In the glorious new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which came out on Thursday, the article on Colin Welch says that the Daily Telegraph in his day was for the lumpenbourgeoisie.
At first I thought that was merely an ignorant error. The word Lumpen in German means ‘a rag’. Lump means ‘ragamuffin’. Karl Marx is the originator of the term Lumpenproletariat, which he applied to the ‘lowest and most degraded section of the proletariat; the “down and outs” who make no contribution to the workers’ cause’, as the Oxford English Dictionary neatly puts it. Marx did not share Mother Teresa’s regard for the poorest of the poor.
Raggedness in early 20th-century English eyes also constituted a characteristic of artistic and intellectual bohemia. ‘The lumpen-proletarian fringe,’ wrote Orwell in Inside the Whale (1940), was ‘composed partly of genuine artists and partly of genuine scoundrels.’
Get Britain's best politics newsletters
Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in