I figured that was most of this forum. Even the people who are clearly minority comrades say this to me basically " all forms of oppression must be fought back against, now, but class is the primary mode of oppression"
If you don't put class first I think you're a rad lib no matter what you tell me.
Not putting class first is literally how you get this killer Mike landlord black capitalism shit. Yass kweening raytheon's first female CEO, etc.
Don't @ me with a bunch of words I don't care if class isn't the center of your framing you're the same as some half nazi petty bourg fuckkl to me
The issue is that “class first” has a super broad meaning. There are people who say “class first” to mean that bourgeoisie identity politics are not liberation (ie Raytheon’s first female CEO). And there are people who say “class first” as a pretense to tell the uppity minorities to fuck off and stop “splitting the movement” over their issues.
This is the things that bugs me the most about class reduction as an idea. It is so specifically used against libs that It feels like a psyop to me.
It should be used against libs because they will confront everything except the class commonality. The problem is that libs refuse to understand the concept and some more socially reactionary leftists fo as well.
Yea I mean im not advocating stupidpol like abandonment of other issues for sure
I figured as much. When I’m around libs I’ll push the class issue and just risk getting called a class reductionist if they’ve got intense brainworms. When I’m around comrades, I feel like the nuances and pitfalls are worth pointing out for lurkers. But I absolutely agree with you that someone celebrating the bourgeois-ification of a minority group is super sus radlib shit
A fair perspective so long as you recognize that all fighting all forms of oppression is still important.
That is what class first means. Fighting for healthcare helps every marginalized person at the same time for example. So by opposing a bourgeoisie interest you are doing the work of uniting thr workers of the world and all that.
Right, but I still think fighting racism and fascism head on is something that's good praxis as well.
How do you mean to fight ideas? Write a play? Or do you mean things like universal school lunches which help all workers? If it is actually worth doing it is a little more than just fighting rascism. Look at the Irish, Italians, and jews. They are white now. Allmost all the rascism is gone against them. Has it helped much?
Yeah Im not sure we are going to come to come to an agreement if you don't believe in organizing against things like Unite the right when they happen.
This is edging close to stupidpol territory.
If the chuds are having a cook out and we are just going to yell at them, that's fun sure, but that isn't praxis especially if it comes at the cost of organizing for things that do make material difference. For sure I don't want comrades to get arrested to just emotionally validate chuds. Adventureism like :nazi-punching: is not a reliable tactic despite it having worked. What do you picture doing that I wouldn't be down for?
Im just going to say that i agree with black bloc antifa tactics and making sure Fascists know they aren't welcome whenever they appear and try to demonstrate. That's not the entirety of what I want to do, but in this current era of rising reactionary thought I think it's pretty damn important.
I used to have the whole stupid pol mindset myself, as I'm a cis het white dude of the suburbs and was insulsted from a lot of discrimination myself. Over time I had people from different walks of life kind of enter my circle and family and I wasn't so insulated anymore.
Yeah, class is the most important over arching aspect, but again I still think things like anti-fascist action are very important both in principle and for the sake of praxis.
I tend to also align more with anarchism or libertarian socialism than Marxism due to the above.
I guess that's the next I can explain myself, sorry if it's a wall of text
I mean, I think we basically agree on everything. Just minor questions of doctrinal efficiency
I think to put base and superstructure into a hierarchy is to ignore their dialectical nature.
It’s really that simple. But also, when I heard that a few years ago I thought it was nonsense jargon, so here’s an explanation for anyone reading who had that sentence slide right off their brain.
We’re obsessed with thinking of everything as hierarchical. Even in a group of two things or people, many of us find our brains trying to figure out which one is dominant over the other. The Marxist concepts of base and superstructure are often seen through this lens. The economic base is everything about a society that involves its people’s relationship to the means of production. The superstructure is everything else. Culture, politics, media, religion, etc. The relationship between these two parts of society is like this: One part shapes the other part, and in return the shaped part protects its shaper. So for example, the economic base of exploitation of people in the color in the US gave rise to the cultural construction of race as we know it, but that same construct protects the economic order of capitalist oppression via white supremacy.
