Blogging the End

This essay draws heavily on Selma’s James justly famous “Sex, Race and Class.” This brilliant work contains the clear foundations of a Marxist conception of the relationship between capitalism and oppression which neither reduces the importance of oppression, nor suggests gender and race oppression are separate social systems to capitalism. I’d suggest reading “Sex, Race and Class”, it’s better than anything I could write.

I

The problems of this world appear to us, at first, like a huge pile of broken things; War, poverty, environmental destruction, and of course racism, sexism, queerphobia and ableism to name a few. The view that these forms of strife are not independent but have a common essence is what I will defend here.

What is objectionable about identity politics is that it construes, at least implicitly, various social struggles as fragmentary and particular fights around specific identities. Granted, identity politics generally concedes that these identities intersect and interact, and oppression is mutually reinforcing, but any notion of the underlying unity in the order of things through capitalism is rejected. This in turn leads to inaccurate, or at least unnuanced, analysis of topics like privilege and the basis for solidarity. The point we will be arguing here is not that we shouldn’t fight around specific identities, but that we must see these fights as components of a larger struggle, the struggle between the producers and the ruling class.

I am going to argue that the various forms of oppression center on capitalism, or a system where a few individuals own the means of production, and primarily live off the takings from them. Meanwhile most have no choice but to work for a living, or if they can’t find work, live on charity or unemployment benefits.

Capitalist society is by its very nature class society, so it’s important to be clear on what we mean by class here. The most popular way of looking at class bases it on how much money you earn, what schools you went to, whether you like high-brow or low-brow art etc. However, none of these are directly related to class in the sense we mean. Class in the Marxist sense, a sense also used by many anarchists, is a question of whether you earn your living through your labor, or through ownership of the means of production. Those who earn their living through work are said to have ‘surplus labor’ extracted from them. These victims of surplus labour extraction are said to be the proletariat or working class.

What many critics of Marxism, and even many Marxists, don’t realize though is that we don’t merely have surplus labor extracted from us at formal jobs and workplaces. For example, home-makers who raise children and clean houses are doing labor which is absolutely indispensable to the maintenance of the workforce. Capital needs that labour in order to continue, yet domestic labour is not paid for directly. Instead homemakers in effect receive a portion of their spouse’s income.

Students at schools and universities are doing work that capitalism needs to function, they are transforming themselves into value added human capital, yet they are also not compensated for their work directly. Instead they are given the often false promise of higher wages or better jobs down the track if they do well.

Then there are even stranger ways still that surplus labor is extracted from us. If you’ve ever used a self-serve checkout, labor is being extracted from you; you are effectively doing some of the work for the capitalist who is selling you things. If you’ve ever used Facebook, you’ve helped generate information which is then used to market products to you and your friends.

We can go further than that. If you’ve ever given a friend a shoulder to cry on, you’ve done some of the emotional labor that capital needs to keep its producers healthy. We are always doing things which keep this society running for the disproportionate benefit of a few. Almost every single person who reads this will be a worker, yet most of you have never worked in a factory in your life.

II

So we’ve seen that this extraction of surplus labor can happen anywhere- in the home, at university, and of course at our jobs. The division between those who do most of this labor, and those who benefit from it through their ownership of the means of production, defines the division between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, in other words the division between the producing class and the ruling class.

But class can’t just exist as this simple abstraction: some do the work and some profit. It needs more than just this one single asymmetry. Marx said that the peasants of France were like potatoes in a sack, homogenous. Each village, each farmstead and in a sense even each peasant was similar. With French peasants this wasn’t a threat to class society, because of their geographic dispersion and the difficulties this created for them in organizing effectively.

Among the working class though, if there were no internal divisions, there would be little preventing us from revolt. Without the logic of competition within the working class itself revolution would be a quick inevitability. The only sustainable working class is a working class riven with divisions. Thus the working class is organized into a series of binaries or oppositions, one part of which is superior in power and the other subordinated. To name a few such divisions, men and non-men, straights and queers, whites and people of color, white collar workers and blue collar workers, workers in the Global South and the Global North. The division between the producers and the exploiters can only be sustained through a proliferation of other social divisions. Proper class analysis always attends to the intricacies of how the class is structured, for the way it is built also constitutes the chains which restrain it from action.

