The shitty part about neets (yeah I’m one but not a fucking fascist), is that they have no class conscious so they end up propping up the people that exploited them in the first place and lead to them being in the gutter. So you have young white men voting for the republicans that want to take away whatever meager benefits they have, because they’re trad or whatever nonsense, and do the racism they love. I very easily could have ended up as a fascist posting on 4chan about how much I hate minorities, if my life went in another direction rather than me educating myself on why my life sucks and reaching the conclusion the rest of us on here have.
I’m young black and I don’t vote because why expose myself to more detrick-bioweapon when my vote doesn’t even count
I became communist because I thought about economics and society for like 10 seconds one time when I was 20 years old. Either you want endless genocide or you don’t. Either you want monoculture massproduced mayo farm societies, or you want to preserve diversity. It’s very simple
As Marx wrote in the Manifesto about it, “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.”
NEETs being mostly very reactionary shouldn’t be very surprising with this historical trend and the lack of actual socializing possible with others. Of course this is not always true and there are many exceptions to this but it just reminded me of Marx’s comments on the matter.
One thing to point out is that Huey Newton wanted to think of ways to radicalize the lumpenproletariat.
I’ve been lumpenized and I see it as one of porky’s most nuanced devices of social murder. Nothing causes a crash out quite like society explicitly telling you “Fuck off, we neither want nor need you. Go starve on the streets.”
Yes, the Black Panthers were one of the groups I was thinking of the times when it isn’t true. I believe they were one of the earlier movements in the US to see the lumpenproletariat as having revolutionary potential
Which I believe was influenced by Fanon’s arguments on the matter in a more anti-colonial context
Which, critically, was a critique developed outside the norms of British or Euro middle class moralism.
I’ve always wondered, what are the exact mechanisms that turn the lumpen reactionary?
The total alienation. The condition that gives an organized prole their potential to seize the means, that being the socialization of labor, is by definition something that the lumpenproles are alienated from. Imagine trying to do a socialist revolution based on the ideals of /r/antiwork: it’s untenable! You simply must take advantage of the social forces of production and how they organically bring workers together under a common interest; scattered oppressed people by themselves are a hard surface to build a parallel power structure and a dictatorship of the proletariat off of.
jokerfication and nihilism, as well as crime
Lumpen includes criminals, the “classical” sex worker and the homeless. They are very easily bribeable and have internalized classism.
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The point here is that there is no banner you can organize these people around. You can perfectly see the truth of the latter part of this statement in how most of the people who voted for Trump voted utterly against their own material interests, but still think they are in the right to have done so because the world will burn while they can watch everyone being dragged down to their level.
Hyperbolically stated, of course. There was in Marxes day no real way to reach people that weren’t working with a message about shared ownership of the productive forces and that’s not really changed in 2025. It is actually one of the biggest problems facing socialists today.
Though it’s interesting how the left has historically been pretty active among students who also haven’t been in the workforce.
Education does that. But also, education is always framed in the context of “you’re learning this do that it can be applied in the workforce later”, which I would say is a pretty direct tie to the workforce
As well as the fact students aren’t isolated in the same way lumpenproletariat are so they may be less reactionary due to social connections and exposure to differing worldviews
Historically it’s often been the case that students drank at the same bars as working people and poor tradesmen. Students, whatever their family means, were often cash poor and had to stay wherever they could find cheap lodgings, which often meant in the middle of working class neighborhoods. And there have been plenty of students throughout history who worked until they could afford tuition, went to school until they ran out of money, then went back to work for however long before seeking employment.
Universities are also frequently located in cities that are large, important, or both. So there’s a couple of reasons they’d be in close communication with working people.
True, but you can reach students en masse at the place they are learning.
lumpenproles aren’t simply “the poors”. It’s the criminal class, the gamblers, the pimps, the mafia. These people are reactionary, it’s a fact. You can just observe it, it’s not controversial. These people do more damage to the working poor than almost anyone else, in terms of day-to-day suffering they cause.
I thought things like the disabled, beggars, and sex workers were also included in lumpenproles.
Beggars and sex workers are criminalized, so they are members of the criminal class
This. The “Criminal Class” is a bougie Victorian social construction meant to weaponize Calvinist moralism. It has no place in any modern understanding of the social landscape. There is no criminal class, there are groups of marginalized people whose existence is made criminal by the state. And most of them work for cash wages.
I think I understood what you said. Why are gamblers considered reactionary, though? Arent they more victims of their potential addiction? (I’m not a gambler Ive played slots maybe two or three times, but that’s it.) I’ve always considered most gamblers to be people who suffer from possible addiction. The few who are lucky enough to get out of it with money are so rare that they don’t really change my view on the issue.
I’m very open to changing my mind, though. I haven’t really engaged with gambling culture or its problems at all, to be honest.
Gamblers as in the mafia running gambling games, i.e. those who make money off gambling. No one can really do gambling as their profession unless they own the house.
It’s because the whole concept of a “Criminal class” is the result of middle class English Protestants trying to create a framework for understanding society that conformed to their religious worldview ie God loves rich people because God made rich people morally good and hates poor people because he made poor people morally depraved. Communists who still cling to the idea of a “Lumpen” just flipped “God made rich people good” for “God made working people good” while retaining the morality and moralizing of British middle class white society of the 1890s.
It has no basis in sociology, anthropology, medicine, or science generally.
I’m not sure if you’re joking, but either way there’s a lot that could be said here.
It’s not that Marx hates the poors, which is a bit absurd to accuse him of, but I do think his class analysis of the lumpen is somewhat misguided, and this error is still commonly made by leftists to this day*. Part of the problem is using lumpenproletariat as a catch-all class for people who subsist without participating in productive labor. Within that category there are so many different ways that people might relate to production, meaning there can be huge differences in their class character, hence it being imo problematic to call the lumpenproletariat a class at all. But even if we do, maybe we shouldn’t be lumping all NEETs in with the lumpen.
