Identity Politics

Ever since the election of President Donald J. Trump, a lot of the discussion on the left has tended to revolve around the concept of "identity politics", where more traditional leftists seek a return to the issues of class, economics, foreign policy and war, whereas the identitarian left seeks to refocus the discussion on gender and sexual orientation, race, and culture.

In the 20th century, a group of German intellectuals, now known as the Frankfurt school, sought to apply Marx and Hegel's dialectal, critical method to subjects other than political economy and history. Using insights from Freudian psychology, existentialism, and other sources, they created a philosophy known as "Critical Theory".

This theory gained popularity in the 1960's and 70's as the disillusion with overzealous abuses of power in actually existing Marxist-Leninist states such as the Soviet Union, opened up a space for movements like the New Left. During the same time, a new related philosophy called postmodernism was beginning to take off as well. Postmodernism rejected the “Modernism” of 19th and 20th century western philosophy. According to the postmodern philosophers, many western philosophies inspired by enlightenment rationality, contained ‘meta-narratives’, or ‘grand, master stories’ about history like the notion of progress, or Marxist historical materialism.

It is worth noting here that any discussion of these topics tends to be lumped in the anti-Semitic “Cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory, which tends to characterize the Frankfurt school’s work as a ‘Jewish plot’ to destroy white western civilization, and ascribes an influence and important to the Frankfurt school far beyond that which it actually had in left and center-left movements, thought, and realpolitik. Another objection to this is that the classification of the Frankfurt School theorists as ‘Marxists’ is incorrect, as many have pointed out that Adorno, Horkheimer, etc. did not subscribe to many of the basic tenets of Marxism, such as value or exploitation theory, or historical materialism.

For more on this, see Council Communist blogger Michael Acuna’s essay “The Origins and Ideological Function of Cultural Marxism” at: commonruin.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/the-origins-and-ideological-function-of-cultural-marxism-revised.pdf

But it wasn't really until the late 80's and early 90's, that scholars (mostly women of color) applied critical theory to race and gender issues in a new formulation called "Critical Race Theory". This is where the idea of 'intersectionality' comes from.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
shadowproof.com/2016/02/28/clinton-intersectionality-language-interview/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_Bell
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lawrence-jarach-essentialism-and-the-problem-of-identity-politics
thenorthstar.info/?p=11299
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lupus-dragonowl-against-identity-politics
viewpointmag.com/2017/01/06/white-purity/
hollaforums.com/thread/1641377/activism/identity-politics.html
youtube.com/watch?v=HX2z2u3Uar8
thecharnelhouse.org/2013/12/07/whats-wrong-with-identity-politics-and-intersectionality-theory/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

According to Patricia H. Collins (a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland),

"intersectionality is the idea that multiple identities intersect to create a whole that is different from the component identities. These identities that can intersect include gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, age, mental disability, physical disability, mental illness, and physical illness as well as other forms of identity"

This theory, over time, has become the popular within the so-called left in Western World, especially the The United States. The old feminist motto of ‘the personal is political’ has been taken to it’s logical extreme conclusion, that being that all things political must be filtered through the lens of personal identity.

The aforementioned developments of western philosophy were, in my opinion, steps in the wrong direction. Whether or not they can be classified as “Marxism”, is, in my opinion really debatable. In a large part, each evolution of ‘western’ theory has been a reaction to (and I would argue, against) actually existing and traditional socialism. Just as the new left was a reaction against Stalinism, it could be argued that the retreat into postmodern obscurantism was a defense mechanism of the left against the end of the Cold War and by extension, most actually-existing socialism.

To quote the postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard,

“The end of history is, alas, also the end of the dustbins of history. There are no longer any dustbins for disposing of old ideologies, old regimes, old values. Where are we going to throw Marxism, which actually invented the dustbins of history? (Yet there is some justice here since the very people who invented them have fallen in.) Conclusion: if there are no more dustbins of history, this is because History itself has become a dustbin. It has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin.”

Such a mentality was meant to shelter what remained of left wing academia from the harsh reality that in fact, meta-narratives were not dead: the new meta-narrative was that capitalism had won, and socialism – the left – had lost (Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ theory).

