Why did Marx have a go at the lumpen?

[Bitter Ashes]

I'm trying to get my head around this and I think I could do with some input.

If I'm understanding right, the lumpen, that Marx reffered to, are basicly criminals. Right? I know that stuff like the workshy got bolted on afterwards, but that wasnt by Marx (I dont think) and that's what I'm trying to focus on.

The reason I'm confused is because doesnt criminal "working" still follow the working class-bourgeois split? I mean, take this for example:
A pimp withholds the means of income from a street worker, by taxing her in one way or another, with the threat of losing the means of income if she doesnt comply. Doesnt that make the pimp bourgeois and the street worker a worker?

Or how about the thugs that gangs will have with them. They cant make money by just committing random acts of violence, in order for it to be profitable they have to sell this "labour" to gang leaders. So, arent the thugs technically workers (albiet not a trade I think is positive) and the gang leaders bourgeois?

Then there's drug dealers. They seem to be a kind of petit-bourgeois on the lower levels, while the higher levels of supply are certainly bourgeois.

It then raises another intresting question about the very nature of "crime fighting". All the drug dealers and smugglers and the pimps and hustlers rely on thugs or one shape or form to protect thier "industries" from bieng violently challenged by other competitors. In the case of a lot of these things, there are legitimate industries that mirror these purposes; e.g. crack dealers -> pub landlords. smugglers -> legit import buisnesses. So, when the police are given a code of law to crack down on these illegal activities, are they not just bieng sent to deal with the competitors to legitimate industry? Doesn't this make the war against crime actualy a civil war between the bourgeois? And like any war, they're throwing thier wage slaves in to do the fighting for them.

Where I'm getting with this is whether it's important to make the distinction between the scales of good and evil based solely on whether we're told an industry is legitimate, or not, instead of basing our descions on what it really boils down to and that's how these bourgeois, illegal or legal, treat workers?

[Bitter Ashes]

I rambled on there and I forgot the second part of my question, which is actualy relativly short :blushing::

When you recognise that there's the same bourgeois-worker division within the lumpens, won't this dispear too with the fall of capitalism? The day when it become impossible to make a profit either legitimatly or illigitimatly? So, how hard will the lumpen-bourgeois try to defend capitalism do you think? Or, alternativly, can the lumpen-bourgeois be temperoilly ignored under the basis of enemy of an enemy, with the knowledge that they'll cease to exist at a later date anyway?

[mikelepore]

Find a primary source. If you don't start with a direct quotation, most people who discuss what Marx supposedly meant will probably be refering to rumors started by encyclopedias and high school history books.

[Bitter Ashes]

okay. Will the communist manifesto do?

The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

[Charles Xavier]

okay. Will the communist manifesto do?


Basically, what marx is saying when someone is unemployed and hungry enough, they are more likely to betray their class for when food and stability is offered in their life then to fight against that system. The bosses employ them to confront their fellow workers. You see on the internet these people underemployed, laid off or in jobs paying minimum wage raging that workers in unionized workplaces make more than them and instead of asking "Why don't I have a stable sufficient income?" They say well if my life is hard everyone's life should be hard!

[Gustav HK]

You probably mean the part in the Communist Manifesto where he (and Engels) talked about the "dangerous classes" and in the 1870 preface to Engel´s work "The Peasant War in Germany", where he wrote, that a socialist shouldn´t use them as support.

Well, where many socialists today point at the lumpens to show the injustice in the society (for example the homeless), Marx and Engels (and other great classic socialists) pointed at the workers, the proletariat, those who are lawfully opressed ("lawfully" here means by the law of the country, and not some kind of moral law).

Moreover in the revolutionary wave in 1848-1849, the lumpens had acted as "political prostitutes", by that i mean that the lumpens fought for those, who could give them money, they became a sort of mercanaries.

For example when the workers uprising in Paris in June 1848 was put down, the lumpens where to find at the side of the government (and such on the side of the bourgeoisie).

I would like to give a link, but it seems that this forum requries me to post at least 25 posts before i can post links.

EDIT: Link: http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/ch0a.htm - Sean

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

As you may know, that was a point of conflict between Bakunin and Marx.

To defend Marx, he seems to hold a moral perspective rather than a political one. If capitalism causes poverty, you have no right to steal. You can take what is rightfully yours, from the capitalist, but you can't harm innocent proletarians. You're essentially stealing from the weak and poor because you're afraid of the rich.

I think that is the reality of power relations. People sometimes marginalize others when material resources are limited. That was especially true in Marx's time. Most criminals who actively pursue unethical crimes would prefer another occupation, but they need/prefer the money more than ethical integrity.

I'd say there is a moral compass, and Marx is suggesting criminals lack that. If you saw a diamond, but you knew it would feed starving children, would you steal it given the opportunity? Marx, I think, would not. I don't think Bakunin would either. However, criminals often lack this integrity.

If it's a choice between harming others and depriving yourself, Bakunin implies most people will choose to harm others. The system puts individuals in a situation where they must compete with one another and exploit each other. Most criminals would prefer to honest work, but they need their work. Given the prospect of a revolution, they will side with the proletariat and be significantly motivated for social change. They know better than anyone the consequences of the system. Imagine having to sell drugs to children to make a living. Terrible.

When you're rich, stealing is wrong. When you're middle class, and well taken care of, stealing from the rich is alright. When you're destitute, stealing from anyone is acceptable. The line between being destitute and being immoral is a fine one, often dictated by individual morals. If you ate enough to sustain yourself, drank enough, etc, could you steal entertainment?

I think Marx is hard to defend here. He has some fundamental truth in his argument. Some criminals are simply garbage people. They are just, by their nature, people who commit crimes. I'd say this is overwhelmingly the minority, though, and Marx was wrong to generalize it to all criminals. It's easy for him to make such judgments given his background.

[mikelepore]

The word doesn't only means criminals. It includes hobos and beggars and other people who aren't participating in the dominant class relationships. Marx expresses the opinion there that they would be unreliable members of the working class movement, disruptive rather than helpful, and may be induced to become bribed agents of the capitalist. I'm not aware of any evidence that such a generalization is true, but I haven't searched for it either. It seems that you asked what Marx thought, not whether he was correct.

[ZeroNowhere]

Anyways, to clarify, the lumpen refers to mercenaries, 'swindlers, confidence tricksters, brothel-keepers, rag-and-bone merchants, beggars, and other flotsam of society.'
Engels praised this passage on the lumpen from a poem by Beck:

Who day by day unwearyingly
Hunt garbage in the fetid gutters;
Who flit like sparrows after food,
Mending pans and grinding knives,
Starching linen with stiff fingers,
Pushing breathless at the heavy cart,
Laden with but scarcely ripened fruits,
Crying piteously: Who'll buy, who'll buy?
Who fight over a copper in the dirt;
Who at the corner-stones each day
Sing praise to the God in whom they believe,
But scarcely dare hold out their hands,
Begging being against the law;
Who with deaf cars, beset by hunger,
Pluck the harp and blow upon the flute,
Year in, year out, the same old tune —
Beneath each window, at each gate —
Setting the nursemaid’s feet adance
But hearing not the melody themselves;
Who after dusk illuminate the city
But have no light for their own home;
Who shoulder burdens and split firewood,
Who have no master, and who have too many;
Who dash to pray, procure and steal
And drown with drink the vestige of a soul
He also says that, "Another great fact is the Dock Labourers’ strike. They are, as you know, the most miserable of all the miserable of the East End, the broken down ones of all trades, the lowest stratum above the Lumpenproletariat." This implies that the lumpen weren't exactly rich, the main problem with them as revolutionary is that they were easily corruptible.

As far as I know, Marx's views were sharply influenced by the 1848 revolution, described here:

For this purpose the Provisional Government formed twenty – four battalions of Mobile Guards, each a thousand strong, composed of young men from fifteen to twenty years old. They belonged for the most part to the lumpen proletariat, which in all big towns forms a mass sharply differentiated from the industrial proletariat, a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds living on the crumbs of society, people without a definite trade, vagabonds, gens sans feu et sans aveu [men without hearth or home], varying according to the degree of civilization of the nation to which they belong, but never renouncing their lazzaroni character – at the youthful age at which the Provisional Government recruited them, thoroughly malleable, as capable of the most heroic deeds and the most exalted sacrifices as of the basest banditry and the foulest corruption. The Provisional Government paid them franc 50 centimes a day; that is, it bought them. It gave them their own uniform; that is, it made them outwardly distinct from the blouse-wearing workers. In part it assigned officers from the standing army as their leaders; in part they themselves elected young sons of the bourgeoisie whose rodomontades about death for the fatherland and devotion to the republic captivated them.

And so the Paris proletariat was confronted with an army, drawn from its own midst, of 24,000 young, strong, foolhardy men.

Engels also describes the same situation happening in Rhenish Prussia:

Finally the lumpenproletariat was here as elsewhere corruptible from the second day of the movement onwards, demanding weapons and pay from the Committee of Public Safety in the morning and selling itself to the big bourgeois in the afternoon to protect their buildings or rip down the barricades when evening fell. On the whole it stood on the side of the bourgeoisie, which paid it most and with whose money it led a gay life as long as the movement lasted.

Engels refers to them as "absolutely venal", and M+E to them as "prepared to sell themselves to anyone who will make extravagant promises." It probably has a lot to do with their poverty and the fact that their occupations often involve reliance on the bourgeoisie. I'm not entirely sure to what extent the voluntary-lumpen of today would count among them, though they wouldn't exactly be vulnerable to the same critique, but are also a generally new invention.


Well, where many socialists today point at the lumpens to show the injustice in the society (for example the homeless), Marx and Engels (and other great classic socialists) pointed at the workers, the proletariat, those who are lawfully opressed ("lawfully" here means by the law of the country, and not some kind of moral law).
Well, technically, the lumpen are a part of the proletariat (hence "drawn from its own midst"), and 'lumpenproletariat'.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

If you saw a diamond, but you knew it would feed starving children, would you steal it given the opportunity? Marx, I think, would not. I don't think Bakunin would either. However, criminals often lack this integrity.

Wait a minute. So there's a Diamond. Diamond's are quite expensive, if this was property of a very bourgeois person and I knew it would feed starving children of course I would steal it.


If it's a choice between harming others and depriving yourself, Bakunin implies most people will choose to harm others. The system puts individuals in a situation where they must compete with one another and exploit each other. Most criminals would prefer to honest work, but they need their work. Given the prospect of a revolution, they will side with the proletariat and be significantly motivated for social change. They know better than anyone the consequences of the system. Imagine having to sell drugs to children to make a living. Terrible.

I think I understand this and agree with it. I'll try to summarise it: Did Mikhail say that the lumpen are forced into these choices and have no other option but to steal from others. Those who do this know they are doing wrong but have no other option. They will side with us during revolution.



I think Marx is hard to defend here. He has some fundamental truth in his argument. Some criminals are simply garbage people. They are just, by their nature, people who commit crimes. I'd say this is overwhelmingly the minority, though, and Marx was wrong to generalize it to all criminals. It's easy for him to make such judgments given his background.

I don't think that anyone by nature will go out to harm people. You cannot dismiss any case of a crime. There will always be an event or something within their life which has triggered the crime. I don't care what Marx's background was, it doesn't matter at all, he shouldn't have generalised.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Bakunin basically said that they were put in a situation where they have no choice. However, people, not just criminals, often make the wrong choices. Sometimes people steal for "extras" rather than "needs." While one is certainly entitled to do so, at the expense of the rich, stealing from the poor to acquire a new television is essentially what the rich do. I think that's what Marx disliked, to some extent.

I agree, overall, with the idea that criminals have little choice because they have no means to get either "needs" or "wants" without crime.

[Charles Xavier]

As you may know, that was a point of conflict between Bakunin and Marx.

To defend Marx, he seems to hold a moral perspective rather than a political one. If capitalism causes poverty, you have no right to steal. You can take what is rightfully yours, from the capitalist, but you can't harm innocent proletarians. You're essentially stealing from the weak and poor because you're afraid of the rich.

I think that is the reality of power relations. People sometimes marginalize others when material resources are limited. That was especially true in Marx's time. Most criminals who actively pursue unethical crimes would prefer another occupation, but they need/prefer the money more than ethical integrity.

I'd say there is a moral compass, and Marx is suggesting criminals lack that. If you saw a diamond, but you knew it would feed starving children, would you steal it given the opportunity? Marx, I think, would not. I don't think Bakunin would either. However, criminals often lack this integrity.

If it's a choice between harming others and depriving yourself, Bakunin implies most people will choose to harm others. The system puts individuals in a situation where they must compete with one another and exploit each other. Most criminals would prefer to honest work, but they need their work. Given the prospect of a revolution, they will side with the proletariat and be significantly motivated for social change. They know better than anyone the consequences of the system. Imagine having to sell drugs to children to make a living. Terrible.

When you're rich, stealing is wrong. When you're middle class, and well taken care of, stealing from the rich is alright. When you're destitute, stealing from anyone is acceptable. The line between being destitute and being immoral is a fine one, often dictated by individual morals. If you ate enough to sustain yourself, drank enough, etc, could you steal entertainment?

I think Marx is hard to defend here. He has some fundamental truth in his argument. Some criminals are simply garbage people. They are just, by their nature, people who commit crimes. I'd say this is overwhelmingly the minority, though, and Marx was wrong to generalize it to all criminals. It's easy for him to make such judgments given his background.


You completely don't understand the Marxist analysis I wouldn't defend Marx if he had that analysis, but he doesn't so I congratulate you on defeating a straw man. Marx isn't against stealing, he is against scabs, against mercenaries of the bourgeioisie. He knows that a large reserve army of labour is very dangerous to the proletariat.

[Bitter Ashes]

If I'm understanding right, if the lumpen-proletariarian can trust that socialism can be a more sustainable benefit for their lives then in theory, the bourgeois wouldnt be able to bribe them like that? I guess winning them over is something that could only really be achieved when revolution looks inventiable, so they're able to see the possibility of tangible results.

I dont think there's any hope for the lumpen-bourgeois, as they're going to be just as defensive of capitalism as the legit-bourgeois.

[Charles Xavier]

If I'm understanding right, if the lumpen-proletariarian can trust that socialism can be a more sustainable benefit for their lives then in theory, the bourgeois wouldnt be able to bribe them like that? I guess winning them over is something that could only really be achieved when revolution looks inventiable, so they're able to see the possibility of tangible results.

I dont think there's any hope for the lumpen-bourgeois, as they're going to be just as defensive of capitalism as the legit-bourgeois.


Yes thats the thing, the lumpen proletariat are apart of our class, we need to unite our class. Including sections of the lumpen proletariat, we cannot allow the bosses to divide us and steam roll over us.

The lumpen bourgeoisie are not as big here as they are in the third world. in the Third would they are the guys paid off by the imperialists to keep their people in line. Drug Cartels as well can be seen in this manner as well.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

You completely don't understand the Marxist analysis I wouldn't defend Marx if he had that analysis, but he doesn't so I congratulate you on defeating a straw man. Marx isn't against stealing, he is against scabs, against mercenaries of the bourgeioisie. He knows that a large reserve army of labour is very dangerous to the proletariat.

