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Virtually all Marxist scholars, who have dealt with the analysis of revolutions, had difficulty with the orthodox evaluation of the "revolutionary potential" of the various social classes. A great amount of ethnographic literature is available on the very poorest segments of society; but they are said to be passive and inert. They do not impede the revolution, they are simply uninvolved. The author argues in this article that the lumpen-proietariat might very well be revolutionary after all. The lumpen-proletariat is not supposed to be revolutionary, its role is reactionary. This blindness on the part of many sociologists and anthropologists, particularly the Marxists, has motivated the examination of the works of social philosophers Karl Marx and F. Engels. The paper focuses on the role of the lumpen-proietariat, examines the use of this term by Marx and Engels, and evaluates whether the historical statement of the term in Marx's and Engels' work can be accepted as being a true representation of reality.

This article analyzes how Dutch sociologists observe social reality. In the author's opinion, in the Netherlands, certain forms of social research are simply not seen as being part and parcel of the accepted skills of the trade. There are indeed a number of social scientists in the Netherlands who have managed to incorporate a wide variety of productive activities into the course of their professional careers, through such participant observers as Phillips (1977), Punch (1981) and Zijderveld (1981). The author asks such questions as how can one account for the large gap between Dutch sociology and the social reality that is supposedly its focus. As soon as one steps out of the gate of the Sociology Institute in Amsterdam, one is virtually overwhelmed by the turbulence of "modern life." Many sociologists are totally preoccupied with the study of eighteenth-century books on etiquette. The author is struck by the fact that by far the majority of the Dutch authors who had gathered their own data, did not deem it necessary to justify their research methods in any way.

This article discusses the effects of emigration on migrants of West European countries. The author discusses this issue through the story of Suleiman who left his hometown to seek his fortune. He secured work and earned substantially, that he was able to