(en) Canada, Common Cause Mortar #2 - With Allies Like These: Reflections on Privilege Reductionism

Over the course of the last several decades, anti-oppression politics have risen to a 
position of immense influence on activist discourse in North America. Anti-oppression 
workshops and reading groups, privilege and oppression checklists and guidelines, and 
countless books, online blogs and articles make regular appearances in anarchist 
organizing and discussion. Enjoying a relatively hegemonic position in Left conversation, 
anti-oppression politics have come to occupy the position of a sacred object?something 
that expresses and reinforces particular values, but does not easily lend itself to 
critical reflection. Indeed, it is common for those who question the operating and 
implications of anti-oppression politics to be accused of refusing to seriously address 
oppression in general. A political framework should be constantly reflected upon and 
evaluated?it is a tool that should serve our struggles and not vice versa.

Against this backdrop, this article aims to critically engage with the dominant ideas and 
practices of anti-oppression politics. We define anti-oppression politics as a related 
group of analyses and practices that seeks to address inequalities that materially, 
psychologically, and socially exist in society through education and personal 
transformation. While there is value in some aspects of anti-oppression politics, they are 
not without severe limitations. Anti-oppression politics obfuscates the structural 
operations of power and promotes a liberal project of inclusion that is necessarily at 
odds with the struggle to build a collective force capable of fundamentally transforming 
society. It is our contention that anti-oppression furthers a politics of inclusion as a 
poor substitute for a politics of revolution. The dominant practices of anti-oppression 
further an approach to struggle whose logical conclusion is the absorption of those deemed 
oppressed into the dominant order, but not to the eradication and transformation of the 
institutional foundations of oppression.

I. Historical Context

The Defeat of Liberation and the Rise of anti-oppression

In the Global North, the 1960s and 1970s marked a high point in social movement struggle. 
Today, when revolution can seem impossible, it is difficult to imagine a time when 
militants spoke of ?the revolution? not cynically, but as something that was happening, or 
would happen in the near future. Subdued using old-fashioned strategies of incarceration, 
murder, sexual assault, espionage and surveillance, blacklisting, and other forms of 
direct physical, economical, and emotional violence, beginning in the 1980s, the Left 
found itself entombed in a sophisticated system of control and co-option. In describing 
this, our goal is to illustrate how anti-oppression politics are neither radical, nor 
revolutionary. In fact, the prominence of anti-oppression in activist circles is both a 
symptom of, and contributing factor to, the ongoing victory of the ruling elite over our 
movements.

Dylan Rodriguez (2007), in The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, elaborates this reality:

Indeed, the US state learned from its encounters with the crest of radical and 
revolutionary liberationist movements of the 1960s and early 1970s that endless, 
spectacular exercises of military and police repression against activists of colour on the 
domestic front could potentially provoke broader local and global support for such 
struggles?it was in part because they were so dramatically subjected to violent and racist 
US state repression that Black, Native American, Puerto Rican, and other domestic 
liberationists were seen by significant sectors of the US and the international public as 
legitimate freedom fighters, whose survival of the racist State pivoted on the 
mobilization of a global political solidarity. On the other hand, the US state has found 
in its coalition with the Non-Profit Industrial Complex a far less spectacular, generally 
demilitarized, and still highly effective apparatus of political discipline and repression 
that (to this point) has not provoked a significant critical mass of opposition or 
political outrage.

Strategies previously employed by State-Capital interests to dispose of a fighting trade 
union movement were modified and extended to control the heterogeneous New Left movements 
of the 1960s and 1970s. Rather than being crushed by outright military force, elements of 
the resistance movements are subsumed into the inner workings of State and Capital, and 
ultimately come to reinforce the overarching structures of exploitation and oppression. In 
the 1950s in Canada, what is known as ?labour peace? was declared by a subsection of the 
labour movement, Capital and the State. The process of establishing labour peace involved 
some key elements which could be seen as analogous to the pacification of other movements.

The process begins with legitimizing a section of the antagonistic movement, and propping 
them up as leaders or representatives of the whole. This representation requires funding 
and a bureaucracy to maintain itself. In the case of labour peace, funding was guaranteed 
by the Rand Formula, a policy which requires employers whose workers are unionized to 
collect dues and hand them over to the union, which serves to put the union in a dependent 
position to the legislative framework, and therefore the State. The maintenance of power 
and outside legitimacy by those placed on the top of the hierarchy is contingent on their 
discipline of the rank and file.

Finally, other systems of domination are mobilized to keep everyone in check?for example, 
white union workers enforcing a racial hierarchy among their co-workers.

The One-Two Punch:Destroy and Replace

While the co-option of revolutionary movements was no new insight on the part of the 
ruling class, the scale of this project was novel. Understanding that every new generation 
would bring with it a "new" awareness that revolutionary change is desirable, the ruling 
class sought to create infrastructure not just to contain existing movements, but to 
redirect the energies of future ones. Destroy existing movements by way of violence, 
infiltration, etc., and replace all aspects of people's movements with institutions that 
are in line with the interests of the ruling class. For our purposes, it is on this latter 
point that we focus.

