Crime and Causality: Contextualising the lumpenproletariat within Capitalist Societies as Observed in Bertolt Brecht's 'The Good Woman of Schezwan' and Badal Sircar's 'Hattamalar Oparey'

Anwita Bhattacharya

Abstract: Marx and Engels considered the lumpenproletariat or the underclass, consisting of the unemployed, petty thieves, criminals and prostitutes "social scum" or the "declasse" group, devoid of class consciousness. According to them, this group emerges as a reactionary force as opposed to revolutionary, exploiting society to serve its own ends and in turn is exploited by the bourgeoisie as tools of destruction. Alternately, Algerian psychiatrist and Marxist philosopher Frantz Fanon, hails the revolutionary potential of the lumpenproletariat as integral to a proletarian revolution if well organized under a fitting leadership. What Fanon primarily emphasizes is the exploitative mechanism through which the bourgeoisie, in pursuit of its profit-maximising imperial project, creates a mass of unemployed people, who, in turn, constitute the lumpenproletariat. When Bertolt Brecht writes 'The Good Person of Szechwan', he adopts the vision of Fanon; through the protagonist Shen Te, a prostitute, he demonstrates how exploitation operates within the capitalist system, compromising the inherent goodness in individuals, creating the depraved lumpenproletariat. Likewise, Badal Sircar, one of the most conspicuous Marxist playwrights of Bengal and the creator of the 'third theatre' significantly influenced by the Brechtian epic theatre, has explicated on the issue of the lumpenproletariat in his play 'Hattamalar Oparey'. Through the protagonists, Kena and Becha, a pair of thieves who stray into a land of classless and moneyless communal living, Sircar's play aligns with the Fanonian critique of the declasse as a direct product of capitalist exploitation, becoming the strongest case in favour of this paper's argument. I shall attempt a comparative study of the two plays employing an interdisciplinary critical approach to affirm how Fanon's argument informs them. Besides, I shall also demonstrate, through Marxist critique, how both of these plays reflect the social reality steeped in economic exploitation while also drawing parallels between the protagonists of the aforementioned plays in an effort to connect the global material conditions of the working class situated in seemingly different spatial realities.

Keywords: lumpenproletariat, Marxist, Fanon, bourgeoisie, proletariat, exploitation, epic theatre, third theatre

How to Cite?: Anwita Bhattacharya, "Crime and Causality: Contextualising the lumpenproletariat within Capitalist Societies as Observed in Bertolt Brecht's 'The Good Woman of Schezwan' and Badal Sircar's 'Hattamalar Oparey'", Volume 15 Issue 7, July 2026, International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR), Pages: 852-854, https://www.ijsr.net/getabstract.php?paperid=SR26710210039, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21275/SR26710210039

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