Lumpenproletariat
From MarxWiki
According to Marxists, the Lumpenproletariat, or slum proletariat, consists of the lowest possible members of an industrial society--outcasts, beggars, tramps, petty criminals, unemployables, etc. During a Depression, young people who cannot be accommodated in the working world may be forced into this class due to a complete lack of even Proletariat jobs. The lumpenproletariat lacks a class consciousness (unlike the proletariat), and is basically pushed around by the bourgeoisie (possibly because money provided by the bourgeoisie was their only means of subsistance, therefore no need to revolt against them).
Frantz Fanon complicates the class-based Marxist discussion of the lumpenproletariat by examining the interpellation and agency of this group in a colonial context. Originally peasants, members of the lumpenproletariat are men (see footnote) who have been driven off their land by the poverty exacerbated during the process of industrialization in colonized countries. Excluded from the advantages of the colonial system that many of their counterparts in the towns experience, they move in mass to erect shanty towns on the urban fringes. According to Fanon, juvenile delinquency in colonized countries is a direct result of the emergence of the lumpenproletariat. Once on the outskirts of the city, these landless peasants become pimps, hooligans, unemployed, and petty criminals. Fanon writes disparagingly of this group of society's dredges as "irrevocable decay, the gangrene always present at the heart of colonial domination (130). However, redemption is still possible, specifically through participation in the national liberation struggle. Armed insurgency against the oppressor birthed in the countryside will find a channel into towns through the exploited group living on the fringes. The only way for the lumpenproletariat to enter the city and reclaim its worth is through violence in the name of the nation, and as the urban spearhead of armed struggles, the lumpenproletariat is “one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people (129). Urging nationalist parties who look down upon and neglect the lumpenproletariat to recognize its revolutionary potential, Fanon also cautions against the danger of the oppressor using the group in its own service against the struggle for liberation. Because “ignorance and incomprehension are weaknesses of the lumpenproletariat, its members are easily bought by the colonizer as hired troops. Therefore, political education of the masses becomes historically imperative.
footnote: In his writing, Fanon tends to use sexist terminology that is inclusive only of men. Although I believe that in the case of the potentially revolutionary lumpenproletariat he may intend to gender the group, women (and any specificity of gender) fall out of the picture of colonial conditions and armed liberation struggle that he provides.
