Parasitic 'workers'

[Dr Mindbender]

Theres been a lot of debate about what class soldiers and policemen fall into, but what about those proles who are complicit with the beourgioise on different capacities? The types that are overlooked I mean include tax collectors, traffic wardens, debt collectors, bailiffs etc. Are these examples of lumpen-proles?

[which doctor]

No, they are not lumpen at all.

[Red October]

Originally posted by Ulster [email protected] 31, 2007 01:54 pm
Theres been a lot of debate about what class soldiers and policemen fall into, but what about those proles who are complicit with the beourgioise on different capacities? The types that are overlooked I mean include tax collectors, traffic wardens, debt collectors, bailiffs etc. Are these examples of lumpen-proles?
Aren't the lumpenproles people who sell their labor power in illegal ways like drug dealers, prostitutes, etc?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by Ulster [email protected] 31, 2007 11:54 am
Theres been a lot of debate about what class soldiers and policemen fall into, but what about those proles who are complicit with the beourgioise on different capacities? The types that are overlooked I mean include tax collectors, traffic wardens, debt collectors, bailiffs etc. Are these examples of lumpen-proles?
Tax collectors (or rather, tax auditors) could be seen as being in the same class as police (because the police have detectives and other investigators).

Traffic wardens are still proles (come on, you don&#39;t expect them to be equipped with sidearms alongside the riot police <_< )... just like firefighters.

Debt collectors? What do you mean here? Employees of a debt collecting agency? [If so, they&#39;re still proles.]

Bailiffs - weren&#39;t they Marx&#39;s translation of "policemen" back in the 19th century? :huh:

[Dr Mindbender]

Originally posted by Jacob Richter+--> (Jacob Richter)Traffic wardens are still proles (come on, you don&#39;t expect them to be equipped with sidearms alongside the riot police <_< )... just like firefighters.[/b]
No, traffic wardens dont carry firearms however their purpose is to enforce state penalties (fines) therefore they could be regarded as having a similar role to the police.

Originally posted by Jacob [email protected]

Debt collectors? What do you mean here? Employees of a debt collecting agency? [If so, they&#39;re still proles.]
Most debt collection agencies (certainly in this country) employ full time professional agents. They can encounter a lot of animosity for obvious reasons so I doubt many part timers would last in it. Again, their purpose is to serve the interests of the capitalist class so they could be regarded as similar to the police.

Jacob Richter

Bailiffs - weren&#39;t they Marx&#39;s translation of "policemen" back in the 19th century? :huh:
I dont know of the situation in other countries but bailiffs are very much operative here- If someone in debt refuses or is unable to pay to a private debt collection agency they can employ bailiffs (nearly always very large, well built, strong people) to forcibly seize goods from the person&#39;s home which can be auctioned to reclaim the sum owed. Sometimes they are accompanied by police officers with an entry warrant. If this is insufficient, they can continue to pursue the matter regardless of the person&#39;s ability to pay.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by Ulster Socialist+January 01, 2008 12:36 pm--> (Ulster Socialist @ January 01, 2008 12:36 pm) No, traffic wardens dont carry firearms however their purpose is to enforce state penalties (fines) therefore they could be regarded as having a similar role to the police. [/b]
Crap. I was thinking more along the lines of folks in the middle of intersections coordinating traffic whenever the traffic lights go bust. :(




Jacob Richter
Debt collectors? What do you mean here? Employees of a debt collecting agency? [If so, they&#39;re still proles.]
Most debt collection agencies (certainly in this country) employ full time professional agents. They can encounter a lot of animosity for obvious reasons so I doubt many part timers would last in it. Again, their purpose is to serve the interests of the capitalist class so they could be regarded as similar to the police.

Ah, I see.

[Dr Mindbender]

Originally posted by Jacob Richter+January 01, 2008 07:49 pm--> (Jacob Richter @ January 01, 2008 07:49 pm)
Ulster [email protected] 01, 2008 12:36 pm
No, traffic wardens dont carry firearms however their purpose is to enforce state penalties (fines) therefore they could be regarded as having a similar role to the police.
Crap. I was thinking more along the lines of folks in the middle of intersections coordinating traffic whenever the traffic lights go bust. :(

[/b]
sorry, i forgot in the states and other places its the cops who have the power to give parking tickets and stuff.

Should&#39;ve explained that.

[#FF0000]

I'm pretty sure that they'd all still be considered proles, since no matter how much we don't like what they do, they do sell their labor to survive, and I was always under the impression that what made a bougie a bougie was whether or not the individual controls the means of production.

[Great Helmsman]

funny, I thought this thread was going to be about the mythical 'proletariat' in the imperialist-nations.

