My response to B. Foley’s reply on intersectionality

Dear Barbara:

Please forgive the extent of this reply. Instead of rewarding you for helping me clarify these matters, I’m punishing you by inflicting on you another long piece of text.

On your main concerns, this may be one of these cases in which theoretical analysis and terminology don’t find easy agreement. Out of practical concerns, we each may be pulling the stick in opposite direction. As I say below, I’m trying to emphasize the identity while you’re concerned about the difference. Both matter.

You write that: “Exploitation, for Marxists, signifies the expropriation of the surplus value yielded up by the purchase and use of labor power.” Yes, if by exploitation one means capitalist exploitation, but exploitation (without the adjective) has a broader meaning in Marxism. It refers to the expropriation of labor time in general, by “economic” (capitalist) methods or by “extra-economic” (more directly coercive) methods.

Exploitation by non-economic methods can consist of directly appropriating (1) the bodies of the producers (where their labor power resides, as in a society with slavery), (2) their labor activity over time (the “service” or “use value” of labor power), and/or (3) the product of their labor: the wealth they produce. Since the producers have to be reproduced and their reproduction takes up part of their product or labor time, the exploiter winds up appropriating the surplus product or labor time, which in the capitalist case alone appears as surplus value.

Although in modern times wealth is largely commodified, a portion of the total wealth of society is not held privately to be exchanged in markets, but is systematically subtracted from private owners, appropriated directly, and then used up or reallocated also directly, with no commodity exchange as necessary mediation. This is the case, for example, of modern taxation, eminent domain expropriation, confiscation under the criminal code, public spending, etc.

As Marx noted in Poverty of Philosophy, this financing structure is the “economic basis of state power.” In simple terms, a portion of the total productive forces or wealth of society is converted into the political power of the ruling class, group, etc. down the level of individuals. Political power, the ability to legislate, govern or administer laws, and adjudicate legal disputes, starts as the taxing power of the state. If it has a larger scope that that (only a portion of the assets under the state are deployed for taxation, the rest goes toward advancing the other goals of the state), it is because the class and particular ruling group (“elite”) enjoys at least temporary political and spiritual hegemony in society. You cannot accomplish anything through the state without taking productive forces out of where they are (re)produced (the production sphere) and then directing them toward politically sanctioned priorities. (In Marx’s 1859 study plan of the “bourgeois economy,” these topics were supposed to covered in part II — “state, foreign trade, world market” — after part I — devoted to “capital, landed property, wage labor” — but Marx never got that far, except in the form of scattered remarks here and there).

The policies and administrative actions of the state are class struggle and competition pursued by other (political and legal) means. Now, say the state functions chiefly as protector and promoter of capitalist relations; even if at the expense of groups of capital and individual capitals. Then the state is effectively an organization *of* the capitalists and for the capitalists. It is owned by them in the Marxist sense of the term ownership. Now, the state is maintained out of the general surplus value produced by the workers. Therefore, the whole state process (taxation and reallocation of the productive forces taxed out of the private sphere of production in order to protect and promote capital) is a particular mechanism of (extra-economic) exploitation. The specific class or classes, group or groups, and individuals who benefit (in net terms) from the taxation/reallocation process exploit those who don’t!

One can view this political form of exploitation as one of the concrete forms in which capital exploits labor, but because of its historical specificity (states are never simply executive committees of the common affairs of the bourgeoisie; their actions reflect more complex class and intra-class compromises) it can also be viewed as a relatively independent form of exploitation, separate from the direct exploitation of wage labor by capital in and through the regular “economic” process.

Now, as you noted, economic exploitation proper, the typical capitalist case, involves the expropriation of the producers, the commodification of their labor power, the exchange of labor power for wages in the labor market, etc., and the application of their labor power under the orders of the capitalists so that the surplus value thus produced is accumulated by the capitalists.

It is good to note that, by concentrating wealth ownership, the capitalists are effectively dispossessing or depriving the producers from the conditions of their existence: the means of consumption that permit their personal reproduction and/or the means of production without which they cannot effectively be producers as in able to produce for themselves. However, this effective coercive pressure is masked under the legal, formal equality between workers and capitalists in the markets, which is a big reason why it’s so insidious and devastating. In the workplace, the workers submit to the will of the capitalists “voluntarily” because outside of the workplace, the workers are individuals on their own with the markets acting as stern disciplinarians.

