Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat

While Marx-Engels often use "working class" and "proletariat" interchangeably, their functions within the system diverge, a vacillation that is symptomatic of a more general failure.  In Marxism, the significant characteristic of the working class is that its members are victims of exploitation, constituted by others profiting from the fruits of their labor, while the significant characteristic of the proletariat is its property-lessness, which is the concrete historical ground of the post-revolutionary abolition of property.  But, as Marx well recognizes, not every member of the population that is property-less is also an exploited worker; such non-productive types are a range of misfits that includes bohemians, the chronically poor, and petty criminals, that he glosses as the "lumpenproletariat".  Now, corresponding to the disdain that he sometimes expresses for these types, is the inadequacy of his system to their existence.  For example, as neither exploiters nor exploited, they are outside of the Dialectical scheme of both History and Society, so, specifically, Marxism cannot recognize the chronically poor as victims of a ruling class, and, generally, falls short of adequacy as a comprehensive theory of Society or History.  In concrete terms, the fate of the Lumpenproletariat in Marxist Socialism is uncertain, which a systemic failure, since other less "scientific" varieties manage to incorporate those misfits into their societies.