Oppression

Great Debates
1

Oppression doesn’t benefit oppressors.

If oppression benefits oppressors, quit what you’re doing right now and go out and seek power over others. Because it will make your life better, because it will benefit you.

If you protest “But I don’t want that”, then explain why. If you say that you need to feel morally okay and could not live with yourself as a person deliberately seeking opportunities to oppress, then “feeling morally okay” has to be factored into “beneficial” and again I say that if this is how you feel, oppression WOULD NOT BENEFIT you. If you say you value egalitarian human connections far more than power over other people, then that evaluation also has to be factored into “beneficial” and again you don’t benefit from oppression. Benefit means “having it better than”. And the comparision is “than if you weren’t oppressing”. Not “than if someone else were oppressing you instead”.

If you say “well fine and good for those who CAN but goddammit I am marginalized in THIS way and/or THIS way and there’s no way I can seize that kind of power”, hi there and sorry about your situation, but you’re basically saying that IF you could oppress successfully you WOULD and you’re only complaining that you CAN’T? So if you’d had the fortune to be born male, cisgender, able-bodied, English-speaking, white, wealthy, and otherwise privileged, damn right you’d have your oppressor jackboots on the throats of those below you? If not, see the paragraph immediately above this one.

If you say “Yeah but THEY, the ones REALLY with all those entitled powers and privileges, they DO ENJOY their status and they really ARE oppressive”, yeah I notice that too. Please keep in mind that the powers at their disposal include a lot of things but don’t tend to include the power to dismantle the entire system of privilege and power. The most they can do, if that’s what they want most in life, is to step down. Some do. Then they’re no longer the folks you’re pointing fingers at. Some try to strike a middle ground continuing to be wealthy and otherwise encsonced people, but behaving as philanthropists, giving their assets to worthwhile causes, etc. But then they are privileging their own judgment about what is and what is not deserving of funding. They’re still privileged.

It’s a SYSTEM not a batch of evil culprits. I’m sorry if you really relish the idea of someone to hate, someone to blame, for inequality and oppression. Get over it. Go play Monopoly™ with your friends. See if the people who try hardest to refrain from acting like capitalist landlords win the game. See if the people who win the game were behaving particularly like capitalist landlords or just a bit more so than those who lost. Watch how the rules of the game itself insure that no matter who does what the game will be won by capitalist landlords.

Our social systems – patriarchy, racism, capitalism, et. al. – are games like that. There are no culprits. No one is “getting away with” them. They may even have had temporary evolutionary purposes. To move beyond them we really need to believe that a different system can offer EVERYONE – even those most advantaged by the existing systems, those most invested (therefore) in the existing systems – a better deal. A better game, one that still offers efficiency, reliability, stability, and so on. But more fair.

2

Nevermind.

3

I feel there are a few holes in your argument.

Not everyone has the opportunity to be an oppressor. Society gives out the opportunities.

People are different. Just because I’m saying I wouldn’t enjoy being an oppressor for moral reasons, doesn’t mean other people might not be okay with being an oppressor.

This is an excluded middle fallacy.

There is no system outside of what people do. (Unless you’re arguing that some deity imposes a system upon us.) The system is just the collective actions and interactions of the individual people within it.

As a whole, your argument doesn’t follow a line of reasoning. Your post up until your conclusion was based on the idea that people have free will and can choose their actions. But your conclusion then ignored that.

4

To the OP,

  1. Some oppression does (or some acts of oppression do) benefit some oppressors.

  2. People who behave immorally (nebulous, I know, but roll with it if you can) can and in at least some cases should be held accountable for their actions, even as those actions occur within and according to a system not of their making that may make such actions appear advantageous to them.

How would you respond to those two statements? Because I’m having a really hard time parsing your argument, and so cannot even begin to respond to it without some clarification.

5

@the OP: I think you have a rather naive take on it. Plenty of oppressors benefit greatly from oppression, and also don’t feel morally bad about it in the least. Indeed, IIRC, many Southern slave owners quoted Scripture out of context to justify their owning of black slaves, and probably believed what they were mis-preaching, too.

You can’t project your views onto others and assume that they feel guilt or remorse over something that would cause you guilt or remorse. ISIS threw gays off rooftops to their deaths, and probably felt really good morally about doing so.

6

Doesn’t the argument work the other way, too? If oppression didn’t benefit oppressors, wouldn’t they all just give it up?

7

Oppressors often have a set of beliefs which justify their oppression. Slave holders have been mentioned. Much of the oppression of women was justified by their not being strong enough or had enough brains to be doctors and lawyers etc. Oppressors of this type can convince themselves that they are doing good.

Yeah it was the system. Child labor was also part of the system. Passing laws to end oppression is often effective, especially when the oppressors benefit from the oppression. Feeling bad about yourself and making big bucks is not something you can argue someone out of. Being good or going to jail (or being fined) works much better.

8

Define “benefit”.

Your idea of “benefit” might be very different from that of a potential or actual oppressor.

9

Benefit: to be better off WITH something than you would be WITHOUT it.

10

No it doesn’t. They may, however, think that it does and behave accordingly. That’s not the same thing.

As I said I’m not interested in identifying culprits.

11

I’m still not following you. I’m really not trying to be difficult or dense on purpose, I just really am not following.

