{{short description|Marxist term to describe a subsection of the underclass}} {{Italic title}} {{Marxism|sociology}} In Marxist theory, the '''''Lumpenproletariat''''' ({{IPA|de|ˈlʊmpn̩pʁoletaʁi̯ˌaːt|lang|De-Lumpenproletariat.ogg}}; {{IPAc-en|ˌ|l|ʌ|m|p|ə|n|p|r|əʊ|l|ɪ|ˈ|t|ɛər|i|ə|t}}) is the underclass devoid of class consciousness.<ref name="Hemmerle"/> Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the word in the 1840s and 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 the revolutionary potential of the ''Lumpenproletariat'' 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 20th century. Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky followed Marx's arguments and dismissed the group's revolutionary potential, while Mao Zedong argued that proper leadership could harness it. The word ''Lumpenproletariat'', popularized in the West by Frantz Fanon's ''The Wretched of the Earth'' in the 1960s, has been adopted as a sociological term. However, what some consider to be its vagueness and its history as a term of abuse has led to some criticism. Some revolutionary groups, most notably the Black Panther Party 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''.{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=680}}{{sfn|Thoburn|2002|p=440}} It is composed of the German word {{Lang|de|Lumpen}}, which is usually translated as "ragged"{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=675}}<ref>{{cite web|title=lumpenproletariat|url=https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/lumpenproletariat|website=Collins English Dictionary|quote=German, literally: ragged proletariat}}</ref> 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''.{{sfn|Thoburn|2002|p=440}} 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.{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=679}}
===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."<ref>{{cite web|title=lumpenproletariat|url=https://www.thefreedictionary.com/lumpenproletariat|publisher=TheFreeDictionary.com}}</ref> In modern usage, it is commonly defined to include the chronically unemployed, the homeless, and career criminals.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Holt|first1=Justin P.|title=The Social Thought of Karl Marx|date=2014|publisher=SAGE|isbn=9781412997843|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=oc45DQAAQBAJ&dq=dangerous+class&pg=PT117 105]|chapter=Class}}</ref>
In English translations of Marx and Engels, ''lumpenproletariat'' has sometimes been rendered as "social scum", "dangerous classes", "ragamuffin", and "ragged-proletariat".{{sfn|Thoburn|2002|p=440}} It has been described by some scholars and theorists, as well as the Soviet nomenclature, as a declassed (déclassé) group.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Kernig|first1=Claus Dieter|author-link1=:de:Claus Dieter Kernig|title=Marxism, Communism, and Western Society: Class, Class struggle|date=1972|publisher=Herder and Herder|location=New York|page=3|quote=...declassed groups (the Lumpen- proletariat, beggars)...}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Cheng|first1=Lucie|title=Labor Immigration Under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States Before World War II|date=1984|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=9780520048294|page=[https://archive.org/details/laborimmigration00chen/page/300 <!-- quote=declassed lumpen. --> 300]|quote=...population of declassed or lumpen proletariat....}}</ref>{{sfn|Abdullah|2006|p=100}}<ref name="Welshman"/>{{sfn|Thoburn|2002|p=435}} The term "underclass" is considered to be the modern synonym of ''lumpenproleteriat''.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Peterson|first1=Paul E.|author-link1=Paul E. Peterson|title=The Urban Underclass and the Poverty Paradox|journal=Political Science Quarterly|date=1992|volume=106|issue=4|pages=617–637|doi=10.2307/2151796|jstor=2151796|quote=underclass, like lumpen proletariat, is also a suitable concept for those who, like Karl Marx, want to identify a group shaped and dominated by a society's economic and political forces but who have no productive role.}}</ref>{{efn|"the lumpen proletariat, or what today might be called the 'underclass'."{{sfn|Pulido|2006|p=142}} }} Scholars note its negative connotations.{{efn|"The Marxist term for this underclass, the lumpenproleteriat, conveys distinctly negative images."{{sfn|Brownfield|1986|p=426}} }} 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".<ref>{{cite news|last=McGahey|first=Richard|title=Poverty's Voguish Stigma|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/12/opinion/poverty-s-voguish-stigma.html|work=The New York Times|date=12 March 1982}}</ref> Another synonym is "riff-raff".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Carr|first1=Edwar Hallett|author-link1=E. H. Carr|title=Karl Marx: A Study in Fanaticism|date=1938|publisher=Dent|page=60|quote=...Marx had a name for these proletarians who had not yet seen the light — the ''Lumpenproletariat'' or riff-raff...}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite web|title=lumpen|url=http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/lumpen|website=dictionary.cambridge.org|publisher=Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary}}</ref>
==Usage by Marx and Engels== According to historian Robert Bussard, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels viewed the ''lumpenproletariat'' as:{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=677}} {{quote frame|essentially parasitical group was largely the remains of older, obsolete stages of social development, and that it could not normally play a progressive role in history. Indeed, because it acted only out of socially ignorant self-interest, the ''lumpenproletariat'' was easily bribed by reactionary forces and could be used to combat the true proletariat in its efforts to bring about the end of bourgeois society. Without a clear class-consciousness, the ''lumpenproletariat'' could not play a positive role in society. Instead, it exploited society for its own ends, and was in turn exploited as a tool of destruction and reaction.}} They used the term exclusively with negative connotations, although their works lack a "consistent and clearly reasoned definition" of the term.{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=676}} They used the term in various publications "for diverse purposes and on several levels of meaning."{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=677}}
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''.{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=676}} 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."{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=676}} Bussard noted that they often used the term as a "kind of sociological profanity" and contrasted between it and "working and thinking" proletariat.{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=683}} 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."{{sfn|Denning|2010|p=87}}
And the above did not limit expressions to where the concept originated. A graduate student argued ''lumpenproletariat'' was one of the end products of ''The 1789-1848 Struggle To Define The Concept Proletariat''.<ref name="ReferenceA">Yaraskavitch, James. 1996 ''On The 'Scientific' Use Of The Concept Lumpenproletariat''. Ottawa, ON: Carleton University, M.A. Thesis. OCLC=(OCoLC)1056456346</ref> This student found the term proletariat was invented during the 509BCE-27BCE Republic of Rome by Cicero (106BCE-43BCE) as a concept reflecting a specific point in time during the earlier 753BCE-509BCE Kingdom of Rome such that the synchronic word ''proletariat'' essentially meant the same idea as the ahistorical synchronic words ''working class''.<ref>Yaraskavitch, James. 1996 ''On The 'Scientific' Use Of The Concept Lumpenproletariat''. Ottawa, ON: Carleton University, M.A. Thesis. OCLC=(OCoLC)1056456346|p=44</ref> In later 18th century France, this ahistorical synchronic view of the word was accepted and enhanced in the work of Montesquieu (1689-1755) in his 1748:(p527) work ''The Spirit Of Laws'' and also by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in the 1762:(p95) work ''The Social Contract''.<ref>Yaraskavitch, James. 1996 ''On The 'Scientific' Use Of The Concept Lumpenproletariat''. Ottawa, ON: Carleton University, M.A. Thesis. OCLC=(OCoLC)1056456346|p=45-46</ref> This ahistorical point in time view of ''proletariat'' held until the 1789-1799 French Revolution when Journalist Gracchus Babeuf (1760-1797) used the term in one of his 1794 pamphlets, as a historical diachronic continuity, implying that the ''in struggle with a class above proletariat'' no longer meant the same idea as ahistorical ''working class''<ref>Yaraskavitch, James. 1996 ''On The 'Scientific' Use Of The Concept Lumpenproletariat''. Ottawa, ON: Carleton University, M.A. Thesis. OCLC=(OCoLC)1056456346|p=47</ref> and so the fight over a diachrony and synchrony usage of ''proletariat'' began.