Economic coercion stands in contrast with extra-economic, not necessarily more crude but certainly different methods of eliciting cooperation. Force and threat of force are crude. But another method, more or less sophisticated and more or less used in combination with other extra-economic and economic methods, is the ideological one: spiritual control, psychological manipulation, moral pressure, intellectual deceit, the formation of what Rudolf Bahro calls “compensatory needs” so the exploited pursue the rat race with gusto, etc. These are, in general, the methods that permit the exploiters to elicit the cooperation of the exploited, to ensure that the exploited surrender to them the productive forces of their labor, their labor time, or the products of their labor.

And, of course, all of these methods, economic or non-economic, are contrary to the primary method of eliciting cooperation that we expect to prevail in socialism: comradely discussion, rational persuasion, consciousness of our fundamental community of interests, etc. especially if pressing economic necessity can be reduced or eliminated.

Now, back to modern exploitation. This is the (direct and/or indirect) appropriation of surplus value. Direct, if the capitalist directly exploits wage workers. Indirectly if, for example, the capitalist exploits male wage workers who (say) in their patriarchal families exploit the labor of women. In this case, the capitalist exploits indirectly the women in the workers’ household. In both cases, the surplus labor time that the capitalist appropriates appears as surplus value, in the latter case because the labor power of the male worker exists as a commodity whose value is cheapened by the extra-economic exploitation of women in the family.

Here I am addressing this remark you made:

“First, he [JH] appears to accede to the notion that men, by virtue of their presumed position of power in the nuclear family, actually “exploit” the labor of women and children in the household. While Engels wrote words to the effect that he is the ruler, and she is the proletariat, this is a highly problematic statement, both theoretically and historically.”

Do men in a patriarchal family exploit the labor of women and children, and perhaps others (elders)? Yes! Again, this is in a patriarchal family. In modern times, in a working class patriarchal family, the exploitation of women already inherent in the familial structure may be reinforced by economic dependence, legal codes that impose a burden on women and children in case of divorce, moral pressure and religious beliefs that chastise women’s personal autonomy, etc.

“Along similar lines, I don’t quite understand Huato’s statement that whites (mostly working-class, presumably) can be said to be “effective owners of wealth” and thus in a position of “exploiting” their nonwhite working-class counterparts; this says little about the situation of working-class whites who — no matter what their attitudes may or may not be toward people of different “races” — own little more than the clothes they wear and the cars they drive.”

Yes. To say that in a society whites are the dominant race is to say that whites are effective owners of material wealth at the exclusion of nonwhites, and therefore that whites are thereby capable of recurrently exploiting nonwhites. To see this, suppose that white dominance or supremacy is limited exclusively to their greater “political power.” This is an absurd example, but it helps to emphasize the point. So, imagine a society in which whites and nonwhites have the same chance in the distribution of wealth and capital. However, 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.

Perhaps, we need to dig deeper in the concept of ownership. What does it mean to own wealth (not necessarily in its specific form as capital)? It means that one effectively decides on or manages in the last analysis over the use or disposition of such wealth.

In earlier historical times, ownership was attached to possession. But with the development of legal and fiduciary mechanisms, i.e. of more robust states capable of enforcing private ownership, ownership became increasingly detached from direct physical possession. It became possible to own a tool (or money) and lend it or loan it. At some point you’ll recover possession of the tool (money), perhaps with some interest or benefit added on it. With the emergence of joint stock companies, which evolved into today’s corporations, it was possible to detach ownership from the direct management or disposition over wealth. You could retain ownership while delegating direct management to salaried personnel. Modern finance is all about retaining ultimate ownership over wealth and capital, while not directly getting involved in the management or use of said wealth or capital.

Since modern capitalist finance exists and pretty much dominates our social life, then all existing organizations can be viewed as fiduciary vehicles owned by, in the last analysis, individuals. A family or household, a firm or bank, a church, a portfolio of bonds, stocks, and other securities, a political party, the state, an academic journal, etc. are all fiduciary or legal vehicles by means of which specific individuals exercise ownership (ultimate decision power) over wealth and capital without being directly involved in the day-to-day management of the physical wealth or capital assets thus owned. If I decide and you don’t, then I am effectively the owner and you’re not. If you produce wealth but do not own it, then that wealth is taken away from you, and you’re being exploited by those who end up deciding on how that wealth is to be used, consumed, transferred to other owners, discarded, etc. This is why the material reproduction of a society is the ultimate basis on which all social structures are erected. This is why any type of oppression or discrimination or exclusion is effectively exploitation, and should be called such … hmm… for certain purposes. For more on my hesitancy, read below…

“Exhaustive empirical and theoretical work by Marxist feminist and Marxist critical race scholars demonstrates that identities, however suffused these may be in what some Marxists have traditionally called “false consciousness” (a term that cannot readily be jettisoned, in my view), do not readily correspond with objective historical circumstances. Huato’s conflation of the terms “class” and “group” does not help to clarify matters.”