In the 1980s, substantial inroads were made for new areas where people?s organizations 
previously enjoyed a monopoly: the creation of revolutionary theory, the internal movement 
and popular education by which that theory is shared and elaborated upon, the provision of 
services to marginalized people and the creation of progressive social spaces. In these 
four areas, liberalism posturing as an emancipatory politics has thoroughly washed the 
revolutionary potential away.

Development of Analysis and Theory

While analysis and theory were historically produced by radicals in the context of 
struggle, this task has largely been shifted into the realm of academia. Over the course 
of the last several decades, entire bodies of literature and corresponding vocabularies 
have been developed, turning radical theory and analysis into a highly specialized 
undertaking. Coming out of the 1970s, many liberation movements sought to create homes for 
themselves within the university through the creation of ?Progressive Studies? departments 
(eg. Gender Studies, Critical Race Studies, Disability Studies, Queer Studies, Labour 
Studies, etc.).

At the time, some activists thought that obtaining space within universities was an 
important goal because of its potential to organize collectively, and because of the large 
amount of resources within the university. However, in hindsight, the channeling of 
resistance into the universities facilitated the destruction of the grassroots movements, 
and created a space in which people could build careers off of the backs of past 
struggles. Despite ostensibly radical beginnings, Progressive Studies function to hinder 
(rather than further) the interests of revolutionary movements.

The gravitation of would-be revolutionaries to the university for an ?education?, where 
radical theory is subject to bourgeois pressures more than an accountability to humanity, 
harnesses our radical traditions and erases collective memory of struggle. There exists a 
fundamental misunderstanding (to be generous regarding motivation) of a radical education: 
that the classroom can serve as a foundation for transformative politics, rather than an 
adjunct to learning and development focused on real-world struggle.

?Research? conducted by students on marginalized constituencies, which is the closest 
thing to grassroots work that may be seen, is often based on such exploitative assumptions 
and power relationships that value may only occasionally be derived from it. The 
demobilizing effects of the alienation of theory from action cannot here be overstated.

In the creation of Progressive Studies, the passing of stories, information, theory, and 
practice was very smartly removed from organizations where work was happening. The 
blossoming of the historical study of people's movements by academia in the past thirty 
years has had some key effects. Those with the best access to university have the best 
access to people's history. Simply having access to university, being competent working 
within it, and having an interest in people's history, is enough to facilitate access to 
the history.

Therefore, there is no correlation between access to history, the framing and development 
of that history, and being engaged in struggle oneself. Lacking intimate knowledge of the 
context of organizing, students of people's history are rarely capable of understanding 
the material they study. Therefore, we have noticed that historians who consider 
themselves ?radicals? because they have an interest in liberation stories are often 
stumped when it comes to extracting the value from their work.

While people's history was a people's pursuit in the 1960s and 1970s, its movement into 
the university effectively removed people's access and contributions to it. In this sense, 
history is back to being written by the victors ? the liberal bourgeoisie, and those who 
are able to adapt their studies to their criteria for inclusion. Despite this, it manages 
to maintain a veneer of subversiveness, which is misleading and unhelpful.

Popular and movement education

Popular education has been almost entirely abandoned by the Left, from radical to 
reformist. Here we focus on internal movement education, and how it is done.

Movement education continues in the form of mentoring, book-fairs, workshops, literature, 
online forums, and formal training programs. This stands in contrast to the pedagogy 
employed by successful movements in the past and contemporarily: education of individual 
militants is best done in the midst of work, struggle, and action.

James P Garrett worked extensively on the creation of Black Studies at San Francisco State 
University, a program which was exemplary in the creation of Progressive Studies 
departments around North America. Interviewed by Ibram Rogers (2009) in Remembering the 
Black Campus Movement: An Oral History Interview with James P. Garrett, he recounts his 
own political education, beginning when he ?got involved in the sit-in movements. We 
demonstrated and I was arrested seven times that summer and I was hooked. My life 
changed... by the time I got to [San Francisco] State I was ready. I was trained and 
prepared. I came there as a veteran of the movement.?

Here we contrast the militant who arrives at university "trained" (not in manners, but in 
the manipulation of power for radical ends) and then proceeds to organize, instead of 
arriving hoping to be educated.

Describing the goals of the creation of Black Studies as the redirection of university 
resources ?to benefit or ameliorate the Black community," he is critical of modern 
careerists ?who consolidated the attire of Black consciousness? and ?owe a tremendous 
amount ? they don?t pay ? but they owe a tremendous amount to the sacrifices of people who 
lost their hands their fingers, their eyes, people who spent time in prison who were 
killed?students.? Pragmatically, Garret is not wedded to the continuation of the 
institution he helped to create, but hopes younger militants will ?develop a worldview 
about what education should be in the twenty-first century for young Blacks and then move 
to organize around that.?

Even in forms of movement education which were later depicted as individualized, such as 
Consciousness Raising (CR), people actually emphasized the collective creation and 
distribution of knowledge by those affected. CR, borrowed by the Women's Movement from 
Chinese revolutionaries, was a self-education process in groups of women who articulated 
the truthful realities of their lives to one another, thereby creating a new knowledge of 
their collective situation.

Of course, the term consciousness raising is now used more to describe awareness of issues 
faced by oneself or others. The original meaning of the term was not an individual 
intellectual exercise or imposition. Instead, CR was a deliberate tactic whose goal was to 
provide a tool with which people could raise themselves from the destitutions in which 
they found themselves to become militants with agency, by fostering a class-consciousness, 
based on their experiences (in this example) as women.

