ABSTRACT
There has recently been much concern expressed among professional developmentalists about the level of unemployment in underdeveloped countries. Ideological validation for the elevation of the lumpenproletariat to the forefront of world history is provided inter alia by the Fanonist belief that the lumpenproletariat could provide the urban spearhead and second base for a revolutionary struggle waged by the peasantry, by the use of certain elements of the lumpenproletariat by Amilcar Cabral’s PAIGC in its war against the Portuguese, and by the experience of such groups as the Black Panthers in the northern cities of the US. The extent of social differentiation within the lumpenproletariat, on closer examination, is considerable, and it may be a mistake to impose a researchers’ taxonomy that regards this group as one social category rather than many. All the experience of practising revolutionaries seems, however, to confirm the unreliability, volatility and danger of using this group as an ally.
