I could very well be wrong, but my understanding is that the term "lumpen proletariat" is rather precisely defined to encompass those people whose labor, generally speaking, cannot be exploited/sold within the labor market.  In other words, the "lumpenproleteriat" are a class the capitalist class would simply be better off without.  So "lumpenproletariat" actually denotes broad and varied swaths of humanity throughout history: from American Indians, to the mentally ill or severely disabled, some non-white youth, and so on.  In any event, it seems fruitful to me to think of the lumpenproletariat as a specific subset of what would generally be thought of as "the underclass":  The lumpen are those whose employment record is especially spotty (even for someone in their desperate circumstances), who work very low skill jobs for the purposes of getting drunk or high, and who are constantly moving in and out of jail.  So, as a criminal defense attorney, I consider the lumpen to comprise the majority of my client base. I think the mistake many liberals and radicals make is to fail to acknowledge the separation between the lumpenproletariat from the rest of the underclass -- as if the lumpenproletariat are solely result of a lack of employment opportunities or other social assistance.  Likewise, conservatives attribute the existence of the lumpenproletariat to moral failure (no work ethic, etc.).  In my rather extensive dealings with the lumpenproletariat, what I notice in particular is an extraordinary impulsiveness, and it is through the lens of impulsiveness that I think we can develop a more productive and realistic way of thinking about the lumpenproletariat.  My guess is that this impulsiveness is the product of "tough love" social programs that employ what are basically Skinnerian tactics intended to encourage reactive thinking and a reactive relationship with the world rather than a more deliberative approach.  Here's an anecdote Jonathan Kozol used ( <a href="http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/American-Apartheid-Education1sep05.htm" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/American-Apartheid-Education1sep05.htm </a>) to illustrate the teaching style at a South Bronx school he's been visiting: "The teacher gave the "zero noise" salute again when someone whispered to another child at his table. "In two minutes you will have a chance to talk and share this with your partner." Communication between children in the class was not prohibited but was afforded time slots and, remarkably enough, was formalized in an expression that I found included in a memo that was posted on the wall beside the door: "An opportunity . . . to engage in Accountable Talk." Of course, you can see Skinnerian tactics being used throughout many other institutions poor people are forced to deal with on a regular basis.  My hypothesis is that these institutions are very good at fostering impulsivity and reactive thinking but they have mixed success in terms of creating nice, productive members of the underclass -- when they fail, they create the lumpenproletariat. Anyway, this is a subject I'm pretty interested in; I wrote about it at length here: <a href="http://woomer.blogspot.com/2005/09/moral-accountability-and-katrina_15.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> http://woomer.blogspot.com/2005/09/moral-accountability-and-katrina_15.html </a> -N