The development of class-consciousness, history and identity by a vast collective, in 
contrast to representatives of given groups who are seen as having authority to speak is 
perhaps subtle, but important. We see most often in anti-oppression an emphasis on the latter.

In researching this article, we found The Combahee River Collective Statement (1978) to be 
one of the most frequently cited documents in the origin stories of anti-oppression. Often 
mentioned in the first paragraphs of modern writing and workshop outlines, it was not 
obvious to us that this document had in fact been read by most authors.

The Combahee Collective takes great pains to describe a process by which its members, all 
Black Lesbians, educated themselves, and got them to the conclusion that they should 
continue the creation of a Black Lesbian consciousness and analysis, rather than 
individualizing insights regarding their condition, as is done contemporarily. The 
Collective describes the effect that the group-based generation of knowledge had on their 
development:

There is also undeniably a personal genesis for Black Feminism, that is, the political 
realization that comes from the seemingly personal experiences of individual Black women's 
lives. Black feminists and many more Black women who do not define themselves as feminists 
have all experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day existence ? 
Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before becoming conscious of 
the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule, and most importantly, feminism, the 
political analysis and practice that we women use to struggle against our oppression.

Practitioners of anti-oppression have been heard to say, ?a white person cannot be an 
expert on racism.? In practice, especially in combination with the Non-Profit Industrial 
Complex (NPIC), where paid jobs increasingly demand a university education, a degree in 
any Progressive Study functions to make viable the prominence/importance/leadership of 
individuals within movements where they would otherwise not be central. Using academic 
credentials, an "ally" can obtain employment at an agency, where services are provided to 
a constituency in which the worker may or (more often) may not have "lived experience." 
This helps to propagate systems of domination within marginalized communities by entitling 
non-members to important roles in their maintenance. Alisa Bierria (2007), in The 
Revolution Will Not Be Funded, gives the following example of the progression in the ways 
education is viewed:

Organizers often understood themselves as belonging to a mutual community of women who had 
suffered from patriarchal violence. Seattle Rape Relief, for example, began from a 
speak-out, a mutual sharing of stories about the experience of abuse. As the movement 
developed and became increasingly professionalized, workers were expected to be not 
"battered women" but experts with a master's degree in social work.

The Provision of Services

In the past, many revolutionary groups provided services to those who were unable to 
obtain them elsewhere due to their marginalization. Examples of this would be the 
development of shelters by radical feminists for women being subjected to violence, and 
the Black Panther Party's free breakfast program. These services, provided by grassroots 
organizers, posed important political questions: Why do women need shelters? Why do Black 
children need breakfast? Then they proposed responses: patriarchy, white supremacy, and 
capitalism.

Service provision was a valuable method for the recruitment, training, and retention of 
militants. It served as a form of ?prefigurative practice? via direct action, as a way to 
develop organizing skills, and a venue to sharpen revolutionary analysis. Also, every 
action taken by an organization or social movement is also a form of outreach and 
recruitment. Different forms of action attract people with different goals. Symbolic 
action may attract those interested in representation. Lobbying attracts those who are 
invested in the power of the State. The direct service provision served to attract high 
quality new recruits who were interested in immediate results, but as they were 
constructed with revolutionary goals in mind, served as a way to demonstrate the viability 
of alternative economic and social arrangements.

Social interactions

In recent years we have seen an emphasis placed on the role of anti-oppressive practice in 
regulating social interactions on the left. As manners go, anti-oppression is not a bad 
try at a moral code that seeks not to brutalize and disempower each other. Perhaps this is 
the best that can be said about it. However, it does not in and of itself constitute 
anything other than a bare minimum standard of behaviour, certainly not a politics.

Decades ago, in yet another work that has been left unread by those who invoke it, the 
value of such interventions were questioned by Carol Hanisch (1970) in The Personal is 
Political. Discussing CR she states, ?personal problems are political problems. There are 
no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective 
solution.? Soon after, Hanisch dismisses lifestylism as without political merit:

The groups that I have been in have also not gotten into ?alternative lifestyles? or what 
it means to be a ?liberated? woman. We came early to the conclusion that all alternatives 
are bad under present conditions... There is no ?more liberated? way? there are only bad 
alternatives.

Reading and Waiting for the Anti-Globalization Movement

When the Anti-Globalization Movement saw a groundswell of activism, action and organizing, 
the capacities of the NPIC and Progressive Studies to contain potential revolutionary 
forces were put to the test.

Hungry to learn more about the world and how to change it, fresh activists turned to the 
remnants of the last generation of high struggle. Only instead of finding the history in 
their neighbourhoods, grandparents, political organizations and prisons, they found them 
in books written by university-educated people, themselves overwhelmingly disengaged from 
struggle, published in academic journals and university-affiliated presses.

Infused in this purportedly radical press was the ideology of anti-oppression. Explicitly 
claiming heritage in the 1960s and 1970s liberation movements on the one hand, 
anti-oppression theory on the other hand discourages direct connection with these 
movements. Referencing and critiquing works of past generations while not making those 
works directly available to new activists, academics and their allies on the one hand 
stood on the backs of (often still-living) organizers of decades gone, while dismissing 
their work as a whole as "problematic."

