> On Apr 23, 2016, at 10:29 AM, Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
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> On Apr 23, 2016, at 1:04 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
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>> In the media and political establishment’s effort to discredit Trump, he’s been identified as the candidate of the lumpenproletariat - the most poorly educated, low-income, and racist segment of the working class...
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> This is to distort, grossly, the meaning of "lumpenproletariat"--that word means the ordinary CRIMINAL element, a class that scarcely exists in American society (as distinct from the lumpencapitalists, the social base of the Clintons and their Demoncrudic apparatchiks). NAFTA with all its acronymized successors is a perfectly valid working-class issue that accounts for the Trumpe-l’oeil's success so far and would (combined with the overflowing bin of "Opposition Research" on the Clinton) easily produce a Demoncrudic disaster in November should the Repugnicon apparatchiks somehow fail to destroy their own campaign at their convention and their counterparts somehow escape their suicidal propensities and manage to dump the Clinton as the loser she most certainly is.
The term has much broader application than to just the criminal element, Shane, otherwise the fascists would never have come to power. Trotsky described the lumpenproletariat as “all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy”. Marx saw it composed of that sector of the working class “whose conditions of life prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue”, who are “prepared to sell themselves to anyone who will make extravagant promises”.
More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpenproletariat#cite_note-1