A Class Struggle Anarchist Analysis of Privilege Theory - from the Women's Caucus.
Aims and definitions
The purpose of this paper
is to outline a class struggle anarchist analysis of Privilege Theory.
Many of us feel “privilege” is a useful term for discussing oppressions
that go beyond economic class. It can help us to understand how these
oppressions affect our social relations and the intersections of our
struggles within the economic working class. It is written by members
of the women’s caucus of the Anarchist Federation. It does not
represent all our views and is part of an ongoing discussion within the
federation.
What do we mean – and what do we not mean – by privilege? Privilege implies that wherever there is a system of oppression (such as capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity) there is an oppressed group and also a privileged group, who benefit from the oppressions that this system puts in place1.
The privileged group do not have to be active supporters of the system
of oppression, or even aware of it, in order to benefit from it. They
benefit from being viewed as the norm, and providing for their needs
being seen as what is naturally done, while the oppressed group is
considered the “other”, and their needs are “special considerations”.
Sometimes the privileged group benefits from the system in obvious,
material ways, such as when women are expected to do most or all of the
housework, and male partners benefit from their unpaid labour. At other
times the benefits are more subtle and invisible, and involve certain
pressures being taken off a privileged group and focused on others, for
example black and Asian youths being 28% more likely to be stopped and
searched by the police than white youths2.
The point here is not that police harassment doesn’t happen to white
youths, or that being working class or a white European immigrant
doesn’t also mean you’re more likely to face harassment; the point is
that a disproportionate number of black and Asian people are targeted in
comparison to white people, and the result of this is that, if you are
carrying drugs, and you are white, then all other things being equal
you are much more likely to get away with it than if you were black.
In the UK, white people are also less likely to be arrested or jailed,
or to be the victim of a personal crime3. Black people currently face even greater unemployment in the UK than they do in the USA4.
The point of quoting this is not to suggest we want a society in which
people of all races and ethnicities face equal disadvantage – we want
to create a society in which nobody faces these disadvantages.
But part of getting there is acknowledging how systems of oppression
work, which means recognising that, if black and ethnic minority groups
are more likely to face these disadvantages, then by simple maths white
people are less likely to face them, and that means they have
an advantage, a privilege, including the privilege of not needing to be
aware of the extent of the problem.
A privileged group may
also, in some ways, be oppressed by the expectations of the system that
privileges them, for example men under patriarchy are expected to not
show weakness or emotion, and are mistrusted as carers. However, men are
not oppressed by patriarchy for being men, they are oppressed
in these ways because it is necessary in order to maintain women’s
oppression. For women to see themselves as weak, irrational and suited
only to caring roles, they must believe that men are stronger, less
emotional and incapable of caring for those who need it; for these
reasons, men showing weakness, emotion and a capacity for caring labour
are punished by patriarchy for letting the side down and giving women
the opportunity to challenge their oppression.
It makes sense that where
there is an oppressed group, there is a privileged group, because
systems of oppression wouldn’t last long if nobody benefited from them.
It is crucial to understand that members of the privileged group of any
of these systems may also be oppressed by any of the others, and this is
what allows struggles to be divided and revolutionary activity crushed.
We are divided, socially and politically, by a lack of awareness of our
privileges, and how they are used to set our interests against each
other and break our solidarity.
The term “privilege” has a
complex relationship with class struggle, and to understand why, we
need to look at some of the differences and confusions between economic
and social class. Social class describes the cultural identities of
working class, middle class and upper class. These identities, much like
those built on gender or race, are socially constructed, created by a
society based on its prejudices and expectations of people in those
categories. Economic class is different. It describes the economic
working and ruling classes, as defined by Marx. It functions through
capitalism, and is based on the ownership of material resources,
regardless of your personal identity or social status. This is why a
wealthy, knighted capitalist like Alan Sugar can describe himself as a
“working class boy made good”. He is clearly not working class if we
look at it economically, but he clings to that social identity in the
belief that it in some way justifies or excuses the exploitation within
his business empire. He confuses social and economic class in order to
identify himself with an oppressed group (the social working class) and
so deny his own significant privilege (as part of the economic ruling
class). Being part of the ruling class of capitalism makes it impossible
to support struggles against that system. This is because, unlike any
other privileged group, the ruling class are directly responsible for
the very exploitation they would be claiming to oppose.
