Sunday, June 12, 2005
Together forever
First off, sorry for the Rick Astley reference. So, in conversation with a friend of mine, I was talking about why the labour movement is important. I relied on dichotomies between labour & other movements – as if the working class is some white, male, homogenous mass. This implies that people of colour have their anti-racist movement, women have their feminist movement, and white men have their labour movement. Then everyone comes together in a big happy rainbow to defeat capitalism.
But this is precisely the kind of formulation that postmodernism feeds on. There's no systemic critique that ties any of those oppressions together, which means we can only fight ‘our’ battles.
The worst of Marxist critiques have fallen into this stratification, privileging (white, male, straight) workers over other movements. But in reality, a black man works, a white worker is female, etc. Identity is always multi-layered and contextual.
Identity - the scourge of young men everywhere
The liberal response to this (shared, unfortunately, by a lot of activists) is to create a laundry list of identities: we oppose oppression for women, transgendered people, people of colour, etc - as if those were all separate oppressions. Capitalism does more than foist identities on us; it binds us together in a material system of exploitation.
Capitalism works in so many ways (early Communists used to draw it as an octopus). It regulates sexuality & the family to maintain the reproduction of labour and social/workplace discipline. It destroys small land holdings to make massive agri-businesses. And it draws people of all identities into wage-labour.
I’m interested in two questions: why it does all this, and how to oppose it. I think the first question is actually more straightforward. It’s pretty easy to see how a capitalist profits from privatizing plant genomes, or forcing women to do unpaid labour in the home. Social discipline is essential for maintaining ‘order’ i.e. keeping people working and reproducing (much like John Carpenter’s excellent anti-capitalist wrestling film “They Live!”) So queer pride only becomes acceptable when it’s about MAC sponsoring parade floats once a year – not when it’s calling for total sexual liberation, as it used to.
Black & White Unite & Fight - from "They Live!"
There’s way more going on. The point is, once capitalism is established, it needs to destroy whatever’s ‘outside’ it. It has to commodify and subdue all comers.
But because capitalism has its tentacles everywhere, it can be challenged everywhere. Not in a cheesy ‘free your mind’ sense, but materially. This can mean white men in factories, but it also means pro-choice movements (fighting capitalist regulation of women’s bodies), environmental anti-racist movements (stopping toxic waste dumps in poor black neighbourhoods), First Nations de-colonization, etc.
As a Marxist, I focus on the labour movement – but not just because I want to see more white men carrying picket signs. I do – but any successful labour movement has to be a mass movement, and that means including workers who female & people of colour. The latter are a majority in trade unions today.
The early labour movements were successful to the extent they integrated black and white workers. There were huge battles 100 years ago to integrate trade unions along colour and occupation lines. Some of the most militant union activists in the 1940s & 50s were gay. They didn’t stop being gay when they became labour activists. Instead, they saw their identity as part of their struggle for a better world. So I don’t see the labour movement as an ally of women & people of colour: it _is_ women and people of colour, together with the fat white men, fighting the imposition of capitalist discipline.
"Labour Defender", 1934
And I think any social movement – whatever it calls itself, and whatever issue it’s fighting on – can be anti-capitalist, to the extent it disrupts profit-making and capitalist social discipline, and builds people’s confidence to organize democratically, on a mass scale. Queer community patrols against gay-bashers? Excellent. Anti-Nazi organizing in communities of colour? Great. Female investment luncheon groups? Um….
Like in Bolivia right now, a coalition of indigenous peasants and miners have shut down the country, occupied the cities and highways and are demanding nationalization i.e. democratic control over resources. They’re not a ‘labour movement’ in the formal sense, and they’re certainly not white men – but they’ve made the regular operations of capital grind to a halt.
Bolivia… grind… I think I need some more coffee.
Song of the day: Yukari Disco, Yukari Fresh
But this is precisely the kind of formulation that postmodernism feeds on. There's no systemic critique that ties any of those oppressions together, which means we can only fight ‘our’ battles.
The worst of Marxist critiques have fallen into this stratification, privileging (white, male, straight) workers over other movements. But in reality, a black man works, a white worker is female, etc. Identity is always multi-layered and contextual.
Identity - the scourge of young men everywhere
The liberal response to this (shared, unfortunately, by a lot of activists) is to create a laundry list of identities: we oppose oppression for women, transgendered people, people of colour, etc - as if those were all separate oppressions. Capitalism does more than foist identities on us; it binds us together in a material system of exploitation.
Capitalism works in so many ways (early Communists used to draw it as an octopus). It regulates sexuality & the family to maintain the reproduction of labour and social/workplace discipline. It destroys small land holdings to make massive agri-businesses. And it draws people of all identities into wage-labour.
I’m interested in two questions: why it does all this, and how to oppose it. I think the first question is actually more straightforward. It’s pretty easy to see how a capitalist profits from privatizing plant genomes, or forcing women to do unpaid labour in the home. Social discipline is essential for maintaining ‘order’ i.e. keeping people working and reproducing (much like John Carpenter’s excellent anti-capitalist wrestling film “They Live!”) So queer pride only becomes acceptable when it’s about MAC sponsoring parade floats once a year – not when it’s calling for total sexual liberation, as it used to.
Black & White Unite & Fight - from "They Live!"
There’s way more going on. The point is, once capitalism is established, it needs to destroy whatever’s ‘outside’ it. It has to commodify and subdue all comers.
But because capitalism has its tentacles everywhere, it can be challenged everywhere. Not in a cheesy ‘free your mind’ sense, but materially. This can mean white men in factories, but it also means pro-choice movements (fighting capitalist regulation of women’s bodies), environmental anti-racist movements (stopping toxic waste dumps in poor black neighbourhoods), First Nations de-colonization, etc.
As a Marxist, I focus on the labour movement – but not just because I want to see more white men carrying picket signs. I do – but any successful labour movement has to be a mass movement, and that means including workers who female & people of colour. The latter are a majority in trade unions today.
The early labour movements were successful to the extent they integrated black and white workers. There were huge battles 100 years ago to integrate trade unions along colour and occupation lines. Some of the most militant union activists in the 1940s & 50s were gay. They didn’t stop being gay when they became labour activists. Instead, they saw their identity as part of their struggle for a better world. So I don’t see the labour movement as an ally of women & people of colour: it _is_ women and people of colour, together with the fat white men, fighting the imposition of capitalist discipline.
"Labour Defender", 1934
And I think any social movement – whatever it calls itself, and whatever issue it’s fighting on – can be anti-capitalist, to the extent it disrupts profit-making and capitalist social discipline, and builds people’s confidence to organize democratically, on a mass scale. Queer community patrols against gay-bashers? Excellent. Anti-Nazi organizing in communities of colour? Great. Female investment luncheon groups? Um….
Like in Bolivia right now, a coalition of indigenous peasants and miners have shut down the country, occupied the cities and highways and are demanding nationalization i.e. democratic control over resources. They’re not a ‘labour movement’ in the formal sense, and they’re certainly not white men – but they’ve made the regular operations of capital grind to a halt.
Bolivia… grind… I think I need some more coffee.
Song of the day: Yukari Disco, Yukari Fresh
