Justice & Material Benefit is What is Counter-Hegemonic
In a post Roe v. Wade world, understanding real change is even more important.
In a time where movements, rights, and policies are always at the forefront, we must begin to pose the question, what is real change? Real change, for many, is tangible. Something they can see, feel, or benefit from. Italian political activist Antonio Gramsci was under that same notion. In his prison notebooks, Gramsci wrote plenty. However, his central ideas that have withstood the test of time focused on what is labeled as hegemony. Hegemony[1] can be defined as the dominance of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society.
This hegemony includes the beliefs and explanations, perceptions, values, and more — so that the worldview of the ruling class becomes the accepted cultural norm. This allows the ruling class to implement features and ideas in the daily lives of the more significant population and without the latter second-guessing it. It is not second-guessed because of the relentless pursuit of installing hegemony.
So, in a time of advocation for rights, recognition, and more, we need to also advocate for counter-hegemony. Counter-hegemony is hegemony for the proletarian or the broader basis of society, not just the ruling class. We need to go beyond what we currently understand and accept as simply rights and recognition. We must conjure our efforts to produce justice, material changes, and benefits. This notion itself is something academic Dean Spade discusses as well. Looking at Spade’s text and keeping Gramsci’s idea of hegemony in mind, we must discuss rights, recognition, justice, and redistribution.
Discussing Rights, Recognition, Justice, and Redistribution
The limits of legal equality. What does that mean? Academic Dean Spade goes intensely in-depth on this topic in his text International Resistance and Law Reform[2]. When we look at programs aimed at remedying racial issues, we can see that they have also been declared illegally discriminatory. On top of this, many argue that anti-discrimination laws have proven to be largely ineffective in addressing massive race discrimination and racial issues. While this may seem off the mark, I raise the question, despite all the advancements made in the civil rights era, how much less impoverished, marginalized, and so on are minorities today compared to back then? When we look at legal rights and laws, how many minorities can seize them?
As Dean Spade says,
“Most people of color who have been denied a job or an apartment cannot produce the required evidence of intent, not to mention that the people for whom such losses will produce the worst consequences likely cannot afford.”
To continue with this, as shown in a Washington Post[3] article, via the data from the federal reserve bank of Minnesota and University of Boston economists, there shows to be little if any improvement at all from the civil rights era, until now. The historical data reveal that no progress has been made in reducing income and wealth inequalities between black and white households over the past 70 years,” wrote economists Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schularick and Ulrike I. Steins in their analysis.
Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash
Our problems of racial injustice, among other injustices, are far from narrow. They are highly complex. The most severe conditions produced by white supremacy cannot be addressed or even imagined by anti-discrimination law. A sole entity does not conceive these issues; they are ingrained in a system perpetuating them[4]. One may even argue, as Dean Spade does, that “law reform tends to provide just enough transformation to stabilize and preserve status quo conditions.”
The bottom line is that our issues of racism and rights for the marginalized goes beyond just “issues”. Our issues are not ones that once people are given rights or laws in favor of them, their issues go away. Rights and recognition are not counter-hegemonic. For the latter to be as such, movements and strides forward must contain more.
Society requests material change to see progress for people. Therefore, true counter-hegemony must be a material change. Material change includes redistribution of wealth and justice, not simply rights and recognition. While Spade’s notion of justice is needed for marginalized people, not simply just rights, is correct, it goes beyond even just this. Based on class, there must be fundamental changes, and only that will be in the name of proletarian hegemony. What we have come to understand as intersectionality is incredibly important. However, our intersectional issue at its core is capitalism.
Our issues of race, gender, and sexuality are all perpetuated through our system of capitalism. Capitalism’s innate ability and need to divide and conquer for the sake of profit has perpetuated these systems through which these people are exploited. Even something as simple as voting rights do not offer true counter-hegemony. This is because many minorities are still unable to vote because of disenfranchisement. Going beyond the latter, because of wage labor exploitation, the cost of voter identification, or the commute to a polling booth, many minority voters are barred from elections because they do not have the material needs to partake in voting. This can be expanded to the education to vote because of poor schooling in inner-city neighborhoods.
Modern movements for rights and recognition must recognize the issues with just pursuing this. They must understand that to see material change, they must pursue material benefits that are genuinely counter-hegemonic. Embrace diversity and intersectionality, but don’t pursue recognition based on being diverse or intersectional. Our issues are far deeper than that of representation or status symbols. Therefore, our solutions must go beyond simply just recognition to fix it. This, at its core, is a battle of Rights vs. Justice. We can even look at what Spade says on reproductive justice to examine this battle.
Many people who can get an abortion will always be able to. An affluent woman will likely fly to whatever state — even country if needed, to get her procedure done. The current attempts to remove Roe v. Wade do not pose an imminent threat to her, and if it does, indeed a much less significant threat than many other types of women. On the other hand, removing abortion rights directly affects the working class and women of even lower status, who cannot travel, cannot afford premiums, and may have to seek out other measures to prevent unwanted childbirth.
This discussion is simply one of reproductive rights vs. reproductive justice. Moreover, it goes beyond abortion as well. Inner-city occupants, minorities, people in working-class cities and towns often do not possess material means for reproductive justice. Their hospitals lack modern, clean, safe equipment and proper funding. They cannot afford the premium care when going into labor. They likely lack the resources for proper prenatal care as well.
