Marx and Engels mention a class “below” the proletariat called the lumpenproletariat, which i understand as meaning a class that has no class consciousness, and is therefore susceptible to the influence of the bourgeoisie. but i don’t see the difference between that and the proletariat proper. don’t the proletariat receive propaganda to suppress their own class consciousness, and don’t they have to be woken up? i don’t get why the lumpenproletariat supposedly can’t be woken up in the same way. besides, some examples of the lumpenproletariat given are people in organized crime, sex workers, and the unemployed. i find it hypocritical to condemn a class of people based on what they do to survive in a capitalist society (or in the case of the unemployed, the fact that the bourgeoisie won’t give them a job). but more than anything, i’m just thoroughly confused by this concept. i feel like i’m missing something major.
It’s not a moral condemnation.
Marx thought revolution was an inevitability in advanced industrialised societies because the workforce was concentrated in factories which could not function without them, and where they were able to organise because they had the numbers to organise. He thought that the inevitable crises of capitalism would lead to a takeover by the proletariat because they were in a position to take over. The lumpenproletariat consists of those individuals who, like the peasantry, were too isolated and atomised to be part of this revolutionary force.
Turns out, crises of capitalism lead to fascism because they happen when labour is at its weakest (when capitalists have bled the population so dry they have to blow up bubbles in the stock market to parasitise each other instead). And so-called ‘Marxist’ revolutions have only happened in agrarian societies, with a bit of Lenin or Mao tacked on to bridge the gap.
Marx is useful but treating his words like a theology is a mistake.