#lumpen proletariat

[razorsadness]

…According to postwar analysts such as David Riesman and C. Wright Mills, the outcome was rather different. America’s mid-century masses were no longer huddled—unless around their TVs or in their Chevrolets—yet this gain was offset by the fact that they were apparently no longer yearning to breathe free, either. Whole new industries had sprung up based around the emergent conformist masses, finding productive and efficient ways to move them around in mass transit, to entertain and inform them through mass media, to supply them with needs and desires through mass marketing, and to fulfill those needs and desires through mass production.

With the calling into question of that way of life, with the rising concern that its bounty could be reduced to bland mass consumerism and its freedom reduced to mass conformism, Beat discourse contemplated a reversed trajectory of liberation leading from (relative) riches back to lumpen rags. The experience of life might be fuller and the desire to breathe free might be better explored, it seemed to some disenchanted Americans, through a downward mobility, and this led back to a curiosity about the inassimilable lumpen state of homeless refuse. "We wandered around," Kerouac writes, "carrying our bundles of rags in the narrow romantic streets" (170). The rags proclaimed (even etymologically) a lumpen identity; the wandering established a sense of freedom from the ordered efficiency demanded by modernity; and the narrow streets remained available to those romantics willing to abandon the standardized freeways and suburban subdivisions of the postwar world. Modernity seemed not only to homogenize the social diversity of individuals, it seemed to reduce the range of experience available to those individuals. The heterogeneity of the lumpen-bohemians, whether the vagabond vision attributed to Mississippi Gene or the bohemian delirium of Sal himself, famished and "frozen with ecstasy" on the streets of San Francisco (172), appeared to counteract this tendency.

The exploration of the spaces of skid row, of addiction and perversion, criminality, lunacy and vagrancy, became sources of a desperate sense of possibility in a white middle-class modernity that had begun to seem synonymous with dead-end mass culture, a space of potential individuality and freedom in the land of what C. Wright Mills called the "cheerful robots" (233). If, as many social critics charged, the cheerful robots of postwar America functioned as efficient cogs in the wheels of modern production, the antithesis would lie in a calculated inefficiency. The original French bohemians arose in the context of a postrevolutionary disillusionment with political solutions; their postwar American counterparts, in the wake of two world wars and a global economic depression,  in the grip of the cold war's threat of nuclear holocaust, developed a similar estrangement. In the absence of any sense that progressive social change is an option, then, uselessness itself can become a kind of virtue, and dysfunctionality a badge of countercultural courage. Nonproductivity is a hallmark of the lumpens and bohemians, whose activities may include poetry, petty crime, or wandering ragged through narrow romantic streets, but whose proclivities do not extend to productive labor in the industrial or bureaucratic model. As Jameson puts it, "To be unique or grotesque, a cartoon figure, an obsessive, is also ...not to be usable in efficient or instrumental ways" (101). The adoption of strategies of un-usability potentially opens the door to a freer space, to "a Utopia of misfits and oddballs, in which the constraints for uniformization and conformity have been removed, and human beings grow wild like plants in a state of nature" (99). Coincidentally, Sal comments at one point that Dean's "madness…had bloomed into a weird flower" (112).

Social scum and refuse appeared to threaten the coherence of both Marxist and capitalist taxonomic order, both of which depend on the efficient control of productive labor. The nonproductive nature of the lumpen-bohemians is one of their defining traits, and Georges Bataille associates this directly with unassimilable heterogeneity:

the heterogeneous world includes everything resulting from unproductive expenditure (sacred things themselves form part of this whole). This consists of everything rejected by homogeneous society as waste.... the waste products of the human body and certain analogous matter... the numerous elements or social forms that homogeneous society is powerless to assimilate... those who refuse the rule. (142)

—Robert Holton, from “The Tenement Castle: Kerouac’s Lumpen-Bohemia” (What’s Your Road, Man?: Critical Essays on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Southern Illinois University Press, 2009)

[theburialofstrawberries]

my problem w glass onion is that it said 'idea smart but guy dumb', when whatever janelle monae scribbled on that napkin looked incomprehensible. if you want to extend the musk metaphor, hyperloop travel in a modern urbanizing world is a dumb idea, fully automated driving is a dumb idea. there’s simply no reason to give alpha ANY credit....there are better ways of satirizing elon musk’s success than ‘he stole a good idea’ (namely, focusing on all the dumb desperate idiots comprising the international financial class looking to get rid of their surplus capital SOMEWHERE like hot potato because the capitalist machine needs to be keep running!)

and I lied I have 2 problems. see, at the executive level, andi would have been raking it in. you’re telling me she lost all her money in the court case to live in some modest sympathetic suburban home where she pours her own guests tea? you’re telling me the edward norton character didn’t settle quietly so as to not frighten the stock market and instead controversially carved her out in a public court? i mean her implied complicity in all of the klear stuff up until the moment of signing the big deal + her estrangement from helen (who seems to bear the general burdens of a working class life but does not seem to have gotten an assist from her sister) + her hanging about these assholes makes her a total asshole to me. I get why helen wants to solve her murder, I get why its important to establish andi’s intellectual property in order to establish motive for the murder, I just don’t understand why that last is supposed to be cathartic. again, the burning mona lisa, very cathartic. but am i supposed to feel emotional about backstabbing venture-capitalist legislator-buying weirdos stealing each others bad ideas and having public cat fights over their shitty start up, just because one of them happens to be smart and have a fabulous sense of fashion 

[mesetacadre]

Does socialist theory have any use for classes based on wealth/income? (rich/poor as opposed to bourgeoisie/proletariat)

Short answer: kinda but not really

Long answer: Classes in marxist theory are exclusively defined by the objective relationship of the subject to the property of the means of production and to the organization of labor, in capitalism it being mostly salary work. From these objective and economic relationships spring the classes of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, the petit-bourgeoisie, the lumpen-proletariat, artisans...

Income, while highly correlated with one's position in class society, is not the defining trait of the subject, but the consequence's of the individual's conditions and specific relationship to their own work. Income itself is just the remuneration for a part of the labor-power that one exerts, or for the value created by others' labor-power that you exploit by virtue of having private ownership of the means of production. In neither of these cases is income the cause of one's class, but a consequence of it.

What a "class" analysis based on income gets you is the inability to actually strike at the core of what organizes class society. For example, the income-based analysis most radical liberals and social-democrats prefer to use (while still choosing to appropriate marxist terminology like "owning class") does not allow them to properly identify the exploitative nature of small businesses, thus, you'll see them rallying against Big Capital while their beloved family-owned small business commits labor law violations on the daily with 11 hour workdays for minimum wage. The income of the petit-bourgeoise is not that great, it's still higher than an average salary worker, but small enough that recessions or the mere existence of concentrated capital is enough to render the small property owner into a worker, a process known as proletariatization. See this really good explanation of what that dynamic means for the political implications of this economic fact.

An income-based analysis would place the small business owner and their 3 employees on the same side with, supposedly, the same interests, because they don't get a lot of money. I don't need to harp on any more to explain why that is nonsense, I hope.

