Seriously, I am unable to really find much about them outside of short lines from Marx and Mao about their potential destructiveness among other things, but I still do not really know what that “class” is. It seems to refer to the poorest members of society that includes unemployed, criminals, homeless, etc… And are they really so incapable of being utilized in revolutionary activities as they are portrayed?
Edit: By “destructiveness”, I refer to how Marx and Mao portrayed them as people that are not considered reliable allies in any proletarian revolution (though even this understanding might be wrong because I think the explanations about them are vague).
Lumpens are people in unofficial or illegal employment and the unemployed generally. I disagree with the analysis that they are inherently destructive/reactionary. The black panthers are proof of this on their own.
But did they actually end up making up a majority of the party? I think there is a big difference between being lumpenproletarian-led and having a minority of lumpenproletariat in their party.
idk if they were the majority of party members or not
but that’s besides the point, the Panther’s thesis(and later praxis in getting members of the lumpenproletariat to become genuine revolutionaries) is that the lumpenproletariat as a class have revolutionary potential, something many earlier Marxists dismissed
Could you list examples of them doing that for the lumpenproletariat? Despite living in America, I never studied the Black Panther Party that much.
Of what, former criminals/lupmens becoming socalists/BPP members? Eldridge Cleaver & George Jackson were two prominent members who where involved with a convicted of major crimes before they became members
Even founder Huey P. Newton had string of juvenile offences and no formal employment before he founded the party(although his college education puts him outside of the lumpen class by some definitions)
You could go through the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Black_Panther_Party and see how many came from a lumpen background before joining(through I wouldn’t use this as a measure of if the party contained a majority of lumpen or of proles(and imo when dealing with racialised underclass that distinction is harder to make as systemic racism makes securing formal work much harder and pushes people into the informal/illegal economies) as only members prominent enough to have wiki page are listed)
In general if you want to gain a better perspective on how the BPP and others view the lumpenproletariat as a potentially revolutionary vanguard then Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth is a essential read(and is explicitly quoted as an inspiration by many BPP theorists) https://dn790007.ca.archive.org/0/items/the-wretched-of-the-earth/The Wretched Of The Earth.pdf
Tbf, the BPP are the exception that proves the rule. No cap.
The Brown Berets and the Young Lords exhibit the same pattern, and that’s just counting US based orgs
So not much time before work, but I did a quick search I’ll redo later. I have never heard of these groups, thanks for sharing!
Right or wrong, Marx & Engels wrote their manifesto while living in and studying 19th century London, and their analysis may have been specific to that time & place.
My slumlord 😂
I think it’s as Fanon says, Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to deal with the colonial issue.
And in the case of Black people in the US, those in unofficial/illegal employment are more accurately understood as internally colonized peoples that are being superexploited by the colonial situation.
100% true. The white lumpens I have talked to are almost always more reactionary than POC lumpens I’ve met
Well whites tend to be more reactionary more often due to white supremacy being a part of modern neoimperialism, right?
Right, and white supremacy is an outgrowth of the colonial situation as well. It’s how the colonizers are kept elevated above the colonized. Fanon again: In the colonies the economic infrastructure is also a superstructure. The cause is effect: You are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich.
“Internally colonized”? I have never heard of that phrase before… I get the settler-colonialism of Native Americans, but I have never read anything about Black people being internally colonized.
It’s a theory that underlies much of Black nationalism and internationalism; racism is based in an economic system whereby colonized peoples may be superexploited in their ghettos and through prison labor and with unequal application of the law. The colonial situation is what creates upper and lower racial castes in the first place, and that racial caste aligns them more or less with the colonial situation or against it. There are also compradores who are elevated above their racial caste for their usefulness towards the colonial project, and in the era of neocolonialism they’re even elevated to positions in government.
It’s also sort of a political project to unite the Black liberation struggle with other anti-imperialist liberation struggles around the world.
Compradors do sound like a certain group in people in America… though they are usually called sellouts.
We ran out of natives for forced labor and because it was also their home they were more resistant to being forced laborers (in short). It was easier to move africans across and entire ocean and make them slaves instead. Africans took the place of the “colonial subject” in the US and are for most of their history have been treated as such by white settlers. I think “internal periphery” is a better term than internally colonized but they both do the job. They remain a more exploited type of worker because of racism basically. You should read fanon, Black Skin, White Masks is great
Appreciate the recommendation!
Indigenous Americans also seemed less immune to Anglo illnesses, so a lot simply died.
In my last three and current neighborhood, they certainly seem to be.