Lumpenproletariat and Dialectical Materialism

Some successors are more sanguine than is Marx about the revolutionary potential of the Lumpenproletariat.  Nevertheless, the challenge remains that according to Dialectical Materialism, that sub-class is either exploiter or exploited, even though its multifarious members are not involved with the Means of Production that, according to Marxist analysis, mediates the exploitation that is at the heart of its critique of Capitalism.  So, as much as does the thesis that an empowered Working Class acts voluntarily, not by necessity, the existence of the Lumpenproletariat exposes the inadequate reductionism of Dialectical Materialism, an inadequacy that is arguably concretely manifest in the totalitarian rigidity of some subsequent Communist regimes.