Two Concepts of Oppression

Two Concepts of Oppression

There may be a more dangerous, all-pervasive threat than terrorism

By Elliot D. Cohen Ph.D.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “oppression” as “the state of being subject to unjust treatment or control.”   However, this does not mean that those so subject are aware of their unjust treatment or control.  This is an aspect of oppression that is largely missed in popular culture when we consider whether we or others are being oppressed.  Indeed, when living day to day in concert with the constraints of a given cultural milieu, we seldom consider whether we are actually being oppressed.  Instead, we tend to think that one who wants to live according to the constraints of her culture is making a free choice.

In contrast, the usual scenario we think of when we think of oppression is that of someone who is captured, confined, tortured, or otherwise unjustly treated or controlled against his or her protests and pleas for freedom.  Those who organize rebellions, or who would do so if they could, are thought to be oppressed.  The internal resistance against Apartheid in South Africa was viewed as a mark of oppression; while those who acquiesce in their cultural restrictions and taboos, and think none the worst of it, are typically considered free agents.

In U.S. history, one prominent example of the latter sort of “forced” oppression is that described by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in 1848, in their influential book, The Communist Manifesto.  Therein, Marx and Engels advanced their polemic against the power of capitalism to enslave the working class using the technology of mass production:

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