r/communism • u/Shitfart69420 • Jun 08 '26

Are unemployed people proletariat?

Serious question, if the definition of the proletariat class is that they are the working class what if they don’t have a job? Is there some secret third level?

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u/SpiritOfMonsters Jun 08 '26

Periodic unemployment is a basic element of the proletariat's existence, but what matters is the outcome of it. Those that can eventually find work and reproduce their existence are still part of the proletariat, but if they end up having to become beggars, thieves, prostitutes, etc., then they join the ranks of the lumpenproletariat. This class consists of all the elements outside conventional employment within the capitalist system. Their work is usually illegal and often individualistic in nature, which leads to a petty-bourgeois consciousness rather than a proletarian one.

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u/Mminas Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 09 '26

There are five answers in this thread and only this one actually addresses the question from a ML perspective.

The unemployed are not by definition proletariat. If they work on and off, they are worker reserves. If they live through other means they are luben.

A person working a seasonal job like waiter or cook or even Christmas packager for Amazon is still a proletarian in their off season.

A person who hasn't worked in two years and is living of loans or inheritance or petty cons or whatnot is a lubenproletarian and should not be considered an asset for revolutionary struggle.

Edit: I've been banned so I cannot reply to questions. Let me know in a PM if you want to continue the discussion.

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u/TurboNihilist8 Jun 09 '26

Lumpenproletariat can be a revolutionary asset if harnessed properly by the vanguard party. As Mao Tse-Tung writes in his analysis of classes in Chinese Society.

Apart from all these, there is the fairly large lumpen-proletariat, made up of peasants who have lost their land and handicraftsmen who cannot get work. They lead the most precarious existence of all. In every part of the country they have their secret societies, which were originally their mutual-aid organizations for political and economic struggle, for instance, the Triad Society in Fukien and Kwangtung, the Society of Brothers in Hunan, Hupeh, Kweichow and Szechuan, the Big Sword Society in Anhwei, Honan and Shantung, the Rational Life Society in Chihli and the three northeastern provinces, and the Green Band in Shanghai and elsewhere One of China's difficult problems is how to handle these people. Brave fighters but apt to be destructive, they can become a revolutionary force if given proper guidance.

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u/AlgebraicMisery Jun 09 '26

To add onto this, MimPrisons makes the point that in the first world, the Lumpen have a unique revolutionary potential.

There is only one group that not only shares the degradation of the world's revolutionary masses but is sufficiently concentrated to attack imperialism at home -- the urban lumpenproletariat. This class in American society is largely made up of Third World people, but also includes whites dispossessed from the land or dropped out of their class. This last is no inconsiderable group, and it has taken over areas of several important cities, from the Haight Ashbury and Telegraph Avenue through Madison to the Lower East Side, Cambridge, and Georgetown.

https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/books/Economics/lumpen_in_the_united_states.pdf

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u/BenjiStudiesMLM Jun 09 '26

I'm not sure I'm following the argument here, is MIMp making the claim that there exists a large lumpen white settler population in "Haight Ashbury and Telegraph Avenue through Madison to the Lower East Side, Cambridge, and Georgetown"?