This doesn't make
economic class a "primary" oppression, or the others "secondary", but it
does mean that resistance in economic class struggle takes different
forms and has slightly different aims to struggles based on cultural
identities. For example, we aim to end capitalism through a revolution
in which the working class seize the means of production from the ruling
class, and create an anarchist communist society in which there is no
ruling class. For the other struggles mentioned, this doesn't quite work
the same way - we can't force men to give up their maleness, or white
people to give up their whiteness, or send them all to the guillotine
and reclaim their power and privilege as if it were a resource that they
were hoarding. Instead we need to take apart and understand the
systems that tend to concentrate power and resources in the hands of the
culturally privileged and question the very concepts of gender,
sexuality, race etc. that are used to build the identities that divide
us.
A large part of the
resentment of the term "privilege" within class struggle movements comes
from trying to make a direct comparison with ruling class privilege,
when this doesn't quite work. Somebody born into a family who owns a
chain of supermarkets or factories can, when they inherit their fortune,
forgo it. They can collectivise their empire and give it to the
workers, go and work in it themselves for the same share of the profits
as everybody else. Capitalists can, if they choose, give up their
privilege. This makes it OK for us to think of them as bad people if
they don't, and justified in taking it from them by force in a
revolutionary situation. Men, white people, straight people, cisgendered
people etc., can't give up their privilege - no matter how much they
may want to. It is forced on them by a system they cannot opt out of, or
choose to stop benefiting from. This comparison with ruling class
privilege makes many feel as if they're being accused of hoarding
something they're not entitled to, and that they're being blamed for
this, or asked to feel guilty or undergo some kind of endless penance to
be given absolution for their privilege. This is not the case. Guilt
isn't useful; awareness and thoughtful action are. If you take nothing
else away from this document, take this: You are not responsible for the system that gives you your privilege, only for how you respond to it.
The privileged (apart from the ruling class) have a vital role to play
in the struggle against the systems that privilege them - it's just not a
leadership role.
Answering objections to privilege
So if they didn’t choose
it and there’s nothing they can do about it, why describe people as
“Privileged”? Isn’t it enough to talk about racism, sexism, homophobia
etc. without having to call white, male and straight people something
that offends them? If it’s just the terminology you object to, be aware
that radical black activists, feminists, queer activists and disabled
activists widely use the term privilege. Oppressed groups need to lead
the struggles to end their oppressions, and that means these oppressed
groups get to define the struggle and the terms we use to talk about it.
It is, on one level, simply not up to class struggle groups made up of a
majority of white males to tell people of colour and women what words
are useful in the struggles against white supremacy and patriarchy. If
you dislike the term but agree with the concept, then it would show
practical solidarity to leave your personal discomfort out of the
argument, accept that the terminology has been chosen, and start using
the same term as those at the forefront of these struggles.
Another common objection
to the concept of privilege is that it makes a cultural status out of
the lack of an oppression. You could say that not facing systematic
prejudice for your skin colour isn’t a privilege, it’s how things should
be for everyone. To face racism is the aberration. To not face it
should be the default experience. The problem is, if not experiencing
oppression is the default experience, then experiencing the oppression
puts you outside the default experience, in a special category, which in
turn makes a lot of the oppression invisible. To talk about privilege
reveals what is normal to those without the oppression, yet cannot be
taken for granted by those with it. To talk about homophobia alone may
reveal the existence of prejudices – stereotypes about how gay men and
lesbian women behave, perhaps, or violence targeted against people for
their sexuality. It’s unusual to find an anarchist who won’t condemn
these things. To talk about straight privilege, however, shows the other
side of the system, the invisible side: what behaviour is considered
“typical” for straight people? There isn’t one – straight isn’t treated
like a sexual category, it is treated like the absence of “gay”. You
don’t have to worry about whether you come across as “too straight” when
you’re going to a job interview, or whether your straight friends will
think you’re denying your straightness if you don’t dress or talk
straight enough, or whether your gay friends will be uncomfortable if
you take them to a straight club, or if they’ll embarrass you by saying
something ignorant about getting hit on by somebody of the opposite sex.
