quarrk [he/him]
It was coined by Marx. See glossary on marxists.org.
There can be a reactionary usage of the word, but there is also theoretical utility in distinguishing proletarians with different relations of production. Based on the glossary here it sounds like Marx used the specific word lumpe satirically against Stirner, but idk the details of that.
Wasn’t it coined by Marx and Engels on the basis of differing relations of production? The differences in material conditions between working and non-working proletarians has theoretical significance.
The question of revolutionary potential is, I think, the main distinguishing feature between communism and so-called utopian socialism. Communism is a proletarian movement and sees the proletariat as the revolutionary class.
But does that mean that the proletariat is uniformly revolutionary?
Marx and Engels thought the struggle between workers and capitalists was the essential contradiction that would lead to revolution. Later Marxists like Mao and the Black Panthers thought non-working proletarians could be instrumental too. But the basic theoretical question I think is valid.
For feudal society, Marx identified the bourgeoisie as the revolutionary class, not because of its moral standing, but due to the specific contradictions that intensified between the old feudal rulers and a rising merchant/bourgeois class. The peasants were also exploited in feudal society, but that alone didn’t make them the class with most revolutionary potential.
Marx did refine this view over time. In 1882, a year before his death, he and Engels wrote this preface to the communist manifesto:
1882 preface to the Russian edition of the manifesto
The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?
The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.
As absurd as it sounds, a conventional “war” with boots on the ground at least grants the perpetrators some sort of cover. If they killed the entire population with this method or with a nuke or something, they could no longer frame the genocide as a war between two standing armies. It would dispel any illusions that Israel is embattled or persecuted by the Palestinians and is only reacting to a threat. As dumb as that logic is, it is the veil of plausibility that the general public uses to willfully maintain their ignorance.
Also they use “unprecedented” as a crutch, as if unprecedented means bad. Unprecedented actions can be good strategies but they don’t want to believe that.
If things aren’t going well, that’s exactly when you do things differently! That’s the whole point!
Therapist: You should try this new thing
Me: Sorry that’s totally unprecedented
Therapist: Yes