In addition to dividing the working class, these splits also serve to create specialists. Women are nudged into being reproductive laborers, housemakers and the like, and also into various forms of care work such as social work and nursing. People of color are channeled into low paying jobs, and all too often into the prison industrial complex. Trans* people are often funneled into sex-work. When we realize the vast complexity of the different types of labor people do, white collar and blue collar, waged and unwaged, legal and illegal, it becomes easier to see the intricate patterns class takes in relation to oppression than when we are stuck with an image of the proleterian as factory worker.

All too often, Marxists have accepted the following picture of the working class. In the first instance it just is a sack of potatoes, secondary to that there are divisions and differences. I would like to emphasize again how deeply wrong this is. In addition to being an abstract relation of surplus labor extraction, class is always a concrete institution with indispensable specificities. These specificities are not merely “unfortunate” for us or “fortunate” for the capitalists; class cannot live separated from its specificities, any more than a body can live separated from its organs. Those organs may change and mutate over time, some might even come in and out of existence. Nevertheless the organs as a whole are absolutely essential to the body. It is not merely that the body causes the organs to come into existence, rather, neither can survive long without the other. Really they are one.

What I am proposing is not that class is primary. Class is no more primary than, for example, gender- because gender is absolutely essential to defining the actual shape that class takes in our society. Rather I think that class is not the same sort of thing as these other modes of oppression. In order for class to be sustained it needs a whole series of differentiations and complexities. Any capitalist society without such differentiations would be overthrown quickly. Modern class society cannot be a sack of potatoes. Oppression is vital part of that structure of differentiations and complexities class needs to live and prevent us from living.

III

Anyone who wants to defeat class society has an interest in weakening the divisions created by oppression. If one were to attack a body, it would be prudent to target its vital organs. If class society depends on the division of the working class into dominant and subaltern components then we must oppose those divisions.

Moreover, it is useful to make a distinction between relative advantages and absolute advantages. It’s obvious that straight people have it relatively better than queer people, white people relatively better than people of color and men relatively better than non-men. But this does not imply that both groups in each couplet wouldn’t be better off if oppression were defeated. If every form of oppression is deeply valuable to capitalism, and if every worker has a tremendous interest in the defeat of capitalism, this would suggest that every worker has an interest in the defeat of every form of oppression.

If working class men ultimately benefit from patriarchy, then it is unclear how non-males could persuade them to fight against the oppression of women, except through abstract appeals to morality. However, if we see that we have a common enemy it is clear why working class men should be allies to working class women, because the liberation of one is bound up in the liberation of the other. Our solidarity should not be based on charity; rather it should be based on a shared path to liberation.

The solution to attacking the system of relative advantages given to parts of the working class is not to pretend that they don’t exist, but to recognize that fighting and ultimately defeating them through the abolition of capitalism is essential. Precisely because the advantaged within the working class lose out less from oppression, and are often even duped into thinking they gain from it, it is important that those most interested in defeating every form of oppression, the oppressed group themselves, have space to organize autonomously against their subjugation.

I’m concerned that the picture of oppression as made up of a series of separate cultural institutions which are independent but interacting has encouraged movements to think that their various interests are either potentially opposed to each other or at least not intimately linked. When we realize that we have a shared enemy, we can act in a greater spirit of love, solidarity and mutual support, fighting oppression more effectively both within our own left spaces and within broader society.

The concept of privilege needs to be interrogated, though not rejected. The relative differences in status and power of various sections of the class are real and must be fought, but in the ultimate sense no one in the class gains from them. In talking about privilege we need to be very clear on this point, because of the strength our common interests give us.