Black Power can be dismissed as anti-feminist and homophobic. Labour struggles are racist, 
colonialist, and patriarchal. Radical feminism is anti-trans*, anti-sex, and sometimes 
homophobic. Other feminisms are pro-capitalist, and white-centred. Gay liberation was 
dominated by white, affluent men. Components of all movements sought to integrate 
themselves in political power structures and Capital. In order for an idea to be worth 
considering, the generator of the idea must be politically pure. And since the purity has 
to do with strict adherence to a code of speech and conduct which was developed and is 
learned primarily through universities in the past twenty years, which are accessible only 
to a portion of workers (and in departments which are desirable to far, far fewer than 
even have access) the pool of people who are able to speak with any authority is quite 
small. Interestingly, it does not include many on-the-ground organizers, past and present, 
but is dominated by those who have access or desire to pursue a formal education in 
Progressive Studies.

The Anti-Globalization Movement, as it became known, thus came to serve as the means by 
which anti-oppression politics would come to imbed itself in the theory and activity of 
the Left, the activist
milieu, etc. Now, a decade and a half later it is held as the hegemonic, almost innate, 
orientation of most of the Left?radical, progressive, reformist, or otherwise. We now will 
look at what this entails in day-to-day practice, and what we understand the implications 
of this to be.

II. Practices

In order to situate our critique, it is useful to consider some of the common practices 
associated with anti-oppression politics. Although a homogenous grouping of practices does 
not exist, there are dominant trends that can be observed. There are common customs and 
rules that constitute the lived practices of anti-oppression politics. The descriptions we 
provide here are not exhaustive but representative.

Workshops, Workshops & More Workshops!

Workshops are a foundational component of anti-oppression politics. Anti-oppression 
workshops are mandatory in many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and activist groups. 
Workshops attempt to provide an overview of the ways in which power operates in society, 
outline different forms of oppression, and encourage participants to reflect on the ways 
in which they experience privilege. Group exercises such as "Step Forward, Step Back" and 
"Mainstream/Margin" are used to draw on personal experiences to highlight the different 
ways in which oppression and privilege affect participants.

In Pursuit of Safe(r) Spaces

Safe or "safer" space policies are a standard outcome of anti-oppression politics. 
Organizations and groups incorporate into their mission statements or basis of unity 
documents a policy that expresses their commitment to anti-oppression via the construction 
of safe spaces. These statements present a laundry list of oppressions (racism, sexism, 
homophobia, "classism," ableism, ageism, etc.), and cover guidelines for appropriate 
behaviour. Common features of these policies include using inclusive language (i.e. avoid 
gendered language), being respectful towards others, and the provision of "active" listeners.

Call-out Culture & "Working on Your Shit"

The "checking of privilege" is a fundamental component of anti-oppression practice.

The analogy of ?unpacking the knapsack? first used by Peggy McIntosch in White Privilege: 
Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack has been widely adopted by anti-oppression advocates, who 
centralize recognizing and thinking about privilege. Part of this practice includes the 
use of the qualifier?people preface statements with an acknowledgement of the ways in 
which they are privileged ( i.e. ?As a white able-bodied settler who is university 
educated??). If someone is not adequately "checking their privilege," the retaliation is 
"the call-out"?an individual or group is informed (often publicly) that they need to "work 
on their shit" in order to realize the ways in which they benefit, and are complicit in x 
oppression.

The "Good Ally"

The identity of ally (as someone who primarily identifies as engaging in struggle in 
support of others) is another cornerstone of anti-oppression politics. According to a 
popular anti-oppression guide, an ally is ??a person who supports marginalized, silenced, 
or less privileged groups.? The fundamental pursuit of someone with privilege is the quest 
to become a "good ally." It is considered fundamental to take leadership (usually 
unquestionable) from representatives of oppressed groups and act as an ally to their 
struggles. Innumerable lists, guides, and workshops have been produced to outline the 
steps and necessary requirements for being an ally. The individual focus of the idea of 
?ally? in contrast to the collective response of ?solidarity? which used to occupy a 
similar place is symptomatic of the general denigration of collective action by 
anti-oppression politics.

III. Implications

Championing Individual Over Collective Action

While anti-oppression theory acknowledges that power relations operate at both the micro 
and macro level, it places a disproportionate focus on the level of individual 
interactions. Emphasis is placed on individual conduct and personal improvement, with 
little attention given to challenging oppression at a structural level. Widely used by 
activist groups and NGOs, the document Principles and Practices of Anti-Oppression is a 
telling example of this trend. The statement describes the operation of oppression and 
outlines steps for challenging the unequal distribution of power solely in terms of 
individual behaviour. It puts forth the following suggestions for confronting oppression: 
?Keep space open for anti-oppression discussion? Be conscious of how your language may 
perpetuate oppression?promote anti-oppression in everything you do?don?t feel guilty, feel 
motivated."

