Intersectionality 101: Solidarity beyond Kin

The last political Essay I put out concluded with a point on intersectionality, and it's as good a point as any to take a closer look at it beyond the abstract concept. There is, after all, always the question of praxis, which often gets lost in spheres where time is spent writing and not organizing, for whichever reason. While the idea of intersectionality hasn't been formulated until 1989 by Kimberle Crenshaw, it's seen action in basically all socialist movements, especially in those that have succeeded. There is even precedent to claim that some revolutionary movements have failed or gone into decline through ignoring intersectionality, and in a narrower sense, internationalism.

The basics of intersectional praxis is one of these things that lends itself to bad slogans or confused rhetoric. There is, for example, the rhetoric in liberal circles, that only those who experience a certain reality of oppression should have the authority to speak on it, which often falls into the shorthand "Listen to BIPOC". This falls into the same unfortunate realm of slogans like "Defund the police" and "Black Lives Matter", all of which are technically correct, but not hard to misunderstand or even deliberately obfuscate. Defund the Police, as a movement especially has so much stuff included that's not explicitly stated in the slogan, that through omission hides the real benefits of the proposals. It's very similar in intersectional praxis. It is an undeniable fact, that most people live a certain blend of oppression, which they will then have a unique qualification to speak on. This relation is not bijective, however, rather it's more of an injective relation. Those who experience certain oppression should have the right to speak on it, even on a subjective, maybe even uneducated level, just by the virtue of having seen the intricacies first hand. It is however possible to educate oneself on forms of oppression and speak on them, and in fact, this becomes the norm in retrospective. Much of the modern understanding of history is based on doing this, though in non-Marxist circles this is arguably often done from the aforementioned uneducated perspective, which, without first hand experience, arguably borders on bad faith. Still, we should keep in mind that speaking about oppression is a normalized form of rhetoric, and ideally, education on the historical background and political intricacies is part of the discourse regardless of whether they have experienced this particular form of oppression or not.

Allies

Implicit in discourse is the concept of allies. These are the ones that are not directly affected by the conflict (or not affected in a way that would organically align with their interests), but stand behind either group. This automatically means that allies of social causes are not affected by the particular oppression. Although they are often secondary in the narrative, they have historically played important roles, especially in social movements, which have been adopted as successes by the liberal narratives, these being mostly women's emancipation movements and anti-racism movements. Being an ally is also a very easy role to claim.

Being an ally is a decent starting point for theory, but usually is very insufficient for praxis. Yet, it takes up a disproportional importance in many bourgeois narratives of social change. On the face of it, it's maybe because the bourgeois needs to save face whenever they recount these stories that they now claim as victories they helped to win, but it's also a phenomenon deeply entrenched by an individualist understanding of history. Let's keep in mind that there were slave revolutions long before the Civil Rights movement took hold of the popular western narrative, and that the same system that would later claim the emancipation of racial minorities as a virtue they helped proliferate spent most of its time trying to bury the fruits of said revolutions. Even during the times of the Civil Rights movement, the go-to figurehead of the white liberal was not popular while alive, and not just because of his socialist writings. Infamously, the US didn't enter WWII until it was attacked by one of the axis powers, despite many claiming solidarity with a subsection of the oppressed groups under the Nazi regime and its collaborationist quasi-colonies. Allies that made a tangible difference are hard to find, and then, most often on the front lines of the struggle. Still, it's an indispensible step towards intersectional thinking. What differentiates the liberal idea of allyship from intersectionality on this very basic level is whom this allyship is extended towards.

There is a reason why many socialist slogans stress their solidarity with "all workers". Obviously, Marxist connotations apply here, which means "the worker" is shorthand for all (systematically or structurally) exploited people. Effectively, the Marxist dedicates themselves to solidarity with all people. This becomes difficult later, so put a pin in this, while we go over this surface level understanding. While solidarity with oppressed groups is often an obvious position to take, especially in hindsight, this isn't practiced very often by non-Marxists, at least not in a recognizable way. Modern liberal solidarity often happens within subgroups of the population that the individual is often entrenched in, or at least in contact with. These subgroups can be as specific or as broad as the individual might like them to be, or rather is comfortable with. There was a long, protracted debate within the more liberal parts of the Queer (using this descriptor for want of a fitting acronym) sphere about whether to show solidarity with Trans people. Even self-proclaimed allies of other queer identities felt it appropriate to withdraw their solidarity from the Trans community, which is a position still held by many otherwise not queer-phobic personalities. In the same way, because the debate about queerness has been polarized (for fun and profit). Many consider themselves at least "adjacent" to the issue and express solidarity for some subsection of queer people, though not necessarily groups of people that are similarly oppressed on different grounds. The most egregious examples of these contradictions can be found when discussing international relations and nationalist policies. After the second world war, there was a vague concensus in political discourse that hyper-nationalism was bad and we probably shouldn't do it anymore. However, it set in again immediately as one of the chief drivers of the following Cold War. There has been a clear and continuing favouritism shown towards the countries within the imperial core, which is of course a phenomenon with capital interests at its roots, but on a cultural level, this favouritism should have aimed at the same people that solidarity as a force should have.

