B. Foley’s second rejoinder on intersectionality

Dear Julio,

You raise a number of important points in your reply: regarding the role of the state, regarding the ways in which what appear to be “non-economic” modes of oppression inevitably have a class character, largely one that results in “class cleavages” that serve only the interests of the ruling class. I’ll respond briefly here, hoping that others will also comment upon your thoughtful and provocative theorization of the issues involved in what could be called the “intersectionality debate.”

I grant your correction of the definition of “exploitation” I used in my original response to your statement. “Exploitation” refers to the expropriation of surplus value from wage labor only — or at least primarily — in the capitalist era. But, as Marx pointed out, exploitation has existed in all forms of class society; modes of production are largely distinguished from one another precisely in terms of the ways in which a surplus is “pumped out” of the laboring population.

But I still consider “exploitation” to be an economic term, one that points to the capacity of ruling elites to benefit from the uncompensated labor of the producers. If “exploitation” is extended to describe a broad range of oppressive behaviors or unequal situations, however — that is, if it spills over into various modes of “non-economic exploitation” — it loses most of its value as a tool of Marxist analysis. I therefore disagree with your assertion that the term “exploitation” usefully describes the differential positioning of different sectors of the working class (broadly construed) in relation to one another — with the result that the more advantaged (or less disadvantaged — more on this below) sectors, especially as defined by gender or race, can be seen as “exploiting” their gendered or racialized counterparts.

The key point here is that differential treatment (which surely exists, often with toxic effects) is not the same thing as objective benefit. White workers do not “exploit” workers of color, even if some white workers are supplied by the ruling class with somewhat better public services and experience lower (if hardly nonexistent) levels of police violence at the hands of the state. Yet you argue that, “because whites have more “political power” — e.g. they are more than proportionally represented in government, the policies of the government will favor them, perhaps law enforcement is significantly more punitive toward nonwhites, etc. — this means that, through the mechanism of the state, the whites will be appropriating wealth at the expense of nonwhites. This, again, is exploitation.” To which I ask, what kind of political power? and for which whites? Similarly, in response to your own question — ”Do men in a patriarchal family exploit the labor of women and children, and perhaps others (elders)?” — you respond, “Yes!” As I see it, however, working-class men who think that their home is their castle, and who sit down for a beer after work while their wives (also working for a wage) begin their second-shift of labor at home, do not “exploit” their female counterparts, even if their gendered behavior is both selfish and oppressive. Indeed, I’d make the argument that these men’s acceptance of a stereotyped gender hierarchy has a boomerang effect, leading them to substitute a false sense of superiority for higher wages for both genders — as well as a diminution of their own humanity as both partners and parents.

The logical corollary of broadening “exploitation” to describe the differential access to goods and services by different social groups is, inevitably, a kind of “oppression Olympics,” in which only those at the very bottom of the social hierarchy — which is a global social hierarchy — can count as being truly and completely exploited without exploiting anyone else. But does a single mother living in Topeka with three children, earning the minimum wage at a 7–11, count as exploiting the Indonesian factory worker whose wretched wages and working conditions — and, possibly, oppressed status within a religiously sanctioned patriarchal family structure — make it possible for the Topekan mother to purchase those cheap jelly shoes for her children at the local dollar store? The notion that she objectively benefits from imperialist exploitation of labor in the global South — or that, more generally, working-class men benefit from sexism, or white working-class people benefit from racism — means that they don’t have an interest in abolishing the exploitative hierarchies of which these demographics are the presumed beneficiaries.

You evidently share this view, Julio, when you write, in conclusion, that “the direction the workers’ struggle must follow is . . . clear: Exactly against the grain of these class divisions!” But your argument that “we should reserve the term class (the modern working class) to denote the exploited, ultimately by capital, but in and through a whole mixture of exploitative processes that require concrete elucidation” muddies the waters of class analysis. It is only by keeping in mind the distinction between oppression or domination on the one hand, and exploitation on the other, that we can, in my view, begin to develop a class analysis of the roles played by a wide range of ideological and material practices — always present in complex admixtures in any situation “requiring concrete elucidation” — in helping to secure ruling-class hegemony.

Last point: I sometimes find it helpful to approach these questions not from the standpoint of current capitalist reality — beset by exploitation, domination, and oppression, as well as the assumption that we need to compete for pieces of the pie in an essentially fixed and stingy social order — but from the standpoint of a communist future. The notion of human need prevailing in capitalist societies is narrow and warped, even for those in presumably advantaged positions within social hierarchies. That’s why I find it useful to think of white workers as “less disadvantaged” then workers of color, or of working-class men as “less disadvantaged” than their female counterparts.

The chains borne by our class make it difficult to imagine the kind of world we can win.