Tommy Sheridan argued in 2006 argued that at the heart of the SSP (Scottish Socialist Party) should be class and not a “gender-obsessed discussion group”.It didn’t come as a surprise reading that as there is this common belief throughout some of the left that every other form of oppression is subordinate to class.It doesn’t help in the least when you start to argue that one form of oppression outweighs another. Oppression is oppression, it can take different forms, whether overt or subtle, and the intersection between other forms of oppression.
I have also heard similar arguments on the Left that at the apex of oppression is class. Class trumps all forms of oppression. No, it doesn’t. Politically, we have to reject this idea of a hierarchy of oppression as it presents a situation that can only be described as divisive.
My own political belief is that you use a class analysis to explain oppression, but that class isn’t a ‘superior’ form of oppression that garners any more solidarity than confronting and fighting other forms of oppression. If you feel that sexism isn’t being taken seriously then you must challenge that along with trying to make the invisible visible but not at the expense of downplaying another form of oppression.
If there is anything about “class” that makes it different from class, race, gender, sexuality and disability. It is not not that oppression arising purely from class has a privileged call for a response. It is that the class has a duty to respond to and fight all forms of oppression. Not to do so would be to open ourselves up to nothing more than divide and rule.
I have great difficulty in formulating this but as I understand it the Marxist argument is not that ‘class’ is worse than other forms of oppression. It’s that class is the fulcrum to dislodge all of them, but it can only become so consciously. As you say: ‘the class has a duty to respond to and fight all forms of oppression. Not to do so would be to open ourselves up to nothing more than divide and rule.’ That’s what Lenin argued in What is to be Done?
You missed out gender identity. Doesn’t matter what class you are when you transition, you are unlikely to ever be employed by anyone else again.
It is probably worth noting that, in the UK at least, class is the only form of oppression you list not to be outlawed (though it could be argued that the laws against oppression on the basis of disability and sexuality are particularly ineffective).
I wouldn’t put it quite the way you have put it. Gender, sexual, national, racial oppression and bullying of all kinds are expressions of class oppression. Class oppression operates largely but not exclusively through these prejudices and exclusions. They are some of the ideological forms class oppression takes in the superstructure. For instance homosexuality is thought by the bourgeoisie to be an ideological assault on the family. Homophobia is then an ideological expression of the class interests of the ruling class. Things and forms change especially as democratic rights are successfully conquered of course but at base is the class struggle, the political economy, the irreconcilable antagonism. To fight its ideological expressions is a duty not a distraction. The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class and as long as there are classes there will of course be oppression but to refuse to grapple with its manifestations would be opportunism masquerading as ultra-left sectarianism. Lenin was most insistent on the question of national self-determination being take seriously for instance and not to take it seriously reflected not some uber-proletarianism but Russian chauvisnism.
Just to add that as long as class struggle remains at society’s base then any democratic rights that are won and which we have a duty to fight for will actually never be secure and will at some point be overturned. So there is a dialectic. If you are not fighting the ideological expressions of the class struggle you are not fully engaged in the class struggle and in fact as our Russian chauvinists proved you are objectively assisting a ruling class policy . If however you only fight its ideological manifestations and fight exclusively for democratic rights you are not serious about either those forms of oppression and rights or the class struggle itself.