chapotraphouse

You're right, though. When people in 21st century discourse use the term lumpen they're not using it in it's formal definition and it's 19th century context. They're just being whorphobic jerks. 19th century labor relations don't exist in many parts of the world now. Drug dealers are just normal folks. Most criminals aren't really doing anything immoral or wrong. Sex workers are just normal ass self-employed service industry workers. Trying to dogmatically cling to this never especially useful or well founded notion of a lump class is silly. Whatever dangers might have once been posed by "lumpen", those roles are now taken by cops, soldiers, and intelligence agencies that just flat out didn't exist in the 19th century the way they do in the 21st. The capitalists don't need to hire homeless beggars to beat up strikers with ax handles, they have well equipped cops and soldiers for that. Homeless people have wage labor jobs now.

I mean look how the "read theory" scoffers have to go back to Marx and Engels to discuss this. That's 19th century stuff. They're talking about the past, not modern material conditions where sex workers and disabled people are often organized and have strong class consciousness. And it's silly ableist shit, too. Like 19th century cruel dismissal of disabled people as useless and socially worthless. We have computer and phones and shit. Disabled people can do many important jobs within a revolutionary movement. Dismissing them as a class because they can't work on a 19th century factory floor, which is what the perpetuation of Lumpen as a concept does, is just... weird. Just bizarre.