ill in bed, Jim
On 1/20/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> Wojtek wrote:
>
> > Another popular misconception is that "working class" includes
> > every poor person regardless of his relation to work and production
> > (i.e. workers as well as lumpen, homeless, criminals etc. Many
> > populists and "activistists" (as Doug and Liza aptly labeled them)
> > hold a noble-savage notion of class that relies almost exlcusively
> > on cultural identities associated with low socio-economic status
> > and exclude professionnals and middle class.
>
> Social categories in social theory are of necessity fuzzy: they are
> bundles of political, analytical, emotional statements, and they are
> bundled differently according to who does the bundling. (This fact
> tends to drive empiricists up the wall.)
>
> But some categories are fuzzier than others. (At least you can
> define who the homeless are, for instance, even though they are hard
> to count, and even though it's odd to make them a separate category
> from workers, as a number of homeless individuals except children
> work, and the unemployed and homeless -- even the chronically
> unemployed and homeless -- are still part of the working class, just
> as working-class housewives, working-class mentally ill, etc. are.)
> The fuzziest of all categories must be "lumpen."
>
> What are lumpen? Who are they? How many lumpens exist in the USA in
> particular and the world in general? Are they growing in number? It
> seems impossible to answer such questions at all. About workers,
> capitalists, etc., you can attempt definitions and answers, based on
> your political perspective and social theory, however contradictory
> and unsatisfactory to others, but "lumpen" seems to defy any such
> attempts, and in truth, few have and would bother. I propose that
> the category be retired from use.
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> <http://montages.blogspot.com>
> <http://monthlyreview.org>
> <http://mrzine.org>
>
>
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-- Jim Devine
"The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Baldwin