eldridge cleaver on lumpen ideology

8/2/2019 Eldridge Cleaver on Lumpen Ideology

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BYE~ni l{I :PGEC L E A V E R


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ON LUMPEN IDEOLOGYby Eldridge Cleaver

In reality, time is an unbroken span of matter in motion, of movement andinteraction. Objectively, the universe is timeless, and time is a category created bythe relationship between form and motion. When we isolate any portion of matterin motion, for purposes of analysis, our efforts thereby encounter the primarydisaster of inquiry, because a part has been substituted for the whole. And, as human.beings, since none of us knows everything and all of us know something, I would arguethat this partial understanding is the root of all evil. Here we are, each of usstanding there with our separate realities, collectively looking like the pieces ofa chinese puzzle.When it comes to studying and analyzing social, political, and economic

problems, the situation created by our partial views of reality plunge us into amost unfortunate crisis.And since the discussion of social, political, and economicproblems is a partisan arena, the special pleading and distortions intended todeceive keep us bogged down in a morass of confusion which renders manyproblems impossible to solve. In the first place, in order for people to move,together, united in a common design, they have to agree, they have to understand,and they must share a point of view. This would be a difficult enough task if ouronly problems were those of fitting together our pieces of the puzzle. But whenwe also have to deal with treachery and deception we end up driven by the whip,stumbling blindly, like oxen, pulling somebody's wagon, fighting, dying, andworking for goals we neither understand nor share. Sometimes we call this fate,or bad luck, or we just say that it's fucked up. Yes, it's fucked up. Partly becausethe human condition is fucked up from the go, like a herd of monkeys rustlingthrough the leaves, and partly because there are people who are deliberatelykeeping the shit fucked up.There are periods in history ,however, when people have gotten their heads

together on what's happening. Enough of them understand clearly enough to unitewith each other in the rejection of the lies, the treacherous distortions, anddeceptive fabrications, enough so that they are able to unite, build somemachinery, and move to solve some of the social, political, and economic problemsthat are oppressing them. The last time this was done on a world scale was signalledby the gigantic achievement in analysis and synthesis of Karl Marx.Drawing upon a vast amount of the storehouse of human knowledge, i.e., theinformation on the world centralized in the universities and libraries and museumsof Europe, Marxwas able to present a definition and picture of reality that couldserve as a broad symbol for dealing rationally and programmatically with a world


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m Chaos. Marx was mterested in providing what he saw as the majority of humanitywith a tool of understanding that would enable them to effectively combat andultimately transform the capitalist system which had grown up and was then incontrol of the world. Starting in 1849, with the publication of the COMMUNISTMANIFESTO, in collaboration with Frederick Engels, Marx continued to develop,expand, and refine his analysis until, some 30 years later, he brought it to fullflower in his epochal book, DAS KAPIT AL.Marx's vision of capitalist society became the rallying point of the dispossessed

people both inside the capitalist countries themselves and by the people in otherparts of the world who were shackled in colonial bondage by the capitalistcountries as they reached out to encompass the world in their system. Marxbrilliantly described the monstrous concentration of the ownership of the meansof production into the hands of the ruling bourgeois class, with the majority ofhumanity, the proletariat class, ground underfoot by the capitalists in their madrush for profits, and chained by an iron law in slavery to wages.Today, a full century after the time of Karl Marx, we find a very curious

situation upon our hands. Heroic struggle has been waged against capitalism andthe bourgeoisie, and the dispossessed people of the world have made great gainsin their efforts to regain control of their lives and destiny.and to live a full andabundant, independent and free life. A number of people, numerically amountingto a huge hunk of humanity, and geographically spanning avast area of the globe,have completely uprooted and rejected the capitalist system, building instead, newsocial, political, and economic systems, patterned, vaguely, along the lines laiddown by Karl Marx in his searching analysis of history, his present reality, and theprobable future evolution of civilization. The socialist countries of the world arethe children of Karl Marx, and they have grown gigantic and powerful, conglo-merated into Superpowers, able to rival and stand off the whole of the capitalistworld. And yet, we are not free. We are still oppressed. Indeed, we see clearly thateven inside the socialist countries themselves the people are oppressed and sub-jected to totalitarian elite dictatorships that use state terror and police power tomaintain their rule. At the same time, the level of oppression inside the capitalistcountries has reached a point of desperate ruthlessness that has given rise to asocial, political, and economic depravity unparalleled in the history of the world.The fact is that, today, the vast majority of the people of the world are still

