A comprador, according to the definition, is someone that serves as an agent for foreign interests. In the traditional sense, compradors were directly employed by foreign governments and commercial interests in the colonial period, acting as representatives, spies, and business managers on their behalf. Compradors could earn fortunes carrying out work that was detrimental to their countrymen, and the difference between them and outright traitors lay only in the range of activities that their employers required of them. Farmhand, one of the members of DMSG, recently brought up the question of whether or not the Lumpenproletarians serve as compradors in late-stage globalized capitalism. While it may seem strange, to compare homeless vagrants and chronic drug users to the wealthy compradors of yesteryear, this is a DMSG discussion we’re talking about here and it’s honestly par for the course.
Moving on towards cementing our reasons for why the Lumpenproletarians are used as modern-day compradors, it is first necessary to examine who their sponsors and enablers are. Given that, up until the election last month, it seemed that the international bourgeois had captured control of America and were intent on shredding apart its ethnic identity for the sake of reinforcing liberal voting bases, DMSG had considered the US Federal Government and its neoliberal lordlings to represent foreign and globalist interests in America. While these subhumans and flesh-bound daemons may be formally citizens of America, anyone that conflates illegal immigrants with the founding populations of America, aids and abets those immigrants in completing the naturalization process here, and competes for the favor of hostile countries and special interest groups that only wish to plunder our country further are simply foreign and hostile influences in our eyes. For these entropic morons, identifying their subordinates and fellow compradors becomes a question of recognizing which groups of the population and economy do they support and enable. While I am reluctant to think back on the harrowing and soy-infused days of the early 2020s’ Quarantine period, that was a time when the international bourgeois had become more brazen in their efforts and maneuvers, thus providing a great example of how our own foreign-occupying government operates.
When the lockdowns started during Quarantine, it became increasingly apparent that corporations and other politically-connected companies were allowed to remain operational, while smaller businesses had to close down. While the lockdowns did not represent an outright war on the Petite Bourgeois, these regulations seemed to be solely designed to bleed them dry and drive them out of business, while larger businesses were simply allowed to bypass the same restrictions. From here, we can extrapolate that the government as it exists today favored larger scale economic actors over smaller scale ones during this time, most likely due to the lobbying money that these larger interests were able to inject into the world of politics. With the dissolution of many of these smaller competitors, corporations had the opportunity to expand their market shares and acquire properties in economical locations that had formerly been owned by smaller businesses. In this case, it could be said that public health officials and other regulators acted as compradors for corporate interests during this period, enabling sheer economic extraction in a way that America hasn’t experienced since the monopolies and company towns of the Gilded Age.
Moving down to the level that the Lumpenproletarians exist at, as nuisances, hazards, and ransackers, it is worth examining where they are allowed to live and who they are allowed to plunder. Regardless of what states the Lumpenproletarians inhabit, in our time period, the vagrants cannot typically squat in police precincts, empty mansions, and corporate locations. Their removal from these premises are prompt and their punishments are often pushed to the maximum extent that the law allows. For these unemployed compradors of corporate capitalism, it is often the case that they are freely allowed to set up shop outside small businesses and harass them and their customers as much as they please. In states run by the national bourgeois (conservatives), as opposed to the international bourgeois (neoliberals), this process of driving away customers and derailing the operations of smaller businesses is more muted but still apparent.
Even in regard to the property damages and thefts that naturally ensue from having Lumpenproletarians set up camp nearby, smaller businesses suffer disproportionately more simply due to the fact that they often operate without insurance. While these larger chains can absorb the losses from theft and damages quite readily, these small businesses cannot, and even if they tried to acquire insurance to protect themselves, the premiums would be far higher in the event that they were already under siege from vagrants to begin with. Adding onto that the simple fact that these vagrants often drive away customers from the establishments they perch outside, and these small businesses are left with little to no practical solutions to their problems. Violence and threats against these nuisances simply results in fines and punishments for themselves, while the utility of police is severely diminished by the fact that law enforcement cannot justify from a economical standpoint expending the resources and manpower to maintain a constant presence by frequently harassed smaller businesses. While corporations can afford to bring on security guards and install more comprehensive security systems, smaller businesses cannot find it within their smaller operating budgets to do that, and without these protections, are entirely vulnerable to the problems that the Lumpenproletarians cause.
While it may seem almost as if a conspiracy has been hatched here, in which the homeless and drug addled misfits of late-stage capitalism are purposefully weaponized against the Petite Bourgeois, it simply comes down to a few different economic dynamics. For one, the government acts on behalf of its lobbyists, all of who represent corporate interests in the present day. Secondly, the homeless have to encamp somewhere, and with the cramped conditions and hostile social climates found within homeless shelters, that leaves them with the choice of setting up camp in places that allow – or cannot eject – their presence. Thirdly, the executive branch of local governments are naturally more interested in protecting their tax bases, most of which is derived from taxes on the wealthy and corporations. For the system that we live in, the most optimal placement of homeless people is in tents or on the pavement outside small businesses. For the police, the tax base that they serve and protect is hardly dented. For the corporations, it represents the possibility of opening up new locations and increasing their market shares. For the government, the inhabitation of spaces outside or on the irrelevant margins of their jurisdiction is preferable, as it takes any of the responsibility off of them and minimizes expenses. For all of the major decisionmakers, the prime arrangement for the Lumpenproletarians is for them to live at the storefronts and within the alleyways of small businesses.
For the major actors in this system, the state of lawlessness outside and within the premises of smaller businesses is a negative externality that they are not held accountable for. When we look at the phenomenon of laws being passed in our country that legalize theft up to a certain dollar amount and create a catch-and-release system for criminals, it is worth wondering what organizations have the incentives to brib- err, “lobby,” politicians to pass these legislations. While we often credit the private prison industry with pushing for harsher sentencing and / or mandatory minimum sentencing throughout the 1990s, we have yet to give due credit to the corporations that have pushed for a legalization of criminality – up to a certain point – in recent times. The reason that the Lumpenproletarians take on the role of compradors in the modern globalist system is because they are permitted to do as they please, as long as it does not harm or hinder their silent and hidden benefactors. Rather than performing pest control, as befitting the traditional duties of law enforcement, the government in late-stage capitalism has seemed to take on the role of shepherding and corralling the pests towards pastures set aside for them.
