The lumpenproletariat’s scandal is that its identity depends on articulation.
Evidence
For Marx, in other words, as for Bataille, heterogeneity is not the antithesis of political unification but the very condition of possibility of that unification. I suspect that that is the real scandal of the lumpenproletariat in Marxist theory: namely, that it figures the political itself.… For the lumpen seems to figure less a class in any sense that one usually understands that term in Marxism than a group that is amenable to political articulation. And what group is not? … But if the lumpenproletariat can as easily be exalted as base, its identity cannot be given in advance of the moment of political articulation. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 293
Categorization
- XREF: Directly extends the earlier claim that Engels and Marx’s proletariat needed the lumpenproletariat as excluded other. — connects to: Class antagonism cannot be deduced from the concept of capital. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 298; Any antagonistic class must internally bear something of the lumpenproletariat. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 304; The proletariat’s historical insider status required expelling the lumpenproletariat as outsider. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 290 (+1 more)