I think that there is a difference between an analysis of class, and a class analysis, and that this article whilst groping for the later ends up with the former precisely because class analysis is something that, in my opinion, can't be realised with the framework of privilege theory.
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Originally Posted by AF Women's Caucus
This doesn’t make economic class a primary oppression, or the others secondary, because our oppressions and privileges intersect.
The point here is that workers are not 'oppressed' as workers, but exploited. This may sound like a semantic point, but I don't think it is and I think that it is fundamental to the question. The bourgeoisie are not 'privileged' in this relationship, but exploiting.
I think that the authors of the text realise that there is a fundamental difference between class and the other oppressions that are raised. but they either don't manage to explain it well or they can't quite see the significance of it:
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Originally Posted by AF Women's Caucus
The ruling class and the working class have opposing interests, while the privileged and oppressed groups of other systems only have differing interests, which differ less as the influence of those systems is reduced.
I think that the reason for this is that the working class is exploited (i.e. surplus value is extracted from it), and I think that this does mean that they is a real difference between oppression and exploitation.
What I think that this use of privilege theory ends up doing is rejecting the idea of the working class as the revolutionary subject. I don't think that there is anything new in that, and it distinctly reminds me of the Euro-communists back in the day. Class ceases to be the defining factor, and the revolutionary subject becomes a collection of different oppressed groups, a sort of rainbow coalition as it were.
Now there is no doubt that some of this reaction was a necessary questioning of the workers' movement of the day. The worker was perceived as being a white male heterosexual. There were workers' issues and 'secondary' issues, some of which were relegated to a position of less importance, some were just plain ignored, and some were actively stigmatised (i.e. the position of many 'left-wing' organisations that homosexuality was a 'bourgeois deviation'.
I think to a certain extent the analysis presented here maintains the same dichotomy. 'Workers' issues' are contrasted to 'women's issues':
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Originally Posted by AF Women's Caucus
If women’s issues were considered secondary to class issues, this would imply that working class men's issues were more important than those of working class women.
There is a problem with this and again the authors seem to recognise it:
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Originally Posted by AF Women's Caucus
Economic class is not so much the primary struggle as the all-encompassing struggle.
It is 'the all encompassing struggle for two reasons. The first is that, for those with a class analysis, the working class is the revolutionary class, and the only group that in liberating itself can liberate humanity as a whole. After all, on a
theoretical level capitalism could continue having done away with sexism, racism, homophobia, etc, but it could not continue without exploitation and the extraction of surplus value.
The second is that the working class today, and it becomes more and more obvious with the passing of time, is not this stereotypical white male worker, but is both male and female, black and white, and straight, and gay.
The issues which divide the class are class issues. They can not be left as some seem to suggest that others are suggesting; "other oppressions won’t melt away “after the revolution”".
The fact remains though that a German factory worker (who may just for the sake of example be a white male) and an Indian peasant* (for the sake of the example a woman) are in very different positions. While the German worker may feel that he is privileged (in the traditional sense of the word) over the Indian peasant, it remains a fact that he is a part of the working class, and by his position relative to the means of production has interests directly opposed to his exploiters, and is forced to fight against them, and she is not a part of the working class, but a member of the petite-borgoisie. This despite the fact that she is undoubtedly more oppressed, and has worse living conditions than him. He is exploited and is part of a class that has the potential to enact a revolutionary transformation of society, and she is not.
In addition of course, the German factory worker today is not this stereotypical image of the old workers' movement, but is just as likely, probably even more so, to be a woman or Turkish or both.
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Originally Posted by Joseph Kay
Yes, it may originate in the academy - or iirc, in the US women's movement of the 70s as a means to account for hierarchies within the movement, and the trajectory of leading figures into the academy.
I think that its roots were originally in US Maoism actually, but it was developed in the women's movement and academia. I think that its objective role has primarily been to aid the rise of a certain sector of the petite-bourgeoisie and sociological middle classes. There was a comment in the text that remined me of somebody in particular.
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Originally Posted by AF Women's Caucus
A black, disabled working class lesbian
When I worked in London the leader of the local council was a woman called Linda Bellos. She was a black Jewish disabled Lesbian. She is described on her wiki page (so probably self described) as a 'revolutionary feminist':
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Originally Posted by Wiki
Bellos is a revolutionary feminist and was the first mixed-race lesbian to join the Spare Rib feminist collective in 1981. She criticises the movement's 'point scoring' and the manner in which the women's movement was, in her view, dominated by 'white, middle-class women
I think that there are people who are constantly told to shut up, and that their experiences aren't valid. Generally it is working class people, whatever their race, sexuality, or gender who are on the receiving end of this, and those above them, whatever their race, sexuality, or gender, who are telling them to be quite.
I think that 'privilege theory' is one (and only one of many) of the tools for telling working class people to shut up.
Today, Linda Bellos, OBE, is a successful "businesswoman" and "runs her own consultancy and training company, EDHR Solutions LTD, providing equality, diversity and human rights consultancy and training services to the UK’s commercial, public and not-for-profit sectors".
*Used in its real meaning as a small landowning producer, not a landless rural labourer.