Make it plain. Don't lose the frame.
Some notes on consciousness raising & 'Epstein class'.
There’s a common misconception about ‘consciousness raising’ across leftist discourse (especially online, but in real life too). Folks assume using reductions is the same as ‘making it plain’ when discussing oppressive systems. These things are, in fact, not the same and the difference lies in the questions and types of thinking they prompt. I’m gonna use two terms as examples — “Epstein class” (a recently popularized reduction) & “ruling class” (a long-standing simplification).
‘Ruling class’ names power in relation to the ‘ruled’. It’s a simplification that prompts thinking centered on one’s position in relation to the ‘ruling class’ — in a broader class structure. When thinking on it, we intuitively ask: “Am I the ruler or the ruled?”; “How do I know if I am being ruled?”; “Who is ruling me, and what enables them to keep ruling me?”; “Who around me is also being ruled? How, and why?”; and so on.
Even if one doesn’t have a comprehensive grasp of the system being discussed, ‘ruling class’ gives them language to analyze their conditions through relational, systemic, thinking. And that is necessary for consciousness.
‘Epstein class’ names power held by a group. It’s a reduction, because it prompts thinking centered on the internal happenings & character of the ‘Epstein class’. When thinking on it, we intuitively ask: “Who’s all tied up with Epstein?”; “What all did these people do, and how did they get away with it?”; “How do they keep the government from holding them accountable?”; “What else are they hiding?”; “Who & what all do they control?”; and so on.
If one doesn’t have a solid understanding of the systems at play — and the analytical tools necessary to situate Epstein & his bunch within those systems — ‘Epstein class’ gives them language to investigate that group through conspiratorial, grand-narrative, thinking. And even if one does have that understanding, and is equipped with those tools, that reactionary way of thinking still flows naturally from the term. This is a barrier to consciousness.
If you float around activist/organizing spaces I work in or have helped shape over the past three years (on campus or in community), it won’t be long before you hear someone joking me about triangles.
“Here he goes: ‘We gotta turn the triangle from right side up, to upside down!’”, and they’ll do the hand motion showing it. It really is a meme at this point, and it makes me laugh every time; because I really have presented ‘systems of oppression’ and ‘all power to the people’ the exact same way more times than I can count — and to well over a hundred people at this point.
What I do is draw a triangle, with a line splitting it horizontally, on the board (or on a paper). Then on the top part I write ‘oppressor’, and on the bottom I write ‘oppressed’ (sometimes I’ll use ‘exploiter/exploited’ instead). I point at it and say, “Here we have a power hierarchy. It’s where the top group has power over the bottom group. Where there is oppression, this is the set up.” Then I ask what oppressions folks see in the world.
The three that come up most often are race, class, and gender (but here, I’ll just focus on race). I draw another triangle — ‘White’ over ‘Black’ (White Supremacy). I say, “There’s more complexity than what’s shown here, but right now, we’re all gonna just think about how power shows up in this system and how we see it in the world.” Then we start conversing — either as a full group, or in small groups.
By the stopping point of this discussion, we have (almost always) surfaced two important things about white supremacy (and power hierarchies in general) — the top group has privilege relative to the bottom; and some people, who’s identity puts them in the bottom group, have certain privileges similar to the top group.
This is the moment where I introduce or (more often) foreground the words ‘position’ and ‘access’. I say something like: “My position in a power hierarchy determines my privilege under that hierarchy; the more I fit in the top, the more power I have to oppress the bottom, and the more privilege I have under that hierarchy. So this white supremacist hierarchy isn’t just about white and Black people; it’s more about who has access to oppressive power, ‘white power’, and the privileges that come with it under white supremacy.”
From here, we’re able to discuss why some people from oppressed groups have privileges most don’t in a more structured way; and we can better identify what an ‘enemy’ or ‘traitor’ is. This comes from us asking, “Where are the Black masses positioned under white supremacy?”, and answering clearly, “At the bottom.”