Recently I was attacked by a bigot in the street. Partly because our society does not really care about such things the worst that happened to him was a black eye. Surely then he gained from queerphobia? That depends what you mean by gained. Certainly he was better off without repercussions, but he would have been even better still living in a society where gender and sexuality simply didn’t exist, and consequently either capitalism didn’t exist, or its hold on us was weakened.

IV

So I’ve argued that it’s absolutely essential to attacking capital to attack oppression, indeed every attack on oppression is an attack on capital. What about the converse, that in order to attack these forms of oppression we must ultimately try to dismantle capitalism?

Capitalism doesn’t simply passively benefit from divisions in the working class problems. Rather capitalism works to sustain them. The popular culture it produces mirrors existing prejudices back at us. The way its wage systems are structured means that it renders many more women dependent on men than men dependent on women. The so called justice system is really a prison industrial complex which serves mostly to defend property rights and simultaneously maintain white supremacy, othering and criminalizing people of color. Then of course there is the savagery of the job market, turning us against perceived enemies in a frantic effort to get what we need to live.

But what about prejudice, the subjective component of oppression, wouldn’t that stick around after a revolution, even if the material base of oppression in the extraction of labor is defeated? It’s one thing to abolish the class structure, but how would this act to end things like racist slurs, queer bashings or even rape?

I don’t think that anyone could guarantee that ‘interpersonal’ oppression would disappear immediately if capitalism were defeated. However I also don’t believe that prejudice is simply a free-floating system of ideas. Rather I think that without the material bases that capitalism provides for prejudice, such as the production of competition between groups, racist, sexist and queerphobic popular culture and the massive violence of the state, prejudice would fade.

In school we are taught that prejudice is a mistake that people tend to make sometimes. We are rarely, if ever, taught to think about the systematic roots of oppression. Our whole society tells us that oppressive conduct is primarily a mistake that individuals make, as if it were a problem similar to lying, being mean or cheating at cards. The truth is though because prejudice is not natural it must be constantly reinforced. The ways capital does this are immeasurable- by dividing communities so we only spend time with people like us, by the generation and propagation of images of prejudice for mass sale, by telling us that our jobs are at threat because of women or people of color. Thus I think there is reason to be confident that just as oppression of all sorts is indispensable to capitalism, so capitalism is indispensable to all forms of oppression. Now you might argue that prejudice could continue indefinitely after the dismantling of capitalism because it is embedded in our discursive structures or something like that. But even if you do think that it, it seems clear that there would be far more space for fighting such things in a non-capitalist world.

V

A useful way to sum this up might be to contrast three models. The first model, the Classical Marxist model, suggests that the class divide is society’s most fundamental divide. From this arise other divides, sexism, queerphobia, racism and the like. The second model, the model we have been critiquing, suggests that society is defined by a plurality of divides, which while they may be mutually reinforcing, are independent.

The third model, that we are defending, is similar to the first model in that it suggests that class is society’s fundamental divide, but also similar to the second model in that it doesn’t see gender, race and sexuality as the mere effects of an underlying class contradiction. Rather it suggests that there is only one social contradiction. The contradiction between the producers who labour and the rulers who control capital. Call this contradiction what you like, but taken as a state of being, rather than a process of struggle, we call it capitalism. The ongoing social battles which constitute gender[1], race and sexuality are moments in the war of the producers and rulers.

But what about the objection, already alluded to, that it seems unlikely that oppression will end the moment capitalism does? Surely even if different forms of oppression will eventually splutter out in a non-capitalist world, their persistence, even if temporary, proves their separateness?

Take a bowl and smash it. Fragments will fly everywhere. Does this demonstrate that they were not one? After capitalism is defeated, all sorts of problems will persist for a while, some of them obviously class based (illiteracy, ill health from a lifetime of poor working conditions, even snobbery), others obviously associated with sexism, racism and queerphobia, but no less based on class for all that.

It’s worth reiterating, the conjecture that the defeat of capitalism is tied to the elimination of all forms of oppression does not mean that oppression doesn’t need to be struggled against. Grasping that oppression via identity is inextricably linked to capitalism tells us that to fight capitalism, we must fight oppression based on identities. Thus I finish by echoing Selma James:

Power to the oppressed and therefore to the class.

Safety is an interesting concept. What do you think you need in order to feel completely safe? What would make you feel safer? Here’s another question, would spending countless hours thinking about what would make you feel safer, make you feel safer, or would it trap you in a spiral of ever increasing anxieties?

The left has become obsessed with safety in a way we find counterproductive. This includes institutions like trigger warnings, and other ways of relentlessly trying to avoid triggers. Our critique will focus on institutions created around preventing triggering, particular the trigger warning. However it could be extended to some other forms of concern about safety on the left. This is not to say that we consider safety to be unimportant or uninteresting. We feel the left has gone out of balance on these issues, and consequently is harming vulnerable people.

The kind of focus on safety in interpersonal contexts that we are critiquing here about has no limit. There will never be a point where people stop saying triggering things to each other without trigger warnings. Instead we are left with a permanent war for safety, as futile as a puritan war on sin or the American war on drugs. In our opinion it is at least as counterproductive.

We say counterproductive because for us and many of the people we’ve talked to about this, nothing serves to reinforce our ongoing experience of trauma quite as well as endless fussing about safety. Every trigger warning, every discussion about whether or not something might be triggering, brings to the edge of our consciousness the experience of trauma, but doesn’t even give us the opportunity to face it head on. As we scroll through the Facebook pages and read:

Trigger warning- Rape

Trigger warning- Depression

Trigger warning- Suicide

Trigger warning- Violence

Over and over and over and over again we are constructed, over and over, as the vulnerable subjects of trauma. We are reminded of trauma by endless efforts to exclude it. Not only do the memories still come, but we are increasingly encouraged to see those memories as triggering. Past experiences that we may not have previously thought were traumatic begin to be experienced as trauma.

All we can say is that in our experience, trigger warnings have not been helpful. We suspect that this experience is quite common. We also suspect that many trauma survivors have been encouraged to think that trigger warnings are helping them cope with their trauma, where in reality trigger warnings have been counterproductive.

We recognize that there is a diversity of experiences, but tentatively propose the abolition of trigger warnings, and similar institutions which aim to exclude triggering experiences.

To put the case in point form:

1      Trigger warnings make us less safe by encouraging us to obsess over our safety. The more time we spend thinking about it, the more we begin to identify as unsafe. Things that were previously just at the margins can become quite threatening. Constant debate and discussion about safety won’t let it out of our minds, and so thinking about the concept begins to overwhelm us.

2.       Trigger warnings make trauma, and our recollection of trauma, eternally salient. Thus we encounter not just the word “rape”, for example, but a reminder that rape may remind us of our trauma, the association between our memories, and the traumatic experience of those memories, is strengthened. At the same time we never directly confront our memories full on, so we have the worst of both worlds, trauma is at the edge of consciousness, but not quite there. Trigger warnings seem to be helping, because they enable us to avoid full blown recollection of trauma in contexts where they are used consistently, but in the long run the practice strengthens the traumatic aspects of our memories.

3.       Trigger warnings enable us to avoid recollecting trauma. You may respond that this gives us the choice of whether to confront our trauma or not, but things are not so simple. When we are given the option of avoiding recollections of trauma, it can be hard not to take it. Trigger warnings can enable the self-destructive behavior of avoidance. We may not wish to engage in such avoidance, but the temptation is strong, and trigger warnings have the potential to enable that.

Written by a group of trauma survivors of which Tim is a part.

To my delight, The Case for Class has generated considerable discussion lately, so I thought I’d try and expand on it a little, in particular to make clearer some of the practical differences, since the discussion is a little abstract at the moment.

