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 place. 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 youths. 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
crime. Black people currently face even greater
unemployment in the UK than they do in the USA. 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.
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.
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 itself,
and it’s not difficult to imagine a post-capitalist society in which oppressive
gender roles still hold true.
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.
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 & Principle
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 workers.
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.
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.
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.
