Lumpenproletariat () is a term used primarily
by Marxist theorists to describe the underclass
devoid of class consciousness.
Coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in
the 1840s, they used it to refer to the "unthinking"
lower strata of society exploited by reactionary
and counter-revolutionary forces, particularly
in the context of the revolutions of 1848.
They dismissed its revolutionary potential
and contrasted it with the proletariat.
Among other groups criminals, vagabonds, and
prostitutes are usually included in this category.
The Social Democratic Party of Germany made
wide use of the term by the turn of the century.
Lenin and Trotsky followed Marx's arguments
and dismissed its revolutionary potential,
while Mao argued it can be utilized by a proper
leadership.
The term was popularized in the West by Frantz
Fanon in the 1960s and has been adopted as
a sociological term.
However, its vagueness and its history as
a term of abuse has led to some criticism.
Some radical groups, most notably the Black
Panthers and the Young Lords, have sought
to mobilize the lumpenproletariat.
== Overview ==
=== Etymology ===
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are generally
considered to have coined the term lumpenproletariat.
It is composed of the German word lumpen,
which is usually translated as "ragged" and
prolétariat, a French word adopted as a common
Marxist term for the class of wage earners
in a capitalist system.
Hal Draper argued that the root is lump ("knave"),
not lumpen.
Bussard noted that the meaning of lump shifted
from being a person dressed in rags in the
17th century to knavery in the 19th century.
=== Definition ===
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language defines it as "the lowest stratum
of the proletariat.
Used originally in Marxist theory to describe
those members of the proletariat, especially
criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed, who
lacked awareness of their collective interest
as an oppressed class."
In modern usage, it is commonly defined to
include the chronically unemployed, the homeless,
and career criminals.
The Communist Party USA website defines it
as follows:
In English translations of Marx and Engels,
lumpenproletariat has sometimes been rendered
as "social scum", "dangerous classes", "ragamuffin",
and "ragged-proletariat".
It has been described by some scholars and
theorists, as well as the Soviet nomenclature,
as a declassed (déclassé) group.
The term "underclass" is considered to be
the modern synonym of lumpenproleteriat.
Scholars note its negative connotations.
Economist Richard McGahey, writing for the
New York Times in 1982, noted that it is one
of the older terms in a "long line of labels
that stigmatize poor people for their poverty
by focusing exclusively on individual characteristics."
He listed the following synonyms: "underclass",
"undeserving poor", and "culture of poverty".
Another synonym is "riff-raff".
The word is used in some languages as a pejorative.
In English it may be used in an informal disapproving
manner to "describe people who are not clever
or well educated, and who are not interested
in changing or improving their situation."
== Usage by Marx and Engels ==
According to Bussard Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels viewed the lumpenproletariat as:
They used the term exclusively with negative
connotations, although their works lack "consistent
and clearly reasoned definition" of the term.
They used the term in various publications
"for diverse purposes and on several levels
of meaning."Hal Draper suggested that the
concept has its roots in Young Hegelian thought
and possibly in G.W.F.
Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right.
While Bussard believes that the idea was "at
one and the same time, a hybrid of new social
attitudes which crystallised in France, England
and Germany, as well as an extension of more
traditional, pre-nineteenth-century views
of the lower classes."
Bussard noted that they often used the term
as a "kind of sociological profanity" and
contrasted between it and "working and thinking"
proletariat.
According to Michael Denning by identifying
the lumpenproletariat, "Marx was combating
the established view that the entire working
class was a dangerous and immoral element.
He drew a line between the proletariat and
the lumpenproletariat to defend the moral
character of the former."
=== In early writings ===
The first collaborative work by Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels to feature the term lumpenproletariat
is The German Ideology, written in 1845−46.
They used it to describe the plebs (plebeians)
of ancient Rome who were midway between freemen
and slaves, never becoming more than a "proletarian
rabble [lumpenproletariat]" and Max Stirner's
"self-professed radical constituency of the
Lumpen or ragamuffin."
The first work written solely by Marx to mention
the term was an article published in the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung in November 1848 which
described the lumpenproletariat as a "tool
of reaction" in the revolutions of 1848 and
as a "significant counterrevolutionary force
throughout Europe."
Engels wrote in The Peasant War in Germany
(1850) that the lumpenproletariat is a "phenomenon
that occurs in a more or less developed form
in all the so far known phases of society".In
The Communist Manifesto (1848), where lumpenproletariat
is commonly translated in English editions
as the "dangerous class" and the "social scum",
Marx and Engels wrote:
=== In writings on France ===
In an article analyzing the June 1848 events
in Paris Engels wrote of the gardes mobiles,
a militia which suppressed the workers' uprising:
"The organized lumpenproletariat had given
battle to the working proletariat.
