Marx saw the lumpen-proletariat as parasitic and a source of state coercion.

Evidence

A fourth class, the lumpen-proletariat, too, was reactionary. The class was characterized as one that fed off the proletariat in a parasitic manner. The lumpen-proletariat were the thieves, the thugs, the prostitutes, “people without a definite occupation and a stable domicile.” It was from this class that the society recruited many of those who would form its coercive instruments: the army, the state militias, the police. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1100

Categorization

• DEFINE: Key class category in Marx; its dismissive characterization matters because the Black radical tradition’s subjects were often written off under this label.
• XREF: Directly relevant to how official Marxism misread the Black worker, whom Du Bois and Robinson reclaim as revolutionary — the crux of the book’s argument. — connects to: The proletariat’s historical insider status required expelling the lumpenproletariat as outsider. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 290