oppressed, some inside the capitalist countries, some inside the socialist countries,and others inside the underdeveloped Third World, or formerly colonized areas,now transformed into states and nations, in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Inall of these areas, the oppressed people have one thing in common, not only doesMarxism not ultimately help them either in understanding or dealing with theirplight, but Marxism, in the form of socialist states and communist parties, hasentered the camp of the enemy and joined with the enemy in the common task ofrepressing and blocking revolutionary forces in the world. That is a mind blower:the capitalists and the Socialist/Communists have gotten together, objectively ifnot subjectively, merged their pieces of the puzzle together to form a superpowerperspective, and they are looking down, and askance, at us.And who are we? Who is this 'us', still oppressed and longing to be free? Who


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are we that neither capitalism, socialism, nor third worldism provides for? Yes,we have an identity problem - or better yet, an identity crisis. Wehave no troublein not identifying with capitalism, our old enemy, or in condemning, to death,the bourgeoisie. But we thought that Socialism was our future and representedwhat we were fighting for, and if we are not proletarians, what are we, what'sleft? At this point, we know that we stand in a cross. Weknow damned well thatwe are not fighting to establish a society that will produce more Breshnevs, Chouen-lais, Titos, Castros, Jomos, Mobutos, Satos, etc.! Yet, we have stood andwatched, witnessed with our own eyes, the proletarian Working Class taking thelong march into the system, becoming Socialist States, or Super Labor Unions,if still trapped within a capitalist state, and in both cases becoming, rapidly, foul,reactionary, and fanged. Itwas like field slaveswatching yard slavesbeing lifted upand taken in by the master and transformed into House Niggers. And we say, truly,that the Working ClassProletarians are the House Niggers of Capitalism So wehad to back off, and go back, not to the beginning but at least to the roots.

The Concentration and Centralization of TechnologyAt the beginning of the period of European colonialist expansion, the 14th,l Sth, and 16th centuries, when the nations of Europe were pouring all over theglobe and committing the form of invasion and robbery called exploration andtrade, the disparity between Europe and the rest of the world was not as great,relatively speaking, as that which exists today. North America, encompassingwhat is now the United States and Canada, was the preserve of the Red Man. TheU.S. and Canada, as the glittering extension of European civilization, did notexist, considerably reducing the proportions, in all spheres, of the base fromwhich the European invaders and manhunters came. There were societies all overthe world that did not look with envy towards Europe. Indeed, it had been theEuropeans themselves, looking out from the bleak rock of their peninsula, whowere filled with envy and lust as they were looking out and tempted into banditryby the glitter of what they saw.. For hundreds of years, the spoils of the most barbarous, piratical, looting andpillage in the history of the world pumped such a concentration of wealth andtechnology into Europe that Europe as a whole was transformed into a new typeof society, firmly established upon a qualitatively new technology. Bounded inthe West by the Atlantic Ocean, in the North by the snow, Europe had been, forcenturies, held in check by the pinzers of Islam in the South and the descendantsof Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun in the East. But with the concentration andcentralization of wealth and technology in Europe, a naked power was producedthat was used to conquer and subdue the rest of the world. We all know the storyof the Europeans seeing the Chinese using gunpowder in their festive celebrations,latching onto that toy and turning it into weapons which were then used againstthe Chinese, crushing them down into centuries of slavery and exploitation. What


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is less often realized is that the same process took place in reference to gunpowderalso took place with every other aspect of the technology and culture of thepeoples who fell under the brutal, arrogant, rapacious rule of Europe.

Having dispossessed the people of the world of all control over theirtechnology and culture, the powerful class growing up inside Europe, thebourgeoisie, was able to totally and completely usurp control over the technologyand culture of each European state, making the concentration and centralizationcomplete. This great usurpation of technology, which was thereby transformedinto private property, progressively alienated the great masses of humanity fromtechnology. As this technological conglomerate became more interconnected,taking on more and more, the natural, rightful, interdependent relationship betweenman and his technology was destroyed. Whereas technology is truly a socialproduct, it was now' neatly packaged, bound and gagged, by the new systemgrowing up in Europe, and the survival of the peoples, their very livelihood, fellto the mercy of the avaricious class, the bourgeoisie, which was blind to everythingexcept its own prosperity and the forward march of the concentration andcentralization of technology, in its own hands.

