In every society, side by side with socially adapted citizens, there are people who have lost their social roots, who are alien to the moral code, they only understand the language of brute physical force.
Lumpen
Usually, lumpen people include people who have no social roots, who also do not have any property, and they live off one-time earnings. But more often their source of livelihood is various types of social and state benefits. In general, this category should include homeless people, as well as citizens like them. To explain more simply, the lumpen is a person who does not carry out labor activities, he beggars, wanders, in other words, he is homeless.
Translated from German, the word "lumpen" means "rags". These are a kind of ragamuffins who have sunk to the “bottom” of life, dropped out of their midst. The more lumpen people become in society, the more they pose a threat to society. Their environment is a kind of stronghold for various extremist-minded individuals and organizations. Marxist theory even used such an expression as Lumpenproletariat, describing with this word vagrants, criminals, beggars, as well as the scum of human society as a whole. Under Soviet rule, this was a dirty word.
Marginals
Marginal people and lumpen are not the same concept, although these groups of people have a lot in common. The very concept of "marginality" in sociology means a person who is between two different social groups, when a citizen has already split off from one of them, and has not yet nailed to the second. These are the so-called bright representatives of the lower classes, or social "bottom". Such a social position has a very strong effect on the psyche, crippling it. Often, people who have gone through the war, immigrants who have not been able to adapt to the conditions of life in their new homeland, who have not been able to fit into the social conditions of their contemporary environment, become marginalized.
During the collectivization carried out in the USSR, in the 1920s and 1930s, rural residents massively migrated to cities, but the urban environment was reluctant to accept them, and all roots and ties with the rural environment were severed. Their spiritual values were crumbling, well-established social ties were torn. And it was precisely these strata of the population that needed a "firm hand", an established order at the state level, and it was this fact that served as the social basis for the anti-democratic regime.
As you can see, lumpen and marginals are not identical concepts, although they have much in common. In modern reality, the word "lumpen" is practically not used, calling homeless people marginalized. Although this word can also be used to describe people with housing, but leading an asocial lifestyle.
