Our intention is deliberate a revolutionary movement must be rooted in and shaped by the most oppressed and marginalized those whose lives are most directly targeted and exploited by the system. Within these communities are also workers, but our struggle goes deeper than labor alone. It is about our humanity and the survival of the planet. This is why we highlight those who are often excluded or rendered invisible and why revolutionary leadership and power must come from where the oppression is deepest.
So de-emphasizing solidarity along class lines is somehow good for the "most oppressed people?" How would you define or quantify oppression in this context? I've not encountered analysis of systems of oppression framed in such a way, and my concern is the ease with which cynical actors could deploy the same political technologies that divide workers in service of the capitalist order to divide workers in leftist spaces as well.
Our politics are rooted in a decolonial, abolitionist, anti-capitalist analysis that understands liberation must be shaped by those facing the deepest contradictions of this system.
This is classic class reductionism. Centering the most oppressed is not de-emphasizing class solidarity it’s deepening it. Many of those most targeted by colonialism, racism, patriarchy, ableism and state violence are workers too. The issue is that class cannot be understood in a vacuum. A politics rooted only in a European settler Marxist framework is not enough if we are serious about striking at the root.
Since your analysis actively and intentionally omits class as a source of oppression, I'd argue yours is the reductionist argument. Im not saying that class is the only thing that matters - that actually would be class reductionism.
In case I wasn't clear, class is the most universal line along which we are divided, and it is the commonality that including class as a means of describing oppression is the kind of thing folks who are genuinely trying to achieve an end to all oppressive systems refuse to ignore.
By decentering class you do the work of the capitalist class that benefits from the oppression of all people inways that are unique and distinct across different modes of oppression. I don't see oppression as a state that can be quantified, i.e. "more" or "less." Oppression is a relationship to exploitation and benefits. The oppressor benefits while the oppressed are exploited. The capitalist class, which necessarily benefits from arguments that choose to set aside class and deny the role it plays in capitalist exploitation. Capitalists perpetuate and rely on white supremacy to create and maintain divisions between the underclasses such reprehensible systems create to more effectively exploit the masses. Erasing class from the discussion necessarily protects white supremacy rather than weakening or dismantling it, because it removes a crucial relationship to power than acts as an effective vehicle for white radicals who reject white supremacy to stand in solidarity with all oppressed people.
Ironically enough, the Huey P Newton who opposed capitalist oppression and white supremacy is on the record including class in his analysis of systems of oppression, and did not reject white revolutionaries outright, and I think it's fair to say you are consiouscly deploying his name to lend legitimacy to an ideology that seeks to exclude and reject people on the basis of race without any real examination of whether all people under the heel of the capitalist class are oppressed and deserving of liberation.
You are aware of the primary contradiction here in the U.S. settler state, correct? Then you should know anti-Blackness was not secondary to capitalism here. It was one of the conditions that made it possible. Capitalism in the U.S. did not develop apart from settler colonialism and anti-Black racial domination. It developed through them.
This is exactly the kind of class first universalism we’re rejecting. No one is omitting class. We are saying class is not the only or always primary contradiction in every context, especially in a settler colonial empire built through genocide, enslavement, land theft, racial hierarchy and imperialism.
And honestly, non Black people often get in their feelings the moment Black, colonized and other oppressed people center our own conditions, leadership and political analysis instead of defaulting to a framework built around their comfort or familiarity. What you’re calling "universal" is often just a European settler Marxist framework pretending its own experience is neutral.
For us, class is one terrain of struggle but liberation cannot be built through a politics that flattens colonialism, anti-Blackness, patriarchy, ableism, borders and state violence into secondary contradictions. Invoking Huey P. Newton without grappling with the material conditions Black, colonized and oppressed people were organizing from is exactly the problem. The point is not to reject solidarity. The point is that solidarity that is not decolonial, anti-racist and rooted in the most oppressed will always remain shallow, conditional and incomplete.
Centering the most oppressed doesn’t erase class it deepens our analysis and ensures revolutionary politics are rooted in the material realities of those who face the sharpest contradictions. Are you even in solidarity with black and brown liberatory struggles?
The "working class" within the United States is largely made up of a white settler majority. If this white settler majority were willing to revolt, they would be able to do so today, as they control the majority of unions, associations, clubs, and non-governmental organizations. The fact that they have not done so is not a fluke, it is a feature of the system that allows these "working class" people to trade away their solidarity in exchange for the privileges of settler whiteness. Until that changes via white working class investing in the solidarity economy and their own re-education, the situation will not change. If you'd like to learn more about whiteness and how it has been weaponized to dull the revolutionary potential of the working class, I suggest you read "An Indigenous People's History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
TL;DR: The white working class has no revolutionary potential. They are too complicit in global anti-Blackness.
I’m concerned by what I see as a glaring omission.
When you say, “A revolutionary movement must instead be rooted in and shaped by the most oppressed, including:” the list omits the working class.
