Class politics vs Identity politics

I believe that capitalism/imperialism needs to be eliminated so economic equality can take root before the finer details of identity equality can be truly addressed.

Not that gender/race issues aren't important, but for example, how can indigenous rights be promoted in a system where suppressing indigenous cultures can make a pretty profit (e.g. land claims, cultural exploitation/hegemony, etc)?

Do you agree with my position? How would you convince a liberal that class inequality has to be dealt with first (e.g. radicalize them re: class) before identity politics?

Yup.



True.



Yes.



Priorities.

Use that argument you just mentioned, and also note that the 'social ills' instigated / perpetuated against social minorities -- like poverty, racism, sexism, police brutality, etc. -- are all entirely backed by the existing political establishment since there's always a resounding silence around these issues from the powers-that-be / corporate media. There are no excuses for the continuation of these social ills here in the largest and richest economy on the planet -- not dealing with them comprehensively, for their complete eradication, is inexcusable and demonstrates the collective culpability of society's ruling class, because what else could possibly be more important -- ?

This is stupid, it's pretty easy to enforce the golden rule which is what all of this really comes down to is treat people as you would want to be treated.

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Ok Chaistuwiki, what's this and Chinese tea have to do with anything?

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@OP

Could you be more specific about what you mean by identity politics, because it isn't really clear in the OP. A lot of "gender/race issues" (to use your words) are class issues and should be addressed as such rather than ignored because "after the revolution..."

Well see, that's the thing. Lots of liberals will see these identity politics (e.g. LGBT rights, anti-racism, nationalism, disability rights, No One Is Illegal, anti-war, anti War On Drugs, etc) as just that - issues that affect their self-interest or self-identity. I'm just wondering what some strategies some of you have used to re-frame these issues into class issues, or if this sort of approach is even kosher in the revleft circles.

well they don't see them as class issues that's the problem. Hell even some so called Marxists and Anarchists don't. As if everything will be fine after the revolution :rolleyes: . As for Liberals it can be hard to beat any class consciousness into them but i have had some come around to being Communists mainly because they hardly realized what Communism is. As long as capitalist created identity politics divide the working class it makes true revolution impossible. While nationalism, race issues and gender equality may be identity politics they are still a part of class struggle because if we want any chance of having a united working class everyone has to be on the same playing field and having a sort of 2 tiered working class because a certain ethnic group, nationality, etc get's turned down for a job first makes this impossible.

Ridding the Proletariat of those divides is in my opinion one of the first stages of revolution.

True.



This part is *contradictory*, though, to what you just said, and to your line in general -- the revolution, by definition, is the working class taking over social production for its own interests, and those interests are *not* divided by race, gender, etc., because there would be no lording-over ruling class to *benefit* from such divisions.

People often conceive of racism, sexism, etc., as being mere *prejudices*, but if that were the case it wouldn't be a problem at all -- a person could just walk away and their life wouldn't be impacted in the least. As things stand, though, people *don't* have the option of just walking away because the thing in front of them might be a rental lease or a mortgage, an employer, a person in authority, etc. (those carrying out their duties for ruling-class interests).



Yes.

So, what's problematic about this is that it seems to be based in the same problematic notions of liberal "identity" which remain divorced from class understanding.
In other words, your suggestion that some differences can be "put off" while we deal with the question of class shares a lot of assumptions in common with the idea that we can deal with differences (gender, race, etc.) without dealing with class. ie That these things can be neatly teased out.
The reality is different - gender and race are absolutely central, in historical terms, to the lines along which class has been constructed. Women's reproductive and affective labour, for example, is absolutely central to understanding the proletariat - we can't simply put "women's liberation" off until later because "later" will never come without addressing this question.
Race needs to be looked at similarly. "Whiteness" has been a key part of establishing a bulwark against proletarian revolution in the form of a privileged strata of workers whose (short term) interests are with the capitalists'. We can't put anti-racist struggles off because, again, as long as this division remains, "later" will never come.
This is where the line needs to be drawn with liberals - not at "What task comes first?" but deeper at the question of "How, in historical terms, do identities and classes come into being?" This latter question must be answered if we're to even imagine a classless society.

I don't see why we should expect every non-male, non-white, non-heterosexual person in the world to put aside the struggles that they face every day so that those of us who are male, white and straight can lead the world to glorious revolution.

I don't think it is the case that any of class, race, or gender can simply be 'put aside' until after the second coming of christ/the revolution. Revolution is a process, not waking up one day with a red flag flying above the government buildings. That process has to include women, it has to include non-whites and it has to include workers too.

There has to be a class basis to our analysis of race and gender issues (which I think TGDU outlines nicely), but that doesn't mean that our worldview is a reductive one based only on class, with some woolly promise to make blacks and whites play nicely after we've won power. That's just bogus lip-service and it's really disingenuous and shows a lack of empathy with the struggles of non-cisgender people.

I agree with most of this. I just have a problem, analytically, with this part:

I agree with everything except the idea that there are actual interests these workers share with the capitalists. What is the short term interest you have in mind? I agree that there is patronage of course, and that is true whether the issue is sectarianism in the Middle East or race in the American context. But I am not sure that I would describe this as an alignment of interests. It seems more illusory than anything.

