystallised in France, England and Germany, as well as an extension of more traditional, pre-nineteenth-century views of the lower classes."[21] Bussard noted that they often used the term as a "kind of sociological profanity" and contrasted between it and "working and thinking"proletariat.[22] According toMichael Denning by identifying thelumpenproletariat, "Marx was combating the established view that the entire working class was a dangerous and immoral element. He drew a line between the proletariat and thelumpenproletariat to defend the moral character of the former."[23]
And the above did not limit expressions on where the concept originated. A graduate student arguedlumpenproletariat was one of the end products ofThe 1789-1848 Struggle To Define The Concept Proletariat.[24] This student found the term proletariat was invented during the 509BCE-27BCE Republic of Rome byCicero (106BCE-43BCE) as a concept reflecting a specific point in time during the earlier 753BCE-509BCE Kingdom of Rome such that the synchronic wordproletariat essentially meant the same idea as the ahistorical synchronic wordsworking class.[25] In later 18th Century France, this ahistorical synchronic view of the word was accepted and enhanced in the work ofMontesquieu (1689-1755) in his 1748:(p527) workThe Spirit Of Laws and also byJean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in the 1762:(p95) workThe Social Contract.[26] This ahistorical point in time view ofproletariat held until the 1789-1799 French Revolution when JournalistGracchus Babeuf (1760-1797) used the term in one of his 1794 pamphlets, as a historical diachronic continuity, implying that thein struggle with a class above proletariat no longer meant the same idea as ahistoricalworking class[27] and so the fight over adiachrony and synchrony usage ofproletariat began.
Endorsing the Cicero-Montesquieu-Rousseau view ofproletariat in 1820, was the early SociologistAuguste Comte (1798-1857), but finally leaving behind this Comte view in 1824 was his boss,Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), who broke down and finally agreed that Babeuf was correct, only two years before he died as personal frustration with his inability to 'sell' his harmonious view of France to influential natives seized him.[28] Engels in 1842 and Marx in 1844 entered this debate and sided with Babeuf and Saint-Simon in saying thatproletariat was a historical concept and adding they had a significant optimistic role to play in humanity's future.[29] But the duos optimistic view ofproletariat did not hold as they soon expressed frustrations, within four separate documents written in 1844-1845, with theirproletariat, and so they realized that a complimentary diachronic term needed to be invented to act as a form of pessimistic 'theoretical space filler' which played the role of a polar opposite to their optimistic view ofproletariat.[30] So between late night glasses of wine in Brussels, Belgium, the multi-lingual duo, who both knew over 10 languages, invented the Germanic languages wordlumpenproletariat which primarily meant to them, "mass" or "size" since everywhere they looked about them, they sawlumpenproletariat easily outnumbering theproletariat.[31] The rascally duo (Engels comments to Marx's daughter after the 1883 death of Marx) as they wrote up the 1845-1846The German Ideology laughed those late nights away imagining future readers of their newlumpenproletariat, especially those hot on their trail censors, being unable to understand their literary creation.[24]
Yetlumpenproletariat as describing a "mass" was not new in the 19th Century; in the 17th Century, England's firstPoet LaureateJohn Dryden (1631-1700) wrote this phrase within a 1679 poem "How dull and how insensible a beast is man, ... philosophers and poets vainly strove, in every age the lumpish mass to move".[32] The duo's new word's built-in ambiguity, plus their added lack of a full definition of the term among any one of the 88 term uses during 1845-1890, ensured that any pursuing censor faced a challenge in decoding their new literary invention.[24] Since theirlumpenproletariat was aproletariat polar opposite, they borrowed fromAdam Smith (1723-1790) and his 1776The Wealth Of Nations wherein Smith used his productive labour and unproductive labour distinction, and they decreed that theproletariat emerged as the result of their mostly productive labour while thelumpenproletariat emerged mostly from doing unproductive labour.[24]
While writing before the 50 VolumeMarx-Engels: Collected Works,Hal Draper (1914-1990) found 75 uses oflumpenproletariat within 40 documents and placed these within three of his publications,[33] our 50 volume aided student in 1996 found 88 uses within 50 documents and also found what he thought were three distinct periods of how the duo used their 1845-1890 term; while the 1845-1847 period and the 1855-1890 period featuredobjective uses of the term, the middle 1848-1854 period was judged to be of a moresubjective sort, so the student warned future term users to not borrow their definitions of the word from this potentially misleading middle 7 year period wherein 56 of the 88 total uses took place over 45 years.[24]
The first collaborative work by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to feature the termlumpenproletariat isThe German Ideology, written in 1845–46.[20][34] They used it to describe theplebs (plebeians) ofancient Rome who were midway between freemen andslaves, never becoming more than a "proletarian rabble [lumpenproletariat]" andMax Stirner's "self-professed radical constituency of the Lumpen or ragamuffin."[3] The first work written solely by Marx to mention the term was an article published in theNeue Rheinische Zeitung in November 1848 which described thelumpenproletariat as a "tool of reaction" in therevolutions of 1848 and as a "significantcounterrevolutionary force throughout Europe."[22] Engels wrote inThe Peasant War in Germany (1850) that thelumpenproletariat is a "phenomenon that occurs in a more or less developed form in all the so far known phases of society".[35][36]
InThe Communist Manifesto (1848), wherelumpenproletariat is commonly translated in English editions as the "dangerous class" and the "social scum",[37][38][39][40] Marx and Engels wrote:[20]
Thelumpenproletariat 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.
