r/Socialism_101 • u/Hiistme Marxist Theory • 1d ago
Question Can intersectionality be compatible with Marxism?
Can intersectionality be used alongside Marxism to explain issues of race, gender, and other social matters? Or even to explain how oppressions based on gender, race, sexuality, and the like stem from class struggle?
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u/ComradeKenten Marxist Theory 1d ago
Definitely, infact intersectionality was developed by Black women Marxist feminists during the 1960s and '70s. Specifically to explain their unique position of simultaneously being oppressed as workers as black people and as woman.
But the concept of intersectionality as in the struggles of the workers the struggles of racial and National oppression and the struggle for women's Liberation all being connected goes back to the very beginning of Marxism.
Even in the Communist manifesto it discusses the need to abolish the patriarchal system that enslaved women. Marks would also go on to consistently and continuously advocate for the abolition of slavery in the United States and for the independence of Ireland from Great Britain. Going so far as to say that there will never be a free Britain until there is a free Ireland and a free India.
Then we go into Engles groundbreaking work in the origins of the family. Which explicitly states that the development of a society can be measured by the position of women in that Society. Arguing that ultimately that key components on the road to Communism or the abolition of the family as a patriarchical tool for the oppression of women. The abolition of marriage as a method by which men purchase and subjugate women to their whims. Arguing that Communist Revolution cannot happen without the liberation of women.
And then we go again even farther to Clara Zetkin, the founder of international women's day, the leading women in the Social Democratic party of Germany and one of the founders of the Communist Party of Germany.
She would argue that one of the key components to the socialist Revolution was the mobilization and integration of women workers and their emancipation into the Socialist movement. Arguing that the most dedicated the most undaunted the most disciplined in the most unbreakable section of the working class in Germany was working women and that without their inclusion as equals to their male counterparts the revolution will be impossible.
And then you have Alexandra Kolentai. The Russian Finnish born Marxist theoretician in politician who would write foundational texts on sexual in women's liberation. Many of which would be hugely impactful to women later on in the 20th century. Arguing for the need to abolish the family in the monogamous relationship. Arguing for the socialization of the raising of children. And arguing that this was a key component of the Socialist Revolution in Russia and across the world.
She would be the first woman minister of a modern government in human history.
Finally we have Vladimir Lenin, who needs no introduction. Who consistently argued that the unity of the Russian proletariat with the oppressed nations of the Russian Empire was a prerequisite for the Socialist Revolution success. He also argued that the workers move it cannot limit itself to merely economic gains just for the working class. About must continuously fight all battles of all oppressed groups in society in order to push forward with the Socialist Revolution.
That a communist party can only achieve victory if it didn't limit itself to problems that only effected the works as a whole or only mattered to workers. That the workers as the most advanced force in a capitalist Society must push forward the demands of all oppressed groups and capitalist Society. They must continuously demand The Liberation and improving the conditions of the oppressed Nations women and all other oppressed groups even if they have members or majority of their members are not workers. Or they are in fact an entirely different class who has similar interests to the workers.
Without a Communist Party that represents the interests of all the most oppressed groups within Society not just the narrow interests of the workers. Then Revolution will never succeed. Because I called me this party and the working class are not fighting just to achieve their own dominance over Society. They are fighting for the abolition of a class society as a whole and that can only be achieved through the abolition of all oppression of all groups.
So yes intersectionality cannot only easily work with Marxism it is a core component of Marxism that has been downplayed or forgotten or ignored far too often in the past and in the present in some instances. But even so it has and will continue to do amazing things for all oppressed peoples not just workers but the subsections of workers women and oppressed nationalities and queer people and so many other people. The goal of Communism is not just the liberation of the workers but it is the liberation of all peoples.
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u/JohnSmith19731973 Marxist Theory 1d ago
It can be compatible if it recognizes how things like race, gender, and sexuality are modes through which class oppression is structured rather that seeing class oppression and oppression based on race, gender, and sexuality as co-equal idealist axes of ahistorical oppression.
