{"id":37,"date":"2025-03-16T12:11:42","date_gmt":"2025-03-16T16:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/campagnerosa.quebec\/?p=37"},"modified":"2025-03-22T08:37:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-22T12:37:39","slug":"a-pillar-of-strength-anti-oppression-struggles-and-the-revolutionary-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/campagnerosa.quebec\/en\/a-pillar-of-strength-anti-oppression-struggles-and-the-revolutionary-process\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cA Pillar of Strength\u201d \u2013 Anti-oppression struggles and the revolutionary process"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Reflections on Marxism and Oppression <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

By Laura Fitzgerald<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe must lead the struggle of the politically oppressed and unfree female sex into the broad course of proletarian liberation, just as we do that of oppressed peoples and nationalities. The demand for women to enjoy complete political equality before the law and in daily life will become a point of departure and a pillar of strength for the proletarian struggle<\/em> to win political power… This demand for women\u2019s equality signifies much more than sweeping away received prejudices, customs, and practices; much more than sweeping away male privilege. It becomes a struggle against bourgeois class rule<\/em> and the bourgeois class state, and merges with the onward drive of the proletariat to win state power.\u201d1<\/sup> (our emphasis)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a quote from trailblazing socialist feminist Clara Zetkin, a giant of the Marxist movement who played a vital role in Germany and internationally in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The 1921 language might be archaic but the prescient kernel contained in it is as current and urgent as can be. Let\u2019s parse it in more contemporary terms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zetkin argues for socialists to strive to lead <\/em>the feminist struggle that she attributes strategic importance to. Placing feminist demands seamlessly inside the working-class movement, Zetkin sees them flowing into \u201ca struggle against bourgeois class rule\u201d \u2013 a socialist struggle against class society, capitalism, and the capitalist ruling class. Moreover, this process adds value and impetus to the working-class revolutionary process itself. Taking this approach will prove to be a \u201cpillar of strength\u201d for the working-class movement. Zetkin does not mince her words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marxism is often falsely purported as not reckoning with different forms of oppression; that it is innately \u2018class reductionist\u2019 \u2013 privileging class exploitation over other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism and LGBTQIAphobia, whose ravages it at least diminishes, if not ignores. This is a misconception as we will go on to show, irrespective of all the litany of mistakes of many left traditions on the question. In fact, this very organisation *(The Socialist Party of Ireland) has written an analysis<\/a> about deficiencies in our own tradition vis a vis fighting gender oppression, with a view to rectifying the same.2<\/sup> While the most egregious and consistently poor approaches to oppression are located in left reformism, conservative trade union bureaucracies, and the Stalinist tradition \u2013 it\u2019s not as if there aren\u2019t still self-professed Trotskyist groups ranting and raving about \u2018identity politics\u2019 in a fashion that sounds like a right-wing talking point that continue to give Marxism a bad name<\/a>.3<\/sup> In this vulgar, spurious version of Marxism, \u2018identity politics\u2019 is the key tool of division used by the ruling class, rather than sexism, racism, transphobia etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marxism is a philosophy that optimistically and humanistically advocates for a united, global, working-class struggle against capitalism \u2013 a self-emancipatory vision and perspective for the exploited and oppressed themselves to rise up against capitalist class rule. It advocates for the urgency and necessity of building a determined struggle that can not only take society\u2019s wealth, resources and industry out of private hands, but also goes up against the capitalist state that protects the status quo. Via this democratic movement of the masses from below, an alternative to the state has to be actively built. Such a revolutionary perspective for a rupture with capitalism \u2013 centring the unique power<\/em> of a united working-class movement imbued with socialist politics \u2013 are at Marxism\u2019s core. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This revolutionary process, and this united working-class socialist movement, are thoroughly and inextricably intertwined with the anti-oppression struggle. The revolutionary process unfolding without the latter is unthinkable \u2013 an impossibility. The radicalisation, the social ferment, the adding of value and impetus to the working-class movement \u2013 \u00e0 la Zetkin above \u2013 that flow from struggles against oppression are part and parcel <\/em>of the revolutionary process. Oppression is a tool of capitalist rule. Therefore it has to be challenged as part of any movement that is genuinely fighting capitalism. Moreover, the working-class movement cannot be fought in the workplace alone if it\u2019s to successfully challenge and defeat the capitalist class and system \u2013 and in order for it to be able challenge for power as a whole it must be able to take up all facets of social life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Marxist approach to fighting oppression is never about being any less <\/em>feminist or less <\/em>anti-racist in a deference to class oppression and exploitation. It\u2019s about strengthening anti-oppression struggles in every way and simultaneously rooting them in a perspective that can win true, full, and lasting freedom. This piece will attempt, 1) to summarise some hallmarks of a Marxist approach to fighting oppression; 2) to illuminate in brief the problems with a liberal anti-oppression strategy; and 3) to rebut