Globalization and the Lumpenproletariat
Gabor Steingart on the changing nature of the European lumpenproletariat.
Rather, what stand out are the symptoms of intellectual neglect. The poor of today watch television for half the day. These days, television producers even refer to what they call "Underclass TV." The new proletariat eats a lot of fatty foods and he enjoys smoking and drinking -- a lot. About 8 percent of Germans consume 40 percent of all the alcohol sold in the country. While he may be a family man, his families are often broken. And on Election Day, he casts a protest vote for the extreme left or right wing party, sometimes switching quickly from one to the other.Marx and Engels on the nature of the lumpenproletariat:
But the main thing that sets the modern poor apart from the industrial age pauper is a sheer lack of interest in education. Today's proletariat has little education and no interest in obtaining more. Back in the early days of industrialization, the poor joined worker associations that often doubled as educational associations. The modern member of the underclass, by contrast, has completely shunned personal betterment.
The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.and here is a reference to this class in Grundrisse that I found interesting and needs to be kept in mind when looking for the modern lumpenproletariat- since there has been a significant rise in the services sector since Marx's time- note the interesting reference to the 'honest' and 'working' lumpenproletariat that stands in marked contrast to his comments on the class elsewhere (in the Manifesto, quoted above, and elsewhere)
The same relation holds for all services which workers exchange directly for the money of other persons, and which are consumed by these persons. This is consumption of revenue, which, as such, always falls within simple circulation; it is not consumption of capital. Since one of the contracting parties does not confront the other as a capitalist, this performance of a service cannot fall under the category of productive labour. From whore to pope, there is a mass of such rabble. But the honest and 'working' lumpenproletariat belongs here as well; e.g. the great mob of porters etc. who render service in seaport cities etc. He who represents money in this relation demands the service only for its use value, which immediately vanishes for him; but the porter demands money, and since the party with money is concerned with the commodity and the party with the commodity, with money, it follows that they represent to one another no more than the two sides of simple circulation; goes without saying that the porter, as the party concerned with money, hence directly with the general form of wealth, tries to enrich himself at the expense of his improvised friend, thus injuring the latter's self-esteem, all the more so because he, a hard calculator, has need of the service not qua capitalist but as a result of his ordinary human frailty.See also the Wikipedia entry for the term.
Link to Der Spiegel article via Eugene Plawiuk's Le Revue Gauche.
Image Source
15 comments:
Dear Friend
I would like to invite you to post on the blog naxal revolution ?
If you accept the invitation I will
mail you the invite.
I am doing this simply because your posts are of high quality and when I seek to reproduce them it becomes
difficult because I have to re insert all the links and formatting
and it would be a lot easier if you just copy pasted it from your blog to naxalrevolution
Let me know
REgards
Abhay
Thanks for your kind words, Abhay.
I would suggest that you follow the normal practice of quoting a para or so from the original blog and link to the rest of the post. That would save you the hassle of re- building the entire post.
Thanks for the extract. I went on the Der Spiegel site and saw the other extracts from the book as well. Gabor Steingart certainly has some unique insights. Now I have to get hold of the book!
That speigel article was good, thanks.
I can't make a general statement here and I don't have the theoretical understanding of these marxist concepts but grouping every underclass who doesn't pull himself up into "lumpenproletariat" seems unfair to me. Poverty and deprivation often wreak enormous damage to the psyche of individuals and expecting them to behave "rationally" or join the working class revolution is often asking too much.
I don't know if you have read Premchand's hindi story called Kafan. It is one of his most controversial (still!) stories. In the story a dalit woman dies in child labour and her husband and father-in-law waste the money that they get for her kafan in buying alcohol. Premchand shows how far they have gone from even the most basic of human emotions. Will you call those two men part of lumpen proletariat? This story predictably infuriated both his Gandhian and Marxist admirers because it showed how difficult it is to achieve social change by either appealing to the heart or asking people to join the revolution without realizing whether they are indeed psychologically capable of doing so.
There is a feeling of hopelessness specially after the failures of many of worker's revolutions all over the world in making life of workers qualitatively better. It is difficult to motivate people just by slogans now.
A very incisive question, Alok. On the face of it, Marx and his followers have been pretty unkind to the lumpenproletariat. The word has been used practically as an invective. Read this, for example (from Wikipedia): In Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), the term refers to the 'refuse of all classes,' including 'swindlers, confidence tricksters, brothel-keepers, rag-and-bone merchants, organ-grinders, beggars, and other flotsam of society.'
In this rather, ahem, picturesque description of the LP, one tends to overlook the defining criteria for the nature of a class(and its instrumental use for a struggle for socialism)- the role that the class plays in the production process. I liked the quote from Grundrisse because for the first time I came across a more objective description of this class (see my commentary on the use of words like 'honest' and 'working').
A person does not become lumpen because he is morally bad, but because he plays a non- productive role in the production process- sometimes even trying to enrich himself.
The example of the porter is a good one- the porter may be honest and even working, but his role in the production process is pretty insignificant, if at all.
The question is not of (individual) psychology but of the objective position in the (social) production process.
I cannot comment much on the story by Premchand, my forays into Hindi literature have been very few, but you may want to read a Dalit perspective on Premchand's writings.
Siyaah- do write about the book in case you get to read it before I do, I am very much interested but will not read it in the near future.
These Latino writers have made my life miserable- sometimes I wish they would did not write such mesmerising stuff :-(
A few points, Ishwar-
1. The original author has not used the word 'lumpenproletariat' was introduced by Eugene Plawik and I took off from there. His site actually addresses the question about the revolutionary potential of the lumpenproletariat.
