Nancy Fraser: Benjamin Lecture 3 - Class beyond Class

In the framework of the Benjamin Lectures – and the associated Benjamin Chair at the Humanities and Social Change Center Berlin – a distinguished philosopher is invited each year, to present the broader public with current debates on key social and political issues. In 2022, Nancy Fraser served as Benjamin Chair. The lectures took place on the 14th, 15th and 16th of June 2022 (6-8 p.m.) at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

June 16th – Class beyond Class: Toward a Counter-Hegemonic Politics

The previous lectures have left us with a political conundrum. On the one hand, the three faces of labor associated with exploitation, expropriation, and externalization are functionally integrated in capitalist society. On the other hand, only the first is (widely) recognized as labor; and only those directly engaged in it have organized politically as “workers”. Put differently, the functional integration of the three faces is not matched by any comparable political integration among the expropriated, the externalized, and the exploited. On the contrary, they appear divided in the classical triad: gender, race, and class.

This lecture examines some political strategies for addressing that conundrum. After assessing the merits of intersectionality and “allyship”, I consider two additional proposals, less widely discussed, but at least as promising: first, a proposal to develop an expanded, inclusive, and differentiated view of “the working class,” which includes the expropriated and the externalized as well as the exploited; and second, the related idea, inspired by W. E. B. Du Bois, of conceiving existing struggles against racial/imperial oppression, on the one hand, and against the undervaluation of carework, on the other, as unrecognized labor struggles. These last proposals invite us to see anti-racism and feminism as labor movements, whose claims deserve a central place in a counter-hegemonic bloc, on a par with those of traditional “workers”. And that in turn means rethinking the triad – by envisioning “class beyond class.”

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