the idea that Marxism is class reductionist, relegating anti-oppression demands and struggles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Hallmarks of a Marxist approach to combating oppression<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    We will try to boil down a Marxist approach to fighting oppression to the following morsels: a) an analysis of where oppression is rooted; b) recognition of the interconnectedness of oppression and exploitation; c) self-emancipation; and d) always conscious, always combative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A. Possessing an analysis of where oppression is rooted and a laser focus on advancing the struggle against the same <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In short, oppression in all its guises is rooted in and reproduced by capitalism: an innately patriarchal, gender-binary promoting, racist, ecologically-destructive and oppressive system. Gender- and sexuality-based oppression have their roots in the beginnings of the first class-divided societies. Racism has a much shorter life-span in history, with it being innately tied up with the development of capitalism and imperialism itself. While capitalism initially developed in Europe, endless expansion in search of new markets, resources and supplies of labour was in the nature of the system. This meant the colonisation of Africa and Asia, the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade. Such horrors were perpetrated in the interests of profit but also necessitated a categorisation and stratification of people based on the new criteria of race (a concept which of course has no biological basis). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Racism today remains a powerful ideological tool to divide and rule working class people and to justify the ongoing super-exploitation of the global south. Migrants and people of colour in Europe and North America are subjected to systemic state repression and are concentrated in the most exploitative sectors of the economy, all to the benefit of the system. These, and other forms of oppression have been deepened and reproduced by capitalism in an intricate web of ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A Marxist approach to fighting oppression at all times must retain a laser focus on oppression\u2019s roots in capitalism, a system based on the systemic exploitation of workers and the poor \u2013 the vast majority of society \u2013 and the environment, in the pursuit of profits for a tiny elite. In this way, it means possessing a crystal clear view on the type of socialist struggle and change needed to end oppression; it means consciously imbuing this understanding into every act; it means understanding who are our enemies \u2013 the capitalist class and its system, including the states that uphold its rule, and who are our potential allies \u2013 the exploited and oppressed of the world who have a common interest in uprooting the system that breeds oppression. In building our anti-oppression struggles, we may \u2018march separately, but strike together\u2019 \u2013 seeking to build the widest possible movement against any and all forms of injustice and oppression, but with a clear remit to cohere and win leadership for an approach and programme rooted in anti-capitalism, socialism, and working-class unity in struggle to achieve the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    B. Recognising the interconnectedness of oppression and exploitation <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As Marx\u2019s penetrating analysis of capitalism laid bare, worker exploitation is the central building block of capitalism. Profits are the unpaid labour of the working class. The capitalist compensates the worker just enough for their labour power to reproduce their labour power. The worker\u2019s labour power, however, produces more value than it costs \u2013 a surplus value that the capitalist commandeers. In this way, the source of capitalist profits is the ability to compensate workers less than the full value of their labour, i.e. to exploit them. This exploitation is an innate contradiction of capitalism, underpinning the injustice and inequality at the core of the system. But it also means that workers are naturally infused with potential power. An organised movement of workers has special power to strike at the heart of the system that sustains class rule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Behind and integrated into this central contradiction of capitalism is the gendered and patriarchal inequality of capitalism. The system requires the gender binary and backward gender roles, including because of the unpaid and underpaid reproductive labour that reproduces the labour force for capitalism, carried out mainly by working-class women. This work takes place often within the confines of capitalism\u2019s patriarchal family structure, and also within the paid labour force \u2013 notably in health and education, female dominated sectors. Oxfam has estimated the value of the unpaid work of women and girls worldwide as $10.8 trillion<\/a> per annum, over twice the size of the global tech industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Without the reproduction of the labour force there is no profit to be made. In this way, gender oppression and the imposition of a backward gender binary is not just floating about untethered in and around the system, it is inextricably tied into it \u2013 in this instance because of the workings of the interconnected spheres of production and reproduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Similarly, the extraction from and exploitation of nature that is constant under capitalism \u2013 with its rapacious need for expansion of profits no matter the cost \u2013 is a current and active reproducer of a sort of neo-colonialism<\/a> on a global level. The refugee crisis resulting from climate change is another active and present driver of capitalism\u2019s racist inequalities. Climate refugees could reach 1.2 billion by 2050 under current trends. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Oppression \u2013 a systemic subjugation \u2013 of course intersects and intertwines with exploitation. Nurses and care workers are underpaid and undervalued in a gendered fashion \u2013 in this instance because of the overall low value attached to what\u2019s seen as \u201cfeminine\u201d caring work under patriarchal capitalism. They are also exploited as workers, intensely so under pandemic conditions. Similarly, migrant workers regularly face more intensified exploitation as workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    These examples are just a glimpse into the myriad intertwining of oppression and exploitation. Furthermore, the radicalising effect of oppression on those who face it, along with the class division that the majority of those with oppressed identities also face, creates an intensified radicalisation that can propel these sectors of the working class and poor to the forefront of struggle and politicisation. They can be among the first to draw more far-reaching, radical and revolutionary conclusions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    C. Self-Emancipation<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cThe truth, not fully recognised even by those anxious to do good to woman, is that she, like the labour-classes, is in an oppressed condition; that her position, like theirs, is one of merciless degradation. Women are the creatures of an organised tyranny of men, as the workers are the creatures of an organised tyranny of idlers. Even where this much is grasped, we must never be weary of insisting on the non-understanding that for women, as for the labouring classes, no solution of the difficulties and problems that present themselves is really possible in the present condition of society. All that is done, heralded with no matter what flourish of trumpets, is palliative, not remedial. Both the oppressed classes, women and the immediate producers, must understand that their emancipation will come from themselves<\/em>.\u201d<\/em> 4<\/sup>\u2013  Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling<\/a> (our emphasis)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl and trailblazing revolutionary socialist who, in fighting for her father\u2019s politics with every fibre of her being, sought to weave feminist demands and struggles into the early workers\u2019 and socialist movement. A beloved and legendary working-class leader in her own right \u2013 an organiser of dockworkers, gas workers, engineers and miners \u2013 who addressed the first ever May Day demonstration in London in 1890, Eleanor Marx\u2019s radicalisation and political thinking were formed as a child and adolescent following, writing about and campaigning against the colonial oppression of the Irish people by the British ruling class. Writing here as early as 1886 alongside her life partner Edward Aveling (more on him later), she not only recognises the patriarchal nature of the capitalist mode of production, she also explicitly advocates for self-emancipation for women themselves \u2013 and the same applies for any of those peoples facing a particular type of systemic subjugation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Those who themselves suffer any particular form of oppression have a central role in fighting against the same. They understand what it means to be subjected to it more than anyone. Furthermore, getting active in any collective struggle is a radicalising and politicising experience: often transforming awareness about the systematic nature of oppression; dispelling illusions in the system; and illustrating in a living way the necessity for determined struggle and solidarity in order to enact any change. This can propel those people into a leading role in the working-class movement as a whole \u2013 \u00e0 la the women and queer people on the frontline against the Iranian dictatorship in the \u2018Woman, Life, Freedom\u2019 social revolt sparked in September 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Oppressed people getting active to fight their own oppression in struggle is innately a positive for the whole working class, including those that do not experience that form of oppression directly. Misogyny, racism, LGBTQphobia etc. are odious in themselves, have deleterious, sometimes deadly consequences for those affected by them. As well as being knitted into and reproduced in a myriad of ways by the capitalist system itself, they are also essential tools of the capitalist ruling class that needs division amongst the exploited and oppressed in order to maintain its rule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As well as winning increased rights, collective anti-oppression movements fight divisions, prejudices, and backward ideas amongst the working class that damage solidarity. The Black Lives Matter explosion of multi-racial mass protests onto the streets around the world after the murder of George Floyd in the US on 25 May 2020, that had iterations across the island of Ireland, give an insight into this. It was the first time that widespread anti-racist protests here were led by Black people, especially Black young people. The depth of racism and its brutal toll were highlighted by those raising their voices. The reality of being \u2018Black and Irish\u2019, and the illustration of the deep hurt and alienation felt by those who are asked every day, \u2018Where are you from? No, where are you really from?\u2019, because of widespread racist prejudice, was brought into public discussion in a way that could never have happened without it being led primarily by those experiencing the oppression. It had a profound impact, and absolutely raised the consciousness of many working-class and young people from white backgrounds to strive to be more anti-racist. In the US, the June 2020 BLM revolt demonstrably delivered a leap forward in public attitudes \u2013 achieving a 17% nationwide increase in support for the movement in the two weeks of protests since George Floyd\u2019s killing was publicised.5<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In Poland during the pro-choice feminist Black Protests of 2016 \u2013 polls showed increased support for abortion in the context of this defiant struggle, in an upwards trend of support in the years since despite new devastating attacks from the right wing.6<\/sup> An oppressed group rising up as agents in struggle, demanding their rights, often fighting tooth and nail against the same capitalist governments attacking working-class