{"id":7085,"date":"2014-05-07T13:05:16","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T13:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=7085"},"modified":"2023-06-12T19:57:33","modified_gmt":"2023-06-12T19:57:33","slug":"exploitation-oppression-and-alienation-emancipation-liberation-and-self-determination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/07\/exploitation-oppression-and-alienation-emancipation-liberation-and-self-determination\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploitation, Oppression and Alienation: Emancipation, Liberation and Self-Determination"},"content":{"rendered":"

The RCN has based much of its analysis of\u00a0capitalism on the notions of\u00a0exploitation and\u00a0oppression, to which we counter the\u00a0ideas of emancipation and liberation – hence the name of our main publication. However, we have been conducting\u00a0discussions on capitalism’s third prop, alienation, and its antithesis, self-determination, understood in its widest sense. In the article below, by Allan Armstrong (RCN), which comes from Volume 1 of Internationalism From Below: Reclaiming a hidden communist\u00a0tradition to challenge the nation state and capitalist empire<\/cite>, explores the\u00a0relationships between exploitation, oppression and alienation, and between emancipation, liberation and self-determination.<\/p>\n

\"th-3\"<\/p>\n

Communists, and sometimes others on the Left, use three key terms to help us understand social relationships between human beings in class societies. These are exploitation, oppression and alienation.<\/p>\n

Exploitation, oppression and alienation have become more developed in the later forms of class society, particularly capitalism. However, the ideologies used to disguise or justify class society have also become more sophisticated.
\n<\/p>\n

Exploitation<\/strong> occurs whenever and wherever there is a dominant class able to extract surplus labour or products from a subordinate class. Women became the first subordinate \u2018class\u2019 when patriarchal societies developed, following upon the demise of many earlier communal societies. In patriarchal societies, men as husbands and fathers were able not only to control their wives\u2019, concubines\u2019 and children\u2019s surplus labour in the form of goods and services (including sexual), but were also to transfer women and children as their property to other men. Later class divisions developed on the basis of the social conditions initially brought about by the emergence of patriarchy.<\/p>\n

When chattel slavery developed, the forcible extraction of surplus labour followed from the direct ownership of the slave by her or his master (or occasionally mistress). Under various tributary systems, such as those found in China and India, the subordinate classes, particularly peasants, were expected to pay imposed taxes in kind (goods), services or money to state-employed collectors. Under feudalism, another form of tributary society, serfs were forced to work directly on their lords\u2019 land, and\/or provide rents in services, kind or money.<\/p>\n

Under capitalism, however, surplus labour takes the form of surplus value extracted from waged labour in the process of production. However, this surplus is only realised in the form of a payment (usually monetary) at a market away from the workplace. This is then distributed as profits, interest and rent in the process of exchange. This helps to disguise its origin.<\/p>\n

There is another type of exploitation, the significance of which has become clearer as capitalism has conquered the planet and converted more and more of the natural world into private property. This is the human exploitation of natural resources, sometimes beyond their sustainability. This has also led to the degradation, in many places, of some natural circuits necessary for life, e.g. air, water and nitrogen in the soil.<\/p>\n

All earlier forms of human society have, at times, had negative effects upon certain life forms (e.g. the large mammals driven to extinction by early bands of hunters) and natural environments (e.g. the forests of Iceland destroyed by early Viking settlers). However, capitalism\u2019s inbuilt drive to accumulate has greatly extended and speeded up the human degradation of our environment.<\/p>\n

There is also a strong link between capitalist exploitation and the development of the nation-state. A key function of nation-states is to ensure that capitalists can command labour and resources, as well as control the domestic market. Furthermore, capitalists\u2019 demands for cheap labour, greater access to resources and extended markets, has been a major factor in the promotion of imperial projects by those \u2018nation\u2019-states most able to exert their power outside their own state boundaries.<\/p>\n

Oppression<\/strong> occurs wherever a ruling class has developed a state with the power to enforce human exploitation upon the subordinate classes in society. Indeed the two things cannot be separated. Class societies and the state go together; exploitation and oppression go together.<\/p>\n

Oppression is most effective when rooted in customs, laws and other practices, which are accepted or endured by the subordinate classes. These have been reinforced by the \u2018soft\u2019 state \u2013 e.g. religion and education (training) and state regulation of the media. In the past, organised or established religions could extend the role of this \u2018soft\u2019 state by the provision of charity to the \u2018lower orders\u2019. Capitalist states have, to different degrees, taken on this role through the provision of welfare.<\/p>\n

However, all states also have a \u2018hard\u2019 aspect, reserving for themselves the right to enforce repressive measures. In different states, and in accord with the level of challenge the ruling class faces, these measures include the use of police and armed forces, psychological pressure and torture, the courts, fines, imprisonment and death penalties.<\/p>\n

It is only under capitalism, however, that there appears to be a separation between an economic arena of production and a political arena of the state. This division has given rise to the notion of \u2018free labour\u2019 and \u2018free elections\u2019 under capitalism. These ideas were first promoted by Liberals, but accepted later by many Radicals and Social Democrats.<\/p>\n

However, from the earliest days of waged labour, under capitalism, many of those directly affected felt their lack of freedom acutely. They had little difficulty seeing themselves as wage slaves, comparing their own insecure and impoverished lives with those of chattel slaves. Others considered their new industrial masters to be a \u2018millocracy\u2019 enforcing a new form of serfdom, following in the exploitative and oppressive footsteps of the older feudal landed aristocracy.<\/p>\n

Once industrial capitalism and waged labour had become more firmly established, some workers became influenced by Ricardian socialism[1]<\/sup><\/a>see Ricardian Socialism<\/a><\/span><\/span>