Everyone has a right to rebel. There is no such thing as freedom in this society, not even for the yuppies who think just because they drive fast cars and own a holiday home in Marbella, they are fully in control of their own lives. We are all oppressed, and with the exception of very few people (such as Bono), we all have a right to achieve our liberation by any means necessary. However many of us not only have rights to resist our own oppression, we also have responsibilities to aid others in their struggles.
I'm working class. It's a fundamental injustice that throughout most of my life I will be forced to work in order to survive, and that the wealth produced by my labour will be funnelled into the hands of capitalist employers. But at the same time I'm well aware that I am among the 10% of the richest people on the planet. The oppression I face cannot be compared to that of a sweatshop worker in the third world who makes 20 cents an hour for infinitely harder work than the desk job I'll probably end up being shackled to. The apparatus of her oppression is the global economy, driven by the neocolonial regimes of the first world, and they depend on people like me to be a good citizen, to not protest and to not question how the trainers I wear on my feet were made.
Those of us who in this society, because of the hierarchies that exist within it, find ourselves part of the oppressor class by default in some situations, have a responsibility to distance ourselves from the mindset that perpetuates these hierarchies. So when the (widely accepted, but usually never mentioned in polite conversation) racist prejudices of some "white" people are exposed in conversation, the rest of us have a responsibility to make it clear that not only do we not condone those views, but we share no affinity with the institutionally racist society that places the "white" race and all those who are granted the luxury of assimilation into it above all others.
This applies to male supremacy every bit as much as it does white supremacy. All men have a responsibility to try and figure out what the hell happened over the last few thousand years that led to the subordination of women in just about every contemporary society, and then take measures to try and change things. At the very least we have a responsibility not to be part of the structure of oppression as it presents itself, for example, in the form of sexist jokes which have the effect of reinforcing existing male/female power relations.
It is the acquiescence of the relatively empowered, as much as the calculated actions of the elites, that the domination and subordination of the oppressed thrives upon. This is what socialists have been saying for years. That it's not OK to be middle class, and enjoy the privilege that you have been allocated under this system at the expense of those below you. We need to apply this ethic not just to class, but to all other forms of institutionalised hierarchy that exist in human societies. In fact I would go even further than that, and argue that as this civilization is based on - more than anything else - the separation of humans from the natural world, and our dominance of it, all humans have a responsibility to derail it in order to "save the [fucking] planet", as some whining environmentalist would say. Next time you're at a zoo ask yourself how you came to be on one side of the glass and the cute little animal you're harassing came to be on the other.
It should be made clear that I am not advocating bleeding heart liberalism. It's an affront to be some kind of purely altruistic revolutionary, who fights for the liberation of others to quell personal feelings of guilt. And any post-revolutionary society that comes out of such a patronising relationship between different constituencies cannot help but to replicate the same disparities that exist in the present one, or just as bad, reverse them. As the Zapatistas have said time and time again, we need to build the movement here, and struggle alongside them for our freedom as much as theirs.
"Solidarity can be expressed with those who are being oppressed out there in Latin America. Out there in Africa. Out there in Asia. Out there in the rest of the planet - by ending the structure of oppression that has been created here that allows the extrapolation of oppression there. Their fight is our fight; our fight should be your fight. In that we can find solidarity. In that we can find success. And in that we can smash the possibility of a consolidation and consummation of the process of globalization. In the alternative, we can only fail."
- Ward Churchill
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