Touché. A group is a more general term to refer to a set of individuals described by some common trait. A social class is a more specifically defined term.

Here, I think we are getting to the real source of our divergence in views. The point I am trying to make is that each particular form of extra-economic appropriation or exploitation (such as in a patriarchal family or a racist society) coexisting with capitalist exploitation involves what I call a “class division” or “class cleavage.” Classes and exploitation are terms that we, Marxists, typically use in tandem. E.g.: The capitalist class exploits the wage workers by economic means (surplus value production and appropriation). That sounds fine.

Then, when should we talk simply about “class” and when about “class divisions” or “class cleavages”? Here’s my take: Instead of saying, in the study of modern society, the term class is to be reserved to the case of capitalists vs. workers, or the case of capitalist class, working class, petty bourgeoisie, etc., which are still abstract social classifications (based only on surplus value production proper), I believe that the term class should be reserved to denoting the concrete totality of class.

In other words, if you are a predominantly exploited individual in today’s society (even if not necessarily under the direct capital-labor relation), then you belong to the modern working class. If you are predominantly exploited on the basis of your gender, race, etc., and you are not a big capitalist (regardless of whether you’re a wage worker or a stay-at-home wife), then you’re working class. Etc.

And this highlights that the really complicated questions are those such as: (1) What is the relative weight of patriarchal, racial, etc. exploitation in a particular, historically delimited society? (2) How do these various class cleavages combine, coexist, conflict, and/or reinforce one another in a concrete society? (3) Of all the forms of exploitation, which one is the most dynamic, which one is the most virulent, which one is the most dominant in the sense of being able to repurpose all other forms of exploitation, subordinating them to its specific inner “logic” or “law of motion”? Etc. These questions cannot be answered in the abstract. They can only be answered after a specific and meticulous historical, concrete investigation.

The historical investigation of a society always brings out very mixed and complicated situations. One says, for example, that ancient Athenian society was a slave society for short, as a summary conclusion, but the complexity of class divisions was remarkable, as Engels notes in the Origin. It is always possible to find a group exploited by others in various forms while also exploitative of other groups in other forms. The dynamics in very asymmetric inter-class, inter-racial, intern-ethnic, inter-national marriages offer microcosmic illustrations of the issues that arise from these combinations. For example, in a modern capitalist society, we find white and black wage workers in similar occupations. They share the condition of being exploited by capital, but the whites — being members of the dominant race in society — also exploit the black workers through specific mechanisms! The disunity of the workers that we observe is indeed false consciousness. White and black workers do not fully recognize in their practical struggles the deeper basis for their unity as a class, something that requires a formidable theoretical and moral effort. However, like all false consciousness, it has roots in objective social conditions. Their ideological differences are erected on class cleavages, which is why it can overcome division and attaining class unity is so hard.

Back to the terminological problem: When Marxists have done this detailed, empirical and historical kind of work, concretely analyzing concrete societies, their tendency has been to designate the main class cleavage as class, period, and the appropriation of labor through the corresponding process as exploitation, period, to be distinguished from the dominated or subordinated class divisions, designating the corresponding processes as “oppression,” “domination,” or “subordination.”

Now, I do understand that quantitative differences translate often into qualitative differences, and thus a subordinated type of exploitation can be referred by a term less loaded than “exploitation,” e.g. a term such as “oppression.” That is fine.

On top of all this, it is clear that some of these class cleavages have persisted or been repurposed by capital largely because they have shown to be functional to the needs of capital of keeping the workers fragmented. However, if there is a strong political movement against these cleavages, they may not show a strong economic grip in that capital is capable of surviving without them. This is why capital, which doesn’t move much of a finger to dismantle these cleavages, it is often willing and happy to throw them under the bus as a diversionary trick. Thus, you see Nike pretending to be anti-racist, etc.

In my view, the thinnest class cleavage, the most fragile or superficial forms of exploitation are those justified on purely aesthetic, ethical, or spiritual grounds of a rather local nature. Then you have those based on political power, when existing political power represents a not necessarily very stable balance of forces in the class and intra-class conflicts. Then there are those based on political power but with a balance of forces relatively stable over longer periods of history, political power thus baked constitutionally or in a legal framework hard to reform or overturn (e.g. state senate representation, electoral college, state oversight of national elections in the U.S. case). And finally there are those based on economic conditions, the structural, long-term costs and benefits that make them “economically rational,” because there exist harder-wired technological, demographic, or lasting cultural conditions that favor them (re. the latter, think of languages, ancestral customs, and the “common-sense logic” embedded in them!). Traditionally, Marxists have focused on economic (dominant social relations of production in their correspondence to the particular state of the productive forces), and for good reason. But convincing others on why they should be placed front and center does require listening to the concerns raised by, say, nationalists in exploited nations, races, and ethnicities; feminists (especially radical feminism), etc.

