WHERE DOES THE MARXIAN CONCEPT OF THE "PROLETARIAT" COME FROM?

(Revised & Corrected Version)

By Franz J. T. Lee

Pandemonium Electronic Publications, Mérida, Venezuela, 2002

URL:

http://www.oocities.org/juttafranz/carl_79.html


Daily we are utilizing all sorts of words, terms and concepts, and yet, we don't even bother to investigate what we are really talking about. Obviously, with shabby tools,
with empty words, sir-reverence, we coin weird notions and bizarre ideas; and we do not even notice how uncanny and banausic we express ourselves in conversations and discussions. This also happens to "expert" Marxists and "erudite" scholars, not to mention the  "masses", the "working class" and the "proletariat" itself.

Who coined such concepts like the "proletariat" or the "lumpenproletariat"?
Immediately, the layman, the nerd, the ideologue,  would say: the "Communists", Marx and Engels. Well, we humbly genuflect confronted by such implanted ignorance; really, it's bliss.

From the 16th century onwards, here and there, in European writings, the concepts
"proletariat" or "proletary" appeared; at the eve of the French Revolution, especially in "worker's clubs", like the "League of the Just", the concept gradually acquired a
worker's content. In 1837, the Swiss economist Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi finally adopted this term. Only in 1842, Lorenz von Stein introduced the
concept into German; then the famous German revolutionary poet, Ferdinand von Freiligrath passed the concept on to Friedrich Engels, who used it in the first scientific socialist work, in his book, The Condition of The Working Class in England in 1844.

As a matter of scientific-philosophic curiosity, why did the fathers of scientific socialism use this specific term in their works? After all, concepts like the "working classes", "working men", "labouring classes" were prevalent in that epoch. We
know that Marx and Engels were linguists par excellence. Let's see what the etymological meaning of this concept reveals.

In Ancient Rome, the proletarius belonged to the under-dogs, to the lowest section of the population. In Latin, pro-olescere simply means "growing out of"; in the sense of  mushrooms "sprouting out of the ground", "shooting up". Hence, the proletarius had a derivative, an artificial, a synthetic nature.  Marx and Engels introduced him as follows in the Communist Manifesto:

"The bourgeoisie ... has ... begotten the men who are to wield those weapons -- the modern workers -- the proletarians. ... the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population."

This means that the proletariat is not primordial, not "naturwüchsig"; it is an amorphous social concoction, lacking "cultural" and "civilized" roots. According to Marx and Engels the new proletarius adopted the capitalist relations produced by the victorious bourgeoisie, and the nexus between the members of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie became "naked self-interest, callous cash payment".

However, on the other pauperized extreme, we find the "Lumpenproletariat". Why did Marx and Engels use this concept? Grimm's Wörterbuch described them as Lumpengesindel: "a slovenly mob, a pack of scoundrels, a godless pack, vagabonds".  Apart from the semantic similarity, this colluvies vagabundorum, this rotting mass thrown off by the lowest sectors of "modern society", the Lumpenproletariat, in  Marxian terminology, is exactly the negation of the proletariat. In 1845, this concept appeared in their work, The German Ideology. The influential contemporary work, De Cassagnac explained, that the proletariat was composed of "workers, beggars, thieves and prostitutes". This is what Hegel understood by his concept, the Pöbel.

For Marx, the Lumpenproletariat comprised the "beggars, thieves and prostitutes", the non-productive sector of the lowest classes. In Class Struggle in France, he described this class as "gens sans feu et sans aveu". However, both had the following in common: both were "free" and both could be "bought" or "bribed". However, the differentia especifica is, that the Lumpenproletariat are déclassés; that they lack a "class interest"; that they can't develop a "class consciousness"; in other words, they can't be conscientized for anything whatsoever.

Now, we know what Marx and Engels, the fathers of scientific socialism, understood by the proletariat, which/who should unite itself, and would emancipate all mankind. We should just analyze whether this proletariat, including its "lumpen" side, ever had authorized us to "free" or to "emancipate" it, whether it ever had an interest in "emancipation", and from where precisely we got our brilliant, human, humanitarian, humanistic and humane ideas. Anyhow, "Love Thy Neighbour As Thyself!",
and Thy Neighbour Surely Will Teach Thee How to Rape and Pillage the "Ten Commandments".

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