The union makes us strong — the intersection makes us weak

It is a truism that rulers everywhere have a most effective weapon: “divide and rule”. It is a vital task of those on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors to find tools to disarm this weapon. Too often, however, the weapon wins: social movements fight among themselves rather than finding the means even to just slightly move towards the position they say they want.

This brings us to the subject of unions and intersections. “Intersectionality” seems to pop up everywhere these days (18 March 2021) in “the discourse” on social movements. From what I can make out the idea is that we can build unity through overlapping “identities”. I am restraining my inner mathematical pedant at this point (see below).

The advanced ruling classes in the United States-led empire have carried out much research into public relations and social manipulation in the past century or so. The first woman United Kingdom Prime Minister was a firm supporter and member of the ruling class. I guess you could see this as an example and triumph of “intersectionality”, just not of the oppressed. The new Biden cabinet in the US is designed to be shielded from criticism through its various intersectionalities/identities. The Trump movement plays some of the same games. And in the UK . . . we have “representatives” of ethnic minorities in the cabinet and leading the charge against civil liberties.

I assume the origination of the term “intersectionality” was done with the best of intentions. To be honest, I don’t exactly know what this intention was, and that I “should” read up on it before pronouncing on it. I am not going to do that. I am not concerned with the precise, canonical meaning, if there is one. My complaint is the effect: division and the effective further empowerment of the already powerful.

Abstract pedantry

Let’s get down to abstracts. When I was in school, various versions of this diagram were pretty pervasive in mathematics text books:

As “Russian-influenced media”, I have chosen a version with Cyrillic in it (ironically from Wikipedia/”UKFO/CIA-influenced media” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_diagram). I assume Putin’s cheque is in the post. I have added some primary colours with 33% transparency to do my best at making it more appealing visually, but I am not very good at that sort of thing.

The unions combine elements from the various regions/sets/classes: in the case above, this would be the class of letters from the different scripts (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic). The intersections are the letters in common between the letter-classes. You probably should notice that unions are bigger than their component sets, while intersections are smaller. If you keep unionizing you end up with the “universal set” or “universe of discourse” (the box). Keep intersecting and you end up with nothing, nada, the “empty set” (∅).

In writing this, it has occurred to me that part of the problem is an ambiguity in how we look at and “deconstruct” the term “intersection”. I come to it, as is probably obvious at this point, from a mathematical perspective, which has its own shortcomings.

Social movements are often about “sectional” struggles, from the right of women, black people and others to walk the streets without being casually murdered down to having adequate toilet facilities at work. Adding “inter-” to the front could make it seem like you are connecting up these struggles, in the same way people looked to the inter-national workers’ movement for strength in the old days (and I hope once again in the near future).

When you are picked on, and worse threatened and even killed, for having a distinguishing characteristic, it is useful to find others with the same experiences and to try to defend oneself through solidarity. We need to push beyond sectional solidarity to connected solidarity.

The shortcoming I was thinking of a few paragraphs ago was the danger of attributing “meaning” to pure mathematics. The power of mathematics is that it abstracts from meaning, allowing a focus on the thought processes and logical connections involved. But to be effective, this work then needs to be applied to do something useful, or what’s the point? Part of the use is to expand our imaginations of what is possible.

Union drive

While it would be nice if we could keep unionizing until the 100% were in charge of their own destiny rather than the 99% having it dictated to them by the 1%, the problem is that large sections of the 99% identify with the 1% in many unhelpful ways. In large part this is the ideological purpose of nationalism, particularly in countries engaged in imperialist exploitation of weaker countries for the benefit of the 1%.

In the UK, the “Queen, gaud bless ’er” commands the loyalty of wide swaths of the working and ex-working classes. In the US, to kneel in supplication not to be murdered during the “Star-spangled banner” is to “disrespect the troops”, and presumably, more to the point and unsaid, the police/defenders/policies of the 1%.

In the working-class movement itself, leaders of parties and trade unions often identify more with the rulers of their local politics/society/industry in the interest of gaining personal favours, such as knighthoods, lordships and other (dis) “honours” in the UK. Siding with the 1% also pays better. Plus you can look down on and sneer at those who aren’t clever like you. These misleaders do not represent the working class, they represent the 1% to the working class.

Identity crisis

As usual I have argued myself into a corner. The problem seems to me to be how people can appropriately identify their own interests and respect those around them. How can people appropriately unite to fight the power. I will end with the words of the US-based Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) song whose refrain started me on this abstraction: