Is “Anti-Oppression” enough?

This is a comradely criticism/critique of the current theory and practice of Students for a Democratic Society. It’s assembled from notes and recollections of various conversations. By no means is it meant to tear down anyone’s work in SDS. I understand this is controversial, but I hope that as a comradely critique this leads to a deepening of both theory and practice in SDS.

Anti-oppression. It’s this buzzword I’ve only recently encountered due to heavy involvement with SDS. I have to say, I have an almost constitutional dislike for the modern-Leftist fixation with “anti” formulations (anti-[fill in the blank]ism”), perhaps due to an early love of Elements of Style, but also because I find that it reflects the modern ideology of neverending resistance struggle without revolution — for a sharp discussion of that, here’s Zizek.

Anti-oppression, as it’s been put before SDS at least, is a catch-all term for the praxis built around political/popular education against forms of systemic oppression — white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, and capitalism — for the sake of having the male, pale, and stale Left confront these things as they show themselves in both society and in the movement (as a reflection of society, however distorted). It gets translated into organizations usually running down a laundry list of oppressions they oppose, and the stances they take up in opposition (i.e., “anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-patriarchy, anti-heterosexist” etc.)

Beyond the problems for propaganda in attempting to force negatives without having positives – the common retort to stating that one is “anti-capitalist” is, what the hell do you support then? – is that it’s hard to create some praxis out of a theory based solely on opposition to this thing called oppression. If practice is informed by theory, and our operating theory is simply “we oppose oppression,” we’re going to get in the long hard slog of attempting to “fix” the oppression problem; the problem of never-ending resistance struggles and no revolution. This poses problems both theoretical and practical.

The problem for anti-oppression:
Why does oppression exist?
The problem I have with the near single-minded focus on  anti-oppression, for taking oppression as the essence of the problem is that there’s a circular logic. “Why do we oppose oppression?” “Because it’s oppressive!” Don’t probe any further, or it starts getting ugly both theoretically and in conversation.

Further, there’s a problem of reification: oppression is this thing that exists in itself, of itself, and for itself; it seemingly came out of nowhere, oppressing the oppressed on behalf of an oppressor who is an oppressor simply because He oppresses; in short, the oppressor is simply evil and has no motives beyond that.

This would be a purely philosophical problem if it did not inform our practice (and badly). But it does produce problems in practice:

1) Simple anti-oppression theory subscribes, however subtly, to the image of our oppressors that they want us to have: that they are simply indifferent, above it all, have no motives for doing what they do. As such, what are we offering, really? To act as their Jiminy Cricket-like conscience of their system, nagging them to “fix” various oppressive acts they commit.

In the end, we have to ask ourselves whether we’re really just all about ”captalism with a human face?” Are we content to simply fix the problems created by Wal-Mart (their bad labor practices, their environmental record, etc.) — and is it not true that in doing so, without a deeper criticism, we are just doing the shit work their customer service department would be far more suited to doing?

 

2) Putting up oppression as this thing that exists, as if in a vacuum, neglects what opens up the possibility of agency in the oppressed: the fact of their exploitation. Oppression doesn’t just exist because oppressors want to cause grief for people; it is because the exploitation of the oppressed is a necessary component to the perpetuation of the oppressor’s existence. Without this reality, there would be no oppressor, no oppressed — just . . . equals.

In forgeting exploitation, what is most profound is that we are forgeting the one bit of leverage, the one bit of power that the oppressed have: the fact that the oppressor needs the oppressed. It forgets the lesson of the vast millennia of actions whereby the oppressed banded together, recognized their strength over the oppressor, and exercised it.

3) In this forgeting of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed, of exploiters and the exploited, there is a forgeting of what the function of revolution — in the truest sense — is: a permanent breaking of the bonds that keep the oppressed/exploited tied to an oppressor/exploiter in the relationship of oppression and exploitation. The refusal to acknowledge this is why, I fear, so often in our generation we mistake revolution as simply a matter of shuffling seats every once in a while akin to musical chairs, rather than for what it is: a matter of calling the game null and void. Thus we have the game that many honest organizers get dragged into: getting caught up in the novelty of a few people getting into new seats, never realizing (until disillusionment) that this very novelty has been accounted for and is in no small way built into the system itself.