In an article analyzing theJune 1848 events in Paris Engels wrote of thegardes mobiles, a militia which suppressed the workers' uprising: "The organizedlumpenproletariat had given battle to the working proletariat. It had, as was to be expected, put itself at the disposal of the bourgeoisie."[22] Thoburn notes that Marx makes his most detailed descriptions of thelumpenproletariat in his writings of the revolutionary turmoil in France between 1848 and 1852:The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850 (1850) andThe Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852).[41] InThe Class Struggles he describes the finance aristocracy ofLouis Philippe I and hisJuly Monarchy (1830–1848) as lumpenproletarian: "In the way it acquires wealth and enjoys it the financial aristocracy is nothing but the lumpenproletariat reborn at the pinnacle of bourgeois society."[42][43] He distinguished the finance aristocracy from the industrial bourgeoisie as the former became rich "not by production, but by pocketing the already available wealth of others."[44] He further suggests that thelumpenproletariat is a component of the proletariat, unlike his earlier works. He claimed that thegardes mobiles were set up "to set one segment of the proletariat against the other":[43]
They belonged for the most part to thelumpenproletariat, which forms a mass clearly distinguished from the industrial proletariat in all large cities, a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds, living on the refuse of society, people without a fixed line of work.
InThe Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Marx identifiedNapoleon III as the "Chief of theLumpenproletariat", a claim he made repeatedly. He argued that he bought his supporters with "gifts and loans, these were the limits of the financial science of thelumpenproletariat, both the low and the exalted. Never had a President speculated more stupidly on the stupidity of the masses." For Marx, thelumpenproletariat represented those who were "corrupt, reactionary and without a clear sense of class-consciousness."[45] He wrote inThe Eighteenth Brumaire:[46]
Alongside ruinedroués with questionable means of support and of dubious origin, degenerate and adventurous scions of the bourgeoisie, there were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves, swindlers, charlatans,lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, procurers, brothel keepers, porters,literati, organ grinders, rag-pickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars; in short, the entirely undefined, disintegrating mass, thrown hither and yon, which the French callla bohème.
