Intersectionality

It's a capitalist meme. Keep your eyes on the prize, comrade.

That book is great for starting with him but is online only in French and Spanish. If you know where to find it in English, drop a link, please.

No I'm not. Take for example this recent racial shit that happened to some basketball player, lebron James maybe. Liberals freaking out and expressing their discontent and condemnation. Then this one dude, black sportscaster starts trolling them all saying that it's all a show and that some asshat spray painting the n word on the gate to lebron's house is very different from the institutional racism experienced by poor and inner city blacks. Started dropping some class analysis, liberals btfo.
My main point being though is it has some use.
This same shit happens here all the time when pol comes here and shits on blacks and posters here demonstrate that they are oppressed and are disproportionately lower class because of institutional racism. Intersectionality theory is inherent to these arguments

I'd suggest reading Althusser's earlier works first.

Pretty great introductory article on Internationality vs. Marxism.

marxist.com/marxism-vs-intersectionality.htm

Vivek Chibber demolishes this notion in his talks.

I have no idea what story you are refering to. I am also not certain that class is the nature of the difference between a professional athlete and poor people in an urban center.

What use?

Are you new here? You will rarely find anyone making the case that institutional racism is the cause of any disproportionate representation of certain identities in the lower class. Actual materialists will say that poverty is largely inherited which means that poor people nearly always have poor children. That is the principle reason why the descendents of slaves tend to be impoverished.

We tend not to make the arguments that you are describing.

Stop spamming esperanto you fucking asshole

is this the one way intersectionality can be useful:

The white man is alienated/exploited by capital.
The black man/woman is alienated/exploited by capital + they have negative social consequences due to sexism/racism.

In both cases, capitalism needs to be utterly destroyed to solve their main problem, but a leftist should note that the 'extra' work of destroying sexism/racism should occur at some point along the process of liberation, whether that is taken care of simply by removing capitalism, or if a few other steps need to take place, for instance, a bit of ideology injected into the population that women/blacks are not 'genetically inferior'

It would be nice if you could provide a real ontological basis for intersectionality (for example, anarchopac is a huge advocate of the notion despite being very anti-PoMo and pro-Chomsky/pro-humanism, which I don't see as compatible), or show how intersectionality creates a political program or course of action. Theory is definitely a practice, BUT intersectionality does nothing of the sort. It's just academic chitchat and nothing more.

The thing is, that's not intersectionality. Instersectionality would take into account all of the different axes of oppression simultaneously.

this is a consequence of capitalism and not some spook that manifests itself arbitrarily, please erase yourself and never post again

intersectionality's consequence is Israel

All workers are oppressed, but different sections of the population are oppressed in different ways. It's important for Communists to take this into account when critiquing bourgeois society and their control over productive relations, and when designing an emancipatory program.

Liberal/bourgeois ideologues however take this method of social criticism and divorce it from the emancipating context in which it's base. Without the ultimate goal of emancipation you're left with an impotent model of critique, and so the liberal practitioner has no choice but to substitute their own "emancipatory" solution, which is just integration into bourgeois society. Since it's no longer being used to make criticisms of material society, the technique can only be applied to ideals (white people, black people, other such abstractions). So instead of investigating how a people are exploited by the society in which they're in, all you're left with is a method of describing oppression without identifying its root causes, and so oppression is further abstracted into the realm of feelings, self esteem, etc, and since oppression cannot be ascribed to the social systems that create them, instead oppression is assigned to those abstractions considered "less oppressed." It's not the nature of the bourgeois that oppresses, is just white/male/Christian members of priviIeged groups, etc.

So, the issue isn't with intersectionality per se, but the rejection of its application to material circumstances, and the critique of productive social relations. Without the emancipatory goal and material analysis, the only options left to it are assigning "oppression points" and integration into bourgeois society.

My understanding of intersectionality is that social scientists can point out all the variables a group has that will likely lead to negative outcomes in the life-course as those attributes are subjected to society. That is simple enough, for example:

old fat black woman - economic oppression /racism/sexism/ageism/ableism

The good communist will want to wipe out all those things, especially the economic.

The liberal (who is a capitalist to be sure) will simply wipe out racism/sexism/ageism/ableism (social human rights) with certain labour laws from the state, and education programs for the populace) Through the ISAs, but will never touch the economic human rights.

The thing is, nothing is outside of relations of production. You can't tackle any form of social hierarchy or contradiction without going after the economic base.

You and I are saying the same thing, so I have a question for you, I'd say that liberal feminism, to use an example, is conservative, in that by integrating all groups into capitalism it legitimizes capitalism and provides the ideology that 'anyone can make it in capitalism'.

