"Lumpen"

[leftace53]

So I heard this word "lumpen" being thrown around quite a lot a while ago, and I didn't know what it was, so after looking it up, wikipedia said it was a group Marx had thought would never achieve class conciousness.

I'm confused as to how a group could never achieve class conciousness? What type of people would be considered as lumpen? Is wiki even right in describing what a lumpen is (if not, what is a lumpen)?

[theAnarch]

Lumpen Proletarian is essentially a class made up of two groups of people

A. a section of the working class thats driven under the level of being wage laborers usually through economic forces such as prolonged unemployment. Such as prostitutes, and people who become petite drug dealers to feed them selves.

B. Social parasites that make there living through parasiting off the working and middle classes, examples are gangsters, extortionists, bandits, pimps and other brigands

[ContrarianLemming]

Lumpen Proletarian is essentially a class made up of two groups of people

A. a section of the working class thats driven under the level of being wage laborers usually through economic forces such as prolonged unemployment. Such as prostitutes, and people who become petite drug dealers to feed them selves.

B. Social parasites that make there living through parasiting off the working and middle classes, examples are gangsters, extortionists, bandits, pimps and other brigands

correct, however the idea hat a prostitute can't have class consciousness is absurd.
Lumpen are the lowest class, but saying that they can't have class consciousness is rediculious.

[Uppercut]

Could there be ordinary workers that do not achieve class-consciousness do to social or cultural backwardness? For example, a miner that refuses to help the other miners in a strike because his mind is too convoluted or unaware? I always though there could be, but I could be wrong if the lumpenproletariat are simply gansters, prostitutes, drug dealers, etc.

[theAnarch]

correct, however the idea hat a prostitute can't have class consciousness is absurd.
Lumpen are the lowest class, but saying that they can't have class consciousness is rediculious.

I think Marx was speaking out against thoughs who thought you could rely on the lumpen class to make a revolution such as groups like the NBPP or MIM.

[meow]

lumpen is those who dont have access to means of production. the chronic unemployed and many homeless are included. they cant or dont want work at "normal" job.
they arent "lowest" they are just a different marxist class. other sociologists use things like access to political power to group people. some sociologists dont even use "class" any more. but things like "risk" to group people. people like ulrich beck say risk is distributed uneven in society. an example poor people are more at risk of natural disaster (such as hurricane).

[Obs]

gangsters, extortionists, bandits, pimps and other brigands
All of these are either proletarian, petit bourgeois or true bourgeois. Gangs, prostitution rings, and the like are all capitalist ventures.

[Hit The North]

correct, however the idea hat a prostitute can't have class consciousness is absurd.
Lumpen are the lowest class, but saying that they can't have class consciousness is rediculious.

Class consciousness works on two general levels:
1. A recognition of your shared interest with others in the same class position.
2. A recognition that we stand opposed to other social classes in society.

As Marx argued, a class has to change from being a class-in-itself (its objective collective position within the relations of production) and become a class-for-itself (i.e. act from the point of view of having class consciousness). However, before a class can be 'for itself' it has to be 'in itself'. The problem with the lumpen proletariat, is that is is not a class-in-itself in that its members do not share a common relation to the means of production. It will therefore never become class conscious.

Even many workers do not possess class consciousness. It is not something which appear spontaneously, but something which is achieved through workers' experience of struggle against the other classes which oppress or exploit it.

Now, as we know, in modern capitalist society, there are many factors which seek to undermine class consciousness, but two general ones are:

1. The competition which capitalism forces between workers individually, sometimes between sectors.
2. Various ideological discourses which have the effect of concealing the class nature of society.

[The Idler]

Lumpens are the ones who would be sabotaging any workers' revolution. Not necessarily the prostitutes, homeless or unemployed. Lumpens are defined by being counter-revolutionary.

[Taikand]

What about organised crime?

[ContrarianLemming]

Lumpens are the ones who would be sabotaging any workers' revolution. Not necessarily the prostitutes, homeless or unemployed. Lumpens are defined by being counter-revolutionary.

In what way are prostitutes, homeless and unemployed counter revolutionary?

I also remind you'se of the Iron Column of the CNT/FAI, a collumn made up entirely of petty criminals.
Pretty revolutionary.

[ContrarianLemming]

Taikand:

What about organised crime?

Organized criminals such as the mafia are capitalists, they control means of production of the illegal sort. The way the tack protection money off shopkeepers (and shops they control) could only be called capitalist. They also control a lot of trade and regulate it's traffic.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Different people have used the word in different ways. Bakunin for example used the word to describe individuals on the periphery of capitalist developement*, rather than simply professional criminals.

*The same kinds of people who would later make up the bulk of Pancho Villa's army, in contrast to the more peasant-based army of Zapata.

[meow]

Lumpens are the ones who would be sabotaging any workers' revolution. Not necessarily the prostitutes, homeless or unemployed. Lumpens are defined by being counter-revolutionary.
your definition is not based on any useful metric. it is not marxist definition. it is not anarchist definition.

what about the capitalist? they to sabotage any revolution. but they are not lumpen by useful definition.

[theAnarch]

This is kind off a side issue but just to clarify, I did not mean that the unemployed are lumpen being unemployed alone does not change someones class character. I was simply giving an example of long term chronic unemployment as one reason why people moved in to criminal behavior.

You have to understand at the time Marx said this it was right after Napoleon III used the lumpens as the base of support for his dictatorship. traditionally in fact the lumpen class after the pette bourgeoisie has been the bread and butter of bonapartist, and fascist regimes. This is why (dispite the fact these claims are blown way out of proportion) capitalism does support having what the conservitives call "welfare bums" that is people totally relient on the bourgeois class for there day to day needs.


This however does not represent the vast majority of the working class on government assistance.