Endorsing the Cicero-Montesquieu-Rousseau view of ''proletariat'' in 1820, was the early Sociologist Auguste Comte (1798-1857), but finally leaving this Comte view in 1824 was his previously agreeable boss, Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), who broke down and finally agreed that Babeuf was correct, only two years before he died as personal frustration with his inability to 'sell' his harmonious view of France to influential natives ultimately seized him.<ref>Yaraskavitch, James. 1996 ''On The 'Scientific' Use Of The Concept Lumpenproletariat''. Ottawa, ON: Carleton University, M.A. Thesis. OCLC=(OCoLC)1056456346|p=47-48</ref> Engels in 1842 and Marx in 1844 entered this debate and sided with Babeuf and Saint-Simon in saying that ''proletariat'' was a historical concept reflecting people who had a significant optimistic role to play in humanity's future.<ref>Yaraskavitch, James. 1996 ''On The 'Scientific' Use Of The Concept Lumpenproletariat''. Ottawa, ON: Carleton University, M.A. Thesis. OCLC=(OCoLC)1056456346|p=54-58</ref> But the duos optimistic view of ''proletariat'' did not hold as they soon expressed frustrations, within four separate documents written in 1844-1845, with their ''proletariat'', and so they realized that a complimentary diachronic term needed to be invented to act as a form of pessimistic 'theoretical space filler' which played the role of a polar opposite to their optimistic view of ''proletariat''.<ref>Yaraskavitch, James. 1996 ''On The 'Scientific' Use Of The Concept Lumpenproletariat''. Ottawa, ON: Carleton University, M.A. Thesis. OCLC=(OCoLC)1056456346|p=59-64</ref> So between late night glasses of wine in Brussels, Belgium, the multi-lingual duo, who both knew over 10 languages, invented the Germanic languages word ''lumpenproletariat'' which primarily meant to them, "mass" or "size" since everywhere they looked about them, they saw ''lumpenproletariat'' easily outnumbering the ''proletariat''.<ref>Yaraskavitch, James. 1996 ''On The 'Scientific' Use Of The Concept Lumpenproletariat''. Ottawa, ON: Carleton University, M.A. Thesis. OCLC=(OCoLC)1056456346|p=66-68</ref>
Yet ''lumpenproletariat'' as describing a "mass" was not new in the 19th century; in the 17th century, England's first Poet Laureate John Dryden (1631-1700) wrote this phrase within a 1679 poem "How dull and how insensible a beast is man, ... philosophers and poets vainly strove, in every age the lumpish mass to move".<ref>Yaraskavitch, James. 1996 ''On The 'Scientific' Use Of The Concept Lumpenproletariat''. Ottawa, ON: Carleton University, M.A. Thesis. OCLC=(OCoLC)1056456346|p=IX</ref> The duo's new word's built-in ambiguity, plus their added lack of a full definition of the term among any one of the 88 term uses during 1845-1890, ensured that any pursuing censor faced a challenge in decoding their new literary invention.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Since their ''lumpenproletariat'' was a ''proletariat'' polar opposite, they borrowed from Adam Smith (1723-1790) and his 1776 ''The Wealth Of Nations'' wherein Smith used his productive labour and unproductive labour distinction; they decreed that the ''proletariat'' emerged as the result of their mostly productive labour while the ''lumpenproletariat'' emerged mostly from doing unproductive labour.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
===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.{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=677}}<ref>{{Cite book|first1=Karl|last1=Marx|first2=Friedrich|last2=Engels|orig-date=1846|publisher=Progress Publishers|location=Moscow|date=1976|edition=3rd|title=The German Ideology|url=https://archive.org/details/germanideologymarxengels/page/n87/mode/2up|page=93}}</ref> 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."{{sfn|Thoburn|2002|p=440}} 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."{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=683}} 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".<ref name="Khanna"/><ref>Engels, Friedrich. 1978. "The Peasant War in Germany". In ''The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels'', vol. 10, 397–482. New York: International.; Also in {{cite book|last1=Engels|first1=Friedrich|translator=Moissaye Joseph Olgin|author-link1=Friedrich Engels|title=The Peasant War in Germany|date=1926|publisher=International Publishers|location=New York|chapter=The Economic Situation and Social Classes in Germany|title-link=The Peasant War in Germany}} ([https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/ch01.htm web view])</ref>
In ''The Communist Manifesto'' (1848), where ''lumpenproletariat'' is commonly translated in English editions as the "dangerous class" and the "social scum",{{sfn|Hayes|1988|p=447}}<ref>{{cite book|last1=Marx|first1=Karl|last2=Engels|first2=Friedrich|title=Manifesto of the Communist Party|date=1888|publisher=Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company|location=Chicago|page=[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AManifesto_of_the_Communist_Party.djvu/31 27]|title-link=:s:Manifesto of the Communist Party|translator=((Samuel Moore))}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Ollman|first=Bertell|author-link=Bertell Ollman|title=Marx's Use of "Class"|journal=American Journal of Sociology|date=1968|volume=73|issue=5|pages=573–580|doi=10.1086/224531|s2cid=143725693}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Lumpenproletariat|url=https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/u.htm|website=marxists.org|publisher=Marxists Internet Archive|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171031195626/https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/u.htm|archive-date=2017-10-31}} ()</ref> Marx and Engels wrote:{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=677}} {{quote frame|The ''lumpenproletariat'' is passive decaying matter of the lowest layers of the old society, is here and there thrust into the [progressive] movement by a proletarian revolution; [however,] in accordance with its whole way of life, it is more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues.}}
===In writings on France=== [[File:Horace Vernet-Barricade rue Soufflot.jpg|thumb|A depiction of the 1848 uprising in Paris by Horace Vernet]] thumb|Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte
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."{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=683}} 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).{{sfn|Thoburn|2002|p=441}} In ''The Class Struggles'' he describes the finance aristocracy of Louis Philippe I and his July Monarchy (1830–1848) 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."{{sfn|Thoburn|2002|p=444}}{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=684}} 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."{{sfn|Hayes|1988|p=449}} 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":{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=684}} {{quote frame|They belonged for the most part to the ''lumpenproletariat'', which forms a mass clearly distinguished from the industrial proletariat in all large cities, a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds, living on the refuse of society, people without a fixed line of work.}}