Furthermore, within the working class, there are contrasts in income. There are workers who have a lavish salary, and there are workers who don't even make enough to support their basic needs. The objective fact of their exploitation is the same: they generate value with their labor-power, and sell it to a capitalist for a fraction of what they generate. Exploitation in the marxist sense is not a moral judgement. This is not about whether it's morally wrong or not to extract value from workers. Exploitation creates alienation and a class antagonism that can only ever be resolved one way, which is through the overthrow of the exploiter class by the exploited, history shows that this antagonism is what has propelled it forwards.

It is another question, and one that concerns us less, whether the salary, the price with which a capitalist buys a fraction of the worker's labor-power, is enough for the worker to lead a relatively accommodated life or not. If this was the question, which it is for, say, social-democrats, then the mere reform of capitalism (which, to be clear, is not possible to enact for all workers and all countries) to ensure a decent livelihood under the system of salary work would be enough.

With a lavish income, some might argue, a worker ceases to share the same interests with the rest of the working class who can't afford the first's lifestyle. But what this is omitting is that, in the cases of some workers with a really high salary, it becomes possible for the worker to join the ranks of the bourgeoisie by acquiring capital. Here, top-rated actors and athletes comes to mind. Actors and athletes are paid a salary in exchange for their labor-power, but the highest rated ones generate so much value that the capitalists pay them a really high salary, and then, most of the time, these highly-paid workers acquire some property and become a part of the bourgeoisie. In the US, for example, a bunch of high-rated workers of the entertainment industry such as Oprah, with more than 2,000 acres, have become large landlords in Hawai'i, taking advantage of the colonization of the island chain.

The break in common interests between highly-paid workers and the rest of their class comes from the change in economic class that their income allows for, not the income itself.

There is one instance when income becomes more relevant, and that is in the case of the labor aristocracy. Because of the international division of labor created by and protected by imperialism, the workers of the imperial core, as much as they are still exploited by capitalists and have revolutionary interests, benefit directly or indirectly from the even greater exploitation placed on the workers of the imperial periphery and global south, allowing for a generalized improvement in the quality of life for the imperial core workers.

Two conclusions can be made from this fact:

First, that the social-democratic welfare state depends on the exploitation of vast swaths of the world, and thus, it is not an applicable system in the majority of the world. Second, that the working class of the imperial core can, by the objective fact of the improvement of their material conditions by the spoils of imperialism, can act in the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Take as an example the SAG-AFTRA union, which decidedly supported the imperialist project of Israel after al-Aqsa Flood. This does mean that a greater effort is needed for most workers in the imperial core, the labor aristocracy, to achieve revolutionary-political consciousness. The spontaneous class consciousness that some people insist is enough to be revolutionary, is born of the daily class antagonisms one experiences, and also of the material conditions underlying one's existence, therefore, as we have seen a lot this past year, spontaneous consciousness can include attitudes that favor the bourgeoisie.

And still, even if the labor aristocracy is broadly defined by a higher income, it is still dependent on the relationship to the organization of labor. Even the most desperate and destitute homeless citizen of the imperial core benefits in a lot of ways from the system of imperialism. For example, they don't need to worry about the political instability most imperialized countries suffer, and to put a cruder example, they are never going to get shot by a 22-year-old USamerican soldier doing target practice.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Kim Ives

Today, Haiti may be in the opening days of its second social revolution, which differs from a political revolution (like Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s 1990 election) in a crucial way. An oppressed, exploited class not only seizes political power but also control of the economy, by wresting ownership from the ruling class of the nation’s means of production: its land, factories, banks, stores, transport, utilities, communications, and other economic mainstays.

Today’s revolution is also being carried out by men whom many in the West, including some “leftists,” regarded as sub-human. The revolutionaries are simply characterized as “gangs” or “thugs,” and, indeed, some of them not only committed crimes but survived off of crime, most notably kidnapping. But many others in the Viv Ansanm coalition, which now is battling the Haitian National Police (PNH), fought the criminal “gangs” with which they are currently united. Both the formerly crime-based and crime-fighting armed groups, now united for “system change,” arise directly out of Haiti’s proletariat and lumpen-proletariat in Port-au-Prince, the sprawling capital of close to three million souls.

[abr]

La vera Ecoansia: l'invasione dei climascemi.

Confrontate le due foto sotto: la prima auspicio-obiettivo wokissimo modernissimo per il prossimo futuro delle città; la seconda, lavoratori-commuter della Cina anni '70 nel pieno della Rivoluzione Culturale.

Vedete differenze, ideologiche oltre che pratiche? NO, perché non ce n'è: i cinesi andavano in bici perché di auto non ne avevano e credevano di non volerle, roba da kapitalisti egoisthi; i woke perché credono di non voler le auto ma in realtà non potranno più permettersele.

Daimler e Porsche, Ford e Bentley, quel paio di intere generazioni cresciute col mito auto e moto uguale libertà per i giovani, anche di scopare, si rivolteranno nella tomba.

Questo BACK TO THE FUTURE dei woke climascemi ha un nome accattivante e ipocrita, da anglosassoni puritani che poi s'inculano i bambini: ACTIVE TRANSPORT, designa tutti i mezzi a motore umano (anche se poi quelle flaccide checche cellulitiche ci piazzano sotto il motorino elettrico da ricaricare).

Scarp del tennis (cit.), bici e monopattini ma anche risciò e portantine ciclate: mica solo per i postofisso quindi, anche per gli artigiani e le consegne - funzionale questo alla crescita del sottobosco nerastro sfruttabile del neo lumpen proletariat sottopagato urbano. Descamisados mobilitabili alla venezuelana per tenere eventualmente in riga le "classi medie privilegiate", oltretutto.

Active Transport uguale "la città in 15 minuti". Per molti ma non per tutti: i Fedez e la Kasta godranno di droni automatici che in 15 minuti li portano all'aeroporto senza dover scendere al livello del suolo solcato da aulenti ascelle, direttamente dalla cima del loro Bosco Verticale (i veri boschi sono orizzontali ma pazienza, viviamo in un mondo fake di plastica peggio di Barbie). Un bellissimo futuro alle spalle.

Questa discrasia tra il Dover Essere (tutti woke) e il Voler spingersi nonostante i divieti oltre la barriera dei 15 minuti che come gli racconteranno i padri loro si-può-fare (altra cit.): ecco la vera fonte di ecoansia.

[trogthefrog]

I cannot help but like Saw Gerrera.

He’s an evil character certainly. Saw targets civilians, kills and tortures POWs. He’s a mess of paranoia who serves as example of a person who’s worst aspects have been brought to the fore by war.

But.

Saw Gerrera is willing to throw down as both terrorist and revolutionary. He fights the empire relentlessly, harnessing anti imperial sentiment and ACTING on it. He’s willing to free wookiees on Kashyyyk when no one will (even though he abandons them later). Speaking of, his organization is diverse, in aliens and himself being a person of colour. Giving the impression of them in the Star Wars galaxy being lumpen proletariat. The people who’d be most disenfranchised by the Empire representing more of a people’s struggle. Plus in Andor he is shown to be unwilling to work with human supremacists which gets him points from me. Don’t work with racists it ain’t a good idea (plus it’ll turn out bad, remember what happened to Walter White in Breaking Bad?).