[BobKKKindle$]

Class is defined by one's relationship to the means of production, not the section of the economy (or, in the case of the workers described above, the section of the state apparatus) in which one is employed - and so, as people who sell their labour power as a commodity and do not command ownership of productive resources, such people are workers. However, they differ from the 'main' working class as their labour does not create surplus value - it is labour that creates the institutional and social framework within Capitalism can function.

The Lumpenproletariat is the group that does not earn income through wage labour, and as such is comprised of criminals and those that draw their income form the state in the form of welfare benefits without doing work in return.

A better issue to discuss is whether such workers have the same potential for class consciousness as those engaged in commodity production. Does the close tie between these workers and the state make them less likely to challenge the existing order?

[chimx]

A better issue to discuss is whether such workers have the same potential for class consciousness

I doubt any specific group of workers has an equal potential for class consciousness since this potentiality is so tied to economic factors that inevitably vary from region to region.

[Dr Mindbender]

what i mean is is there a change in status between workers who serve the beourgioise interests to different extents?

Clearly a soldier, policeman or debt collector serves the beourgioise on a more direct level than a factory worker or postman.
They even have an elevated level of power over normal proletarians since a policeman can arrest a worker and a debt collector can seize possessions.

[Luís Henrique]

I would use the term "parasitic" with great reservations. It tends to be tied, in people's imagination, to a moral issue. But "parasitic" capital is only such in relation to other branches of capital - bankers are "parasitic" because they exploit industrial companies; but then industrial capital isn't "parasitic" because it exploits workers... so this can be an ideological tool in interbourgeois disputes, an element in the bourgeois ideology of "producerism".

On the other hand, workers who work for "parasitic" capitalists seem, to me, not really different from productive workers, except in ways unrelated to that precise characteristic (it is common that some layers of "improductive" workers have better education and earn more money than most productive workers, which makes some of them believe they are not workers, but part of an "intellectual elite", etc). After all, I don't think a welder changes social classes if he quits his job and finds a new one as a retail seller or janitor.

It's important to notice that there are also huge differences among productive workers. Making lethal weapons for Lockheed is not the same as making cookies for Dunkin Donuts, after all.

The lumpenproletariat is made up of people who have to sell their labour force in order to survive, like any other workers - but happen to find a way to circumvent such dreadful circumstance. Beggars, small hucksters, drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, swindlers, petty thieves, etc, etc, etc. What they do does not have to be necessarily illegal, and not unusually it is made illegal exactly to close some loophole that allows people to escape from capital's chains. So I don't think lumpenproletarians are a class apart; rather they are a layer within the working class.

People who have a regular, socially recognised, occupation, cannot be lumpenproletarians. A policeman is not a lumpen, in any meaningful way. A different issue is that many policemen do have clandestine relationships with the lumpenproletariat, selling protection to illegal activities or even blackmailing petty criminals in order to make money besides their wages. I don't think any police force can exist without attracting a significant number of individuals with such characteristics, but this is a different issue: there are criminals in each and every existing social class, from the poorest layers of the working class to the richest elite of financial capital or landed nobility.

Luís Henrique

[La Comédie Noire]

Theres been a lot of debate about what class soldiers and policemen fall into, but what about those proles who are complicit with the beourgioise on different capacities? The types that are overlooked I mean include tax collectors, traffic wardens, debt collectors, bailiffs etc. Are these examples of lumpen-proles?

They are still Proleteriat, they are just the reactionary part of the class, the part you would not expect to start the revolution.


funny, I thought this thread was going to be about the mythical 'proletariat' in the imperialist-nations.

There is a Proleteriat in the first world.

[BobKKKindle$]

They are still Proleteriat, they are just the reactionary part of the class, the part you would not expect to start the revolution.

This is not always true. In Russia, the armed forces had a crucial role, as the military was comprised primarily of conscripted soldiers, originally from isolated rural areas, and soldiers eventually formed an important component of the new political system that emerged during the period of dual power, prior to the october revolution, in the form of the urban soviets. Arguably, creating support amongst the military is an essential precondition for revolution, as if soldiers refuse to use force against workers, the state is deprived of the ultimate source of power - armed bodies of men.

[La Comédie Noire]

This is not always true. In Russia, the armed forces had a crucial role, as the military was comprised primarily of conscripted soldiers, originally from isolated rural areas, and soldiers eventually formed an important component of the new political system that emerged during the period of dual power, prior to the october revolution, in the form of the urban soviets. Arguably, creating support amongst the military is an essential precondition for revolution, as if soldiers refuse to use force against workers, the state is deprived of the ultimate source of power - armed bodies of men.

I wasn't refering to the soldiers, I was refering to the police and the other segments of the working class. Sorry I didn't make that clear. I was actually going to bring up the Petrograd Soldiers.