Rehabilitatie van het rapalje. Hoe en waarom Marx en Engels het lompenproletariaat ten onrechte hebben afgeschilderd als een reactionaire kracht

Samenvatting

The various meanings with which Marx & Engels use the term lumpenproletariat seem hopelessly confusing. It is shown that they were wrong in attributing political reaction to the lumpenproletariat in several instances. This can be explained by their bourgeois prejudice against the very lowest urban social strata & by their political fight against other branches of early socialism. It seems that the invention of a separate class served also to mask their incapacity to explain why various sectors of the proletariat did not behave politically as predicted. Modified HA.