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145-463: The general idea that a class system includes a population under the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences (for example, lumpenproletariat ). However, the specific term, underclass , was popularized during the last half of the 20th century, first by social scientists of American poverty , and then by American journalists. The underclass concept has been a point of controversy among social scientists. Definitions and explanations of

290-576: A New York Times review that the authors argue that the United States is being "split between an isolated caste of ruling meritocrats on one hand and a vast, powerless Lumpenproletariat on the other. Society, the authors predict, will have little use for this underclass in a world dominated by sophisticated machines and the bright human beings who tend them." Several commentators and researchers have analyzed Donald Trump 's political base as modern American lumpenproletariat . Trumpen Proletariat

435-477: A behavioral conception of the underclass, which fuses Myrdal's term with Oscar Lewis 's and others' conception of a " culture of poverty ". Various definitions of the underclass have been set forth since the term's initial conception; however, all of these definitions are basically different ways of imagining a category of people beneath the working class. The definitions vary by which particular dimensions of this group are highlighted. A few popular descriptions of

580-427: A gentrifying neighborhood, "The Village" (pseudonym), bordering a black ghetto, "Northton" (pseudonym), in an American city. Anderson provides the following description of the underclass in this ghetto: The underclass of Northton is made up of people who have failed to keep up with their brethren, both in employment and sociability. Essentially they can be seen as victims of the economic and social system. They make up

725-568: A "moral assault on American values". Lumpenproletariat In Marxist theory , the Lumpenproletariat ( German: [ˈlʊmpn̩pʁoletaʁi̯ˌaːt] ; / ˌ l ʌ m p ə n p r oʊ l ɪ ˈ t ɛər i ə t / ) is the underclass devoid of class consciousness . Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the word in the 1840s and used it to refer to the unthinking lower strata of society exploited by reactionary and counter-revolutionary forces, particularly in

870-598: A "tool of reaction" in the revolutions of 1848 and as a "significant counterrevolutionary force throughout Europe." Engels wrote in The Peasant War in Germany (1850) that the lumpenproletariat is a "phenomenon that occurs in a more or less developed form in all the so far known phases of society". In The Communist Manifesto (1848), where lumpenproletariat is commonly translated in English editions as

1015-467: A 1932 article on "How Mussolini Triumphed" Leon Trotsky described the "declassed and demoralized" lumpenproletariat as "the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy." He argued that capitalism used them through fascism. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia , written from the Marxist-Leninist perspective, defined lumpenproletariat as: The term

1160-555: A President speculated more stupidly on the stupidity of the masses." For Marx, the lumpenproletariat represented those who were "corrupt, reactionary and without a clear sense of class-consciousness." He wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire : In Capital (1867) Marx claimed legislation which turned soldiers and peasants "en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances." By this he deviated from his focus on

1305-849: A Walter Channing Cabot Fellow at Harvard University for 2009–2010. And in 2012, the Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section of the American Sociological Association renamed its Early Career Award as the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award. Wilson also served on a member of numerous national boards and commissions including, the Social Science Research Council , Spelman College , Bard College , National Humanities Center , Levy Economic Institute and Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. He

1450-421: A black underclass was racial segregation. The decline of manufacturing and the rise of a two-tiered service economy harmed many racial and ethnic groups, but only black Americans were highly segregated, so only among them was the resulting income loss confined to a small set of spatially contiguous and racially homogenous neighborhoods. Given the prominent role of segregation in the construction and maintenance of

1595-505: A critique of arguments advanced by Wilson in The Truly Disadvantaged. In particular, Waldinger challenges Wilson's argument that the labor market problems African Americans face today are largely due to deindustrialization and consequent skills mismatches. Waldinger argues that, on one hand, African Americans never were especially dependent on jobs in the manufacturing sector, so deindustrialization in itself has not had

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1740-404: A greater degree than the general population, and other classes more specifically. Joel Rogers and James Wright identify four general themes by which these characteristics are organized within academic and journalistic accounts of the underclass: economic, social-psychological, behavioral, and ecological (spatial concentration). The economic dimension is the most basic and least contested theme of

1885-636: A group that is poor and behaviorally deficient. He describes the underclass as dysfunctional. He provides the following definition in his 1986 book, Beyond Entitlement , The underclass is most visible in urban slum settings and is about 70 percent nonwhite, but it includes many rural and white people as well, especially in Appalachia and the South. Much of the urban underclass is made up of street hustlers, welfare families, drug addicts, and former mental patients. There are, of course, people who function well –

2030-631: A major impact on African Americans, and that, on the other hand, the relative labor market success of poorly educated immigrants suggests that there is no absence of jobs for those with few skills in the post-industrial era (see Anthony Orum 's review of the book). One limitation to the full credibility of Waldinger's study, however, is that it is based entirely on research in New York City and, therefore, its findings are difficult to generalize to cities such as Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and others where blacks were indeed concentrated in

2175-404: A neo-Marxist conception of class, gradational measures of class (occupation and education) ... Measures of disreputable poverty—unemployment and welfare status [recipiency]—are relatively strong correlates of violent behavior." He explained: Several terms have been coined in imitation of lumpenproletariat such as: William Julius Wilson William Julius Wilson (born December 20, 1935)

2320-424: A primary institution conceptualizing the underclass for a mass audience. Many suggest that the underclass terminology employed by American journalists in the last quarter of the twentieth-century were partial to behavioral and cultural—as opposed to a structural—definitions of the underclass. While journalists' use of the underclass term is vast, a few popular sources are frequently cited in the academic literature on

2465-413: A program design would evoke behavioral change since permissiveness is replaced with authority. Mead summarizes his call to replace permissive welfare with authoritative welfare: The progressive tradition of extending new benefits and opportunities to the worst-off has made it next to impossible to address the behavioral difficulties at the bottom of society in their own terms. For to do that, authority, or

2610-547: A revolutionary movement. According to Michael Denning Fanon revived the term, long having been disappeared from left-wing discourse, in this book The Wretched of the Earth (1961). He defined the lumpenproletariat as the peasantry in colonial societies of the Third World not involved in industrial production who are unaware of the dominant colonial ideology and are therefore, "ready, capable and willing to revolt against

2755-527: A subculture of poverty). Gans suggests that the word "underclass" has become synonymous with impoverished blacks that behave in criminal, deviant, or "just non-middle-class ways". Loïc Wacquant deploys a relatively similar critique by arguing that underclass has become a blanket term that frames urban blacks as behaviorally and culturally deviant. Wacquant notes that underclass status is imposed on urban blacks from outside and above them (e.g., by journalists, politicians, and academics), stating that "underclass"

2900-602: A vast number of people in urban and rural areas into illegitimate occupations and activities. Earlier, in 1928, he asserted that "the only way" to win over these wayward proletarians was to carry out intensive thought reform "so as to effect qualitative changes in these elements." He argued that the lumpenproletariat had a dual nature. Simultaneously, they were "victimized members of the laboring masses and untrustworthy elements with 'parasitic inclinations ' ", which made them waver between revolution and counterrevolution. He believed that lumpenproletariat elements, such as triads ,

3045-469: Is Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University . He is one of 25 University Professors, the highest professional distinction for a Harvard faculty member. After receiving a PhD from Washington State University in 1966, Wilson taught sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst , before joining the University of Chicago faculty in 1972. In 1990 he was appointed

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3190-420: Is a derogatory and "negative label that nobody claims or invokes except to pin it on to others". And, although the underclass concepts is homogenizing, Wacquant argues that underclass imagery differentiates on gender lines, with the underclass male being depicted as a violent "gang banger", a physical threat to public safety, and the underclass female being generalized as "welfare mother" (also see welfare queen ),

3335-458: Is a diversity in the lumpen population, especially in terms of consciousness. Post-anarchist Saul Newman wrote in 2010 that classical anarchists argue that the lumpenproletariat should be designated as a revolutionary class. According to Tom Brass , individualist anarchist Max Stirner "celebrated the lumpenproletariat as authentic rebels." Anarchist thinker Mikhail Bakunin , who was dubbed "the lumpen prince" by Engels, wrote that only in

3480-735: Is an American sociologist , a professor at Harvard University , and an author of works on urban sociology, race, and class issues. Laureate of the National Medal of Science , he served as the 80th President of the American Sociological Association , was a member of numerous national boards and commissions. He identified the importance of neighborhood effects and demonstrated how limited employment opportunities and weakened institutional resources exacerbated poverty within American inner-city neighborhoods. Wilson

3625-412: Is an imaginary cure. In other words, the laissez-faire option assumes that the underclass is generally hopeless, and thus the only public effort given to them should be the bare minimum. The "retail option" includes those in between optimism and pessimism, what Auletta calls "skeptics". The retail option advocates for targeted efforts, recognizing the limits of government intervention, but is also aware of

3770-417: Is debated, so too are the attempts to frame the underclass as members of such a culture. The ecological dimension, a fourth theme in the literature on the underclass, is often used as both a description and an explanation for the underclass. The underclass is concentrated in specific areas. Although there are some writings on the "rural underclass", in general the underclass is framed as an urban phenomenon and

3915-403: Is frequently described as a "discouraged" group with members who feel "cut off" from mainstream society. Linked to this discussion of the underclass being psychologically deviant, the underclass is also said to have low levels of cognition and literacy. Thus, the underclass is often seen as being mentally disconnected from the rest of society. Consider the following: The underclass rejects many of

4060-528: Is not a requirement for underclass membership, and thus there are individuals who are non-poor members of the underclass because they live in "underclass areas" and embody other characteristics of the underclass, such as being violent, criminal, and anti-social (e.g., gang leaders). Many writers often highlight the social-psychological dimensions of the underclass. The underclass is often framed as holding beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and desires that are inconsistent with those held by society at large. The underclass

4205-407: Is one of a collection of causes to concentrated poverty and why the "social dislocations" (e.g., crime, school dropouts, out of wed-lock pregnancy, etc.) of the underclass emerge. Thus, the underclass is defined and identified by multiple characteristics. Members are persistently poor and experience high levels of joblessness. However, these trends are generally not seen as sufficient identifiers of

4350-438: Is one of the most vocal critics of the underclass concept. Gans suggests that American journalists, inspired partly by academic writings on the " culture of poverty ", reframed underclass from a structural term (in other words, defining the underclass in reference to conditions of social/economic/political structure) to a behavioral term (in other words, defining the underclass in reference to rational choice and/or in reference to

4495-437: Is primarily an outcome of institutionalized racism in real estate and banking, coupled with, and significantly motivated by, individual-level prejudice and discrimination. They provide the following summary, Thus, although we share William Julius Wilson's view that the structural transformation of the economy played a crucial role in creating the urban underclass during the 1970's, we argue that what made it disproportionately

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4640-404: Is psychologically disconnected from mainstream society, are occasionally highlighted as evidence that the underclass live in a subculture of poverty . From this point of view, members of the underclass embody a distinct set of thoughts, perceptions, and actions – a "style of life" - that are transmitted across generations. However, just as the conceptualization of a " culture of poverty " in general

4785-462: Is simply "non-assimilation" and his examples, along with Mead's definition, highlight underclass members' participation in deviant behavior and their adoption of an antisocial outlook on life. These controversies are elaborated further in the next section ("Characteristics of the Underclass"). As evident with Mead and Auletta's framing, some definitions of the underclass significantly diverge from

4930-586: Is the transformation of the post-civil-rights-era inner city into a "ghetto" whose residents are isolated from mainstream institutions. Wilson proposes a comprehensive social and economic program that is primarily universal, but nevertheless includes targeted efforts to improve the life chances of the ghetto underclass and other disadvantaged groups. Wilson lists multiple examples of what this universal program would include, such as public funding of training, retraining, and transitional employment benefits that would be available to all members of society. With respect to

5075-461: Is too permissive and provides benefits to the underclass without requirements for its members to change their behavior and lifestyle. Mead's diagnosis that permissive welfare is a primary cause of the underclass problem is followed by a prescription for a more authoritative welfare program that combines benefits with requirements. This proposal is often called " workfare ", which requires welfare recipients to work in order to receive aid. For Mead, such

5220-560: The 2016 presidential election campaign, to Marx's rhetoric of the lumpenproletariat . In 2020 Ryan Lizza coined Biden Proletariat to describe an underclass of campaign workers and supporters—"veterans of the Biden campaign"—who were cast aside during post-election White House staffing, thus carrying on a tradition in Democratic politics of abandoning loyal political workers in favor of well-connected political elites. Ranjit Gupta ,