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."{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=685}} He wrote in ''The Eighteenth Brumaire'':{{sfn|Bussard|1987|pp=685–686}} {{quote frame|Alongside ruined ''roués'' with questionable means of support and of dubious origin, degenerate and adventurous scions of the bourgeoisie, there were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves, swindlers, charlatans, ''lazzaroni'', pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, procurers, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, rag-pickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars; in short, the entirely undefined, disintegrating mass, thrown hither and yon, which the French call ''la bohème''.}}
===''Capital''=== In ''Capital'' (1867), Marx claimed that legislation 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 what he called an "industrial reserve army", which capitalists used as required. Thus, "vagabonds, criminals, prostitutes" and other ''lumpenproletariat'' formed an element within the "surplus population" in a capitalist system.{{sfn|Hayes|1988|p=458}}
==Left-wing views== ===Social Democratic Party of Germany=== The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was one of the first to use ''lumpenproletariat'' in its rhetoric, particularly to indicate the scope of its view of a "desirable" working class and to exclude the non-respectable poor.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Stewart|first1=Michael|editor1-last=Hann|editor1-first=C. M.|title=Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia|date=2002|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781134504459|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=-neBAgAAQBAJ&dq=social+democratic+germany+lumpenproletariat&pg=PA149 149]|chapter=Deprivation, the Roma and 'the underclass'}}</ref> By the early 20th century, the German Marxist tradition saw workers outside the SPD and/or labor unions as members of the ''lumpenproletariat''.<ref name="Hemmerle"/> 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."<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Evans|first1=Richard J.|author-link1=Richard J. Evans|title='Red Wednesday' in Hamburg: Social democrats, police and Lumpenproletariat in the suffrage disturbances of 17 January 1906|journal=Social History|date=1979|volume=4|issue=1|pages=25–26|doi=10.1080/03071027908567437}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Fleiter|first1=Andreas|editor1-link=Richard Wetzell|editor1-last=Wetzell|editor1-first=Richard F.|title=Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany|date=2014|publisher=Berghahn Books|isbn=9781782382478|pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=oQFPAgAAQBAJ&dq=social+democratic+germany+lumpenproletariat&pg=PA67 67-68]|chapter=Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the Lustmorder Punishment on the Path to Socialism}}</ref> August Bebel, pre-World War I leader of the SPD, linked antisemitic proletarians to the ''lumpenproletariat'' as the former failed to develop class consciousness, which led to a racial, and not social, explanation of economic inequality.<ref name="Hemmerle"/>
===Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union=== Vladimir Lenin called socialist attempts to recruit ''lumpenproletariat'' elements "opportunism".<ref name="Brass"/>{{better source needed|date=October 2022}} 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."{{sfn|Brownfield|1986|p=426}}<ref name="Welshman"/> 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.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Trotsky|first1=Leon|author-link1=Leon Trotsky|editor1-last=Banerjee|editor1-first=Aninda|editor2-last=Sarkar|editor2-first=Saurobijay|title=Fascism: What It Is And How To Fight It|date=2005|publisher=Aakar Books|location=Delhi|isbn=978-81-87879-44-2|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=wJcu4PdGK2oC&dq=demoralized+lumpenproletariat&pg=PA18 18]}}</ref> The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'', written from the Marxist-Leninist perspective, defined ''lumpenproletariat'' as:<ref>{{cite web|title=Lumpen Proletariat|url=https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Lumpen+Proletariat|newspaper=TheFreeDictionary.com}} ([https://slovar.cc/enc/bse/2014059.html original Russian text])</ref> {{quote frame|a declassed strata in an antagonistic society (including vagrants, beggars, and criminal elements) [which] has become particularly widespread under capitalism. It is recruited from various classes and is incapable of organized political struggle. It constitutes, along with the ''petit bourgeois'' strata, the social basis of anarchism. The bourgeoisie makes use of the lumpen proletariat as strikebreakers, as participants in fascist pogrom bands, and in other ways. The lumpen proletariat disappears with the abolition of the capitalist system.}}
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 that were not pro-Soviet.<ref name="Hemmerle"/> 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 descend on them with all its might."<ref>{{cite book|last=Stephenson|first=Svetlana|title=Crossing the Line: Vagrancy, Homelessness and Social Displacement in Russia|date=2006|publisher=Ashgate Publishing|isbn=978-0-7546-1813-3|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=99b9CAAAQBAJ&dq=soviet+union+lumpen+proletariat&pg=PA110 110]|chapter=Soviet Outcasts: Displacement, Expulsion and Self-expulsion}}</ref>
===China=== Mao Zedong argued in 1939 that the ''lumpenproletariat'' ({{lang-zh|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.{{sfn|Smith|2013|pp=939–940}} Earlier, in 1928, he asserted that "the only way" to win over these wayward proletarians was to carry out intensive thought reform "to effect qualitative changes in these elements".{{sfn|Smith|2013|p=940}} 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.{{sfn|Smith|2013|p=940}} He believed that ''lumpenproletariat'' elements, such as triads, the organized crime syndicates, "can become revolutionary given proper leadership".{{sfn|Cowling|2002|pp=233, 241|ps=: cited in {{cite book|author-link=Mao Zedong|first=Mao|last=Zedong|chapter=Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society|title=Selected Works: Volume 1|location=Peking|publisher=Foreign Languages Press|date=1967|page=19}} }} According to Luo Ruiqing, the Minister of Public Security, the ''lumpenproletariat'' population consisted of sex workers, 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), the ''lumpenproletariat'' were interned in government-run reeducation centers. Some 500,000 people were interned in 920 such centers by 1953.{{sfn|Smith|2013|p=945}} 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'."{{sfn|Smith|2013|pp=950–951}}
