Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 12:18:08 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Agency and Oppression


Hi Russ,

>Yoshie correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not so sure I'd go along with all
>of this: I think that you're conflating exploitation and oppression.
>Exploitation works for the most part through the appearance of free will,
>the worker freely sells his or her labour on the market and appears to gain
>a fair day's pay for a fair day's work etc. Most importantly the parties in
>the transaction need to be equal in the eyes of the law and to appear to be
>making a _fair exchange_. Thus for this to function properly there needs to
>be the appearance of equality, equal rights, democratic choices and all
>that. This is in marked contrast to societies founded on forms of
>exploitation where the extraction of surplus labour is obvious eg slavery
>or under feudalism in the form of the tithe paid to the church and working
>the lord's land. In the latter, as with the caste system, legitimation is
>via supernatural means "All things bright and beautiful, all things good
>and great; God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate..." Under
>capitalist exploitation, exploitation is mediated by the ideologies of
>fairnesss and freewill in the market, together with the 'veil' of apparent
>equality.

Up to here I agree.

>Oppression occurs when the appearnce of equal rights is negated by actual
>experience. Thus a woman in the UK may be granted equal rights under the
>law, but in practice is discriminated against at every turn, is denied the
>same rewards as her male counterparts and experiences the sexism of everday
>life. Her oppression is the result of her being treated as a 'second class'
>citizen in a society where the appearance of equal citizenship reigns. (OK,
>forgetting the fact that we are all 'subjects' of her majesty here and that
>none of us is a citizen- but I hope you get my gist!).
>Thus oppression as such does not entail freewill in the same manner as
>exploitation- the worker may choose her exploitation (_not_ forgetting that
>we all need to earn a crust), but surely she does not choose her
>exploitation.

Now as we switch our perspective and focus more closely on capitalism
today, I think that while your definition of oppression captures an
important form of oppression, it leaves out several other forms:

1) In the case of the lack of legal agency of minors and sometimes an
oppressive mixture of coercion and consent that is used to maintain control
by parents, communities, and the State over minors, to take just one
example, we can't use your definition, in that there isn't even an
appearance of equal rights here. (This is very important to recognize
especially concerning the minors' rights to reproductive freedoms, sexual
liberties, etc.)

2) Actual practice of equal treatment might still result in differential
outcomes according to genders. Take parental leaves, for instance. Suppose
that the State does not guarantee the right to parental leave to parents of
either gender. In this case, the State is actually treating men and women
equally (that is, equally badly). However, given the social fact that in
today's society the majority of care-giving duties fall upon the female
sex, simple equal rights and equal treatment under the law basically
perpetuate and aggravate the hierarchy produced through the workings of
families and civil society. The case of pregnancy leaves is even clearer;
the oppression that results from the lack of pregnancy leaves can't be
meaningfully discussed within the definition that says that oppression
takes place when practice negates the equal rights granted in theory. The
same can be said for the oppression of the disabled.

3) As to your statement about people never choosing their oppression, I
think that we might find Gramsci's idea of "consent" useful here in
qualifying your comment. I think all oppressed peoples (as groups) have
fundamental interests in their own emancipation (whether or not they as
individuals recognize how and why they are oppressed), but this doesn't
mean that oppressed individuals never give "consent" to the very ideologies
that legitimate their oppression. Nobody literally forces young women to
starve themselves, but many in core capitalist countries do, for instance.

I welcome your (or anybody else's) further qualifications.

Yoshie





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