My problem is that Saw’s less revolutionarily nuanced then I’d like (Byproduct of not being written by people who know what actual anarchists are I guess). He’s more caricature of violent revolutionary descending into paranoia. This is really expressed by the fact that violence is Saw’s main tool and he and his partisans do not embrace a diversity of tactics. It hurts their credibility and isolates the Partisans as terroirists.

Still I love him with Luthen, I appreciate his struggle and I acknowledge his faults. Regardless of them though, it’s important for the rebellion to have someone who will fight the empire for the right reason. Because the empire is evil and facist. And it is of import to note that Saw acts (irresponsibly maybe) but in service of The Cause, helping the oppressed by hurting the system of oppression.

(I will not credit him with Tech’s death. Saw wasn’t responsible for the Batch and it was pure coincidence they ran into each other that day. Saw did his mission, fucking shit up. If you wanna credit anyone with Techs death give it to the people literally shooting at them. The Empire. (plus It is good whenever someone try’s to kill Tarkin.))

[femciolente]

Lumpen Theory : Genealogy of a Panoptilumpenism (Part 1)

“ Terrible things happen daily of which we are not aware of, hidden under the pretense of normality and coherence of the world you and I are forced to experience. Together, but yet so far away, a digital sea of modern colonization exists. All that is hidden is understood to exist as oppression, and that oppression is but the systematic death once the inevitable misery catches up to the rowdy prosperity of the cybernetical un-friendship orders.  “

.

What became projected as a refusal to expand on the different forms which the oppressed populations of the world took, the Lumpenproletariat has always been nothing more than a slur. The Lumpen  have seen their potential, actions and even existence reduced to a mere splinter of class society under the classical Marxist framework, and even more reductive under a liberal scope. 

The liberal status quo seeks to uniform these outliers, to create a non-porous, fully glossy and brand new form of governance that does not imply the existence of the faults and burdens called Lumpen. And the Marxist seeks to merely fault it for the errors of its own actions. What both of these conceptions have in common is simply their will to reduce struggle to a mere flaw, forgetting the moments and large periods in which the Lumpenproletariat took apart of, not as the subject of a movance or drive towards a narrative goal, but more-so as the undisputed net losers of the movements of the societies we trap  our thought around. The construction of a “better world” under the progressive stance implies the wiping down of the impurities the liberated subject of the  Lumpen are : there cannot be a better world for those  at the bottom of the existence of the present state of things, and the future ones if we try to be cynical. Engels retains the crown of anti-lumpen sentiment, very early on embarking in hatred towards a group he barely defined in order to assert the position of the proletariat as the unique pawn in their path of the progress of history. Nothing constructive comes from the Lumpenproletariat, and this understanding leads to conceiving them as historically “scum” and “opportunists”, friends of reaction and the status quo. The myth of the Lumpen representing the outdated populations of the early-modern urban development is something that persists nowadays. Mercenaries, crooks and “parasites” are what Engels, and then Marx, meant and explicited by the Lumpen, entities devoid of revolutionary character, outside of the glorious proletariat and most importantly, in opposition to it. In many regards, the reductionism that Marx and Engels apply to this strata of the population  is clearly tied to the events they analyzed ever since 1848 and the many abuses the working population suffered because of this undisclosed exploitative Lumpenproletariat. The vagueness of what they even imply by Lumpen at this stage makes for it to become the quick insult many cement the term as, even when Marx’s own conception evolves when Capital arrives. His true, real critique of political economy outside of the realizations he has on the conditions of the revolting bodies involving themselves in England, France and other areas of the  European theater, comes with the realization of a new concept that will be very useful following up : the  one of Lumpenization, or understood as the process that turns sectors of a viable population towards a much more precarious, fluid and non-protected existence, basically creating a larger aflux of Lumpen.

Efforts from the capitalist systems turned the varied populations of an evolving society into elements of what he saw as being the “exploitative degeneracy” that constituted the element to oppose inside his notion of the Lumpen, making it not a desirable process, but more so a subjected one with the whole entire violence of the state and capital behind it all. A scheme so simple in its perpetuation that it gets overlooked and assimilated into the “natural” processes of capital, alongside  commodity production and fetichisation. His opposition to the Lumpen is, as commonly described, political. But nonetheless, I see his opposition as coming from a severe lack of will towards a deep understanding of  outside regards, or as Ernesto Laclau would put it in this same topic, "the limits of Marxist determinism“ . In short, Marxism, as the established framework of analysis and understanding of class society guided by the proletarian socialist meta-narrative, has no room, nor want, to establish a thoughtful consideration of what the Lumpen REALLY are, outside of all value and moralistic judgement many engage with nowadays. The conditions of such a shift and change in the perspective of the Lumpen should be set, first of all, on the basis of a “non-marxist” framework, one that does not establish a subject for revolutionary progression above all other possible material analysis. 

Combating the many forms the systematic train of thought Marxism has historically represented comes in the originally Marxist realization of the end of the “labour movement”. The late Paul Mattick essentially considered the labour movement to be “dead” and non-existent in the modern times of the postwar world. No longer could the forms of organization of the working class combat capitalism the same way it once used to. No longer can the proletariat unite under the thought of Marx or Lenin in order to advance the  progression of social systems. No longer could liberation be achieved by the same old conceptions of revolution we had carried around essentially since the early Fourrieriusts. As he would put it : “The labour movement preceded Marxian theory and provided the actual basis for its development. Marxism became the dominating theory of the socialist movement because it was able convincingly to reveal the exploitative structure of capitalist society and simultaneously to uncover the historical limitations of this particular mode of production.” On this same basis, Marxism was able to grasp the concept of leading progressive revolution in terms of using a same, concrete and particular subject, one not free but alienated and exploited, with enough potential to set itself free and dissolve the forms that put it there to begin with. But no  longer can that be seen as a coherent labour movement, and the flaw comes with this essentialization of The Proletariat, the utmost important cog and at the same time, the main pawn to the creation of Marxist analysis.

With this in mind, many properly Marxist groups through the (mostly) modern history of class struggle (1960’s-80’s) have undertaken this fallacious class consideration, and taken on a Lumpen defense, one that does confront the previously mentioned un-legitimate attacks from the early socialist revolutionaries. Denning, Fanon and even Marcuse embark in the commonly found “revolutionary potential of the Lumpen”, explaining its colonial history as being the “radicals of the radicals”, a sort of unmeasured group full of revolutionary fervour, similar to what the classical proletariat can achieve if set  under the line of class consciousness. While these defenses have served as the proliferation of the term in a less commonly conceived pejorative notion of the Lumpenproletariat, they fall under the baseline that creates the issues of Marx and Engels : they create a new revolutionary subject,  this time more radical, not removed from any constructive logic in order to achieve the building up of a concise class identity. It cannot be said that this is truly the liberatory form of the Lumpen. We should in turn, consider this defense as the first kind hearted attempt to remove the monopoly of revolt from the hands of the western and white proletariat  in order to atomize  it further into greater depth. Back to the first international and the period of the mere inception of the Lumpen-Prole divide, Bakunin encountered a similar attempt, as the label he was attributed of the “Prince of the Lumpen” was a simple reaction towards what he had conceived as a preferential strategy to out-socialist the marxists. In order to defend the vague and, very un-deleuzian, nomadic peasantry of the remains of economic development in the European labour world, he provocatively took on the position of “Only the Lumpen can liberate and act towards the social revolution”. To repeat myself one last time, this is not but a change in the subject of history and a retention of the notion of the progression of history towards a being-just and not a liberatory becoming. 