===Views on its revolutionary potential=== By the early 1970s, some radicals deviated from the orthodox Marxist view that the ''lumpenproletariat'' lacked significant revolutionary potential.{{sfn|Bussard|1987|p=676}} 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.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Winter|first1=Mary|title=Class Consciousness and the British Working Class|journal=Marxism Today|date=May 1974|volume=18|page=155}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Maisano|first1=Chris|title=Letter to the Next Left|url=https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/03/letter-to-the-next-left|work=Jacobin|date=March 2011}}</ref> 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).{{sfn|Denning|2010|p=87}} 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."<ref name="Hayes&Kiene"/> He was not uncritical of the ''lumpenproletariat'' due to their supposed unpredictability due to "their ignorance and incomprehension." Colonial forces could make use of them as hired soldiers.{{sfn|Abdullah|2006|p=104}}
Fanon's use of the term prompted debates and studies, including by Pierre Bourdieu and Charles van Onselen.{{sfn|Denning|2010|p=88}} The African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral was skeptical about the ''lumpen'' being used in anti-colonialist liberation revolution.{{sfn|Abdullah|2006|p=100}} His African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde recruited ''déclassé'', but not ''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.{{sfn|Abdullah|2006|p=101}} Historian Martin Meredith wrote that Ethiopian ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam used "the lumpen-proletariat of the slums" to help with his Red Terror.<ref>{{cite book |first=Martin |last=Meredith |title= The State of Africa: A History Of The Continent Since Independence|pages=246|date=2011 |publisher=PublicAffairs}}</ref>
====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.{{sfn|Pulido|2006|p=143}} The Black Panther Party, most prominent revolutionary socialists in post-war US, "thought of much of their following as ''lumpenproletarian''."{{sfn|Cowling|2002|p=233}} They adopted Fanon's viewpoint regarding the revolutionary potential of the group.<ref name="Hayes&Kiene"/> Pulido claims the emphasis the Black Panthers put on the ''lumpenproletariat'' was the party's hallmark.{{sfn|Pulido|2006|p=142}} 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''.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Seize the Time|last=Seale|first=Bobby|publisher=Random House|year=1970|location=New York}}</ref> Newton called them "street brothers", alienated from the system of oppression in the US, and sought to recruit them into the party.<ref name="Hayes&Kiene">{{cite book|last1=Hayes III|first1=Floyd W.|last2=Kiene III|first2=Francis A.|editor1-last=Jones|editor1-first=Charles E.|title=The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered]|date=1998|publisher=Black Classic Press|location=Baltimore|isbn=9780933121966|pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780933121966/page/160 <!-- quote=Panthers took a different position on the lumpenproletariat. --> 160-161]|chapter="All Power to the People": The Political Thought of Huey P. Newton and The Black Panther Party}}</ref> 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 were caused by the disproportionately high membership of the ''lumpenproletariat'' in their ranks.{{sfn|Pulido|2006|p=144|ps=: Chris Booker, "Lumpenization: A Critical Error of the Black Panther Party," in Charles Jones, ''Black Panther Party Reconsidered'', Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998, p. 341; Errol Henderson, "Black Nationalism and Rap Music," ''Journal of Black Studies'' 26 (January 1996): 308–39}}<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Henderson|first1=Errol A.|title=The Lumpenproletariat as Vanguard?: The Black Panther Party, Social Transformation, and Pearson's Analysis of Huey Newton|journal=Journal of Black Studies|date=1997|volume=28|issue=2|pages=171–199|doi=10.1177/002193479702800203|s2cid=141057732}}</ref>
====Young Lords Party==== The Young Lords Party adopted views similar to those of the Black Panther Party, believing in the potential of the lumpen. They developed a Lumpen Organization within their larger organization to enlist 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.<ref name=":0">Enck-Wanzer, Darrel. ''The Young Lords a Reader''. New York: New York UP, 2010. Web.</ref> 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.<ref name=":0" />
===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."<ref>{{cite book|last1=McMillan|first1=Chris|title=Žižek and Communist Strategy: On the Disavowed Foundations of Global Capitalism: On the Disavowed Foundations of Global Capitalism|date=2012|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|isbn=9780748646654|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=GZtvAAAAQBAJ&dq=populism+as+an+%27absolute+outside&pg=PA127 127]}}</ref> 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."{{sfn|Cowling|2002|pp=237–238}} Laura Pulido argues that there is a diversity in the ''lumpen'' population, especially in terms of consciousness.{{sfn|Pulido|2006|p=143}}
====Anarchist criticism==== Post-anarchist Saul Newman wrote in 2010 that classical anarchists argue that the ''lumpenproletariat'' should be designated as a revolutionary class.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Newman|first1=Saul|author-link1=Saul Newman|title=The Politics of Postanarchism|date=2010|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|isbn=9780748654161|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=xY9vAAAAQBAJ&dq=consciousness+Lumpenproletariat&pg=PA117 117]}}</ref> According to Tom Brass, individualist anarchist Max Stirner "celebrated the lumpenproletariat as authentic rebels."<ref name="Brass"/> 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."{{sfn|Thoburn|2002|p=445}} Thoburn writes that for him, the ''lumpenproletariat'' represented a "kind of actually existing anarchism."{{sfn|Thoburn|2002|p=446}} 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".<ref>{{cite web|last1=Robertson|first1=Ann|title=Marxism and Anarchism: The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict|url=http://workerscompass.org/pubs/marxism_anarchism_roberston.pdf|website=workerscompass.org|publisher=A Workers Action Pamphlet|page=20}} [http://workerscompass.org/marxism-and-anarchism-the-philosophical-roots-of-the-marx-bakunin-conflict/ web version]</ref> Bakunin stated:<ref>{{cite book|editor1-last=Dolgoff|editor1-first=Sam|editor1-link=Sam Dolgoff|title=Bakunin on Anarchy|date=1972|publisher=Vintage Books|location=New York|isbn=978-0394717838|page=294}}</ref> {{quote frame|that eternal 'meat', [...] that great rabble of the people (underdogs, 'dregs of society') ordinarily designated by Marx and Engels in the picturesque and contemptuous phrase ''lumpenproletariat''. I have in mind the 'riffraff', that 'rabble' almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization, which carries in its inner being and in its aspirations [...] all the seeds of the socialism of the future...}}
==Other uses== [[File:Bundesarchiv R 165 Bild-244-71, Dr. Robert Ritter mit alter Frau und Polizist.jpg|thumb|Ritter with an ''Ordnungspolizei'' officer and a Romani woman, 1936]]