Yup, you guys have a very good point. I mean, I realize that revolution is a process. It just seems like a monumental task to tackle class/race/gender/etc all at once.

And I'm not white, btw.

I'll be the hard-ass here and point out that you might begin by *not* assuming that everyone here is 'guys' -- if that *was* an assumption (I don't know, I didn't check everyone's profiles). Also you're not helping yourself, or the discussion, by self-identifying regarding race -- it's pretty meaningless in cyberspace.

Basically if you want to go the individualistic good-guy (whoops) route with all of this, in terms of being a 'shining example' and whatever, just do everything that the right has derided as being 'politically correct'.

I, however, see all of this stuff from more of a 'policy' perspective, though....

:rolleyes:

(Thanks -- I knew it would be appreciated by *someone*....)(grin)

(*I'm* not the one currently weighing and considering a life of identity politics and lifestylism.)

I speak with a Midwestern variety of English! Very difficult to not say "you guys"

I only did so because some of the replies seemed to suggest I was being ethnocentric.

Gah, this is getting complicated.

No prob -- you're not a stereotypical terminology-obsessed neurotic liberal, then.



Got it.



Here -- was looking for an excuse to post this, anyway -- please note 'identity politics' on the spectrum....


[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

http://s6.postimg.org/6omx9zh81/3_Id...ndamentals.jpg

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't include this one:


Ideologies & Operations -- Left Centrifugalism

http://s6.postimg.org/3si9so4xd/1102..._Centrifug.jpg

The basic identity divisions, by language between groups and by gender within groups, go back into prehistory and may be the primary human ones. However, social class is the very first division made in forming a civilization. The original class pairing of nobles vs. commoners lasted all the way up to the point where Marx and Engels begin their description in the Manifesto.

Convincing liberals of primacy for class shouldn’t be as hard as it seems to be. Class has more to do with how well one can live than anything else about a person—during the heyday of American Jim Crow there was a black middle class of doctors and lawyers who did fairly well despite racial oppression. High status women could exert influence despite not holding offices. And class demotion is the main way in which oppression is applied now that formal legal equality holds for all. Everyone can vote in most countries, but only those who effectively control a country’s capital can fix policy in a nontrivial way. Rather, liberals are afraid to rock the cattle cars.

I have no idea how a revolution is planned and effected. As for its necessity, it is politics: Those vested in an extant system do not give way until forced out. The record on the aftermaths of revolutions is not encouraging to me. The early tasks after power shifts hands are related to reestablishing civil order amid chaos. Later, the issues swirling around class versus other identity attributes can arise from the dust cloud. Yet what’s done about them seems to be dependent, in an idiosyncratic manner, upon what happens during the chaotic period that can’t be controlled. For instance, the Soviet Union was never able to solve its “nationalities problem” via the system of republics and autonomous areas, although the latter had to be awarded quid pro quo for cooperation.

I now believe the postwar western international arrangement will indeed ultimately be overturned by force. Because its bankruptcy hasn’t sapped enough out from beneath its foundations, probably not soon. But modern capitalism is basically a system that eats itself for a living, a thing you can’t do forever. However, a revolution in no way guarantees you will end up with a better society.

Adjusting identity issues in a revolutionary society won’t be easier in future than in past. For women, it’s either compensation for work done in the home, or daycare while they pursue careers (as the Soviets did). For racial and ethnic groups, truly desegregated residential and educational arrangements will help, but likely not eliminate problems—such as those caused by language differences. The diagram posted above suggests class conscience and other forms of identity are incompatible politically. And, governance is a separate problem from that of making a change of power.

This is difficult only for anyone who doesn't recognize that issues of identity-based oppression(s) are *rooted* in the class division itself -- basically, the question to be asked is what's holding people back from being able to provide for their own needs on a mostly-d.i.y. basis. Today everything regarding production, as for everyday human needs, has to be done through the commodity-exchange system, which inherently siphons off profit, to reward capital (and, no, it *isn't* necessarily made available again to the system as new capital investments, for production).

So since everything goes through the profit-extracting commodification process that means that even *labor* is commodified, and it's not always cost-effective to compensate labor well enough for labor / people to live decent lives.

If people / labor didn't *have* to be commodified, then people could just find ways to provide for themselves, as on a d.i.y. (or more-collective) basis, *directly* from nature and society. It's at this point that any identity-based definitions of self or group would have *zero* social impact, because any such definitions wouldn't / couldn't affect a person's ability to provide for themselves, compared to *any other* person, of whatever identity.

Recall:




'Work', under present-day capitalist conditions, implies *commodification*.



Segregation and desegregation are volatile social issues within the present-day capitalist context only because the expectation is that capitalist society is enlightened enough to *not* tolerate such petty-type discrimination in its civil society, while at the same time its very development has actually *been* a racist, sexist, etc., one.

