Some Thoughts on the Limitations of Capitalist Liberation Movements

Every so often we find ourselves in a moment of uncanny depersonalisation, when the brittle structures that hold things together opacify and reality unfolds into a parody of itself. This was what I felt at my university’s International Women’s Day celebration, which encapsulated the limitations of intersectional liberation with a poetic elegance.

Apparently no-one in administration had realised the irony of celebrating women’s empowerment by testing a competitors’ prowess in the kitchen, as they decided to hold a cake-baking competition. Not being a great baker, I did not intend to participate, but a kind professor in the department offered to submit a cake on my behalf on the condition that I show up to the event.

The department arranged for the local town mayor to judge the event and give a speech about her achievements as a woman in STEM. After acquiring her degree in physics, she worked as a researching physicist at an arms company. She went on to work for several decades as a prospector in an ‘exploration’ division of BP. Upon achieving motherhood, she slid into local politics and became the conservative mayor of our sleepy English village. She now works hard to block construction of affordable housing and build beehives over derelict comprehensive schools.

To cap off the irony of the day, the cake which I presented won first prize. As the professor who baked it for me was a woman, this meant the victory went to the man whose work was done by a woman in the kitchen.

Intersectionality

Fundamentally, intersectionality is a sociological method which focuses on analysing how many varying forms of oppression can intersect to limit an individual’s opportunities. Superficially this is a very agreeable concept – race, gender, class, sexual orientation and countless other factors undeniably limit a person’s social capital - so why do Marxists reject intersectionality as a method of achieving liberation?

On the descriptive level, intersectionality fails to recognise the root causes of the oppression it analyses. It sees bigotry as a personality defect to be punished, and systemic oppression as a cultural throwback to a mythological pre-enlightenment parochialism. In this sense intersectionality is a quintessentially liberal ideological construct, which divorces emergent social issues from the system which creates them.

This philosophy profoundly limits the prescriptions that an intersectional thinker can make: Just a little more education! Send thoughts and prayers! Maybe hire a minority worker? Make sure you support BLM by changing your Instagram profile!

As Marxists, we must take a more thorough approach. We know that societal issues can always be linked back to the mode of production, so we can see that intersectional solutions only treat symptoms of the disease of capitalism.

For example, we know that capitalism needs an underclass (“reserve army”) of impoverished, desperate workers who will take any job to survive. We know that capitalism needs crime to justify the police state upholding an unequal status quo. We know that capitalism has never and will never provide adequate affordable childcare to allow young mothers to work, and we know that businesses will always be disincentivised to promote women as a result. Most importantly, we know that all forms of division are powerful weapons which are used to break strikes, stymie unionisation and obfuscate class interests.

Intersectional theory fails to identify the limitations of free markets and capitalistic commodity production, so does not recognise poverty and inequality as a material problem. As such it is incapable of providing material solutions.

Quotas and anti-racist education can provide opportunities to some minorities, but this can never benefit more than a small elite. The overwhelming majority of the impoverished will remain poor.

Furthermore, without a material solution every individual uplifted only displaces someone else, so the interests of those who enjoy relative privilege (cis-white-men) are often opposed to those of the oppressed – they will fight against liberation of other minorities until we can improve one condition without costing the other.

It must also be noted that there are a potentially infinite number of intersections of oppression, to the extent that they can never be fully accounted for. Anyone can recognise racial oppression, gender oppression, but more intersections will always slip through the cracks. Tall people have significantly higher salaries than short people. Blonde people earn more than dark-haired people. Any number of health issues can have immeasurable impact on an individual’s opportunities. Do we want quotas for employees with IBS?

Optimistically, all that intersectionality can do is disentangle the more obvious forms of cultural and social capital from class mobility. Pessimistically, intersectionality inflames tensions and delays the liberation its exponents tout, by redirecting class antagonisms towards factional, identarian intra-class struggles.

The only way to achieve a meaningful liberation and reduce the overall amount of suffering in the world is a holistic class struggle. Only when the poorest member of the working class can live a good life without exploitation will any group be truly free. Freedom is a privilege unless it can be enjoyed by all! There can be no intersectional liberation without intersectional solidarity!

More Female Oil Prospectors!

For me, the university’s Women’s Day celebration encapsulated many of these issues.

The mayor’s achievements are undoubtedly impressive. She is clearly a talented and hard-working individual, and she has a dazzling portfolio of achievements. However, her speech highlighted the unfortunate truth about liberal intersectional feminism – that the highest form of ‘liberation’ a woman can achieve is to become indistinguishable from the previously male hegemon.

By achieving under capitalism, our honourable mayor has become complicit in its worst crimes. As a researcher in the arms industry, she reinforced Euro-American imperial monopoly on global violence. As an oil prospector she perpetuated neo-colonial exploitation and contributed to irreparable environmental damage. As a conservative politician she has contributed to the destruction of the British social democracy, and actively removed opportunities for young and oppressed people.

It is sickening to me that these are the roles that are presented as aspirational to young people, and certainly damaged my opinion of the university. As Paolo Freire once said: When education fails the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors.