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)
3 http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/statistics/mojstats/stats-race-cjs-2010.pdf
4 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/13/black-people-unemployed-britain-us
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
6
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-settingthere-
is/
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
14 Links to these examples are on these posts at the Angry Black Woman blog:
http://theangryblackwoman.com/2010/02/26/reproductive-justice-linkspam-a-starting-point/,
http://theangryblackwoman.com/2008/04/14/poc-and-the-politics-of-medical-research/
Bron : a-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten