I provide a service for direct use (forgot the real term).
as an independent worker with my own business I am not an organized worker and have no solidarity with ppl who do the same job. true lumpen.
but then learned about the whole concept of unproductive labour. there is no capitalist who steals my surplus value. true unproductive worker?
what am I?
Was looking more at the definition of lumpenproletariat the other day:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41296-021-00487-9
I think of that categorization as characterized by an inconsistent or absent relationship to work and production that leads to a lack of class consciousness (lumpen) despite being closer to the working class than to any other class (proletariat). The “self-interested hustler” phrase stood out to me as a good summation.
Someone who owns their own business could certainly fit this, but I suppose it comes down to how dependent you are on someone else’s means of production (the point made elsewhere in this thread about YouTubers depending on Google is a good one).