WSM.ie: Identity politics, class and autonomous organising

[Audio recording of recent talk and discussion in the Black Rose anarchist social centre 
in Sydney on the theme of identity politics and its relevance today. Below is the text of 
the talk given by Timothy followed by a lively and constructive discussion covering 
everything from sexual violence in radical spaces to ?intersectionality,? feminism and 
autonomous organising.] ---- This talk is at a midpoint between being an original work, 
and being an exegesis of Selma?s James justly famous ?Sex, Race and Class.? This 
astonishingly brilliant work contains within itself the clear foundations of a historical 
materialist, or Marxist, conception of the relationship between capitalism and oppression. 
Because I have mixed in many of my own original points, both intentionally and no doubt by 
accidental misinterpretation, I would strongly suggest everyone here goes and reads the 
original.

Guest article.

I.

I was asked to give a talk on identity politics, and provide a critique of it. One problem 
with this task is that few people, if any, openly describe themselves as supporters of 
identity politics. Identity politics, especially in radical circles, is mostly used as a 
pejorative. It is a term that applies to that person over there, but not to us. 
Nonetheless I think there is a recognizable tendency in contemporary politics that could 
be described as identity politics, a movement which has developed its own practices and 
language. I am skeptical of the value of more precise definitions than this because I do 
not think there is one, and trying to provide one does violence to the fluidity of the 
subject matter. Like other movements, such as the New Left, identity politics resists 
classification.

My main concern with the discourse around identity politics, with its manifestations in 
places like the online blogging service Tumblr, are that it represents the fight for 
social justice as being a fight against an incredibly diverse array of oppressions, 
without a sense of an underlying structure that maintains, exacerbates and reproduces 
them. It therefore tends to articulate a quite liberal politics. In my view, a deeper 
critique of oppression?s underlying unity in diversity is required.

We can be very clear on one thing. What we mean by a critique of identity politics in the 
context of this talk is simply the critique of a politics which sees different forms of 
oppression as separate though interconnected social systems. We are contrasting this with 
a view according to which oppression arises from, or more accurately is part of, a single 
social system. A system centered on the extraction of labour from we who produce this 
world into the parasitic bourgeoisie. While identity politics tends to support this 
conception of different and at least somewhat independent oppressive systems, naturally 
the broad collection of positions it encompasses has many other aspects. We are thus 
critiquing identity politics in this talk in a very narrow sense. Still I think this 
conception of fighting various forms of oppression, where each struggle is its own 
distinct thing, is very close to the methodological heart of what is generally called 
identity politics.

Supporters of what is loosely called identity politics are usually well aware of how 
different forms of oppression interact, through invaluable concepts such as 
intersectionality. What is missing in modern identity politics is not an understanding of 
the interaction of forms of oppression, but an understanding of their root unity in a 
capitalist social system.

II.

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 suggestion that these forms of strife are not independent, but share a 
common root, is an old one. These days however, it is common to suggest that different 
forms of political problems are independent social systems.

I am going to argue that various forms of oppression center around capitalism, or a system 
where a few individuals own the means of production, and primarily live off the takings of 
that, while 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 a class 
society, but before we go on it?s important to understand how this crucial term 'class' is 
best defined.

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 Marxist sense. 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: that is the labour that we are not 
directly compensated for through wages, that goes into the employer?s pockets for free. 
These victims of surplus labour extraction are said to be the proletariat or working class.

So class is defined by the extraction of surplus labor. 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, that capital needs in order to continue, yet they are not 
paid for it directly. Instead they in effect receive a portion of their spouse?s income. 
Students at schools and universities are doing work that capitalism absolutely needs to 
function, they are transforming themselves into value added human capital, yet they are 
also not compensated for it directly. Instead they are given the often false promise of 
higher wages or better jobs down the track if they keep at it and 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.

We can even 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 workers healthy. 
All the time, always, we are doing things which keep this society running, for the 
disproportionate benefit of a few. I would hazard a guess and say that every single person 
in this room is a member of the working class, yet many of you have never set foot in a 
factory in your life.

III.

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, or in other words 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 ultimately in a 
sense even each peasant was similar. With peasants this doesn?t really matter to class 
society, because of their geographic dispersion and the difficulties this creates for them 
in organizing effectively.

Among the working class though, if there were a lack of internal divisions, there would be 
little preventing them from revolt. Without the logic of competition within the working 
class itself, revolution would be a quick inevitability. The only possible, 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 vast number of other social divisions.

In addition to dividing the working class, these divisions also serve to create 
specialists. Women are nudged into being reproductive laborers, housemakers and the like, 
and also into various forms of care work, like 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 disproportionately funneled into sex-work for a variety of reasons. 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 bought into the following picture of the working class that I 
am critiquing. In the first instance it really is just a sack of potatoes, and then 
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. 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, perhaps some might even come in 
and out of existence, but 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 and really they are one.

What I am proposing is not that class is primary exactly. 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 it to be a concrete thing, in order for 
it to be class as it is in any particular society at any particular moment of time, it 
needs a whole series of differentiations and complexities. Any capitalist society without 
such differentiations would be overthrown quickly. Oppression is vital part of that 
structure of differentiations and complexities.

IV.

A few things follow from the key role of various forms of oppression in class. One of the 
most important points to make is that anyone who wants to defeat class society has an 
interest in weakening the divisions created by oppressions. That is, to try and rip down 
the internal structures that holds up capitalism. 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 it is a necessity that these 
divisions should be attacked.

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 wouldn?t be better off if oppression 
were defeated, i.e. this doesn?t imply that straight people gain an absolute advantage 
from heteronormativity. If this is the case, then it is very important we be aware of it. 
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 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 
spaces and within broader society.

V.

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, but what about the converse, 
that in order to attack these oppressions, we must ultimately try to dismantle capitalism.

Capitalism doesn?t simply passively benefit from divisions in the working class, as if 
they were simply pre-existing problems. Rather capitalism actively 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 massive prison industrial 
complex which serves mostly to defend property rights and simultaneously maintain white 
supremacy, othering and criminalizing people of color.

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?

Well I don?t think that anyone could guarantee that ?interpersonal? oppression would 
disappear immediately if capitalism were defeated. By the same token though I 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 kind of 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 would, it seems clear that there would be far 
more space for fighting such things in a non-capitalist world.

Now it?s worth reiterating, so this talk is not misunderstood by any who would have us 
abandon our specific struggles in favor of some abstract class struggle conceived of as 
separate to various struggles against oppression, that my 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 now. Rather, grasping that oppression is 
inextricably linked to capitalism leads to the view that in order to fight capitalism, we 
must fight oppression directly, and that this is as important as any other struggle. Thus 
I finish by echoing Selma James:

"Power to the oppressed and therefore to the class."
http://www.wsm.ie/c/identity-politics-class-and-autonomous-organising