/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2358948
>What do you think about the lumpenproletariat
you in the streets playa
get ya mail
there's only two places
you end up
either dead or in jail

engels posits them as the revolutionary subject since they are at the heart of capital's antagonism with labour:
<"The decennial cycle of stagnation, prosperity, over-production and crisis, ever recurrent from 1825 to 1867, seems indeed to have run its course; but only to land us in the slough of despond of a permanent and chronic depression. The sighed for period of prosperity will not come; as often as we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms, so often do they again vanish into air. Meanwhile, each succeeding winter brings up afresh the great question, “what to do with the unemployed"; but while the number of the unemployed keeps swelling from year to year, there is nobody to answer that question; and we can almost calculate the moment when the unemployed losing patience will take their own fate into their own hands."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p6.htm
as we see in real life also, unemployed NEETs are far more politically engaged than wagecucks.

>>2358948
After AI transforms society there will be only unemployed lumpen and technocratic elite controlling the AI run economy.

>>2359110
Unemployed = lumpen

>>2359172
Meant to say unemployed =/= lumpen. A true lumpen is someone who refuses to work, not someone who’s just down in their luck

We have this thread every week comrade. Look at the meaning of Lump in German, and you will have your answer.

>>2359173
being a wagecuck is being "down on your luck"

the lumpen are the true vanguard of a new social order

Here's a good article from Intransigence Journal (ICT) on the subject
https://web.archive.org/web/20201022230353/https://intransigence.org/2019/03/26/on-the-lumpenproletariat/
>Just to be clear, the goal here is not to place lumpenproletarians at the forefront of proletarian struggle or make them into the vanguard of the class. Still less does this essay want to replace the proletariat as the identical subject/object of history, as workers remain uniquely positioned to overthrow the capitalist system. Least of all does it seek to rehabilitate the lumpenproletariat as a group or deny how awful the process of lumpenization can be.

>>2358948
I think you should get a job if possible because you need savings to survive in the world and it will also give you some purpose but if you can't it's okay : )

>>2359310
Quit being pedantic. I’m obviously referring to people who refuse to work under any conditions

>>2359353
like bartleby the scrivener?

>>2359110

WW1 literally ended because the proletarian revolution succeeded in Russia and ended the war via rev-def, which resulted in all the capitalist powers invading Russia and yet losing.

WW1 proved the immense power of Marxist theory, which is why the bourgeoisie made sure that WW2 was not just a mere war of conquest but a war of extermination in order to prevent the success of proletarian defeatism again.

>>2359371
Yes capitalism sucks but it's still better to have a job than not have one generally speaking

>>2359383
why?

>>2359385
You have money and you have something to do with your time

>>2359172
Yes. These are sub-class of proletariat that rely on begging or criminal activity instead of productive labor. AI run economy will make any kind of productive labor done by humans obsolete on a longer time frame.

>>2359198
Lumpen beg for scraps from this slave class.

>>2359393
>have something to do with your time
Too little free time, maybe.

>>2359342
>and it will also give you some purpose
This is what capitalism alienation does to a MF

>>2359398
Lumpen are proletarians chronically "excluded" from the "official" productive sphere, be it by "fate" (the necessity of Capital) or by personal choice (a direct result of alienation). Nevertheless, the material class interest of the lumpen remains the abolition of class society and therefore of its own condition.
It is foolish to "lump" the lumpen under one broad umbrella -
The reactionary swathes of lumpen whom Marx denounced as actually serving counterrevolution have always been those who maintained an internalized dynamic of alienation (by seeking "illegitimate" wage labor) thus enabling a propensity for thuggery - failsons of the middle class and the petty-bourgeoisie, war veterans, etc.. In contrast, the revolutionary minorities of lumpen who use their time for directly self-reproductive activity (outside of and against the market dynamic) and "illegalist" activity for the acquisition of primary needs and the furtherance of revolutionary tasks have often represented the most conscientious vanguards of the class struggle.

Wage labour is not my purpose in life. It's not your purpose in life.
Wage slavery is something we as Communists should seek to abolish.
Ne travaillez jemais.

>>2359437
>the revolutionary minorities of lumpen who use their time for directly self-reproductive activity (outside of and against the market dynamic) and "illegalist" activity for the acquisition of primary needs and the furtherance of revolutionary tasks have often represented the most conscientious vanguards of the class struggle.

TRVKE

>>2359439
Based Debord reader.
People on this board can't be assed to look at the etymology of the word and the definition of Lumpen/Lump (rag, by extension scoundrel), so basically they start all these stupid debates about how someone on the dole is a lumpenprole, and teachers are lumpenproles, and everyone I don't like like lumpenprole, it never stops and it's pathetic.

>>2359444
everyone I don't like is lumpenprole*
it's always the logical conclusion of these threads

>>2359341
This piece is fucking lovely 😍.

I guess for my two cents, I see the lumpen as the peasant strata of the cities, an ambiguous reservoir capital can drain proles out of. Like the peasants, the role of the lumpen is ambiguous. IMO the lumpen are still a necessary element in revolution in the imperial core. I see the lumpen as a kind of self-exploitation of the working class not so different from the peasants, the petty-bourgeoisie, the capitalist family unit or worker cooperatives.

Reminder that Marx was going to flesh out his full theory of class in volume 3 but died before doing so and Engels' edition of the manuscript cuts off there.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch52.htm

Historically they always kill communists. No exceptions, it was even a lumpen that betrayed the Panthers and to this day he defends it well after any sort of "deal" would have enticed him.

Now the actual label of lumpen is all over the place and is very clearly used by Marx as an insult in most of his texts. The only one it makes sense for are criminals, though there were times where being unemployed was illegal. Using it for the unemployed, irregular employed, or students is ridiculous, which is why in Capital the term doesn't exist. It's called the reserve army of labor which itself is also stratified. Some argue it's still relevant because the term appears in the Grundrisse but those are his scattered and unfinished notes and shouldn't be held OVER Capital.

And this pol-pot revival fetish on shitting on students and calling them lumpen is the dumbest shit in the world. For the developed world, education is a prereq for entering the workforce.

>>2359110
And we also see the Indonesian death squads ran by gangsters or the Nazi Dirlewanger Brigade which was specifically for counter-insurgency terror. Historically, they never fail to be a lumpen-organized force of reaction. It's not really the goal of theory to fetishize entire classes of people just because they're poor, like antifa does. I mean, antifa at times exploited the lumpen by using them to squat on property to do meth in, rather than any sort of comradery.

I think the real problem, is that people moralize class which is not the point. You're not inherently evil for being lumpen, but we're (I'm at least) not idealist liberals, who fantasize about a mass "waking up" of a class that historically has not aided socialist causes.

>>2361126
Like right here he's putting lumpen into a distinct category, because they're (mostly) part of the proletariat because they don't have Capital. If it's some RICO act dude then he obviously owns Capital even if it's illegal. It's not really hard to understand, this confusion on class is just from people refusing to read Marx.