Robert Ritter, the head of Nazi Germany's efforts to track the genealogies of the Romani, considered them a "highly inferior ''Lumpenproletariat''" as they were "parasites who lacked ambition and many of them had become habitual criminals."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Lewy|first1=Guenter|author-link1=Guenter Lewy|title=The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies|date=2000|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780195125566|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=m_ERDAAAQBAJ&dq=gypsies+lumpen+proletariat&pg=PA47 47]}}</ref> The Romani were seen in post-World War II communist-ruled eastern and central Europe as an example of the ''lumpenproletariat'' and were, therefore, subject to an aggressive policy of assimilation.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Rorke|first1=Bernard|editor1-last=Nicolae|editor1-first=Valeriu|editor2-last=Slavik|editor2-first=Hannah|title=Roma Diplomacy|date=2007|publisher=International Debate Education Association|isbn=978-1-932716-33-7|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=6C7w6q_-VbQC&dq=Lumpen+proletariat+gypsies&pg=PA89 89]|chapter=No Longer and Not Yet: Between Exclusion and Emancipation}}</ref>
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."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Gelder|first1=Ken|title=Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice|date=2007|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781134181278|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=l1OAAgAAQBAJ&dq=lumpenproletariat,+lacking+class+consciousness&pg=PA83 83]|chapter=Subcultures and Cultural Studies}}</ref>
Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Kravchenko describes the ''titushky'', pro–Viktor Yanukovych provocateurs active during the Euromaidan protests of 2013–14, as "lumpen elements".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Kravchenko |first1=Volodymyr |title=Ukraine after Yanukovych |url=https://ukrainian-studies.ca/2014/10/02/ukraine-yanukovych/ |website=Forum for Ukrainian Studies |publisher=Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies |date=2 October 2014 |quote=The lumpen elements now known as titushky...}}</ref>
Another active user of lumpenproletariat, Sociologist Mark Traugott, used the term within three publications.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Traugott|first=Mark|title=Determinants of Political Orientation: Class and Organization in the Parisian Insurrection of June 1848|journal=The American Journal of Sociology|date=1980a|volume=86|issue=1|pages=32-49}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Traugott|first=Mark|title=The Mobile Guard in the French Revolution of 1848|journal=Theory and Society|date=1980b|volume=9|issue=5|pages=683-720}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Traugott|first=Mark|title=Armies of the Poor: Determinants of Working Class Participation in the Parisian Insurrection of June 1848|date=1985|publisher=Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press|isbn=9780691101736}}</ref> Herein Traugott unveiled a detailed empirical study of official records reflecting the composition of the Marx-Engels labelled ''proletariat'' and ''lumpenproletariat'' in Paris, France during the June 1848 resurrection; he found no essential difference between the two contending labeled groups and no difference between these two labeled groups and the general composition of the population of Paris.<ref>{{cite book | last1=Yaraskavitch | first1=James Michael | title=On The 'scientific' use of the concept lumpenproletariat | year=1996 | oclc=1056456346 | pages=37,38,140,141}}</ref> Apparently inspired by this empirical study, the 1996 student confirmed that ''proletariat'' and ''lumpenproletariat'' were both two historical classes situated within the ahistorical ''working class'', and likely asked himself that since the concept's creators saw two historical classes, one with class consciousness and the other with obedience consciousness, within the ahistorical working class, then there might also be more than those two historical classes; so he speculated that the ahistorical ''working class'' may have also included a 3rd historical class, the ''religiousproletariat'', bound to a religious consciousness, and maybe a 4th class, the ''rightsproletariat'', bound to maintaining a human rights consciousness, and perhaps a 5th historical class, the ''ecoproletariat'', bound to maintaining an environmental consciousness.<ref>{{cite book | last1=Yaraskavitch | first1=James Michael | author2=Carleton University Theses and Dissertations Sociology and Anthropology | author3=ProQuest (Firm) | title=On The 'scientific' use of the concept lumpenproletariat | year=1996 | oclc=1056456346 | location=Footnote Number 300}}</ref>
===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'."<ref>{{cite news|last1=Maeroff|first1=Gene I.|title=Panel Proposes Broad Changes in Education and Job Preparation|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/11/28/archives/panel-proposes-broad-changes-in-education-and-job-preparation.html|work=The New York Times|date=28 November 1979}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite news|last1=Norton|first1=Eleanor Holmes|author-link1=Eleanor Holmes Norton|title=Restoring the Traditional Black Family|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/02/magazine/restoring-the-traditional-black-family.html|work=The New York Times|date=2 June 1985}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Gottschalk|first1=Marie|author-link1=Marie Gottschalk|title=It's Not Just the Drug War|journal=Jacobin|date=March 2015|url=https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/mass-incarceration-war-on-drugs}}</ref>
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 conservative political scientist.{{sfn|Cowling|2002|p=228}} Although Murray and Richard Herrnstein did not use the term in their 1994 book ''The Bell Curve'', Malcolm Browne noted in a ''New York Times'' review 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."<ref>{{cite news|last=Browne|first=Malcolm|author-link=Malcolm Browne|title=What Is Intelligence, and Who Has It?|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/16/books/what-is-intelligence-and-who-has-it.html|work=The New York Times|date=16 October 1994}}</ref>
Several commentators and researchers have analyzed Donald Trump's political base as modern American ''lumpenproletariat''.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.press.umich.edu/11595909/dangerous_class|title=The Dangerous Class|author=Clyde W. Barrow|publisher=University of Michigan|date=2020|isbn=978-0-472-12808-2}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/lumpenproletariat-long-discarded-economic-theory-helps-explain-divided-america|title=The Lumpenproletariat: The Long-Discarded Economic Theory That Helps Explain An Increasingly Divided America|access-date=January 1, 2022|date=December 9, 2020|author=Jonathan Russo|work=Talking Points Memo}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://socialistproject.ca/2020/08/donald-trump-a-new-emperor-of-the-lumpenproletariat/|title=Donald Trump: A New Emperor of the Lumpenproletariat?|date=August 30, 2020|access-date=January 21, 2022|author=Clyde W. Barrow}}</ref> ''Trumpen Proletariat'' was coined by Jonah Goldberg in 2015 to describe Trump's "biggest fans", who he believed "are not to be relied upon in the conservative cause" in the same way the ''lumpenproletariat'' was not to be relied upon for a socialist revolution.