The role of the diversification of the relations under the precognition of the Lumpen is one that serves a greater purpose, but once again, the Lumpen is already a liberated subject, only constrained by its own influenced volition. The repetition of the subject form instead of its abolition and liberation on a general form is nothing brand new or outstanding, and hence the proclaimed Lumpen defense of these authors remains incomplete, inconclusive and truthfully useless for a construction of the real genealogy behind the liberation of Lumpen. One group, however, embarked in the tale to liberate and act upon the Lumpen’s condition with greater notions and wider conceptions on how to approach it, this being the Japanese New Left (JNL). In reality, this wide movement of social upheaval in the Japanese islands was much more than just a grouping of pro-Lumpen students. From the Trotskyists and Maoists that confirmed the improvised parties and informal revolutionary groups at the borderlines of the control of the state, many groups seeked an avant-garde approach to acting upon the conditions of the Japanese sphere, and a revolution of Japanese culture as a whole after the fiasco of the expansion and construction of a cultural identity on the precognition of the expansion of the empire. This pre-conceptual imperialist nature to what it meant to be Japanese inherently implied a re-thinking of what groups constituted as the internal operations of the Japanese cultural machine, and those that conformed a noumena, purposely blinded and devoid of any constructive forms on which to base themselves on. The bulbous mass of deformed victims of the violence of the Imperial Japanese construction became the allies of the revolutionary groups : ethnic minorities were, for many groups of denominational variety, the main primary focus on their struggle. Doing so bought them the hatred of some more orthodox Marxist groups, claiming their “non focus on class” as being contrary to the bouillant social climate that might at the time host an actual revolutionary movement. The ethnic minorities that they sought to protect under many circumstances were grouped up vulgarly under the notion of all being Lumpen, below the Japanese worker. And under such framing, groups of students in Tokyo and Osaka claimed this aspect proudly, hailing the defense of the Lumpen into action, seeking to organise outside of the prefecture of Osaka proper the members of the Lumpen, in the case of Japan, the prostitutes, day labourers and marginalized ethnic groups that were comprised as the poster children of this movance popping up in the area. The so-called “inner colony” of the newly constructed Kamagasaki council, constituted of the Lumpenproletarian actors that constitute a majority of the activity in that area, was considered “the 3rd world inside the 1st world”. The notion here implies a heavy dose of colonial relations into the logic of the interaction with the Lumpenproletarian populations. This relation exists because of the following parameter:

Lumpenproletariat = Alienated > Proletariat ----------> sense of outside -------> colonial logic is applied for it, maintaining margin and distance with class society.

That last part remains an integral part of the actions of the JNL on the eyes of the Lumpen : the alienation due to the misery and visceral exploitation of the Lumpen from the whole of Capitalist social actors makes them a subject of the “borderlands” of class society, outside, but remaining on the grasp of the exploitation they phase. Because of this separation, they are unable to construct a destructive imperial entity, just like the Japanese proletariat, willingly or not, did. Of all the groups that appeared during this clearly intellectually fertile time in Japanese class struggle, the East-Asian Anti-Japaneist Armed Front (EAAJAF) remains as the biggest and best example of how to envision the lumpen. Many of the Marxist groups, specially those in accord with Eiji Oguma’s notion that the Anti-Japaneist movement had a clear “post-structuralist character, understanding its use of pseudo-history as realization of the “linguistic turn” ”, none of them actually continued and carried out the proposed total and radical deconstruction of a Japanese cultural identity itself, basing themselves around the “zenkyoto” form, or joint struggle committees that were used as organs that can be classically found on any other Marxist organization. On this, the Daidoji couple that founded the front did so in a non-explicitly “opposition” towards the general direction of the Zengakuren, that by then had abandoned all sense of radical deconstruction and erasure. The group held on to the stance that became the more Lumpen-friendly out of a movement that already greatly considered this sector. Their direct attacks on the Empire, whether it be via the numerous sabotages like in 1974 or simply the intellectual intention behind their collective writings and most specifically the Hara Hara Tokei, had crumbled, as Till Knaudt would say, the entirety of the still not anti-Japaneist enough New Left. Their actions are an expression of the concerns of the victims of this newly appearing virtual-colonialism that is so omnipresent in their conceptions. Basically founding an armed struggle group on the collaboration and retaliation of the Lumpen against even the workerist Prole identity seemed too far for the anachronistic Marxists of modern discourse, and even the ones at the time acting as formal opposition to the EAAJAF, but in reality is the utmost example of an action, an attitude and a thought against the anti-lumpen sentiment, and one favorizing its revolt, self-abolition and proliferation as the vector of the creative destruction they so wanted to see unfold on the Japanese archipelago. The Lumpenproletariat then follows the agitation that it is brought, not prescribed like in the case of the proletariat, and perpetually seeks the total liberation that is the lustful object of Communistic projects : a liberation from all sides of class society, an affirmation of non-exploitation.

Similarly, Deleuze, in his lectures on the State War Machine, retook this term and applied a machinic logic to the developments of capitalism he saw in the later part of his life. The “3rd world inside the 1st world” was then the 4th world, an absurd difference between the affluent perfection of the wealth created and then fetichized by the rich populations, and the misery created, not in response, but in consequence of such development. Total misery contrasted to total virtuosity of capital’s developments. As such, the 4th world is the situation in which Lumpenization occurs, one in which the machine of Capital, that we will from now on describe as “Technocapital”, perpetuates modes of production and exploitation in order to conceive a “virtual-colonial” situation. This neologism is something I have coined to describe that distance in the treatment of the Lumpenproletariat that was considered a form of colonial relationship by the JNL theorists. This relationship relies on distance and separation, all geographical, social and economical distance from class society, to the Lumpen inhabitants of its borderlands. Added to this notion, we have the central word of Panoptilumpenism, a porte-manteau word encompassing “panopticon” and “Lumpen” to define the effect that is to be understood as the self-biopolitical regulation of the Lumpenproletariat that is on itself the reason of their sense of “outsideness” and non-liberation, as a direct result from the total alienation they face and the absolute bottom of the barrel position in society that they held, and still hold, in relation to other groups. Panoptilumpenism, to be more concrete, is the genealogical perpetuating coincidence that pin-points the raison-d’etre of the Lumpenproletariat in its various forms.

