How many of you guys are like... Class first but recognize all forms of oppression must be stamped out right?
I figured that was most of this forum. Even the people who are clearly minority comrades say this to me basically " all forms of oppression must be fought back against, now, but class is the primary mode of oppression"
the primary form of oppression is when mom says I ate too many totino's pizza rolls
Your mom is an ass reductionist
The debate about class versus "other forms of oppression" is absolute bullshit that doesn't matter much when you're out there doing praxis in the real world.
I've helped organise demonstrations, marches and other agitation work in the local populace.
You'll get to meet people with so many unique backgrounds and stories that any distinction beyond class loses its meaning.
As an activist, my experience is that when you're out there agitating, the closest thing most people will have to a common background is our class.
There are working class trans people, working class minorities and working class foreigners, working class women, working class LGBTQ+ people etc.
The one common denominator among my fellow comrades is our background as workers.
My point is, when you're out there, you'll meet so many unique people that the only certain common thread is your class.
I think to put base and superstructure into a hierarchy is to ignore their dialectical nature.
It’s really that simple. But also, when I heard that a few years ago I thought it was nonsense jargon, so here’s an explanation for anyone reading who had that sentence slide right off their brain.
We’re obsessed with thinking of everything as hierarchical. Even in a group of two things or people, many of us find our brains trying to figure out which one is dominant over the other. The Marxist concepts of base and superstructure are often seen through this lens. The economic base is everything about a society that involves its people’s relationship to the means of production. The superstructure is everything else. Culture, politics, media, religion, etc. The relationship between these two parts of society is like this: One part shapes the other part, and in return the shaped part protects its shaper. So for example, the economic base of exploitation of people in the color in the US gave rise to the cultural construction of race as we know it, but that same construct protects the economic order of capitalist oppression via white supremacy.
So which is the shaper and which is the protector? Base or superstructure? The key insight relevant to this conversation is that both parts perform both functions. That’s the dialectical portion. So to run with the racial example, the economic conditions of chattel slavery and indigenous genocide in the US were themselves made possible by racial pseudoscience which arose to justify colonialism. The base and superstructure push and pull one another this way.
There may be people reading this who have a lot to say about me implying that base and superstructure perform both functions equally, but I specifically didn’t say that because it’s generally not true. But I do believe that balance has changed in the west since the time of Marx and Engels.
I think of these systems like a river. You have the water and you have the riverbed. They’re a dynamic system and if you want to redirect the river, it doesn’t make sense to move the water’s path without modifying the bed as well.
Good post. It's like genetics and enviroment stuff. One doesn't 'control' the other in any meaningful sense.
Class is the primary overriding force of oppression but is not entirely separable from any of the others. In fact, it tends to drive and reinforce them.
There's no either/or, nor even class first then the rest. You're never going to truly root out and resolve the rest, i.e. liberate humanity, without overthrowing capitalism, and the act of doing so is itself an intersectional effort (and always has been).
As an example, trans liberation requires trans people being able top get the medical care they need and have places to live and food to eat. Under capitalism, all of these things are undermined and all of humanity, but especially the marginalized, are degraded and immiserated. Trans people deal with homelessness and poverty more often than other people do precisely due to class oppressions that reflect and reinforce capitalism. Homelessness is a consequence of rent-seeking, in this case for land, and is about guaranteeing profits and value increases for landowners/homeowners. Only through decommodification can we guarantee housing, and the only places to ever approach this after capotalism were socialist projects after revolution. The inability to get medical care is a function of ability to pay under capitalism, whereas socialized medicine was largely a socialist invention copied by some socdems in the imperial core - and it's being deconstructed by capitalist forces. Poverty is of course a function of class as well as the role played in capitalism by the creation and maintenance of marginalized subgroups within the lower classes. Thus, trans liberation requires the overthrow of capitalism. That doesn't mean we are idle rather than supporting our trans comrades, it just means there can be no illusion that bourgeois approaches will be enough. It also means that when we can gain class-widr wins, the material gains have a big impact on those oppressed groups. If we can fight and win a housing-first approach at a local level, we are disproportionately helping trans people (and BIPOC people, and gay people, and immigrants, etc etc).
I don't recognize the distinction in the first place, all forms of oppression are imbedded in class, and all class oppression is socially realized
It's a bullshit duelism invented by liberals to obfuscate class struggle and it's inherent social justice nature
A big insight of intersectionality for me has been that looking at systems of oppression in isolation is like unweaving a blanket to understand its pattern.
The other, as it relates to class, is that class oppression is not a system whose liberation involves the coexistence of its opposing groups.
Straight people are going to need to learn to live in peace and respect with gay people.
White people are going to need to learn to live in peace and respect with people of color.
The bourgeoisie must be eradicated.
The class’s constituents must take on a different class character entirely. A class-conscious coexistence of the working and owning classes is the material base for fascism. This cannot stand. So while class is inextricably tied to the oppression of these social groups, class stands out as a system of oppression whose eradication will remove the very distinctions it preys on.
If you don't put class first I think you're a rad lib no matter what you tell me.
Not putting class first is literally how you get this killer Mike landlord black capitalism shit. Yass kweening raytheon's first female CEO, etc.
Don't @ me with a bunch of words I don't care if class isn't the center of your framing you're the same as some half nazi petty bourg fuckkl to me
The issue is that “class first” has a super broad meaning. There are people who say “class first” to mean that bourgeoisie identity politics are not liberation (ie Raytheon’s first female CEO). And there are people who say “class first” as a pretense to tell the uppity minorities to fuck off and stop “splitting the movement” over their issues.
Yea I mean im not advocating stupidpol like abandonment of other issues for sure
The second isn't putting class first, ironically.
A fair perspective so long as you recognize that all fighting all forms of oppression is still important.