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Goldberg|first1=Jonah|author-link1=Jonah Goldberg|title=Donald Trump's Popularity – It's Corrupting Conservatism|url=http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423607/donald-trump-conservative-movement-jonah-goldberg|work=National Review|date=5 September 2015}}</ref> Daniel Henninger used the term as well in ''The Wall Street Journal''.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Henninger|first1=Daniel|author-link1=Daniel Henninger|title=The Trumpen Proletariat|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trumpen-proletariat-1467847631|work=The Wall Street Journal|date=6 July 2016}}</ref> 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''.<ref>{{cite news|last=Levy|first=Francis|author-link=Francis Levy|title=The Final Solution: The Lumpenproletariat|url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-final-solution-the-lumpenproletariat_us_58dd1335e4b04ba4a5e2512f|work=HuffPost|date=30 March 2017}}</ref> In 2020 Ryan Lizza coined ''Biden Proletariat'' to describe an underclass of campaign workers and supporters—"veterans of the Biden campaign"—who were cast aside during post-election White House staffing, thus carrying on a tradition in Democratic politics of abandoning loyal political workers in favor of well-connected political elites.<ref name="Lizza">{{cite news|last=Lizza|first=Ryan|author-link=Ryan Lizza|date=2020-11-24| title=People are pissed: Tensions rise amid scramble for Biden jobs|url=https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/24/biden-cabinet-scramble-440199 |publisher=Politico}}</ref>
===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 up 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."<ref>{{cite news|last=Weinraub|first=Bernard|author-link=Bernard Weinraub|title=Terror Is Past, but Calcutta Is Uneasy Over Repression|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/25/archives/terror-is-past-but-calcutta-is-uneasy-over-repression-law-and-order.html|work=The New York Times|date=25 April 1973}}</ref> 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).<ref>{{cite book|editor1-last=Kohli|editor1-first=Atul|title=The Success of India's Democracy|date=2001|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9780521805308|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=Io0NsnlRT6sC&dq=Dalit+india+lumpen&pg=PA16 16]|chapter=Introduction|quote=A variety of lumpen groups, especially unemployed youth in northern India, have joined right-wing proto-fascist movements in recent years – such as RSS}}</ref> In 2010s, cow vigilantism in India has been linked by Pavan Varma to "lumpen Hindu fanaticism"<ref>{{cite news|last=Varma|first=Pavan K.|author-link=Pavan Varma|title=BJP's faultline stands exposed: Hindutva preaches Hindu unity, yet attacks Dalits in the name of cow protection|url=https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/bjps-faultline-stands-exposed-hindutva-preaches-hindu-unity-yet-attacks-dalits-in-the-name-of-cow-protection/|work=The Times of India|date=30 July 2016|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170128130844/http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/bjps-faultline-stands-exposed-hindutva-preaches-hindu-unity-yet-attacks-dalits-in-the-name-of-cow-protection/|archive-date=28 January 2017}}</ref> and to "lumpen and self-appointed ''gau rakshaks''" by Bhalchandra Mungekar.<ref>{{cite news|last=Mungekar|first=Bhalchandra|author-link=Bhalchandra Mungekar|title=Dalit vs Dalit|url=http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/presidential-contest-ram-nath-kovind-dalit-vs-dalit-4725096/|work=The Indian Express|date=28 June 2017|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201031204/http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/presidential-contest-ram-nath-kovind-dalit-vs-dalit-4725096/|archive-date=1 December 2017}}</ref>
== Genocides and crimes against humanity == Due to a desire to keep clean the hands of the larger public, paramilitary groups are often used to commit atrocities and they often recruit mainly among criminals, said to be used to violence and brutality and wanting to enjoy an occasion to loot.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Anderson |first=Kjell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LBBADwAAQBAJ&dq=lumpenproletariat+%22arkan's+tigers%22&pg=PT134 |title=Perpetrating Genocide: A Criminological Account |date=2017-11-23 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-23438-8 |pages=134 |language=en}}</ref> The lumpenproletariat has been described as being more likely to adhere to doctrines calling for ethnic cleansing and to organize in militias.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Conesa |first=Pierre |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wkkkskJ1UzIC&dq=lumpenprol%C3%A9tariat+Janjaweed&pg=PT122 |title=La Fabrication de l'ennemi: ou Comment tuer avec sa conscience pour soi |date=2011-09-15 |publisher=Groupe Robert Laffont |isbn=978-2-221-12736-0 |pages=122 |language=fr |quote=Le ''lumpenprolétariat'' s'identifie à ce discours populiste contre une victime proche et constitue la force de frappe de ces milices aux noms fleuris: les Tigres d'Arkan, les Scorpions serbes, les Interahamwe (« ceux qui sont ensemble ») du Rwanda, les milices MAS, ''Muerte a los secuestradores'', et les groupes paramilitaires en Colombie, les groupes Mai Mai du Congo ou les cavaliers Janjawid du Soudan.}}</ref>
During the Armenian genocide, prisoners were pardoned and released from prison to serve in bands, or ''<span dir="ltr" lang="tr">çetes</span>''. Criminals and other elements of the ''lumpenproletariat'' hoped to gain respectability and wealth through their participation in genocide.<ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Kévorkian |first=Raymond |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tbaKDwAAQBAJ&dq=bands+convicts+armenian+genocide&pg=PA184 |title=The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History |date=2011-03-30 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-0-85771-930-0 |pages=184 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Kieser |first1=Hans-Lukas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H-eaDwAAQBAJ&dq=lumpenproletariat+%22%C3%A7etes%22&pg=PT298 |title=The End of the Ottomans: The Genocide of 1915 and the Politics of Turkish Nationalism |last2=Anderson |first2=Margaret Lavinia |last3=Bayraktar |first3=Seyhan |last4=Schmutz |first4=Thomas |date=2019-04-25 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-78672-598-1 |pages=298 |language=en |quote=The formation of the ''çetes'' (bands) offered even deprived strata of society – a ''lumpenproletariat'' – the possibility of gaining visibility and patriotic 'dignity' and of claiming their own portion of the Armenians' 'abandoned' wealth, however restricted that might be.}}</ref>
During World War II, the German Waffen-SS Dirlewanger Brigade recruited poachers and criminals to guard the ghetto in Lublin and later wage the ''Bandenbekämpfung'' on the Eastern Front.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bell |first=J. Bowyer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XeYxAQAAIAAJ&q=dirlewanger+convicts |title=Besieged; Seven Cities Under Siege: Madrid, 1936-1939; London, 1940-1941; Singapore, 1941-1942; Stalingrad, 1942-1943; Warsaw, 1939, 1943, 1944; Jerusalem, 1947-1949; Berlin, 1945-1949 |date=1966 |publisher=Chilton Books |pages=190 |language=en}}</ref>