In a similar vein, the popular blog Black Girl Dangerous in a recent post 4 Ways to Push 
Back Against Your Privilege offers a simple four-step model. The first step is to make the 
choice to relinquish power?if you are in a position of power, relinquish this position. 
Step two is "just don?t go"??If you have access to something and you recognize that you 
have it partly because of privilege, opt out of it?. The third step is to shut up?if you 
are an individual of privilege who is committed to anti-oppression you will ??sit the hell 
down and shut up.? And finally, step four is to be careful with the identities that you 
claim. The strategy for ending oppression is articulated as a matter of addressing power 
dynamics between individuals in a group context, but within the confines of the State and 
Capitalism.

For the privileged subject, struggle is presented as a matter of personal growth and 
development?the act of striving to be the best non-oppressive person that you can be. An 
entire industry is built on providing resources, guides, and trainings to help people 
learn to challenge oppression by means of "checking their privilege." The underlining 
premise of this approach is the idea that privilege can be willed away. At best this 
orientation is ineffective, and at worst it can actually work to recenter those who occupy 
positions of privilege at the expense of wider political struggle. Andrea Smith reflecting 
on her experiences with anti-oppression workshops, describes this issue:

These workshops had a bit of a self-help orientation to them: ?I am so and so, and I have 
x privilege.? It was never quite clear what the point of these confessions were?It did not 
appear that these individual confessions actually led to any political projects to 
dismantle the structures of domination that enabled their privilege. Rather, the 
confession became the political project themselves.

Resulting in what Smith terms the "ally industrial complex," the approach of challenging 
oppression via the confession of one?s privilege leads to a valorization of the individual 
actions of a "confessing subject". Acknowledging the ways in which structures of 
oppression constitute who we are and how we experience the world through the allocation of 
privilege is a potentially worthwhile endeavour. However, it is not in and of itself 
politically productive or transformative.

Privilege is a matter of power. It equates benefits, including access to resources and 
positions of influence, and can be considered in terms of both psychological or emotional 
benefits, as well as economic or material benefits. It is much more than personal 
behaviours, interactions, and language, and can neither be wished, nor confessed away. The 
social division of wealth and the conditions under which we live and work shape our 
existence, and cannot be transformed through individual actions. We must organize together 
to challenge the material infrastructure that accumulates power (one result of which is 
privilege). Anything less leads to privilege reductionism?the reduction of complex systems 
of oppression whose structural basis is material and institutional to a mere matter of 
individual interactions and personal behaviours.

Relentless Articulation of Difference

As a component of anti-oppression politics, intersectionality accounts for the complexity 
of domination by outlining the various ways in which different forms of oppression 
intersect and reproduce each other. Rooted in feminist discussions of the 1970s and 1980s 
that sought to problematize the notion of universal "womanhood," intersectionality 
provides a framework for conceptualizing the ways in which different ?positionalities? 
(eg. gender, sexuality, race, class, ability, etc.) shape people?s subjective experiences, 
as well as material realities. Patricia Hill Collins describes intersectionality as an 
??analysis claiming that systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, 
nation, and age form mutually constructing features of social organization.? In sum, 
intersectionality provides a lens through which we can view people?s social locations as 
mutually constitutive and tied to systemic inequalities.

Intersectionality is often evoked in a manner that isolates and reifies social categories 
without adequately drawing attention to common ground. Crucial to its analysis is an 
emphasis on a politics of difference?it is asserted that our identities and social 
locations necessarily differentiate us from those who do not share those identities and 
social locations. So, for example, a working class queer woman will not have the same 
experiences and by extension, the same interests as an affluent woman who is straight. 
Similarly, a cis-man of colour will not have the same experiences and by extension the 
same interests as a trans* man of colour, and so on and so forth. Within this framework, 
difference is the fundamental unit of analysis and that which proceeds and defines 
identity. This practice works to isolate and sever connections between people in that it 
places all of its emphasis on differentiation.

There are seemingly endless combinations of identities that can be articulated. However, 
these articulations of difference do not necessarily get at the root of the problem. As 
Collins argues: ??Quite simply, difference is less a problem for me than racism, class 
exploitation and gender oppression. Conceptualizing these systems of oppression as 
difference obfuscates the power relations and material inequalities that constitute 
oppression."

It is absolutely true that our social locations shape our experiences, and may influence 
our politics. Acknowledging difference is important, but it is not enough. It can obscure 
the functioning of oppression, and act as a barrier to collective struggle. The 
experiences of a female migrant who works as a live-in caregiver will not be the same as a 
male worker who has citizenship and works in a unionized office. These differences are 
substantial and should not be ignored. However, in focusing only on difference we lose 
sight of the fact that both are exploited under capitalism, and have a shared interest in 
organizing to challenge Capital. To be clear, this is not to say that divisions can be put 
aside and dealt with ?after the revolution?, but to highlight the importance of finding 
common ground as a basis to bridge difference and organize collectively to challenge 
oppression. In the words of Sherene Razack: ?speaking about difference?is not going to 
start the revolution.? Moving beyond a politics of difference, we need an oppositional 
politics that seeks to transform structural relations of power.

The Subcultural Ghetto and Lifestylism

The culture of anti-oppression politics lends itself to the creation and maintenance of 
insular activist circles. A so-called "radical community" ? consisting of collective 
houses, activist spaces, book-fairs, etc. ? premised on anti-oppression politics fashions 
itself as a refuge from the oppressive relations and interactions of the outside world. 
This notion of ?community?, along with anti-oppression politics? intense focus on 
individual and micro personal interactions, disciplined by "call-outs" and privilege 
checking, allows for the politicization of a range of trivial lifestyle choices. This 
leads to a bizarre process in which everything from bicycles to gardens to knitting are 
accepted as radical activity.

Call-out culture and the fallacy of community accountability creates a disciplinary 
atmosphere in which people must adhere to a specific etiquette. Spaces then become 
accessible only to those who are familiar with, and able to express themselves with the 
proper language and adhere to the dominant customs. Participation in the discourse which 
shapes and directs this language and customs is mostly up to those who are able to spend 
too much time debating on activist blogs, or who are academics or professionals well 
versed in the dialect. As mentioned previously, the containment of radical discourse to 
the university further insulates the "activist bubble" and subcultural ghetto.

In addition to creating spaces that are alienating to those outside of our milieu, 
anti-oppression discourse, call-out culture, and the related "communities" leads activists 
to perceive themselves as an "enlightened" section of the class (largely composed of 
academics, students, professionals, etc. who have worked on their shit and checked their 
privilege) who are tasked with acting as missionaries to the ignorant and unclean masses. 
This anarchist separatist orientation is problematic for any who believe in the 
possibility of mass liberatory social movements that are capable of actually transforming 
society.

One example of this orientation is a recent tumblr blog maintained by Toronto activists 
entitled Colonialism Ain't Fashionable. The blog encourages activists to use their smart 
phones to snap photos of people wearing Hudson Bay jackets in public and submit them. 
Hudson Bay is a Canadian retailer which played a historically significant role in 
colonialism, and the jacket in particular is seen by activists as an example of cultural 
appropriation. Photos are then published in a strange act of attempted public shaming, 
justified with some high-minded language about "challenging colonialism at a cultural 
level," or "sparking discussion." What we actually see on display here is the arrogant 
glee with which those within the activist bubble shake their finger at those outside it.

The retreat to subcultural bohemian enclaves and activist bubbles acknowledges that 
revolutionary change is impossible, and as a substitute offers a counterfeit new society 
in the here and now. We understand that such a proposition is appealing given the 
day-to-day indignity and suffering that is life under our current conditions, but time and 
time again we have seen these experiments implode on themselves. Capitalism simply does 
not offer a way out and we must face this reality as the rest of the class that we are a 
part of faces it everyday. No amount of call-outs or privilege checking will make us into 
individuals untainted by the violent social relationships that permeate our reality.

Privilege, Militancy & Implicit Pacifism

As a pacifying feature of anti-oppression politics, the assertion is frequently made that 
militancy is a luxury for the privileged. In the context of a meeting in which a militant 
action is proposed, proponents of anti-oppression politics will often critique the 
proposal on the basis that only those with x or y privilege can participate in such an 
action. Due to the increased risks associated with militant action, it is argued that 
confrontational politics are largely the domain of those who occupy a social location of 
privilege, mainly cis-men. This line of argument is then used to criticize confrontational 
actions as exclusionary and to gender such actions as masculine (i.e. the framing of a 
tactic as "manarchist"). For example, the Autonomous Workers? Group notes that black bloc 
actions in their city of Portland are often critiqued on the basis of furthering a 
??mentality of masculine, white privilege.? In a similar vein, another article critiques 
property destruction and illegal strike action, stating:

There are many problems with this. Some people cannot get arrested (immigration status or 
compromise of professional licensing)?Other issues that warrant consideration are people 
who may have had traumatic experiences around violence or the police (or both). People 
with health issues (mental or physical) may also not be able to participate in these kind 
actions?

Noting that it is not feasible for everyone to participate in high-risk actions, the 
article concludes that peaceful protest provides an opportunity for anyone, regardless of 
privilege, to participate. The end result of this logic is an aversion to risk that breeds 
an implicit pacifism.

The avoidance of risk is a logical impossibility. To engage in revolutionary struggle is 
necessarily to put yourself at risk. To be against Capital, the State, colonialism, white 
supremacy, patriarchy, etc., is to declare yourself an enemy of these systems. Risk, 
discomfort, conflict are unavoidable. The history and ongoing reality of resistance 
movements is radically unsafe. Furthermore, for a lot of people simply going through their 
daily life is not safe. Marginalized communities aren?t safe going about their daily lives 
because of institutions of oppression?police, prisons, individual, and systemic violence, 
etc. To ignore this reality is to abandon revolutionary organizing. Jackie Wang notes: 
??removing all elements of risk and danger reinforces a politics of reformism that just 
reproduces the existing social order.?

If we accept that a) confrontation is relegated to privileged social positions, and that 
b) inclusivity is an uncompromising imperative, it follows that pacifism is the only 
acceptable approach to struggle. There exists an essential contradiction. Within the 
framework of anti-oppression politics it is only the most oppressed who are considered to 
be legitimate actors in struggle (the role of the privileged is the ally). Yet, it is 
argued that militancy is for the privileged alone. Thus, the only option available is 
passive resistance. The framing of confrontational forms of resistance as belonging to the 
realm of privilege acts to relegate necessary tools ? actions, tactics, strategies, etc. ? 
to a domain that is inaccessible. It re-inscribes, rather than challenges the unequal 
distribution of power in society, acts to erase militant histories in which oppressed 
peoples have engaged in violent resistance, and further thrusts a role of hapless victim 
onto those who are oppressed. There is nothing liberatory about this.

