Solidarity and Responsibility: Fighting to win against capitalism and oppression.

By Gary Kinsman


Many activists involved in fighting racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of oppression have been told by other leftists (often but not always white, heterosexual men) that these are not as important as the "central" class struggles they support. They may even view our struggles as diversionary or divisive. I remember being told this many times in the 1970s and 1980s as a gay liberation and socialist activist.

By "class struggle" they seem to mean only the unions and the point of production -- offices and factories. While this is a very important front of struggle, it is only one arena of working class life and even here race, gender and sexuality are central aspects of the organization of workplaces and of exploitation. For some who argue this narrow view of class it is as if there is a working class that does not have a home, community and sexual life – as if working class experience does not centrally include the relations of domestic labour, the reproduction of our capacities to labour, poverty, unemployment, immigration, race and racism, sexuality and pleasure. As many have pointed out, you cannot possibly think and act politically about class relations in Canada without seeing their racialized and gendered character. The narrow notion of "class politics" still common in some parts of the left is not an adequate "class politics" at all. This view abstracts the working class away from the racism, gender and sexual oppression that are actually key to defining what class relations and struggles are all about. This empty abstraction is then used to construct a "false universal" image of the working class as white and mostly male and heterosexual. This false image of the working class can foster divisions in working class struggles when racism, sexism and heterosexism are not centrally addressed. The experience of class is never an abstraction – it is a social relation between people. It is always lived in relation to gender, race, sexuality, age, ability, language, nation and other relations.

Successful struggles to undo these forms of oppression and exploitation must recognize their intertwined character. This is why an anti-racist, feminist, class politics that addresses all forms of oppression is needed in today's organizing.

I examine these questions in the context of the Fighting to Win perspective developed by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) which is about moving beyond token or symbolic forms of protest to developing our own forms of power and wining victories through our own struggles. As a queer liberation and socialist activist, I experience oppression in a society dominated by heterosexual hegemony but I am also simultaneously located in practices of social privilege in relation to class (as a university professor), as white in a racist society, as a man in a patriarchal society, and as able-bodied in a society that systematically marginalizes people living with disabilities. While I address questions of oppression in relation to anti-capitalism, I do not wish to suggest that these various forms of oppression all have the same social character.

Autonomy and Interdependence

When it comes to oppression and capitalism we need to recognize the specificity of each form of oppression which creates the basis for autonomous struggles against racism, sexism, heterosexism and other forms of oppression. Oppressed people need to build their own power against the forms of oppression they face. At the same time autonomy on its own is not enough.

This is because all of these forms of oppression are constructed in and through each other and in and through the relations of capitalism. This is why we need to bring our various struggles together to build a broader counter-power to that of the capitalists and their state relations. Capitalism in a concrete historical sense is racism, and is sexism. Fighting racism can be fighting capitalism and fighting sexism can be fighting capitalism. The fight against capitalism is thereby enriched by seeing how central fighting gender and racial oppression, for instance, is to developing a radical anti-capitalist politics. So we need to recognize both the need for autonomy and for united struggles and for building a solidarity that learns from and builds upon the autonomy of the various struggles of the oppressed and exploited.

Solidarity yes, but solidarity on whose terms?

In recent years, given the growth of our movements against oppression, some of the arguments against taking up the struggles of the oppressed are made in a more subtle fashion. One variant is that in the name of solidarity against a common enemy – whether it be the Harris government in Ontario or the struggle against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) – we should not raise our specific concerns and demands around racism, sexism, sexuality and other struggles. We should instead, it is argued, unite against our common enemy with the hope that after this enemy is defeated that somehow our needs will get addressed. This boils down to an unacceptable argument for the postponement of our struggles against oppression, as well as not seeing how central oppressed people's needs are to battles against the Harris government and capitalist globalization. This raises important questions about solidarity in our struggles.

Solidarity is central to a fighting to win as OCAP has stressed. But we always need to ask whose solidarity, and solidarity on whose terms? Does this solidarity take all of our diverse needs into account. Solidarity when fighting to win only makes sense when it is defined by the needs of all the exploited and oppressed. Solidarity cannot simply be on the terms defined by the leaderships of union or non-governmental organizations but must be centrally defined by those who adopt radical positions and forms of struggle and are trying to get to the social roots of the problems people face.

Solidarity must be based not only on unity in struggle but also on learning from other people about the forms of oppression and exploitation that they face. A solidarity that is defined only by the needs of the more socially powerful and privileged is actually a source of division in our struggles. Many times, for instance, we have seen the union movement receive the support of other oppressed groups only not to have that solidarity returned when it is urgently needed. While OCAP has been a strong supporter of many union struggles for some sections of the union leadership solidarity with OCAP has been undermined since the June eviction of James Flaherty, Minister of Finance from his constituency office.

[This article will be continued in the next issue of New Socialist]

Gary Kinsman is a queer and global justice activist in Sudbury. He is a member of the New Socialist Group, the author of The Regulation of Desire and co-author of the forthcoming Canadian War of 'Queers':
National Security as Sexual Regulation.