The Lumpenproletariat And Class Consciousness
I was doing some research into the Weimar Republic (Germany 1919-1933) and ran into this passage at Britannica : Because of the hopes aroused in 1918–19, the fact that no far-reaching plan for securing public control over industry or for breaking up the big landed estates was carried through had two consequences. First, although the German working class undoubtedly improved its political and economic status under the republic, a considerable portion of it was embittered by the failure to effect drastic reform of the social and economic systems. This disenchantment was to provide the left-wing opposition with strong working-class support, which weakened both the Social Democratic Party and the republic. This brought to mind Whittaker Chambers's observation that as of the 1920s, German was in fact the language of international socialism, and Germany was the locus of the movement. My takeaway from the link above is that the German working class at the time had clearly articulat...