Bakunin

imo Bakunin btfoed Marx

There were several uprisings in France and Germany before 1917, all led by workers. The Russian Revolution was spearheaded by workers, and the fact that they were the only ones succesful was a product of historical circumstance - after all they were all hoping that the German Revolution was succesful, since that would have pretty much ensured the safety of the revolution. The precarity and isolation of the USSR, along with its eventual failure in part due to that initial isolation, is proof of the need for the revolution to happen in an industrialised society. Meanwhile the lumpenproles have spearheaded exactly zero revolutions. Bakunin wasn't "more right", he's all wrong.

So why do people credit him with this idea? So far I've only found an essay by James Guillaume that mentions them.
And how solid were his predictions?
The Tsar eventually declared war on Germany. Marxists took over Russia and ushered their revolution. Italy had mostly Marxists and reactionaries. The revolution in Spain was his only good prediction, and it didn't stand a chance because the "social revolution" didn't sweep Europe. I'll admit I don't know the intricate details of these events and Bakunin may as well changed his stances had he lived long enough to see circumstances unfold. I agree with his opinion of "lived experience" as what causes a predisposition to a certain idea.

However, his materialism is only so-so, depends on what he's analyzing. He goes on to say on every other page how it's in the German blood to subdue others and themselves submit to authority, and in the same breath how the social revolution will bring a change among all peoples and usher equality. It's ridiculous how he treats "national characteristics" as something embedded, going so far as to insist that the only reason Slavs ever developed a government was because of foreign influence and conquest - it's a completely anti-materialist stance and given the latest anthropological evidence a simply wrong assertion (PDF related), which just goes to show his analysis is sloppy and biased.
His worst take is probably when he explains German ascendancy, lists all of the achievements of the German civilization to disregard them as the cause, and then talks about, once again, the "German tendency for submission and subjugation," and then goes on to say that the German worker doesn't have the latter tendency. Gee, I wonder why? It's almost as if it has nothing to do with some DnD racial trait and more with the material conditions.

That doesn't really answer my question and I'm reading his works in Russian anyway.

kek

The difference between lumpenproletariat and proletariat is that the latter developed class-consciousness. There are no other differences. All revolutions after the first world war were started by the so-called lumpen: unemployed soldiers returning from the front.

tbh Kropotkin is betterm but if you must, read God and the State.

ebin meem
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(Logs into my second account to upboat your poast again +1)

Disagree'd, he has more theory than just that and it would be brainlet tier to dismiss everything he says based off of one idea you may disagree with.

I mean sure, if you want to twist the term lumpenprole into meaninglessness I'm sure you're right. The thing is that lumpens are not soldiers. The soldiers were conscripted workers, and they certainly developed class consciousness.

But now that you mention lumpen soldiers, I have to say that you're dead wrong. The revolution wasn't led by lumpen soldiers, it was stopped by them. The Freikorps, the ones who crushed the Spartacist uprising and killed Rosa and all that, were made up of unemployed WW1 veterans who did not return to civilian life and who, exactly as you say, did not have a shred of class consciousness. And that lack of class consciousness, their lumpen nature, was exactly why they crushed the revolution. Frankly, that fact alone is more damning than anything.

What is correctness? Marx has created the whole sublime philosophy and epistemology. Bakunin is proven false by history already. All his holier than though and idealistic nonsense is useless, and helps no working man.

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It's not twisted. Their relation to the means of production is exactly the same. The lumpenproletariat and the "ordinary" proletariat belong to the same class.

I'd like to see your explanation for that. The lumpenproletariat are not simply "proles that aren't class conscious", they are criminals, outcasts, whose specific relation to society and production separates them from the rest of the proletariat and often pits them against them. You just look at how gangsters have been used as strikebreakers, or how traumatized veterans are sent to massacre revolting workers. Lumpenproles are antithetical to revolution, and the only way you can say otherwise is to twist the definition to something else.

Idiot-tier social analysis
You're aware that the vast majority of people in gangs and criminal enterprises also have employers, right? Or are you so sheltered that you honestly believe criminality is some kind of volunteerist worker's paradise?

Where did I say any of that? Are you gonna deny that gangsters and mercenaries stand in opposition to the working class?

Yes.

Well then I don't know what to tell you. You only need a cursory knowledge of the history of class struggle to see how they time and time again have fought on the side of the bourgeoisie against the working class. I have provided plenty of examples, and you have done nothing to contradict them.

What explanation is needed? When you say that their "relation to society" sets them apart from the "rest of the proletariat" you yourself admit that they belong to the same class. Of course you cannot do otherwise. I suggest you actually read Marx instead of further embarrassing yourself.

For every example of lumpen class traitors you can give, I can give you 10 examples where lumpen showed revolutionary potential or where the law was changed by the bourgeoisie to make proles into lumpens. The distinction between lumpens and proles is a canonical example of respectability politics. We need to critically support our impisoned and disenfranchised comrades. History demonstrates that people do not turn to crime out of weakness of character, but out of desperation at having been completely removed from the polis, economically, politically, and socially.

I don't really see your point. The fact that the lumpenproletariat are related to the proletariat is self-evident, it's even in the name. But that is far from saying that they are one and the same, which was implied hence why I asked for an explanation. The group of people who Marx called lumpenproles - gangsters, mercenaries, the lot - have historically stood in opposition to the proletariat, and that is in part due to the nature of their occupation, which is not like that of "regular workers". In fact, they often prey on their "fellow proles", even when they do not explicitly fight on behalf of the bourgeoisie. They have no class consciousness and they have no understanding of solidarity.

I've never once said or even implied that being a criminal is due to any weakness of character, and I completely agree that their situation is rarely of their own making. I'm sure you can also find plenty of examples of criminals who renounce their past and become agitators. The problem is that the criminal environment is not condusive to class consciousness, and it will inevitably pit them against workers, who are the ones most affected by crime. You can be sympathetic to them all you want, but that does not change the fact that workers and lumpens are inevitably opposed.
You talk about invarcerated people - I assume that you're American - and I completely agree that incarcerated workers deserve support. But they aren't really lumpens are they? Now, this may just be me misinterpreting Marx, but my impression is that lumpenprole is not simply something you're branded as whenever you get locked up or do something "criminal", it is a result of being in an occupation or environment that pits you against your fellow workers or in other ways is not conducive to class consciousness, and being an incarcerated worker is quite the opposite of that.

Marx did not call gangsters and mercenaries lumpen, he said that they were the recruiting grounds for them and that you can cheaply bribe them into acting against their own class interests. The lumpenproletariat are those who do not have a steady job which makes them harder to organize and develop class consciousness. But he never claimed that it would be impossible! They are still part of the proletariat. That's it, everything else is just moralism and propaganda.

Please don't talk about "solidarity" when even today it is the lumpen elements that show solidarity with refugees and immigrants (of course, they are the ones who actually work with them) while the more developed proletariat has wet dreams about massacring them and are begging quasi-fascists parties to bring back their position of labour aristocracy!

So in other words they are exactly like this "labour aristocracy" that you and Bakunin are so eager to deride. Both are self-serving and lacking in class consciousness, and yet you support one and not the other. How is this anything but sympathy politics, taking a stand for the poor, oppressed lumpen who can't help but be a gangster and shoot striking workers? I don't see how this shit is in any way productive.
As-fucking-if. I wish I lived in your fairytale land, it sounds nice. I don't see any of them arguing for class struggle, solidarity, or anything beyond their own enrichment, and the only upstanding "lumpens" I've seen reject everything about that lifestyle. Meanwhile it's the regular workers that you deride as "labour aristocrats" who have solidarity and take part in class struggle. A revolution led by outcasts, by the worst of the worst, is a nice fantasy, but it is just that: a fantasy.

We are talking about Bakunin, not me. His argument was that the lumpen was much more likely to rise up as they actually had nothing to lose. They would even burn their own neighbourhood down as they were only renting it anyway. They are not meant to abolish capital alone, only to start the revolution. Meanwhile Marx in his infinite wisdom believed that the organized proletariat that spent decades fighting for compromises would risk their hard earned privileges and stage a revolution when their party decided it was time.

Do only lumpens rent apartments? That would mean the vast majority of the proletariat back then were lumpen, which is a pretty bizarre conclusion. Furthermore desperation alone does not lead to revolution. Without a movement this desperation will just manifest in random outbursts of violence and reactionary tendencies, and the real movement is in the "organised proletariat".
Is this what you think Marx believed, or what you think Bakunin thought he believed? Either way it's a horrible take. I would be very surprised if Marx ever even suggested that revolution is something that happens on command, and the notion that the organised proletariat is content with reformism or unwilling to rise up is contradicted by history - but perhaps they were all lumpens too.

(me)
Just to add, this notion of the lumpens starting the revolution is pure idealism. According to this logic, the revolution is not something that arises from class struggle, but rather an ideal that manifests whenever enough people find it worth dying for. I don't find it very compelling.

I've finished the book; great history lesson, some interesting conclusions, SHIT materialism, Marx btfo'd him pretty hard

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm

I consider myself a Marxist (I believe a worker's state is necessary to transition into classlessness as well as abolishing commodity production) but I have to disagree with Marx on the Lumpenproles.
If we're talking about the Soviet Union it's not hard to note plenty of the followers of Socialism were jobless soldiers that returned from the war and struggled from the Czar's lackadaisical economic policies. You can say these "aren't lumpenproles" or whatever but it's clear a lot of these people were gang members because they had nothing else to do after the war.
Stalin himself was the leader of the gang and was a strong supporter of communism (as were his subordinates) long before he actually got involved in Leninism or the Bolshevik party, and he wasn't educated on political economy at all.
and if you go way back to the colonial era it was pirates that were establishing communes in the Americas in order to manage their loot and barter completely off the books. just like Russia these people were soldiers that couldn't find any work in an economically mercantile state.
I didn't get any of these ideas from Anarchist philosophy either. If you read Zizek carefully, although he is very much a supporter of the communist worker-state, he expresses a lot of doubt on objective class conflict and rather views society as a struggle between an overarching self-reproducing structure and those who can't find a satisfying stable place in it.
Marx was way ahead of any leftists in his time but here I absolutely have to disagree with him. Imo his idea on lumpenproles probably just comes from his subjective experience as an academic, most of the socialists he knew were probably highly educated compared to the lower disenfranchised class.
then again this might also be my bias as a brown person who interacts with lumpenproles in my family every day that share a lot of my political views so it goes both ways I guess.

The war was still going on when the revolution happened. It only ended with the Brest-Litovsk treaty in 1918. There weren't any "jobless soldiers", they were actively fighting. The February Revolution started with a general strike and a military mutiny. This is pretty well known. Not only do you not know these very basic facts, you then pull this idea that everyone became "gang members" straight out of your ass. If you want to see what happens when you got lots of "unemployed soldiers", look up the Freikorps post-WW1.