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Underground > Head Shop >

'Pikey' 'Council' 'townie' - derogatory class rhetoric

  
  

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museum in time, tiger in space
15:06 / 18.07.08
There is also a difference between the lumpenproletariat and the "scum" of the Communist Manifesto.

No there isn't - I'm fairly certain that the original text of the Manifesto actually used the word 'lumpenproletariat', and it just happened to be translated as 'dangerous classes'. This dictionary of Marxist terminology appears to back me up on this, and I'm sure you can find the original online somewhere if you want to check.

The language of the Manifesto is, even allowing for the vagaries of translation, very different to most of Marx's writings. Basically that's because it's designed to be a political document rather than a piece of philosophical or economic theory - he's deliberately cutting down on jargon and technical terms in favour of more emotive language, like 'scum'. There's actually a pretty good thread about this on Barbelith somewhere.

I think it's also important to point out that Marx wasn't really all that interested in the concept - according to this he only used the term 'lumpenproletariat' a total of 27 times, and most of these were when he was discussing the 1848 revolutions.
 
 
Anna de Logardiere
11:07 / 24.07.08
And just in case Haus and Museum haven't made it clear to you yet any fashion theorist would tell you that you went wrong when you started to think "chav" is about far more than a matter of taste in dress etc. I'm afraid that in no uncertain terms you are wrong. Chav is a descriptor for people who dress in specific styles, it's a northern word for townie and has no meaning beyond that. Chav is more in line with Hebdige than Marx, a sub-cultural (and imposed) rather than class description and it's a shame that people are trying to apply it in different ways since it makes the word rather nastier. You can't apply a word for a style of dress to people's class background because the first thing that happens is that a series of mistakes are made, the word is applied for people who don't dress in that way, suddenly chav means working class and it's semantic value is completely re-written but because it was an imposed word you carry the negative connotations over. Chav becomes a word that means you are bad and dress badly because you are from a different strata of the British class system. Well thanks but that seems like a fucking bad idea to me.
 
  

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