So which is the shaper and which is the protector? Base or superstructure? The key insight relevant to this conversation is that both parts perform both functions. That’s the dialectical portion. So to run with the racial example, the economic conditions of chattel slavery and indigenous genocide in the US were themselves made possible by racial pseudoscience which arose to justify colonialism. The base and superstructure push and pull one another this way.
There may be people reading this who have a lot to say about me implying that base and superstructure perform both functions equally, but I specifically didn’t say that because it’s generally not true. But I do believe that balance has changed in the west since the time of Marx and Engels.
I think of these systems like a river. You have the water and you have the riverbed. They’re a dynamic system and if you want to redirect the river, it doesn’t make sense to move the water’s path without modifying the bed as well.
I know it. I intentionally don’t state which is which, but I really wish I had a better physical analogy. Until then, I’m gonna stick with the river.
Good post. It's like genetics and enviroment stuff. One doesn't 'control' the other in any meaningful sense.
i think an important distinction also is that the superstructure is the institutions of culture, politics, media, religion, education and family on the one hand, and the repressive legal state apparatus on the other.
the realm of ideology is generated by the institutions of the superstructure which reflects back on the superstructure as the superstructure reflects back on the base.
you might be interested in reading Althusser's work on overdetermination as it pertains exactly to what you wrote, and explains the meaning of "the base determines the superstructure in the last instance".
They need to be addressed together and, imo, not putting one before the other
Yes, it either this or what I talked about in my title. We are not leaving anyone behind. Not happening
I notice the other forms of oppression pop up as discussions THE MOMENT there is ANY progress, and it all instantly stalls out.
I swear it’s a CIA move.
Some of it is that some groups have a long history of being thrown under the bus as a sacrifice to make that progress sustainable. But the feds exacerbate this intensely.
There are people who are good at validating the concerns of marginalized groups while still rallying around class interests and doing coalition building. Feds tend to use them for target practice.
There are ways to have difficult discussions in a respectful and safe way which focuses on education and liberation. These patterns of discussion are coincidentally the polar opposite of how social media trains people to engage in arguments. The same social media whose monopoly status is protected by the feds in exchange for cheap mass surveillance and readily available sockpuppets for psyops.
Fictional example - as I don’t want to accuse real people of shit right now.
Cop City protests finally get some major media attention and coverage - 5 minutes in, someone starts talking about oil pipelines.
All the struggles are the same struggle, but knowing when it’s time to connect the dots, and when it’s time to push on a point are very important. Mostly it’s an in-person thing as online I can just scroll past.
Stop Cop City is also Defend Welaunee. Taking about pipelines, especially ones being defended against like line 3 is a natural connection
Remember when MLK, A Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin called a general strike for "jobs and freedom" and then felt the need to bring up race and it all instantly stalled put? Identity politics smh
I don't recognize the distinction in the first place, all forms of oppression are imbedded in class, and all class oppression is socially realized
It's a bullshit duelism invented by liberals to obfuscate class struggle and it's inherent social justice nature
A big insight of intersectionality for me has been that looking at systems of oppression in isolation is like unweaving a blanket to understand its pattern.
The other, as it relates to class, is that class oppression is not a system whose liberation involves the coexistence of its opposing groups.
Straight people are going to need to learn to live in peace and respect with gay people.
White people are going to need to learn to live in peace and respect with people of color.
The bourgeoisie must be eradicated.
The class’s constituents must take on a different class character entirely. A class-conscious coexistence of the working and owning classes is the material base for fascism. This cannot stand. So while class is inextricably tied to the oppression of these social groups, class stands out as a system of oppression whose eradication will remove the very distinctions it preys on.
The debate about class versus "other forms of oppression" is absolute bullshit that doesn't matter much when you're out there doing praxis in the real world.
I've helped organise demonstrations, marches and other agitation work in the local populace.
