by ProfDave, ©2022
(Feb. 22, 2022) — How does division end discrimination? CRT and its cousins and predecessors divide the world into overlapping and crisscrossing layers of the oppressed and the oppressors. Because the R stands for race, we set black against white. Historically, Karl Marx turned Hegel’s dialectic of ideas into a dialectic of socio-economic relations: employees against employers. The same paradigm can be extended to women against men, have-nots against haves, homosexual against heterosexual, atheist against Christian, student against teacher, suspect against police, inmates against staff, illegal immigrants against border authorities. The game gets sticky where there is controversy over which party is the oppressed – as between the flash mob and the shop owner or the Palestinian and the Jew. My question is: how can a conflict paradigm end oppression?
It is doubtful that any worldview except Social Darwinism sees oppression as a good thing. Survival of the fittest may be the law of the jungle, but the civilized West calls upon the strong to protect the weak. Eastern morality may stand aside to let karma play out in the suffering of the disfavored but is at least neutral towards the underdog. But how do we identify the oppression, oppressors or victims?
My fifth-grade dictionary (Webster’s Dictionary For home, school and office, Kappa Books, 2009) defines oppress as “1. To weigh heavily on. 2. To crush by abuse of power.” Traditionally, and in Judeo-Christian morality, this applies to one individual abusing power over another. Note that individual responsibility is assumed. It is also assumed that any individual is capable of oppression and of being a victim. Just laws are enacted to punish the perpetrator and compensate the victim, irrespective of who they may be. In other words, the oppressor is the one who oppresses, regardless of class or race.
Society corrects oppression by rescuing the victim and censuring the oppressor. If it is observed that people are taking advantage of others, a moral society modifies the law. Individuals are responsible to join together in making just laws, not just for themselves – the strong – but for the weak. This process, as the founding fathers observed, required a moral and religious population. In Britain and America Caucasians came to see that Africans were people, made in the image of God, and that holding them in slavery was morally wrong. It took time, because evil was entrenched in self-interest, but Caucasians voted, changed the law, enforced the law, and fought a bloody civil war in America that rendered Africans free. Who gave women the right to vote? Men who saw that it was right. Hindu Mahatma Gandhi appealed to the Christian conscience of the British, reinforced by passive resistance, to set India free – and it worked. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, appealed to the conscience of white Christians to end segregation – and white Democrats joined with white Republicans to pass the Civil Rights Act. Prejudice remains in the hearts of fallen mankind, but integration, King believed, opened a door to reconciliation – a world in which we see more of common humanity in one another than that which divides us.
Karl Marx experienced the failure of the liberal democratic Revolution of 1848 and observed the troubles of the early industrial revolution while in exile in England. The law of the land placed no limits upon the power of the machine owners over the machine operators, nor were the social consequences of the actions of the powerful entirely clear. Christian socialists and utopians lobbied, set up cooperatives, and even model factory villages. Marx, however, regarded individual moral persuasion and parliamentary reform as insufficient and counterproductive. Only united class revolution would suffice. The worse conditions got, the sooner the working class would rise in rebellion. Reform only postponed the inevitable explosion. Using Hegel’s historical dialectic, he thought he saw the inevitable overthrow of the rich few (capital) by the impoverished many (labor) leading to a communal classless society.
Marxist parties were never able to seize power or gain more than a third of the voters in the industrialized West, but by dint of disciplined elites were successful by ruthless conspiracies in Russia and China and a series of developing nations. The process cost over a hundred million lives, but the communal “workers’ paradise” never followed. Instead, brutal dictatorship and repression – at best – brought forced industrialization but gray misery for the ordinary people. The Marxist state became the new oppressors of the working class.
Meanwhile, in the West ordinary people, through labor unions, coalition building and parliamentary action were able to achieve standards of living beyond Marx’s wildest dreams while firing hardly a shot. Communist regimes build walls to keep their people in, while “capitalist” regimes build walls to keep illegal immigrants out. Who is oppressing whom?
