Intersectionality
Intersectionality is a method of analysis often used by some people on the Left to discuss the different forms of oppression that people face in their daily lives or lived experiences. It is used to look at how these different oppressions intersect and how they impact on people. Intersectionality emerged from the black feminist movement because of a very important analysis of how black women faced both racism and sexism and even the latter in different ways to white women. Proponents of Intersectionality focused on the oppression of women as defined by racism.
In 1974 a new organisation of black lesbian feminists was born in Boston, Massachusetts in America called The Combahee River Collective. In April 1977 (three years before they disbanded) they wrote their official statement to explain their politics. The concepts defined in this statement are widely quoted by proponents of Intersectionality today even though the term ‘Intersectionality’ isn’t used in it. In fact the term itself only began to be used widely in the early 1990s.
The formation of the Combahee River Collective comes from a really positive perspective. This was a group of some of the most oppressed women in America coming together, discussing ideas and figuring out their own liberation. This was in direct response to the sexism of the male-dominated civil rights and black nationalist movements and the often-implicit racism of the white-dominated women’s movement. While they did not necessarily feel that they were completely cast aside by these movements they did think that often their own issues were not taken up and other issues were prioritised.
They say in their statement:
Above all else, our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else’s but because of our need as human persons for autonomy. This may seem so obvious as to sound simplistic, but it is apparent that no other ostensibly progressive movement has ever considered our specific oppression as a priority or worked seriously for the ending of that oppression ... We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism. [3: The
Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977 (pdf, ~300kt)]
This is a good starting point. The fact that, in a deeply racist and sexist society, they bravely demand an end to sexism within their movement is fantastic. However while it is important for us to recognise that this group and others like them came a very good place, Marxists should have some clear criticisms of this document. Clearly their oppression is real and clearly they are victims of both racism and sexism (as well as capitalism) but does their analysis advance their position? Can their emphasis assist in their struggle against oppression?
First of all, while they identify as socialists and discuss economic inequality, there seems to be no real class analysis. Instead they opt for discussing things in terms of privilege:
We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess any one of these types of privilege have.
Secondly there is this statement:
We are not convinced however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist revolution and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation.
This is a good principle as long as it is not a condition for taking part in a revolution. Before we have a revolution must we guarantee that each and every worker is consciously both a feminist and an anti-racist? Do we ask the working class to wait and not revolt on the basis that there is still sexism and racism in society?
Understanding the development of class consciousness is fundamental to Marxism and to how exactly we beat oppression. A revolution is a process.
A revolution starting from very basic economic and political demands can turn into a socialist revolution. A socialist revolution includes not just
large street protests and
college occupations but also
mass strikes and
general strikes where the entire working class down tools and withdraw their labour. In this process everything gets thrown up in the air and everything ends up landing in different places,
everything changes, including people’s ideas.
People’s ideas are developed and based on real, material objective conditions and during a revolutionary period these conditions change radically. Even in the smallest of struggles today we can witness a shift in people’s ideas as people learn rapidly when they are forced into fighting the system. During the Egyptian revolution in 2011 we witnessed Muslims, some of whom may at some stage have held prejudice views about Christians, form a protective ring around those Christians (Copts) while they prayed and vice versa. We have seen people concerned about the property tax end up coming on protests for abortion rights. When people are engaged in their own battles they become more ready to express solidarity with others who are engaged in other battles. People’s consciousness shifts radically in a revolutionary process.
As [
Karl]
Marx said in the German Ideology in 1845:
Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary; an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution. This revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew. [4: Karl Marx,
German Ideology.]
We don’t only beat oppression by beating capitalism, we also beat oppression in the process of beating capitalism. If a revolution throws off the muck of ages (like racism and sexism) then
a revolution can open the way to everyone’s liberation. Arguments will still have to be had and socialists and feminists will have to argue against sexism and racism and every other expression of oppression we meet in a revolution – but we can still say that men, women, black and white, gay and lesbian working together against capitalism in and of itself is a major blow to oppression.
While the ideas behind Intersectionality initially emerged in the 1960s/70s it came back into being with the rise of postmodernism. In 1983, postmodern theorist
Kimberlé Crenshaw wrote an essay entitled Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity and Violence against Women of Color. In this essay she made a clear link between intersecting or overlapping oppressions and postmodernism: ‘I consider Intersectionality to be a provisional concept linking contemporary politics with postmodern theory’. [5:
Crenshaw, 1983] Further to this in 1995
Caroline Andrew wrote a paper called Ethnicities, Citizenship, and Feminisms: Theorizing the Political Practices of Intersectionality. In this she wrote:
Postmodernism has given visibility to fragmentation, marginalization, and multiple identities. The question of how to theorize the intersection of feminism and ethnicity partially reflects postmodern sensibilities. Postmodernism is certainly an important intellectual step towards the reconceptualising of difference. The idea of multiple, fluid identities, of things being both what they are and what they are not, of the end of metanarrative all these open up the debate for the better understanding of difference. [6:
Andrew, 1995]
However this connection with postmodernism is nowhere to be seen in the circles where it is discussed today.
I want to argue that the core concept of what is now called ‘Intersectionality’ is nothing new. For generations the left have discussed, in various ways, how different people are victims of oppression in different ways. [
Lev]
Trotsky and [
Alexandra]
Kollontai in early 20th Century Russia discussed what is called ‘the double burden of women’ to refer to how women were both wage workers and homemakers and men were not. Marx talked about how the working-class Irish emigrants in England had it worse than most of the English working class and the European left through the 20th century resisted anti-Semitism and recognised how working-class Jews were oppressed in a different way to the rest of the class and so on.
Marxists must recognise that it is vital to challenge racism, sexism, homophobia etc. and not simply concentrate on economic struggles or say certain things can wait until after the revolution. While people are being oppressed nothing can wait. However, this necessary struggle is not helped by complicated, often abstract, academic terms or concepts which can be used by the knowledgeable activist to berate working class people who may hold some reactionary ideas.
We need to disagree with people and patiently argue why racism and all other prejudice is bad.
Also, Marxists should keep the concept of class central to our analysis. It is because we live in a class society that oppression exists in the first place. All oppression arises from the class division in society. So the ability to wipe away oppression depends on having a class analysis and acting on it. Class cannot be viewed as just another way in which humans are divided, but as a key division in society that gives rise to prejudices between other real human differences. All struggles are intrinsically linked but revolutionaries need to work to connect struggles through solidarity and broad alliances that bring different groups together.
Socialists should see themselves as ‘tribunes of the oppressed’ and use every space they occupy to
highlight the plight of the most oppressed people in society. It is not good enough to just say you are against racism if you do not demand that non-Irish people also have a right to a home, education, job and health in this country and make this demand at every turn and opportunity. Lastly we need an organisation that can do all this. But this organisation needs to reflect and represent the class.
The revolutionary party should be a multi-racial, multi-gendered, multi-identity international working-class organisation that challenges the capitalist and class roots of oppression.