Is that an oversight, or does it accurately reflect your perspective?
Our intention is deliberate a revolutionary movement must be rooted in and shaped by the most oppressed and marginalized those whose lives are most directly targeted and exploited by the system. Within these communities are also workers, but our struggle goes deeper than labor alone. It is about our humanity and the survival of the planet. This is why we highlight those who are often excluded or rendered invisible and why revolutionary leadership and power must come from where the oppression is deepest.
So de-emphasizing solidarity along class lines is somehow good for the "most oppressed people?" How would you define or quantify oppression in this context? I've not encountered analysis of systems of oppression framed in such a way, and my concern is the ease with which cynical actors could deploy the same political technologies that divide workers in service of the capitalist order to divide workers in leftist spaces as well.
Our politics are rooted in a decolonial, abolitionist, anti-capitalist analysis that understands liberation must be shaped by those facing the deepest contradictions of this system.
This is classic class reductionism. Centering the most oppressed is not de-emphasizing class solidarity it’s deepening it. Many of those most targeted by colonialism, racism, patriarchy, ableism and state violence are workers too. The issue is that class cannot be understood in a vacuum. A politics rooted only in a European settler Marxist framework is not enough if we are serious about striking at the root.
Since your analysis actively and intentionally omits class as a source of oppression, I'd argue yours is the reductionist argument. Im not saying that class is the only thing that matters - that actually would be class reductionism.
In case I wasn't clear, class is the most universal line along which we are divided, and it is the commonality that including class as a means of describing oppression is the kind of thing folks who are genuinely trying to achieve an end to all oppressive systems refuse to ignore.
By decentering class you do the work of the capitalist class that benefits from the oppression of all people inways that are unique and distinct across different modes of oppression. I don't see oppression as a state that can be quantified, i.e. "more" or "less." Oppression is a relationship to exploitation and benefits. The oppressor benefits while the oppressed are exploited. The capitalist class, which necessarily benefits from arguments that choose to set aside class and deny the role it plays in capitalist exploitation. Capitalists perpetuate and rely on white supremacy to create and maintain divisions between the underclasses such reprehensible systems create to more effectively exploit the masses. Erasing class from the discussion necessarily protects white supremacy rather than weakening or dismantling it, because it removes a crucial relationship to power than acts as an effective vehicle for white radicals who reject white supremacy to stand in solidarity with all oppressed people.
Ironically enough, the Huey P Newton who opposed capitalist oppression and white supremacy is on the record including class in his analysis of systems of oppression, and did not reject white revolutionaries outright, and I think it's fair to say you are consiouscly deploying his name to lend legitimacy to an ideology that seeks to exclude and reject people on the basis of race without any real examination of whether all people under the heel of the capitalist class are oppressed and deserving of liberation.
You are aware of the primary contradiction here in the U.S. settler state, correct? Then you should know anti-Blackness was not secondary to capitalism here. It was one of the conditions that made it possible. Capitalism in the U.S. did not develop apart from settler colonialism and anti-Black racial domination. It developed through them.
This is exactly the kind of class first universalism we’re rejecting. No one is omitting class. We are saying class is not the only or always primary contradiction in every context, especially in a settler colonial empire built through genocide, enslavement, land theft, racial hierarchy and imperialism.
And honestly, non Black people often get in their feelings the moment Black, colonized and other oppressed people center our own conditions, leadership and political analysis instead of defaulting to a framework built around their comfort or familiarity. What you’re calling "universal" is often just a European settler Marxist framework pretending its own experience is neutral.
For us, class is one terrain of struggle but liberation cannot be built through a politics that flattens colonialism, anti-Blackness, patriarchy, ableism, borders and state violence into secondary contradictions. Invoking Huey P. Newton without grappling with the material conditions Black, colonized and oppressed people were organizing from is exactly the problem. The point is not to reject solidarity. The point is that solidarity that is not decolonial, anti-racist and rooted in the most oppressed will always remain shallow, conditional and incomplete.
Centering the most oppressed doesn’t erase class it deepens our analysis and ensures revolutionary politics are rooted in the material realities of those who face the sharpest contradictions. Are you even in solidarity with black and brown liberatory struggles?
The "working class" within the United States is largely made up of a white settler majority. If this white settler majority were willing to revolt, they would be able to do so today, as they control the majority of unions, associations, clubs, and non-governmental organizations. The fact that they have not done so is not a fluke, it is a feature of the system that allows these "working class" people to trade away their solidarity in exchange for the privileges of settler whiteness. Until that changes via white working class investing in the solidarity economy and their own re-education, the situation will not change. If you'd like to learn more about whiteness and how it has been weaponized to dull the revolutionary potential of the working class, I suggest you read "An Indigenous People's History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
TL;DR: The white working class has no revolutionary potential. They are too complicit in global anti-Blackness.
I didn’t read it that way, the listed groups are part of the working class and vice versa.