It had, as was to be expected, put itself
at the disposal of the bourgeoisie."
Thoburn notes that Marx makes his most detailed
descriptions of the lumpenproletariat in his
writings of the revolutionary turmoil in France
between 1848 and 1852: The Class Struggles
in France 1848-1850 (1850) and The Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852).
In The Class Struggles he describes the finance
aristocracy of Louis Philippe I and his July
Monarchy (1830–48) as lumpenproletarian:
"In the way it acquires wealth and enjoys
it the financial aristocracy is nothing but
the lumpenproletariat reborn at the pinnacle
of bourgeois society."
He distinguished the finance aristocracy from
the industrial bourgeoisie as the former became
rich "not by production, but by pocketing
the already available wealth of others."
He further suggests that the lumpenproletariat
is a component of the proletariat, unlike
his earlier works.
He claimed that the gardes mobiles were set
up "to set one segment of the proletariat
against the other":
In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
Marx identified Napoleon III as the "Chief
of the Lumpenproletariat," a claim he made
repeatedly.
He argued that he bought his supporters with
"gifts and loans, these were the limits of
the financial science of the lumpenproletariat,
both the low and the exalted.
Never had a President speculated more stupidly
on the stupidity of the masses."
For Marx, the lumpenproletariat represented
those who were "corrupt, reactionary and without
a clear sense of class-consciousness."
He wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire:
=== Capital ===
In Capital (1867), Marx focused on the oppressive
legislation which turned soldiers and peasants
"en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds,
partly from inclination, in most cases from
stress of circumstances."
By this, he deviated from his focus on the
vicious and degenerate behavior of the lumpenproletariat
in his writings on France.
Instead, he described the lumpenproletariat
as part of the what he called an "industrial
reserve army", which capitalists used as times
required.
Thus, "vagabonds, criminals, prostitutes"
and other lumpenproletariat formed an element
within the "surplus population" in a capitalist
system.
== Left-wing views ==
=== Social Democratic Party of Germany ===
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)
was one of the first to use lumpenproleteriat
in their rhetoric, particularly to indicate
the scope of their view of a "desirable" working
class and exclude the non-respectable poor.
By the early 20th century, the German Marxist
tradition saw workers outside the SPD and/or
labor unions as members of the lumpenproletariat.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
rioting and violence was often attributed
by the SPD and its newspaper Vorwärts to
the lumpenproletariat working in collusion
with the secret police.
Historian Richard J. Evans argued that the
SPD, thus, lost touch with the "militancy
of the classes which it claimed to represent,
a militancy which found expression in frequent
outbursts of spontaneous collective protest,
both political and industrial, at moments
of high social and political tension."
For many German socialists in the imperial
period the lumpenproletariat—especially
prostitutes and pimps—was not only a "political-moral
problem, but also an objective, biological
danger to the health of society."
Karl Kautsky argued in 1890 that it is the
lumpenproletariat and not the "militant industrial
proletariat" that mostly suffer from alcoholism.
August Bebel, pre-World War I leader of the
SPD, linked anti-Semitic proletarians to the
lumpenproletariat as the former failed to
develop class consciousness, which led to
a racial, and not social, explanation of economic
inequality.
=== Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union ===
Vladimir Lenin called socialist attempts to
recruit lumpenproletariat elements "opportunism".
In 1925 Nikolai Bukharin described the lumpenproletariat
as being characterized by "shiftlessness,
lack of discipline, hatred of the old, but
impotence to construct anything new, an individualistic
declassed 'personality' whose actions are
based only on foolish caprices."
In a 1932 article on "How Mussolini Triumphed"
Leon Trotsky described the "declassed and
demoralized" lumpenproletariat as "the countless
human beings whom finance capital itself has
brought to desperation and frenzy."
He argued that capitalism used them through
fascism.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, written from
the Marxist-Leninist perspective, defined
lumpenproletariat as:
The term was rarely used in the Soviet Union
to describe any portion of the Soviet society
because, Hemmerle argues, following the Russian
Revolution of 1917 "millions of people passed
through economic conditions that bore a resemblance
to the traditional meaning of lumpenproletariat".
However, it was used to label labor movements
in capitalist countries which were not pro-Soviet.
Soviet authorities and scholars instead reserved
other terms for their own lumpenproletariat
groups, especially "déclassé elements" (деклассированные
элементы, deklassirovannye elementy),
and viewed them, like Marx, as "social degenerates,
isolated from the forces of production and
incapable of having a working-class consciousness."
