So where do drug dealers and the mafia fall in the system of classes? On one hand, they brutally supress workers and communities, in extreme cases acting like feudal lords in the territories they control. They have all the signs of material wealth extorded from actually productive people.
On the other hand, they don't enjoy the lawful legitimacy of the bourgeoisie, they have violent and bloody clashes with the state, they don't actually own means of production (unless you think drugs are socially necessary), the mafia itself is born from the working class, they offer class mobility, a escape from crushing poverty, and in many working class places the mafia is idolized by the proletariat: In inner cities such as Baltimore and Detroit, and the crime-ridden areas of Central America, the working class is immersed in mafia culture, music and habits, children aspire to be part of them, and enjoys a legitimacy that the bourgeoise government does not have.
Here's a thing Zig Forums doesn't seem to grasp: The Bourgeois/Proletariat dichotomy is a generality meant to describe the main dialectical relationship in capitalist society. It's not intended to be an all-embracing, all-encompassing sociological categorization that every single element of society can be assigned to. That's nowhere near Marx's intent, and it's mostly a "modern" view of a social theory that was produced back when Sociology wasn't as systemic and schematic as it is today.
So here's a tip: stop worrying about where would you assign every single occupation or profession out there in the Marxist class system. You guys are missing the point.
Aiden Hall
Lumpenproletariat.
Joseph Long
the classification is "Lumpen" but aside from that i mostly agree
Julian Johnson
Anarchists love to glorify them. Even heard on "The Guillotine" podcast that gang leaders could be turned to community leaders during a revolution since they are deeply entrenched in the neighborhoods they operate out of. Anarchists see these guys as potential "Robin Hoods" just because they are rebellious superficially of police. These terrorists are straight bourgeois themselves, they're just not afraid to get their hands bloody.
Nolan Wilson
Lumpenproletariat you idiot. Read Marx
Dylan Gonzalez
Thats not what socially neccecary labour time means. It is the time neccecary to make things by society.
Also I want to point out that the bourgeoisie are just gang members. Their enforcement of their ownership is exactly like that of the gangs, through punishment and violence. In many poorer nations there is no big difference between drug gang bosses and the regular bourgeoisie, in italy, russia and japan the maffia is involved in legitimate businesses as well, as well as politics. The distinction between maffia and bourgoiesie might as well not exist, apart from scale.
Basically, compradors, underworld criminals and corrupt rent-seeking politicians that derive their wealth from those actually involved in production.
Thomas Ortiz
Please tell me more about the billionaire lumpenproletarian drug lords.
Cooper Evans
The Mexican drug cartels. Also the Hell's Angels are estimated to be trading into the 100's millions.
Alexander Miller
NOICE!
Tyler Roberts
They are lumpenbourgeois.
Lincoln Bell
They are lumpenproletariat, op.
Grayson King
There's no revolutionary potential among people whose only complaint about capitalism is that they're not on top of the legitimatized social order.
Jaxon Long
They're bourg fighting other bourg, both are criminals who steal and manipulate proles. Just because they are illegal doesn't mean anything changes.
Thomas Jones
That's an undialectical view and denies the value of illegalism comrade. Many are what I'd call lumpenbourgeois– but lumpenproles can be valuable if the gangs are directed towards the pigs in the struggle.
Brody Gray
Organized crime is essentially a baffled ruling class. They benefit from the status quo, even if the status quo does not benefit from them, and perpetuates their existence. Ask any drug dealer and they will tell you that legalized narcotics are the last thing they want, because it means they lose power to the formal propertied class.
Some criminals can certainly be reformed, but that does not mean gangsters are revolutionary.
Logan Anderson
Gangs have hierarchies too, it fits under the same boss worker relation as most jobs. The individual small time dealer is a prole, the mafia boss living in a mansion is bourgoisie. It's no different. These definitions just describe a relationship to the means of production it makes no difference if it's legal or not.
Julian Miller
They are lumpenproletariat, they don't rely on selling their labour for the reproduction of daily life nor do they exert private ownership over capital and use it to extract surplus value or rent. They aren't a revolutionary subject because their way of subsisting, crime, is dependent on the property relations of capitalist society which when pressed they are likely to act to preserve as their class interest. Mob bosses probably can and do become bourgeoisie as they accumulate capital till they run their own private enterprises and the like. Still their class interest isn't tied entirely to the bourgeoisie or the proletariat so their class allegiance is dependent on the conditions particular to them. There may be criminals who have a revolutionary role, certainly crime can have a revolutionary role since every revolution in a crime against the old order and every revolutionary a criminal. Insofar as those who subsist of crime go, they utilise the same techniques of monopoly and coercion as the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state, simply not from the position of 'legitimated' class power.
Jackson Mitchell
Like I said: Read Marx or at least the damn Wikipedia page. They are lumpenproletariat - the term does not just mean "proles who are criminals", it means something else.
And wealth has nothing to do with class. Read Marx. A prole can be richer than a (petit) bourgeois.
William Ward
They're baboon
Going to the zoos
Angel Rodriguez
DRUG TRAFFICKING IS GOOD PRAXIS
MADE BY LITERAL GANG
Lucas Rodriguez
I am not an expert on organized crime. but what I understand drug dealers would be proles or petite bourgeoise, maybe even bourgeois. I don't know or care, those don't exist anymore as far as I'm aware. So? Not to take the fedbait, but these clashes are for bourgeois druglord/kingpin/(whatever Hollywood shit) interests, not any sort of revolution. Look kids, the root of all evil, not understanding theory. Drug production is 100% means of production. How would that even work in your mind? Do you think beer doesn't have a means of production? Do computers not have a means of production? They aren't 100% necessary. I don't want to actually know, and I think I already do know. I'm just musing. Fuck class mobility. I don't care how much the fat cats of crime are loved. They are bad, bourgeois scum. Drugs should be legalized though.
Jeremiah Sanchez
This probably sounds dumb but isn't a rich prole practically bouj since he has the capital to buy or start a business at any time?
Honestly not true though. Most of the time these gangs go reactionary in some way. They pimp the kids/women in the neighborhoods they're supposed to protect through sex, drugs, or some other destructive lifestyle that they likely wanted nothing to do with. They abuse people who don't agree with them or might have issues to raise with their control of a neighborhood.
That's a huge problem i have with American culture in general is the whole ghettoization of black people and hypocritical elevation of gangsterism as political praxis. People who endorse this can get righteously fucked. IMHO the real way to combat this scum was stuff like the Panthers were doing but of course the state crushed them in no time.
Let's also remember that OP is wrong to say they have clashes with the state. These are superficial and never enough to make any lasting damage. The state often works *with* the mafia to accomplish certain goals. This is certainly in places like Italy during post-WWII era. It kinda drives me nuts when people in anarchist circles have these rosy views of gangsters. It's like they never bothered looking at videos of cartel violence in Mexico. That is the shit you're promoting when you just blindly put your hat in with "illegalism" and don't clearly define WTF you are talking about.
Alexander Garcia
Any more detail or anything I could read on that?
Xavier Cooper
Depends on how rich. But an engineer working for a corporation is still proletarian since he partakes in wage labor to sustain himself and owns no means of production, even though he may earn more than the local store owner.
That being said, I think the transition between these two ends is fluent. A rich prole could try and become a petit bourgeois - that is, after all, what the American Dream is all about…a bunch of temporarily embarassed self-made millionaires.
Parker Ward
Not who you are replying to, but Marxists.org has some material on the Blank Panthers and there is also a very interesting book about the Panthers Serve the People programs - which you should be able to find on google search.
Daniel Thomas
Drug dealers are scum that should be shot on sight like the rabid animals they are