As this rip-off continued, concentrating and centralizing resources, technology,and information, this rich harvest, assembled and organized in a new way for thefirst time in history, took qualitative leaps and completely transformed the culture,lifestyle, values, and outlook of those who were closer to it, the Europeans, thecolonizing, capitalist imperialists themselves. When Europeans bragged of bringingcivilization to people, of bringing them into the modern world, this only referredto the incidental and unpreventable spilling over into the rest of the world of thefallout from the technological explosions going off in Europe.

While Europewas growing strong, throbbing, pulsating, expanding, burstingout of its seams by this burgeoning growth, the rest of the world, and thedispossessed and disinherited peoples of Europe were withering away, shrivelingup, their vital lifelines cut. Natural growth and development were disrupted, andthe life impulses of these cultures were turned into death throes, producingmonstrous growths, anti-life forces that fed upon the people, those very peoplethese cultures were created, developed, and elaborated to nuture, to facilitate theirsurvival in the struggle with nature. The people who were the victims of thisannihilation of their survival skills continued to exist, but tortured, deformed, andin chains. The chains fasted upon their culture and technology were buried intheir souls, as they stood there stoned. The alienation from their heritage, frommanipulation and control of their apparatus of survival, plunged them into a formof stagnation so profound that centuries would pass without recovery orrecu pera tion.

The Lumpenization of HumanityOnce technology was separated from the people, flowing into large pools in the

colonialist metropoli of the world, a qualitatively new relationship of the people


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to technology, unknown before in the history of civilization, came into being.Technology, which until then had been thecollective possession of peoples andsocieties, speaking to their needs through their total culture in their struggle tosurvive in nature, was transformed into property in the hands and under thecontrol of individuals and conspiracies who themselves were beyond the control ofthe people. This new relationship, the separation and alienation of the people fromtechnology, is the basic problem of the history of our era. It is what we call thelumpen relationship of the people to technology, and the process of its develop-ment, the concentration and centalization of technology, produced thislumpenization of humanity.

The lumpenization of the people of the world created a dependent worldpopulation, at the mercy of those who controlled technology. The people of theworld were enslaved by the control of technology exercised by predatory combi-nations of wolf-pack, bandit societies, vampirish in their sucking of other peoples'lifeblood and murderous in their callous disregard for the fate of their victims.This condition of enslavement by technology is the lumpen condition. Thephenomenon of people being cut off from technology, and then plugged backinto it artifically through jobs became a dominant feature of our era, eventhough it has been misunderstood and often narrowly construed even whenrecognized.In response to the usurpation of technology, its concentration and centrali-

zation, a mad scramble, by the people, was unleashed as, in order to survive,people began to hack out a new relationship to technology. In a sense, everythingwas up for grabs, a new image of what reality is like was deliniated. Technologybecame parcelled up in transferable packages, ownership of which was evidencedby a neat little piece of paper ~ a Bill of Sale or Deed of Trust. Things definitelyhad the appearance of being there for the taking. Even if this was more apparentthan real, it became the spirit and outlook of the bourgeoisie, which in turnprojected it into the consciousness of the people as a whole. But in fact, for themajority of the people, ownership of technology was a shrinking possibility andan expanding dream. As it turned out, most people had to settle for somethingless than participation in ownership of technology, as they rooted around for ahammerlock on the new technological landscape. What they got hold of was jobs.From an ownership point of view, everything was monopolized, owned, withsomeone standing there with a deed of trust saying, 'That is mine.' He may havebeen talking about a river, a mountain, or a huge section of the surface of theearth, or a toolmaking machine which in its creation contained the accumulatedwisdom of humanity, drawn and assembled from all corners of the earth, andtracing back over time into misty eons of the past. But the way that things werereorganized, the usurpers were able to make their claims stick. They had cops andsoldiers to back them up, with guns. Back them up they did, and they backed thepeople up too - against the wall.Unable to get in on the ownership aspect of the new system, other unions

of people worked out other accornodations, as functionnaries and workersneeded to keep the system rolling. This all-encompassing system, as it refineditself and get better organized - streamlined, automatized, cybernated, and


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6computerized - required fewer and fewer people to make it tick. Indeed, thevision became possible, and began to circulate in and out of dreams, of theultimate machine, with one button, and with one technician standing therepushing it, or, better yet, a robot, itself part of the machine, standing therepushing its own button. The nightmare and the dream of the robots in control.Robots or not, this situation became the profound reality of the majority of thepeople of the world. As far as they were concerned, the robots might as wellhave been incontrol for a long time now. Those who worked out an accomoda-tion with the system, from the Boards of Directors down through the executivehierarchy, through the technocratic elite, through the white collar functionariesand blue collar workers, down to the street cleaners and garbagemen, found aform for their security, whatever its content. But the vast majority of the people,possessingno direct, stable relationship to the system, became even more depen-dent, they became true and pure lumpen. Dependency found new forms,enslavement manifested itself through other relationships. People who wereconnected to others who were themselves plugged into the system, foundthemselves at their mercy, camouflauged as natural family relationships, orrelationships of race.For a while, at the advent of this new system, the dispossessed people shared

the same relationship to the concentrated and centralized technology. Theyshared a common lumpen relationship to the usurped plugs in the system,hiring themselves out as functionaries and workers, organized themselves andlegitimized their relationship to technology. The formulations which Marxthought would emancipate humanity as a whole fell short of their mark, endingup as a new religion of those who had found their plug in the system - theWorking Class. Those who were still left out, unplugged and dependent, en-snarled in a web of social relations thrown off by the new system, and with astatus at the bottom of the ladder, became the candidates and objects of charityand welfare, or other forms of relief. CARE PACKAGES could now be sent outof the centers where technology had been concentrated and centralized, intothose areas of the world that had been sacked and left drifting. It became possibleto speak of technology-exporting countries and technology-importing countries.The majority of the people were left standing there, regarding themselves as

a vast army of job seekers, of unemployed workers. To find a job became a pointof honor, to rise above the driftwood of the rest of humanity. A job in the systemwas viewed as natural, because that's the way the system functioned, the way itwas organized. One had to have a job, to work, to live. To be blocked out of theactive labor force is to be blocked out of Production. Historically, to be blockedout of Production was to be blocked out of Consumption. To be blocked out ofConsumption is to die. So that those who found jobs, who plugged themselvesinto the system, were jealous and eager to secure their plug, to which theirlifelines were attached. They created Labor Unions and Communist Parties tosecure and safeguard their relationship to technology. Thus, they turned theirjobs into property, which they possessed as a right. To seal the bargain and blockthe army of job-seekers hovering around outside the factories, Seniority wasthrown in as the joker. To be a man, one had to have a job. To be a woman, one


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had to have a man with ajob. To be a man without ajob or a woman with aman without a job was to be Lumpen.

The System of ReliefThe system of relief, of charity, of welfare, developed and elaborated into SocialSecurity, is the best proof of the lumpenization of humanity. As the system, run-ning now at the smoot speed of light, became richer, as the Surplus built up, some-thing could be done to relieve the poor, those who had been left out, unplugged -the Lumpen. CaUthem unemployed workers if you want to, but there they are,and their condition has not changed. They will never become members of anyLabor Union. Already, the Labor Unions have too many members, as the refine-ment and centralization of Production has eliminated the need for them.Those who control the system know very well the functioning of Relief.

That's why they never give up total and complete relief. To do so, they wouldhave to commit suicide. class, and in some cases, personal. The marvel of it allis that they can now afford it. From their huge Surplus, they can dole out alittle, careful not to make it look like a dole, because they know that if the ideaever got around that the Surplus should be divided up, amongst the people, itwould not be too long before the idea was refined into the simple principle thatit should be divided equally. So they prefer to keep the whole thing quiet, refusing toacknowledge its true nature, and to toss out a dole, begrudgingly, as if uncertainas tothe efficacy of the gesture. A miserly, stingy bourgeoisie with a greedy working classlickspittieing its boots, standing there with the money bags, tossing out small changelike tossing com to the chickens.A new vested interest is being created through the dole. The Relief People are

being born. Instead of being plugged into the system through jobs, they are beingplugged in through doles; As a neo-colonial technique of social control, it works.Through the dole, direct and indirect, camouflagued or naked, some people arebought off, the bought-off Lumpen. Itwas not exactly what they wanted. Theywanted dignity and equality, in all spheres, including economic. But they had tolive. They had to eat. Everything else was shaky. Itwas easy to fill out thoseforms and then wait for the check. Itwas also hard to find a job. But there wasnothing for them to do. They had not had much schooling, even though theywent to school, and they did not know how to do any of these new things, likebeing a scientist. So the dole was better than nothing, and there were the kidsto feed.

