What do you think about the revolutionary potential of the lumpen?

[Dialectical Wizard]

I would like to read your opinions on this subject.

[Rooster]

I'm sure that Marx considered them unreliable as they're outside of the system so they won't feel the need to get rid of the system. Bukinin I believe thought otherwise, that them being outside of the system made them the best type of person to be revolutionary and that the proletariats who worked were too disciplined in capitalism to overthrow it. Personally, I do not think of them as being helpful to a revolution for the same reasons Marx did.

[Bronco]

Yeah this was Bakunin's view on it:

The flower of the proletariat does not mean, as it does to the Marxians, the upper layer, the most civilized and com fortably off in the working world, that layer of semi-bourgeois workers, which is precisely the class the Marxians want to use to con stitute their fourth governing class, and which is really capable of forming one if things are not set to rights in the interests of the great mass of the proletariat; for with its relative comfort and semi-bourgeois position, this upper layer of workers is unfortunately only too deeply penetrated with all the political and social prejudices and all the narrow aspirations and pretensions of the bourgeois. It can be truly said that this upper layer is the least socialist, the most individualist in all the proletariat.

By the flower of the proletariat, I mean above all, that great mass, those millions of non-civilized, disinherited, wretched and illiterates whom Messrs. Engels and Marx mean to subject to the paternal regime of a very strong government, to employ an expression used by Engels in a letter to our friend Cafiero. Without doubt, this will be for their own salvation, as of course all governments, as is well known, have been established solely in 'the interests of the masses themselves. By the flower of the proletariat I mean precisely that eternal "meat" for governments, that great rabble of the people ordinarily designated by Messrs. Marx and Engels by the phrase at once picturesque and contemptuous of "lumpen proletariat", the "riff–raff", that rabble which, being very nearly unpolluted by all bourgeois civilization carries in its heart, in its aspirations, in all necessities and the miseries of its collective position, all the germs of the Socialism of the future, and which alone is powerful enough to-day to inaugurate the Social Revolution and bring it to triumph

[thesadmafioso]

The lumpen proletariat cannot support a revolution as they are not a part of capitalistic development. As they do not participate in the conflict between capital and labor and as they play no part in most of the antagonisms of capitalist society which lead to radicalization and class consciousness, they cannot sew revolution.

The lumpen are simply without any potential to be unified or led in a revolutionary fashion as they are more or less unaffected by the course of historical development.

[Coach Trotsky]

First, you need to define what you consider to be "lumpen" in today's world.

I've heard a hell of a lot of Leftists use that term to describe any poor minorities and long-term unemployed people. Worse, they then take this "they are lesser scum" attitude toward these so-called "lumpens" as broadly defined. It reeks of middle class elitist Leftism, and it will kill the revolutionary essence of these politics if allowed to stand and spread unchallenged. Yeah, they will deny that they're looking down on poor minorities and unemployed/underemployed people, but look to their deeds, their approach to such people (they don't have any active approach to these people? :rolleyes:) Just look at how absent and impotent they were in England in the communities where rebellions occured, then many of them responded by giving the moralizing middle finger to the worst off more precarious and oppressed peoples in society...that tells everything you everything you really need to know about most of what calls itself 'Left' these days.

Define lumpen specifically. Otherwise, it's just a middle class Leftie codeword to reject the "underclass" as "lumpen scum".

[Flying Trotsky]

Well, Marx didn't think much of the revolutionary potential of the lumpen, and unfortunately, most of us tend to sideline them as well.

Which is a shame, considering that the lumpen (the criminals, thieves, beggars, etc.) don't exactly want to be the lumpen, and for the most part, those who are criminals, thieves, beggars, etc. are only so because they were dealt a lousy hand by the unfair Capitalist system.

I dunno- I think in many respects, the lumpen might be even more revolutionary-inclined than some of the proletariat, as they have really nothing left to lose. From what I recall of the French revolutions, the lumpen played a pretty big role in all of those.

[thefinalmarch]

If working class revolution is understood to necessarily primarily involve the seizure of the means of production by the proletariat, then the lumpen-proletariat is pretty much non-revolutionary in this economic aspect. However, individual lumpen would most definitely be able to provide material support for the revolution, by way of participating in any riots (which is a pretty huge possibility), or self-defence of worker-controlled urban areas against state reaction.

[citizen of industry]

Well, as tools of revolutionary change, a worker can join a labor union, join a political party or some other organization. But the lumpen-proletariat, being unemployed and probably homeless, is unlikely to do these things. They can steal and riot, but are unlikely to spark a riot themselves, they would just be following on the heals of others. On top of that they can be easily bribed, and could become scabs, fascist thugs, etc.

But I think if a large percentage of society was lumpen - 50% unemployment for example and people not able to support families, it would be a revolutionary class. But then would that even be considered lumpen-proletariat anymore?

As for prisoners, I wouldn't consider them lumpen. There have been prison strikes, they participate in production through forced labour, still have contact with political organizations through visitation, letters, publications, etc.