living standards and rights broadly, of course has a profound impact on all the exploited and oppressed, including those who don\u2019t experience that oppression directly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    An oppressed group getting active in struggle can sometimes win increased rights even if it doesn\u2019t spark a whole lot of wider solidarity. Usually, the active striking forward in struggle of one oppressed group will evoke solidarity from other layers \u2013 evidenced in so many ways in the 2010s feminist and LGBTQ rights waves, from the movements in Ireland that won marriage equality and abortion in popular votes; to the abortion green wave in Argentina that provoked active support from the working class of all genders; to the movement against femicide that saw workers in a predominantly male car manufacturing workforce walking out against femicide in the Spanish state in 2021.7<\/sup> Such solidarity deepens and strengthens the struggle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Moreover, to take oppression up at the roots this solidarity is not only useful it is essential. \u201cBoth\u2026women and the immediate producers, must understand that their emancipation will come from themselves\u201d, says Eleanor Marx. The working class, united, politically conscious and organised as socialist, has special power to uproot the private ownership of wealth at the heart of capitalism \u2013 channelling this power and entwining it with every single revolt at the multiple fault lines of the system is the only way a serious, let alone successful, challenge to the system that perpetuates oppression can be mounted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    D. Always conscious, always combative <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There\u2019s no space for determinism or fatalism within a serious fighting Marxist approach. Its whole essence hinges around the exploited and oppressed taking their destiny into their own hands in a conscious struggle. This conscious struggle involves those organised as Marxists to always be seeking ways for any oppressed or exploited section to strike forward in struggle; to aid this struggle where possible to win victories; to deepen the active solidarity of other exploited and oppressed sections towards this struggle, enhancing its reach and simultaneously raising class consciousness; and to always seek to fill the burst of fresh air that any collective struggle creates for those active within it, with an increase in those who are conscious and organised as part of the revolutionary socialist movement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The \u201calways conscious, always combative\u201d approach, not only pertains to the question of striking forward in struggle wherever possible; it also pertains to a conscious struggle within the broad working-class movement, and even within our own political organisations of the socialist left, to raise consciousness and challenge every vestige of prejudice, which is poisonous to solidarity. In fact, this is something we need to pay extra attention to at this historical juncture \u2013 when the feminist and LGBTQIA wave that soared from the 2010s into the 2020s is facing such a right-wing backlash. The attacks on the gains of MeToo; the vicious anti-trans offensive \u2013 all need to be met with a robust rebuttal, including within the trade union movement, and all left movements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This battle within the working-class movement was something Lenin spoke about in conversation with Clara Zetkin in 1920:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cUnfortunately, we may still say of many of our comrades, \u2018Scratch the Communist and a Philistine appears.\u2019 To be sure, you have to scratch the sensitive spots, such as their mentality regarding women\u2026We must root out the old slave-owner\u2019s point of view, both in the Party and among the masses. That is one of our political tasks, a task just as urgently necessary as the formation of a staff composed of comrades, men and women, with thorough theoretical and practical training for Party work among working women.\u201d8<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As far back as 1902, in the seminal What Is To Be Done?, <\/em>Lenin made it clear what class consciousness, as distinct from \u2018trade union consciousness\u2019, really means. In raising class consciousness, Lenin advocates for socialist worker activists to be \u2018tribunes of the people\u2019 who speak up against all injustice meted out by the system \u2013 no matter what class is affected \u2013 in an effort to truly agitate against the system and build working-class agency, consciousness and power.9<\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The socialist project is no narrow one. So it follows that any narrow view of what constitutes working-class consciousness and struggle \u2013 for example a view that limits the same to either solely or primarily questions of wages and conditions on a workplace level, or any version of an economistic approach \u2013 cannot ever cut it. A social revolution is the ultimate act of human creativity, forged in struggle in an intense, kinetic moment in time, full of promise and potential and hope. Given this, how could a Marxist organisation worth its salt eschew questions of oppression, including by failing to seek to disabuse sections of the working class of the prejudices and oppressive practices that they have absorbed via the prevailing capitalist culture they\u2019ve been conditioned by, if that organisation was truly basing itself on the type of revolutionary rupture with the system that\u2019s objectively needed from the point of view of humanity and the planet? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Any mealy-mouthed approach on oppression would be blatantly incongruent with the type of change needed, with the type of change that is at Marxism\u2019s core, and in fact would betray a lack of perspective for the same. Similarly, piecemeal offerings or zig-zagging in one\u2019s commitment to the anti-oppression fight will not suffice. This is no abstract question. Observe the \u2018Woman, Life, Freedom\u2019 revolt in Iran: a revolutionary movement sparked by an act of patriarchal state violence in September 2022, infused in every way with the demand for women and queer people\u2019s freedom, and gripping the whole working class and political and social life. It is a living, breathing, current example of the importance of questions of oppression in winning leadership for a programme for socialist change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The \u201calways conscious, always combative\u201d approach was evident in the practice of women Marxists in the movement historically who embodied this struggle in every way, including establishing international structures and conferences to organise and push a working-class feminism as a vital component of the wider working-class movement. The First International Conference of Socialist Women took place as early as 1907, alongside a conference of the Socialist International, founding an international movement of socialist women. Out of its 1910 conference came the proposal to establish International Women\u2019s Day, now 8 March. This activity on behalf of Marxist women was often met with passivity, indifference and sometimes hostility by many of their conservative male comrades. A resolution passed at the 1907 Women\u2019s Conference explicitly took this up, stating that: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cBy and large, where the interests and rights of women were concerned, the [Second] International\u2019s decisions were carried out only to the degree that organised socialist women were able to force the proletarian organisations in each country to do so.\u201d10<\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Here we see how the self-liberatory element of a Marxist approach to fighting oppression is entwined with the \u201calways conscious, always combative\u201d aspect. It\u2019s worth noting that many of the Marxist women who took on this struggle were also key advocates for maintaining a revolutionary, anti-imperialist stance, as the increasingly reformist trajectory of so many of the leading lights of the Second International saw them descend into brutal betrayal, including failure to oppose the imperialism of the First World War. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    1. Problems with a liberal approach to fighting oppression <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      A liberal feminism or anti-racism is defined by an approach that works within the parameters of the capitalist system. Any approach to fighting oppression that is ultimately liberal is incapable of ending that oppression, and in the process often tends to accommodate and compromise with the oppressive status quo in a way that may subvert the demands and needs of oppressed groupings in struggle. It fails to see the significance of capitalism\u2019s class divide \u2013 either from the point of view of the multifaceted impediments facing those from oppressed identities who are working class, or from the point of view of recognising the power of united working-class struggle in striking back against the capitalist class and system. A liberal commitment to personal freedom is often defined by an individualistic outlook, devoid of or countering a view of rooting oppression in capitalism and class society. A liberal approach also tends to eschew collective \u2018struggle from below\u2019, which is the way oppression is most effectively challenged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Clara Zetkin, whose words comprised our opening salvo, excoriated the \u201cbourgeois women\u2019s rights\u201d feminists \u2013 the elite class women who did not break in any significant way with the men of their class, and the system of class rule. She was particularly sharp when their demands or approach clashed with the interests of working-class and poor women, and the working class and poor of all genders. In an example of where she clashed with the bourgeois feminists, and incidentally also with the increasingly conservative and reformist SPD leadership, Zetkin refused to co-sign a petition that meekly sought an increase in democratic rights to assemble for women, in a fashion that ignored the demands of the whole labour and socialist movement for wider change in this regard. She likened their tame appeal, dripping with pusillanimity, to the mindset of bourgeois feminists similarly conditioned by their elite bubble who had issued an odious petition a year earlier advocating for the criminalisation of sex workers.11<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      It\u2019s patently obvious that there\u2019s a class divide within feminist, anti-racist and other anti-oppression concerns. The most overtly class antagonistic approaches include a nakedly capitalist feminism, or capitalist anti-racism, anti-LGBTQphobia, etc. that hails (usually limited) increased diversity in the boardroom of giant corporations which perpetuate oppression, exploitation and ecological catastrophe in their operations; or representation in capitalist governments that attack working-class livelihoods, or use \u2018feminist\u2019 arguments to justify imperialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      We can increasingly add a bourgeois transphobic \u2018feminism\u2019 to this list. The \u2018Terf-ism\u2019 of JK Rowling et al. \u2013 herself personally a super-rich, probably billionaire \u2013 is increasingly about reinforcing the backward gender binary, something very much needed by the capitalist system, as it aligns with further and further far-right forces that seek to crush the feminist and LGBTQ wave, and have migrants and people of colour in their crosshairs. All of these approaches are akin to attempts by shills for the status quo to co-opt the language of, or aspects of, issues raised by anti-oppression campaigns and movements. In this way, they are a class conscious attempt by ruling class interests to neuter or quell anti-oppression movements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      However, within the active anti-oppression movements themselves, albeit with many contradictions, liberal approaches to fighting oppression inevitably abound, including amongst many activists and organisations who may also have positive attributes, who may even make anti-capitalist pronouncements from time to time. Here are some of these qualities in brief:<\/p>\n\n\n\n