>>155868See, you're starting with a false premise, and just failing to understand that no one is arguing from the same false premise you're basing your entire outlook on. We aren't even arguing diametrically
against it, because you're starting with assumptions which are so wrong that they're not even relevant. In other words, the assumptions which your assumptions are grounded in are themselves baseless.
I'm a lumpen. Ordinary people encounter lumpens. It's not something we need to speculate about or "romanticize," we aren't
spectators to the existence of lumpens, lumpens are extremely common. Nobody thinks lumpens are exotic, you sound nuts.
Also, the "middle class" doesn't actually exist. You're (probably) talking about white collar workers, in which case you could just as well make the argument that college students are inherently lazy, too. That is not an argument which I am making, nor an argument anyone else is making, but it is an argument which perfectly parallels your argument, which is a stupid argument. Being born one strata of working class and falling to another strata is very common. This idea you have in your head that anyone else thinks every lumpen was born dirt poor is stupid. Nobody thinks that. Being born to blue collar or pink collar or white collar parents are not moral achievements; it doesn't make you any better or worse of a person if your dad was a plumber and you end up as a waiter. It happens all the time.
And, to be clear, that doesn't even mean that every lumpen is just downwardly mobile; I'm just pointing out that this is not a coherent criticism. Looking for good work and not finding any is not a sin.
With that being said, generational poverty is still extremely common. Most lumpenproles do come from poverty, and, again, this is not
"romanticizing" anyone. Poverty is not romantic. It provides no automatic moral value. No one is
good just because they're poor, but a lot of people, because they are poor, have more difficulty finding good work and covering basic necessities. This, in turn, economically incentivizes alternative means of employment, which are often taboo or sketchy, and sometimes illegal. This is a harsher, much more constant version of the same economic pressure which greater numbers of people (from other strata of the working class) are periodically exposed to during depressions and severe recessions. Because people born into severe poverty more constantly experience the same economic pressures which cause people born into white or blue collar backgrounds to resort to 'lumpen' work, and because more people are poor than are not, most lumpenproles come from low income backgrounds.
Whether or not anyone is "hardworking" or "down to earth" has fuck all to do with it.