this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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Why do Marx and Lenin disregard the lumpenproletariat? (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 months ago by CupcakeOfSpice@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
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I have not read every document the two wrote regarding the subject, so I may be misunderstanding; but the ProleWiki makes it sound like Marx and Lenin--and therefore Marxist-Leninists would--disregard the revolutionary potential of the lumpenproletariat. It seems like sex workers and homeless folks and disabled people are all spat on by the bourgeoisie and would be glad to help take them down? I'm disabled and mostly unable to work (I do work a little, but not even enough to be part-time) and I consider myself an ML.

The wiki describes the lumpen as exploitable by reactionary and counter-revolutionary forces, but we've seen in the West that the proletariat as a whole is susceptible to these forces. See Zohran run one of the most radical campaigns we've seen in a while and then put on Zionist officials and advocate for changing the system from the inside. The working class is content to sit down and wait for someone else to make change for them. Most disabled people I know, on the other hand, are ready to tear the system down with their own hands. So are we supposed to just gloss over a group of people who've been pressure cooking this whole time? If so, why?

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[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago

I think what people are missing is that the primary problem within the lumpenproletariat isn't that they aren't dissatisfied or alienated, it is that they do not possess the means through which to replicate themselves as a dominant class.

The reason the proletariat is necessarily the class that must overthrow the bourgeois in order for society to have social progression is that they have the knowledge and means to not only replicate society, but demonstratively alter it's material composition.

The lumpenproletariat, scabs, drug dealers, prostitutes, homeless, etc, the army of reserve labor, do not inherently possess revolutionary potential is because they, for the most part, predate the proletariat in existence, and are not directly connected to the way of shaping the world through material goods. It is the same reason why say, an email job does not produce an inherently revolutionary subject. It's not a moral calculus, it's a relationship to the means of production.

That said, it is not outside the bounds of a communist party to attempt to proletarianize the lumpen, in fact, that should be the goal.