Black Bourgeoisie by E. Franklin Frazier

Foreign colonial powers want to acquire resources and goods found in the colonies, and they find this facilitated through the incorporation of the local elites into the system, as these latter become intermediaries between the rich colonial buyers and the poor local producers. The colonial elites would-although not involved in crime activities-hurt the local economy by aiding the foreign exploiters. This difference was in the former's mentality akin to that of the Marxist lumpenproletariat, the 'refuse of all classes' (as described in Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon) who are easy to manipulate to support the capitalist system, often turning to crime.

But although the colonial and neocolonial elites in Latin America were similar to European bourgeoisie on many levels, noted Frank, they had one major difference. Frank writing on the origins of the term noted that he created this neologism, lumpenbourgeoisie, from lumpenproletariat and bourgeoisie. The term is most often used in the context of Latin America. Nonetheless, the term was popularized by Frank's book Lumpenbourgeoisie and Lumpendevelopment: Dependency, Class and Politics in Latin America (1972) which used it in its title.Ī compound of the German word Lumpen (rags) and French word bourgeoisie, it follows Karl Marx's concept of the lumpenproletariat, a rejected underclass that sides readily with the elite bourgeoisie.

Wright Mills (1951) and also in Paul Baran's The Political Economy of Growth (1957).

It is often attributed to Andre Gunder Frank in 1972, although the term is already present in several texts by Lukács (1943), Koestler (1945), C. Lumpenbourgeoisie is a term used in colonial sociology to describe members of the middle class and upper class (merchants, lawyers, industrialists, etc.) who have little collective self-awareness or economic base and who support the colonial masters.

Black Bourgeoisie by E. Franklin Frazier