5365-803: The American Sociological Association 's Sydney Spivack Award; The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (1987, 2012), which was selected by the editors of the New York Times Book Review as one of the 16 best books of 1987, and received The Washington Monthly Annual Book Award, the Society for the Study of Social Problems' C. Wright Mills Award and the American Political Science Association's Aaron Wildavsky Enduring Contribution Award; When Work Disappears: The World of

5510-593: The Armenian genocide , prisoners were pardoned and released from prison to serve in bands, or çetes . Criminals and other elements of the lumpenproletariat hoped to gain respectability and wealth through their participation in genocide. During World War II , the Nazi German Waffen-SS division Dirlewanger Brigade recruited poachers and criminals to wage the Bandenbekämpfung on

5655-692: The Black Panther Party and the Young Lords , have sought to mobilize the Lumpenproletariat . Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are generally considered to have coined the term Lumpenproletariat . It is composed of the German word Lumpen , which is usually translated as "ragged" and prolétariat , a French word adopted as a common Marxist term for the class of wage earners in a capitalist system. Hal Draper argued that

5800-776: The Eastern Front . In Kigali , during the Rwandan genocide , the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi , who recruited among the poorer elements of the population, started to draw a " lumpenproletariat of street boys ". The various Serbian militias of the Bosnian War such as the Serb Volunteer Guard and the White Eagles were described as recruiting among the lumpenproletariat. Eighty percent of

5945-699: The Euromaidan protests in 2013–14, were characterized as lumpen elements. The 1979 report of the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education warned that the US is in danger of creating "a permanent underclass, a self‐perpetuating culture of poverty, a substantial 'lumpen proletariat'." Eleanor Holmes Norton wrote in 1985: "An American version of a lumpenproletariat (the so-called underclass), without work and without hope, existing at

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6090-495: The Frankfurt School , believed that the working class in the US "having been bought up by the consumer society, has lost all class consciousness" and lay the hopes for revolution on the lumpenproletariat —the social outcasts—led by intellectuals. Marcuse, along with Afro-Caribbean philosopher Frantz Fanon and other radical intellectuals, proposed that elements of the lumpenproletariat are potentially leading forces in

6235-854: The University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. A MacArthur Prize Fellow from 1987 to 1992, Wilson has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the National Academy of Education , the American Philosophical Society , the Institute of Medicine , and the British Academy . In June 1996 he was selected by Time magazine as one of America's 25 Most Influential People. In 1997, he received

6380-429: The deindustrialization of the country. Mark Cowling argued that there is considerable similarity in both definition and function between the lumpenproletariat , as proposed by Marx, and the contemporary theory of the underclass by Charles Murray , an American conservative political scientist. Although Murray and Richard Herrnstein did not use the term in their 1994 book The Bell Curve , Malcolm Browne noted in

6525-421: The gardes mobiles were set up "to set one segment of the proletariat against the other": In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Marx identified Napoleon III as the "Chief of the Lumpenproletariat ", a claim he made repeatedly. He argued that he bought his supporters with "gifts and loans, these were the limits of the financial science of the lumpenproletariat , both the low and the exalted. Never had

6670-475: The imperial period the lumpenproletariat —especially prostitutes and pimps—was not only a "political-moral problem, but also an objective, biological danger to the health of society." Karl Kautsky argued in 1890 that it is the lumpenproletariat and not the "militant industrial proletariat" that mostly suffer from alcoholism . August Bebel , pre-World War I leader of the SPD, linked anti-Semitic proletarians to

6815-452: The laissez-faire option) and one middle-of-the-road position (the retail option), but these are more discussions concerning the amount of public resources that should be dedicated to fixing, or attempting to fix, the underclass problem, rather than specific strategies. Auletta seems to support the retail option, which would provide aid to underclass members deserving and hopeful and withhold aid to members undeserving and hopeless. For Wilson,

6960-463: The lumpenproletariat and "and not in the bourgeois strata of workers, are there crystallised the entire intelligence and power of the coming Social Revolution ." Thoburn writes that for him, the lumpenproletariat represented a "kind of actually existing anarchism." Ann Robertson notes that Bakunin believed that "inherent in humanity is a natural essence which can be suppressed but never entirely extinguished. Those in society who are more distant from

7105-450: The lumpenproletariat and were, therefore, subject to an aggressive policy of assimilation. Ken Gelder noted that in cultural studies, subcultures are "often positioned outside of class, closer in kind to Marx's lumpenproletariat , lacking social consciousness, self-absorbed or self-interested, at a distance from organised or sanctioned forms of labour, and so on." In Ukraine, titushky , pro- Viktor Yanukovych thugs active during

7250-538: The lumpenproletariat as the former failed to develop class consciousness, which led to a racial, and not social, explanation of economic inequality. Vladimir Lenin called socialist attempts to recruit lumpenproletariat elements " opportunism ". In 1925 Nikolai Bukharin described the lumpenproletariat as being characterized by "shiftlessness, lack of discipline, hatred of the old, but impotence to construct anything new, an individualistic declassed 'personality' whose actions are based only on foolish caprices." In

7395-469: The lumpenproletariat as: They used the term exclusively with negative connotations, although their works lack "consistent and clearly reasoned definition" of the term. They used the term in various publications "for diverse purposes and on several levels of meaning." Hal Draper suggested that the concept has its roots in Young Hegelian thought and possibly in G.W.F. Hegel 's Elements of

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7540-452: The lumpenproletariat in his writings of the revolutionary turmoil in France between 1848 and 1852: The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850 (1850) and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852). In The Class Struggles he describes the finance aristocracy of Louis Philippe I and his July Monarchy (1830–1848) as lumpenproletarian: "In the way it acquires wealth and enjoys it

7685-546: The lumpenproletariat is essentially a conservative force based on his study of Sesto Fiorentino . He found that some 450–500 members of the working class had joined the liberal-conservative party, which was led by landowners, industrialists, and professionals in hopes of getting recommendation that would allow them to join Richard-Ginori , the largest local employer, which refused to hire socialists. In 1966 sociologist David Matza cited disorder and violence as two of

7830-430: The lumpenproletariat , "Marx was combating the established view that the entire working class was a dangerous and immoral element. He drew a line between the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat to defend the moral character of the former." The first collaborative work by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to feature the term lumpenproletariat is The German Ideology , written in 1845–46. They used it to describe