With that said, my question is, at what point do you completely abandon making life under capitalism better for the worker, in the very short term? Should no work be put to ending racism in the workplace literally this week as I continue to organize workers?

Does 'reform' only serve to teach workers that they can improve their conditions by working within the system, thereby strengthening capitalism?

Bourgeois garbage.

'economic human rights' aka, full surplus value and a democratic workplace are not bourgeois -.-

Why call it "human rights", a term denoting bourgeois liberalism? Why not call it what it is, "workers' control of the MoP" or "dictatorship of the proletariat"?

simply for the sake of strategy. Extreme example, if you go around saying 'over throw capitalism' all of a sudden it sounds like a huge monumental project that is literally impossible.

But, if people are already getting 'social human rights' like the right for your boss not to be racist, I think you can start to sneak in 'economic human rights' like the right to have a say in your workplace, or to deceid e collectively where profits go.

it's just a thought

Yeah, that's right, which is why liberal intersectionality is entirely impotent with regards to effecting actual social change. For leftist critiques it might be important if the conditions you're examining effect mostly white people, or women, or Sikhs, or whatever, but without examining the material conditions that create or facilitate that exploitation to begin with then you're not going to make any real progress in eliminating oppressive conditions.

Among other reasons, that's what drives the obsession with identity among liberals and the misguided left, is that they think or believe that it's not the system that's the problem, so it must be the people, which any halfway decent leftist can tell you is nonsense.

both extremes loathe it and consider it liberal porky globalist madness

do people even really exist anymore? I thought humanism was over, and there were only classes btw.

Also, is there really anything wrong with a direct action workplace organizing demanding the firing of a racist boss?

This one is quite good too.

isj.org.uk/whats-wrong-with-privilege-theory/

It's still bourgeois liberalism. You're basically saying if I want to convert someone to Marxism I first have to convert them to liberalism, which is pathetic.

Other supposed forms of oppression are symptomatic of material relationships. They are not seperate from and independent of them. Likewise all of them are fundamentally changed when those material relationships change.

I am starting to wonder if you are confusing materialist analysis with intersectionality. Intersectionality points to no root causes. The geneological natural of social phenomena does not allow for clear root causes. Intersectionality is a postmodernist theory that rejects grand narratives like base-superstructure analysis.

The good communist will recognize that all those things are symptomatic of economic realities.

The liberal will try to do such, but all he will acomplish is to reify the very imaginary constructs that he intends to destroy while accidentally creating an opposition that negates his own ideology. For all the attention that liberals give to race, gender, and nationality they can never eliminate any of them. All they ever do is to bolster the concepts.

I read this article a few days ago mronline.org/2017/07/25/the-politics-of-everybody/ which deals a bit with this topic, though I disagree with it minor point. It tackles the idiotic lifestylism of identitarian communities that pretend they can chip away at capitalism by choosing their identities, who also forget anything about class struggle, preferring to obfuscate it.

identity politics becomes a tool of the society of control. 'social progress' is equated with individual advancement within the pre-existent structures of media, the corporate world and academia. The current incarnation of american idpol has less to do with Foucault and more with for profit diversity consultants like Peggy McIntosh. watch her TED talk if you want a dose of pure undiluted ideology (youtube.com/watch?v=e-BY9UEewHw). intersectionality is a form of managing subjectivity that keeps the subject disempowered. The 'oppressed' subject is a psychiatric patient suffering from some vague PTSD like affliction, who needs constant validation from the bourgeois liberal Big Other in order to maintain a semblance of self worth.

No work should be put into futile endeavors. Racism is only eliminated by eliminating its causes. Talking about it and making rules against it ultimately does nothing. If you want to mitigate the suffering of particular individuals within a group, then better align their interests with those of other workers. That can be accomplished through organization in which each benefits from the production of all. Their stuggle is shared, and once that is clear internal strife will be minimized.

Intersectionality is good entry level.

That's not intersectionality, not even remotely. That's liberal idpol

Are you new here? Have you never seen one of Holla Forumss countless race realism threads? It's possible as mods have cracked down on them as of late but they used to be quite common.
And the story:
espn.com/blog/golden-state-warriors/post/_/id/4706/iguodala-on-lebrons-home-vandalized-ive-had-situations-where-that-word-has-been-thrown-out

One of the passages I quite like from the Manifesto talks about what communists are for ideologically, and I believe it goes something like "communists make common cause with all progressive struggles, but stands ultimately for the emancipation of the proletariat," and "the real fruit of their battles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding Union of the workers."

