What is meant, exactly, by "Liberation"?

[#FF0000]

I've noticed a lot of groups and individuals which organize around the issues faced by certain groups (in particular, women, LGBT, people of color) are either dropping or have dropped "equality" (that is, simple equality before the law) in favor of "liberation" as an end goal.

Now I think aiming for more than simple equality before the law as an end goal is a good idea (after all, equality for the law doesn't do anything for de facto bigotry and discrimination), but what exactly does liberation entail? If it's one of those things that means different things to different people from different schools of thought, what does it mean according to who?

[Flying Purple People Eater]

It's just positive triggering language.

You really think the people of Egypt were liberated when the Rightist muslim-brotherhood clenched their fingers around the country last revolution?

EDIT: Realised this had to do with identity politics - lol.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I've noticed a lot of groups and individuals which organize around the issues faced by certain groups (in particular, women, LGBT, people of color) are either dropping or have dropped "equality" (that is, simple equality before the law) in favor of "liberation" as an end goal.

Now I think aiming for more than simple equality before the law as an end goal is a good idea (after all, equality for the law doesn't do anything for de facto bigotry and discrimination), but what exactly does liberation entail? If it's one of those things that means different things to different people from different schools of thought, what does it mean according to who?

Liberation just means an end to oppression (as opposed to legal equality as you said) more or less no matter what the ideology of the person using the term. Non-marxists/anarchists in the women's liberation movements of the 1970s used it and liberartion to them probably meant the end of some concept of "patriarchy" existing above or outside of the class system.

If people generally are begining to use this term again, I'd say that's probably evidence of some positive development (a tacit realization that oppression goes deeper than just legal restrictions or common bigotry) even if at this point a general understanding about the how oppression fits into society and why and therfore how to fight it is still muddled at this point. It probably also means there is a better chance of some of revolutionary arguments about oppression resonating with more people.

I use the term (rather than equality) and of course I see liberation of sexuality or women as linked to revolution: the fight for liberation being, in my view, a necissary fight for the class to take up to organize itself for revolution and the revolution to actually make full liberation from oppression possible through new relations in society.

[#FF0000]

Liberation just means an end to oppression (as opposed to legal equality as you said) more or less no matter what the ideology of the person using the term. Non-marxists/anarchists in the women's liberation movements of the 1970s used it and liberartion to them probably meant the end of some concept of "patriarchy" existing above or outside of the class system.

Right, but I'm still struggling to figure out what liberation would really mean, concretely. As in, what are the objectives and victory conditions for groups based on "liberation".

I think my trouble here stems from my nebulous understanding of patriarchy and white supremacy more than anything. Hm.

[ckaihatsu]

One approach to the question that isn't taken up often enough is how private property relations undergird all forms of oppression and discrimination.

We should ask *anyone* to consider what social relationships they're in mainly for economic reasons, then ask them to reflect on *how many* of those mainly economic relations are directly related to the necessities of life. By doing so we've traced out the social ties that are less-than-fully-voluntary -- when multiplied by the lesser societal status of those who are social minorities, we can see how those who are lower on the socio-economic hierarchy are its victims and oppressed.

In other words economic robustness confers a certain kind of social validity, all the way up to an entire social strata of enlightenment-in-common that may not be quite as possible in lower economic layers that are more in flux, with concomitant jockeying for position. And, of course, the upper strata do not have to concern themselves, as a class, with those who are lower on the "social food chain", so to speak.

Liberation would be an end to all economic concerns -- really -- for everyone, with the realm of such matters superseded by a mass-collectivist professionalism-in-common. With every individual entirely freed from the social necessities related to modern 'foraging', no one would have any material advantage over anyone else, since there would be no social recognition or social basis for it -- private enclaves of property, wealth, and power would no longer exist, nor would the state that currently functions to defend such social enclaves.

Liberation, then, would be 'the absence of all social-material basis for hierarchy', into which a true egalitarianism could then take root.

[Decolonize The Left]

Right, but I'm still struggling to figure out what liberation would really mean, concretely. As in, what are the objectives and victory conditions for groups based on "liberation".

I think my trouble here stems from my nebulous understanding of patriarchy and white supremacy more than anything. Hm.

Your OP made it sound like you were asking about the term "liberation" used as a rhetorical device - if so, then as a rhetorical device it's relatively devoid of "real" meaning in the sense that you are asking about.

[#FF0000]

Your OP made it sound like you were asking about the term "liberation" used as a rhetorical device - if so, then as a rhetorical device it's relatively devoid of "real" meaning in the sense that you are asking about.

It is only/mainly used as a rhetorical device, then?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Right, but I'm still struggling to figure out what liberation would really mean, concretely. As in, what are the objectives and victory conditions for groups based on "liberation".

I think my trouble here stems from my nebulous understanding of patriarchy and white supremacy more than anything. Hm.Right, me too. I and I think it's mostly because these concepts are either really nebulous themselves or there are just countless variations on the conept of patriarchy or whatnot. Just in that concept alone there's no consensus among people who see wmone's oppression as the result of a patriarchy: some have a view fairly close to radicals and do see the links between class control and the specific control of women; othere have a biologically deterministic view of "pratriarchy"; and everything inbetween.