Power and Privilege: Reclaiming Solidarity for Justice

This forum brings together the voices of Filipe Maia, Aaron Stauffer, and Joerg Rieger to explore the critical intersections of class, power, privilege, and solidarity. This fourm is grounded in Chapter 4 of Rieger’s Theology in the Capitalocene and were presented during the fall meeting of the Theology and Religion in the Capitalocene International Working Group.

Through these essays, each contributor uncovers how the confusion between privilege and power sustains systems of exploitation, why solidarity must be rooted in shared material struggles, and how movements can transform through collective action. From dismantling false narratives of unity to envisioning deep solidarity that transcends identity-based divides, this forum offers a path toward reclaiming justice in an unequal world.

Contributors: Aaron Stauffer, Filipe Maia, and Joerg Rieger

Aaron Stauffer

December 1, 2024

It is somewhat of an odd experience to be giving a response to Dr. Rieger’s work, in part because I am almost in daily conversation to him. When Joerg asked if I would step in at the last minute, he said, “Because you know this material,” why don’t you respond? I gladly accepted, but not because I think it would be easily done. Indeed, sometimes things that you are closest to you have the most difficulty honestly examining. I wanted a chance to use Joerg’s work to invite others into some recent conversations we’ve been having with scholars, organizers, clergy, and students. These have largely focused around two concepts: power and identity.

Chapter 4 of Joerg Rieger’s Theology in the Capitalocene is titled: “The (Im)possibility of Deep Solidarity: Reclaiming, Privilege, Power, and Identity.” To offer a quick overview, the chapter begins by analyzing current forms of solidarity offered by political liberals and political right. The liberal approaches have tended toward centrist or assimilationist approaches to solidarity, failing to offer a fundamental new social, economic, and political arrangements of neoliberal capitalism. Before turning to the political right, Rieger offers some examples of solidarity in the progressive Left in the U.S., to help readers see the power of this sort of solidarity. Turning to movements like the Knights of Labor and Black Freedom fighters like Fannie Lou Hamer, Rieger shows that, “solidarity emerged not primarily on the basis of progressive ideas but because people realized their shared interests, came together, and organized” (146). Solidarity, for Rieger, "was always more than just an idea in the history of the Christian Left: it was embodied by all those who stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight for trans- formation” (151).

Rieger then turns to strategies the right uses, such as divide and conquer and Joerg’s neologism of unite-and-conquer. In the unite-and-conquer strategy, “white supremacy and white racism are employed to unite whites of all classes in order to create a majority for the purpose of winning elections and maintaining the power of a white elite” (156). What is crucial to me about this strategy of diffusing solidarity is how difference is put to use for the political right. As we will see, identity and difference are key to deep solidarity, but only after identity and difference have been reframed through class analysis.

Deep solidarity is not a moral concept; it is an analytical one. Deep solidarity emerges from the foundation of relations of exploitation and extraction of what humans and non-humans create through productive and reproductive labor. Deep Solidarity is not something we “should” have — but rather deep solidarity has a material basis. As Rieger says, “Talking about deep solidarity in material rather than idealizing or moralizing terms addresses common problems in popular progressive narratives, which fail to distinguish privilege and power” (170). Class analysis is crucial here; not classism or class as stratification, but class as a relationship of power that centers on questions of production. Working people everywhere face “common pressures” of exploitation and extractivism ( 166). The working majority gains an accurate understanding of their conditions through the struggle to transform them — class consciousness is gained and deep solidarity emerges. A new community is formed as the working majority does not gain a "full fledged sense” of class-consciousness “without community and political organization” (136). Deep solidarity, it seems, needs to be organized in power relationships in order to be full realized.

