What is the difference between the lumpen and the marginalized? Meaning of the word lumpen. What does Marginal mean?

The word “marginal” came into the Russian language from German, there from French, and in, in turn, from. From Latin this word can be translated as “located on the edge.” Marginalized people are outcasts who find themselves outside their social group or at the intersection of two different groups. If we are talking about one person, most likely he was expelled from one group and not accepted into another. Bright - people who were forced to flee their country and turned out to be apostates in the eyes of its citizens, but at the same time unable to accept the traditions of another state where they moved.

Such a socially borderline state is perceived very difficult. If we are talking about a group of people, most likely, the essence is in serious social, political, economic changes in society, which led to the collapse of the usual society. Something similar often happens as a result of revolutions.

The word “lumpen” was borrowed again from German, and in translation it means “rags”. Lumpen are people who find themselves in the lowest social strata and do not engage in any socially useful work. This is something that cannot be called a poor person who tries to earn money by the sweat of his brow, but achieves very modest results. Not at all - we are talking about criminals, vagabonds, beggars, those who trade in piracy and robbery.

Very often, non-working alcoholics and drug addicts, people who are supported by someone, although they may well be able to work and earn money, are also considered lumpen. This is also the name given to representatives of the lower social stratum who live off government benefits.

What is the difference between lumpen and marginalized

As a rule, lumpen people have almost no property: they either wander or live in other people's houses, and have only the most necessary things for life. Marginalized people, on the contrary, can even be wealthy people who are not recognized by society because for some reason they have lost their previous position.

Lumpen either take short, one-time jobs, or get money illegally, or live at the expense of loved ones or the state. Marginalized people can engage in socially useful work.

An additional meaning of the term "lumpen" is a person who has no moral principles of his own, does not obey the laws of morality and recklessly or cowardly obeys the group of people who have the most power at a particular historical moment. In such cases, marginalized people become victims rather than mindlessly acting forces.

As we remember from school history, the term lumpenproletariat was introduced into use by Marx, thus designating its lower stratum. Translated from German, the word means “rags.”

Gradually, the semantic content of this concept expanded, and everyone who sank to the “bottom” of society began to be called lumpen: tramps, criminals, beggars, prostitutes and various kinds of dependents.

Summarizing well-known definitions, we can say that the word lumpen now unites a class of people deprived of personal property and eking out odd jobs, preferring to live on certain social benefits.

Folk art

In modern language, which is actively replenished with youth slang, this concept has expanded even further. Now, when pronouncing the word lumpen, its meaning can be understood in at least three ways:

A person from the bottom (homeless, alcoholic, drug addict);

A person outside of society (marginal);

An unprincipled person who does not comply with the norms of public morality (scum).

Thus, now a representative of any class of society can be called a lumpen if his actions fit one of three categories. Here, for example, are phrases from the mass media: “the lumpen people are growing and multiplying,” “yes, I am a lumpen intellectual,” or “there is such a ruling class in Russia - the lumpen bureaucracy.”

Who are the lumpen: the roots of life philosophy

Historians have determined that the first lumpen appeared in antiquity, and gave birth to this class. In ancient Roman society, the economy was built on the use of the labor of numerous slaves, and small landowners, unable to compete with large farms, quickly went bankrupt. This gave rise to a massive resettlement of peasants who had lost their land to the city.

Nominally, they had all the rights as citizens of the Roman state: they could participate in elections and attend city meetings. However, they had no property and no jobs, which forced them to support their existence by “selling” their votes in support of wealthy clients, or providing other small services.

The Roman government decided to provide financial assistance to these people in the form of a hefty measure of grain (about one and a half kg per day), which they received according to special lists.

In Rome alone, the lumpen proletariat numbered about 300 thousand at the beginning of the first millennium. He began to take an active part in all political and military brawls. Having no constructive interests of their own, these people were ready to serve anyone - just to provide themselves with food and simple pleasures.

The marginalized are the “border guards” of society

Well, what can we say about the marginalized? Translated from Latin, it means "borderline" and refers to a person who has dissociated himself from his social group but has been unable to integrate into any other. The number of marginalized people increases significantly when too rapid changes occur in the social order: reforms, revolutions, etc.

In Russia, this process began with the reign of Alexander II and continued with the efforts of Witte and Stolypin. By the beginning of the twentieth century, our country already had a significant layer of marginalized people of all kinds.

Trace in Russian literature

The marginalized and lumpen are distinguished by their special psychology, which is quite clearly captured in our classical literature, for example, by Maxim Gorky, who described who the lumpen are. In the play “At the Lower Depths” he brought together representatives of all social strata: Baron - from the nobility, Actor - from people of art, Satin - from the technical intelligentsia, Bubnov - from the bourgeoisie, Luka - from the peasants, and Kleshch - from the proletarians.

