Lumpenbourgeoisie

Lumpenbourgeoisie is a term used in colonial sociology to describe members of the middle class[1] and upper class[2] (merchants, lawyers, industrialists, etc.)[3] who have little collective self-awareness or economic base[1] and who support the colonial masters.[1][2] It is often attributed to Andre Gunder Frank in 1972,[1][4] although the term is already present in several texts by Lukács (1943), Koestler (1945), C. Wright Mills (1951) and also in Paul Baran's The Political Economy of Growth (1957). Nonetheless, the term was popularized by Frank's book Lumpenbourgeoisie and Lumpendevelopment: Dependency, Class and Politics in Latin America (1972) which used it in its title.

A compound of the German word Lumpen (rags) and French word bourgeoisie, it follows Karl Marx's concept of the lumpenproletariat, a rejected underclass that sides readily with the elite bourgeoisie.

  1. ^ a b c d Kapcia Antoni, Antoni Kapcia, Havana: The Making of Cuban Culture, Berg Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-85973-837-0, Google Print, p.15
  2. ^ a b William Edwin Segall, School Reform in a Global Society, Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, ISBN 0-7425-2461-2, Google Print p.146
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Harr was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Hosam Aboul-Ela, Other South: Faulkner, Coloniality, and the Mariategui Tradition, Univ of Pittsburgh Press, 2007, ISBN 0-8229-4314-X, Google Print, p.73

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