Still, talk of solidarity hasn't exactly been ceasing during this time, and hasn't since. If anything, it's become more ubiquitous as awareness of issues has increased. Here, the individualist liberal narrative would like to sketch the process as follows: Awareness leads to solidarity leads to votes for the right people leads to positive social change. This not only puts the entire responsibility of positive social change into the hands of the individual, when it's a structural issue, but it also abstracts the process into the immeasurable concept of popular sympathy.

Solidarity vs. Sympathy

It's no accident that the tool of violence is frowned upon by liberals in the purpose of emancipation. Supposedly it's alienating to the public and thus counterproductive. That's only somewhat correct and reveals itself in cases, where the action in question is not in fact "violence". I've made the case before, that violence can take many different forms, and since then the term "Stochastic Terrorism" or "Stochastic Violence" has entered the zeitgeist, making this point unmistakably clear. The rhetoric around violence alienating "the voter" is maybe intuitive, because, simply put, violence is scary. Especially if it happens in the next town over, or to people that you know. However, beyond the fact that this ignores the violence that this is in response to, there is also a case for the proportionality of the action. The goal of violent action is rarely to convince anybody to do something, which is the folly of many non-principled streams of anarchism, but from a socialist-led movement, it's often the only way to fight a struggle, because they're not actually privy to other forms of facilitating change. We extend this courtesy to the French revolutionaries, seeing as they couldn't vote in a new king, and to the American ones, seeing as they couldn't vote not to be a colony, why not extend it to struggles of people that aren't now part of the global capitalist hegemony. Seeing as that is the case, I think it's fair to ask one question: How strong is liberal solidarity, if it can be alienated by violence against the oppressors?

I'll stress this point with a topical(ish) example. In light of the coming climate apocalypse and the consequent failure of politics to establish an effective solution in favour of catering to capitalist interests, some groups have been protesting in the streets on a regular basis. I don't feel like participation in these rituals is particularly effective either, but in general, I'm inclined to let them have their protests, until something changes or we all have to live on floats (or that one third option I'm sure everybody is sick of hearing me mention). "Die Letzte Generation" (transl.: the last generation) is one such movement that has taken to gluing themselves onto streets and highways to disrupt traffic. The background of this is that the German government has found itself unable to introduce a universal speed limit, which is not only a safety hazard for those participating in motorway traffic, but also has a measurable impact on the carbon emissions, since those scale quadratically with the speed. Cutting off the upper limit then would make a lot of the cars on highways automatically more climate friendly, without anything more than legislation. Their frustration is compounded by the fact that most countries around the world have one such limit, most of them even below the limit that "Die Letzte Generation" is asking for. Now, gluing oneself onto the street is really nothing more than an inconvenience that needs to be planned around. In Germany, there are also worker's rights on account of that one revolution they almost did, so it's not like they can get fired, on account of being late, if the protest is public knowledge even beforehand and public transportation in the country is notoriously flaky. Still, not insignificant parts of the car-driving population has found themselves alienated by these protests, some even thinking it appropriate to not only wish violence upon them, but also actively kicking people who have rendered themselves unable to move. If these "allies of the cause" really cared about climate policy, not being able to drive their car the way they wanted, hopefully wouldn't lead them to seriously even entertain the idea of doing half the things that have been documented. What this leads me to conclude, is that what these people are expressing was never solidarity, as we should want to understand it, as in "standing with the cause", but rather sympathy with the individual. Something that can run out, if aspects of behavior don't align with the self-imposed order of decorum. This nicely resolves the contradictions we've already taken note of. It's very easy to feel sympathy with people facing the same struggles as oneself, even without feeling the need to further educate oneself. In fact, feeling sympathy is inherently an individualist notion, and while I don't think it's a bad feeling to have on an interpersonal level, it has no place in political analysis, and should not be confused for a basis of political opinion.

Kin and Disappointment

Solidarity, as it's own concept, is really traditionally rooted in commie rhetoric. As such, it's usually used interchangeably with "sympathy" in liberal politics. Sympathy as a basis for political opinion can be found a lot in these individualist spheres, so this is where I choose to illustrate the failure of sympathy as a political basis. Disillusionment is a powerful force when dealing with party politics. Infamously, the US. 2020 presidential election swung hugely progressive (please take this descriptor with a pinch of salt), even in traditionally conservative states, with large population that have usually voted republican. Pennsylvania, for example, which has a large population working in the traditionally conservative mineral industry, swung left enough to flip it, apparently for having betrayed the workers. What I think is striking, is that this probably shouldn't be surprising to anybody, seeing as the stereotype about politicians of any ilk is, that they lie. This feeling of betrayal can also be found in many left-wing or self-professed apolitical, but often marginalized groups with respect to social democratic parties. In both cases, this feeling of betrayal is founded, but not really surprising - even while the feelings of sympathy probably weren't all wrong in the first place. Sympathy is usually established through a process of humanization, which is a good thing in itself. It finds commonality with which one can identify oneself with the other party, and in that way, individualizes the party - be it an organization, or an actual individual - relating it to oneself on more or less equal footing. This is very close to building a feeling to kinship, albeit one-sided and less open to negotiation. The rules for such relationships are, unfortunately, a lot more squishy for this to be functional over longer stretches of time.