For example, a NEET who chooses to be NEET because they have a rich (bourgeois or labor aristocracy) family that takes care of all of their needs is going to have significantly different class interests compared to say someone who has lived in destitution most of their life and is forced to turn to pickpocketing, prostitution, or selling drugs in order to survive (the latter few being traditional examples of lumpenproletariat). There are other conditions that can produce NEETS who would have class characteristics more like those traditional lumpen examples or even that of regular proletariat, like people who are barely able to subsist on disability, and have little choice but to live like hermits. In other words, NEETs can be all over the place as far as actual class character, but then again, so can any lumpen.
(*In the linked thread, OP @Frank@hexbear.net was correct. When I said there is an error that leftists make to this day, I am referring to many of the responses he got.)
Textbook lumpens
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referencing analysis of why completely alienated members of society might turn reactionary, which has been elaborated on at length and can therefore be used in context
HOLY SHIT WHY DO YOU WANT TO MINCE THE POOR?!?how have you not been bullied off lemmygrad yet? fucking hell
I appreciate that you’re keeping us honest on ableism. There’s clearly an element of capitalist ableism that informs the dynamics at play with the modern day lumpenproletariat and NEETs more specifically. But I think you should take a serious look at how Marx and Marxist academics after him analyze the lumpenproles. It’s not that lumpenproles can’t be trusted, or that they don’t deserve the same liberation that all workers deserve. It’s that the position that they occupy within capitalism holds back their political development as a class. If some of them, like the user I replied to, use their status to read up and educate themselves then they are just as capable as anyone else to contribute to the revolution. Hell, Marx had some lumpen qualities of his own. The point is that the prevailing social forces push lumpenproles into reaction, much like the petit bourgeoisie. Would you say that when Marx or Trotsky call the petty bourgeoisie reactionaries they’re being ableist toward disabled landlords? Come on.
@ in name
nobody said anything even remotely like this, shitlib. try reading marx for once
No need to dunk on lemmygrad lol
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Really uncharitable reading of what I said.
I keep seeing the takes like this with no irony across twitter and it’s just like, I can’t imagine not caring that my employer will probably react to this with layoffs. I can’t imagine not caring that my parents will simultaneously not be able to retire and maybe lose their jobs when they are too old to find new ones. My friends may be facing the same fates?
It’s so crazy to not have anyone you care about and only want some other you made up in your head to suffer.
I’ve always been so jealous of NEETs like imagine not having the burning anxiety of wondering where your next meal would come from if you stopped working for a few days
Edit: i understand i have an idealized version in my mind, I’m sure it’s just a side effect of having to work to pay rent since i was 14
It’s not good. I’m not neet by choice, I’ve been dealing with a host of mental and physical problems that bar me from any real gainful employment. I’m at the whim of my family whom I’m at odds with over stuff like food and housing and if on a bad day they don’t want to put up with me anymore they can cut me right off! Sure I have free time I can use to pursue hobbies and stuff but I’d rather have the piece of mind of having to not worry about food and shelter anymore.
Self Crit time, my conception of a NEET was that of a person otherwise capable of working for their own subsistence but choosing not to. This is still a pretty reactionary idea though, as in essentially buying into the capitalist idea that you don’t deserve what you have if you don’t sell your labor to get it. Guess i should do more thinking on the matter.
I’m sorry you find yourself in that situation and i hope you can find a way through it.
NGL, I wish there was an online support group for involuntary NEETs (inNEETS?) where it tries to actually be a productive, non-toxic place for people down on their luck.
The whole concept of “NEET” was invented by neoliberals as an alternative to saying “unemployed”. They needed a way to discuss the unemployment of “socially desirable” people; White men from middle income families who in prior times would have been training to be white collar professionals. “NEET” divides the reserver army of labor in to morally good and morally depraved categories - NEETs are contrasted with Reaganite nonsense like “Welfare queens”.
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I understand. A lot of “NEETs” are disabled or neurodivergent in truth and rarely are the “welfare queens” that play video games all day. Besides the hatred of NEETs is comes from the “cult of productivity” rather than any true concern about self-fulfilment or alienation from labour.
Yeah that’s what I’m thinking i need to reassess about my little brain worms
Can confirm as a laid-off NEET. This was literally forced on me.
Porky’s a very very picky guy and he’s more than spoiled for choice.
jealous of NEETs like imagine not having the burning anxiety of wondering where your next meal would come from if you stopped working for a few days
Yeah you just got the burning anxiety that your probably racist libertarian leaning parents will decide shoving you into the streets will help you “get over” your entire personality
Yeah I’m leaving that comment up because I need the pushback but you’re right. Bad take on my part
it’s okay dawg hope I didn’t make you feel bad about it
Nah, nobody said they were hurt by what i said so i don’t feel bad. I would rather learn and grow, y’know? Being wrong is actually ok and good sometimes
Conservatism is a nihilistic death cult.
I can’t wait when we’re on month 36 and all the right wing yappers are talking about how sticking glass shards into your eyeballs is extremely manly.
Hey, Jordan Peterson, you should hear about this fun new idea I heard about…
Never paid for anything? How?
they live with their parents and watch shitty anime streaming sites all day
Not even torrenting is criminal
you’ll lose your job
Never had one
I know this is likely tongue-in-cheek, given the neckbeard pic related. But this is unironically what the ruling class think. Probably except for the ‘never had a chance’ would be “that means my property values would go up.”
probably because the mental age of 4chan is like 12.
Also probably some of them are not american
