The "Dangerous Class" and Revolutionary Theory: Thoughts on the Making of the Lumpen/Proletariat

This two-part book starts with the paper of that name, on the birth of the modern lumpen/proletariat in the 18th and 19th centuries and the storm cloud of revolutionary theory that has always surrounded them. Going back and piecing together both the actual social reality and the analyses primarily of Marx but also Bakunin and Engels, the paper shows how Marx's class theory wasn't something static. His views learned in quick jumps, and then all but reversed themselves in several significant aspects. While at first dismissing them in the Communist Manifesto as "that passively rotting mass" at the obscure lower depths, Marx soon realized that the lumpen could be players at the very center of events in revolutionary civil war. Even at the center in the startling rise of new regimes. The second text consists of the detailed paper "Mao Z's Revolutionary Laboratory and the Role of the Lumpen Proletariat." As Sakai points out, the left's euro-centrism here prevented it from realizing the obvious: that the basic theory from European radicalism about the lumpen/proletariat was first fully tested not there or here but in the Chinese Revolution of 1921-1949. Under severely clashing political lines in the left, the class analysis finally used by Mao Z was shaken out of the shipping crate from Europe and then modified to map the organizing of millions over a prolonged generational revolutionary war. One could hardly wish for a larger test tube, and the many lessons to be learned from this mass political experience are finally put on the table.

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The "Dangerous Class" and Revolutionary Theory: Thoughts on the Making of the Lumpen/Proletariat

This two-part book starts with the paper of that name, on the birth of the modern lumpen/proletariat in the 18th and 19th centuries and the storm cloud of revolutionary theory that has always surrounded them. Going back and piecing together both the actual social reality and the analyses primarily of Marx but also Bakunin and Engels, the paper shows how Marx's class theory wasn't something static. His views learned in quick jumps, and then all but reversed themselves in several significant aspects. While at first dismissing them in the Communist Manifesto as "that passively rotting mass" at the obscure lower depths, Marx soon realized that the lumpen could be players at the very center of events in revolutionary civil war. Even at the center in the startling rise of new regimes. The second text consists of the detailed paper "Mao Z's Revolutionary Laboratory and the Role of the Lumpen Proletariat." As Sakai points out, the left's euro-centrism here prevented it from realizing the obvious: that the basic theory from European radicalism about the lumpen/proletariat was first fully tested not there or here but in the Chinese Revolution of 1921-1949. Under severely clashing political lines in the left, the class analysis finally used by Mao Z was shaken out of the shipping crate from Europe and then modified to map the organizing of millions over a prolonged generational revolutionary war. One could hardly wish for a larger test tube, and the many lessons to be learned from this mass political experience are finally put on the table.

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The

The "Dangerous Class" and Revolutionary Theory: Thoughts on the Making of the Lumpen/Proletariat

by J. Sakai
The

The "Dangerous Class" and Revolutionary Theory: Thoughts on the Making of the Lumpen/Proletariat

by J. Sakai

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Overview

This two-part book starts with the paper of that name, on the birth of the modern lumpen/proletariat in the 18th and 19th centuries and the storm cloud of revolutionary theory that has always surrounded them. Going back and piecing together both the actual social reality and the analyses primarily of Marx but also Bakunin and Engels, the paper shows how Marx's class theory wasn't something static. His views learned in quick jumps, and then all but reversed themselves in several significant aspects. While at first dismissing them in the Communist Manifesto as "that passively rotting mass" at the obscure lower depths, Marx soon realized that the lumpen could be players at the very center of events in revolutionary civil war. Even at the center in the startling rise of new regimes. The second text consists of the detailed paper "Mao Z's Revolutionary Laboratory and the Role of the Lumpen Proletariat." As Sakai points out, the left's euro-centrism here prevented it from realizing the obvious: that the basic theory from European radicalism about the lumpen/proletariat was first fully tested not there or here but in the Chinese Revolution of 1921-1949. Under severely clashing political lines in the left, the class analysis finally used by Mao Z was shaken out of the shipping crate from Europe and then modified to map the organizing of millions over a prolonged generational revolutionary war. One could hardly wish for a larger test tube, and the many lessons to be learned from this mass political experience are finally put on the table.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781894946902
Publisher: Kersplebedeb Publishing
Publication date: 11/28/2017
Pages: 300
Product dimensions: 8.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

J. Sakai is a revolutionary intellectual with decades of experience as an activist in the U.S.
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