I don't think there is a good, hard and fast answer, because no one can really predict when the revolution will come, so every action has to be examined in context, both in regards to the existing circumstances, and the ends of such action. If something were to contribute to the material lessening of the burdens of the proletariat, or a broad section of it in general, then it should be supported. If not, then I would be very suspicious of it.

For example, the liberal call for more female or trans or non white CEOs. It's portrayed as a victory for all women, etc, but we know that a female slave master doesn't end the exploitation of female slaves. Such a program only serves to integrate females into the bourgeois superstructure.

This doesn't mean though that women's issues should be ignored entirely out of hand. For example, the 10 hours act limited the severe exploitation women and children endured in industrial England.

So I guess how I'd put it is, making life better shouldn't be viewed as an end in itself, but a step on the road to the total abolition of oppression, and so followed by numerous other similar steps, if that makes sense.

Exactly what I'm fucking saying

I like that. Sometimes I'm on the edge about even unionizing a workplace b/c well then that group can be set, go on with their lives, and are not interested in much else anymore revolution wise.

But I've had some senior unionizers tell me with a wink that they're only building power to get to socialism.

I hope taking small pockets of power all over the place can build up the chances for the revoltuion when the economic conditions are in place so we don't go to barbarism (either barbarism or socialism, as Marx said is the only result of the final crises)

We are not Holla Forums, nor are obvious troll threads indicative of the general consensus.

Intersectionality means that liberal feminists enter and paralyze your movement, as you need to consider hpw everyone reflects on over 9000 contrived identities, each with a competing score in the oppression olympics before taking any action that hasn't been pre-approved by the ruling liberal feminist coterie. Who just happen to be fine with shit like capitalism and states and Hilary Clinton. To make matters even worse, none of them can even agree on how many oppression points each of the contentious """oppressed identities""" should have, so even they are incapable of taking any more than the most basic of actions against the system.

Pure cointelpro cancer.

wow so helpful
so arguments used to counter Holla Forumss narrative aren't considered consensus? the obvious flaw in that is there is no consensus here on ANYTHING, other than that we are an anticapitalist board (rosa murderers excluded of course). But my point being, the arguments I presented are not my own but espoused by others as well in that specific context, but as soon as anything other than class analysis is mentioned on this board the autists come out in droves to decry Idpol in a manner akin to the fucking Stirnerfags and their fucking autistic screeching of "spooks".

in its vulgar form, intersectionality is far too embedded within the managerial ideology of the societies of control.

This would seem to be a corner cutting analysis compared to what it could be.
While straight-white-male is the default, any analysis that ends with that instead of then exploring how the expectation of default-ness impacts on the group of "defaults" even to their disadvantage will invariably be useless, as the implications - intentional or otherwise - that they're an enemy to be taken down a peg filter through.

Furthermore there's always the problem that most people have shit understanding of class, hence someone will unironically say from time to time "middle class white male" for example. Now, I mean, income distribution is also a significant factor, but it's quite a bit down the totem pole.

Personally I just dodge the problem and go a step further into essentially individualistic analysis while picking down aspects of society taken as given (i.e. "you are a woman, I know X Y and Z are expectations, I can adapt to that - but I don't care about the overall entity "woman" "), combined with the vaguely autistic analysis of bourgeoisie economics and a focus on class, because I rarely care for this sort of thing. I'm here to nationalise trains, not play social worker. Give the home office to somebody else.

You abandon it when the opportunity cost is too high.

I'm envisioning an office block with a massive hole in the floor and a delicately based plank that if you can slowly balance across you reach the communist reception desk. The hole is full of bodies. Fucking PFI offices.

that's what intersectionality is, liberal idpol.
all that empty air, and not a single reference to materialism, or materialist analysis. Intersectionality is hot air.

worse still, it becomes a form of managing subjectivity. the self perceptions and identities of people are opened up to management, and by extension to regulation and control.

Intersectionality is a liberal academic's shitty substitution for solidarity, it ignores the material causes for bigotry and and tries to weave together the various types of oppression without acknowledging the cause, capital.

The universalization and ranking of identities should be a fucking laughable concept to most people.

Yes, exactly.

this sounds suspiciously like self help ideology

I feel you. Especially in the face of the "failure of socialism" in the 20th century I was kind of at a loss as to what Street the left can take in the 21st, but now I don't think there's anything wrong with strategies like unionizing per se, but without critical ideological elements from Socialism, the principle of the international character of the proletariat for example, then they are all just reforms that will ultimately be undone. Advancing minimum wages, fighting workplace discrimination, and so on, are all necessary, but they're simply battles in the war to free the proletariat. If these battles are viewed as wars in and of themselves, then they're doomed to defeat. You can see evidence of this I believe in the trajectory of American unions. In 1970 a third or more of American jobs were unionized (iirc), while today less than 5% of jobs are, and maybe it's just me but every time I read about them it's about how they're screwing their workers and collaborating with management (the UAW and telecom unions especially). I think purging socialists and communists from the unions played a major role in facilitating that.

