Thread by @therubykid

A problem with these “[thing] of the oppressor/[thing] of the oppressed” distinctions is that people invoking them often (not always, but often) stretch the category of “the oppressed” so it can include the ruling classes of basically any state claiming to oppose US imperialism.

In a relationship of direct colonial subjugation (e.g., Israel/Palestine, Turkey/Kurdistan, etc.), there is a national oppression that affects capitalists within the colonised national group as well as workers (although it doesn’t affect them equally/evenly!).

In a direct struggle for national liberation there *is* an important distinction between (say) the use of violence/other forms of coercion (although I wouldn’t call that “authoritarianism”, personally) on the part of an oppressed people and use by the state oppressing them.

But even there, there are nuances. Attacking the military infrastructure of an occupation is, I’d argue, politically distinct from indiscriminately attacking civilians in the “oppressor” nation. I’d support one (or at least defend the right to do it), and oppose the other.

But that’s in a scenario where there is a clearly defined oppressed national group, where national oppression affects all classes, albeit unequally/unevenly.

Being economically bullied and kicked around by bigger powers is not the same as being colonised or nationally oppressed. Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran (for example) are not ruled from Washington. Their ruling classes are not “oppressed”. They’re oppressors.

Some leftists refuse to accept that colonial conquest and direct rule haven’t been the primary modes of big-power imperialism for 60+ years. Hegemonic imperialism now functions far more via what Ellen Meiksins Wood and others call “the imperialism of free trade”.

Regional imperialist powers have also emerged. If your model of the global division of power designates the Iranian state - imperialist by any operable definition of the concept - as “oppressed” because its imperialism is subordinate to US imperialism… your model ain’t much use.

The global capitalist economy is uneven and some states are more powerful than others. But that unevenness and imbalance of power doesn’t amount to form of oppression that could give bourgeois nationalism some progressive potential, or render national ruling classes “oppressed”.