Before I turn to Rieger’s notion of power, it is important to highlight that Rieger is defining power against privilege, which he helps us see, is often confused with power. Privilege and power are both systemic. Privilege refers to ones position in social, political, and economic relations: in current U.S. society, all white people have white privilege; but not all white people have the same power. Rieger often refers to organizing and power in his chapter, building on early arguments in the book, which claim that activism is not enough; activists need to build power in order to transform the broader social, political, and economic structures. In making this claim, Rieger turns to Weber’s notion of power, which is defined as: “the ability of one person to exercise influence on another person against their interest” (164) and he extends it by asking, “where the ability to influence others against their interests is located.” “Labor relations,” Rieger continues, “exemplify well what is at stake: white warehouse workers enjoy white privilege compared to BIPOC warehouse workers, but they do not have the same power—economic, political, or cultural—as white warehouse managers or white warehouse owners, let alone the seven billionaire heirs of Sam Walton, who control Walmart” (164). Power is a relationship of influence over interests.

In my experience working people organize most effectively when they ground the struggle in a new sense of identity. The practice of organizing takes private pain and turns it into public action. Class analysis provides this sort of identity: unveiling relationships that were previously mired in what a colleague in our earlier working group meeting called “liberal soup.” When identity is something that needs recognition from others as it typically is on the political liberal and political right — whether social, political, racial, or gender identity — it depends on a moral affirmation from others. Class analysis helps reframe identity so that it is truly relational, and grounded in a material relationship where all other relations intersect. In this way, class identity does not depend on a moral affirmation from others, but rather on a clear-eyed analysis of what one us up against.

One develops this identity through class struggle; through organizing with fellow working people for power for working peoples’ communities. Working people who come together to organize in order to have a greater influence over the conditions that govern their own lives develop deeper relationships of solidarity with each other, as the struggle inevitably involves becoming more intimately familiar with others’ working conditions of exploitation. Deep solidarity needs to be organized through class struggle to be fully realized.

I want to end with a few prompts for our discussion: working people’s movement to build power do not always win; in fact, though the wins have been instructive, monumental and not to be dismissed, we are unlikely to see full transformation of the social, political, economic structures in the next few years. Losses are just as likely as wins. How do we sustain the deep solidarity when the wins do not come?

Second, are we missing an important aspect of the relationship of deep solidarity between working people when we only focus on power as the influence of interests? What if power is instead not so focused on influence of interests, but instead, is about the capacity to act with significance or even more, as the ability to undergo change, rather than merely exert influence on others? Working people organizing for transformation of relations of exploitation adapt and adjust to changing circumstances all the time, as neoliberal capitalism is slippery and a shape-shifting form itself, as we have seen in recently evolutions of gig-work and increased sophistication of work.

Rev. Aaron Stauffer, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt Divinity School. His scholarly and organizing work lies at the intersection of the academy, the Christian church, and community organizing. His current book with Oxford University Press is titled: Listening to the Spirit: The Radical Social Gospel, Sacred Values, and Broad-based Community Organizing aListening to the Spirit: The Radical Social Gospel, Sacred Values, and Broad-based Community Organizing was released in February 2024.

Filipe Maia

December 1, 2024

I have previously shared my view that Theology in the Capitalocene ought to be understood as a continuation of Joerg Rieger’s many contributions to the development of liberation theology, to class analysis, and to theology and power. I continue to believe this book is very important. In this brief response, I focus solely on chapter 4 and I would like to summarize wat I perceive to be its key arguments and offer two questions to further the dialogue.

First, then, the arguments. I think there are at least three main claims that Rieger is making in this chapter. There are certainly more than that, but I think these three offer a general view of the flow of the chapter’s argument.

1.     There is a significant difference in the way that the Right and the progressive Left think about solidarity. The Right unites on the basis of exclusions and in the pursuit of homogeneity. At several points in the chapter, Rieger accentuates how right-wing movements built upon racism, nationalism, and patriarchy. The slogan of the Right would be “unite and conquer.” On the other hand, the progressive Left thinks that solidarity does not mean homogeneity and that the basis for unity is a shared struggle for better material conditions and for better working conditions. Still, the progressive Left tends to lack unity, mainly because of its inability to mobilize movements that attend to exploitation and to class. I think this is Rieger’s most direct critique on leftist movements, religious and otherwise: they tend to appreciate and welcome difference, but they have a harder time addressing power differentials.