2. You will be surprised that between Bakunin and Marx, much of what we can think of now, has already been thought of :-(
3. >Is bourgeoisie always already lumpen, for despite of its place within the system, it is basically parasite class thieving/ exploiting worker’s labour?
My initial thought too, but then Marx does assign a role to the bourgeoise. Here his reference is not to exploitation but specifically to the non productive role.
4. I liked the Grundrisse quote not because of the ethical aspect, but because here the reference to the LP is "more Marxist" than in the 18th Brumaire.
Ishwar:
>but after the dominance of financial and share markets speculation become the one of the prime economic activities of the system. Does this refer to the tendency of lumpenisation of economy
My answer to that question is: No
I would take a somewhat reductionist stand here from Marx's Capital- capitalism inverts C-M-C to M-C-M (or more exactly M-C-M'), that is commodity production becomes the locomotive for the creation of more capital.
Any activity that hastens the creation of M' from M, that is, results in a quantitative expansion of capital (exchange value) is a productive activity. It may or may not have a use value (or have an artificial use value- which is what much of advertising is all about).
As a corollory, going beyond capitalism, any activity that results in creation of 'use value' is productive.
It appears that a great deal of sanctity has been given to the 'production process' as defined and the categories that came up in reference to this...
While the labour in producing today's nuclear bombs becomes 'productive' ,that of people working in various areas of life like NGOs in education, health sectors may come under at best as lumpen activities…!
Isn't it that the ‘production process’ as always but more so today produces not only goods but also ‘bads’ ...referece here being to ecological destructive activities and also colossal wastes related with production process...
A spectre is haunting the world today...,Of human race so irreversibly altering the biophysical cycles of earth by its narrow minded pursuits thus destroying all life and itslf in the process....!
This may be termed the highest form of alienation possible....
For all hues of social -economic systems,it seems,nature was always a point of departure and never of return when factoring the 'costs' in the production process...Returns and replenishment of a seemingly neutral and' non-human' nature was convenintly forgotten,notwithstanding the talk of dilectics of Man-Nature!
I wonder what has been the consciousness and role of different parties associated with the 'production process'in salvaging the situation for the better...
I am afraid that on the whole you are right. Ishwar, any comments?
Rajesh- how about a post on the 'Dialectics of Nature' in context of the points that you have raised?
Dear Ishwar- I cannot thank you enough for bringing in Adorno, and so much rigour to this discussion. Let me see if I can make a summary post out of this.
That quote from Theories of Surplus Value is most illuminating, I never went upto this volume of Capital ! (and between you and me, Rajesh and myself read Das Capital together, and at least I unconditionally surrendered to the Old Man merely after the first volume, and wholeheartedly agree:
>I know that it is not easy to take ‘panga’ with Baba Marx.
and would add: ab se woh kaam karenge jo aasaan hoga
Finally, thanks for that insight on Bicycle Thief, I saw it last last year but probably need to re- view it.
About the Awaara song, let me see if I can dig up something. Shailendra was generally not so ideologically inclined as Sahir, but one never knows there may be something. I wish Shahid was here too in this discussion - he would throw in a couple of anecdotes besides.
Ishwar-
The "underclass" Steingart is talking about is ethnically and linguistically German. Turkish immigrants are split into two groups in the minds of most Germans, as well, but that's another subject. For perspective, I'm an American living in Bavaria, working in IT for the US Army. My German friends are university graduates. However, I know several discouraged long-term unemployed Germans whose 15-35 year old children seem to be firmly entrenched in this new underclass. It's sad to watch.
Bavaria is one of the better-off states in Germany, but in my part of Bavaria, the Oberpfalz (Upper Palatinate), unemployment is high and there is a distinct underclass solidifying.
Part of the problem I see is that if, at the tender age of 10, you do not make it into Realschule (mid-level school) or Gymnasium (top-level, university-preparatory school), you end up in Hauptschule. Hauptschule is meant to be vocational school, and back when there were plenty of good manufacturing jobs, it was ok, it didn't leave kids feeling hopeless about their futures when they were only 12 or 13 years old as it does now.
It seems like the best predictor of which school path a child will follow is what school path his parents did. There are two basic tracks for family formation here: the university and technical college graduates who don't get married until they're around age 30 and go on to have one, MAYBE two children, but then the Hauptschule leavers who finish their education around age 16 and, seeing nothing else ahead, start having children soon after.
I understand, Ishwar. Thanks for your very enliving presence and hope to have you back soon !
Hopefully, I would have read a little more on Zizek by then, thanks for pulling me back to theory.
It has been yearssince I read any theory, leave alone Marxist theory but all this - (fatty foods,using borrowed monet to pay for television cable while going bankrupt,extreme vote ] sounds familiar and relatable to various POVs expressed at the wake of the Katrina episode, of course it had two dimensions of race and economy.Again I wish to draw attention to one distinct aspect, it is not just a Marxist usage but if you draw some of the American suburbia (middle and upper middle class ) into conversations you would hear that they group this section of people (who supposedly don't help themselves or help others help them etc) into something akin to this lumpenproletariat.The problem is that it is referred to not as a mere theoritical group but in an unkind sense..
Vidya: A feature of poverty in much of the developed world, but specially in the US, is that the poverty is often "invisible" (except in some downtowns or ghettoized areas).
It also tends to be along racial lines and in a society where socialization spaces are restricted to shopping malls, the human relation, or empathizing with the poor, is grossly absent.
Why this does not translate into protest of the subaltern is something that needs to be explained, I cannot think of any particular explanation for this.
Post a Comment