The aforementioned feelings of sympathy are probably valid, insofar as the party (or candidate) and the voter probably espouse the same values in the areas on which the candidate has built their platform. Deviations might pop up everywhere, but boiled down to a catchy three word slogan, they might well agree. However, their material interests, the things that usually pin down what is done, and how it's done tend to differ wildly, and ultimately, these are the avenues that matter. One might argue that this is what Trump did correctly during his 2016 campaign: Marketing himself as somebody existing within the same material conditions as the majority of the US proletariat. It's not a new tactic, but it's been historically effective, provided the attempt is at all believable. Of course the man in question famously started with "a small loan of a million USD", but such details won't deter a serious libertarian from being confidently wrong about things. For the effect this form of politics has had historically, many will categorize it as populism when employed. In fact, where sympathy might have been founded in similarities, when the material interests are unaligned in a way that the actions of one are actively harmful to the other, they are in fact, useless to the one with less power. At the same time, the conception of a group as a collection of individuals, which mostly enjoy kinship with the observer will give a lot of leeway when evaluating, or reevaluating their positions. What's expressed as "betrayal" or "disillusionment" is a form of personal disappointment, wholly unhelpful to the process of change, as the door remains open to try again, once the specific people that one takes issue with, have been replaced with a successor, who often holds the same material interests and priorities.

We must however recognize once again, that the feelings of affiliation originated from a perception of mutual kinship that didn't actually exist. The standard politician has very different class interests than his voter and thus can only represent him in limited capacity. Sympathy is to think that he can and - crucially in this case - deferring to their authority. Solidarity is to recognize the needs and shared class interests, and building a united front to push for the entire spectrum of interest.

It's not (always) easy being red

We've tossed out a bunch of stuff that intersectionality isn't and how it differs from the liberal notion of solidarity. We've also stamped out a definition for solidarity that is actually workable, and as far as I'm concerned, this is already essay-length. There's a reason why I put "101" in the title, and that is twofold: This topic and all the formal work that needs to be done to get it "praxis-ready" includes a lot of stuff and even struggles from within the Marxist movements, some of which are still being fought by smaller sects to this day (for very little merit, to be clear), and my own understanding of it very much still in the works, so I've got some reading to do. I still have a pin from earlier left that I want to address, before closing out this essay. I will definitely continue this topic, once I think I have enough material to make a coherent point.

That pin from earlier is about "universal" solidarity. For the Marxist, it's of course easy to take a stand in solidarity for somebody who has many intersecting oppressed identities. We have, after all, committed ourselves in understanding oppression and effectively combating it across the fronts that are available. It becomes more difficult in cases, in when the identity overlaps mostly with bourgeois circles, but still experiences oppression. Hollywood actors often find themselves in this role. While actresses for example have trouble finding the same longevity in their careers as their male counterparts because of society's expectations for women to be young and visually pleasing in a very narrow sense of the word, many of them are white, straight, rich, connected, not part of a marginalized religion. Still, it's good practice to include them in the feminist anti-patriarchal struggle as well. Of course there is a long history of such struggles to be focused on bourgeois individuals in the first place, so maybe the Hollywood actress doesn't actually need the backing of Marxist collective action. She certainly doesn't need it more than a black woman in the lumpenproletariat, but if we draw this line, we're once again playing the sympathy game. My own sympathy certainly more readily goes out to the latter, but I've been a communist for most of my adult life at this point, and never particularly invested in celebrity culture in the first place. There is a need for a principled position that takes into account intersections that are difficult to deal with.

From the need to effectively address such difficult intersections there arises a need to adopt a structuralist view of oppression and frame the solutions not first and foremost as an individualist action. Marxism is uniquely primed to adopt the concept of intersectionality, because it actually doesn't need to make foundational changes to itself to integrate it into its theory. Marxism has been constructed by structuralist (and hence collectivist) in its solutions already, meaning the struggle against patriarchy for example is supposed to be externalized, as well as internalized, as opposed to the liberal theory that places the responsibility onto all individuals to rid themselves of patriarchal tendencies. While the internal struggle is absolutely vital as a starting point, the task will never be done without the externalization to find a unified praxis that will not only correct the aspects of patriarchy that affect oneself and the periphery, but all intersections that it interacts with.