Cartoon depicting people listening to a charlatan. File photo.
By Seda Arz Inquilab – Mar 29, 2025
Liberation is a consciousness that develops from within. It is not self-fulfilling. It is universal and immanent. But it is not abstract; it takes shape through struggle, through the relentless pursuit of truth, and through the weight of understanding one’s own oppression.
To fully grasp one’s oppression (to understand its historical roots, structural mechanisms, and dialectical relation to others’ struggles) is both a gift and a burden. This awareness can sharpen revolutionary clarity, but it also brings psychological contradictions that shape how one engages with struggle. The impact of this understanding is not merely intellectual; it is deeply psychoanalytical, influencing emotions, relationships, and one’s sense of agency.
Hyper-Awareness and Alienation
When one truly understands oppression beyond the surface-level liberal framework, it becomes impossible to unsee. This hyper-awareness leads to alienation, not only from mainstream society but often from those who claim to be politically conscious yet remain ensnared in idealism. There is a growing distance between those who view oppression as a structural, material force and those who reduce it to moral failings or personal grievances. The realization that liberalism has succeeded at achieving its goal of sedating the masses by making so many either unwilling or incapable of seeing the depth of systemic violence breeds frustration. How do you engage meaningfully with people who are content with half-truths?
Comparative Suffering and Competitive Victimhood
Liberalism trains people to understand oppression hierarchically, as a zero-sum game where recognition is the ultimate goal. This framework creates an obsession with proving who suffers more rather than focusing on dismantling the system that produces suffering in the first place. Some fall into the trap of internalizing oppression as a static identity, leading to either paralysis (“my oppression is too great to fight”) or resentment (“why is theirs acknowledged while mine is erased?”).
Marxism, by contrast, approaches oppression dialectically. It is not a fixed condition but a contradiction that can be resolved through struggle. True revolutionary consciousness moves beyond the liberal impulse to rank oppression and instead identifies the material roots of all oppression, forging solidarity based on collective liberation rather than individualized grievances.
Cognitive Dissonance in the Face of Powerlessness
To recognize the full weight of oppression yet feel powerless to combat it creates a deep cognitive dissonance. When there is no clear path to material resistance, this contradiction manifests as despair, nihilism, or even self-destructive tendencies. The crushing realization that systems of exploitation are not only all-encompassing but actively reproduce themselves can lead to political burnout. This is why those who understand oppression most acutely are often the ones who retreat from engagement altogether.
However, dialectical materialism offers a way out of this psychological trap. It teaches that contradictions are not meant to be merely observed but resolved through struggle. This is where revolutionary clarity emerges—not as an academic exercise but as a practical, material process. Understanding oppression is only unbearable when it remains an internalized burden; it becomes a tool for liberation when channeled into concrete action.
The Burden of Explanation and the Politics of Exhaustion
Those who truly comprehend oppression often find themselves in an exhausting cycle of having to educate others—whether it is explaining the flaws of liberalism to those who romanticize reform or deconstructing imperialist propaganda for those who passively consume media narratives. This burden is compounded by the reality that many people do not actually seek to understand; they want their pre-existing beliefs affirmed. The expectation that the oppressed must continuously justify their oppression to the oblivious or the willfully ignorant is itself another form of violence.
Liberation Through Dialectics
The psychoanalytical impact of understanding oppression depends entirely on whether it remains an internal wound or is transformed into external resistance. While awareness alone can lead to alienation and despair, when placed within a revolutionary framework, it becomes a source of power. The goal is not simply to “understand” oppression through dialectical analysis but to dismantle it by using dialectical analysis to develop the tools and strategies necessary for its destruction. Only through dialectical analysis and material struggle can this knowledge transcend passive suffering and become the engine of true liberation.
At its core, this awareness forces us to become more human—more empathetic, not only toward others but also toward ourselves. It reminds us that suffering is not just an abstract concept to be theorized but something deeply felt, lived, and endured. For a liberal, suffering is relative, something to measure and compare. But for a Marxist, suffering is neither a burden to be carried alone nor a reason for self-victimization; it is a call to action. One must understand that guilt-tripping oneself into passivity or being consumed by the weight of oppression are not inevitable consequences of oppression but are instead the intended consequences of a liberal system designed to paralyze the masses by cultivating defeatist tendencies within them. There is always a balance to be upheld—between understanding suffering and refusing to be defined by it, between feeling its depth and channeling it into struggle, between knowing the world and transforming it.
But this balance is not a passive state—it is a conscious, active process that sharpens our understanding of duty.
Palestinian Revolutionary-Intellectual Martyr Basil Al-Araj understood this well. During the 2014 Zionist aggression on Gaza, just before the IOF ground invasion on July 17, he outlined eight rules on the nature of war. His final point serves as a call to action, reinforcing the essence of revolutionary consciousness. To understand oppression in a Marxist sense is to recognize that it is not merely a personal or isolated condition but a historical and material reality that binds struggles together. This is why Martyr Basil Al-Araj expands the definition of a Palestinian beyond a solely national identity and into a universal position in the fight against imperialism and settler-colonialism. It is a call to all who understand that the liberation of Palestine is inseparable from the broader struggle against oppression everywhere.
“Finally, every Palestinian (in the broad sense, meaning anyone who sees Palestine as a part of their struggle, regardless of their secondary identities), every Palestinian is on the front lines of the battle for Palestine, so be careful not to fail in your duty.”
This is the ultimate lesson of revolutionary consciousness: it is not merely about seeing the world as it is but taking responsibility to change it.
(Substack)