Part 1 -

[dailyanarchistposts]

Khomeini’s Conquest

The months following the fall of the Shah was a springtime of revolution, a period of conflict and social struggle that provided a challenge to the new authorities. When workers returned to work, in many industries they did so under the control of the shoras (workers councils). Political organizations, suddenly free to operate after years of repression, began to flourish. Neighborhoods self-organized under the control of local committees. Universities became bases of left-wing opposition. The provinces were in rebellion.

How could such a broad based popular movement, with the oldest and largest left in the Middle East, result in the establishment of a clerical theocracy? While repression played a large role, the full story is far more complicated.

While the proletariat was strong and militant enough to overthrow the regime, they were not in a position to assert their hegemony over the movement. Moreover, almost immediately after the fall of the Shah, conflicts began to manifest within the coalition of revolutionary forces. While the movement was broad and popular, its leadership was drawn from the petit-bourgeoisie of the bazaari-clerical alliance. The problem for the new regime would therefore be to somehow establish undisputed political hegemony over this diverse patchwork of revolutionized groups, as well as the masses more broadly.

It was not merely through extreme violence in the streets that Khomeini and his supporters were able to solidify their leadership over the popular movement. Certainly, they did employ lumpen-thugs (calling themselves the Hezbollah) to attack opposition rallies and break strikes. But their success was equally due to ideological manipulation. If there was one overarching ideological trait of the 1979 revolution it was anti-imperialism. Far more than an outcome of some religious revival or resistance to modernity, the Islamic ideology of the day assumed the form of a Third Worldist populism, one which would become so hegemonic over the revolution that all questions relating to it would eventually be seen through its prism. This was especially the case for the left, who contributed to this ideological confusion. It was through the manipulation of anti-imperialist ideology that the Khomeinist clergy was able to secure and maintain its hegemony over the revolution.

A key factor in Khomeini’s ability to rapidly gain control over the movement lay in the near-total political vacuum that existed under the Shah’s dictatorship. The entire weight of the regime’s repression had been turned against the communist movement and the secular nationalists. For the masses of rural people who flooded into cities during the decade preceding the revolution, their traditional community having been disrupted by the land reform, the mosque was often the only place where they could find remnants of that community. However, mosques were not neutral, but under the control of the cleric, who found in this newly dispossessed population a ready audience. These cultural affinities were fused with a utopian-populist ideology that promised to end corruption and inaugurate a period of justice, uniting the various classes into an abstract people.

It is often suggested that the regime of Muhammad Reza Shah was hostile to Islam, or was pursuing a program of radical secularization. This is inaccurate: like his father, he was more interested in bringing religion under the control or service of the state. Although he sought modernization and national development, his approach to religion depended on how it served the state. For the Shah, the main enemy was the communist and left-wing opposition. Although the Pahlavi regime certainly promoted a nationalist ideology that emphasized the pre-Islamic past, the regime was not averse to using Islam when it served its purposes. It pursued a strategy that would be replicated throughout the region, encouraging religious ideology to counter the popularity of the Left. While the full repressive and propagandistic force of the state was wielded against the left, the Islamic forces enjoyed an incredible freedom, and even encouragement. Far from closing down mosques, the last Shah funded more mosques, prayer halls, and religious services. So long as they did not directly challenge the state or the monarchy, they were free to operate. This was especially the case if they directed their ire against godless communism. Many of those clergy who would be important figures in the Khomenist movement during the 1979 revolution featured prominently in magazines and newspapers, and regularly appeared on radio and television. Of course, there was repression against the religious political opposition, but only of groups that directly opposed the regime. Those figures who stayed away from direct discussion of politics were given room to maneuver, which was unthinkable for the left.

Khomeini’s intransigence and relative freedom of expression while in France soon made him the symbolic leader of the revolution — proof that symbols, when invested with enough power, become powers of their own. Khomeini enjoyed a network the communist movement could only dream of, with a strong following among middle and lower ranking clergy. As tapes of Khomieini’s speeches were widely shared and distributed, mosques everywhere soon became a platform for voicing dissent. During the revolutionary insurrection of 1978–79, the neighborhood committees that would later serve as an important base of the revolution were organized out of mosques in which the cleric was in control. These were increasingly controlled by a centralized revolutionary committee composed of Khomieni’s supporters. Those that had remained independent were soon brought under control. These committees soon began to organize militias.[19] Over time, these committees were all brought to heel, usually through violent repression. What they couldn’t dominate by means of loyalists, they broke through frontal repression. But it was in Kurdistan where the autonomy from the central government was maintained the longest. This partially explains the repression that the state has always levied against the people there, who never fully accepted the Islamic Republic.

On November 7th, 1979 Khomeinist students took over the American Embassy. The crisis came at a perfect moment, when economic problems and frustration with the revolution was beginning to grow. One cannot understand the hostage crisis unless one recognizes that it was less about conflict with the US than about defeating the domestic opposition, particularly the Marxist guerrilla groups. It had the dual outcome of both forcing the resignation of the liberal nationalist provisional government and defeating the radical left, who still battled for hegemony over the anti-imperialist revolution. Prior to the hostage crisis, the new regime had no intention of opposing the United States. In this sense, the embassy takeover was the anti-imperialist spectacle perfected: by drawing attention away from the struggles taking place in the rest of the country, students who only recently would have been seen by their Marxist counterparts as religious fanatics and rectionaries could now present themselves as the vanguard of the anti-imperialist struggle. In this way, the crisis helped the religious factions defeat the left and secure their hegemony over the revolution.

From 1980 to 1983 the state launched a “cultural revolution” with the intention of purging the universities and educational institutions of radical left influence. Schools were shut down, faculty purged. Resistance was met with severe repression, leading to fierce battles between leftist students and Islamist thugs. The same was the case with the worker’s councils in the factories, although in this case the initiative lay with the left-wing parties. Although the councils developed spontaneously out of the strike committees organized during the mass strike of 1978–79, they enjoyed the participation of the Left, who were invited to play a role in their direction. Whereas those workers councils that were dominated by the Khomeinists often tended to be corporatist in ideology, the more radical worker’s councils were democratic in nature.

This difference points to the decisive question — by no means unique to Iran — of the internal diversity of the working class. The rapid and uneven character of capitalist development over the previous decade had created a significant though not unsurpassable chasm, a phenomenon common to many nations in the global south, particularly where development is marked by advanced technology, as opposed to more primitive forms of accumulation. This chasm meant that there was an important cultural difference between “new” and “old” workers, one that the Islamists played upon and used against the left and working class movement. There was a marked difference between the newly-proletarianized manual laborers or unemployed workers and second generation urbanites, who enjoyed different sources of entertainment and tended to support the secular parties of the left. This included white collar workers, but also “skilled” workers in modern industries including oil, gas, and petrochemicals, which were central to the state and economy. Similar differences existed at the level of education, as well as in lifestyles. The clergy played upon this difference with their ideas of cultural imperialism. Imperialism was affiliated not merely with the rule of capital, but with all facets of Western culture, Marxism included. The upper sectors of the working class were characterized as Westernized, a trend consistent with Third World populism elsewhere, particularly in nations that are not among the farthest flung regions of the periphery and underdeveloped, but which are developing more rapidly in the direction of the global system.

