Reproduction of the original: The Dangerous Classes of New York by Charles Loring Brace

Reproduction of the original: The Dangerous Classes of New York by Charles Loring Brace

Throughout history, the powerful have created laws, developed agencies to enforce those laws, and established institutions to punish lawbreakers. Maintaining the social order to their advantage resulted in the systematic repression of disadvantaged groups—the “dangerous classes.” The third edition retains a historical approach to exploring patterns of social control and, through current examples, demonstrates how those strategies continue today. The authors trace the roots of race, class, and gender bias in how laws are written, interpreted, and applied. The management of dangerous classes is not a recent phenomenon; there is a long history of keeping those who derive the least advantage from the status quo (and therefore pose the greatest threat) under control. There was and is one system of justice for the privileged and a very different system for the less privileged. The criminal justice system—from the law to daily operations of the police, courts, and corrections—generally comes down hardest on those with the least amount of power and influence and is the most lenient with those with the most power and influence. The book raises critical questions. What is a crime? What is law? Whose interests are served by the law and the criminal justice system? What patterns are repeated generation after generation? How does the criminal justice system relate to larger issues such as social inequality, social class, race, and gender? Contemplation of these topics contributes to informed public dialogue and careful deliberation about the present state and the future of criminal justice.

Marx and Engels’ concept of the “lumpenproletariat,” or underclass (an anglicized, politically neutral term), appears in The Communist Manifesto and other writings. It refers to “the dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society,” whose lowly status made its residents potential tools of the capitalists against the working class. Surprisingly, no one has made a substantial study of the lumpenproletariat in Marxist thought until now. Clyde Barrow argues that recent discussions about the downward spiral of the American white working class (“its main problem is that it is not working”) have reactivated the concept of the lumpenproletariat, despite long held belief that it is a term so ill-defined as not to be theoretical. Using techniques from etymology, lexicology, and translation, Barrow brings analytical coherence to the concept of the lumpenproletariat, revealing it to be an inherent component of Marx and Engels’ analysis of the historical origins of capitalism. However, a proletariat that is destined to decay into an underclass may pose insurmountable obstacles to a theory of revolutionary agency in post-industrial capitalism. Barrow thus updates historical discussions of the lumpenproletariat in the context of contemporary American politics and suggests that all post-industrial capitalist societies now confront the choice between communism and dystopia.