A 164-Year-Old Idea Helps Explain the Huge Changes Sweeping the World's Workforce

"Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, tricksters, gamblers, pimps, porters, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither (here, there and everywhere)” - Karl Marx's definition of Lumpenproletariat.

Fast forward more than a century and a half and the idea of Lumpenproletariat — or those stranded between traditional social strata and professions — is gaining fresh relevance. While Karl Marx writing in the 19th century included a now-quaint list of disparate characters he thought were unlikely to be of much use in the revolutionary struggle, the displaced and despised class was born out of the first and second industrial revolutions.