>>13028After reading steamy yakuza bl and a certain hampton think article, I have some conclusions:
First of all, the category of lumpenprole has always been associated with the disintegrating feudal classes, and this doesn't accurately depict that modern groupings that we would picture (at least in the US, the only region I'm discussing). There's a wide swath of semi-proletarians, that includes gig workers, contract or agency workers, and self-employed with little to no capital. Some of these jobs are illegal. E.g. a drug dealer is just a self-employed person with a small amount of capital. Full service sex workers often work for an agency, and fall under agency workers. There are various types of mules and laundering/fall-guy jobs, which falls under contract or gig work. I'd class people living solely off welfare (unless also engaging in work outlined above) separately, and assume them to be more or less tied to the current state and it's continuity (unless a stable and livable alternative is given), as well as NEETs, and assume they will prefer stability of their family unit (also, unless an alternative is given). Both are relatively degrading (usually) and not aspired to, so these people should be considered in the typical lumpen way as being bought by the highest bidder.
These people may be working class and need supplemental income, they may be homeless and jobless, they may be middle class or stable working class with upward aspirations, or they may be failing petite-bourgeoisie who have to resort to small-time self-employment. So there's obviously no one way we should expect these people to go. Among all of them there's a lack of typical workplace discipline experiences, unless they are currently regularly employed. Some people choose these lines of work
because they refuse workplace discipline. Subjectively, there's overall a petite-bourgeois aspiration among most of these people, because there's not much hope outside of that. Either because previous criminal or taboo activity makes getting regular work hard, or because they have no job skills and experience, so the only hope is to keep making money and eventually have a bundle of capital to turn into a legitimate, gainful, and safe business.
I think we should respect them as semi-proletarian, and as being more or less an offshoot of the proletariat, while noting an upward mobility/consumerist/get-rich-quick ideology among many individuals (which is not different from the rest of the proletariat, it's just that most regular workers don't see an avenue for those aspirations, while the hustler class lives those aspirations).
The stance the proletariat should take towards the hustler class as a whole should be to make sure they are part of their local communities rather than predatory atomized individuals, and to be ready to provide aid when their precarious income fails. For the criminal semi-proletariat, the party of the proletariat should make a bid for governance since the government has both attacked and widely dismantled organized crime, while refusing to serve certain areas (and making certain professions/activities unable to access law enforcement help because they'll get just get arrested or worse). There's a deficit of governance and mediation for drug dealers, sex workers, and mules (though i never hear complaints around this). A proletarian party should attempt to be a mediating force rather than a punishing force, in order to gain a first foothold for its overall bid for governance.
Overall I think there's a lot of room, since the fall of old organized crime and the laziness of pigs, for a proletarian party to take on some of the roles that organized crime used to (e.g. mediation and arbitration, local loans, extortion of business, welfare programs, and so on), but with political motive rather than profit motive.