Irvine Welsh, Neoliberalism, and the Lumpenproletariat

Abstract:This essay demonstrates the continued critical value of Marx and Engels's idea of the lumpenproletariat for contemporary analyses of growing populations excluded from the recognized economy. Focusing on Irvine Welsh's work, I argue that the lumpenproletariat exposes the ideological continuities between marginalized groups and dominant classes. This relation is central to Welsh's fiction, which challenges the simple identification of the outsider and the radical. Welsh's insistence on the agency of the dispossessed extends existing models of the lumpenproletariat, enabling new, more inclusive forms of radical theory and practice.