this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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Agreed. I am currently working to understand this as well because I need to bridge the gap of what is the lumpen today and what it was when Marx wrote his work.
The people we work with clearly aren't exactly lumpen the way Marx framed it, but theu aren't exactly proletarians either. They definitely are the reserve army of labor though. And often the most aware of the conditions, far more so than anyone with access to waged work.
The modern lumpen is also very much a source of surplus extraction, but it happens indirectlt via services etc. There's a form of commodification going on there.
The welfare state was erected to suppress communism. The way this has worked is made concrete in the transformation of the reserve army of labor.
Yes, I apprexiate this analysis! I think that the lumpen in the US is probably more similar to Marx's conception, but their conditions and they way that they operate have changed because the bourgeoisie decided to try to extract value from them
I was thinking this. Prison labor, the drug market.... The underground economy directly benefits the bourgeoisie.
While not exactly the same, I was reading an article written by a black/trans/disabled sex worker, and they said that the only way they could organize around issues they cared about was BECAUSE of sex work and the time it afforded them. Having no time because we need to devote 3/4th of our lives to working, commuting, getting ready for work and sleeping probably plays a role in how weak the movement is here in the US, too.
The closest to lumpen I can see are the homeless, but even then there are a lot more that are employed than people think.
Another thing, too, is that while people may not have their labor to withhold, they can still contribute to the revolution by other means IMO. They can stand in solidarity at picket lines, for example. Some are much more willing to be militant, too. Like instead of the peasant class, the proletariat should be aligning with the lumpen here in the US