Marxist theory was highly attractive to political scientists and sociologists in the 60’s and 70’s when the Soviet Union was at the peak of its military and scientific power. The paradigm for social action ran as follows. First, a possible inequity or grievance is identified. Second, consciousness is raised to create a social problem. Third, mass support is created by hatred, demonstrations and extreme language, provoking escalating response (and over-response). Fourth and simultaneously, control of the “the commanding heights” of the society– education, communication, entertainment and law are seized. And fifth, resistance and criticism are cancelled and silenced – perhaps liquidated. Are we in stage five?
The infamous “dictatorship of the proletariat” ensues (sixth), to be followed by the communal society (seventh), where everyone is equal co-owners of everything and religion and the state fade away into a perfectly practical and democratic world order governed by science. Of course, that utopian seventh day never comes because of the dynamics of human nature and of power addiction — dictators never step down.
In the Judeo-Christian/democratic worldview, particularly in its European form, moral responsibility is intensely individual. Each person, regardless of status, stands before the judgment seat of the Almighty. To whom much is given, from them much will be required. Justice is pictured as a blindfolded lady holding balance scales. There are good and bad rich people and good and bad poor people; good black people and bad black people; good homosexuals and bad homosexuals; good priests and bad priests. Good people can be corrupted, and evil people can repent and reform. Each person is responsible for his own choices. Yes, social relationships may be unequal and unfair, but the powerful can exercise noblesse oblige, taking care of the weak and enabling reform. At the same time, the powerless may make their situation worse by poor choices and rebellious actions. There is good hope that people of good will on both sides may work together to solve inequity and unfairness.
Moral responsibility, in the Marxist worldview, rests on the class, not the individual. Classes (races, sexes, religions, and sexual identities) oppress and are oppressed. Guilt and virtue are assigned by group identity, not by individual action or attitude. If you are a member of a dominant class you are assumed to be an oppressor (evil) – no matter what you do. If you are a member of a victim class you can do nothing wrong. There are no good cowboys and no bad Indians. Every European-American (and their heirs in perpetuity) is responsible for slavery and native-American genocide. There is no individual responsibility.
At the worldview level, CRT, “Social Justice” and other essentially Marxist movements rely on a dialectical, essentially evolutionary, view of social and political reality. Ideas, nations, classes, sexes and the like are locked in conflict – “nature red in tooth and claw.” Life is a struggle in which the weak are swallowed by the strong. Problems are resolved by conflict, not by consensus.
Note the direction of action, under the Marxist scheme, is to increase a sense of grievance, envy, resentment, and hatred towards one’s counterparts until revolution and total victory is achieved. In classical Marxism, to ameliorate the grievance by social reform would be to postpone the desired revolution and therefore must be prevented. Conditions must not be allowed to improve but indeed must worsen. Compromise solutions would prevent total victory. Blame, tension, hatred and division are the solutions.
By contrast, the direction of democratic problem solution is to seek harmony by objective analysis, communication, conflict resolution, working together and reforming what is broken. A solution is sought that improves the situation for both parties. Love and understanding, as preached by Christianity, take longer than hatred and invective, but the result is gradual improvement – perhaps unity. Any mule can kick down the shed; it takes a carpenter to build one. Should we consider construction, instead of destruction?
Are problems solved by sympathy or hostility? By reform or by revolution? By consultation or by agitation? Has BLM improved community relations in the inner city? Driving police out brought fear and crime, the loss of local businesses and little or no protection for victims of any color. Does racial rhetoric reduce racism? Has the last 20 years of playing the race card? We have magnified our differences and minimized our common interests. We have set black against white and forgotten that we are all Americans. Is this the solution?
What is the endgame? The unlimited increase of hatred and division can only lead to bloodshed and destruction. The winner can only be brutal repression of one class by another, as we saw in the Russian Revolution. The granting of one reasonable demand only leads to more extreme demands. The objective is total and perpetual surrender.
