>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>>Or perhaps they are right. The working class is seen as and is a
>>>class in the
>>>middle between the capitalists and the underclass.
>>>
>>>Rod
>>
>>What's the definition of the "underclass"? Poor people of color?
>
>...with loose morals and a propensity towards crime. The Atlantic
>has Nicholas Lemann's classic article on the topic at
><http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/poverty/origin2.htm>. A concept
>not unrelated to "The 'dangerous class', the social scum, that
>passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old
>society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a
>proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it
>far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue." Or,
>"the lumpen proletariat, which in all big towns forms a mass sharply
>differentiated from the industrial proletariat, a recruiting ground
>for thieves and criminals of all kinds living on the crumbs of
>society, people without a definite trade, vagabonds, gens sans et
>sans aveu [men without hearth or home], varying according to the
>degree of civilization of the nation to which they belong, but never
>renouncing their lazzaroni character...."
>
>Doug
I hope the term "underclass" will get dropped at least from leftist
discourse, if not from _The Atlantic Monthly_. Luckily, not many
people use the term "lumpen proletariat" any longer.
Yoshie