But not all marginalized people can be classified as lumpen. It is enough to disagree with the attitudes of your circle, while remaining outwardly on the same social level. So, in Nekrasov’s poem “Who lives well in Rus'?”, in fact, life is bad for everyone - from priests to lackeys.

If we consider the heroes of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” from this position, then they all fall under the definition of marginals: landowners who are forced by circumstances to sell their land; servants who are separated; a footman who is still experiencing the abolition of serfdom; a dropout student dreaming of revolution.

Gorky compiled a psychological portrait of a representative of another version of marginality - a person who rebelliously “breaks out” (the writer’s definition) from his class environment, categorically not accepting its values, and at the same time, continuing to successfully perform his professional functions (“Egor Bulychev and other").

Savva Morozov - marginalized from the underground

The story of the legendary factory owner Savva Morozov is quite in the spirit of Gorky’s Bulychev: he, as expected, exploited his own workers, and spent the proceeds on supporting revolutionary anarchist groups, that is, he dug a hole for himself. But at the same time he was also a philanthropist.

Such a life could not help but end tragically - unable to withstand the internal discord, he eventually shot himself.

Lumpens and marginalized people: differences

Explanatory dictionaries note that lumpen and marginalized are a general characteristic of people who have lost touch with their social environment and become outcasts in society. But what is their difference?

Let's clarify who the lumpen are. By definition, these are people who have lost contact not only with their social group, but also have lost their means of earning a living and have no source of income. The marginalized are always on the edge: they have fought off their own, but have not found anyone to turn to. Moreover, they may have mixed features of two bordering subcultures.

In other words, lumpen people do not have permanent jobs, but live on odd jobs, social benefits, or break the law. Marginalized people are people in a borderline state who have not adapted to the changed reality.

It turns out that the lumpen and the marginalized are two separate groups of modern society. Marginality is rather the dissent inherent in a person who is lost in a world that does not meet his expectations.

Marginal is not a very flattering description. To call him a lumpen means to insult.

lumpen

A, m. (colloquial). A declassed layer of people (criminals, tramps, beggars), as well as (colloquial), a person belonging to such a layer.

adj. lumpen

New explanatory and word-formative dictionary of the Russian language, T. F. Efremova.

lumpen

m.

One who has lost connection with socially useful work, with his social environment.

Wikipedia

Lumpen (- « Lumpen», rags, lumpen lumpenproletariat

,) is a term introduced by Karl Marx to designate the lower strata of the proletariat. Later, all declassed segments of the population (tramps, beggars, criminal elements and other asocial individuals) began to be called lumpen. In most cases, a lumpen is a person who does not have any property and lives on odd jobs or uses government social benefits in various forms.

Lumpens are declassed elements, people without social roots, a moral code, ready to recklessly obey the strong, that is, those who currently have real power. in Soviet and post-Soviet sociology - members of society who do not belong to any social class. These include the unemployed, prisoners, the mentally ill, beggars, tramps, prostitutes and the like.

Lumpenization of society means an increase in the share of these strata in the population and the spread lumpen psychology in conditions of social inequality and crisis.

Examples of the use of the word lumpen in literature.

After many years of homelessness, persecution, after wandering as a worker and lumpen, found myself in an atmosphere of coziness and comfort.

The most heartfelt words were extracted from his Nazi jargon by the former Viennese lumpen Adolf Schicklgruber for the former Tobolsk tramp Grigory Rasputin.

But this is understandable, because there are only suckers left here, rags, I don’t feel sorry for them.

I could not allow myself to be considered for the rest of my life as a person who had fallen out with the system because of personal failure, and a dropout without a diploma, if he is not an artist or a poet, as nothing other than a loser and lumpen, will not be counted.

In fact, foreign prisoners who had not yet done anything wrong in the camp were herded into it, like flocks of sprats in a net, and among them lumpen from the northern quarters of Warsaw, who fled across the sacred Bug River to the Soviet paradise from Hitler's hell.

Fundamentalist resistance and lumpen it will not stop there, but it will take on criminal forms and can be legally suppressed.

They say that all of us, lumpen proletarians, are invulnerable under any revolutions and regimes, because by and large we, lumpen, nothing to lose.

Prokhanov and Malyutin judged correctly: abandoned to the mercy of fate, these people can really form a massive army of the opposition - if you let them slide to the level lumpen.

They believed that Hitler's anti-Semitism was feigned in order to attract votes lumpen.

There were rags and world-eaters, careerists and playmakers, compromisers and rebels, functionaries and dissidents.

Marginals and lumpen

Everyone knows these words from school history lessons; this is how more fortunate people usually call their relatives who are less fortunate in life - representatives of the lower stratum of society. But are they really so close to each other - lumpen and marginal?

