[PEN-L:11428] Re: Class and Oppression

["James Michael Craven" <CRAVJM@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 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

Response Jim C: I agree 100%. All forms of oppression should be
resisted and victims are victims regardless of the basis of their
victimization. There is one problem however, when people from various
oppressed groups think that the answer to the end of their oppression
is to become like or even one of the oppressors. Also from the
standpoint of building united fronts against all forms of oppression,
what happens when some of the oppressed see or show interst only in
their own oppression and not the forms/levels of oppression suffered
by others.

                              Jim Craven

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