As far as I understand, the lumpenproletariat encompasses everyone who earns their living by illegal or borderline-legal means; from pimp to beggar, from dope pusher to mafia loanshark.
BUT: Wouldn’t lumpen-capitalist be a more apt description for the higher-ups in organised crime? Because a high-ranking mafioso or a drug kingpin is basically a capitalist, right? And a pimp is the very definition of a person exploiting others’ labour for their own profit.
Any thoughts…?
Lumpen means “rags” so lumpen proletariat refers to the poorest section of the proletariat; the ones who don’t have jobs.
My old Encyclopedia Britannica gave the term as meaning “marginal and unemployable workers of debased and irregular habits, and including paupers, beggars and thieves”.
I know Lumpen means rags, but the definitions I’ve found in various sources such as http://www.marx-forum.de/ seem to focus more on occupation/activity than material wealth or lack thereof.
I should probably preface this by saying it has been a long, long time since I gave Marx any serious attention.
But my recollection (which seems consistant with the wiki entry) is that the essential distinction is that they are people who make their living completely outside of the realm of productive activity. Even the other non-productive classes like landed gentry or pure “wait by the mailbox” capitalists were still making their living off of productive activity indirectly by contributing land or capital. (Now, you could argue that some criminal activities are every bit as productive as making widgets in a factory or whatever, but Marx certainly didn’t see it that way.)
I think you’d probably be right that if Marx had ever chosen to study the criminal economy in detail, he might have seen classes parallel to those that existed in the legitimate economy, but as far as I know he never did. He thought that all members of the lumpenproletariat, from kingpins to beggars, contributed nothing to productive society and in doing so demonstrated a lack of social consciousness that made them “lost” to revolutionary thought. Thus he did not feel the need to subdivide them in his theories about society as a whole.
Thanks GreasyJack, that makes sense.
PS: I guess if you take Marx’ definition it also fluctuates depending on what is and isn’t legal. For example, if a drug is legalised, its makers, now able to produce it legally, would then turn from lumpen into capitalists, petits-bourgeois and workers respectively, depending on their role in the production process.
I don’t think he was concerned about the legality so much as the contribution to society. A lot of the people he threw into this category weren’t necessarily engaged in anything illegal. There’s the beggars and pawnbrokers, but also remember that gambling and prostitution were for the most part legal during Marx’s time.
I agree it’s not so much about whether the activity is illegal, it’s about whether a marginalized and uncohesive group can be organized. This link has a pretty concise summary and various points of view about whether the lumpenproletariat is revolutionary, etc.