[lbo-talk] Lumpen

Michael Hoover hooverm at scc-fl.edu
Wed Jan 25 18:01:03 PST 2006



>>> jdevine03 at gmail.com 01/25/06 9:38 AM >>>
FWIW, here's what Karl & Fred had to say about the LP in the CM:
>The "dangerous class", [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that
passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.< Jim Devine <<<<<>>>>>

km says similar stuff in several writings, in _class struggle in france_, for example, he describes lumpenproletariat as a 'recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds, living on the crumbs of society, people without a definite trade, vagabonds, people without a hearth or home'...

re. above description, it is portion of passage in which marx is discussing military that provisional gov't recruited - (he, in fact, says that these young persons were bought) from ranks of the 'lumpen', he says that this group is 'capable...of the basest banditry and the foulest corruption'...

he *also* says of this group - young men between the ages of 15 and 20 - that 'at the youthful age at which the provisional government recruited them, thoroughly malleable, [they are] capable of the most heroic deeds and the most exalted sacrifices'...

latter point has been almost completely ignored in both marxist and non-marxist characterizations of marx's conception of lumpenproletariat, clearest exception to such one-sided attention was herbert marcuse (who 'erred', perhaps, on utopian side)... mh



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