Svetlana Stephenson notes that the Soviet
state "for all its ideology of assistance,
cooperation and social responsibility, was
ready to descent on them with all its might."
=== 
China ===
Mao Zedong argued in 1939 that the lumpenproletariat
(Chinese: 游民无产者, pinyin: yóumín
wúchǎnzhě) in China is a legacy of the
country's "colonial and semi-colonial status"
which forced a vast number of people in urban
and rural areas into illegitimate occupations
and activities.
Earlier, in 1928, he asserted that "the only
way" to win over these wayward proletarians
was to carry out intensive thought reform
"so as to effect qualitative changes in these
elements."
He argued that the lumpenproletariat had a
dual nature.
Simultaneously, they were "victimized members
of the laboring masses and untrustworthy elements
with 'parasitic inclinations'", which made
them waver between revolution and counterrevolution.
He believed that lumpenproletariat elements,
such as triads, the organized crime syndicates,
"can become revolutionary given proper leadership".
According to Luo Ruiqing, the Minister of
Public Security, the lumpenproletariat population
consisted of prostitutes, vagrant gangs, and
theft rings and were political problems that
threatened the internal security of China.
Following the Communist victory in the Chinese
Civil War and the proclamation of the People's
Republic of China (PRC), lumpenproletariat
were interned into government-run reeducation
centers.
Some 500,000 people were interned into 920
such centers by 1953.
Historian Aminda Smith notes that the "case
of lumpenproletariat reformatories suggests
that anti-state resistance from members of
the oppressed masses was essential to early-PRC
rhetoric because it validated claims about
the devastating effects of the old society
and the transformative power of socialist
'truth'."
=== Views on its revolutionary potential ===
Sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who later
became a Senator, stated following the riots
of 1967 that the lumpenproletariat is essentially
anarchistic rather than revolutionary.
By the early 1970s some radicals deviated
from the orthodox Marxist viewpoint that the
lumpenproletariat lacks significant revolutionary
potential.
Herbert Marcuse, an American philosopher and
sociologist of the Frankfurt School, believed
that the working class in the US "having been
bought up by the consumer society, has lost
all class consciousness" and lay the hopes
for revolution on the lumpenproletariat—the
social outcasts—led by intellectuals.
Marcuse, along with Afro-Caribbean philosopher
Frantz Fanon and other radical intellectuals,
proposed that elements of the lumpenproletariat
are potentially leading forces in a revolutionary
movement.
According to Michael Denning Fanon revived
the term, long having been disappeared from
left-wing discourse, in this book The Wretched
of the Earth (1961).
He defined the lumpenproletariat as the peasantry
in colonial societies of the Third World not
involved in industrial production who are
unaware of the dominant colonial ideology
and are therefore, "ready, capable and willing
to revolt against the colonial status quo
for liberation."
He described them as "one of the most spontaneous
and the most radically revolutionary forces
of a colonized people."
He was not uncritical of the lumpenproletariat
due to their supposed unpredictability due
to "their ignorance and incomprehension."
Colonial forces could make a use of them as
hired soldiers.Fanon's use of the term prompted
debates and studies, including by Pierre Bourdieu
and Charles van Onselen.
The African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral
was skeptical about the lumpen being used
in anti-colonialist liberation revolution.
His African Party for the Independence of
Guinea and Cape Verde recruited déclassé,
but now lumpenproletariat, groups as the latter
were supportive of the Portuguese colonial
police, while the former, in the absence of
a developed proletariat in Guinea and Cape
Verde, played a dynamic role in anti-colonialist
struggle.
==== Black Panther Party ====
Laura Pulido argues that, historically, the
lumpenproletariat in the US has mostly been
African American due to the nation being racially
constituted.
It is primarily indicated by the high unemployment
and incarceration rates among African Americans.
The Black Panther Party, most prominent revolutionary
socialists in post-war US, "thought of much
of their following as lumpenproletarian."
They adopted Fanon's viewpoint regarding the
revolutionary potential of the group.
Pulido claims the emphasis the Black Panthers
put on the lumpenproletariat was the party's
hallmark.
Its co-founders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton
viewed the African-American lumpenproletariat
as a potential organized threat if the party
did not mobilize them.
Seale included "the brother who's pimping,
the brother who's hustling, the unemployed,
the downtrodden, the brother who's robbing
banks, who's not politically conscious" in
his definition of the lumpenproletariat.
Newton called them "street brothers", alienated
from the system of oppression in the US, and
sought to recruit them into the party.
Their strategy was a controversial one.