InCapital (1867) Marx claimed legislation which turned soldiers and peasants "en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances." By this he deviated from his focus on the vicious and degenerate behavior of thelumpenproletariat in his writings on France. Instead he described thelumpenproletariat as part of the what he called an "industrial reserve army", which capitalists used as times required. Thus "vagabonds, criminals, prostitutes" and otherlumpenproletariat formed an element within the "surplus population" in a capitalist system.[47]
TheSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was one of the first to uselumpenproletariat in their rhetoric, particularly to indicate the scope of their view of a "desirable" working class and exclude the non-respectable poor.[48] By the early 20th century, the German Marxist tradition saw workers outside the SPD and/or labor unions as members of thelumpenproletariat.[1] In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rioting and violence was often attributed by the SPD and its newspaperVorwärts to thelumpenproletariat working in collusion with the secret police. HistorianRichard J. Evans argued that the SPD, thus, lost touch with the "militancy of the classes which it claimed to represent, a militancy which found expression in frequent outbursts of spontaneous collective protest, both political and industrial, at moments of high social and political tension."[49] For many German socialists in theimperial period thelumpenproletariat—especially prostitutes and pimps—was not only a "political-moral problem, but also an objective, biological danger to the health of society."Karl Kautsky argued in 1890 that it is thelumpenproletariat and not the "militant industrial proletariat" that mostly suffer fromalcoholism.[50]August Bebel, pre-World War I leader of the SPD, linkedantisemitic proletarians to thelumpenproletariat as the former failed to develop class consciousness, which led to a racial, and not social, explanation of economic inequality.[1]
Vladimir Lenin called socialist attempts to recruitlumpenproletariat elements "opportunism".[51][better source needed] In 1925Nikolai Bukharin described thelumpenproletariat as being characterized by "shiftlessness, lack of discipline, hatred of the old, but impotence to construct anything new, an individualistic declassed 'personality' whose actions are based only on foolish caprices."[16][12] In a 1932 article on "How Mussolini Triumphed"Leon Trotsky described the "declassed and demoralized"lumpenproletariat as "the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy." He argued that capitalism used them through fascism.[52] TheGreat Soviet Encyclopedia, written from theMarxist-Leninist perspective, definedlumpenproletariat as:[53]
a declassed strata in an antagonistic society (includingvagrants,beggars, and criminal elements) [which] has become particularly widespread under capitalism. It is recruited from various classes and is incapable of organized political struggle. It constitutes, along with thepetit bourgeois strata, the social basis ofanarchism. The bourgeoisie makes use of the lumpen proletariat asstrikebreakers, as participants infascistpogrom bands, and in other ways. The lumpen proletariat disappears with the abolition of the capitalist system.
The term was rarely used in the Soviet Union to describe any portion of the Soviet society because, Hemmerle argues, following theRussian Revolution of 1917 "millions of people passed through economic conditions that bore a resemblance to the traditional meaning oflumpenproletariat". However, it was used to label labor movements in capitalist countries which were not pro-Soviet.[1] Soviet authorities and scholars instead reserved other terms for their ownlumpenproletariat groups, especially "déclassé elements" (деклассированные элементы,deklassirovannye elementy), and viewed them, like Marx, as "social degenerates, isolated from the forces of production and incapable of having a working-class consciousness." Svetlana Stephenson notes that the Soviet state "for all its ideology of assistance, cooperation and social responsibility, was ready to descend on them with all its might."[54]
Mao Zedong argued in 1939 that thelumpenproletariat (Chinese:游民无产者,pinyin:yóumín wúchǎnzhě) in China is a legacy of the country's "colonial and semi-colonial status" which forced a vast number of people in urban and rural areas into illegitimate occupations and activities.[55] Earlier, in 1928, he asserted that "the only way" to win over these wayward proletarians was to carry out intensive thought reform "so as to effect qualitative changes in these elements."[56] He argued that thelumpenproletariat had a dual nature. Simultaneously, they were "victimized members of the laboring masses and untrustworthy elements with 'parasitic inclinations'", which made them waver between revolution and counterrevolution.[56] He believed thatlumpenproletariat elements, such astriads, the organized crime syndicates, "can become revolutionary given proper leadership".[57] According toLuo Ruiqing, theMinister of Public Security, thelumpenproletariat population consisted of sex workers, vagrant gangs, and theft rings and were political problems that threatened the internal security of China. Following the Communist victory in theChinese Civil War and the proclamation of the People's Republic of China (PRC),lumpenproletariat were interned into government-run reeducation centers. Some 500,000 people were interned into 920 such centers by 1953.[58] Historian Aminda Smith notes that the "case oflumpenproletariat reformatories suggests that anti-state resistance from members of the oppressed masses was essential to early-PRC rhetoric because it validated claims about the devastating effects of the old society and the transformative power of socialist 'truth'."[59]