This analysis goes beyond worries about discrimination or prejudice to
the very heart of what we consider normal and neutral, what we consider
different and other, what needs explaining, what’s taken as read – the
prejudices in favour of being straight aren’t recognisable as
prejudices, because they’re built into our very perceptions of what is
the default way to be.
It’s useful to see this,
because when we look at oppressions in isolation, we tend to attribute
them to personal or societal prejudice, a homophobic law that can be
repealed, a racial discrimination that can be legislated against. Alone,
terms like “racism”, “sexism”, “ablism” don’t describe how oppression
is woven into the fabric of a society and a normal part of life rather
than an easily isolated stain on society that can be removed without
trace, leaving the fabric intact.5
Privilege theory is
systematic. It explains why removing prejudice and discrimination isn’t
enough to remove oppression. It shows how society itself needs to be
ordered differently. When people talk about being “colour-blind” in
relation to race, they think it means they’re not racist, but it usually
means that they think they can safely ignore differences of background
and life experience due to race, and expect that the priorities and
world views of everybody should be the same as those of white people,
which they consider to be “normal”. It means they think they don’t have
to listen to people who are trying to explain why a situation is
different for them. They want difference to go away, so that everybody
can be equal, yet by trying to ignore difference they are reinforcing
it. Recognising privilege means recognising that differences of
experience exist which we may not be aware of. It means being willing to
listen when people tell us about how their experience differs from
ours. It means trying to conceive of a new “normal” that we can bring
about through a differently structured society, instead of erasing
experiences that don’t fit into our privileged concept of “normal”.
Intersectionality and Kyriarchy
Kyriarchy is the concept of combined systems of oppression, the idea that capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, theocracy
and other systems that we don’t necessarily have names for, are all
connected, influencing and supporting each other. The word “kyriarchy”
is also a handy verbal shortcut that saves having to list all the
systems of oppression every time you want to explain this concept. It
means everybody who’s fighting oppression of any kind is fighting the
same war, we just fight it on a myriad of different fronts.
Intersectionality
is the idea that we are all privileged by some of these systems and
oppressed by others, and that, because those systems affect one another,
our oppressions and privileges intersect. This means that we each
experience oppression in ways specific to our particular combinations of
class, gender, race, sexuality, disability, age etc. 6 7
Class struggle analyses
tend to mark out capitalism as separate from the other systems in
kyriarchy. As explained above, capitalism operates differently from
systems of oppression based on identity or culture, but it would be too
simplistic to dismiss these oppressions as secondary or as mere aspects
of capitalism. Patriarchy, in particular, existed long before modern
industrial capitalism and, there’s evidence to suggest, before the
invention of money itself8, and it’s not difficult to imagine a post-capitalist society in which oppressive gender roles still hold true9.
As anarchists are opposed to all systems of oppression, we recognise
that fighting capitalism alone is not enough, and that other oppressions
won’t melt away “after the revolution”. If we want a post-revolutionary
society free of all oppression, we need all the oppressed to have an
equal role in creating it, and that means listening to experiences of
oppression that we don’t share and working to understand how each system
operates: in isolation, in relation to capitalism and other systems of
oppression and as part of kyriarchy.10
We're used to talking
about sexism or racism as divisive of the working class. Kyriarchy
allows us to get away from the primacy of class while keeping it very
much in the picture. Just as sexism and racism divide class struggle,
capitalism and racism divide gender struggles, and sexism and capitalism
divide race struggles. All systems of oppression divide the struggles
against all the other systems that they intersect with. This is because
we find our loyalties divided by our own particular combinations of
privilege and oppression, and we prioritise the struggles we see as
primary to the detriment of others, and to the detriment of solidarity.