Chris Booker and Errol Henderson argued that
problems such as "a lack of discipline, a
tendency toward violence, the importation
of street culture, including crime, and the
use of weapons" by Black Panthers was caused
by the disproportionately high membership
of the lumpenproletariat in their ranks.
==== Young Lords Party ====
The Young Lords Party adopted similar views
to the Black Panther Party, believing in the
potential of the lumpen.
They developed a Lumpen Organization within
their larger organization with the goal of
enlisting the people considered the lumpenproletariat,
or "lumpen," in the struggle; they considered
the lumpen to be "the class in our nation
which for years and years have not been able
to find jobs, and are forced to be drug addicts,
prostitutes, etc." (p. 20) in the face of
the capitalist system the Party considered
an enemy.
Crucial to the party's view on the lumpen
is that, unlike criticisms of the lumpenproletariat
around a perceived lack of productivity and
organization, the Young Lords Party stated
that "it's a law of revolution that the most
oppressed group takes the leadership position"
(p. 42) and that the lumpen would be the immediate
focus of the party's organizing efforts in
liberating all oppressed peoples.
=== Criticism ===
Ernesto Laclau argued that Marx's dismissal
of the lumpenproletariat showed the limitations
of his theory of economic determinism and
argued that the group and "its possible integration
into the politics of populism as an 'absolute
outside' that threatens the coherence of ideological
identifications."
Mark Cowling argues that the "concept is being
used for its political impact rather than
because it provides good explanations" and
that its political impact is "pernicious"
and an "obstacle to clear analysis."
Laura Pulido argues that there is a diversity
in the lumpen population, especially in terms
of consciousness.
==== Anarchist criticism ====
Post-anarchist Saul Newman wrote in 2010 that
classical anarchists argue that the lumpenproletariat
should be designated as a revolutionary class.
According to Tom Brass, individualist anarchist
Max Stirner "celebrated the lumpenproletariat
as authentic rebels."
Anarchist thinker Mikhail Bakunin, who was
dubbed "the lumpen prince" by Engels, wrote
that only in the lumpenproletariat and "and
not in the bourgeois strata of workers, are
there crystallised the entire intelligence
and power of the coming Social Revolution."
Thoburn writes that for him, the lumpenproletariat
represented a "kind of actually existing anarchism."
Ann Robertson notes that Bakunin believed
that "inherent in humanity is a natural essence
which can be suppressed but never entirely
extinguished.
Those in society who are more distant from
the State apparatus (the peasants are scattered
throughout the countryside, the lumpenproletariat
simply refuses to obey the laws) are accordingly
natural leaders".
Bakunin stated:
== Other uses ==
Robert Ritter, a physician and Nazi Germany's
leading expert on Gypsies, considered them
a "highly inferior Lumpenproletariat" as they
were "parasites who lacked ambition and many
of them had become habitual criminals."
Gypsies were seen in post-World War II communist-ruled
eastern and central Europe as an example of
the lumpen proletariat and were, therefore,
subject to an aggressive policy of assimilation.Ken
Gelder noted that in cultural studies, subcultures
are "often positioned outside of class, closer
in kind to Marx's lumpenproletariat, lacking
social consciousness, self-absorbed or self-interested,
at a distance from organised or sanctioned
forms of labour, and so on."In Ukraine, titushky,
pro-Viktor Yanukovych thugs, have been characterized
as lumpen elements.
=== In American political discourse ===
The 1979 report of the Carnegie Council on
Policy Studies in Higher Education warned
that the US is in danger of creating "a permanent
underclass, a self‐perpetuating culture
of poverty, a substantial 'lumpen proletariat'."
Eleanor Holmes Norton wrote in 1985: "An American
version of a lumpenproletariat (the so-called
underclass), without work and without hope,
existing at the margins of society, could
bring down the great cities, sap resources
and strength from the entire society and,
lacking the usual means to survive, prey upon
those who possess them."
According to political scientist Marie Gottschalk
the tough-on-crime stance on African Americans
has been caused by political manipulation
of public fears of a lumpen underclass threatening
the majority as African Americans were perceived
to have turned to crime due to losing in the
deindustrialization of the country.Mark Cowling
argued that there is considerable similarity
in both definition and function between the
lumpenproletariat, as proposed by Marx, and
the contemporary theory of the underclass
by Charles Murray, an American libertarian
political scientist.
Although Murray and Richard Herrnstein did
not use the term in their 1994 book The Bell
Curve, Malcolm Browne noted in his review
in the New York Times that the authors argue
that the United States is being "split between
an isolated caste of ruling meritocrats on
one hand and a vast, powerless Lumpenproletariat
on the other.