Like fascist regimes before them, the Khomeini regime used disorder to establish order. They did not merely conquer the state but also seized power in the street, through the action of their revolutionary committees. By 1983 they had defeated all their political opponents. From the beginning, the Islamic Republic always incorporated a segment of the population into its police apparatus to surveil and repress the rest of the population. This policy allowed it to channel the cultural resentment of the lumpenproletariat into the regime’s repression, and marked an important departure from the preceding regime.

[drumlincountry]

short shorts that say "lumpen proletariat" across the arse

[reduxreviews]

The spook who sat by the door (1973)

I watched this movie last night and enjoyed it. It was an oppositional take to the one presented in False Internationalism False Nationalism: Contradictions in the Armed Struggle. the movie follows a man who becomes a CIA agent to learn the skills necessary to return to his chicago home neighborhood to start a guerilla army. He transforms one of the local gangs into a disciplined army capable of taking on the police and national guard. He does little to directly engage the broader working class neighborhood in the organization, instead failing to change the minds of his two middle class friends: a social worker and police detective, who attempt to betray him at the end of the movie, a demonstration how the petty borgeious' (i cant spell this word for the life of me) class interests can often side with the powerful rather than the proletariat.

False Internationalism False Nationalism stresses that while the lumpen can be transformed and brought in line with proletariat efforts, it cannot form the primary make-up of a revolutionary movement. they cite the young lords in chicago as an example of how this fails to pan out. this movie puts forward a guerilla movement mostly shaped by one middle class man's leadership of the lumpen, throughout various cities (although only development of one chicago gang is actually shown happening within the movie). the main character is unsure through the end of the movie whether the remainder of the black working class will side with their movement or not but understands their success hinges on it.

Overall, a cool film worth checking out. weird side note: it was apparently (all?) filmed in gary, indiana, which i wasn't expecting

[torschlusspanikattack]

i get the people making fun of vote guys (👍) but i don’t get the people really harping on voting not mattering or especially: not voting for the democrats being some kind of principled stand.

isn’t the line that it doesn’t matter. fandom blogger who doesn’t mention the american elections at all bc it’s off topic is a better example of the idea that elections in bourgeois democracy aren’t relevant to the (lumpen)proletariat.

i suspect part of it is you wouldn’t need to disabuse americans of the idea that voting matters if you could point to your alternative working better. but in the absence of that…

[f1ghtsoftly]

Assigning Blame: Who is At Fault When Women Are Retaliated Against?

When things go wrong, it is often useful for us to endeavor to discover why, to make matters more complex, how does the apportion of blame change under objectively hostile social conditions? Does the prevalence of injustice preclude us from assigning blame to the oppressed? When the goal is to avoid the ire of the oppressor-how much responsibility does the oppressed hold? Is it even possible to attempt to outsmart someone committed to your destruction? What happens when you fail or refuse to play by their rules?

While I've read a lot and experienced a lot since childhood-it remains to me the most fruitful place to study power dynamics, a kind of lab that helps me reflect on and understand how to operate from a place of social weakness. I had known for a long time that what was happening at home was unjust and I tried multiple strategies to gain some power back, and was met mostly with failure. By the time I was 7 or 8 I had trained myself not to react to beatings for the most part, which made my abuser escalate in attempts to break me psychologically, they succeeded by beating my sister instead. My sister, watching my example-tried to get me to exercise caution. She believed that the only solution was to get away as soon and as much as possible. She didn’t see why resistance was necessary-she thought by controlling me she could make our abuse stop. It didn’t, even when I complied with my abusers wishes. As a young teen, I made a deal with someone to get us out of that environment, it was a trap. No sooner than two years later, my brother, sister and I were made to pay for my mistakes. I became the center of a patriarchal witch hunt and lost everything.

I don’t know if my biggest mistake was ever taking a stand against abuse, but what if it was? I don’t know if I prevented any suffering with my behavior. Conventional wisdom says I shouldn’t hold responsibility, but when you look at the suffering of others and my results, it becomes clear that a conscious, mediated resistance will yield a collective punishment that might just land us in a worse place than the one we were trying to escape. Is that ever worth it?

In many ways, these dynamics mirror the dynamics many feminists face today. Would we trade the short term wellbeing of our sisters for a shot at freedom? Could we even bear it if we did? Will the long term alliance with powerful allies be something that helps us? Or is that an illusion too? If we give up the support of the institutional left, who will protect us? Can we even protect ourselves?

I am…bullheaded. I tend to think that the consistent prolonged effort of one woman could become many, I also can become very fixated on a goal. To me, the short term pain means very little if we can get somewhere tangible-but I am also strong and lucky. The sacrifice to me means nothing in the face of lifelong subordination. Other women, of less financial means, with different psychologies, different needs might suffer more intensely than others, they might see different paths out. I want to help them, I hate to see someone suffer, especially if I feel like it is because of me. It makes me question the whole enterprise. Is it my fault? My fault for wanting better? My Fault for asking for it?

There is a concept in Marxism called adventurism, this article from the International Review sums up the content nicely;

“The adventurer is in general a declasse. There are many such people within bourgeois society, with great ambitions, and with an extremely high estimation of their own abilities, but who are unable to fulfil their high flying ambitions within the ruling class. Full of bitterness and cynicism, such people often slide towards the lumpen-proletariat, living a bohemian or criminal existence. Others prove an ideal work force for the state as informers and agents provocateurs. But among this declassed magma, there are a few exceptional individuals with the political talent to recognise that the workers' movement can give them a second chance. They can try to use it as a springboard to fame and importance, and thus take revenge on the ruling class, which in reality is the object of their efforts and ambitions. Such people are constantly resentful of the failure of society at large to recognise their alleged genius. At the same time they are fascinated, not by marxism or the workers' movement, but by the power of the ruling class and its methods of manipulation.”

Thus, the adventurer is someone who seeks fame and personal success over the wellbeing of the masses, who might see the revolutionary potential of a movement-but manipulates it for their own personal gain. Is this me? In some ways, I share similarities with the characters described above. It would make me perfectly happy to work on liberation all day every day for money, a comfortable amount of money too. I do harbor cynical beliefs about my own potential,I am frustrated that the positions that would make me happiest, educator, writer and worker for the empowerment of others-would require me to abandon any political education of substance. I grieve a life I feel I deserve but am not permitted due to our political moment. I hurt and feel suppressed and am impatient to end that hurt. I think though (and I am alright with those who disagree-you just need to substantiate it) that what separates me from the adventurist is two-fold. My dream of freedom is legitimate and I am more than happy to share. Sure, I do delight in the idea of freedom for myself and am eager to give it to others. I just happen to have a flashy way of going about it.

So, let's come back to responsibility. Who is responsible for inciting the violence? The protestors or the police? Myself or my abuser? What I find most interesting, is that it is both not my responsibility, but also impossibly hard to accept that. The objective truth is this, an oppressor can get to you at any moment for any reason. The oppressed have, by definition of their oppression, no capacity to control the aggression. Our only hope in this life is to continue to try and move forward, no matter their attempts to terrorize because the “right opportunity” might never come in our lifetimes, we must create it.