In Kigali, during the Rwandan genocide, the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, who recruited among the poorer elements of the population, started to draw a "''lumpenproletariat'' of street boys".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Prunier |first=Gérard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XYIJcrgzgQ0C&dq=%22lumpenproletariat+of+street+boys%22+rwanda&pg=PA231 |title=The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide |date=1998 |publisher=Hurst |isbn=978-1-85065-372-1 |pages=231 |language=en |quote=As soon as they went into action, they drew around them a cloud of even poorer people, a lumpenproletariat of street boys, rag-pickers, car-washers and homeless unemployed. For these people the genocide was the best thing that could ever happen to them.}}</ref>
The various Serbian militias of the Bosnian War, such as the Serb Volunteer Guard and the White Eagles, were described as recruiting from the lumpenproletariat.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Griffin |first1=Gabrielle |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PzrXM6LeQ_kC&dq=lumpenproletariat+%22arkan's+tigers%22&pg=PA136 |title=Thinking Differently: A Reader in European Women's Studies |last2=Braidotti |first2=Rosi |date=October 2002 |publisher=Zed Books |isbn=978-1-84277-003-0 |pages=136–137 |language=en |quote=It was mainly the poorer strata of Serbian society, the lumpenproletariat or rural poor, who gave birth to Bokan's and Arkan's volunteers, as well as to many members of the Eagles and Arkan's Tigers}}</ref> Eighty percent of the Bosnian Serb paramilitary troops were said to be criminals, and Croat and Bosnian units similarly drew criminals into their ranks.<ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Ruggiero |first1=Vincenzo |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KM6EAgAAQBAJ&dq=Bosnian+Serb+paramilitary+gangsters&pg=PT291 |title=The New European Criminology: Crime and Social Order in Europe |last2=South |first2=Nigel |last3=Taylor |first3=Ian |date=2002-09-11 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-71480-3 |pages=291 |language=en}}</ref>
In Darfur, some ''Janjaweed'' were convicts recruited in prison or bandits who joined governmental forces.<ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Flint |first1=Julie |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nk_WKSZqXr4C&dq=Janjaweed+criminals+prison&pg=PA48 |title=Sudan, Darfur Destroyed: Ethnic Cleansing by Government and Militia Forces in Western Sudan |last2=Watch (Organization) |first2=Human Rights |last3=Rone |first3=Jemera |last4=Lefkow |first4=Leslie |date=2004 |publisher=Human Rights Watch |pages=48–49 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Üngör |first=Uğur Ümit |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=k-vqDwAAQBAJ&dq=Janjaweed+criminals+prison&pg=PA110 |title=Paramilitarism: Mass Violence in the Shadow of the State |date=2020 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-882524-1 |pages=109–111 |language=en}}</ref> Marc Lavergne, author of ''<span dir="ltr" lang="fr">Le Soudan contemporain</span>'', described them as a "rural ''lumpenproletariat''".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Simon |first=Catherine |date=February 2005 |title=In the Misery of Darfur |url=http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/03064220512331339733 |journal=Index on Censorship |language=en |volume=34 |issue=1 |pages=197–201 |doi=10.1080/03064220512331339733 |issn=0306-4220|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=2004-09-04 |title=Dans la misère du Darfour |language=fr |work=Le Monde.fr |url=https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2004/09/04/dans-la-misere-du-darfour_377888_3210.html |access-date=2023-08-11}}</ref>
==Sociological research== === Political leanings === Ernesto Ragionieri, an Italian Marxist historian, argued that he had 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 landowners, industrialists, and professionals led in hopes of getting a recommendation that would allow them to join Richard-Ginori, the largest local employer, which refused to hire socialists.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Kohn|first1=Margaret|title=Radical Space: Building the House of the People|date=2003|publisher=Cornell University Press|isbn=9780801488603|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=6a_Airc1VFkC&dq=ragionieri+commune&pg=PA194 194]}}</ref>
===Violence=== In 1966, sociologist David Matza cited disorder and violence as two of the most prominent characteristics of the disreputable poor.{{sfn|Brownfield|1986|p=426}}<ref>{{cite book|last1=Matza|first1=David|author-link1=David Matza|editor1-last=Bendix|editor1-first=Reinhard|editor2-last=Lipset|editor2-first=Seymour M.|editor1-link=Reinhard Bendix|editor2-link=Seymour Martin Lipset|title=Class, Status and Power|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/classstatuspowerbendrich|chapter-url-access=registration|date=1966|publisher=Free Press|location=New York|chapter=The Disreputable Poor}}</ref> 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.<ref>cited in {{cite book|last1=Smith|first1=Brent L.|title=Terrorism in America: Pipe Bombs and Pipe Dreams|date=1994|publisher=SUNY Press|isbn=9780791417591|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=boadd2Ecug8C&dq=consciousness+Lumpenproletariat&pg=PA153 153]}}; original source: {{cite book|last1=Quinney|first1=Richard|author-link1=Richard Quinney|title=Class, State, and Crime: On Theory and Practice of Criminal Justice|url=https://archive.org/details/classstatecrimeo0000quin|url-access=registration|date=1977|publisher=D. McKay Co.|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/classstatecrimeo0000quin/page/55 55–57]}}</ref> In a 1986 study sociologist David Brownfield defined the ''lumpen-proletariat'' (or the "disreputable poor") by their unemployment and receipt of welfare benefits.{{sfn|Brownfield|1986|p=421}} 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."{{sfn|Brownfield|1986|p=435}} He explained:{{sfn|Brownfield|1986|p=429}} {{quote frame|The frustrations and the anger associated with unemployment and being on welfare are compounded by the lack of such fundamental necessities as food, clothing, and shelter among some of the disreputable poor. It would seem self-evident that such an environment of absolute deprivation may be the breeding grounds for discontent and violence.}}
