Class as the Root Problem

Ok - so, back in the day (God, I'm getting old, this has to have been over 10 years ago now) I tried to make the case that class issues (read: warfare) should be the main direction of leftist action moving forward.  The person I was talking to, shot me down and argued that class was only one mode of oppression, and that all modes of oppression should be equally targeted.  How can you prioritize?  I was won over intellectually, although in my heart of hearts, I always thought I was right, though couldn't really articulate it.  Here we try again. 

My thoughts lie in what I'll call the hierarchy of oppression in America today.  I want to situate this in space and time; there may be other times and places where this theory won't work.

The first hierarchy of oppression is based on the concept of the nation: who's in and who's out.  It is the most basic form of Othering - powerful folks will side with powerless folks against other powerful folks when there is a national threat.  This actually might be lessening somewhat, especially if you believe Hardt and Negri (see their book: Empire).  Anyways, I still it is useful and appropriate, and it is the most basic form of Othering.

The second most basic form is class.  Rich folks will side with other rich folks of whichever race or gender or whatever against poor folks.

Next is race.  Race, of course, is all sorts of wrapped up with class in the US, but I still think rich white folks see more in common with rich black folks than they do with poor white folks.  (Of course, if you look at it from the bottom up, it might not look the same, but I'll argue that we need to focus on the powerful, not the folks that are fighting each other at the bottom.)  That said, I think it is telling that blacks who make it into the bourgeoisie are often described as acting or being white.  This is a class-based attack couched in racial terms.

Gender and sexual orientation and all the rest of it comes afterward.  These are largely fights that take place within the context of a culture.  Nation, Class and Race all imply inter-cultural conflicts.

Ultimately, I think we need to focus as high up the hierarchy as possible.  I'd like to see an anti-national movement, and in part I think there is one developing in a pro-immigration sense.  But on the other hand, I think it is an awfully hard sell, and ultimately, I think citizenship is a valuable construct for fighting a lot of the other battles farther down the hierarchy.  Instead, I think we should be fighting the class war.  Everything else is a distraction that ultimately only reinforces the class-based system.  To the extent that the women's rights movement, or the civil rights movement or the gay rights movement have succeeded, it's all been about gaining access to the middle class, not about making fundamental changes in the economic structure that leaves millions of people oppressed.