You'll get to meet people with so many unique backgrounds and stories that any distinction beyond class loses its meaning.
As an activist, my experience is that when you're out there agitating, the closest thing most people will have to a common background is our class.
There are working class trans people, working class minorities and working class foreigners, working class women, working class LGBTQ+ people etc.
The one common denominator among my fellow comrades is our background as workers.
My point is, when you're out there, you'll meet so many unique people that the only certain common thread is your class.
As someone who grew up poor but is also an AFAB, Non-Binary, ADHD haver filled to the brim with mental traumas...
They go hand and hand. You can't solve one while ignoring the other.
I think you've briefly mentioned some of this stuff to me before. Hope you're in a better place as of right now. You are one of my favorite posters.
Don't worry friend, I am doing fine at the moment :owl-wink:
Class primary, but also when someone says “I’m class first type of guy” the fucking alarm bells go off in my head :shrug-outta-hecks:
"Class First" is something you say when you want to maintain some of the power structures that prop up capitalism. It's all or nothing if you're actually communist
Class is just useful because a majority of oppressed people fall into the proletariat, but because a majority of oppressed people are proletarian, that means any proletarian movement needs to be accepting of ALL proletarians
Class is the primary overriding force of oppression but is not entirely separable from any of the others. In fact, it tends to drive and reinforce them.
There's no either/or, nor even class first then the rest. You're never going to truly root out and resolve the rest, i.e. liberate humanity, without overthrowing capitalism, and the act of doing so is itself an intersectional effort (and always has been).
As an example, trans liberation requires trans people being able top get the medical care they need and have places to live and food to eat. Under capitalism, all of these things are undermined and all of humanity, but especially the marginalized, are degraded and immiserated. Trans people deal with homelessness and poverty more often than other people do precisely due to class oppressions that reflect and reinforce capitalism. Homelessness is a consequence of rent-seeking, in this case for land, and is about guaranteeing profits and value increases for landowners/homeowners. Only through decommodification can we guarantee housing, and the only places to ever approach this after capotalism were socialist projects after revolution. The inability to get medical care is a function of ability to pay under capitalism, whereas socialized medicine was largely a socialist invention copied by some socdems in the imperial core - and it's being deconstructed by capitalist forces. Poverty is of course a function of class as well as the role played in capitalism by the creation and maintenance of marginalized subgroups within the lower classes. Thus, trans liberation requires the overthrow of capitalism. That doesn't mean we are idle rather than supporting our trans comrades, it just means there can be no illusion that bourgeois approaches will be enough. It also means that when we can gain class-widr wins, the material gains have a big impact on those oppressed groups. If we can fight and win a housing-first approach at a local level, we are disproportionately helping trans people (and BIPOC people, and gay people, and immigrants, etc etc).
the primary form of oppression is when mom says I ate too many totino's pizza rolls
Eating those at all is asking for trouble regardless. Cancerous growth imminent.
I just want multiclassing balanced in a way that doesn't make it completely pointless
Economic class fluidity works the same way as multiclassing in DND: It doesn’t fundamentally change the power of the character’s class , but it does allow them to roleplay in a way that makes them seem more complex than they really are.
They need to be paired together. In the long run, yes, class issues need to be addressed. But if someone says that they’re lonely or facing racism or sexism, and the only advice you have is “we need to abolish capitalism” then it’s about as useful as telling a depressed person to stop being depressed
The two rarely exist independent from one another. Oppressed groups are made poor and poor groups are painted as oppressed groups (see the focus on welfare being black people abusing it).
Honestly, I believe that core vs. periphery has been the principle contradiction (globally, in particular times/places other contradictions and be primary) for over a century; and while this is class, it's not a narrow orthodox understanding of class. But basically it's all connected, all systems of oppression are implicated in capitalism. And overthrowing the capitalist-imperialist world-system and constructing socialism is the only way out.
Like obviously radlibs are wrong, but the "class reductionists" are also wrong in that they don't recognize that class plays out differently in different situations (patsoc types being a perfect example of this).