==Derivations== 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."<ref>{{cite web|title=lumpenintelligentsia|url=https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/lumpenintelligentsia|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170731182605/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/lumpenintelligentsia|url-status=dead|archive-date=July 31, 2017|website=OxfordDictionaries.com|publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref> *the term ''lumpenbourgeoisie'' was coined by German Socialist writers in the 1920s, in part to explain the rise of Hitler and National Socialism.<ref name="intl1925">{{cite journal |year=1972|orig-date=1925 |title=Zeitschrift für Praxis und Theorie des Marxismus |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C6oKAAAAIAAJ&q=Lumpenbourgeoisie |journal=Die Internationale: Zeitschrift für Praxis und Theorie des Marxismus |publisher=Neue Kritik |volume=6 |page=72 |isbn=978-3-8015-0077-1 |editor-first1=Rosa |editor-last1=Luxemburg |editor-first2=Franz |editor-last2=Mehring |editor-first3=Ernst |editor-last3=Schneller}}</ref> It was reinvented and made popular again by sociologist Andre Gunder Frank in his works on dependency theory, where the so described class is complicit in maintaining a flow of resources from, and at the expense of, their own poor states at the "periphery" to a "core" of wealthy states<ref>{{citation | first = André Gunder | last = Frank | title = Lumpenbourgeoisie: Lumpendevelopment: dependence, class, and politics in Latin America | publisher = Monthly Review Press | location = New York, NY | date = 1972 | isbn = 0-85345-235-0 }}</ref> *''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.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Mazrui|first=Ali A.|author-link=Ali Mazrui|title=The Lumpen Proletariat and the Lumpen Militariat: African Soldiers as a New Political Class|journal=Political Studies|date=1973|volume=21|issue=1|pages=1–12|doi=10.1111/j.1467-9248.1973.tb01413.x|s2cid=143839657}}</ref>
==References== ;Notes {{notelist}}
;Citations {{reflist|2|refs=
<ref name="Hemmerle">{{cite book|last1=Hemmerle|first1=O.B.|editor1-last=Odekon|editor1-first=Mehmet|title=Encyclopedia of World Poverty Volume 1: A-G|date=2006|publisher=SAGE Publications|isbn=978-1-4129-1807-7|pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=f6o5DQAAQBAJ&dq=soviet+union+lumpen+proletariat&pg=PA655 655-656]|chapter=Lumpenproletariat}}</ref>
<ref name="Brass">{{cite book|last=Brass|first=Tom|author-link=Tom Brass|title=Labour Markets, Identities, Controversies: Reviews and Essays, 1982–2016|date=2017|publisher=Brill Publishers|isbn=9789004322370|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=dtvzDQAAQBAJ&dq=Max+Stirner+celebrated+the+lumpenproletariat&pg=PA174 174]|url=https://brill.com/view/title/33494}}</ref>
<ref name="Khanna">{{cite journal|last=Khanna|first=Ranjana|author-link=Ranjana Khanna|title=The Lumpenproletariat, the Subaltern, the Mental Asylum|journal=South Atlantic Quarterly|date=2013|volume=112|issue=1|pages=129–143|doi=10.1215/00382876-1891287}}</ref>
<ref name="Welshman">{{cite book|last1=Welshman|first1=John|title=Underclass: A History of the Excluded Since 1880|date=2013|publisher=A & C Black|isbn=9781780935706|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=nVIBAQAAQBAJ&dq=déclassé+Lumpenproletariat&pg=PA21 21]}}</ref>
}}
==Bibliography== {{Div col|colwidth=30em}} *{{cite journal|last=Abdullah|first=Ibrahim|title=Culture, consciousness and armed conflict: Cabral's déclassé/(lumpenproletariat?) in the era of globalization|journal=African Identities|date=2006|volume=4|issue=1|pages=99–112|doi=10.1080/14725840500268390|s2cid=144365791}} *{{cite journal|last=Brownfield|first=David|title=Social Class and Violent Behavior|journal=Criminology|date=1986|volume=24|issue=3|pages=421–438|doi=10.1111/j.1745-9125.1986.tb00384.x}} *{{cite journal|last1=Bussard|first1=Robert L.|title=The 'dangerous class' of Marx and Engels: The rise of the idea of the Lumpenproletariat|journal=History of European Ideas|date=1987|volume=8|issue=6|pages=675–692|doi=10.1016/0191-6599(87)90164-1}} *{{cite book|last=Cowling|first=Mark|editor1-last=Cowling|editor1-first=Mark|editor2-last=Martin|editor2-first=James|title=Marx's 'Eighteenth Brumaire': (Post)Modern Interpretations|date=2002|publisher=Pluto Press|isbn=9780745318301|pages=[http://icspt.uchicago.edu/papers/2002/cowling02.pdf 228-242]|chapter=Marx's Lumpenproletariat and Murray's Underclass: Concepts Best Abandoned?}} *{{cite journal|author-link=Michael Denning|first=Michael|last=Denning|year=2010|title=Wageless Life|journal=New Left Review|volume=66|pages=79–97|url=https://archive.org/details/Denning2010}} ([https://newleftreview.org/II/66/michael-denning-wageless-life web version]) *{{cite journal|last=Hayes|first=Peter|title=Utopia and the Lumpenproletariat: Marx's Reasoning in 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte'|journal=The Review of Politics|date=1988|volume=50|issue=3|pages=445–465|jstor=1407908|doi=10.1017/S0034670500036330|s2cid=145258994 }} *{{cite book|last=Pulido|first=Laura|title=Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles|date=2006|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=9780520245204|url=https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520245204}} *{{cite journal|last=Smith|first=Aminda M.|title=Thought Reform and the Unreformable: Reeducation Centers and the Rhetoric of Opposition in the Early People's Republic of China|journal=The Journal of Asian Studies|date=2013|volume=72|issue=4|pages=937–958|doi=10.1017/S0021911813001654|jstor=43553236|s2cid=162866252|doi-access=free}} *{{cite journal|last1=Stallybrass|first1=Peter|title=Marx and Heterogeneity: Thinking the Lumpenproletariat|journal=Representations|date=Summer 1990|issue=31|pages=69–95|doi=10.2307/2928400|jstor=2928400}} *{{cite journal|last1=Thoburn|first1=Nicholas|title=Difference in Marx: the lumpenproletariat and the proletarian unnamable|journal=Economy and Society|date=2002|volume=31|issue=3|pages=434–460|doi=10.1080/03085140220151882|s2cid=53466836|url=https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/difference-in-marx-the-lumpenproletariat-and-the-proletarian-unnamable(4d534941-d1b6-4a58-a053-f55ed829b93a).html}} {{div col end}}
==Further reading== *{{cite journal|last1=Bourdin|first1=Jean-Claude|title=Marx and the Lumpenproletariat|journal=Actuel Marx|volume=54|date=2013|issue=2|pages=39–55|doi=10.3917/amx.054.0039|language=fr|doi-access=free}} ([http://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_AMX_054_0039--marx-and-the-lumpenproletariat.htm English abstract]) *{{cite journal|author-link=:nl:Frank Bovenkerk|last=Bovenkerk|first=Frank|year=1984|title=The Rehabilitation of the Rabble: How and why Marx and Engels wrongly depicted the lumpenproletariat as a reactionary force|journal=Netherlands Journal of Sociology|volume=20|pages=13–41}} *{{cite journal|last1=Draper|first1=Hal|author-link1=Hal Draper|title=The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat in Marx and Engels|journal=Économies et Sociétés|date=December 1972|volume=15|pages=2285–3 12|issn=0013-0567}} *Hayes, Peter. “Utopia and the Lumpenproletariat: Marx’s Reasoning in ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.’” The Review of Politics 50, no. 3 (1988): 445–65. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1407908 online]. *{{cite book|last1=Mills|first1=Nathaniel|title=Ragged Revolutionaries: The Lumpenproletariat and African American Marxism in. Depression-Era Literature|date=2017|publisher=University of Massachusetts Press|isbn=978-1-62534-279-9|url=http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/ragged-revolutionaries}}
{{Marxist & Communist phraseology}} {{Frantz Fanon}} {{Social class}}
Category:1840s neologisms Category:Underclass Category:Stereotypes of the working class Category:Measurements and definitions of poverty Category:Social class subcultures Category:Marxist terminology Category:Frantz Fanon