This has been illustrated in the LGBT agenda. Private sexual behavior was decriminalized. The police have no business in any bedrooms but their own – we agreed. But alternative sexuality and gender dysphoria did not stay in the bedrooms. Now both are required to be celebrated and taught in public schools. Society and biology are to be rearranged to accommodate them and any objection is to be criminalized. Now heterosexual monogamy and nuclear families are under attack. In Canada and Scandinavia clergymen are being arrested for teaching Judeo-Christian sexual morality. Is this constructive?
It is not difficult to find grievances between Europeans and Africans. The exploitation of African slaves in America was resolved in the 19th century by Christian abolitionists and a civil war. Legal discrimination has been removed in the mid-20th century by civil rights legislation. That prejudice and hostility remain on the one hand and undeniable statistical negative distinctions on the other. A higher proportion of minority citizens experience a variety of life’s misfortunes, from poor health to family failure to incarceration. How does the application of Marxist theory solve these?
First, it is unlikely that class warfare will decrease prejudice or hostility on either side. Prejudice is a human response to menacing differences. Angry mobs increase prejudice. Second, we forget that classical Marxism envisaged a scenario in which the oppressed would become the overwhelming majority. A minority is not likely to win a race war without the majority joining them. Alliances are needed. These are not best achieved by creating more racial conflict, but by recognizing a common identity. In other words, grievances will be resolved as we learn to work together as Americans.
Women have had grievances since the Garden of Eden but have made considerable progress in the Judeo-Christian West: recognized as entitled to human rights, property rights, civil rights, education, professional roles – all granted by men before women gained the right to vote! And yet men, even in the West, continue to devalue and mistreat women. Since the triumph of the suffrage movement (also granted by men as the right thing to do) a new feminist movement has arisen to raise the consciousness of women concerning their disadvantages.
Will women gain by a war of the sexes, literally splitting the human race? Is it helpful and progressive for women to separate themselves in hostility against men? While women, as a class, are naturally more numerous than men (except where sex-selection abortion is common), feminist women are not. While suffragettes assumed participation and to some extent dependency in families, the new feminists asserted independence. One proponent famously declared, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Then why do so many “fish” have “bicycles?”
What does increasing the tension between men and women and/or increasing the independence of women accomplish? There have been unintended consequences. The liberation of women liberates men from responsibility to support, protect and practice chivalry towards them. Freeing women from the bonds of marriage also frees men from the bonds of marriage and fatherhood. Unattached males tend to become predatory. The objectification and abuse of women has increased apace. Does destroying men make the lot of women better? Resentment drives away respect. The demonstrable dignity and ability of women, reinforced by Judeo-Christian morality, moves society towards respect for both the single woman and the wife and mother – without the societal burden of resentment.
Conclusion: Is division the solution for the grievances of our time? The classic Marxist strategy is to make matters worse until the existing system is destroyed in order to make way for a secular utopia – which never comes. Those in power must be overthrown and their power seized. Unfortunately, those who seize power may be even more tyrannical than those who earn or inherit it. In other words, the division strategy, in most cases, is counterproductive. It can only divide and destroy; it cannot unite or build anything but the opposition.
Can democracy combined with Judeo-Christian morality provide solutions for the grievances? There are no utopias promised. Human nature undermines all such schemes. Unchecked power corrupts its holders. Enlightened despots are still despots. At least the classic democratic strategy is to improve things rather than destroy them, to build consensus rather than impose hypotheses. It seeks to bring opposite parties together to solve problems, not drive them apart to make problems worse. Appealing to what we have in common, it can speak truth to power. Conscience is a factor and over and over again, in a democratic system, power has responded to truth constructively.
David W. Heughins (“ProfDave”) is Adjunct Professor of History at Nazarene Bible College. He holds a BA from Eastern Nazarene College and a PhD in history from the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Holiness in 12 Steps (2020). He is a Vietnam veteran and is retired, living with his daughter and three grandchildren in Connecticut.