The first thing you must understand is that identity politics and class politics are not simply different areas of activism. Identity politics does not mean “politics done around womanhood, queerness, disability and the rights of people of colour”. Class politics does not mean “politics done around worker’s struggles”. Rather within both class politics and identity politics there are approaches to every modality of struggle. Class, queerness, anti-racism, feminism, disability activism, indigenous rights and even the environment are all areas where both materialists and supporters of intersectional-identity approaches have developed approaches, each known as a “praxis”. Thus while there’s nothing necessarily incoherent about suggesting a balance between identity and materialist approaches, suggesting we do so that we can keep doing activism in every area is the wrong reason for it.

Nor does the difference of approaches necessarily result in an emphasis on directly class related activism by materialists, or non-class by intersectionalists. For example, at various points in time and locations some materialists have suggested that womanhood or ethnicity is the key points of possible rupture for class society. The differences in praxis are mostly about approach, not subject matter.

This is perhaps best illustrated with an example. During the Vietnam War, a struggle between American and USSR imperialism, a common slogan was “we are all Vietnamese”. Now why would anyone say this, given that almost all saying it weren’t –literally speaking- Vietnamese? In my view and the view of the protestors, the very same structures and people that created and led the imperialist war in Vietnam –the state apparatus and capitalism- oppressed them. What mattered directly was not their commonality or difference in experience, but the commonality of their enemy. Further, since that enemy wished to divide them, and had created over centuries a structure of races and nations to do so, it would be foolish to accept division. In their view, it was in their interests to seek the destruction of racism and nationalism.

Yes, in the short term they benefited from the higher wages and greater security of living in an imperialist nation. In the long run only the ruling class benefited. Of course they were better off than the Vietnamese in so many ways, in a sense this was the point of the slogan, it was a way of saying- “we see through your attempts to bribe us into inaction”.

The key question then, and one that spills over into debates about, for example, the relative importance of micro-aggressions* mostly within the class versus society wide structural disparities, is whether the working class ultimately has unified political interests (at least for the most part, or on the whole), or whether it doesn’t. With some reservations I accept the claim that the working class has the capacity to form a historic bloc, with the interest and power to destroy both the bourgeoisie and itself as a class, and to negate all identities. Moreover, I believe that politics founded on class struggle has the best shot at advancing the interests of the oppressed immediately as well.

——————————-
*Obviously I don’t endorse the view that micro-aggressions don’t matter, or shouldn’t be challenged. I know of no one on the left who does.

It’s widely thought that we live in a period of political apathy. I agree only as far as disgust and felt helplessness can mimic the symptoms of apathy.

More than ever, state and corporate power is perceived as unresponsive to democratic demands. Whether this perception exists because in an age of transnational capital, popular demands are by necessity or opportunity more likely to be ignored, or for some other reason I will leave to the side. Consequently we feel disgust (both at the actions of the state, and at its hypocrisy in claiming to be democratic) and helplessness (because the state never seems moved by our complaints).

In one sense disgust and helplessness are in perfect harmony, one doesn’t contradict oneself if one thinks that something is both disgusting and unchangeable. In another sense though, these two feelings stand in a performative contradiction. When we are disgusted by something we tend to either flee it, or attempt to abolish it unless something else prevents us, or gives us a reason not to. This is where felt helplessness plays its part; it restrains most of us, most of the time, from attacking the present state of things. As a result we resolve our disgust as best we can by “fleeing” the political, or watching it with morbid fascination. However complete escape from or denial of capital’s power is an absurdity as long as it pervades our lives, so our felt helplessness and disgust are at war- do we strike out or stand still?

This tension leads to two interesting phenomena:

                   *An increasing number of us reject bourgeoisie ideology (for our disgust), but seem to be uninterested in finding alternatives (because of our despair).

                   *One can see the beginnings of a phenomenon of sudden ‘flips’. Individuals who displayed little previous interest in politics, suddenly engaging in high intensity political activity. This represents the sudden swing as disgust finally comes to outweigh despair, whether through a sudden flash of hope, or the slow accumulation of disgust coming to predominate.

Now oddly enough I think this landscape I’ve painted of all pervasive disgust and despair gives us substantial grounds for hope. All that’s needed at any moment is for disgust to hit maximum, or despair to abate, and suddenly everything is fragile. There is space for cascades, as the sudden recognition of power leads to victories, leading to further recognition of power, and on and on. Any situation which depends on the uneasy victory of despair over disgust will not remain static.