Bell Hooks said she reads a lot of self-help books. Coincidence? I think not.

Forgot pic.

I was just reading this page and I can't make heads or tails of what it is, how it's supposed to work, and what good it's for. The example one uses is about a Dalit woman and a "privileged" woman, and that a Dalit woman would face more challenges because of her Dalit-ness, but it seems like if this woman had five million dollars, her Dalit-ness would suddenly not be a factor in getting her an education or whatever, so doesn't that make the primary factor her class?

The caste system in India is all about the division of labor, so using a Dalit woman is a terrible example to highlight something "outside" of MoP.

"intersectionality" just means "put race first." Notice how every single conversation about class, gender, sexuality, even imperialism all goes back to "fuck whitey, everything is whitey's fault, we need to distance ourslves from whitey and go back to our Authentic Roots(TM)."

Zizek makes a good point against this. The "good ol' days" trope is almost always the product of bourgeois nationalism, and usually these myths are invoked in order to hide from failure. Like, Muslims will bring up how progressive they were 1000 years ago in order to hide the fact that they're some of the most socially backwards people on earth today. Or African leaders will tell whites: "Yeah, we have people shitting in the streets - BUT AT LEAST WE'RE NOT BOMBING THE FUCK OUT OF THE THIRD WORLD LIKE YOU."

nice try stalin

We can debate as to whether or not Marx's method can aptly be called "dialectical materialism" but Marx did employ a materialist dialectic.

Do you mean chapter 4?
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch04.htm

These quotes are the closest I could find that approximated what you wrote:

Agreed but it doesn't have to relate so closely to labor like in example given

Intersectionality can probably further the left and it is a good entry point. It's theoretical foundations are horrible and also most people don't fully get it or only get it in part.

It gets to the point of "all struggles are one struggle" but not that the one struggle is the class struggle.

< Notice how every single conversation about class, gender, sexuality, even imperialism all goes back to "fuck whitey, everything is whitey's fault, we need to distance ourslves from whitey and go back to our Authentic Roots(TM)."

I have never heard of this. Do you argue on reddit or in youtube comments?

Zizek bless us again with truth

There's a big difference between Marx's historical materialism and Stalin's dialectical materialism.

it's a fundamentally pessimistic ideology, a product of the can't know nuffin era of academic postmodernism. instead of 'grand narratives' such as marxism or human liberation we are left in a world were everybody 'oppresses' everybody else and everyone 'benefits' from 'oppression'. postmodernism represents a return of idealism. focus is shifted from political economy to 'discourse'. if the experts manage to tweak the discourse the right way, and educate the population in the correct use of language, we might get rid of subjective feelings of disempowerment and 'oppression', or something, after all you can't know nuffin.

Yeah, that's what I mean, thank you. I really should have looked it up myself, but I was stuck at work.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

It's absolutely analogous to bourgeois nationalism since it relies on golden age mythologies - "look at how PROGRESSIVE those backwards sand people were centuries ago, why can't you evil white folk see that?". Also, Islamic Golden Age propaganda is frequently used by more secular Arab nationalists to prove their moral superiority to the West.

The irony is that it reproduces orientalist tropes in the sense where Muslims are given Noble Savage qualities contrasted with barbarian Europe. I'm no fan of Zizek's but I can clearly see where he's coming to his conclusions.

Stalin didn't understand dialectics at all. Engels would be a much better example of DiaMat.

no it's always been racial.

marx invented it tho

can someone post the OWS cointelpro infograph?

theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/hillary-clinton-intersectionality/472872/
INTERSECTIONALITY IS LIBERAL TRASH PERIOD, FUCKING LIBERAL GET OUT

COULDN'T RESIST:
youtube.com/watch?v=JW-ZDK7uZLA

not sure i have it but here

no, he's not. your take is highly idealist

There are two variants, I can't see which is superior in my preview.

liberals get the bullet 2

impolite sage

Oh, fuck off. You come here demanding that we talk about shit that has nothing to do with leftist theory (no, intersectionality is not leftist), that will not promote revolution, and resembles the bullshit the undermined every legitimate leftist organization in the industrialized world. And you think that refusing to do so is autistic? Reddit is >>> that way.