The only quote I'm aware of is the one in the Manifesto. Do you have some other information? Otherwise, we're arguing about interpretations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpenproletariat

Still supports my point. I fail to see how Marx can be interpreted in any other way. Bakunin wanted "the rabble," the great masses of the poor and exploited, the so-called "lumpenproletariat," to "inaugurate and bring to triumph the Social Revolution," as they were "almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization."

Marx thought the following:

1. Lumpenproletariat are primarily, if not all, morally corrupt individuals.
2. Even if the lumpenproletariat, or members of it, are not corrupt, there position in the class system will make them side with the state.

Let's ignore Marx's opinions on the "quality" of these individuals. Assume a revolution is taking place, then, what will these people do?

The majority of criminals are outcasts of the system fighting to survive. Given the opportunity to acquire a better life, they may revolt. They are angry at what the system has done to them.

Given the opportunity to be paid, to have a meal, etc, they will side with the rich for economic benefits. The proletariat can't pay them? They can't steal from the rich amongst the chaos?

Criminals are primarily those disadvantaged by the system who have choose to place themselves outside it. Some, "not all," are the opportunists Marx describes.

Generalization is a huge flaw of Marxism. They take single circumstances, argue why it happened, and apply that reasoning universally. Sometimes, Marx makes mistakes. Sure, some criminals would take bribes and go against the revolution. Some proletariat would, too. Arguably, the majority of society would like "things to be better," but they are bribed, or given just enough, to discourage rebellion.

[redarmyfaction38]

If I'm understanding right, if the lumpen-proletariarian can trust that socialism can be a more sustainable benefit for their lives then in theory, the bourgeois wouldnt be able to bribe them like that? I guess winning them over is something that could only really be achieved when revolution looks inventiable, so they're able to see the possibility of tangible results.

I dont think there's any hope for the lumpen-bourgeois, as they're going to be just as defensive of capitalism as the legit-bourgeois.
the lumpen proletariat will follow the strongest lead, ideology, right or wrong or any kind of moral stance don't come into it, survival that's what motivates them.
as for the middle class (lumpen bourgeoisie), they only get active when all the shiney shit they love is taken away from them and the revolution is actually pounding on their door.

[Charles Xavier]

The only quote I'm aware of is the one in the Manifesto. Do you have some other information? Otherwise, we're arguing about interpretations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpenproletariat

Still supports my point. I fail to see how Marx can be interpreted in any other way. Bakunin wanted "the rabble," the great masses of the poor and exploited, the so-called "lumpenproletariat," to "inaugurate and bring to triumph the Social Revolution," as they were "almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization."

Marx thought the following:

1. Lumpenproletariat are primarily, if not all, morally corrupt individuals.
2. Even if the lumpenproletariat, or members of it, are not corrupt, there position in the class system will make them side with the state.

Let's ignore Marx's opinions on the "quality" of these individuals. Assume a revolution is taking place, then, what will these people do?

The majority of criminals are outcasts of the system fighting to survive. Given the opportunity to acquire a better life, they may revolt. They are angry at what the system has done to them.

Given the opportunity to be paid, to have a meal, etc, they will side with the rich for economic benefits. The proletariat can't pay them? They can't steal from the rich amongst the chaos?

Criminals are primarily those disadvantaged by the system who have choose to place themselves outside it. Some, "not all," are the opportunists Marx describes.

Generalization is a huge flaw of Marxism. They take single circumstances, argue why it happened, and apply that reasoning universally. Sometimes, Marx makes mistakes. Sure, some criminals would take bribes and go against the revolution. Some proletariat would, too. Arguably, the majority of society would like "things to be better," but they are bribed, or given just enough, to discourage rebellion.

You are thinking on a much smaller scale than I am referring to. I am talking about unemployed workers desperate enough to betray their own class, through labour scabbing, taking part in paramilitary groups, breaking up meetings. These are the people most manipulated by the conservative forces to enforce their interest, directing workers anger towards immigrants, unions, etc.

This subclass can go either way, it can unite with fellow proletariat against the race to the bottom, it can hold the barricades. But it is a very dangerous subclass.