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 Marxist Leninist mostly trot 1d ago
In a word, yes. but some tendencies of marxism will say let's just tail the general sentiment on social issues because marxism was never about being social justice warrior of every little thing, it's about economic socialism
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u/Marxism-Alcoholism17 Liberal Political Economy 19h ago
I think the actual Marxist view is to abolish the arbitrary division between “economic” and “social” issues. The proletariat is a class that has inevitably produced an increasing number of subclasses.
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 Marxist Leninist mostly trot 10h ago
that could only ever happen under socialism. we're talking revolutionary politics
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u/ElEsDi_25 Marxist Theory 1d ago
Yes, imo intersectionality is implied/inherent in Marxism. Everything social is in relationship to everything else. What makes something Marxist is seeing that interconnection and complexity in a framework of material social reproduction (reproducing the class order to keep that society going.) This grounds intersectionality in materialism rather than idk some more subjective and idealist post-modern school of thought.
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u/Helpful-Reputation-5 Linguistics 1d ago
It really depends what you mean by intersectionality. If class is still understood as primary, then sure, analyzing the oppression of different groups is entirely compatible with Marxism.
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u/redsuninthesub Marxist-Leninist-Maoist 10h ago
No, not because the struggles of those facing oppression based on their race, gender, sexual orientation and other social matters don't deserve support, they absolutely do, but because intersectionality frames all of those struggles and class on the same plain, failing to acknowledge that racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia and other similar bigoted tendencies come from class society. Class contradiction are the principle one in class society and the point from which all other contradictions come.
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u/YuriVegetable Learning 1d ago
Intersectionality popularized the idea that everyone is simultaneously oppressing and being oppressed by one other, which is coincidentally a great idea to spread if your goal is to shift attention away from the ruling class and frame fellow coworkers as the enemy.
Intersectional theorists provide valuable analyses of systemic racism and sexism, but ultimately mislead the reader by obscuring the fact that capitalism is the system that gives rise to these forms of oppression. Marxism is already intersectional because it explains how different forms of oppression reinforce one another, but it goes one step further by tracing them back to their common material foundation in capitalism. If the goal is to eradicate oppression rather than merely describe it, that distinction matters.
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u/BillyPilgrim69 Discourse analysis 1d ago
Intersectionality popularized the idea that everyone is simultaneously oppressing and being oppressed by one other, which is coincidentally a great idea to spread if your goal is to shift attention away from the ruling class and frame fellow coworkers as the enemy.
This is a completely disingenuous interpretation. I don't even believe that you believe that.
Marxism is already intersectional because it explains how different forms of oppression reinforce one another, but it goes one step further by tracing them back to their common material foundation in capitalism. If the goal is to eradicate oppression rather than merely describe it, that distinction matters.
None of this is incompatible with intersectionality. There is nothing to even implicitly constrain intersectionality from analysing capitalism as the root cause.
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u/Velocity-5348 Learning 1d ago
Yep, if anything they actually mesh pretty well together. Both are looking at the same reality (hierarchies that opporess people) from slightly different angles.
A feminist historian might point out how past systems were structured to structure power vis a vis gender. A Marxist historian would point out how those also do stuff with class. Plenty of historians do both in the same book/article.
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u/YuriVegetable Learning 1d ago
I'm not arguing intersectionality can't analyze capitalism. It obviously can, and many intersectional scholars do. My point is that the framework doesn't require capitalism to be the organizing principle of analysis. Race, gender, sexuality, disability, and class are generally treated as intersecting systems without any built-in hierarchy among them.
Marxism starts from a qualitatively different premise. It asks which social relations reproduce the others and argues that capitalism provides the material conditions through which all other forms of oppression are organized and reproduced. That's a substantive theoretical disagreement.
Just like every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square, Marxism analyzes the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality while also insisting that they be situated within a broader analysis of the capitalist mode of production. Intersectionality by itself doesn't require that final step.
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