[PEN-L:11425] Re: Class and Oppression

["William S. Lear" <rael@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, July 23, 1997 at 18:26:51 (-0700) James Michael Craven writes:
>[...]
>a) Gay White Male Investment Banker vs "Straight" White Male
>Sharecropper
>b) White Female Investment Banker vs Poor White Male Sharecropper
>c) African American Male Investment Banker vs Poor White Male
>Sharecropper
>d) etc etc.
>
>Noting of course that various forms of discrimination operate to
>exclude or make rare, people from certain groups being found in some
>of the above-mentioned categories (e.g. few women investment bankers
>etc) and noting that within class (e.g. poor white women vs poor
>white males etc) should also be examined, I think that typically,
>class is still the fundamental basis of and determinant of degree of
>overall oppression. Of course ranking victims and degree of victimhood
>can be an unconscionable exercise that can serve to obfuscate forms
>and levels of oppression in particular and in general.

There is something missing in this, I believe.  It is not a ranking or
ordering of "levels of oppression" that we should be looking for.  We
live in a capitalist society, we live in a sexist society, we live in
a racist society.  Capitalism is, as is sexism, simply an obscenity.
Marx brilliantly exposed this in his "Pre-Capitalist Economic
Formations" of the _Grundrisse_.  The other "isms" are *also*
fundamentally unjust and prejudiced relationships, which are
*orthogonal* to the capitalist relationship (which is not to say that
capitalists can't exploit racial divisions, etc.).  I don't think it
makes much sense to say that "class is the fundamental basis of and
determinant of degree of overall oppression".  Nor do I see much point
in ranking these things.  We should oppose sexism, because it is a
perversion of a just and equitable relationship between the sexes.  We
should oppose racism because it too is a perversion of just and
equitable racial relations.  Capitalism should be opposed, on entirely
separate (though similar) moral grounds, neither more nor less,
because it is a perversion of the just and equitable relationship
between labor and productive property.


Bill