Strategically and tactically, it suggests that we are fighting on unstable ground. We can’t depend on permanency or continuity, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek continuity; networks of counter institutions are necessary to receive and support with community and acquired skills those who decide they can’t stand it anymore. Increasingly we will have to remain mobile, prepared to orient in solidarity to struggles that come out of nowhere and do not follow our preferred agenda (certainly not our preferred schedule).

That all things should be held in common.

Here at blogging the end we don’t normally blog about day to day politics, we hold ourselves a little above the fray. However, the attacks against CAAH for use of the word “fuck” on a recent poster are so ridiculous that I feel something has to be said.

First up, let’s deal with the absurd complaints about democracy and representation. CAAH doesn’t claim to represent the queer community. It’s not claiming to speak on your behalf. You don’t have to agree with everything it says. CAAH meetings are open and publicly advertised; everyone is more than welcome to participate. It certainly hasn’t “hijacked” the same-sex marriage campaign, it’s been at the forefront of the campaign from the very beginning, often in the early days it was the only group campaigning on the issue after more mainstream gay groups wrote the cause off as too “extreme”.  CAAH has been consistently organising rallies and actions drawing in hundreds, sometimes thousands of participants. Meanwhile other groups have favoured largely invisible and seemingly meaningless lobbying campaigns. On balance I think it is figures like Roodney Croome who have hijacked the movement, declaring themselves leaders and holding court over what tactics are and aren’t allowed.

Nor was CAAH itself “hijacked” by Socialist Alternative. The proposed poster received enthusiastic support from the Greens, independents and anarchists within the collective. The only tendency within the collective which opposed the poster was socialist alliance. More than 75% of those present voted in favour of the proposal. I’m not a member of Socialist Alternative, in fact my politics are at the very opposite corner of the radical left, but I and everyone I talk to in the collective, with the exception of my friends in Socialist Alliance, support the decision wholeheartedly.

Secondly, let’s get real on what the queer rights campaign is going to look like in this environment. Tony Abbott is going to be an ugly, ugly prime-minister for pretty much everyone who isn’t part of the ruling class. His election signals the determination of Murdoch, Rhineheart et al. to commence a vicious program of austerity, held together by a politics of hate, fear and division among the working people. We all know this to be true, even if we wouldn’t use precisely those words to say it. We need to pushback early if we want to limit the damage and reduce the number of items he ticks off his agenda.

Community Action Against Homophobia has taken the admirable step of signalling early that they won’t nod sagely while he destroys lives, mumbling that at least he has a “mandate”. They’re carving out a space for a resistance to Tony which is stiff and fierce- not some pliant “loyal opposition”.  They’re getting in early, setting the tone, and not waiting till it’s too late.

The advocates of moderation keep saying that tone matters, and I agree. The pleading, falsely “positive” tone they suggest; fiercely on message and fiercely single issue, will at very best, scrape through marriage equality. It definitely won’t create the kind of fight-back we need to defend our community against broader attacks- attacks on youth services, community organisations and Medicare.

In any case Tony Abbott is not going to be persuaded via constant cajoling moaning. If he’s willing to say publicly that gays make him feel uncomfortable, what do you think his real views are? I’ve read his stuff in Honi, from when he was president. I fear I could hazard a few guesses.

We need to energise opposition if we want gay marriage passed, let alone if we want to protect our community from Abbott’s broader agenda. Any idea that we’re on the home-stretch and just need to do a little sweet talking should have been thoroughly discredited by Abbott’s election.  It’s time to toughen up.

Finally, I just want to say that even if this poster is a strategic mistake (and I repudiate that claim completely) a far worse strategic mistake is dividing the movement by publicly attacking and undermining activist work you disagree with. Lord knows we put up with a lot of nonsense from the so called moderates in the queer rights movement for the sake of unity, the least they could do is extend a similar courtesy.