This is why the Anarchist Federation's 3rd Aim & Principle11
cautions against cross-class alliances, but we should be avoiding
campaigns that forward the cause of any oppressed group against the
interests of any other - not just class. That doesn't mean that every
campaign has to forward the cause of every single struggle equally, but
it does mean that we need to be aware of how our privileges can blind us
to the oppressions we could be ignorantly walking all over in our
campaigns. We have to consider a whole lot more than class struggle when
we think about whether a campaign is moving us forwards or backwards as
anarchists. Being able to analyse and point out how systems of
oppression intersect is vital, as hitting these systems of oppression at
their intersections can be our most effective way of uniting struggles
and building solidarity across a number of ideological fronts.
Some examples:
In the early 1800s, there
were several strikes of male textile workers against women being
employed at their factories because their poorer pay allowed them to
undercut male workers12.
The intersection of capitalism and patriarchy meant that women were
oppressed by capitalists as both workers and women (being exploited for
lower pay than men), and by men as both women and workers (kept in the
domestic sphere, doing even lower paid work). When changing conditions
(mechanisation) made it too difficult to restrict women to their
traditional work roles, unions finally saw reason and campaigned across
the intersection, allowing women to join the unions and campaigning for
their pay to be raised.
From the 70s to the present day, certain strands of radical feminism have refused to accept the validity of trans* struggles, keeping trans women out of women’s spaces (see the controversies over Radfem 2012 and some of the workshops at Women Up North 2012
over their “women born women” policies). The outcome of this is as
above: the most oppressed get the shitty end of both sticks (in this
case cisnormativity and patriarchy),
with feminism, the movement that is supposed to be at the forefront of
fighting the oppression that affects both parties (patriarchy) failing
at one of its sharpest intersections. This also led to the fracturing of
the feminist movement and stagnation of theory through failure to
communicate with trans* activists, whose priorities and struggles have
such a massive crossover with feminism. One positive that’s come out of
these recent examples is the joining together of feminist and trans*
activist groups to challenge the entry policy of Radfem 2012. This is
leading to more communication, solidarity and the possibility of joint
actions between these groups.
The above examples mean
that thinking about our privileges and oppressions is essential for
organising together, for recognising where other struggles intersect
with our own and what our role should be in those situations, where our
experiences will be useful and where they will be disruptive, where we
should be listening carefully and where we can contribute
constructively. Acknowledging privilege in this situation means
acknowledging that it’s not just the responsibility of the oppressed
group to challenge the system that oppresses them, it’s everybody’s
responsibility, because being part of a privileged group doesn’t make
you neutral, it means you’re facing an advantage. That said, when we
join the struggle against our own advantages we need to remember that it
isn’t about duty or guilt or altruism, because all our struggles are
all connected. The more we can make alliances over the oppressions that
have been used to divide us, the more we can unite against the forces
that exploit us all. None of us can do it alone.
The myth of the “Oppression Olympics”
The
parallels that are drawn between the Black and women's movements can
always turn into an 11-plus: who is more exploited? Our purpose here is
not parallels. We are seeking to describe that complex interweaving of
forces which is the working class; we are seeking to break down the
power relations among us on which is based the hierarchical rule of
international capital. For no man can represent us as women any more
than whites can speak about and themselves end the Black experience. Nor
do we seek to convince men of our feminism. Ultimately they will be
"convinced" by our power. We offer them what we offer the most
privileged women: power over their enemies. The price is an end to their
privilege over us.13
To say that somebody has
white privilege isn’t to suggest that they can’t also have a whole host
of other oppressions. To say that somebody suffers oppression by
patriarchy doesn’t mean they can’t also have a lot of other privileges.
There is no points system for working out how privileged or oppressed
you are in relation to somebody else, and no point in trying to do so.
The only way that privilege or oppression makes your contributions to a
struggle more or less valid is through that struggle's relevance to your
lived experience.