This goes back at least to Marx and Engels’ views on Ireland vis-à-vis the liberation of the English proletariat, and then their views on Poland and Russia’s prospects. A more recent precedent, and much more decisive in switching the strategic focus of the struggle, was Lenin’s discovery of the revolutionary potential of the Asian peoples. It started gradually. By November 1919, Lenin had already come to the realization that socialism would not be “solely or chiefly” the struggle of the revolutionary proletarians in the rich countries against their bourgeoisie, but rather “the struggle of all the imperialist-oppressed colonies and countries, of all dependent countries, against international imperialism.” (Lenin, CW, v.30, pp. 159–161.)

In “Our Revolution” (CW, v.33, pp. 478), Lenin says: “Our European philistines never even dream that the subsequent revolutions in Oriental countries, which possess much vaster populations and a much vaster diversity of social conditions, will undoubtedly display even greater distinctions than the Russian revolution.” Etc. So, how could the Soviets even think that they would ever maintain tutelage over the Chinese revolution, in which almost a fourth of the human race was involved?

But I’m getting a bit sidetracked here. The very reason why I’m pushing back against this terminological tradition is precisely because I’ve noticed that people get confused about the relationship between patriarchy or race in a capitalist society vis-à-vis economic capitalist exploitation proper. They see the difference, but they do not see the identity!

This matters. If we view all of these as different forms of exploitation, as different forms in which one and the same social conflict (class struggle) over productive-forces ownership is taking place, then the fact that (e.g.) groups of white workers, men and women, side in mass with Trump in their anti-immigration measures is a much more comprehensible phenomenon.

But most important of all, the direction the workers’ struggle must follow is also clear: Exactly against the grain of these class divisions! In other words, we need to pursue class unity by siding firmly with the exploited (or most vulnerable) groups in each particular context. That’s the way to class unity. And that’s also why I insist 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.

“Division” — as a political strategy — is not the same thing as the division of labor historically giving rise to different race- and gender-coded demographics. “Dispossession” takes different forms in different historical movements, with different agents acting out different roles.”

I think you’re correct here about how nuanced these matters are. I won’t say more.

“While I heartily agree with Huato that, finally, it all comes down to class, Marxists need to steer clear of the charge of class reductionism. Huato’s designation of various cognate terms — oppression, division, dispossession — with exploitation blurs distinctions that need to be borne in mind if we are to grasp the highly mediated totality in which the hegemony of class-based power has a stranglehold over most of the world’s people.”

I believe I addressed this point above.

Just one other tiny thing that, I believe, may address a potential objection. In one of my illustrations of extra-economic exploitation in a modern society, exclusively via the political system, I mention in passing the case of law enforcement in a society with white racial supremacy with law enforcement acting more punitively against nonwhites. This is also exploitation! How?

If I take surplus labor time from the producers in the form of taxes and then reallocate it to policing while policing structures and procedures are such that whites exercise racial supremacy over nonwhites, then it is transparent that whites are expropriating nonwhites (even if whites are also exploited economically and supply a portion of the surplus labor time that goes to the police as taxed resources) through this bias in policing. You are taking resources from nonwhite producers and returning to them hell on the streets, police precincts, and jails! But not only that! Since nonwhites may rebel, protest, etc. against the social order, their brutalization and incarceration is about owning their labor power directly!

We know that, in the most general sense, labor is defined as purposeful or conscious activity. Labor need not be wage labor employed by capital. Brutalizing and incarcerating nonwhites is a way to own their bodies, in the Marxist conception of effective ownership; it is a way to own their *labor* powers by sheer extra-economic coercion, labor powers that these nonwhites may direct against the social order if they own their own bodies! If the state owns their bodies (and therefore decides on how to allocate their labor powers, how to use their time, e.g. to have them spend big chunks of their lives in cages doing nothing or, worse, in solitary confinement, and thus demoralizing them and degrading them), the state is thereby exploiting them and doing so precisely for the most egregious end — that of perpetuating their exploitation and that of the entire class!

Notice how elucidating the identity of exploitation below its diverse forms sheds light on, in this case, the importance of the abolition of the industrial prison complex, the police, the “justice” system, etc. as a means toward class unity and socialist construction. It does more: it points the direction in which to move: these struggles are absolutely essential to build robust class unity and have a chance to build socialism.