This can be backed up by looking at data and research that concludes Black and AIAN women have higher rates of pregnancy-related deaths compared to White women[5]. The pregnant related mortality rates of Black and AIAN women are over two times higher compared to white women (40.8 and 29.7 vs. 12.7 per 100,000 live births, respectively).
Then even going beyond this, they likely have been withheld from proper sex education. Teen births rates among non-white and Asian people are significantly higher. Pregnant teens may be less likely to receive early and regular prenatal care. Preterm birth, as well as other complications are heavily associated with teen pregnancy. Again, taking steps forward, all of the reproductive rights in the world can be passed, but this does not present material advantages for the betterment of at-risk groups overall. Teen pregnancy and childbirth presents tremendous social and economic impacts for the child bearer, as well as the eventual families involved.
Instead of this simple notion of rights, we must pursue justice based on reproduction, voting, working lives, etc. When people go on to challenge the Roe v. Wade objectors, which is to soon come, they must also challenge hegemony. Not just the notion of reproductive rights. They must attempt to obtain reproductive justice.
While Spade’s article is heavily focused on visibly marginalized, these reproduction issues certainly go beyond just those types of people. Many people are affected by not having reproductive justice based on class because our society’s proletariat and precariat[6] portions are routinely neglected and marginalized, even if many of the white-passing portions of these sectors deny it. Our issues are not just on the basis of race.
There are many different exploited peoples. As Spade says, “In the United States, recent decades have seen internal enemies cast as racialized-gendered figures — drug dealers, criminals, terrorists, illegals, gang members, and welfare queens.”. When we look at criminals, people on welfare, minorities, women, and so on, people look at their issues based on their identities. They claim their misfortune or issues arise because of preconceived notions of what they assume those people are like. They assume what hegemony tells them. However, the issues are that these people often, if not always, lack the material benefits to prosper. Therefore, they should pursue material benefits, yes as their identities, because all people are distinct, but more importantly, based on class, to avoid deepening inter and intra-class struggles.
Conclusion
As we continue to attempt and look to progress as a society, we must be wary of half measures, band-aids, and consolations. In order for people’s lives to see genuine improvement, we must use what Gramsci understands as counter-hegemony to combat the current hegemonic power the ruling class has. By installing proletarian hegemony, we can begin to see the real, material change from the policies, laws, movements, and justices we advocate for.
We also must take Dean Spade’s notion of justice vs. rights and extrapolate it to all sectors. Justice as well as redistribution but be prioritized over rights and recognition. As Spade tells us, and we can understand from examining various examples, ultimately, many rights do not move the needle. However, it should be understood that in order for complete counter-hegemony, and with that proletarian hegemony, we must expand our efforts to all sectors.
Intersectionality is pivotal in our understanding of how we are all connected with hardships, problems, and marginalization, as using intersectionality to understand that people are affected on multiple layers. Yet, in all, the roots of these layers are the class struggle within capitalism itself, and many of these layers permeated into society via capitalism to create various inter and intra class struggles[7]. Capitalism cannot be alien to identity politics or intersectionality, and yet race and gender cannot be alien to understanding capitalism from a Marxist perspective either. Nevertheless, we must understand that our mere identities, that offer intersectionality, are based on a need of categories for exploitation. Exploitation in our capitalist system. This is where Gramsci and most other Marxists, supersede all intersectionality or critical race theory scholars. In total, solidarity must be the goal, and solidarity for everyone.
* This was written well before the upheaval of Roe v. Wade. The latter is a travesty to women’s rights, and a barbaric and out of touch ruling by the consertative led supreme court. However, this makes fighting for material change in women’s rights, even more important *
— Footnotes —
[1] Martin, J. (1998). Gramsci’s political analysis: A critical introduction. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press.
[2] Spade, Dean. “Intersectional Resistance and Law Reform.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 38, no. 4, 2013, pp. 1031–1055., https://doi.org/10.1086/669574.
[3] Long, H., & Dam, A. V. (2020, June 5). Analysis | the black-white economic divide is as wide as it was in 1968. The Washington Post. Retrieved January 20, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/04/economic-divide-black-households/.
[4] Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868–1963. Black Reconstruction in America : an Essay toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880. New York :Oxford University Press, 2007. Through Du Bois work we are understanding our social dynamics and issues as coming about through capitalism. It is not that other issues besides class do not exist, but it is that they are perpetuated by capitalism, as Du Bois discusses. They are coterminous.
[5] AIAN women is a acronym for American Indian or Alaskan Native . Samantha Artiga Follow @SArtiga2 on Twitter, O. P. (2020, November 10). Racial disparities in maternal and infant health: An overview. KFF. Retrieved January 20, 2022, from https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/racial-disparities-maternal-infant-health-overview/
[6] Defining precariat as members of a social class only partially involved in labor and must undertake extensive unremunerated actuates that are essential if they are to retain access to jobs and a decent living. Classic examples are constantly preparing and entertaining interviews, being on call for jobs or partaking in gig jobs or gig work.
[7] This text is understanding inter and intra class struggles as two different types of battles. Inter class struggle is understood as the struggle being two different types of social classes, the most common and prevalent, the proletariat vs the bourgeoisie. Intra class struggle is understood as the struggle of people within the same class, against each other, in example, white proletariats against black proletariats.