2.     The power analysis offered by the progressive Left has consistently been intersectional, even before the coining of the term. In the case of the United States, this goes as far back as feminist movements in the nineteenth century, which integrated concerns around gender and race with attention to class. Many of these were mass movements with strong religious roots. They were successful they were not happy to simply name utopian ideals or making moral demands of people. Rather, they effectively built power. Today, Rieger stresses how the labor force remains the most diverse force in the country and that the image of the labor movement as dominated by white males is nothing but a fantasy.

3.     The final argument raised in the chapter is the difference between power and privilege. This is possibly the strongest aspect of the chapter and, I may venture to say, the most impactful claim made in Theology in the Capitalocene. Rieger is here responding to left-leaning movements that tend to base their analyses on a call to name and abolish privilege. Rieger thinks that these movements are short-sighted when it comes to power analysis. Power is not the same as privilege. Though a person can enjoy significant privileges by virtue of race, gender, and sexuality, still, privilege does not directly translate into real power. Rieger writes: “As a rule of thumb, it seems that too much focus on privilege covers up the question of power (and the related topic of class)” (p. 165).  

I would like to offer two questions in response to the chapter. The first is about the distinction between privilege and power. I find this distinction very helpful. Both categories, Rieger insists, are systemic, meaning that one can have privilege even when one does not feel it (p. 163) and one can have power while being naïve or unaware of it (p. 164). Rieger also insists that confusing power and privilege supports the status quo. I’m wondering about the root causes of this confusion: is this part of the design of class power? That is: do we tend to assume privilege as power because power disguises in such a way? In other words: why does it feel so easy to see privilege and believe it to be power? Is this because we lack the categories to think power adequately? And, on the other hand, why does it feel so easy to notice one’s own lack of privilege and feel so profoundly disempowered?

My second question is about nationalism, which is often mentioned in the chapter as part of the “unite and conquer” strategy of the Right. There is no doubt that we are witnessing a global wave of right-wing, reactionary movements and that nationalism is gaining steam all around the world. A lot of the analysis of these movements, particularly in the United States, connects nationalism with racial resentment, hatred of immigrants, and the like. But there is also a line that connects nationalism to class, suggesting that a lot of the working class and otherwise oppressed people is leaning in the direction of nationalism as they realize that their material conditions are making a turn for the worst. I also recognize that a lot of the social commentary on “class” is weak and often based on “stratification” accounts of class, which Rieger often rejects. Still, I think it is worth posing the question: how does class analysis help us in our understanding of the rise of nationalism? Is lack of class consciousness the reason why so many in the working class are embracing nationalism? What is at the root of this conflation of one’s nationality with one’s class? How does the socialist commitment to internationalism survive in the age of nationalism?

Dr. Filipe Maia is Assistant Professor of Theology at the Boston University School of Theology. His research and teaching focus on liberation theologies and philosophies, theology and economics, and the Christian eschatological imagination. Dr. Maia's scholarship pays special attention to how imaginaries about the future shape politics, economics, cultural patterns, and religious practices. Employing sources in Marxist and continental philosophies, his current book Trading Futures: A Theological Critique of Financialized Capitalism (Duke University Press, 2022) offers an analysis of the debate in critical theory, addressing the “financialization” of capitalism to show how future-talk is ubiquitous to financial discourse and how contemporary finance engenders a particular mode of temporality. In this context, he suggests that the language of hope, as approached by Latinx liberation theologians, is a subversive social force that can continuously question and resist the hopes and expectations conjured by hegemonic economic discourses. Dr. Maia holds BTh and BPh degrees from Universidade Metodista de São Paulo, and a ThD from Harvard Divinity School.