A black, disabled working
class lesbian may not necessarily have had a harder life than a white,
able-bodied working class straight cis-man, but she will have a much
greater understanding of the intersections between class, race,
disability, gender and sexuality. The point isn’t that, as the most
oppressed in the room, she should lead the discussion, it’s that her
experience gives her insights he won’t have on the relevant points of
struggle, the demands that will be most effective, the bosses who
represent the biggest problem, the best places and times to hold
meetings or how to phrase a callout for a mass meeting so that it will
appeal to a wider range of people, ways of dealing with issues that will
very probably not occur to anybody whose oppression is along fewer
intersections. He should be listening to her, not because she is more
oppressed than him (though she may well be), but because it is vital to
the struggle that she is heard, and because the prejudices that society
has conditioned into us, and that still affect the most socially aware
of us, continue to make it more difficult for her to be heard, for us to
hear her.
Some would argue that
governments, public bodies and corporations have been known to use
arguments like these to put forward or promote particular people into
positions of power or responsibility, either as a well-meaning attempt
to ensure that oppressed groups are represented or as a cynical exercise
in tokenism to improve their public image. This serves the state and
capital by encouraging people to believe that they are represented, and
that their most effective opportunities for change will come through
supporting or petitioning these representatives. This is what we mean
by cross-class alliances in the 3rd A&P, and obviously we oppose the
idea that, for instance, a woman Prime Minister, will be likely to do
anything more for working class women than a male Prime Minister will do
for working class men. It should be remembered that privilege
theory is not a movement in itself but an analysis used by a diverse
range of movements, liberal and radical, reformist and revolutionary.
By the same token, the rhetoric of solidarity and class unity is used
by leftists to gain power for themselves, even as we use those same
concepts to fight the power structures they use. The fact that some
people will use the idea of privilege to promote themselves as community
leaders and reformist electoral candidates doesn't mean that that's the
core reasoning or inevitable outcome of privilege theory. For us, as
class struggle anarchists, the identities imposed on us by kyriarchy and
the politics that go with them are about uniting in struggle against
all oppression, not entrenching social constructs, congratulating
ourselves on how aware we are, claiming special rights according to our
background or biology, and certainly not creating ranked hierarchies of
the most oppressed to put forward for tokenistic positions of power.
In the AF, we already
acknowledge in our Aims and Principles the necessity of autonomous
struggle for people in oppressed groups; but rather than analyse why
this is necessary, we only warn against cross-class alliances within
their struggles. The unspoken reason why it is necessary for them to
organise independently is privilege. Any reason you can think of why it
might be necessary, is down to privilege: the possible presence of
abusers, the potential of experiences of oppression being misunderstood,
mistrusted, dismissed, or requiring a huge amount of explanation before
they are accepted and the meeting can move onto actions around them,
even internalised feelings of inferiority are triggered by our own
awareness of the presence of members of the privileged group. This may
not be their fault, but it is due to the existence of systems that
privilege them. The reason we need to organise autonomously is that we
need to be free of the presence of privilege to speak freely. After
speaking freely, we can identify and work to change the conditions that
prevented us from doing so before – breaking down the influence of those
systems on ourselves and lessening the privilege of others in their
relations with us – but the speaking freely has to come first.
To equate talk of
“privilege” with liberalism, electoralism and cross-class struggles is
to deny oppressed groups the space and the language to identify their
experiences of oppression and so effectively organise against the
systems that oppress them. If we acknowledge that these organising
spaces are necessary, and that it is possible for them to function
without engaging in liberalism and cross-class struggles, then we must
acknowledge that privilege theory does not, of necessity, lead to
liberalism and cross-class struggles. It may do so when it is used by
liberals and reformists, but not when used by revolutionary class
struggle anarchists. Privilege theory doesn't come with compulsory
liberalism any more than the idea of class struggle comes with
compulsory Leninism.
The class struggle analysis of privilege
This may all seem, at
first, to make class struggle just one struggle among many, but the
unique way in which ruling class privilege operates provides an
overarching context for all the other systems. While any system can be
used as a “context” for any other, depending on which intersections
we’re looking at, capitalism is particularly important because those
privileged within it have overt control over resources rather than just a
default cultural status of normalcy. They are necessarily active
oppressors, and cannot be passive or unwilling recipients of the
benefits of others’ oppression. 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.