My biggest mistake growing up wasn’t acknowledging what was happening to me was wrong, my biggest mistake was believing others when they told me it was hopeless. It was not changing tactics. It was allowing myself to live in despair when an adult I believed was my ally began to betray me. It took me a decade to act on the information I knew at the time, that adult acted out onto me what he wished he had the power to act out on our abuser-getting control back from himself at my expense. Forcing him to confront that would have helped us both. But I didn’t, I suffered, blaming myself for ever wanting anything better in this life. I collapsed under the guilt that I had been the cause of my own repression.

It is with an extraordinarily heavy heart that I acknowledge the way forward will not be easy and there is precious little I can do about that. I don’t always have control of who they target. I can’t control who will give up. I can’t control the pain watching another woman suffer will cause me. Men and women invested in patriarchal power will do whatever they can to stop us. Our only recourse, as always, is to gather, to educate, to stand up for one another and keep moving forward, it is our only way of getting to the other side.

[revindicatedbyhistory]

the phantom troupe are the first lumpen proletariat national democratic revolutionary group

[oops-i-did-it-again-again]

And this is because there are really only two classes, proletariat and bourgeoisie. Anyone in between is really just participating in the social chicanery that constructed the imaginary extra classes - either as the class traitors lumpen or petite bourgeoisie. Middle class has never existed except as a small collection of social status symbols that were collectively agreed upon to make the majority of people hate the “dirty poors” and feel like “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” who would one day be rich. But the middle class has always had more in common with the proletariat than bourgeoisie, because for the former, anyone can belong this class so long as they perform their labor which has social value. But the latter only a select group of people can ever be, of which the petite bourgeoisie function as a “weeding out” group to discard the people who lack the absolute moral depravity necessary to alienate oneself and others from the fruits of labor and steal from the working class. Such was the reason for the creation of middle management as well, to provide a buffer and target against the poorest most exploited people from the people who were exploiting them - CEOs and the highest executives

Ive noticed recently that my generation has... no concept of what the various economic classes actually are anymore. I talk to my friends and they genuinely say things like "at least i can afford a middle class lifestyle with this job because i dont need a roommate for my one bedroom apartment" and its like... oughh

You guys, middle class doesnt mean "a stable enough rented roof over your head," it means "a house you bought, a nice car or two, the ability to support a family, and take days off and vacations every year with income to spare for retirement savings and rainy days." If all you have is a rented apartment without a roommate and a used car, you're lower class. That's lower class.

And i cant help but wonder if this is why you get kids on tumblr lumping in doctors and actors into their "eat the rich" rhetoric: economic amnesia has blinded you to what the class divides actually are. The real middle class lifestyle has become so unattainable within a system that relies upon its existence that theyve convinced you that those who can still reach it are the elites while your extreme couponing to afford your groceries is the new normal.

[abr]

Due calcoli della serva - ditemi se sbaglio eh.

Ipotizziamo che le batterie delle auto elettriche abbiano una capacità media di 50kWh (oggi poche ci arrivano), con consumi medi di 5km/kWh (poche superano i 7km/kWh: dipende anche da fattori esterni tipo salite/discese e temperatura esterna). Da cui una autonomia massima teorica di 250km con un "pieno" elettrico; un'auto a motore termico ne fa il triplo ma pace, fingiamo pure che ciò stia bene alla metà degli utenti.

Ipotizziamo quindi che, senza pianificatori europei del cazzo, su base "di mercato" (solo aiutini tipo divieti e limitazioni di transito), si arrivi a un certo punto a elettrificare 20 milioni di mezzi, metà del parco auto circolante italiano oggi.

Un'auto in media fa 20.000km/anno, circa 50km/giorno. Significa che serviranno 20m*20k/5 = 80TWh di potenza elettrica aggiuntiva media annua. Oggi in Italia si consumano circa 300TWh totali di elettricità (2021): significherebbe aggiungere +25% ai consumi elettrici. Altro che risparmi. Fattibile? Spoiler: non credo (btw, da tale numero si capisce l'enfasi verso la delocalizzazione industriale e la riduzione dei consumi con scuse varie guerresche).

La vera domanda da farsi sarebbe, si può fare in modo green, altrimenti è una presa per i fondelli? Oggi in Italia si producono circa 25TWh da fonti rinnovabili (fonte Gse). Quindi servirebbe aggiungerne più del triplo.

Dice sia fattibile: vedi Germania che ne produce oltre 130TWh. Crediamoci, intanto però là aumenta il consumo di carbone; mobilitiamoci (tosando le burofurerie locali che rallentano tutto, mica solo gli impianti rinnovabili). Resta da gestire il problema cogente del bilanciamento di potenza (fv e vento non sono costanti) e dei picchi di domanda che so, a pasquetta e ferragosto. A proposito di green, ci sono le centrali nucleari alla francese; solo ne servirebbero diverse, diciamo: le più potenti generano 1.6GW di potenza, cioè producono meno di mezzo TWh in un anno.

Sin qui i conti facili, meno costosi. Lasciamo pur stare come si fa approvvigionare tutto il litio cobalto terre rare che serve ( e i relativi costi socio-ambientali); lo scoglio finale è portare tutta quella potenza capillarmente fino alle colonnine, ai garage nei condo. Si fa col fv sui balconi? In contemporanea con lo switch dai riscaldamenti a gas alle pompe di calore elettriche? Ciao core.

Fingiamo pure che i prezzi della auto elettriche scendano un po' all'aumentare dei volumi venduti (toh, il tanto vituperato "mercato"); in ogni caso, per quanto detto sinora, mi sa che è TUTTO UN BARBATRUCCO PER APPIEDARNE UN BEL PO'. Il che, pensando alle Karen con la Yaris, in fondo confesso non sia prospettiva che mi dispiaccia più che tanto.

In realtà stan dicendo: "Vieni, vieni in città, che stai a fare in campagna?" (cit.). Come foste contadini cino-indiani o allevatori nigeriani (questi ultimi aiutati a decidere da un po' di terrorismo islamico); come fecero del resto coi nonni meridio-polesani trapiantati a Torino e Milano. Perché in città ci stanno i Trasporti Pubblici efficenti (per andare da dove dican loro a dove voglian loro), la Sanità e le Squole (stipendifici maximi), i riscaldamenti centralizzati (cioè spegnibili: chiedere ai malcapitati quest'inverno) e i monopattini a nolo.

Gli zombie sinistri godono: si torna al Lumpen Proletariat, alle periferie straccione ma stavolta non per produrre facendo vivere una generazione o due nella merda, sperando di meglio per figli e nipoti: é per NON consumare, NON fare figli ed eliminare i vecchi (ma non gli Schwab o gli utili idioti alla Mattarella, tutti con 80+ anni).

[femciolente]

Lumpen Theory : Genealogy of a Panoptilumpenism (Part 3)

By doing so, the Lumpen should be recognized as one key thing : not a vector of narrative, not an actor of progression, not the subject of the revolutionary, but purely a concentration of insurrection.  Generally, conceiving the Lumpen as a replacement of the proletariat in Marxist analysis is an error the ones before me have made, and one we have already debunked. In certain senses, here we revert to certain original affirmations done by Engels and Marx, and we do so by recuperating the concepts with pride : - The Lumpen do NOT have a class consciousness : Correct ! The lumpen considerably lack the capacity to develop class interest, not due to some classit conceptions of some essentialist incapability, but out of pure interest : Misery cannot be actively mitigated and advanced, and the creation of a progressive narrative towards that is simply not conceivable for the average homeless person, devoid of all possibility towards petty property or even labour stabilisation. Nowadays, even the proletariat lacks a directive line to battle, but the insurrection deep inside the wretched hearts of the Lumpen can be prepared in advance for any confrontation towards the becoming-autonomous process that is so desired. - The Lumpen are purely destructive : Absolutely. This radicality comes from the already mentioned need for unmitigated abolition and not compromise. The ethos of action of the Lumpenproletariat is the affirmation of non-exploitation, and hence, only destruction of the present state of things can actively continue their insurrectionary process. - The Lumpen are disconnected with reality : And that creates the basis of their Nomadhood, a Lumpenomadhood. As their travels through the borderlands of control and self regulation, seeking to avoid or even escape the certain aim and pretended omnipotence of the state, the Lumpen had to become not vectors of the prescribed real, but of their own projection. Life at the bottom of the barrel is harsh, but It can be mitigated by actively pursuing a project outside of what is experienced. Not a form of escapism, but a form to arm a population with the possibility of trying to project themselves onto their desires, far away from the biopower that so crushes them perpetually. - The Lumpen have no constraints or restrictions to their praxis : In reality, the Lumpen do not do what is commonly conceived as “praxis”. As said previously, the Lumpen do not follow the standards of prescriptive actions and a directive attitude. Instead, as the Invisible Committee would come to conceive popular insurrections, the Lumpen engage purely in a “becoming-autonomous” form, as they seek to out-advance the processes of Panoptilumpenism that restricts their potential Anarchoscape from it. The Lumpen are, in this sense and continuing their definition as liberated subjects, not restricted to a form of actions, as their lives and collective violence against Empire and the leviathan of the cyber control society are unto itself extreme and unravelled expressions of insurrection. In many areas, the Lumpen-On-Lumpen exploitation has become a primary form of production. Taking the example of my home country of Mexico, the cartels have become by 2023 the 5th largest direct employer in the country, without taking into account the un-official trading partners and oppressed local communities subordinated to their will. They present an interesting case, as Panoptilumpenism is here materialised in the form of a set of previously Lumpen individuals conforming an administrative statist biopolitical entity that transforms these individuals into the role of the common Bourgeoisie. The difference ? Well, these elements lack the established uniformity of the bourgeoisie, as well as not being able to be the “official” property owners, as the logic of competition is very well applied to the rivalry between the state and its monopoly on regulation, and the unmitigated commodity production of the cartels.

The main victims here are the indigenous Lumpen populations, people who work completely on the most extreme forms of labour imaginable. Its cartoonish intensity makes it some of the harshest and most direct elements to consider when dealing with the Lumpen in majority conditions. Yes, almost a majority of the Mexican population, both rural and urban, are informal workers lacking any form of security and stability that the statist world would have other societies used to. This makes Mexico a country that, in its horrendous shift towards a neoliberal logic of market advancement and a direct war against what could be 60% of the population, is directed by the Lumpen logic of resistance, but Panoptilumpenism and the biopolitical forms of repression that we encounter so absurdly diversified and atomized nowadays wins over them.

As in many other countries, Lumpenization is official policy, and the violence that comes with it constitutes nothing but a will to put down further the subordinated oppressed and alienated groups, is also the logic to its own demise. The inter-connectivity of today’s social relations via total cybernetic methods has turned these complex webs of exploitation into a system so  heavy of its own weight that these reproductions cannot be sustained for too long. Nowadays, what it means to be lumped has radically shifted, and its focus and activity too. Yes, we can retain the JNL’s vision of the Lumpen baseline consisting of prostitutes, day labourers, ethnic minorities, segregated populations, the workers exploited by the proletariat AND the conjunction of class society as a politica-managerial and eventually cybernetic entity. But with the new virtual-colonial relationship that has sprouted from the corpse of our service-minded economic engineering, it is hard to not see Panoptilumpenism as nothing more than an extension of the disciplinary control society, a subset of Biopolitical applications, and unto itself, the expression of technocapital’s regulatory and directive capacities. Technocapital has grown to extend the uniforming violence of biopower to its economic activity via entrepreneurship, and ends up totalizing the slight imperfection, or at that perfection, of the life of a homeless, jobless or lifeless individual. Panoptilumpenism is a cybernetic socio-economic prison that creates unilateral oppression to indiscriminate groups of unrelenting capacities. The source of the discontent of the many with our current capitalism is rooted in that character of its machinic activity. We cannot really comprehend how truly destructive Panoptilumpenism can end up being for the social fabric of this withering material condition, but it most certainly will represent itself as the future order of our lives : Panoptilumpenism will most likely not stop at the Lumpen’s livelihoods.

Concretely, what would be the importance of this analysis ? That is a valid and important question I asked myself when the first thoughts on this topic came to my mind, but the answer is clear. Everywhere in the world, this Lumpenizing tendency has created a strata of the population that is so poor, so oppressed and so unable to act on their own benefit that the concentration of insurrection is strong and pressurised, that the only way for it to come out is the breaking of their shackles, that is now Panoptilumpenism. We have brought immense pain to these people and ignored their processes enough for us to repent and finally act on their model and conception, but without taking them as the subject that can bring our prescribed program to fruition. Instead, the battles of these heroes against technocapital is one that should inspire our new insurrection methods, our new resistance, our new attacks on the state and its institutions. The fact that we can eventually be so free, even the freedom that is so conditional of the Lumpen would seem like the highest of totalitarianisms, is enough for us to become the Barbarians that at the time toppled the oppression of Roman imperialism, and that today can achieve the total liberation from the logic of the liberal administration and its resulting sentient technocapital. As such, we stand strong, we hold on to each other in passion, the passion to win, the passion to live our limit-experiences without the alienation of the Empire, the passion to create more than ever before, and most importantly, the passion to control our own death. At no point can we conceive a liberated society, group or conception as such as long as its participants cannot decide on their death, destroying the little heroism that our era has leftover. As long as we die from the cold of the street and the blaze of the handgun of a cop, our bodies cannot function, our art cannot prosper and our internalised Lumpen will suffer. As long as we die alongside and as the scum of the earth, peace will not reign up above in the sky. And when Technocapital becomes god, and leaves its place in the heavens, nothing will be alright. Kill the Panoptilumpenism that rots your heart. Kill the literal cop that your brain has on itself become. “ Obeying this warning is the only way to avoid increasing casualties .” - Hara Hara Tokei.