The Negation of the Negation:Lumpen Consciousness is the Negation of Class ConsciousnessSo here we are in prison, inBabylon, inthe Congo, inMoscow,England, France,


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Peking, Cuba, Czeckoslovakia, East/West Germany. Rhetoric is shot at us likebullets. They try to explain to us who we are, but we know that we are notwhom they say we are. If everything was alright, if everything was as rosy asthey say it is, there would be no problem, and w~would not be in prison, Buthere we are, locked up in Gore Prison in Dakar, Senegal The President of ourcountry is a fascist dictator, a puppet of France, spouting socialist rhetoric. Weare hunted everywhere. Nowhere is our party in power. Indeed, we don't evenhave a party. Hunted in Paris, Berlin, New York, London, Tokyo, Moscow, andPeking, we are no less hunted in the other capitals of the world. Weare alsohunted by Labor Unions and Communist Parties. Marx said that we were thescum layer of society. That's what he called the blood and shit down into whichwe were crushed. As ifwe had never been respectable once. We retaliate. Wetake a revolutionary position against every organized structure that exists inthe world today. Wedo not support the present order of the world. And we keepreaching out for more. Even if we forget everything else we will neverforgetthat the revolution is for more and not less. Thus, in constantly reaching out,we keep them constantly busy trying to deal with our hands. As soon as theythink that they have us all tied down, with a new program-we shift our positionand reach out for something else. Because we realize that no problem will besolved until we get it all. Weknow that we are involved in a struggle for thephysical control of the machines, of the robots, to physically have them out ofthe hands of the bourgeoisie, and the working class, because as long as we arecut off we will be slaves.And we are no longer seeking a job. Weknow that the system can be reorgan-

ised to reinvest us with our human heritage. Instinctively, we know this, so willnever be satisfied until these arrangements are made.

Lumpen Consciousness and Lumpen RevolutionOne of the big mistakes made in the pa1t by comrades who attempted to applyLumpen Ideology, this writer included , was to make a narrow interpretation asto who were members of the Lumpen, I think this was because we have been soinfluenced and intoxicated by the brilliance of Marx that we failed to recognizeand acknowledge his limitations. Even though we did not like the disparaging,snobbish way that he looked down upon the lumpen, characterizing them as thescum-layer of society, we still accepted his over-all system of categories andthought of the so-called criminal element, hustlers, pumps, etc., as composing theLumpen. As to the rest of society, we accepted Marx's division into the bourgeoisieand proletariat. Welooked upon the proletariat as being synonymous with theWorkingClass, and accepted without questioning the Marxist assertion that allthose who were not bourgeoisie were proletarians or members of the Working"On The Ideology of The Block Panther Party, by Eldridge Cleaver


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Class.This is a fundamental error. The reason we make this error is because wefailed to define, accurately, and in a broad enough sense, just what is the Lumpenrelationship to the means of production. Once we get this definition clear in ourmind, then we can move beyond the limitations of Marx, recognizing that, in thefinal analysis, his categories were arbitrary and that they no longer serve us inour struggles.On the opening page of the COMMUNISTMANIFESTO, Marx and Engels

givethe classicdefinition of the bourgeoisie and proletariat:By bourgeoisie is meant the class of Modern Capitalists, owners of the means of socialproduction and employers of wage-labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage-labourerswho, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour-powerin order to live.During the days when everybody was looking for a job, when jobs were more

plentiful than they are now and have been for a long time, it is easy to see howpeople could accept Marx's definition of the proletariat. Unemployment wasviewed as unnatural and temporary. Politicans promised full-employment.Capitalists said that after the economy picked up from its slump there would bework for everybody. Soon there would be a chicken in every pot. But this neverhappened. What aid happen was that more and more people found themselvesunemployed, permanently out of work. At the same time, the economic systemwas becoming so modernized through electronic controls that complete jobcategories were eliminated. Objectively, this should be viewed as a good thing,because human beings have been struggling all down through the ages to emanci-pate themselves from the drudgery of work. The more that work can be done bymachines, freeing human beings, the better. But in the context of a capitalistsystem, the advance of technology becomes a tragedy to the workers who aredisplaced by machines. Thlis the stories of workers smashingmachines orgreeting a brilliant technological advancement with hostility and opposition. Tothis very day, Labor Unions still fight the introduction of new machinery andtechnology to the productive process precisely because their members aredisplaced and thrown back onto the heap of unemployed or permanentlylumpenized._ So that it is clear that the basic condition of the dispossessed people, thosewho are cut off from technology, is not the proletarian condition described byMarx, but the Lumpen condition. The proletarian condition is that of those whohave lifted themselves out of the Lumpen condition. Whenworkers becomepermanently unemployed, displaced by the streamlining of production, theyrevert back to their basic Lumpen condition.Once upon a time, when there were jobs to fight for, the Lumpen fought

