Submitted by Basil in AskRaddle (edited )

Examples of struggles not necessarily related to class but definitely to hierarchy being, for example, the Tulsa Race Massacre, The American War of Independence, and maybe even both world wars (don't know enough about the economic causes of World War 1 or if Germany's invasions in WW2 were supposed to bring any economic benefit)

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celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )

  1. Tulsa Massacre had a class component, the property was stolen by the whites and beyond that the context of racism in the USA is clearly inflected by class as it is impossible to understand any of it without reference to the implementation of chattel slavery and class conflict.

  2. USA war of independence was fought primarily over the right to continue imperial expansion westward, which the proclamation of 1763 had not permitted. It is impossible to divorce class interests from this, as it was the class interests of settlers which sought expansion and the class interests of the English monarchy which led them to curtail this expansion. Additionally, the antislavery movement in UK was alive and well by the time of the 1770s and 1780s, and the separation of USA from UK was what preserved slavery (a class relationship, undeniably) into the next century in USA whereas UK had banned it in the early 19th century post-USA secession.

  3. WW1 was caused by the need to manage class conflict within Europe by escalating nationalism as an ideology over communism and socialism and anarchism. Additionally the major catalyst of the war was the competition between UK and Germany to build navies. The purpose of these navies was to exert imperial force outwards, not at each other but at the colonized nations of the world. The purpose of doing so, was clearly to preserve and heighten the class tensions within Europe by expropriating labor and resources from elsewhere, thus replicating the class dynamic internationally as well.

  4. WW2 is impossible to understand without the context of first the historic depression during the Weimar Republic, which created incredible class pressures which were to be channelled by the state into a Keynesian wartime economy under the Third Reich. Additionally, the concept of Lebensraum (living space) relates to a class conflict as well, where the indigenous slavic and other people would be subjugated as serfs to a landed, settler-colonial German elite throughout central and eastern Europe.

Just because hierarchies besides class are obviously relevant here, does not mean that these are good examples of class being irrelevant. In fact, it is among the most useful way to understand these historical events as they continue to shape our present.

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Basil OP wrote

yeah of course, I'm not saying that class is irrelevant, just that not every struggle in history has been purely a class struggle, as was the feeling I got from Marx.

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zddy wrote

Marx, as well as most historians/theorists, pared his theory down to a single idea: class struggle. This is due to accessibility, I believe, as a book trying to theorize the absolute truth to anything and everything would be, assumably, completely unwieldy.

I really like the purposeful titling of Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution because there is a realization that it isn't the factor, but one important enough to merit consideration. I think that principle should be applied to all works of history or theory.

With Marx it could be read as Class: A Factor of Struggle. or something like that. His main objective was the documentation of the history of working class, which at that point had been fairly ignored, and how the development of capitalism coincided with the degradation of the working class. During this work he developed his theory of capital. He never set out to discover ALL the reasons (well.. He might have) for conflict or wars or struggle, but he discovered one.

If that discovery blinded him to the considerations of all other factors, then that's his fault, not ours. We can take from him what we need and leave the rest behind.

So...no he isn't wrong, but I will agree that there are plenty of other factors in place?

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Ryebread wrote

I don't buy into class reductionism. While many struggles involve class, so many other identities come into play.

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