Whither Intersectinoality?

[Charlotte]

In the universities and circles of the intelligentsia, one will brush up with the theory of intersectionality almost immediately. It is often presented by lecturers and students alike as a key theory in understanding how oppression in this society expresses itself. In the mass media, the theory is also occasionally touched upon — either demonized as a form of “oppression olympics” or exalted to the skies as the means of understanding various experiences people with various characteristics experience. These understandings are based solely upon how the individual and others like them experience the world, and therein lies its fundamental error. One cannot, in an egotist way, think individuals are the centre of the world, that the entire world can be understood through an individual’s positionality and specific combination of oppressions, and also at the same time think scientifically. Such a notion, on the contrary, proceeds according to metaphysical theories of the liberation of the self and so on.

What is the source of these experiences? Many reply that it is any number of things which are never defined holistically — sometimes it is the police, sometimes it is the state, sometimes it is the schools, sometimes it is this or that section of workers, sometimes it is media and culture, sometimes it is broader discourse. In other words, it is decentralized. Kimberly Crenshaw, a key theorist of intersectionality, says: “Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars travelling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them.” But these are all things that are taken for themselves, either apart from each other or only coincidentally linked through “intersection.”

Nothing scientific can be approached in a psychoanalytical way, without taking as the key link the whole system of relations — how it came into being, why it exists, what perpetuates it and how it will go out of being.

The theory that there are multiple sources of oppression splits the world into two or more pieces, but science has established that there is one world, with one truth and one reality. Opposing such a statement is to reduce one’s worldview to that of the medieval clergy who shouted “heretic!” at any progressive scientist. If it was not true, science itself would not be possible, as there could be no laws to discover, manipulate and test, and bourgeois society would not have advanced to the point where it is so moribund that such ultra-reactionary theories are being peddled to put a block on social progress.

Like nature, society is also a single whole, and human relations must be studied as an ensemble. When bourgeois rule came into being, it came along with a revolutionization of all spheres of life — many of the remnants of feudalism were eradicated (however, not all, as the fundamental character of exploitation was retained). Though the greatest changes were political and economic, ideological and cultural broadenings were just as integral to keep up with demands for renovation. Then, all that obstructed the path of the bourgeoisie, marks of the old, were not said to be mere abstract categories which developed independently of one another, but developed along with society, though operating under the law that the subjective lags behind the objective.

Just as then, there exists today one whole system of relations, with one class which possesses state power and oppresses the masses of people. The domination that exists over all spheres of life is one of the bourgeoisie. One only needs to listen to “popular music” to see what trash is being flung at the working class on a daily basis, or watch a university lecture in the social sciences and see what falsehoods are being instilled into the minds of the youth. In the former, all that is base, perverse and anti-human is presented as “normal” and even full of merit, the route to one’s happiness. In the latter, the youth are taught that nothing is real, to think science is backward and that history is a series of accidental battles of “discourses.” The source of this degeneration is the same as that of the crisis, the same source that incites and inflames passions and hatreds, ideas of national chauvinism and racism.

We do not deny that one may have characteristics which increase exploitation and oppression, and that some may not have rights due to them by dint of being human because of one or more of their characteristics. But this is nothing accidental, nothing apart from everything else, it does not simply converge at some point of time or in some individual. These are not multiple sources of oppression, but they are part and parcel of the same relations of oppression by which a sliver lives off the labour of others and the rest has to sell their labour power to live.

Some say this is to reduce all relations to class, and while the key link for any materialist must be the mode of production in relation to the character of production within any given epoch, these other relations and contradictions constitute part of the whole as well. In the same way capitalism gives rise to imperialism and colonialism, and these two relations mutually reproduce each other through the profits extracted from colonial markets and imperialist war to re-divide those markets, all other relations also reproduce bourgeois relations of production and the latter reproduces the former. To say that they exist and combine at some point to affect the individual is not enough, they must be identified as being inexplicably linked together by socio-historical processes. One cannot exist without the other — this is the unity of relations which bounds the structural fabric of all societies. It is thus logical to say this unity of relations combines to produce such ills as racism.

Their unity is expressed not only in a theoretical sense, but rather they are found bound together in one specific source that protects and defends all these relations as guards of bourgeois rule — state power. The key feature of Leninism, since it came into being, has been state power, and the experience of the Marxist-Leninists in Canada and various other countries has confirmed this, proving that the state is the basis for all forms of discrimination. Taking the example of racist attacks, every attack against various communities has either been directly undertaken by the state through arrests, arson, terror, harassment, intimidation, etc. or the state protects those who undertake racist attacks, such as when the police stay on the sidelines, sympathize with or aid nazi-like movements but criminalize those fighting against them, or even when they simply ignore them, for example in the case of state intelligence decisions to “turn the cheek” on any signs of racist violence. The same is the case with the women, youth, etc. When the question of state power is tackled and the old relations are torn asunder, then the peoples will have a tremendous instrument in their hands, not only in having eliminated that which undertakes and protects all discriminatory acts, but also in being able to build up a society free of such ills.

The new society, while not claiming to immediately eliminate racism and other forms of discrimination, cannot but eliminate the social basis for it. When antagonistic relations are liquidated, the gates for the flow of the flourishing of the humanity personality can be opened — instead of living in hatred of one another, constantly competing for an ever-decreasing slice of the pie, persons can live in amity and fraternity. Labour can be social, every endeavour can be undertaken for providing mankind with the highest quality, while old competition based on antagonism can be sublated in favour of peaceful, friendly competition. In a word, the new order will be built by the masses and serve them, the new state will exist only in so far as it must suppress the most negative birth-marks of the old, which depends in the main on how ferociously the old elements fight progress, and so far as it must remould the new man free of all backwards and obscurantist ideas. We should have no illusions that these will not persist for quite a long time. However, this new society, instead of incentivizing fascist and racist beliefs and actions, will fight against them relentlessly as no hitherto society has.

