It is factually incorrect to say that people who are homeless, sex workers, unable to work due to illness, etc. etc. are incapable of understanding theory or organizing. My shitty experience w a party recently made it clear how important it is that people understand this.

1. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of how class works. Class isn't an inherent quality a person has. It's the situation they find themselves in. Many people move around within the working class.

Ex. You don't lose your job and magically become incapable of understanding complex ideas.

Furthermore, dogmatists who cite Marx re: the lumpen seem to forget about Marx's actual class position

2. The people who say this demeaning shit about the lumpen clearly do not interact with us. Was just listening to a podcast about organizers in the south doing mass line work w homeless people, and they said that the a lot of the people they talk to know quite a bit about theory.

There is abundant evidence of sex workers organizing for labor rights. There is abundant evidence of people with chronic illness / disabilities organizing.

As Marxists we are supposed to be dealing in real things that happened or are happening. The only way to arrive at the position that the lumpenproletariat has no revolutionary potential is via bourgeois ideas about sex workers, homeless people, disabled people, etc.

Rather than taking a look at history or present conditions you're saying "these people are stupid and less capable than I am."

3. There is no way to be anti-lumpen without being racist, because in the context of America lumpen is a racialized idea. Colonized people are much, much more likely to be lumpen.

There's also no way to be anti-lumpen without being ableist & sanist.

In conclusion, anti-lumpen attitudes have their basis in dogmatism (but-but-but Marx said you're the SOCIAL CUM), racism, ableism, sanism. You cannot arrive at such a position using dialectical materialism.

In other words, if you don't believe that the lumpenproletariat has revolutionary potential, your position is objectively wrong.