> >>> 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
Given the rise of a massive informal sector in many nations (especially outside the richest nations), if you write off folks without regular jobs who have ambiguous class backgrounds, you end up writing off a majority of people there.
Last year, I read Christian Parenti's article on Venezuela that describes the nature of supporters for Chavez in barrios very well:
<blockquote>This article can be found on the web at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050411/parenti
Hugo Chávez and Petro Populism
by CHRISTIAN PARENTI
[from the April 11, 2005 issue]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Illiteracy, violence, disease and the listlessness of endemic unemployment have shaped the life of this barrio since landless squatters from the countryside first settled it about forty years ago. But much of that could be changing.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . Chávez and his political allies have won seven national ballots, including the approval of a new Constitution, an overhaul of the notoriously corrupt judiciary, two national legislative elections, two presidential elections and one attempted presidential recall.
Through it all, occasional armed clashes between hard-core Chavistas and opposition militants have left about twenty people on both sides dead or seriously wounded. . . .
The barrio 23 de Enero (January 23) is to the Venezuelan left what Compton is to hip-hop: the home of its hard core. The barrio's eponym is the date of a popular uprising that took place in 1958 against dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Tucked into a Caracas valley and flowing over a few hillsides, 23 de Enero is a mix of 1950s-era cement tower blocks and the usual cinder-block homes wedged along winding staircases and walkways.
The ten- and fifteen-story tower blocks are adorned in an improbable and tatterdemalion layer of colorful laundry hanging from external drying racks or barred windows. Behind the clothes and the bars one can see lush potted plants, caged and squawking birds or household items stacked up in the tiny, overcrowded apartments. On the back sides of the towers, mounds of trash sit in and around dumpsters that are placed below long, dilapidated external garbage chutes that usually have big sections of pipe missing.
From the top of each tower flies a red-and-blue flag: the colors of the Coordinador Simón Bolívar, a powerful community organization that has its roots in the urban guerrilla movements of the 1970s and '80s. Described with the catchphrase Tupamaros, these urban partisans were really a collection of groups and factions rather than a single force, as the name would suggest.
Even today, many comrades in the barrios are still armed. A fellow journalist was pulled over by masked gunmen at a Tupamaro checkpoint in 23 de Enero during the tense days around the August 2004 referendum. The homies were making sure no escuálido thugs snuck into the 'hood to do a drive-by. They also wanted my friend to donate his videocamera to the revolution, putting a gun to his head to help him make his decision. But when adult supervision finally showed up, the muchachos running the traffic stop were persuaded to give back the camera.
At the Coordinador's little headquarters I meet this other type of Chavista: not a sentimental housewife like Guerrero, but a hard-core ex-guerrilla. Juan Contreras is balding, a bit paunchy and has rather unassuming boyish features, but he got his political education the hard way and at a young age: in the form of demonstrations, police beatings and shootouts with the paramilitary forces of the state. He is now one of the key organizers in the Coordinador.
The walls outside the office are covered in revolutionary murals: One honors a youth killed in a demonstration against Henry Kissinger in the 1970s, another is for the Zapatistas, a third displays the classic Alberto Korda portrait of Che Guevara. Most of the art predates Chávez, and none portrays his image.
"Chávez did not produce the movements--we produced him," explains Contreras. "He has helped us tremendously, but what is going on here cannot be ascribed only to Chávez."
According to Contreras and a few of his comrades, the Coordinador got its start after the failed Chávez coup in 1992. In the wake of that defeat, the government began jailing leftists. Contreras fled to Cuba for a month with twenty-nine other activists from 23 de Enero; upon their return, almost all of them were arrested, and Contreras went into hiding. About a year and a half after the attempted coup, the activists regrouped and decided that armed struggle was definitely over and done with. They created the Coordinador and devoted themselves to aboveground work.
Today the Coordinador pursues a three-pronged strategy that involves reclaiming public space from drug gangs, recovering local cultural traditions and promoting organized sports. Already the barrio has produced several players for Major League Baseball, including Ugueth Urbina, Juan Carlos Ovalles and Juan Carlos Pulido. Later a young guy named Kristhian Linares stops by to pay his respects to Contreras. Only 18 years old, Linares has just signed with the Florida Marlins. He starts spring training as soon as his papers are in order.
After building these forms of social solidarity, the Coordinador then launched another project, setting up committees to deal with health, land titles, elections and the like. Some of this work interfaces with government-funded missions, some doesn't. But the paramount issue here is security. The slums of Caracas are extremely violent. Every week, around eighty people are murdered in this city of 5 million.
"We use culture and sports and organization to take over public spaces," explains Contreras. What if the drug gangs refuse to move? "Well, many of them are connected by family to the larger community, so we use that pressure. There is the armed tradition here, and they respect that. And there is a tradition of lynching in this barrio. In the past the community has killed some criminals. Not recently, but it has happened. So most of the gangs take us seriously and stay away from the central areas."</blockquote>
Barrios like this are what Wojtek might characterize as "lumpen- proletarian" neighborhoods. Youths manning checkpoints to defend the revolution and those who join drug gangs with whom Chavistas need to contend come from the same communities, sometimes even the same extended families.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>