The experience Cuba has had in its nation-building project points towards the confirmation of this conclusion. Prior to the revolution, racism and social-apartheid dominated relations to the point where many shops and cafes in Havana prohibited non-whites from entering, modelled on the Jim Crow model of the U.S. south. With the victory of 1959, and as socialist relations were consolidated with the elimination of the regulating role of the law of value, these barriers of the past, losing their social basis, were gradually put down. However, since the “special period” of the 1990s, Cuba has been forced to adopt some measures to allow small private enterprises and foreign investment due to the economic blockade, and this old problem which the Communist Party of Cuba had formerly considered mostly resolved again came to the fore. The social basis for discrimination, though not nearly on the scale as countries which are capitalist and have gone through the anti-social offensive of the past three decades, has become a problem once again, to be taken up for solution. To combat these ills the Cuban people have undertaken a highly active campaign and their successes are not few. However, it proves that racism is not independent of the ensemble of human relations. If it was, its former state of near-elimination would have been permanent.

Earlier, the foremost intersectionality theoretician was quoted as using an analogy that discrimination works like cars at an intersection. The key point contained in this claim is that it is individual cars which “intersect” — so, say, one car is representative of sexism and another is racism. In the experience of a black woman, they would collide at some point in time to create a unique form of discrimination between sexism and racism in the individual. One must ask — who are the drivers of these cars? Cars, even in an analogy, cannot drive without an aim, a direction, and in this analogy, since they are intentionally colliding to create this “unique form of discrimination,” there must be someone or something setting the aim for such a collision. Without considering that the entire set of relations which are set up to repress the peoples are driving the cars that create this situation whereby some are bereft of due rights, you cannot seriously begin taking up the issue of proving a solution to these problems plaguing society. You can change the individual cars, but as long as you do not set yourself the goal of giving society a new aim, a new driver, discrimination will not and cannot disappear.

In this vein, what is meant by taking the relations as a whole is that one cannot speak of capitalism and racism or other forms of discrimination. Today’s relations are historically contingent and have developed as a result of development in a single whole. It would be a mistake to reduce capitalist society to a single economic factor — what can be considered capitalist is not limited to economic or even political life, but discrimination itself today is capitalist, though it has its origin in pre-capitalist exploitative forms.

To analyse these phenomena in such a way is to leave oneself prey to fatalism and nihilism. It cannot show the way out, it cannot lead to transcending discrimination and all oppression. Discrimination is merely treated as a thing-in-itself whose actual content is unknowable, the only thing we know and can know is that it exists and has an impact on human beings. There can be no guide to action with this outlook because there is no way to resolve the fundamental contradictions that sustain the situation. It is to claim that discrimination is immutable, and that we can’t know its actual source and basis to eliminate it. Combatting it becomes a phantasm, and instead of the state being blamed, the people are blamed for racism, for example — it is said that “everyone is racist without exception” and that changing the self with some sort of innocuous privatized “anti-racist” education is the way to eliminate racism. Discrimination becomes a problem of niceties or a lack thereof. Despite the fact that prejudiced attacks still take place, it is common to hear in lecture halls by eclectic professors, some of whom talk about “intersectionality,” that an erroneous word choice of a worker is more harmful to the “visible minority” (a very racist term in itself) than a deprivation of rights by the state.

Why is it today that, although the proletariat has become modern and has rejected discrimination in principle to a large degree, actual life with its prejudiced attacks has become so mismatched with principles? Why is it that in Canada, the people are so revolted at the historical and present treatment of Indigenous people and are rejecting the church and state in record numbers, we still have a character of state power which, among other things, denies Indigenous communities even clean drinking water? If the masses took this power into their hands, they would be able to implement all the principles they hold to be necessary for human development at this stage of society. To blame the masses for some wrong words here and there and not fight the state as the source of attacks is a form of anti-people diversion…

All of this is said not to “demonize” the theory of intersectionality, as certain ultra-reactionaries do in opposing it for self-serving aims. It is merely to settle ideological scores against an anachronistic and metaphysical theory that cannot serve in liberating the proletariat and all humanity from exploitation, and defending and ensuring the rights of all. It is a theory for ivory-tower intellectuals divorced from the masses and their struggle. Wherever the barricades are drawn and class lines become clear for all to see, these intellectuals stand on the sidelines. Even today, when the people stand up against fascism and war, they are nowhere to be seen. It is comforting to “think up” great concoctions within one’s four walls, but they fear to struggle as it is said the devil fears holy water. They oppose the basic scientific postulate that one must act to find out, one must manipulate and experiment to understand, and one must join the struggle to see who represents what.

The Marxist-Leninist youth, for our part, cannot but point this out because these harmful views, spread to oppose the youth taking up the working class as their leader and instead blaming them for all the problems (in a similar way, it is an oft-repeated claim that some past generation and not the state is responsible for all the ills of the youth) are being spread amongst us. We cannot act as tailists of careerists who have sold out their pens for some tenured wage. This theory and others like them are meant to deprive us of our inclination to act, of an outlook and an aim, and moreover to spread the illusion that its Marxist-Leninist Party is somehow representative of a previous stage, that Marxism-Leninism is an outdated outlook. We respond that we are living in the epoch of Leninism, of imperialism and the proletarian revolution, and that revolution is inevitable. On this question, they take the same position as the state which proclaims the End of History.

https://november8ph.ca/2023/07/whither- ... tionality/