7975-606: The plebs (plebeians) of ancient Rome who were midway between freemen and slaves , never becoming more than a "proletarian rabble [ lumpenproletariat ]" and Max Stirner 's "self-professed radical constituency of the Lumpen or ragamuffin." The first work written solely by Marx to mention the term was an article published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in November 1848 which described the lumpenproletariat as

8120-634: The second season of the HBO show The Wire . Beginning with The Declining Significance of Race , Wilson's work has attracted a great deal of controversy and criticism, see for example Willie's The Inclining Significance of Race . In his book Still the Promised City? African-Americans and New Immigrants in Postindustrial New York, Roger Waldinger, a professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles , provides

8265-502: The "case of lumpenproletariat reformatories suggests that anti-state resistance from members of the oppressed masses was essential to early-PRC rhetoric because it validated claims about the devastating effects of the old society and the transformative power of socialist 'truth'." By the early 1970s some radicals deviated from the orthodox Marxist viewpoint that the lumpenproletariat lacks significant revolutionary potential. Herbert Marcuse , an American philosopher and sociologist of

8410-553: The "dangerous class" and the "social scum", Marx and Engels wrote: In an article analyzing the June 1848 events in Paris Engels wrote of the gardes mobiles , a militia which suppressed the workers' uprising: "The organized lumpenproletariat had given battle to the working proletariat. It had, as was to be expected, put itself at the disposal of the bourgeoisie." Thoburn notes that Marx makes his most detailed descriptions of

8555-539: The Bosnian Serb paramilitary troops were said to be criminals, and Croat and Bosnian units similarly drew criminals into their ranks. In Darfur , some Janjaweed were convicts recruited in prison or bandits who joined governmental forces. Marc Lavergne, author of Le Soudan contemporain , described them as a "rural lumpenproletariat ". Ernesto Ragionieri , an Italian Marxist historian, argued to have confirmed in his 1953 book Un comune socialista that

8700-823: The Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement . He is a recipient of the 1998 National Medal of Science , the highest scientific honor in the United States, and was awarded the Talcott Parsons Prize in the Social Sciences by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003; the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize by the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2013;

8845-748: The Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In 2010s, cow vigilantism in India has been linked by Pavan Varma to "lumpen Hindu fanaticism" and to "lumpen and self-appointed gau rakshaks " by Bhalchandra Mungekar . Due to a desire to keep clean the hands of the larger public, paramilitary groups are often used to commit atrocities and they often recruit mainly among criminals, said to be used to violence and brutality and wanting to enjoy an occasion to loot. The lumpenproletariat has been described as being more likely to adhere to doctrines calling for ethnic cleansing and to organize in militias. During

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8990-693: The Inspector General of the West Bengal Police , claimed in 1973 that the Maoist Naxalite rebels in India were made of "some intellectuals and lumpen proletariat. Their main target was policemen—and they thought that if the police force could be torn apart, so could society." Political scientist Atul Kohli claimed in his 2001 book that "variety of lumpen groups, especially unemployed youth in northern India, have joined right-wing proto-fascist movements in recent years", especially

9135-911: The Lucy Flower University Professor and director of the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Urban Inequality. He joined the faculty at Harvard in July 1996. He is affiliated with the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School , the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research , and Harvard's Department of Sociology. He is a member of the Library of Congress Scholars Council. Wilson

9280-779: The Neighborhood: Racial, Ethnic, and Class Tensions in Four Chicago Neighborhoods and Their Meaning for America (2006), and Good Kids in Bad Neighborhoods: Successful Development in Social Context (2006); and author of More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (2009). In The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions (1978) Wilson argues that

9425-631: The New Urban Poor (1996), which was selected as one of the notable books of 1996 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review and received the 1997 Hillman Prize and the American Political Science Association's Aaron Wildavsky Enduring Contribution Award; and The Bridge Over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics . More recently, he is the co-author of There Goes

9570-533: The Philosophy of Right . While Bussard believes that the idea was "at one and the same time, a hybrid of new social attitudes which crystallised in France, England and Germany, as well as an extension of more traditional, pre-nineteenth-century views of the lower classes." Bussard noted that they often used the term as a "kind of sociological profanity" and contrasted between it and "working and thinking" proletariat . According to Michael Denning by identifying

9715-707: The Robert and Helen Lynd Award for Distinguished Career Achievement by the Community and Urban Section of the American Sociological Association in 2013; and the W.E.B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award by the American Sociological Association in 2014, the highest award bestowed by the American Sociological Association. Other honors granted to Wilson include the Seidman Award in Political Economy (the first and only non-economist to receive

9860-447: The SPD and its newspaper Vorwärts to the lumpenproletariat working in collusion with the secret police. Historian Richard J. Evans argued that the SPD, thus, lost touch with the "militancy of the classes which it claimed to represent, a militancy which found expression in frequent outbursts of spontaneous collective protest, both political and industrial, at moments of high social and political tension." For many German socialists in

10005-560: The Soviet nomenclature , as a declassed ( déclassé ) group. The term " underclass " is considered to be the modern synonym of lumpenproleteriat . Scholars note its negative connotations. Economist Richard McGahey, writing for the New York Times in 1982, noted that it is one of the older terms in a "long line of labels that stigmatize poor people for their poverty by focusing exclusively on individual characteristics." He listed

10150-638: The State apparatus (the peasants are scattered throughout the countryside, the lumpenproletariat simply refuses to obey the laws) are accordingly natural leaders". Bakunin stated: Robert Ritter , the head of Nazi Germany's efforts to track the genealogies of the Romani , considered them a "highly inferior Lumpenproletariat " as they were "parasites who lacked ambition and many of them had become habitual criminals." The Romani were seen in post-World War II communist-ruled eastern and central Europe as an example of

10295-411: The U.S. underwent several transformations during the decades following Myrdal's introduction of the term. According to sociologist Herbert Gans , while Myrdal's structural conceptualization of the underclass remained relatively intact through the writings of William Julius Wilson and others, in several respects the structural definition was abandoned by many journalists and academics, and replaced with

10440-509: The approach embraced by Auletta as he closes his book with reflections on some of the people he interviews throughout preceding pages. He says, "I have no difficulty giving up on violent criminals like the Bolden brothers or street hustlers like Henry Rivera. But knowing how a government helping hand made it possible for Pearl Dawson and William Mason to succeed, would you be willing to write them off?" Social scientists often point to journalism as

10585-565: The award); the Golden Plate Achievement Award; the Distinguished Alumnus Award, Washington State University ; the American Sociological Association's Dubois, Johnson, Frazier Award (for significant scholarship in the field of inter-group relations); the American Sociological Association's Award for Public Understanding of Sociology; Burton Gordon Feldman Award ("for outstanding contributions in

10730-495: The black urban underclass. Wilson defines the underclass as "a massive population at the very bottom of the social ladder plagued by poor education and low-paying jobs." He generally limits his discussion to those trapped in the post-civil-rights ghetto in the American rust belt (see "Potential Causes and Proposed Solutions" section of this entry for a more detailed summary of Wilson on the underclass). Elijah Anderson's , Streetwise (1990), employs ethnographic methods to study

10875-405: The cause of the underclass is structural. In The Truly Disadvantaged , Wilson highlights a conglomerate of factors in the last half of the twentieth century leading to a growing urban underclass. The factors listed include but are not limited to the shift from a goods-producing economy to a service-producing economy (including deindustrialization ) and the offshore outsourcing of labor not only in

11020-485: The cause of these differences in resources across similar neighborhoods likely has more to do with dynamics outside of the neighborhood. Past President of the American Sociological Association , Wilson has received 45 honorary degrees, including honorary doctorates from Yale , Princeton University , Columbia University , the University of Pennsylvania , Northwestern University , Johns Hopkins University , New York University , Bard College , Dartmouth College , and

11165-511: The colonial status quo for liberation." He described them as "one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people." He was not uncritical of the lumpenproletariat due to their supposed unpredictability due to "their ignorance and incomprehension." Colonial forces could make a use of them as hired soldiers. Fanon's use of the term prompted debates and studies, including by Pierre Bourdieu and Charles van Onselen . The African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral

11310-707: The competitiveness of American goods on both the domestic and international market; and a national labor market strategy to make the labor force more adequate to changing economic opportunities. On the other hand, this program highlights a child support assurance program, a family allowance program, and a child care strategy. In their 1993 book, American Apartheid , sociologists Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton concur with much of Wilson's suggested causes and proposed solutions, but introduce racial residential segregation (as an outcome of both institutionalized and individual-level discrimination ) as an explanatory factor. Massey and Denton argue that racial residential segregation

11455-430: The context of the revolutions of 1848 . They dismissed the revolutionary potential of the Lumpenproletariat and contrasted it with the proletariat . Among other groups, criminals, vagabonds , and prostitutes are usually included in this category. The Social Democratic Party of Germany made wide use of the term by the turn of the century . Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky followed Marx's arguments and dismissed

11600-416: The diagnosis of concentration and isolation, Wilson suggests the promotion of social mobility , through programs that will increase employment prospects for the underclass, will lead to geographic mobility . Wilson describes his proposed program as having a "hidden agenda" for policy makers "to improve the life chances of truly disadvantaged groups such as the ghetto underclass by emphasizing programs to which

11745-534: The diagnosis of, and prescription for, the underclass often mirror debates concerning first world poverty more generally. However, in many writings on the specific notion of the underclass, some particular causes and solutions have been set forth. A few of these propositions are outlined below, including those developed by William Julius Wilson , Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, Lawrence M. Mead , and Ken Auletta . The work by these authors' certainly do not compile an exhaustive list of suggested causes or solutions for

11890-465: The disappearance of quality work (for example, via deindustrialization and offshore labor outsourcing ) for ghetto residents, while Mead highlights an overgenerous and permissive welfare state . Massey and Denton link the creation of the underclass to racial residential segregation and advocate for policies encouraging desegregation . Auletta provides a different policy framework discussion by highlighting two extreme positions (the wholesale option and

12035-417: The downtrodden, the brother who's robbing banks, who's not politically conscious" in his definition of the lumpenproletariat . Newton called them "street brothers", alienated from the system of oppression in the US, and sought to recruit them into the party. Their strategy was a controversial one. Chris Booker and Errol Henderson argued that problems such as "a lack of discipline, a tendency toward violence,

12180-891: The field of public policy") Brandeis University; and the Martin Luther King Jr. National Award (granted by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , Los Angeles); the Diverse: Issues in Higher Education's John Hope Franklin Award; Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award, Harvard University; and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement in Nonfiction. He was designated

12325-415: The financial aristocracy is nothing but the lumpenproletariat reborn at the pinnacle of bourgeois society." He distinguished the finance aristocracy from the industrial bourgeoisie as the former became rich "not by production, but by pocketing the already available wealth of others." He further suggests that the lumpenproletariat is a component of the proletariat, unlike his earlier works. He claimed that

12470-445: The following synonyms: "underclass", "undeserving poor", and " culture of poverty ". Another synonym is " riff-raff ". The word is used in some languages as a pejorative. In English it may be used in an informal disapproving manner to "describe people who are not clever or well educated, and who are not interested in changing or improving their situation." According to historian Robert Bussard, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels viewed

12615-508: The forces of production and incapable of having a working-class consciousness." Svetlana Stephenson notes that the Soviet state "for all its ideology of assistance, cooperation and social responsibility, was ready to descend on them with all its might." Mao Zedong argued in 1939 that the lumpenproletariat ( Chinese : 游民无产者 , pinyin : yóumín wúchǎnzhě ) in China is a legacy of the country's "colonial and semi-colonial status" which forced

12760-436: The ghetto underclass can be most meaningfully addressed by a comprehensive program that combines employment policies with social welfare policies and that features universal as opposed to race- or group-specific strategies. On the one hand, this program highlights macroeconomic policy to generate a tight labor market and economic growth; fiscal and monetary policy not only to stimulate noninflationary growth, but also to increase

12905-401: The government to "get tough" on underclass crime and welfare dependency. The " laissez-faire option" is pessimistic and its proponents are extremely wary of proposed solutions to a problem they see as unsolvable. Proponents of this perspective call for a drastic withdrawal of public aid for the underclass and are concerned with "quarantining the patient" instead of hunting for what they believe

13050-404: The importance of understanding not only the independent contributions of social structure and culture but also how they interact to shape different group outcomes that embody racial inequality." Wilson's goal is to "rethink the way we talk about addressing the problems of race and urban poverty in the public policy arena." Wilson's book When Work Disappears has been cited as an inspiration for

13195-477: The importation of street culture, including crime, and the use of weapons" by Black Panthers was caused by the disproportionately high membership of the lumpenproletariat in their ranks. The Young Lords Party adopted similar views to the Black Panther Party, believing in the potential of the lumpen. They developed a Lumpen Organization within their larger organization with the goal of enlisting

13340-469: The industrial sector but also in substantial portions of the remaining service sector. These factors are aggravated by the exodus of the middle and upper classes from the inner city (first the well-known " white flight " and later the less-studied departure of the black middle class), which creates a " spatial mismatch " between where low-income people live (inner-city neighborhoods) and where low-skill service-sector jobs are available (the suburbs). The result

13485-406: The initial notion of an economic group beneath the working class. A few writings on the underclass distinguish between various types of underclass, such as the social underclass, the impoverished underclass, the reproductive underclass, the educational underclass, the violent underclass, and the criminal underclass, with some expected horizontal mobility between these groups. Even more divergent from

13630-434: The initial notion of an underclass are the recent journalistic accounts of a so-called "genetic underclass", referring to a genetic inheritance of a predisposition to addiction and other personality traits traditionally associated with behavioral definitions of the underclass. However, such distinctions between criminal, social, impoverished, and other specified underclass terms still refer to the same general group—those beneath

13775-422: The interplay of structural factors and the attitudes and assumptions of African Americans, European Americans, and social science researchers. In identifying the dynamic influence of structural, economic, and cultural factors, he argues against either/or politicized views of poverty among African Americans that either focus blame solely on cultural factors or only on unjust structural factors. He tries "to demonstrate

13920-554: The labor market, and thus they cannot rise above their status easily but also thus are "not consistently exploited" because the opportunity for their economic exploitation is minimal for the classes above. Unlike the working class, which he believes is routinely exploited for their labor power by higher classes, the underclass in Wright's view, do not hold the labor power worthy of exploitation. Wright argues his highly doctrinaire opinion of class malevolence that: The material interests of

14065-472: The limitations of his theory of economic determinism and argued that the group and "its possible integration into the politics of populism as an 'absolute outside' that threatens the coherence of ideological identifications." Mark Cowling argues that the "concept is being used for its political impact rather than because it provides good explanations" and that its political impact is "pernicious" and an "obstacle to clear analysis." Laura Pulido argues that there

14210-484: The lumpenproletariat around a perceived lack of productivity and organization, the Young Lords Party stated that "it's a law of revolution that the most oppressed group takes the leadership position" (p. 42) and that the lumpen would be the immediate focus of the party's organizing efforts in liberating all oppressed peoples. Ernesto Laclau argued that Marx's dismissal of the lumpenproletariat showed

14355-649: The making of demands on people, would have to be seen as the tool, and not the butt, of policy. Ken Auletta closes his book, The Underclass (1982), by highlighting three typologies of solutions: "the wholesale option", "the laissez-faire option", and "the retail option". The "wholesale option" includes both conservatives and liberals who are optimistic that government action can solve the underclass problem. According to Auletta, left-wing wholesale proponents call for increased public aid while right-wing wholesale proponents call for government to reduce taxes to increase jobs (inspired by trickle-down economic theory ) and charge

14500-412: The manufacturing sector. The concept of 'the ghetto' and 'underclass' has faced criticism both empirically and theoretically. Research has shown significant differences in resources for neighborhoods with similar populations both across cities and over time. This includes differences in the resources of neighborhoods with predominantly low income and/or racial minority populations. It has been argued that

14645-468: The margins of society, could bring down the great cities, sap resources and strength from the entire society and, lacking the usual means to survive, prey upon those who possess them." According to political scientist Marie Gottschalk the tough-on-crime stance on African Americans has been caused by political manipulation of public fears of a lumpen underclass threatening the majority as African Americans were perceived to have turned to crime due to losing in

14790-489: The more advantaged groups of all races and class backgrounds can positively relate". Universal programs are more easily accepted within the US' political climate than targeted programs, yet the underclass would likely experience the most benefit from universal programs. Wilson notes that some means-tested programs are still necessary, but recommends that they be framed as secondary to universal programming efforts. The following quote summarizes his policy call: [T]he problems of

14935-476: The most prominent characteristics of the disreputable poor. In his 1977 book Class, State, and Crime , Marxist historian Richard Quinney defined lumpen crimes (or "predatory crimes") as those intended for purely personal profit. In a 1986 study sociologist David Brownfield defined the lumpen-proletariat (or the "disreputable poor") by their unemployment and receipt of welfare benefits. He concluded that "while no significant effects of class can be found using

15080-526: The nation at large, and do not share in its life, its ambitions, and its achievements". However, this general conception of a class or category of people below the core of the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences, such as through the work of Henry Mayhew , whose London Labour and the London Poor sought to describe the hitherto invisible world of casual workers, prostitutes, and street-people. The specific concept of an underclass in

15225-400: The norms and values of the larger society. Among underclass youth, achievement motivation is low, education is undervalued, and conventional means of success and upward mobility are scorned. There is widespread alienation from society and its institutions, estrangement, social isolation, and hopelessness, the sense that a better life is simply not attainable through legitimate means. Not only is

15370-843: The organized crime syndicates, "can become revolutionary given proper leadership". According to Luo Ruiqing , the Minister of Public Security , the lumpenproletariat population consisted of sex workers, vagrant gangs, and theft rings and were political problems that threatened the internal security of China. Following the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War and the proclamation of the People's Republic of China (PRC), lumpenproletariat were interned into government-run reeducation centers. Some 500,000 people were interned into 920 such centers by 1953. Historian Aminda Smith notes that

15515-404: The overall framing of pervasive, concentrated urban poverty of African Americans. He asks the question, "Why do poverty and unequal opportunity persist in the lives of so many African Americans?" In response, he traces the history and current state of powerful structural factors impacting African Americans, such as discrimination in laws, policies, hiring, housing, and education. Wilson also examines

15660-451: The people considered the lumpenproletariat, or "lumpen", in the struggle; they considered the lumpen to be "the class in our nation which for years and years have not been able to find jobs, and are forced to be drug addicts, prostitutes, etc." (p. 20) in the face of the capitalist system the Party considered an enemy. Crucial to the party's view on the lumpen is that, unlike criticisms of

15805-424: The phrase, urban underclass , are, for the most part, used interchangeably. Studies concerning the post-civil rights African American ghetto often include a discussion of the urban underclass. Many writings concerning the underclass, particularly in the U.S., are urban-focused. William Julius Wilson's books, The Declining Significance of Race (1978) and The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), are popular accounts of

15950-417: The phrases "ghetto poverty" and "inner-city poverty" are often used synonymously with the underclass term. However, many scholars are careful not to equate concentrated poverty with the underclass. Living in areas of concentrated poverty is more or less framed as a common (and often necessary) condition of the underclass, but it is generally not considered a sufficient condition since many conceptualizations of

16095-423: The political left arguing that joblessness and insufficient welfare provided are causes of underclass conditions while the political right employ the underclass term to refer to welfare dependency and moral decline. Many sociologists suggest that this latter rhetoric – the right-wing perspective – became dominant in mainstream accounts of the underclass during the later decades of the twentieth-century. Herbert Gans

16240-429: The positive impact social policy can have on efforts to fix specific problems of the underclass. This middle ground perspective requests that aid be given to members of the underclass considered to be deserving of aid, but withheld from members considered to be undeserving. However, proponents of the retail option often disagree on which members of the underclass are considered deserving and which are not. This appears to be

16385-470: The revolutionary potential of the group, while Mao Zedong argued that proper leadership could utilize it. The word Lumpenproletariat , popularized in the West by Frantz Fanon 's The Wretched of the Earth in the 1960s, has been adopted as a sociological term. However, what some consider to be its vagueness and its history as a term of abuse has led to some criticism. Some revolutionary groups, most notably

16530-531: The revolutionary potential of the group. Pulido claims the emphasis the Black Panthers put on the lumpenproletariat was the party's hallmark. Its co-founders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton viewed the African-American lumpenproletariat as a potential organized threat if the party did not mobilize them. Seale included "the brother who's pimping, the brother who's hustling, the unemployed,

16675-539: The root is lump ("knave"), not lumpen . Bussard noted that the meaning of lump shifted from being a person dressed in rags in the 17th century to knavery in the 19th century. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines it as "the lowest stratum of the proletariat. Used originally in Marxist theory to describe those members of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and

16820-399: The significance of race is waning, and that for African Americans, class is comparatively more important in determining their life chances. In The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (1987), Wilson was one of the first to enunciate at length the " spatial mismatch " theory for the development of a ghetto underclass. As industrial jobs disappeared in cities in

16965-484: The slums" to help with his Red Terror . Laura Pulido argues that, historically, the lumpenproletariat in the US has mostly been African American due to the nation being racially constituted. It is primarily indicated by the high unemployment and incarceration rates among African Americans. The Black Panther Party , most prominent revolutionary socialists in post-war US, "thought of much of their following as lumpenproletarian ." They adopted Fanon's viewpoint regarding

17110-423: The so-called 'deserving' or 'working poor' – and better-off people who function poorly, but in general low income and serious behavioral difficulties go together. The underclass is not large as a share of population, perhaps 9 million people, but it accounts for the lion's share of the most serious disorders in American life, especially in the cities. Ken Auletta , often credited as the primary journalist who brought

17255-541: The spaces and locations for the underclass and reflects the leftist view of the other classes as acting against the underclass in unison, as opposed to other sociological views seeing class actors behaving as individuals reacting to individual incentives within society. The underclass generally occupies specific zones in the city. Thus, the notion of an underclass is popular in Urban Sociology , and particularly in accounts of urban poverty. The term, underclass , and

17400-413: The traumatized drunks, drifters, homeless shopping-bag ladies, and released mental patients who frequently roam or collapse on city streets. Each of the above definitions are said to conceptualize the same general group – the American underclass – but they provide somewhat competing imagery. While Wright, Wilson, and Anderson each position the underclass in reference to the labor market, Auletta's definition

17545-481: The underclass and journalism. Ken Auletta employed the underclass term in three articles published in The New Yorker in 1981, and in book form a year later. Auletta is arguably the most read journalist of the underclass and many of his ideas, including his definition of the underclass, are included in this Misplaced Pages entry. Another notable journalist is Nicholas Lemann who published a handful of articles on

17690-409: The underclass are considered as follows. Marxian sociologist Erik Olin Wright sees the underclass as a "category of social agents who are economically oppressed but not consistently exploited within a given class system". The underclass occupies the lowest possible rung on a class ladder. According to Wright, the underclass are oppressed. He believes this is because they are generally denied access to

17835-408: The underclass frequently said to think differently, they are also said to behave differently. Some believe that the underclass concept was meant to capture the coincidence of a number of social ills including poverty, joblessness, crime, welfare dependence, fatherless families, and low levels of education or work related skills. These behavioral characteristics, coupled with arguments that the underclass

17980-501: The underclass highlight behavioral and psychological deviancy that may not necessarily persist in high-poverty areas. In Wilson's writings on the underclass – a term he eventually replaces with "ghetto poverty" (see section titled "Critiques of the Underclass Concept")– the underclass is described as a population that is physically and socially isolated from individuals and institutions of mainstream society, and this isolation

18125-741: The underclass in the Atlantic Monthly during the late 1980s and early 1990s. His 1986 writings on "The Origins of the Underclass" argue that the underclass was created by two migrations, the great migration of Southern blacks to the North and West during the early to mid twentieth century and the exodus of middle class blacks out of the ghetto during the 1970s through the early 90s. In 1991 Lemann also published an article titled "The Other Underclass", which details Puerto Ricans, and particularly Puerto Ricans residing in South Bronx, as members of

18270-547: The underclass term to the forefront of the American consciousness, describes the American underclass as non-assimilated Americans, and he suggests that the underclass may be subcategorized into four distinct groups: (1) the passive poor, usually long-term welfare recipients; (2) the hostile street criminals who terrorize most cities, and who are often school dropouts and drug addicts; (3) the hustlers, who, like street criminals, may not be poor and who earn their livelihood in an underground economy, but rarely commit violent crimes; (4)

18415-512: The underclass – the underclass is overwhelmingly poor. The underclass experiences high levels of joblessness, and what little employment its members hold in the formal economy is best described as precarious labor. However, it is important to note that simply being poor is not synonymous with being part of the underclass. The underclass is persistently poor and, for most definitions, the underclass live in areas of concentrated poverty . Some scholars, such as Ricketts and Sawhill, argue that being poor

18560-409: The underclass, as well as proposed solutions for managing or fixing the underclass problem have been highly debated. Gunnar Myrdal is generally credited as the first proponent of the term underclass. Writing in the early 1960s on economic inequality in the U.S., Myrdal's underclass refers to a "class of unemployed, unemployables, and underemployed, who are more and more hopelessly set apart from

18705-475: The underclass, because, for many, the underclass concept also captures dimensions of psychological and behavioral deviancy. Furthermore, the underclass is generally identified as an urban phenomenon with its members typically living in areas of concentrated poverty. Similar to issues of defining and identifying the underclass, the outlining of potential causes and proposed solutions for the "underclass problem" have also been points of contestation. Debates concerning

18850-403: The underclass, but they are arguably the most read proposals among social scientists. The contrasting causes and solutions highlighted by Wilson and Mead in particular have been popular points for debate. However, because prescription is dependent on diagnosis, much of the debates between Wilson and Mead have been on the causes and conditions of the underclass. Wilson highlights social isolation and

18995-416: The unemployed, the underskilled, and the poorly educated, even though some hold high-school diplomas. Many are intelligent, but they are demoralized by racism and the wall of social resistance facing them. In this context they lose perspective and lack an outlook and sensibility that would allow them to negotiate the wider system of employment and society in general. Lawrence M. Mead defines the underclass as

19140-505: The unemployed, who lacked awareness of their collective interest as an oppressed class." In modern usage, it is commonly defined to include the chronically unemployed, the homeless, and career criminals . The Communist Party USA website defines it as follows: In English translations of Marx and Engels, lumpenproletariat has sometimes been rendered as "social scum", "dangerous classes", "ragamuffin", and "ragged-proletariat". It has been described by some scholars and theorists, as well as

19285-511: The upholding of the Fair Housing Act , including speedy judicial action against violators (to strengthen deterrent effects of the legislation). Mead argues that the core cause of the underclass problem (or at least the perpetuation of the underclass problem) is welfare . Mead argues that most welfare programs encourage social dysfunctions, including welfare dependency , illegitimate births, joblessness , and crime . For Mead, welfare

19430-456: The urban poor. Many who reject the underclass concept suggest that the underclass term has been transformed into a codeword to refer to poor inner-city blacks. For example, Hilary Silver highlights a moment when David Duke , former Grand Wizard of the KKK , campaigned for Louisiana Governor by complaining about the "welfare underclass". The underclass concept has been politicized, with those from

19575-418: The urban underclass in the US. Following the popularization of the underclass concept in both academic and journalistic writings, some academics began to overtly criticize underclass terminology. Those in opposition to the underclass concept generally argue that, on the one hand, "underclass" is a homogenizing term that simplifies a heterogeneous group, and on the other hand, the term is derogatory and demonizes

19720-405: The urban underclass, Massey and Denton call for policies that promote desegregation . They provide a detailed list of policy suggestions in the closing of their book. They argue that policies aimed at desegregation need to target the private housing market, where an overwhelming majority of housing is allocated. In doing this, the authors call upon the federal government to dedicate more resources to

19865-433: The vicious and degenerate behavior of the lumpenproletariat in his writings on France. Instead he described the lumpenproletariat as part of the what he called an " industrial reserve army ", which capitalists used as times required. Thus "vagabonds, criminals, prostitutes" and other lumpenproletariat formed an element within the "surplus population" in a capitalist system. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)

20010-435: The wake of global economic restructuring , and hence urban unemployment increased, women found it unwise to marry the fathers of their children since the fathers would not be breadwinners. In The Truly Disadvantaged Wilson also argued against Charles Murray 's theory of welfare causing poverty . In Wilson's most recent book, More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (2009), he directs his attention to

20155-530: The wealthy and privileged segments of American society would be better served if these people simply disappeared…The alternative, then, is to build prisons, to cordon off the zones of cities in which the underclass live. In such a situation the main potential power of the underclass against their oppressors comes from their capacity to disrupt the sphere of consumption, especially through crime and other forms of violence, not their capacity to disrupt production through their control over labor. This quote partly concerns

20300-424: The working class. And, despite recent journalistic accounts of a "genetic underclass", the underclass concept is primarily, and has traditionally been, a social science term. The underclass is located by a collection of identifying characteristics, such as high levels of joblessness , out-of-wedlock births, crime , violence , substance abuse , and high school dropout rates . The underclass harbors these traits to

20445-662: Was an original board member of the progressive Century Institute , and a current board member at Philadelphia -based Public/Private Ventures , PolicyLink, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He was Sudhir Venkatesh 's advisor when Venkatesh was a PhD student at the University of Chicago. Wilson is the author of Power Racism and Privilege: Race Relations in Theoretical and Sociohistorical Perspectives (1973, 1976), The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions (1978, 1980, 2012), winner of

20590-510: Was coined by Jonah Goldberg in 2015 to describe Trump's "biggest fans", who he believed "are not to be relied upon in the conservative cause" in the same way the lumpenproletariat was not to be relied upon for a socialist revolution. Daniel Henninger used the term as well in The Wall Street Journal . Francis Levy compared " basket of deplorables ", Hillary Clinton 's phrase to characterize some Trump supporters during

20735-481: Was one of the first to use lumpenproletariat in their rhetoric, particularly to indicate the scope of their view of a "desirable" working class and exclude the non-respectable poor. By the early 20th century, the German Marxist tradition saw workers outside the SPD and/or labor unions as members of the lumpenproletariat . In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rioting and violence was often attributed by

20880-766: Was rarely used in the Soviet Union to describe any portion of the Soviet society because, Hemmerle argues, following the Russian Revolution of 1917 "millions of people passed through economic conditions that bore a resemblance to the traditional meaning of lumpenproletariat ". However, it was used to label labor movements in capitalist countries which were not pro-Soviet. Soviet authorities and scholars instead reserved other terms for their own lumpenproletariat groups, especially "déclassé elements" (деклассированные элементы, deklassirovannye elementy ), and viewed them, like Marx, as "social degenerates, isolated from

21025-755: Was skeptical about the lumpen being used in anti-colonialist liberation revolution. His African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde recruited déclassé , but not lumpenproletariat , groups as the latter were supportive of the Portuguese colonial police, while the former, in the absence of a developed proletariat in Guinea and Cape Verde, played a dynamic role in anti-colonialist struggle. Historian Martin Meredith wrote that Ethiopian ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam used "the lumpen-proletariat of

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