Joerg Rieger

December 1, 2024

In the conversation about privilege and power, Filipe Maia starts us off with an excellent question, addressing my observation that privilege and power are commonly confused. Maia wonders about the root causes of this confusion. Is it simply a lack of understanding and of not having the correct categories, or is something else going on?

In response, let me note that his confusion of privilege and power is not innocent. Someone benefits from it. Invariably, this confusion plays into the hands of the powers that be as it leads many privileged people to overestimate their power, thus covering up the real powers that shape the world, and leaving the privileged incapable to push back against these powers and transform the world. In other words, there are good reasons why the confusion of privilege and power is allowed to exist and why it is made to persist.

Take the example of white privilege, which seems to suggest that white people are at the top of the universe. In reality, however, only a small minority of white people who are also extremely wealthy have both privilege and power, while all other white people are misled into believing that they have more in common with this small white minority than with the majority of their BIPOC neighbors who also lack power. Not only does this create a false solidarity among white people that only benefits a few, it also allows powerful white people at the top to offload any blame for their actions onto all white people.

This also helps to throw light on Maia’s related concern that for others is easy to notice one’s lack of privilege and feel disempowered. To stay with the example of the convenient confusion of white privilege and white power, those who do not enjoy white privilege are also duped by this confusion, which misleads them into thinking that all power must be grounded in privilege, which is of course not true. We will come back to the fact that subaltern power is real.

Maia’s second question is about how class analysis might link up with nationalism. In response, I would argue that nationalism is often specifically designed to suppress class analysis, especially in propaganda directed at the working class. German fascism is a prime example of this, but we can see these tendencies in the United States as well. This is why it may look like the working class is especially vulnerable to nationalism while, in reality, there is nothing more powerful than class consciousness to develop an international perspective. The reality of this can be seen even at the top, with the ruling class that jet-sets around the world. The perversions of nationalism can perhaps best be seen in traditional warfare, where working people of one country are incited to fight against working people of another country, covering up who ultimately benefits from this absurdity.

Aaron Stauffer raises the all-important question how solidarity can be maintained when wins do not come. This question was asked before the results of the 2024 election in the United States were known, but it is even more relevant afterwards. For a response, we need to return to the foundation of solidarity. If solidarity is founded on good intentions or moral appeals, it will invariably falter sooner or later, when people get tired and burn out for lack of success. If, on the other hand, solidarity is grounded in a deeper sense of what ties people together, a loss might actually strengthen solidarity in the long term.

In terms of the 2024 election, if members of working majority (99 percent of the population have to work for a living) realize that the party for which they voted and the economic system for which it stands do not have their well-being in mind, solidarity can emerge in stronger ways. Add to that the realization that the other party sold out to the dominant powers in their own ways, and solidarity can make some gains. Ultimately, solidarity can be strengthened by realizing that it is not the power brokers of capitalism (dominant in either party) but the members of the 99 percent who can make a difference when they are waking up to what is going on. In this case, it can be argued that even what was initially perceived as a loss for solidarity can strengthen it, as losses can make it clear whose side one is on.

Stauffer’s second point helps to deepen the notion of solidarity by reminding us that power does not have to be limited to direct influence on others but includes broader notions of agency, including the ability to change and be transformed. In my mind, this points to the difference between dominant power and what might be called subaltern power, power from above and power from below. The power that emerges from deep solidarity is of the second kind rather than the first because it derives from the many instead of the few, marked not by sameness but by the synergy of a tremendous diversity of people that includes religions, complex personal and communal identities, nationalities, abilities, and so on.

Still, I would hold that even power from below ultimately has to be measured by how it is able to engage the dominant system. While there is some truth to the modern Olympic slogan that states that “the important thing is not to win but to take part,” in the longer term wins are not unimportant if we are dealing with matters of life and death that may the determine the future of life on planet Earth as we know it.

Joerg Rieger is the Distinguished Professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion, Affiliate Faculty, Turner Family Center for Social Ventures, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, and the Founder and Director of the Wendland-Cook Program.