#nancy fraser

How can we overcome the obscuring of these connections ? What kinds of demands and framings could bring people together instead?

I think the first step — and I’m now speaking both as a critical theorist and as an activist — is to disclose the interconnections of these phenomena. To give people a map that connects the dots, enabling protests movements to locate themselves in relation to others, to find potential allies and eventually join forces. I don’t mean this in a Leninist sense — it’s not about subordinating some supposedly “secondary” issues to allegedly more important ones. It’s rather about reformulating one’s claims in ways that open the door to cooperation and encourage broader projects.

Through this type of process, it might be possible to win over at least some, maybe even many, people who now gravitate to right-wing populism. I don’t mean the committed authoritarians or “principled” racists —  they are unreachable and not worth the breath. But they don’t exhaust the populist ranks. There are also lots of people who haven’t been exposed to credible left alternatives, and absent such exposure, when there’s no one offering a good class-line that speaks to them, they end up voting for right-wing parties. We should change that by offering them something better.

Is it our task as socialists to show those looking for connections the bigger picture?

Absolutely. Look, whether it’s the Trumpists in the US or the AfD in Germany, these guys have a narrative. Of course, their narrative does not embrace everybody — on the contrary, it embraces some precisely buy excluding others. Unfortunately, a lot of people find it quite convincing.

You write that 'markets and labor power change the internal character of what is traded on them and the surrounding form of life in which they are located.' What is alienation? What is it that we’re alienated from or made alien to?

Nancy Fraser

There’s a long tradition of writing about alienated labor that goes back to Marx’s very early writings. The concept refers to exploited wage labor within capitalism, where the worker is alienated from his or her work but also from fellow human beings and from what Marx famously called our 'species being,' our humanity, our freedom to collectively decide what kind of lives we want to live and to build the institutions to do that.

People today are alienated from all of those things. There’s nothing more alienated, in terms of labor, than having to follow a script in interacting with customers, either on the phone or at a fast-food joint, while you’re also doing some backbreaking or repetitive labor in horrible conditions. So, we’re no strangers to alienated labor. I think the popularity of freelancing, even though that’s quite mystified in certain ways, does speak to a hunger for creativity, for being able to determine how you use your time, being an individual, not just being under the watchful surveillance of somebody else.

But I would say the deepest meaning of alienation and being unalienated has to do with freedom and democracy. Capitalism steals from us not just our labor and energy but our ability to decide collectively the most important questions about how we want to live. How hard do we want to work? How many hours? How much leisure do we want to have? What do we want to leave for future generations? How do we want to relate to nonhuman nature? What should we do with the social surplus that we collectively produce?

These are fundamental questions, and they are decided now essentially by a small handful of people who appropriate the surplus we produce and basically use market mechanisms to invest for the sake of maximal expansion.

Daniel Denvir

In other words, we live in a society where Elon Musk gets to decide that he’s firing a car into space for fun and that’s how our social wealth is being used.

Nancy Fraser

Absolutely. Whereas there might be many other things that we would prefer to do with that wealth. We might even prefer to produce less wealth and to live more simply, companionably, socially, and easily in a more relaxed way. We could have a much freer and more democratic life. But that’s not compatible with capitalism."

We'll discuss CANNIBAL CAPITALISM by Nancy Fraser.

“Nancy Fraser has produced the most elegant theory yet of capitalism in our age - capitalism not in the narrow economic sense, but capitalism in the sense of a total omnivore, a system that cannot stop devouring everything around it, destroying the lives of people and nature. This is Marxist theory for our age of crisis - and, we shall hope, of reckoning.”

4•16•21

Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto is a book published by Verso Books, and is essentially a manifesto for feminist rooted in socialism. As I read this book in its entirety, I found myself agreeing with most if not all of the points that were made by the authors. Throughout the manifesto, the contributing authors make it clear that the rise of capitalism is greatly responsible for enabling exploitation, oppression and discrimination. There are also other factors which play into widening the gap of inequality such as race, class, and gender. I connected with this manifesto a great deal largely because I myself cannot comprehend neo-liberal values, and yet these values were seen as the norm and/or the ideal. I remember the time when Hilary Clinton’s vow to ‘break the glass ceiling’ for women pursuing a political career gained popularity; although there have been many women who’ve praised her and portray women like her as an icon, I found myself rather intimidated and disturbed by women such as Clinton and the women that would rally behind due to the fact that there would be a pattern or commonality that I, and many other women, could see in this group of women. For starters, I and other women look nothing like these women (they’re white most of the time), and secondly these women would have access to a plethora of resources from a system which favours this type of women (i.e. they had money, wealth that many women only dream of possessing). I mention Clinton and her glass ceiling because the book references this in the statement: “We have no interest in breaking the glass ceiling while leaving the vast majority to clean up the shards.” I read this statement over and over again, because these words are the exact the words I’ve been dying to say but could never piece out during the rise of white liberal feminism. White neo-liberal feminism seemed to have become the golden standard for women’s liberation, and yet I found it quite odd how easy it was for this ideology to exclude a large population of women in the global society whilst claiming to be “universal”. The moment I was confronted with just how much white women dictated the grounds for gender development, I was an exchange student in a Scottish university studying Gender and Development. From being cut off when I tried to speak up in the class group discussions to saying and idea but from an Eastern perspective and have it be questioned shortly after that idea was repeated but used in a Western perspective and then applauded by the white girls in this class gave me much to think about when class was over and I made my way in the snow from the university grounds to my flat. I do want to mention that the professor was a white woman and she was well aware of imbalances of power especially in gender and development studies, so she was a wonderful woman and I appreciate her very, very much, her classes were the best. But it was very clear to me that the white girls who came to this class were very much trained into thinking in neo-liberal and “Caucasian” trains of thought. It’s not that I’m disturbingly shocked because of how surprised I was, if anything I wasn’t even the slightest bit surprised and this gave me clarity in really and truly having every intention in fighting for my rights and every other woman’s rights to speak their narrative and voice their story with power and confidence.

This manifesto, along with my memories and teachings as a student of international studies, has given me clarity in voicing my principles and what I believe in. Just as any twenty-something-year-old I’m still learning, but I’m also at that stage where I’m able to ground myself in my core believes and search for what truly speaks to me and that won’t be what everyone believes. I also want to mention the post-face because there was a point which I felt really hit the nail and this is on women and labour. The authors speak about labour in terms of sustenance, survival and consequence. Generally speaking, it’s implied that men pursue hard labour to have a right in taking on the role of breadwinner of the family, they strive and work-hard for glory and praise, whereas women who are committed to childcare and other labour that is associated with maintaining the household are typically seen someone who’s just doing what they’re suppose to be doing, nothing praise-worthy, they simply do labour (which is most often unpaid) out of “love”. Many aunts who are caring for more than three children come to my mind when I read this explanation of labour in the post-face; women in our society are told that it is our purpose to be a mother typically by men (and I know this because it happened to me) and I strongly disagree. A woman's purpose shouldn't be reduced to giving love and receiving basically nothing in return; we are our own person, we have dreams, desires, hopes, fears, and ambitions beyond our capacity to give love.