Monday, October 30, 2006

Return of the Lumpenproletariat ...

... White Trash, Fast food: How Globalization Is Creating a New European Underclass. (Hat tip, Vikram Johri.)

This is worth reading in conjunction with this earlier post: Do you enjoy evolutionary conjecture?

2 comments:

  1. What about the lumpenproletariat in America?
    I'm originally from Detroit. I've written about what globalization has done to my relatives and those I grew up with.
    The difference here is that we have less of a safety net than the Europeans. I also wouldn't classify laid-off workers here as "intellectually depraved." I don't think the organization I helped found to give us a voice is "intellectually depraved"-- though surely many would disagree with me.
    (What people are not reading about here is the true story of what's happening to vast segments of this nation-- the destruction of the American dream. The Underground Literary Alliance wasn't created in a vacuum!)

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  2. Well, King, I'm with you when it comes to not classifying laid-off workers as intellectually lazy. My mother spent a half a century of her life in factories - including the Frankford Arsenal during the war - and my grandmother was a factory-worker, too. So I know where you're coming from - though I think the greater threat to America is from the chattering classes than from globalization.

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