IV. Moving Forward

We have identified the current regime of anti-oppression politics as inadequate in 
providing a way forward in the task of developing a revolutionary movement capable of 
meaningfully challenging systems of oppression and exploitation. Not only are these 
politics inadequate, but ultimately regressive and counter productive. Attempts to address 
the inadequacies of anti-oppression are often met with accusations of class reductionism. 
While we acknowledge that class reductionism exists as an incorrect political orientation, 
the accusation of such can be used as a strawman attack on those who transgress the 
dominant discourse within anarchist/radical circles.

Reducing the Class

As an actual political orientation, class reductionism can be largely described as a 
tendency on the Left which prioritizes the economic struggle in the workplace as the 
primary terrain of revolutionary or progressive action. Often this will go further to 
fetishize a particular segment of workplace struggle, namely that of blue collar, 
industrial workers. Whether or not it is implicitly stated, the belief is held that the 
struggle against other oppressions ? white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, ableism, etc. ? 
are incidental to the class struggle, to be engaged in as secondary, or that they are 
simply prejudices concocted by the ruling class to be dealt with "after the revolution."

On the other hand, we have the proponents of anti-oppression politics attempting to 
amalgamate ?class? as another oppression alongside the rest, which "intersect" with one 
another at various times and places in a person's life. Here we are presented with the 
grotesque notion of "classism"?the result of an attempt by anti-oppression theory to 
reconcile inadequate politics with the entirety of capitalist social relations. The School 
Of the Americas Watch Anti-Oppression Toolkit section on classism offers a prime example:

The stereotype is that poor and working class people are unintelligent, inarticulate, and 
"overly emotional." A good ally (a non-working class committed supporter) will contradict 
these messages by soliciting the knowledge and histories of poor working class people, 
being a thoughtful listener, trying to understand what is being said?

Putting aside for a second the conflation of ?poor? and ?working class? which indicates 
this writer's lack of insight into the matter they seek to educate about, there is truth 
in the descriptions of the ?stereotype?.

We are reminded of the 2010 movie, Made in Daginham, where Eddie O'Grady attempts to 
ingratiate himself to his wife by pointing out that he does not beat her or their 
children. Frustrated by her husband's lack of consideration of her struggle, Rita replies, 
?That is as it should be?You don't go on the drink, do ya? You don't gamble, you join in 
with the kids, you don't knock us about. Oh, lucky me. For Christ's sake, Eddie, that's as 
it should be! You try and understand that. Rights, not privileges. It's that easy. It 
really bloody is.?

Similarly, for all the back-patting going on with regards to ?allies? most of what is 
advised and done constitutes nothing more than a minimal standard of behaviour. We do not 
feel respected when someone in a position of power ?consults? us before making a decision 
regarding our lives, no matter how attentive and probing they may be. We see this emphasis 
on listening to rather than creating-with as uncomradely and tokenizing.

In their essay Insurrections at the Intersections anarchists Jen Rogue and Abbey Volcano 
address so-called classism by writing:

Since everyone experiences these identities differently, many theorists writing on 
intersectionality have referred to something called ?classism? to complement racism and 
sexism. This can lead to the gravely confused notion that class oppression needs to be 
rectified by rich people treating poor people ?nicer? while still maintaining class 
society. This analysis treats class differences as though they are simply cultural 
differences. In turn, this leads toward the limited strategy of ?respecting diversity? [?] 
This argument precludes a class struggle analysis which views capitalism and class society 
as institutions and enemies of freedom. We don?t wish to ?get along? under capitalism by 
abolishing snobbery and class elitism.

Both of these instances of reductionism point to a fundamental misunderstanding of class 
and class struggle, as well as to the limits of intersectionality in understanding social 
relationships under capitalism. The class reductionism we should be critical of is that 
which attempts to reduce the class to a mere section of it (whether it is simply the 
poorest, or the most blue collar), and that which attempts to hold up the interests of 
that section as that of the entire class. The reality is that the majority of the planet 
is working class, and we must recognize that the material obstacles within our class, and 
the manner by which they reproduce themselves must be attacked as a matter of necessity. 
Not because we are good allies or because we want to check privileges or because we want 
to reduce everything to "class first!" but because we are fucking revolutionaries and we 
have to.

The (Re)production of Division

If our intention is not strictly limited to maintaining activist enclaves, we are required 
to look for the means to understand the development of identity and division under 
capitalism. In Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici examines the position of women 
throughout the rise of capitalism. With an emphasis on the incredibly violent subjugation 
necessary, witch burnings being an especially stark example, Federici outlines the 
historical process that fostered the patriarchal social relationships which uphold, and 
define capitalism.

