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.
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.
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.
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.)
Removed by mod
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.)