Intersectional analysis muh privileges (no pun intended) anecdote and subjective postmodern ‘narrative’ over philosophy, theory, statistics, science, and even history itself. According to intersectionalists, the study of these subjects have been imperceptibly tainted by the influence of ‘privilege’. But rather than proposing a new, less biased version of theory or history, the position of intersectionalists is to retreat into obscurantism and anti-intellectualism, as the imposition of theory or even empirical reality onto subjective narrative is considered an intellectual ‘tyranny’. The categories of 20th and 21st century American race and gender relations are acontextually and ahistorically projected onto different societies past and present. This is anathema to the materialist approach, and in my opinion, it is unlikely to be very convincing to those not already inclined in such a direction. Those who append the label of ‘class reductionist’ to socialist analysis, ironically, are themselves being very reductionist (or at least, ignorant) in their interpretation of the base and superstructure model, which accounts for culture and civil society.

The worst feature of identity politics is, in my opinion, it’s use in justifying neoliberal politics. The Democratic party in the United States has become the party of (in the words of that immortal comrade Jimmy Dore) “Goldman Sachs with a Rainbow Flag”. While intersectionalists claim to include class in the discussion, this, in my experience, is rarely the case. Additionally, what an intersectionalist means by class is very different from what a socialist means by class. Whilst a liberal intersectionalist considers economic class as a personal identity, the socialist considers class as a social structure, as a process and a relation. I suppose it is more accurate to say an intersectionalist liberal is against class-ISM, or prejudice on the basis of social class, rather than being against class itself as an inherently hierarchical and non-egalitarian organization of society. This interpretation of intersectionalism is epitomized by figures like Hillary Clinton, who posit an anti-discrimination, but simultaneously pro-capitalist position as the ‘height’ of radicalism, while portraying socialism as somehow an exclusive ideology of white men (ex: the ‘Bernie Bros’ rhetoric).

But socialism is not just an ideology of white men. In the 20th century, millions of people (most of whom were non-European) around the world in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America were inspired by socialist ideology to conduct revolution for national liberation, sovereignty, and equality. To discard this incredible political and intellectual legacy in favor of the comparatively petty concerns of first world culture wars is a position as narcissistic as it is ignorant.

In conclusion Identity politics balkanizes the working class along lines of race and gender. It portrays the issues of class and economics as irrelevant to people of color. It’s adherents conflate all struggle for racial and gender justice with their epistemologically flawed theory and portray it’s critics as either bigoted or ignorant of bigotry. It filters the problems of society through the atomizing lens of postmodern bourgeois ideology.

Identity politics, at least in its neoliberal interpretation is anti-socialist, anti-working class, and indeed, reactionary in many senses, and for that reason, we should, as leftists, be against it.

I conclude with the words of Vivek Chibber: “what has happened in the past twenty years is what it means to be left-wing or radical has been very successfully redefined by the academy, by professors, and by grad students. And the way it’s been redefined is starting with a correct premise, which is that class, people’s economic condition, isn’t responsible for everything awful that’s happened in their lives. There’s also the purely racialized oppressions that they face and gendered oppressions they face, and that’s absolutely true. Starting with that correct premise, it leads to the deeply incorrect conclusion that, therefore, if you talk about people’s economic conditions, you are not addressing the core and most important aspects and liabilities of their lives… because the so-called left—and I don’t really call it the left anymore. I don’t know what to call it because it’s a diseased formation. The so-called left intelligentsia has succeeded in equating the word class with white guys. And we should look at this as an achievement because it’s never happened on the left before. It was always understood among the more savvy radical activists that, even though people’s economic conditions don’t explain all the liabilities they face, addressing the oppressions that men and women, who are poor are facing—Addressing those without addressing their economic conditions is an elite strategy to keep off the table the real concerns of poor, working class … men and women.”

Nothing I didn't know already, but good article, we have to keep bringing the word out.

I know i'm preaching to the choir here, but since there's been a recent influx of idpol I thought I'd clarify why idpol is wrong, I think most of the Holla Forumsetariat agrees with me.

That would actually be on Gramsci and his attempts to deviate revolutionary strategy away a war of matter and towards a war of ideology and culture.

Meanwhile, the Frankfurt School and critical theory were and still remain in no way responsible for the left-liberal shift towards identitarianism we've seen, and since you mention Chibber I actually came to see it as such because of him (see this WEBM I made with an excerpt of his stunt on the Shadowproof podcast early last year).

No serious intellectual is "responsible" for retards saying retarded shit. Neither Gramsci nor Derrida nor Foucault is responsible for Buzzfeed shit. Fuck this line of thinking.

As i explained in the posts (sorry they all couldn't fit into the OP), critical theory as applied to race did come up with the academic left idea of 'intersectionality'

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory