The Scum of Humanity
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Author : Paul Mattick

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Published: in International Council Correspondence Vol. 1, no.6, March 1935, pp 9-18.Source: Antonie Pannekoek ArchivesTranscribed: by Graham Dyer




I

Anyone unfamiliar with politics who strolls into a workers’ meeting (leaving
out of consideration the gatherings of the unemployed) is surprised by the fact
that the larger part of those present is not to be numbered among the most
impoverished stratum of the proletariat. The best organized workers are, of
course, those who belong to the so-called labor aristocracy, which takes a
social position between the middle class and the genuine proletariat. These
trade-unionist organizations espouse the direct vital interests of their
members, bringing to them immediate advantages; and yet they are neither able
nor do they attempt to politicize their adherents in the socialistic sense. The
radical labor movement, on the other hand, can provide its adherents only with
ideological satisfaction; it offers them no direct material advantages. And this
is precisely why it is incapable of embracing the truly impoverished part of the
proletariat. This part, by reason of its very misery, is compelled to concern
itself only with its pressing and direct interests if it is not to abandon life
altogether. For this reason, the political radical labor movement hovers between
the two poles of the working population, namely, the labor aristocracy and the
Lumpenproletariat, and is carried on by those elements which, though without
illusions on the point that within the present society genuine possibilities of
advance are barred to them, nevertheless still maintain a standard of living
which permits them to devote money, time and energy to endeavors the fruit of
which, in the form of real material advantages for themselves, is deferred to
some uncertain future. They set themselves in opposition to the existing society
from a recognition of the fact that it has to be changed and because, in spite
of this position, it is possible for them to live in it.

The activity of the radical labor movement in times which are not
revolutionary is mainly directed to transforming the prevailing ideology.
Agitation and propaganda demand material sacrifices; they bring no material
advantages. The members of these organizations have time available; they wait
for the masses to become revolutionized, even though they seek, meanwhile, to
hasten the day of the overturn; they educate, discuss, philosophize. Those
elements of the working class which flock to their standard but which, because
of their circumstances, are not in a position to wait, are continually repelled
by these organizations. The fluctuation in membership within the radical
movement is not exclusively the result of a false policy or of the lack of tact
displayed by the bureaucracy to members not yet settled in their ideology; it is
also the result of the increasingly imperious compulsion, for a growing stratum
of the impoverished workers, to “restrict the horizon”. The activity of the
movement from which they expected help gives them only words and something to
keep themselves occupied; it does not assist, but hinders them, in their
individual struggle for existence - a struggle which becomes ever more
difficult, time-consuming and nerve-wracking the more the impoverishment spreads
and the deeper the individual becomes submerged in it. However much socialist
propaganda they have absorbed, their present existence compels them to actions
which stand in opposition to their conviction; and as a result, this conviction
itself, sooner or later, fades out, since it is “practically worthless”.

This is also one of the reasons why the political labor movement goes to
pieces in periods of economic crisis and functions better in boom times. And
accordingly, a large part of the labor movement on the basis of its
“experiences” has taken a hostile position to the idea that the impoverishment
of the masses is identical with their revolutionizing. To those who hold to the
theory of impoverishment, the existence of the Lumpenproletariat is
heatedly pointed out as proof that pauperization makes the workers apathetic
rather than revolutionary, sets them in opposition to, rather than serves the
interests of, the proletariat, since the ruling class frequently engages the
Lumpenproletariat to serve the needs of that class. And so the labor movement
set about, with great zeal to improve the economic position of the workers,
considering that precisely in that way proletarian self-consciousness would be
raised. As a matter of fact, in the upgrade period of capitalist society the
improvement in the workers’ standard of living was bound up with a growth in the
trade-unionist and political labor organizations and with the strengthening of
their political consciousness; but this consciousness, like the organizations
themselves, was not revolutionary. So that the theory of raising the proletarian
standard of living as a means to revolutionizing was just as much a failure as
the rejected theory of impoverishment. This difficulty was gotten over by the
unfortunate and meaningless explanation that the reactionary attitude of the
organized workers was the result of the reactionary leadership, since the
contradiction involved in combating impoverishment and at the same time holding
it to be necessary was recognized as injurious to the existence of the
organization; the masses cannot be brought together in organizations without at
the same time being made some promises.

The conviction, based on a superficial view of the phenomena, that
impoverishment makes the masses reactionary rather than revolutionary, and
abhorrence of the Lumpenproletariat as the living manifestation of this “truth”,
remained for a long while a common property of the political labor movement and
is still continually brought up in political arguments when the question is one
of explaining the aid recruited by the ruling class from the camp of the
proletariat. Just as the defective degree of organization and the relatively
undeveloped class-consciousness of the unemployed tends apparently to refute the
theory of impoverishment, so also does the role played in society by the
Lumpenproletariat. Of course it is the “scum of humanity” which, in alliance
with the petty bourgeoisie and at the order of monopoly capital, fills the
fascist ranks. The elements which the fascist movement attracts to itself from
working class circles expect and obtain advantages which at any rate are
immediate, however slight they may be. Those elements attach themselves to no
movement from ideological motives; these are quite beyond their power to
possess. The fact that these advantages are of a merely temporary nature cannot
disturb these elements, which of course are constantly in a state of living
“from hand to mouth”. To reproach them with class betrayal is merely to
attribute to them the possibility of a conscience and of a set of convictions, a
luxury which, however, their determinate mode of life precludes. They act on the
strength of their most proximate interests, as, for that matter, the mass of
workers in general later accepts the fascist movement, passively or actively, in
order not to injure themselves. As to who first and who later goes over to the
class enemy, that depends on the degree of impoverishment. Apart from this
factor, the investigations of social scientists in almost all countries have
proved that the decline in revolutionary tendencies is bound up with the
impoverishment of the masses. Their conclusions are based exclusively, however,
on the last few years and hence can do no more than indicate that impoverishment
is at first bound up with the regression in revolutionary tendencies.



II

The concept of Lumpenproletariat is by no means strictly delimited. Thus the
communist groups to the left of the official parliamentary and trade-unionist
labor movement have given such broad bounds to the concept that
“Lumpenproletariat” has become a term of abuse, is made to cover all those
elements which, in virtue of their class situation, would naturally be counted
among the proletariat but which perform some service or other for the ruling
class. In this conception the lumpenproletarian element is made up not so much
of the “scum of humanity” as of the so-called flower or top, i.e. of the
governing bureaucracy of the labor movement. In this extension of the notion is
mirrored the hatred directed at sellouts; there is consciously left out of
consideration the fact that the betrayal is more the product of the whole
historical development than of the individual self-interest of corrupted
leaders.

Almost the whole of the labor movement includes under the term
Lumpenproletariat, the many pillars of present society who are thrown into the
struggle directly in opposition to the workers, as, for example, the police,
provocateurs, spies, strike-breakers, etc. To the reformist “labor movement”
striving for power within the existing society, however, these elements
forthwith lose their lumpenproletarian character as soon as the reformist
bureaucracy is given a share in the government. The policemen then become the
“brothers in uniform”, the spies turn into worthy citizens who protect the
country from threatening anarchy, and the strike-breakers become the “technical
emergency workers.” A change of government suffices to take away from these
elements the stigma of “Lumpenproletariat”.

The hounds of the existing or of any other antagonistic society cannot,
however, be properly embraced in the concept of Lumpenproletariat, since they
are quite necessary to the social practice. This is not quite true of the
strike-breakers; but even they are logically to be excluded, since, to use an
expression of Jack London’s “with rare exceptions, all people in the world are
scabs.” As a matter of fact, the scab can be reproached only from the standpoint
of a social order not yet in existence. Today they act in complete accord with
the social practice, which, however much it has socialized production,
nevertheless permits no other rule of conduct than private interest. The scab
has not yet realized, nor sufficiently experienced in practice, that it is
precisely his individual necessities which impose upon him collective action. He
is not yet sufficiently disillusioned by the fruitlessness of the efforts
directed to making his way on the basis of the existing society. He hopes to
assure himself advantages from a better fitting into the practice of society and
it is only through the nothingness of his endeavors that he can be convinced
that in reality he stands estranged from that society, however much he has
striven to do justice to it. However much the workers are forced to oppose the
scabs, these latter cannot be denoted as Lumpenproletarians.

Since the capitalistic relations of production serve to advance the general
human development during a certain historical period, these working-class
“pillars of society”, however parasitical and hostile they may be to the
workers, must nevertheless themselves be recognized as productive elements. If
the productive capacity of society was driven forward at a dizzying tempo by the
market and competitive relationship, then the means for the safe-guarding and
promotion of this relationship must likewise be understood as productive ones.
The means can be properly opposed only by one who stands opposed to the society
itself. The function of both groups of the proletariat, the directly productive
as well as the indirectly productive, which assures the safety of society, are
different only in manner; in principle, they serve the same purposes, The
overthrow of existing society would show at once that the concept of
Lumpenproletarian is applicable only to those outcasts of society who are taken
over by the new society as the successor of the old; the shiftless and criminal
elements which, though a product of present society and constantly denied and
frequently employed by it, must also be combated by the new society. These are
nothing other than what is regarded as the scum of humanity: the beggars,
tramps, bootleggers, prostitutes, pimps, floaters, drunkards, thieves,
swindlers, etc.



III

At the time when unemployment could still be denied as a regular social
condition, since the temporary booms concealed the fact that it is inseparably
bound up with the present system, a large part of bourgeois criminology came to
regard all criminal activities and propensities within the lower strata of the
population as having their roots primarily in shiftlessness. This attitude was
nourished even in working-class circles, and the organized worker with a fairly
regular income looked with no slight contempt upon the shiftless canaille of the
large cities and highways. The source of this shiftlessness, in cases where the
word could really serve as an explanation, was quite a matter of unconcern to
the judges. The socialist movement, to be sure, made existing society
responsible for it; and yet wherever the socialists had occasion practically to
combat the tendency, they also merely reached for the bourgeois criminal code.

Impoverishment, Lumpenproletariat, criminality are not a result of the
capitalist crisis; that crisis can only explain the great increase in their
manifestations. Unemployment accompanies the whole development of capitalism; it
is necessary to the present system of production in order to keep wages and
working conditions at the low level corresponding to the demands of a profitable
economy. Even though unemployment alone does not explain capital’s mastery over
the workers, it yet explains the greater success of that mastery. Apart from the
providential effect of the industrial reserve army upon the rate of profit
attained by the various enterprises, the very existence of that army has its
basis in the economic laws which determine the movements of capitalist society.
The tendency of capital accumulation, producing superfluous capital on the one
hand and excess population on the other, has become a very painful reality which
is no longer deniable. So it comes to be admitted however reluctantly, that
unemployment can never more be entirely eliminated and efforts are devoted less
to setting it aside than to lessening the dangers which it involves for society.
Hence also the vigorous discussions concerning reform of the penal system,
discussions which only mirror the changes occurring on the labor market. Thus
even H.L. Menken, in a recent number of Liberty, raised the demand for
Chinese practices in the American penal system: the unrestricted physical
destruction of criminals with or without proof of guilt, that is, a form of
justice such as is common in countries with chronic overpopulation. In Germany
there is talk of introducing the corporeal punishments in vogue during the
Middle Ages, since the prisons have ceased to be means of frightening, and the
gratuitous labor power of the prisoners can no longer be used. The increased
misery resulting from the permanent crisis and large-scale unemployment
diminishes the fear of punishment, since life in jail is not much worse than
existence on the outside. The criminal elements are multiplying; a fact which
compels to the further brutalization of punishment and hence to the
impossibility of reforming the inmates. “When we get down to the poorest and
most oppressed of our population,” says Bernard Shaw, “we find the condition of
their life so wretched that it would be impossible to conduct a prison humanely
without making the lot of the criminal more eligible than that of many free
citizens. If the prison does not underbid the slum in human misery, the slum
will empty and the prison will fill.” So that legal punishment is not only
barbarous and compelled to ever greater barbarism, but its institutions become
hothouses of criminality – as proved by statistics, which show that the majority
of those previously convicted repeatedly find their way back into the jails.

Yet this animalization of human beings, a phenomenon bound up with the
development of capitalist society and which finds its most pronounced expression
in the growth of the Lumpenproletariat, arises not only from the unemployment
and the mass impoverishment by which it is accompanied. The accumulation of
wealth at the one pole is not only, to use an expression of Marx’s the
accumulation of misery,  but also of drudgery, slavery, ignorance, brutalization
and moral degradation at the other pole. Under capitalistic working conditions
labor becomes forced labor pure and simple, however “free” the workers may be in
other respects. Even outside the labor process, the worker does not belong to
himself; he merely recuperates his labor power for the next day. He lives in
freedom merely in order to remain in condition to perform forced labor. The
worker becomes completely dehumanized; he has no voluntary relations of any sort
to his work. He himself is only a thing, an appendage of the productive
mechanism. To expect these workers, under such conditions, to take pleasure in
their work is out of the question. They have to endeavor to get away from it in
order to assert themselves as human beings. Such a state of things must, in the
long run, animalize them.

With external power, with force and compulsion alone, it is impossible to
dispose of the Lumpenproletariat or to bring about a diminution in criminality.
The question is one of maintaining or creating in human beings the psychical
readiness to take their place in society and its definite mode of life; and this
becomes increasingly impossible. The lack of social conscience and of social
adaptability on the part of criminals is susceptible of other explanations in
addition to that of “shiftlessness”. Of course there are a great number of
lopsided theories by which mental and bodily defects are advanced as the
essential reasons for the criminal actions of human beings. It is undeniable
that biological psychological factors must be taken into consideration if
criminal propensities are to be really understood. It nevertheless remains
obvious that the theory which has the most to offer by way of enlightenment on
this subject is the economico-social-political one. The biological and
psychological factors assist in determining the conscious and unconscious
actions of human beings, but these factors are in the fullest measure modified
and in fact determined, as regards their quantitative and qualitative effects,
through the social process. The drives of individuals are subject both to the
socio-economic situation and also to that of the class to which they belong. In
a society which grants the highest measure of recognition to the rich and
propertied, the narcissistic impulses, for example (as has been shown by the
social psychologist Erich Fromm), must lead to an enormous intensification of
the desire for possession. And if, on the basis of society, those propensities
cannot be satisfied along “normal” paths, they must seek their fulfillment in
criminality. Even if criminality is traced back to bodily or spiritual defects,
yet these defects in their turn can only be fully understood in connection with
society and the class situation obtaining in it. Those crimes, the majority of
which are directed against the laws of property, can be understood only from a
consideration of the whole social process; and even the others are partially
determined if not directly, yet indirectly by the social and political
situation. Hence also they can be changed or set aside only through changing the
society in which they occur.

There is no better concrete proof of the importance of the economic factor
for explaining crime than the fact that it greatly increases in times of
economic crisis. As a consequence of depressions, the mentally and corporeally
weakest of the poor are hurled onto the road of criminality; frequently, in
fact, no other possibility is left open to them. How clearly the socio-political
factor is here revealed as the essential one when we consider the fact, for
example, that the sexual transgressions of children in families of the
unemployed are much more numerous than in families whose economic life is
orderly. How can anyone attempt to explain the decline of the family - in
present society another factor in the increase of criminality - on a biological
and psychological basis? How the fact of the rapid increase in prostitution
during the crisis? Investigations regarding the influence of the milieu on
criminality in the United States revealed that the greater percentage of
convicts came from the city slums and from families which lived from hand to
mouth. The majority of crimes are those committed against property, the
investigations further revealed, and the majority of criminals are of “normal
intelligence”.  The youthful tramps, who today are roaming planless and goalless
through the States and populating the highways are in the best possible position
for slipping forever into the Lumpenproletariat. No opportunities knock to them;
they are embittered, and resolved to provide themselves with more of the
fullness of life by all the ways, i.e. the criminal ways, which still remain
open to them. “We will get ours,” they assure themselves; and their
heroes are not the respectable heroes of present society, but the Dillingers.
While Jack London could once characterize the tramp as a discouraged worker,
most of these youngsters have never yet worked at all. They are discouraged
before having begun; and the longer they remain without a job, the more they
lose the capacity ever to fit themselves in to the social rhythm of life.

“It is better for society”, as William Petty already realized, “to burn the
work of a thousand people than to let these thousand people lose their working
capacity through idleness.” But it is not only from the standpoint of profit,
but also from that of social security, that the present system bites into its
own flesh when it robs the workers, even though against its will, of the
possibility of keeping themselves occupied. It is only through the sale of their
labor power that the workers can remain alive as workers. Their whole life
depends on the fickle movements of the labor market. To get away from the
compulsion and chance of the market is possible only in case they evade the
workers lot itself. To him who fails to make the leap into the middle class - a
possibility which was always very exceptional, and which today is already
precluded - the only remaining way out is into the Lumpenproletariat. This “way
out” is sought voluntarily only in exceptional cases, but for an ever growing
element of the unemployed it becomes unavoidable. Since it is quite as much out
of the question, even if desired, to accord to the unemployed living conditions
befitting human beings as it is to do the same for the criminals, since
otherwise the compulsion to labor would lose some of its sharpness and the
workers’ power of resistance in the wage struggle would be increased, so also to
the workers on relief there remains no other recourse than to increase their
extremely limited means of livelihood by way of crime. Yet even in countries
with unemployed relief, a larger or smaller percentage of the workers still
remains excluded from its enjoyment, and this portion cannot save themselves,
even assuming the greatest moderation on their part, from sinking down into the
Lumpenproletariat.

Anyone who has been debarred from the labor process for some time loses also
the capacity and the possibility of ever working again. Consider, for example,
one who has been unoccupied three or four years: it becomes unspeakably
difficult for him not merely psychologically and corporeally to take his place
once more in industrial life, but has become impossible for him in many
occupations merely by reason of the rapidly progressing rationalization; he is
unable to meet the increased demands as performance regards. For this reason
employers almost universally refuse to take back workers who have undergone
years of unemployment. Toward such workers they have a very skeptical attitude,
which is further strengthened by the poor and dilapidated outer appearance of
the applicants. Once arrived at a certain stage of impoverishment, there is no
further return into the ordinary daily grind. There then remains nothing further
than the poor nourishment won by begging and the slow deterioration in the
streets of the large cities. There is only the wheedled gin to enable one to
forget the senselessness of his own existence; or the leap into the ranks of the
underworld, which unavoidably leads to prison and violent death.



IV

If the impoverishment taking place among the masses in the course of the
capitalist development were a uniform one, and if the entire working class were
affected by it in a uniform manner, then it would be identical with the
revolutionizing of those masses. The numbers of the “Lumpenproletariat” would be
so great that the lumpenproletarian existence would be precluded. The
“lumpenproletarian” activity of the individual would in this case be capable of
expressing itself in no other way than collectively. The individual parasitic
existence, or the individual expropriation, would do away with itself, since
sponging or stealing can never be engaged in by a majority without at the same
time completely overturning the basis of society. In the fact that the
Lumpenproletariat is possible only as a minority lies also its tragic character.
As a result of this minority situation there remains to it, in fact, no other
than the sponging or criminal form of activity. In countries at war, for
example, where increasing scarcity of food, in spite of the diversity of
incomes, produces a rather uniform standard of living among the great masses of
the population, a revolutionary situation is more likely to result than in times
and situations in which the impoverishment takes place by stages and with
leaplike impetuosity. Insofar as the Lumpenproletariat arises not only
indirectly but also directly from the existing relations, the predominance in
the matter of impoverishment must be awarded to the blind law by which it is
brought about. The Lumpenproletariat had to take form because the impoverishment
first arose simultaneously with the expansion of the economic system and
because, with the close of this expansion, it is itself still condemned to
remain for a long while a minority, even though an increasing one. Because
society grows up too quickly and declines too slowly, a part of the working
population is exposed to a measure of impoverishment to which it can respond in
no other than the lumpenproletarian way, and to which it must therefore submit.
These first “victims” of a slow process of social overturn which does not
forthwith affect the individual, cannot become a revolutionary, but only a
negative force. Instead of revolutionary solutions, there remain to them only
the individual and necessarily anti-social ones. So the Lumpenproletariat can
free itself from its situation only through its growth, just as this growth is
at the same time an index of the revolutionizing process going on throughout
society. The lumpenproletarian basis of existence must become the level of life
of such a great portion of humanity that there is no possibility for the
individual to maintain any sort of life, even among the Lumpenproletariat.

As we have already said, superficial appearances seem to belie the claims of
the theory of impoverishment. If one considers only the psychological attitude
of the unemployed, not to speak of that of the Lumpenproletariat, one is
horrified (unless he deceives himself, as is often regarded proper for
agitational purposes) at the spiritual deadness of these elements. Released, to
be sure, from the stupefying toil, they are still less capable than before of
developing a revolutionary consciousness. Their conversations turn on the most
trifling matters: current events and sports. They have no real relations to
their own situation. They turn away, almost with fear, from the recognition of
that situation and its political consequences.

The impression made by impoverishment upon the unemployed can be divided into
degrees. A small percentage is not at first cast down by the changed situation.
They have not yet been out of work long enough, or are protected by savings from
the rapid descent. They draw in upon themselves, try with increasing energy
again and again to find work and still look hopefully into the future from which
they expect an improvement in their situation. The intensity with which they
endeavor to keep above water excludes this group more or less from political
activity. More than previously, they are obliged to devote themselves to their
narrowest interests; they have no possibility of applying their energy to
several fields simultaneously. The great mass of the unemployed, however, -
those who, as a result of the length of time in which they have been unoccupied,
have left this first level, - lives on in the most profound state of resignation
and lack of energy. They expect nothing more from life; fancy itself affords
them no cause for hope. Nothing suffices to arouse their interest; there is
nothing for which they are capable of engaging themselves; they have put off the
living features of humanity; they vegetate and are conscious of the fact that
they are slowly going under. From this broad, gray mass is still recruited a
rather small percentage of the completely desperate who either dove down into
the Lumpenproletariat or in a very short time disappear from life. Hopelessness
and embitterment here border on insanity; the victims crawl or lash about each
other like terrified animals. As rapidly as society is relieved of them, the
places they vacated are again filled from the gray mass of the resigned, who in
their turn are again replaced from the ranks of the still unbroken.

Whatever may be said against the theory of impoverishment, all the
counter-arguments fall down before the impoverishment which is now under way and
to which no halt can be put within the framework of present society. If the
theory of impoverishment is false, then also is the Revolution an improbability.
It is much more probable, however, that the impoverishment has hitherto remained
without visible revolutionary consequences only because it always embraced only
minorities. A great mass of the impoverished must by reason of its magnitude be
converted into a revolutionary force. And this, the abolition of the proletariat
as such, is at the same time the end of the Lumpenproletariat, even though it
does not thereby disappear forthwith. Only the soil of its development is washed
away; the lumpenproletarian ideology arising as a result of the
lumpenproletarian mode of existence will still for a long while manifest itself
as one of the many undesired heritages of the proletariat until the new
relations have sufficiently changed humanity that the ideological traditions are
still to be found only in books of history and no longer in the heads of human
beings.

So one need not shrink from holding impoverishment to be a necessary
presupposition for the revolutionary overturn while at the same time practically
combating that impoverishment. This is no contradiction; for precisely by
reason of the fact that one attempts within the framework of capitalism to
diminish impoverishment one actually increases it. But to enter farther into
this paradox would lead us into the field of economics. Let us limit ourselves
to the further statement that in the Lumpenproletariat the workers can only see
the face of their own future, unless their efforts to change the existing
relations of production proceed at a more rapid rate. It is only petty-bourgeois
narrowness which can point the finger of scorn at the Lumpenproletariat; to the
workers themselves, the “scum of humanity” is only the obverse side of the medal
which is admired as capitalistic civilization. It is only with the setting aside
of this latter that the end of the other is bound up.


     From : Marxists.org

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