Worker Liberation and Social Liberation

[VermontLeft]

Do you think that the oppression of the workers and the oppression of women are just manifestations of the same thing or are they seperate problems with seperate solutions?

I mean i know that capitalism and sexism have different histories, but sexism has become very intergrained with a lot of the capitalists as they exploit it to increase profits. Also sexists are usually conservative and so afraid of change and want to maintain the situation. if they dont see women as equal how can they recognize communism as an alternative?

I guess my real question here is what is the feeling on tactics? should we fight sexism and class-discrimination seperatly (i mean method, not people, obviously all lefttists should be involved with both) or similarly? Will the same methods be usable in fighting both insstances of bigotry?


EDIT (is there anyway to change the topic title? sorry to be dumb, but i can't figure it out :blush:)

I think id like to expand this question to talk about ALL non class opprressions, like racism and anti-gay hatreds. Are these products of capitalism or are they seperate problems?

Should we only focus on class and hope that that will solve all the other problems? I think that that's sort of the Stalinist thing, but it doesnt make any sense to me. i don't think that a sexist or racist proletariat would be a good socialist society even if it freed itself of wage-slavery cause it would still be biggotted ...right?

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2006, 10:08 PM
Do you think that the oppression of the workers and the oppression of women are just manifestations of the same thing or are they seperate problems with seperate solutions?

I mean i know that capitalism and sexism have different histories, but sexism has become very intergrained with a lot of the capitalists as they exploit it to increase profits.
Not only are they aspects of the same thing, but they have a common history. As Frederick Engels explained in "Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State", the origins of class-divided civilisation were tied up with the rise of patriarchal oppression of women. And their abolition is tied up together, too.


I guess my real question here is what is the feeling on tactics? should we fight sexism and class-discrimination seperatly (i mean method, not people, obviously all lefttists should be involved with both) or similarly? Will the same methods be usable in fighting both insstances of bigotry?

I'm not sure what you mean, but tactics are specific to a time and place. In everything you do, you have to evaluate the situation and the relationship of forces, not just repeat the same tactics.


EDIT (is there anyway to change the topic title? sorry to be dumb, but i can't figure it out :blush:)

I think if you edit your first post there should be a block for you to edit the title, too.


Should we only focus on class and hope that that will solve all the other problems? I think that that's sort of the Stalinist thing, but it doesnt make any sense to me. i don't think that a sexist or racist proletariat would be a good socialist society even if it freed itself of wage-slavery cause it would still be biggotted ...right?

Well, yeah. The reason the working class is key is because "The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air." as the Manifesto puts it. In other words, because our liberation as a class is tied up with the abolition of every kind of oppression and exploitation.

And for that same reason, we simply won't get there (the end of wage-slavery) by only focusing on class. It's necessary to take up all these other questions in order to unite the working class and win allies among all the oppressed and exploited.

[redstar2000]

The origins of class, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, etc. are lost in the mists of pre-literate times...we only see, at best, traces of those origins written down long after they were "established fact".

But they all do seem to "intertwine" with each other to a remarkable degree throughout recorded history; so it's not unreasonable to assume that they have a common origin.

And if that indeed is the case, then it "makes sense" to oppose all of those things in our struggle to overthrow and abolish class society.

Naturally people strongly tend to be most sensitive to and willing to fight hardest against the particular oppression that bears down on them the hardest.

People of color are very sensitive to and deeply hostile to racism. Women are very sensitive to and deeply hostile to sexism. Gay people are very sensitive to and deeply hostile to homophobia.

And even working people who fully accept capitalism are nevertheless very sensitive to and deeply hostile to the attitudes of "superiority" displayed by their "social betters".

There is a marked tendency for people to spontaneously regard each of these oppressions as "separate" and even "unrelated" to each other.

For a considerable period of time in the last century, most trade unions were more or less openly racist and often sexist as well.

And similar points could be made about groups that came into existence to fight racism and sexism; they concentrated their efforts against the oppression that they regarded as "the worst oppression" while ignoring other oppressions and even sometimes manifesting those other oppressions within their own groups.

And communist groups, who in theory should have been able to see "the big picture", also have a record of, at best, paying a little verbal attention to other forms of oppression but, in practice, concentrating on the issue of class to the exclusion of all other considerations.

This is partly Marx's fault, I think. Since class exploitation is at the heart of the historical materialist paradigm, it was "easy" for him to assume that once class society was abolished, all the other forms of oppression would just "wither away" for lack of economic incentive.

There may even be a sense in which that could be true "in the long run"...but experience has taught us in the short run that ignoring one form of oppression to fight another is a losing strategy.

Modern revolutionaries grasp, I think, the idea that we must be intransigently opposed to all forms of oppression out of necessity.

That is, we can't win with a strategy of "just workers", "just people of color", "just women", "just gay people", etc.

Indeed, I think it could be argued that any effort which weakens some form of "social" oppression may well serve to weaken the whole edifice of oppression altogether.

The "best ways" to support and encourage struggles against all forms of oppression remain highly controversial.

In my view, the choice is between resistance and reform.

That is, I think revolutionaries should concentrate on encouraging active resistance to oppression of any kind and leave reforms to the reformists.

But you'll find a fair number of people here who disagree with that perspective...who believe, for example, that we need "new laws" or "new court rulings" or something of that sort.

In fact, you'll discover that that's the real "divide" on the "left"...the difference between people who think the existing system must be destroyed and the people who believe that it can be "fixed" or at least "made less oppressive". What can be confusing is that some of the latter will say they are "for revolution"...but everything they actually do is reformist.

At some point "down the road" you will find yourself choosing between these two perspectives...and I hope you will give it lots of thought. :)

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