By the early 1970s someradicals deviated from the orthodox Marxist viewpoint that thelumpenproletariat lacks significant revolutionary potential.[21]Herbert Marcuse, an American philosopher and sociologist of theFrankfurt School, believed that the working class in the US "having been bought up by the consumer society, has lost all class consciousness" and lay the hopes for revolution on thelumpenproletariat—the social outcasts—led by intellectuals.[60] Marcuse, along with Afro-Caribbean philosopherFrantz Fanon and other radical intellectuals, proposed that elements of thelumpenproletariat are potentially leading forces in a revolutionary movement.[61] According toMichael Denning Fanon revived the term, long having been disappeared from left-wing discourse, in this bookThe Wretched of the Earth (1961).[23] He defined thelumpenproletariat as the peasantry in colonial societies of theThird World not involved in industrial production who are unaware of the dominant colonial ideology and are therefore, "ready, capable and willing to revolt against the colonial status quo for liberation." He described them as "one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people."[62] He was not uncritical of thelumpenproletariat due to their supposed unpredictability due to "their ignorance and incomprehension." Colonial forces could make a use of them as hired soldiers.[63]
Fanon's use of the term prompted debates and studies, including byPierre Bourdieu andCharles van Onselen.[64] The African revolutionaryAmílcar Cabral was skeptical about thelumpen being used in anti-colonialist liberation revolution.[11] HisAfrican Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde recruiteddéclassé, but notlumpenproletariat, groups as the latter were supportive of the Portuguese colonial police, while the former, in the absence of a developed proletariat in Guinea and Cape Verde, played a dynamic role in anti-colonialist struggle.[65] HistorianMartin Meredith wrote that Ethiopian rulerMengistu Haile Mariam used "the lumpen-proletariat of the slums" to help with hisRed Terror.[66]
Laura Pulido argues that, historically, thelumpenproletariat in the US has mostly been African American due to the nation being racially constituted. It is primarily indicated by the high unemployment and incarceration rates among African Americans.[67] TheBlack Panther Party, most prominent revolutionary socialists in post-war US, "thought of much of their following aslumpenproletarian."[68] They adopted Fanon's viewpoint regarding the revolutionary potential of the group.[62] Pulido claims the emphasis the Black Panthers put on thelumpenproletariat was the party's hallmark.[15] Its co-foundersBobby Seale andHuey P. Newton viewed the African-Americanlumpenproletariat as a potential organized threat if the party did not mobilize them. Seale included "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" in his definition of thelumpenproletariat.[69] Newton called them "street brothers",alienated from the system of oppression in the US, and sought to recruit them into the party.[62] Their strategy was a controversial one. Chris Booker and Errol Henderson argued that problems such as "a lack of discipline, a tendency toward violence, the importation of street culture, including crime, and the use of weapons" by Black Panthers was caused by the disproportionately high membership of thelumpenproletariat in their ranks.[70][71]
TheYoung Lords Party adopted similar views to the Black Panther Party, believing in the potential of the lumpen. They developed a Lumpen Organization within their larger organization with the goal of enlisting the people considered the lumpenproletariat, or "lumpen", in the struggle; they considered the lumpen to be "the class in our nation which for years and years have not been able to find jobs, and are forced to be drug addicts, prostitutes, etc." (p. 20) in the face of the capitalist system the Party considered an enemy.[72] Crucial to the party's view on the lumpen is that, unlike criticisms of the lumpenproletariat around a perceived lack of productivity and organization, the Young Lords Party stated that "it's a law of revolution that the most oppressed group takes the leadership position" (p. 42) and that the lumpen would be the immediate focus of the party's organizing efforts in liberating all oppressed peoples.[72]
Ernesto Laclau argued that Marx's dismissal of thelumpenproletariat showed the limitations of his theory ofeconomic 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."[73] 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."[74] Laura Pulido argues that there is a diversity in thelumpen population, especially in terms of consciousness.[67]
Post-anarchistSaul Newman wrote in 2010 that classical anarchists argue that thelumpenproletariat should be designated as a revolutionary class.[75] According toTom Brass, individualist anarchistMax Stirner "celebrated the lumpenproletariat as authentic rebels."[51] Anarchist thinkerMikhail Bakunin, who was dubbed "the lumpen prince" by Engels, wrote that only in thelumpenproletariat and "and not in the bourgeois strata of workers, are there crystallised the entire intelligence and power of the comingSocial Revolution."[76] Thoburn writes that for him, thelumpenproletariat represented a "kind of actually existing anarchism."[77] Ann Robertson notes that Bakunin believed that "inherent in humanity is a natural essence which can be suppressed but never entirely extinguished. Those in society who are more distant from the State apparatus (the peasants are scattered throughout the countryside, thelumpenproletariat simply refuses to obey the laws) are accordingly natural leaders".[78] Bakunin stated:[79]
that eternal 'meat', [...] that great rabble of the people (underdogs, 'dregs of society') ordinarily designated by Marx and Engels in the picturesque and contemptuous phraselumpenproletariat. 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...