Discussing how that came to be, and how it’s maintained, grounds our discussion of white supremacy in historical and present ‘conditions’. Black people are oppressed by ‘white power’ and blocked from having access to that power in mass; white people have access to this power by virtue of being white, and it is only used against them if they challenge it. So it becomes clear: “The white masses are ‘enemies’ of the Black masses, unless they become ‘traitors’ to white power. And, although some Black folks might be granted access to some privileges — by becoming ‘traitors’/’enemies’ to our people in some capacity — the Black masses will always be at the bottom of the white supremacist hierarchy.”
Arriving at this point is usually where we take a break to allow some space to process the discussion thus far. When we come back, I recap what we went through — with reference to the two triangles I drew.
We then start talking (social) revolution as a process of flipping the power hierarchy upside down. This has generally been the easiest part for people to grasp, and start thinking through, because of how intuitive it is following our discussion of power hierarchies. “‘Black power’ is revolutionary because it flips the triangle and ‘white power’ crumbles under its weight, bringing an end to white supremacy.”, is not hard to internalize at all (hence, the jokes LOL).
From there, conversations about how the few in the top group are held up by the masses/dispossessed in the bottom group — about how ‘oppressors’ cannot keep their position without keeping the ‘oppressed’ in their place — flow naturally. These help us identify the (structural) interests of ‘oppressors’ with ‘systems of oppression’; and the (structural) interests of the ‘oppressed’ with some form of ‘liberation’. And because power hierarchy is the set up that gives one power over another, we know that any real liberation must mean ‘all power to the people’. We crush the oppressors by making their system crumble — by organizing ourselves to become empowered together, and asserting our power against the systems oppressing us.
All the understandings here emerge organically from us thinking and conversing through the analytical framework those triangles I drew model. This process (that we usually carry out over 1.5 to 2 hours, depending on the context) is one of consciousness raising through guided dialogue. So by the end, the statement, “We gotta turn the triangle from right side up to upside down!”, has some concrete meaning.
A conscious man, a conscious woman, is one who understands their responsibility to humanity, that’s all. And fulfills it! Of course.
A phrase I got from an older (still young) union organizer when he came back to Virginia Tech to hold workshops for some of us is, “There’s no shortcuts to effective organizing.”; and often, the difference between working effectively and working to our detriment is us recognizing the shortcuts available to us, and consciously refusing them in favor of intentional struggle. Consciousness raising is no different.
If you want to raise class consciousness, simplifying conversation to ‘workers’ and ‘owners’ (using ‘owning class’) when chatting with your co-workers about how your workplace issues result from capitalism may help spur a more structural understanding of y’all’s conditions and lead y’all to deeper commitment to ‘working class struggle’ — much like ‘ruling class’ can do in social movement contexts. ‘Epstein class’ (much like ‘billionaire class’) does not have that same effect though, no matter how much left and right wing agreement we see on the depravity of rich men.
Yes, making things plain is important, and how we do it is just as important — maybe, even more so. Because not all consciousness is revolutionary, and we exist in a society shaped by systems built to fuel and spread false consciousness amongst the people made to suffer within it.
As Kwame Ture put it:
[To] make people think in America is an extremely difficult job. The difficulty arises from the fact that… the capitalist system seeks to make the people think they’re thinking when, in fact, they are not thinking. And it is extremely difficult to convince someone who thinks they’re thinking that they are not thinking. It is, but it is our responsibility. (Kwame Ture, 1979)
The job of anyone committed to liberation struggle is to recognize the difference between revolutionary consciousness and false consciousness, and do what’s necessary to heighten the former while subverting the latter at every turn. This means being critical of our own framing, of the ways we present complex ideas, and of the entry points we offer people (online and off) into radical politics. It means thinking about the methods we use to get others thinking.
I’m not telling you not to use the term ‘Epstein class’ if it really does work in your context (although it is a reduction). I am saying that popular appeal, even with phrasing, often functions as a shortcut that takes us away from intentional struggle. And just like with organizing, there’s no shortcuts to raising revolutionary consciousness.
To the point and very well written, gonna be sharing this one around quite a bit.
haven’t read it yet, but i literally just read the short post you made about reductionist language like this