As we recall from school history, the term lumpen proletariat was introduced by Marx, thus designating its lower stratum. Translated from German, the word means "rags."
Gradually, the semantic content of this concept expanded, and they began to call lumpen everyone who sank to the "bottom" of society: vagabonds, criminals, beggars, prostitutes and all kinds of dependents.
Summarizing the well-known definitions, we can say that the word lumpen now unites a class of people deprived of personal property and interrupted by casual earnings, preferring to live on certain social benefits.
Folk art
In the modern language, actively replenished with youth slang, this concept has expanded even more. Now, when pronouncing the word lumpen, its meaning can be understood, at least in three ways:
• a man from the bottom (homeless, alcoholic, drug addict);
• a person outside the society (marginalized);
• an unprincipled person who does not comply with the norms of public morality (scum).
Thus, now a representative of any class of society can be called a lumpen if his actions fit one of three categories. Here, for example, phrases from the mass media: “the lumpen-people grows and multiplies”, “yes, I am the lumpen-intellectual” or “there is such a ruling class in Russia - the lumpen-bureaucracy”.
Who are the lumpen: the roots of philosophy of life
Historians have determined that the first lumpen appeared in antiquity, and this class gave rise to a slave state. In ancient Roman society, the economy was built on the use of the labor of numerous slaves, and small landowners, unable to compete with large farms, quickly went bankrupt. This gave rise to a massive resettlement of land-losing peasants in the city.
Nominally, they had all the rights as citizens of the Roman state: they could participate in elections, had the right to vote in city meetings. However, they did not have any property, and work, too, which forced them to maintain their existence by “selling” their votes in support of wealthy clients, or by providing other small services.
The Roman government decided to provide material assistance to these people in the form of a weighty measure of grain (about one and a half kg per day), which they received according to special lists.
In Rome alone, the lumpen proletariat by the beginning of the first millennium numbered about 300 thousand. He began to take an active part in all political and military fights. Without their own constructive interests, these people were ready to serve anyone - if only to provide themselves food and receive simple pleasures.
Marginals - “frontier guards” of society
But what about marginals? Translated from Latin, this means "borderline" and refers to a person who dissociated himself from his social group, but could not integrate into any other. The number of marginals increases significantly when changes that are too quick in the public order occur: reforms, revolutions, etc.
In Russia, this process began with the reign of Alexander II and continued with the efforts of Witte and Stolypin. By the beginning of the twentieth century, our country already had a significant stratum of marginals of various kinds.
Trace in Russian literature
Marginals and lumpen are distinguished by their special psychology, which is quite clearly captured in our classical literature, for example, by Maxim Gorky, who described who such lumpen are. In the play “At the Bottom”, he gathered representatives of all social strata: the Baron from the nobility, the Actor from the people of art, Sateen from the technical intelligentsia, Bubnov from the middle class, Luke from the peasants, and Tick from the proletarians.
But not all marginals can be attributed to lumpen. It is enough to disagree with the settings of your circle, remaining externally on the same social step. So, in Nekrasov’s poem “Who can live well in Russia?”, In fact, everyone lives poorly - from priests to lackeys.
If from this position we consider the heroes of Chekhov's “Cherry Orchard”, then they all fall under the definition of marginals: landowners, whom circumstances force them to sell land; the servant with whom they part; a footman still experiencing the abolition of serfdom; undergraduate student dreaming of revolution.
Gorky composed a psychological portrait of a representative of yet another option of marginality - a person who “breaks out” (a writer’s definition) rebelliously from his class environment, categorically not accepting his values, and at the same time, continuing to successfully fulfill his professional functions (“Egor Bulychev and others ").
Savva Morozov - a marginal from the underground
The story of the legendary manufacturer Savva Morozov is in the spirit of Gorky Bulychev: he, as expected, exploited his own workers, and spent the proceeds on supporting revolutionary anarchist groups, that is, he dug a hole for himself. But at the same time he also sponsored.
Such a life could not fail to end tragically - unable to withstand the internal discord, he, in the end, shot himself.