Robert Ritter, the head of Nazi Germany's efforts to track the genealogies of theRomani, considered them a "highly inferiorLumpenproletariat" as they were "parasites who lacked ambition and many of them had become habitual criminals."[80] The Romani were seen in post-World War IIcommunist-ruled eastern and central Europe as an example of thelumpenproletariat and were, therefore, subject to an aggressive policy of assimilation.[81]
Ken Gelder noted that in cultural studies,subcultures are "often positionedoutside of class, closer in kind to Marx'slumpenproletariat, lacking social consciousness, self-absorbed or self-interested, at a distance from organised or sanctioned forms of labour, and so on."[82]
Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Kravchenko describes thetitushky, pro–Viktor Yanukovych provocateurs active during theEuromaidan protests of 2013–14, as "lumpen elements".[83]
Another active user of lumpenproletariat was the Sociologist Mark Traugott who used the term within three publications.[84][85][86] Herein Traugott unveiled a detailed study from official records of the composition of the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat in Paris, France during the June 1848 resurrection wherein he found no essential difference between the two contending groups - the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat - and also no difference between these two groups and the general composition of the population of Paris.[87] Upon finding this empirical study, the 1996 student confirmed that the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat were both two historical classes situated within the non-historicalworking class, and likely asked himself since the concept's creators saw two historical classes within the ahistorical working class, one with class consciousness and the other with obedience consciousness, then there might also be more than just those two historical classes; so he speculated that the non-historical working class may have also included a 3rd historical class, the religiousproletariat, bound to a religious consciousness, and maybe a 4th class, the rightsproletariat, bound to maintaining a human rights consciousness, and perhaps a 5th historical class, the ecoproletariat, bound to maintaining an environmental consciousness.[88]
The 1979 report of theCarnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education warned that the US is in danger of creating "a permanent underclass, a self‐perpetuating culture of poverty, a substantial 'lumpen proletariat'."[89]Eleanor Holmes Norton wrote in 1985: "An American version of a lumpenproletariat (the so-called underclass), without work and without hope, existing at the margins of society, could bring down the great cities, sap resources and strength from the entire society and, lacking the usual means to survive, prey upon those who possess them."[90] According to political scientistMarie Gottschalk the tough-on-crime stance on African Americans has been caused by political manipulation of public fears of a lumpen underclass threatening the majority as African Americans were perceived to have turned to crime due to losing in thedeindustrialization of the country.[91]
Mark Cowling argued that there is considerable similarity in both definition and function between thelumpenproletariat, as proposed by Marx, and the contemporary theory of the underclass byCharles Murray, an American conservative political scientist.[92] Although Murray andRichard Herrnstein did not use the term in their 1994 bookThe Bell Curve,Malcolm Browne noted in aNew York Times review that the authors argue that the United States is being "split between an isolated caste of ruling meritocrats on one hand and a vast, powerless Lumpenproletariat on the other. Society, the authors predict, will have little use for this underclass in a world dominated by sophisticated machines and the bright human beings who tend them."[93]
Several commentators and researchers have analyzedDonald Trump's political base as modern Americanlumpenproletariat.[94][95][96]Trumpen Proletariat was coined byJonah Goldberg in 2015 to describe Trump's "biggest fans", who he believed "are not to be relied upon in the conservative cause" in the same way thelumpenproletariat was not to be relied upon for a socialist revolution.[97]Daniel Henninger used the term as well inThe Wall Street Journal.[98]Francis Levy compared "basket of deplorables",Hillary Clinton's phrase to characterize some Trump supporters during the2016 presidential election campaign, to Marx's rhetoric of thelumpenproletariat.[99] In 2020Ryan Lizza coinedBiden Proletariat to describe an underclass of campaign workers and supporters—"veterans of the Biden campaign"—who were cast aside during post-election White House staffing, thus carrying on a tradition in Democratic politics of abandoning loyal political workers in favor of well-connected political elites.[100]
Ranjit Gupta, the Inspector General of theWest Bengal Police, claimed in 1973 that the MaoistNaxalite rebels in India were made of "some intellectuals and lumpen proletariat. Their main target was policemen—and they thought that if the police force could be torn apart, so could society."[101] Political scientist Atul Kohli claimed in his 2001 book that "variety of lumpen groups, especially unemployed youth in northern India, have joined right-wing proto-fascist movements in recent years", especially the Hindu nationalistRashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).[102] In 2010s,cow vigilantism in India has been linked byPavan Varma to "lumpen Hindu fanaticism"[103] and to "lumpen and self-appointedgau rakshaks" byBhalchandra Mungekar.[104]
Due to a desire to keep clean the hands of the larger public, paramilitary groups are often used to commit atrocities and they often recruit mainly among criminals, said to be used to violence and brutality and wanting to enjoy an occasion to loot.[105] The lumpenproletariat has been described as being more likely to adhere to doctrines calling for ethnic cleansing and to organize in militias.[106]
During theArmenian genocide, prisoners were pardoned and released from prison to serve in bands, orçetes. Criminals and other elements of thelumpenproletariat hoped to gain respectability and wealth through their participation in genocide.[105][107][108]
DuringWorld War II, the GermanWaffen-SSDirlewanger Brigade recruited poachers and criminals to guard the ghetto in Lublin and later wage theBandenbekämpfung on theEastern Front.[109]
InKigali, during theRwandan genocide, theInterahamwe andImpuzamugambi, who recruited among the poorer elements of the population, started to draw a "lumpenproletariat ofstreet boys".[110]
The various Serbian militias of theBosnian War such as theSerb Volunteer Guard and theWhite Eagles were described as recruiting among the lumpenproletariat.[111] Eighty percent of the Bosnian Serb paramilitary troops were said to be criminals, and Croat and Bosnian units similarly drew criminals into their ranks.[105][112]
InDarfur, someJanjaweed were convicts recruited in prison or bandits who joined governmental forces.[105][113][114] Marc Lavergne, author ofLe Soudan contemporain, described them as a "rurallumpenproletariat".[115][116]
Ernesto Ragionieri, an Italian Marxist historian, argued to have confirmed in his 1953 bookUn comune socialista that thelumpenproletariat is essentially a conservative force based on his study ofSesto Fiorentino. He found that some 450–500 members of the working class had joined the liberal-conservative party, which was led by landowners, industrialists, and professionals in hopes of getting recommendation that would allow them to joinRichard-Ginori, the largest local employer, which refused to hire socialists.[117]
In 1966 sociologistDavid Matza cited disorder and violence as two of the most prominent characteristics of the disreputable poor.[16][118] In his 1977 bookClass, State, and Crime, Marxist historianRichard Quinney definedlumpen crimes (or "predatory crimes") as those intended for purely personal profit.[119] In a 1986 study sociologist David Brownfield defined thelumpen-proletariat (or the "disreputable poor") by their unemployment and receipt of welfare benefits.[120] He concluded that "while no significant effects of class can be found using a neo-Marxist conception of class, gradational measures of class (occupation and education) ... Measures of disreputable poverty—unemployment and welfare status [recipiency]—are relatively strong correlates of violent behavior."[121] He explained:[122]
The frustrations and the anger associated with unemployment and being on welfare are compounded by the lack of such fundamental necessities as food, clothing, and shelter among some of the disreputable poor. It would seem self-evident that such an environment of absolute deprivation may be the breeding grounds for discontent and violence.
Several terms have been coined in imitation oflumpenproletariat such as:
German, literally: ragged proletariat
...declassed groups (the Lumpen- proletariat, beggars)...
...population of declassed or lumpen proletariat....
underclass, like lumpen proletariat, is also a suitable concept for those who, like Karl Marx, want to identify a group shaped and dominated by a society's economic and political forces but who have no productive role.
...Marx had a name for these proletarians who had not yet seen the light — theLumpenproletariat or riff-raff...
The lumpen elements now known as titushky...
A variety of lumpen groups, especially unemployed youth in northern India, have joined right-wing proto-fascist movements in recent years – such as RSS
Lelumpenprolétariat s'identifie à ce discours populiste contre une victime proche et constitue la force de frappe de ces milices aux noms fleuris: les Tigres d'Arkan, les Scorpions serbes, les Interahamwe (« ceux qui sont ensemble ») duRwanda, les milices MAS,Muerte a los secuestradores, et les groupes paramilitaires en Colombie, les groupesMai Mai du Congo ou les cavaliers Janjawid du Soudan.
The formation of theçetes (bands) offered even deprived strata of society – alumpenproletariat – the possibility of gaining visibility and patriotic 'dignity' and of claiming their own portion of the Armenians' 'abandoned' wealth, however restricted that might be.
As soon as they went into action, they drew around them a cloud of even poorer people, a lumpenproletariat of street boys, rag-pickers, car-washers and homeless unemployed. For these people the genocide was the best thing that could ever happen to them.
It was mainly the poorer strata of Serbian society, the lumpenproletariat or rural poor, who gave birth to Bokan's andArkan's volunteers, as well as to many members of the Eagles and Arkan's Tigers
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