This process is one which ran alongside the period of primitive accumulation in the 
transition from feudalism to capitalism. The enclosure of the commons by a fledgling 
bourgeoisie and the imposition of private property was the material basis for the 
proletarianization of populations?without the land base necessary for subsistence, 
peasants became workers who must sell their labour for a wage in order to survive. 
Primitive accumulation is the subsumption of life into the rubric of Capital ? land into 
property, time into wages, things into commodities ? and by extension the transformation 
of social relationships necessary to maintain and reproduce these categories. The 
subjugation of women to patriarchal capitalism was a crucial element of this process. The 
construction of the nuclear family, the assignment of domestic and reproductive labour as 
"women's work", and the subsequent devaluation and erasure of that labour, were historic 
tasks achieved through the development of capitalism. Attempting to understand patriarchy 
as limited to individual attitudes or actions, or somehow isolated from capitalism 
(regardless of patriarchal or gendered divisions of labour in pre-capitalist history) is 
therefore impossible. Speaking to the accomplishment of the implementation of these new 
social relationships, Federici writes:

? in the new organization of work every woman (other than those privatized by bourgeois 
men) became a communal good, for once women's activities were defined as non-work, women's 
labor began to appear as a natural resource, available to all, no less than the air we 
breathe or the water we drink.

The social, economic, and political position of women was thus defined under capitalism. 
This new reality meant that the class struggle, that is the struggle for the emancipation 
of the working class, takes on a particular character whether or not this is recognized by 
its would-be partisans. Federici further explains:

With their expulsion from the crafts and the devaluation of reproductive labor, a new 
patriarchal order was constructed, reducing women to a double dependence: on employers and 
on men.

This ?double dependence? thus implies that the oppression of women under capitalism is not 
something that is incidental, nor something that can be addressed in isolation. As having 
particular features and the product of (ongoing) historic development, attacking 
patriarchy demands that we attack the conditions which allow the perpetuation of the 
social relationships by which it is constituted. As class struggle anarchists then we 
identify the class struggle as one against this "double dependence" as we struggle against 
the conditions which are necessary for capitalism to reproduce itself.

Struggling at the Barricades, Struggling at Home

In 2006, the Mexican state of Oaxaca became engulfed in a popular uprising that lasted 
several months. What began as an annual teachers strike developed into a popular conflict. 
Barucha Calamity Peller's Women in Uprising: The Oaxaca Commune, the State, and 
Reproductive Labour looks at the revolt and the particular role women played. The essay 
shows us both what the disruption of the reproduction of patriarchal social relations can 
look like and how the reinforcement of those relations from within the movement ultimately 
contributed to its limitation and defeat.

On April 1st, 2006, a march of the Cacerolas (later imitated in Quebec and across Canada) 
consisting of over ten thousand women, initiated the takeover of TV station Canal Neuve. 
Several hundred women from the march occupied the building, which was repurposed as a 
communication hub and resource to the ongoing struggle. Peller writes:

Besides transmitting, producing daily programming, and holding workshops, long hours were 
spent during nightly patrols of the transmitter and defensive barricades in which the 
women of Canal Nueve spoke to each other while huddled around small fires drinking coffee 
to stay awake. The dialogue and solidarity that emerged between the women was perhaps one 
of the most potent results of the takeover. What was before ?private? and ?personal? 
became a site for resistance. It was during these conversations that women for the first 
time experienced a space not dominated by men, in the absence of the market, in which they 
could organize freely and relate experiences, and talk to other women. This is where the 
idea of women?s autonomy emerged in Oaxaca, and it was to this formation of women, where 
there was no exploitation of their labor, no dominance of the market or the family, that 
the women would refer throughout the struggle.

What we find important here is the implication that the creation of new, anti-capitalist, 
anti-patriarchal relations requires the creation of the material basis to do so. The 
creation of such a basis requires the negation and disruption of the conditions that 
produce the old ways of interacting. Here, the occupation of the Canal Neuve could be 
understood as what a revolutionary women's movement in embryo might look like?where the 
conditions were created for the creation of a new subjectivity and the destruction of the 
former identity.

In the case of Oaxaca, patriarchy still persisted within the movement. Women who attempted 
to challenge traditional gender roles were subjected to domestic abuse and/or forced to 
continue to take on the full burden of reproductive labour.

Rather than rely on limited class reductionist understandings, either limiting itself to 
the factory floor or sociological definitions of "proles," we must strive for a class 
struggle which directs us towards the abolition of the divisions within our class that are 
necessary to uphold capitalism. We find the example of the Oaxaca uprising useful insofar 
as it provides us with a glimpse of both the undoing of oppressive social relationships, 
and the defense of those relationships in a period of intensified struggle.

While this section has focused primarily on gendered division and oppression under 
capitalism, our intention is to emphasize that these categories and identities are 
historically constructed, and have a material basis to their continued reproduction. We 
see the process of their destruction as one that is necessarily part of the class 
struggle. To paraphrase Marx, this is the process of moving towards a class that is 
conscious of itself, and able to act in its own interest?a class for itself.

V. Conclusion

It is our belief that the ways in which humans are exploited, assaulted, pitted against 
one another, and robbed of individual and collective agency must (and furthermore, can) be 
overcome and replaced with a liberatory existence. While some see anti-oppression politics 
as contributing to this endeavour, we see these politics as a substantial hindrance to 
revolutionary organizing. We would like to challenge our comrades and fellow travellers to 
do better than this half-hearted liberal project that facilitates the reduction of complex 
social and economic problems to interpersonal dynamics and individual privileges. Our 
struggle is collective, and so too must be our tools and analysis.