What class do you belong to

[EvilRedGuy]

As the thread says, which class do you go under.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

What's the difference between an unemployed worker and a lumpen?

[Os Cangaceiros]

Unemployeditarian.

[Os Cangaceiros]

What's the difference between an unemployed worker and a lumpen?

If you're unemployed, that just means you're not currently employed (obviously). That's pretty much a constant reality for much of the working class.

Whereas "lumpen" refers to something else entirely. That's when every day you're hustlin', every day, every day you're hustlin'.

[EvilRedGuy]

Honestly, i got this from another user. But i would think that you can still be working class even if you're unemployed/not working. It dosen't make you Lumpen-Proletariat that you have no job, Lumpen-Proletariat makes up the disabled(i think, maybe theres a disabled working class too), homeless, futureless who have to end up in criminality.

And yeah i added the Petty-bourg together whith the more powerfull bourgeois, but they are both scum so who cares.

[¿Que?]

If you're unemployed, that just means you're not currently employed (obviously). That's pretty much a constant reality for much of the working class.

Whereas "lumpen" refers to something else entirely. That's when every day you're hustlin', every day, every day you're hustlin'.
Hustlin' fine, I guess. I'm more likely to be grindin' on any given day, though.

[Sasha]

i think ypou first need to define what these term mean to you, just to quote the first paragraph of wikipedias entry on middle class:


The middle class are any class in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Weber) socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class) and upper class (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_class). In Marxist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist) terms, middle class commonly refers to either the bourgeoisie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoisie) before or during capitalism,[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)] or some emergent new class (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_class) within capitalism. In common parlance, middle class refers to a set of culturally distinct contemporary Western (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world) cultures that emphasize consumerism and property ownership within capitalism.
The common measures of what constitutes middle class vary significantly between cultures. In urban India (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India), for example, a family is considered middle class if it resides in an owner-occupied property. In the United States, many families where the primary income-earner is employed in a blue collar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_collar) job consider themselves middle class. In the United Kingdom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom) their equivalents would likely be termed working class (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class), because the level required to be middle class is commonly believed to be set much higher - and may include private schooling for children, ownership of a sizeable family house, luxuries such as family skiing holidays, and the main income-earner either holding a senior role in the professions or themselves being an owner/director of a corporation.


so i dont know, i work an close too minimum wage job but my oldfolk got decent paying jobs in education so i grew up the poorest in an posh neighbourhood.
if you look solely at my job i guess im working class. if you look at my socio-economic background i could be middle class (the US definition, not the british one)

[ContrarianLemming]

Lumpen are proles who can never have working class revolutionary views, they're not "extra poor" workers, though they tend to be.

[Bilan]

I don't own the means of production, but I really like Oscar Wilde. So bourgeois.

According to revlefters anyway.

[Zanthorus]

Lumpen are proles who can never have working class revolutionary views, they're not "extra poor" workers, though they tend to be.

Lumpen is actually the german word for 'rags'. It can be used as a vague reference to those on the lowest rung of modern society, or as a general word for criminals and other assorted 'social scum'. Bakunin stated that the flower of the proletariat, the true revolutionary potential, came from the lumpenproletariat, by which he seems to mean the poorest layers of the working-class. His view was at least in part inspired by Wilhelm Weitling, who thought that revolution would be achieved by an armed insurrection of the lowest and most wretched members of society, bandits, robbers, criminals, the more wretched the better. When Marx talked about the lumpen he talked about the "social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society."

So yeah, generally it has in a vague way referred to the poorest and most outcast sections of society, and not to working-class people who inextricably can't acquire revolutionary views.

[Pirate Utopian]

Gangsta, gangsta. It's not about a salary it's all about reality.

[Il Medico]

I don't own the means of production, but I really like Oscar Wilde. So bourgeois.

According to revlefters anyway.
This.

[Panda Tse Tung]

Working class, whats middle class even supposed to mean (seeing as petit-bourgeouisie is seperately reffered too)? The richer working class?

[The Douche]

Somewhere between grinding and hustling, I am in a hella sick communist street gang, afterall.

[black magick hustla]

the drinking class

[ed miliband]

the drinking class

Our class is recognised by the SWP, y'know.

[Magón]

The Poor University Student: Working half his daylight hours at school or work, and half his nighttime hours studying or working. (With a break or two here and there.)

[Lyev]

Naturally, being a trotskyite, I am a petit-bourgeois student.

[EvilRedGuy]

Working class, whats middle class even supposed to mean (seeing as petit-bourgeouisie is seperately reffered too)? The richer working class?

Uhhh? I think middle class are those who are inbetween and have the change to come higher (petty-bourgeois, etc) or lower according to how they do.

[A.J.]

Honestly, i got this from another user. But i would think that you can still be working class even if you're unemployed/not working. It dosen't make you Lumpen-Proletariat that you have no job, Lumpen-Proletariat makes up the disabled(i think, maybe theres a disabled working class too), homeless, futureless who have to end up in criminality.


Agreed. Marx himself referred to the unemployed as the "reserve army of the working class".

I would only consider an unemployed person to be 'lumpen' if they were habitually unemployed and engaged in some form of criminalistic activity(e.g. drug dealing, pimping etc.) to supplement their income.

I also consider all nightclub doormen/bouncers to be steroid-abusing lumpen scum.

[Sam_b]

Worthless thread like. Nice one.

[Knight of Cydonia]

i'm a working class for life baby!!!:lol:

[Queercommie Girl]

I'm a "semi-lumpenised petit-bonapartist".