This doesn’t make
economic class a primary oppression, or the others secondary, because
our oppressions and privileges intersect. 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. Economic class is not so much the primary struggle as the
all-encompassing struggle. Issues that only face queer people in the
ruling class (such as a member of an aristocratic family having to
remain in the closet and marry for the sake of the family line) are not
secondary to our concerns, but completely irrelevant, because they are
among the few oppressions that truly will melt away after the
revolution, when there is no ruling class to enforce them on itself. We
may condemn racism, sexism, homophobia and general snobbery shown by
members of the ruling class to one another, but we don’t have common
cause in struggle with those suffering these, even those with whom we
share a cultural identity, because they remain our direct and active
oppressors.
When we try to apply this
across other intersections than economic class, we don’t see concerns
that are irrelevant to all but the privileged group, but we do find that
the limited perspective of privileged activists gives campaigns an
overly narrow focus. For instance, overwhelmingly white, middle class
feminist organisations of the 60s and 70s have been criticised by women
of colour and disabled women for focusing solely on the legalisation of
abortion at a time when Puerto-Rican women and disabled women faced
forced sterilisation, and many women lacked access to essential services
during pregnancy and childbirth. Although the availability of abortion
certainly wasn’t irrelevant to these women, the campaigns failed to also
consider the affordability of abortion, and completely ignored the
concerns of women being denied the right to have a child. Most
feminist groups now tend to talk about “reproductive rights” rather than
“abortion rights”, and demand free or affordable family planning
services that include abortion, contraception, sexual health screening,
antenatal and post-natal care, issues relevant to women of all
backgrounds.14
We have to challenge
ourselves to look out for campaigns that, due to the privilege of those
who initiate them, lack awareness of how an issue differs across
intersections. We need to broaden out our own campaigns to include the
perspectives of all those affected by the issues we cover. This will
allow us to bring more issues together, gather greater solidarity, fight
more oppressions and build a movement that can challenge the whole of
kyriarchy, which is the only way to ever defeat any part of it,
including capitalism.
1 “A
common form of blindness to privilege is that women and people of
color are often described as being treated unequally, but men and
whites are not. This…is logically impossible. Unequal simply means ‘not
equal,’ which describes both those who receive less than their fair
share and those who receive more. But there can’t be a short end of the
stick without a long end, because it’s the longness of the long end
that makes the short end short. To pretend otherwise makes privilege
and those who receive it invisible.” Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power and Difference (2006).
2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16552489, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/12/police-stop-and-search-black-people (statistics not available for Scotland)
5 “While
it is important that individuals work to transform their
consciousness, striving to be anti-racist, it is important for us to
remember that the struggle to end white supremacy is a struggle to
change a system, a structure…For our efforts to end white supremacy to
be truly effective, individual struggle to change consciousness must be
fundamentally linked to collective effort to transform those
structures that reinforce and perpetuate white supremacy.” bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism, 1995
7 Intersectionality
as a term and an idea has been developed by, among others: Kimberle
Williams Crenshaw, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins,
Leslie McCall, if you are interested in further reading.
8 Graeber’s
‘Debt: The First 5,000 Years’ suggests that young women were used in
some pre-money societies as an early form of currency or debt tally.
9 See the chapter with all the beautiful and sexually available house-keeping-cleaning-serving women in William Morris’ utopia News from Nowhere.
10 One anarchist analysis of intersectionality: http://libcom.org/library/refusing-waitanarchism- intersectionality.
11
“We believe that fighting systems of oppression that divide the
working class, such as racism and sexism, is essential to class
struggle. Anarchist-Communism cannot be achieved while these
inequalities still exist. In order to be effective in our various
struggles against oppression, both within society and within the
working class, we at times need to organise independently as people who
are oppressed according to gender, sexuality, ethnicity or ability. We
do this as working class people, as cross-class movements hide real
class differences and achieve little for us. Full emancipation cannot
be achieved without the abolition of capitalism.” http://www.afed.org.uk/organisation/aims-and-principles.html
12 See Chapter 7 of The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class by Anna Clark.
13 Selma James, ‘Sex, Race and Class’ 1975
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