Suppose a slave master owns 1,000 slaves. They slave away brutally every day without pay, and generate tremendous profits for him. Sure, he has to feed, shelter and clothe them, but it’s still big bucks profits. He builds a cotton empire, owns a sixteen-bedroom mansion, amasses enough wealth to last his family multiple generations, and spends his days sipping mint juleps and strawberry daiquiris, dancing at balls at his estate, partying life away.

Under what definition is he not “benefiting from oppression?” The guy is raking in money without ever breaking a sweat. Let’s say he also feels zero moral guilt in the process - it’s only natural, to him, that darkies should serve whites.

So just where is he “losing?” The only risk he faces is that his slaves might revolt. Which is a serious safety concern for him, of course, but the only one. Is that what you mean when you say oppression doesn’t benefit oppressors?

12

It does, sometimes.

That’s something I heartily agree with, but it doesn’t absolve people who are so actively seeking power as in your example. People who are assumed to be the oppresor by simply existing, on the other hand, should have the average material relative advantage balanced against the distress of knowing that other humans are being oppressed, or even killed, and the economic disadvantages of a system where everyone is forced to spend a lot of useless money on oppression and the economy doesn’t let everyone contribute efficiently.

Some people do enjoy being in a position of relative power over others, even if they don’t otherwise benefit. But it should not be counted as a privilege for everyone else.

13

Oppression and discrimination are valuable tools for the wealthy and powerful, and they wield them well. And they benefit from them. White supremacism was instituted in the US because of the fears of wealthy whites that poor blacks and poor whites could potentially unite to oppose their interests of exploitation.

It is the system that is to blame – but the system was instituted to benefit the rich and powerful, and it still does.

14

Oppressors have been telling the oppressed this lie for centuries. And it’s still a lie.

15

You just played yourself.

If they do enjoy it, everything else is moot. They enjoy it, I could not, therefore the “system” consists of more than one kind of moral actor, and so what if it’s a “system”? Here, that’s just another word for “bunch of interacting humans”. And if some of those humans are evil, well, they get the benefit of oppression. Not just the apparent benefit, the tangible, real benefit.

Unless you’re postulating some outside moral system where they do not, often, just die in their beds of old age having lived in material comfort and raise surviving progeny? Because that looks a lot like “benefit” to me. So unless they suffer in Hell afterwards, or come back as slugs, what is not “benefit” for them?

Are you under the illusion most oppressors angst about being oppressive? I can tell you, they most assuredly do not.

16

Then I fundamentally disagree with you. Because I get the general idea that things like toxic masculinity, patriarchy, racism, etc., etc. can be considered to debase us all, even those engaging in the bad behavior, but it’s different kinds of debasement and not really meaningful to treat them as somehow equal. And they certainly don’t self-correct or cancel each other out.

Perhaps we agree that a slave master debases themselves because you or I, viewing them through our “enslaving other people is bad” lens, would tend to see someone as lesser than a similarly situated individual who does NOT enslave others. Okay… but does that mean the slave master is oppressed? Does that mean the slave master, who quite possibly doesn’t even know we exist, much less care about our opinion, is denied the benefit of the labor done by those he enslaves?

Just in case it’s not clear, I’m pretty sure the answer is “no” to both of those things. Our external (to the slave master) moral judgements of his behavior and what it says about his character do not oppress him and such external judgements do not, by themselves, deprive him of the fruits of other people’s labor.

The question isn’t whether you’re interested in identifying culprits, but whether or not such people should be held accountable. Is it a good “system” that allows for oppressors to keep on oppressing, even if I grant your premise (which I don’t, but for the sake of argument I’ll pretend) that they’re hurting themselves too? I vote no. Which means that, whatever your or my personal interests are, to the extent we agree to focus on making a better “system” rather than pointing the finger at individuals, the new, better “system” needs to have some mechanism of dealing with INDIVIDUALS who do “bad things” like oppress others without just cause. Whether that’s de jure through law or more through things like social pressure, some kind of means of exerting leverage against deviant individuals as they persist within our hoped for “better” system would seem to be value added, no?

17

  1. “Benefit” is a relative term. Oppressors love being rich and powerful, and that’s why they oppress others to become exactly that.

  2. Bullshit. People are responsible for their own moral choices, not something abstract like a “system”. The Nazis who were put on trial after WWII tried to spin that and, rightfully so, they were shot down in court. Gassing millions may have been part of the Nazi “system”, but the people following those orders made a moral decision to do so

18

Kim Jong Un is having a pretty good time being an oppressor.

Getting stylish slacks to fit is just a minor problem.

19

I’m not the slave master so I can’t speak from firsthand experience about the slave master’s experience. Neither can you.

So let’s pretend that you have the option of being the slave master.

Are you in? Do you wanna? If not why not?

Now I’ll answer for myself. No, I’m not in and I don’t wish any such thing for myself. I would not benefit. It would not make me happier. It would not make my life better. It would in fact make me less happy and leave me feeling like I was living an empty life without purpose or dignity. I haven’t always felt like I was living the best possible life but on balance I’m pretty damn satisfied with the course I’ve taken. I’ve done things I’m proud of. I’ve lived a life with meaning. These things are far more important than material possessions even if they came without horrible moral costs. But to have them and know that I have them because I’ve profited from the coerced labor of 1000 enslaved people, people whose lives I’ve made miserable? Ugh!!

20

In this day and age, who is being oppressed and who is doing the oppression? The OP mentions landlords, I used to have one, the company built and maintained the apartment buildings and fixed any problems in exchange for an agreed upon price. How was I oppressed by being offered a place to live?