Again, if everything becomes truly d.i.y. (and truly collectivist), there would be no basis for anyone to deny anyone else the use of natural resources, and social resources, in an even-handed way. Language differences, and even "segregation", would be trivial, because it would be *self*-segregation, by definition -- not imposed by material differences in wealth or by government policy. People would have to collectively work through superficial differences, and we know that language and racial differences are hardly insurmountable.



'Class consciousness' is not merely another superficial identity-based social distinction -- it's a *material* one since one's class determines one's relative access to the bounty of the world's material production.

Politically, there *are* correlations among class background, social identity, and chosen politics, but there are *variations* as well, as with conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for example.

In a *post*-capitalist society there would be no 'governance', since the term implies a tiered system of power relations which simply cannot exist in a world that lacks a *basis* for that, as with the wholesale abolition of private property relations.

From an alternate approach -- please note the difference in magnitude between 'class struggle' (class), and 'regional culture' in the diagram:


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

http://s6.postimg.org/nmlxvtqlt/1_Hi..._Precision.jpg

Could you explain this graphic? I'm having a hard time understanding it.

Really? Seems pretty straight forward to me, you see at the top we have the macro level and well..moving on to the bottom is the micro.. something.. and then the tube in the middle represents...uhh

I don't really think they make sense to anyone (except ckaihatsu)

No prob. The idea -- if you will -- is that society ('history') has certain major dynamics which are *not* all equivalent in magnitude, or effect.

For example, would you say that any given person has an effect on history equal to an institution like that of a government office -- ? Usually not, of course, because as Marxists we track the *policies* of a country, contained within its institutions, regardless of whoever happens to be in office at any given moment. We notice that U.S. foreign policy, for example, has a trajectory of its own regardless of whoever the president and the cabinet happens to be. There *are* broader overall trends, and the larger public opinion ('democracy') will have an impact as well, but in general we identify U.S. foreign policy as 'the interests of the state' (empire).

So the framework is an illustration of varying levels of magnitude, from natural environmental forces, all the way up to the class struggle, which has paramount deterministic power in human society.

Why does it seem a monumental task? I mean, it is a monumental task. Tackling just class inequality by itself is a monumental task. Why is it more difficult to tackle the issues of all of the oppressed at the same time?

If anything, given the diverse nature of the working class and the different oppressions people face under capitalism, it would be a harder task (as is evidenced by the current failures of the Marxist-Leninist parties in the western world that cling to stalinist ideology) to attempt to unite workers under some pro-white, pro-male, heteronormative type of politics.

Further, in practice, instead of having some monolithic party that tries to lead everything, focusing on diverse struggles encourages smaller groups in different arenas of struggle - class, gender, race, sexuality etc. - to join together on a class basis, which is far more likely to lead to pluralistic and just outcomes for all oppressed groups within the working class.

I think that non-class issues, such as racism, sexism, etc, need to be addressed in the here and now. At the same time though, it is paramount to view these issues as, fundamentally, class issues. The revolution has nothing to offer the bourgeoisie, even if they are oppressed in some other manner, and cross-class alliances centered around race, gender, sexual orientation, or anything else must be viewed with suspicion and contempt.

You've got a good point. I guess in my mind, I was just picturing a Marxist party/group trying to win people over by addressing every single issue that would be contentious. I now realize that it all comes in a single package, and it doesn't have to be some grand vanguard party that tries to unite all sections of the working class.

Yeah, I now think that it's probably more nuanced than I originally thought when I made my OP.

Address non-class issues, but in a way that develops class consciousness and not factionalism. Avoiding the latter is the tricky part, I think. It seems that there's sometimes this race to see "who's more oppressed" or to jockey for attention/funding/etc. Getting identity groups to see the forest for the trees would be a good start.

This would only hold if it was clear that the correct strategy for the left was to unite behind some Marxist party full of revolutionaries who are distinct from the rest of the working class. However, there is overwhelming evidence that this model has failed and is a dead-end strategy.

Rather than thinking of a single package, think of the analogy of cooking a meal. You cannot cook, for example, a main course of fish with mashed potatoes, green veg and a white sauce with one ingredient. You need many ingredients, and you need many processes. In the end, yes, the many ingredients and processes come together to form something relatively whole, but in order to come to this wholesome finish you have different foodstuffs that start at different points, in different places, are cooked in different ways in different pans, grills etc. Some processes are more complex than others, some take longer...you get the point.

Similarly, it seems odd to me that any one party can, through one strategy and one political programme, adequately identify, analyse and meet the needs of the so many different oppressed groups that exist within the working class and face a multitude of oppressions (think of the various ways, for example, that life for a black American single mother living in somewhere like Texas working a minimum wage job is tough).

On the left there has been a misconception of unity for many years now as being some sort of hippy dream where we dilute or even ignore our own personal situations, struggles, and philosophical ideas and unite under some lowest common denominator 'broad church' mass party. It seems odd that this conception of unity seeks to dilute the content of every struggle in the interests of the whole.

Rather, unity can be found in allowing diverse struggles to proceed along their own different paths, just like the different ingredients and processes needed to bring together a complex main course; unity will come when class consciousness reaches a certain level and struggles in the arenas of gender, race etc. unite multilaterally along class lines.