Explanatory dictionaries characterize both of them almost identically, as people who have lost touch with their social environment, who have become outcasts in it. However, from this position, anyone can turn out to be lumpen or marginal, depending on which society is taken as a starting point. Therefore, clarification is required.

Word " marginal" comes from Latinmarginalis- “extreme, located on the edge.”Marginal - this is someone who is between two irreconcilable cultures, without completely belonging to either of them, and at the same time accepting some characteristic features from both.

In economics there is a similar (only phonetically) term with a French pronunciation: “marginal”, associated with the conceptmargin– “margin, profit, the difference between the purchase and sale prices; minimum, lower limit."

Well, the word “lumpen - and is considered colloquial. This is an abbreviation of a German expression used in Marxist theory -Lumpenproletariat, WhereLumpen- “torn, rags”, andproletariat- “proletariat”. The lumpen proletariat are beggars, vagabonds, criminals and other dregs of society. So, we conclude: the wordlumpen not identical to the wordmarginal , although it has a lot in common with it.

^ Lumpens and outcasts.

These two groups of the population, each in its own way, seem to fall out of the stable social structure of society.

The word "lumpen" comes from the German lumpen - rags. The lumpen include people who have sunk to the “bottom” of social life - tramps, beggars, homeless people. As a rule, these come from different social strata and classes. An increase in the number of this group (lumpenization of the population) is dangerous for society, since it serves as a breeding ground for various kinds of extremist organizations. The marginal strata have a different position and a different social role (Latin marginalis - located on the edge). These include groups that occupy an intermediate position between stable communities. One of the main channels of marginalization is mass migration from rural to urban areas. This process took place, for example, in the late 20s - 30s. in our country. The ongoing industrialization required more and more workers. Former rural residents, having lost touch with the village way of life, had difficulty adapting to the urban environment. For a long time they became people with severed social ties and destroyed spiritual values. Such sections of the population, “unrooted”, with an unstable social position, strived for a solid order established by the state, for a “strong hand”. This created a social basis for an anti-democratic regime.

The above example shows one of the negative consequences of the increase in marginal groups. At the same time, one cannot help but admit that often it is precisely these sections of the population, not bound by traditions and prejudices, that especially actively support the progressive, often acting as its initiators.

Who are the lumpen and the marginalized? This is the question one might ask when hearing these words for the first time. If we talk about the meaning of these words, it will be similar, but not equal. That is, the difference between these definitions that needs to be understood. These words are connected by only one thing - they are used to designate a person who, for one reason or another, is outside his social group and belongs to the lowest social stratum.

How do you think Oblomov from I. A. Goncharov’s novel is lumpen and marginal?

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Origin and meaning of words

“Marginal” is a word that has Latin roots and a little later came to different languages ​​of the world. According to Wikipedia, this word is translated from Latin into Russian as “standing, located on the edge.” Marginal people are usually called people who, for some reason, find themselves outside their social group or are at the junction between two specific societies. We can say that the marginalized are outcasts. For example, marginalized people can be called people who, for some reason, left the territory of their native country and became apostates in the eyes of their former compatriots, but at the same time did not accept the traditions of the power to which they fled. A group of people is called marginalized when this group did something that led to the collapse of some social or state foundations.

Lumpen - this word came into Russian speech from the German language. Translated, it means “rags.” Lumpen are people who have sunk to the very bottom of the social spectrum and who do absolutely no work, bringing no benefit to themselves or society. A person who is financially insecure cannot be called a lumpen: this person works, earns bread by the sweat of his brow. Lumpen - this word applies to criminal elements, people wandering. Alcoholics, drug addicts, and individuals who live solely on government subsidies are also often called lumpen.

Difference between terms

In order not to get confused in concepts, let's look in detail at the differences between lumpen and marginalized people. Lumpens usually do not own any property; often these people simply wander and carry with them only those things that are really necessary for life. The marginalized may well be people who live in material prosperity, but for some reason are rejected by society.

You should know that the word “lumpen” has another meaning: it can be used to call a person devoid of moral values, who despises the moral principles accepted in society and mindlessly submits to persons with a certain authority. The more lumpen people appear in society, the greater the danger they begin to pose to society. That is why in the theory of Marxism the term “lumpenproletariat” was introduced, which denoted an environment of criminals and moral corruptors. In the USSR, the word “lumpen” was abusive and offensive.

Marginality, marginalism, marginality - all these words have never had an abusive meaning. They only indicate a person’s borderline state in society, being an outcast and the inability to find one’s place in any social group. Immigrants, political refugees, people who left their native lands and were unable to find a new homeland in another country are often called marginalized. It is worth noting that in modern society the word “lumpen” is almost never used; even homeless people are increasingly called marginalized, although this is not entirely true.