Society, the authors predict, will have little
use for this underclass in a world dominated
by sophisticated machines and the bright human
beings who tend them."Francis Levy compared
"basket of deplorables", Hillary Clinton's
phrase to characterize some Trump supporters
during the 2016 presidential election campaign,
to Marx's rhetoric of the lumpenproletariat.
=== Usage in India ===
Ranjit Gupta, the Inspector General of the
West Bengal Police, claimed in 1973 that the
Maoist Naxalite rebels in India were made
of "some intellectuals and lumpen proletariat.
Their main target was policemen—and they
thought that if the police force could be
torn apart, so could society."
Political scientist Atul Kohli claimed in
his 2001 book that "variety of lumpen groups,
especially unemployed youth in northern India,
have joined right-wing proto-fascist movements
in recent years," especially the Hindu nationalist
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
In 2010s, cow vigilantism in India has been
linked by Pavan Varma to "lumpen Hindu fanaticism"
and to "lumpen and self-appointed gau rakshaks"
by Bhalchandra Mungekar.
=== Islamism ===
Sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim argued that
the urban lumpenproletariat in the Arab Middle
East has "proven particularly open" to the
appeal of political Islam: "In fact, the Islamists'
populist appeal positively resonates among
it."
Jonathan Power notes that many observers familiar
with the madrasas in Pakistan, such as Haqqania,
"have seen firsthand the preaching and indoctrination
of hatred by clerics, creating a class of
religious lumpen proletariat."
== Research ==
Ernesto Ragionieri, an Italian Marxist historian,
argued to have confirmed in his 1953 book
Un comune socialista that the lumpenproletariat
is essentially a conservative force based
on his study of Sesto Fiorentino.
He found that some 450-500 members of the
working class had joined the liberal-conservative
party, which was led by landowners, industrialists,
and professionals in hopes of getting recommendation
that would allow them to join Richard-Ginori,
the largest local employer, which refused
to hire socialists.
=== Violence ===
In 1966 sociologist David Matza cited disorder
and violence as two of the most prominent
characteristics of the disreputable poor.
In his 1977 book Class, State, and Crime,
Marxist historian Richard Quinney defined
lumpen crimes (or "predatory crimes") as those
intended for purely personal profit.
In a 1986 study sociologist David Brownfield
defined the lumpen-proletariat (or the "disreputable
poor") by their unemployment and receipt of
welfare benefits.
He concluded that "while no significant effects
of class can be found using a neo-Marxist
conception of class, gradational measures
of class (occupation and education) [...] Measures
of disreputable poverty—unemployment and
welfare status [recipiency]—are relatively
strong correlates of violent behavior."
He explained:
== Imitations ==
Several terms have been coined in imitation
of lumpenproletariat such as:
lumpenintelligentsia, to depreciatively describe
in Britain, "a section of the intelligentsia
regarded as making no useful contribution
to society, or as lacking taste, culture,
etc.
Also more generally: the intelligentsia collectively,
regarded as worthless or powerless."
lumpen militariat, coined by Ali Mazrui in
1973, to describe the newly emerging "class
of semi-organized, rugged, and semi-literate
soldiery which has begun to claim a share
of power and influence in what would otherwise
have become a heavily privileged meritocracy
of the educated" in post-colonial Africa.
Trumpen Proletariat, coined by Jonah Goldberg
in 2015, to describe Donald Trump's "biggest
fans", who he believed "are not to be relied
upon in the conservative cause" in the same
way the lumpen proletariat was not to be relied
upon for a socialist revolution.
Daniel Henninger used the term as well in
The Wall Street Journal.
== References ==
notes
citations
== Bibliography ==
== Further reading ==
Bourdin, Jean-Claude (2013).
"Marx and the Lumpenproletariat".
Actuel Marx (in French).
Presses Universitaires de France (54): 39–55.
doi:10.3917/amx.054.0039.
(English abstract)
Bovenkerk, Frank (1984).
"The Rehabilitation of the Rabble: How and
why Marx and Engels wrongly depicted the lumpenproletariat
as a reactionary force".
Netherlands Journal of Sociology.
20: 13–41.
Draper, Hal (December 1972).
"The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat in Marx
and Engels".
Economies et Societes.
Institut de Sciences Mathematiques et Economiques
Appliquees.
15: 2285-3 12.
ISSN 0013-0567.
Mills, Nathaniel (2017).
Ragged Revolutionaries: The Lumpenproletariat
and African American Marxism in.
Depression-Era Literature.
University of Massachusetts Press.
ISBN 978-1-62534-279-9.
