Complicity of the Oppressed: 
A Socially Patterned Defect that Reproduces Inequality

The workers of the world have not united. In three successive elections, white workers in the US voted for Donald Trump, many hoping that he would deport immigrant workers who were “taking their jobs.” A century earlier, US labor unions regularly disparaged and excluded Black and Asian workers from their ranks and later berated them as strikebreakers. In anti-oppression movements globally, infighting and backstabbing are rampant: western leftist coalitions have been coopted and pacified by centrist party machines while the center of mainstream politics shifts sharply to the right; Third World revolutions have given way to despotic postcolonial governments that punch down at indigenous people, racial/ethnic minorities, women, and queer people; and once-victims of genocide have today become perpetrators. Why is it so hard for oppressed peoples to come together in solidarity and sustain movements for change? What role do oppressed groups play in oppressing others, and what role can we all play in bringing forth emancipatory political alternatives? Questions like these have been raised by social psychologists and Marxist organizers, black feminists and social movement theorists. Answers, however, too often fail to make connections across academic literatures and levels of analysis. Some blame capitalist ideology, while others blame material conditions, and still others point to psychological predispositions. Erich Fromm, I argue, offers a way out of the impasse. More than most, Fromm explored why and how people act contrary to rational self-interest. Why did the German masses choose Nazism over Marxian class solidarity? Why did the US populace allow itself to be taken in by mediocre consumerism? To answer both questions, Fromm suggests that our fundamental human need for relatedness leads us to seek social acceptance by conforming to the dominant character of our society. Individual personalities are brought into alignment with the wider character structure by way of social filters that inculcate some traits and suppress others. Unhealthy societies tend to produce similarly unhealthy relational patterns, which Fromm terms socially-patterned defects, while repressing more productive orientations. Putting Fromm—and those he influenced, like Paulo Freire and bell hooks—into conversation with Marx, Foucault, Collins, and others, I develop a model of complicity of the oppressed wherein marginalized people seek to elevate themselves by cooperating in the oppression of others. Insofar as capitalism fosters competition and filters out solidaristic tendencies, marginalized people tend to choose narrow self-advancement over broad movements for change. Complicity of the oppressed is a socially-patterned defect, a byproduct of intersecting oppressions that turn people against one another. The challenge, then, is to readjust our filters toward love and solidarity.