for jobs, for better working conditions, etc. Gradually, they won concessionsfrom the capitalists. But later on, and even more so today, the Lumpen realizedthat there are no jobs to fight for. Ideologically confused, perceiving their truesituation unclearly, the Lumpen has been sidetracked. But still the Lumpen poseda constant threat to the capitalist system, by their demands of the poor. Theydemanded to be let in on Consumption even if they were blocked out of Production


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by the absence of jobs or even future prospects on jobs. To cool out this situation,the capitalists responded with the dole - the system of relief. From the point ofview of the Lumpen, the dole plays the same function as a job - it allows themto get in on Consumption. But the dole, the system of welfare and relief, cannever really deal with the situation, nor is it intended to. Relief is only a stop-gap measure resorted to by the capitalists to cool people out and buy themselvessome more time, by dividing the Lumpen, by buying some of them off, thuspostponing the showdown between the Lumpen and the capitalist system ofproduction and consumption.It is in this regard that Marxism has had disastrous effects upon the revolutionarymovement. Marx, misunderstanding the basic condition of oppression, identifiedthe proletariat, the working Class,as the most revolutionary element of society,So that for generations, revolutionaries have been trying to bring about therevolution by relating religiously to the working class. This has gone on untiltoday, to the point where it is now absurd, if not insane. In reality, the WorkingClass has become as much a part of the system that has to be destroyed as thecapitalists themselves. They are the second line of resistance, after the cops.The real revolutionary element of our era is the Lumpenyunderstood inits broader sense. What is lacking is a Lumpen consciousness, consciousness of thebasic condition of oppression being the Lumpen condition and not the proletariancondition. In order for the revolutionary movement to progress, the Lumpenmust become conscious of themselves as the vast majority, and the false prole-tarian, working class consciousness must be negated.Lumpen consciousness is more advanced than the job-seeking, fringe-benefitconsciousness of the AFL/CIO/Communist Party/Working Class accommodationistmovement. The basic demand of the Lumpen, to be cut in on Consumption inspite of being blocked out of Production is the ultimate revolutionary demand.What is wrong with the way that this basic Lumpen demand has been set forthin the past is that it has come out as a sort of begging, ashamed of itself, and ithas accepted the dole. The dole of the system of relief is nothing but a shamsubstitute for equal distribution of the wealth of society. Brainwashed with theproletarian consciousness of the working class, the Lumpen has been made tofeel that it does not have any rights; that the Lumpen are just unfortunate inthat they cannot land ajob, unfortunate because they are unskilled andunqualified to fit into the modern, science-based labor force. In reality, all of this,which is the basic preoccupation of the proletarian, working class consciousness,is beside the point.

The point is that the Lumpen, humanity itself, has been robbed of its socialheritage by the concentration and centralization of technology. The holding ofthe means of production as private property is illegitimate because it certifiesthe usurpation of technology and its concentration and centralization in the handsof the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. Once the Lumpen understand this, thattechnology belongs to the people, that our modem technology is the heritage ofall humanity, then they will move to expropriate the expropriators, to abolishthe usurpation, and take control of the machines, technology, into their ownhands.


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All demands for relief programes, welfare programs, survival programs, arenothing but reformist, sell-out, half-stepping adjustments to a system that needsto be replaced. The only satisfactory, revolutionary demand is for the restorationof the hegemony of the people over technology and equality in distribution andconsumption. The point is not equality in Production, which is the Marxist viewand basic error, but equality in distribution and consumption. We look forwardto the day when all work can be done by technological advances, which will bea good thing. But this doesn't mean that we should be blocked out of Consumption.The basic task confronting revolutionaries today is to further define the

Lumpen condition, to refine Lumpen Ideology, spread Lumpen consciousness,and lead the struggle, through righteous practice, to seize physical control of themachines, of technology, and destroy, forever, hegemony of the usurpers overthe social heritage of humanity.


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eldridge cleaver on lumpen ideology

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