Or of use to anyone wanting to understand graphic design. There's many further writings on class and capitalism but the communist manifesto is short and easy to read. I wouldn't point you towards Capital.
Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.
- Thread starter danny la rouge
- Start date
Or of use to anyone wanting to understand graphic design. There's many further writings on class and capitalism but the communist manifesto is short and easy to read. I wouldn't point you towards Capital.
With Marx, certainly other people have drawn from his works and written their own. But nobody has written a greater critique of Capitalism. If they had, I'd point you to them.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
it would be wrong to ignore cultural capital, social capital and how's its used, to what ends and by who. That said, you are absolutely correct that without addressing the question of class that not only can you not effectively challenge capital but all of the evidence demonstrates you either end up competing within it, are captured by it or your ideas are recuperated by it.
snadge
metal alchemist
snadge
metal alchemist
BigTom
Well-Known Member
I was only born in 79 so I wasn't around for the period you are talking about, which makes it hard for me to compare, but over 20-40 years the politics will evolve of course and so identity politics today, both in theory and practice, will not be exactly the same as it was in the period you are talking about, but it'll be more closely related to today's identity politics than to class analysis.
I think crossthebreeze in the first paragraph of the post you replied to before mine has talked about how class analysis is in that capital has found it useful to divide the workforce and that is the root of where homophobia comes from, so by focusing our demands & efforts for sexuality equality (there's an proper word or phrase for that isn't there?) on capital (which includes the state), rather than on individuals, we can make bigger gains. That doesn't mean you don't challenge homophobia in yourself or other people your personal life but that you also need to makes demands on capital, which is the structure behind this.
I still need to make the post I said I would yesterday but I won't have time this morning or at work today, it will be over the weekend, apologies.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Look at my post #329, I give an examples of the different tactics used by identitypolitics and a politics that involves class.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Yeah exactly. If groups/campaigns don't have class as a basis of understanding they often have morals as a replacement, and this leads you into all sorts of problematic directions in terms of who you who orientate yourself towards (and against).
It's classic liberal activism; people on your side are those who choose to do the 'right thing' - not being homophobic/be against fracking/not to fly/not to eat meat/etc., and politics becomes about convincing everyone else to make right decisions as well, and those that refuse to or argue the other side are the enemy.
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What happens after the revolution when there is a classless society? There will still be people with racist, sexist and homophobic etc views, they won't be eliminated when capitalism has gone. What use would a class analysis be in that context? What would replace it?
So as long as there is racism, sexism etc it will to do with economic class, regardless of how society is organised?
The gulag.
I don't think its much surprise that the subject generates so much confusion as like a number of other posters I often find it hard to grasp the distinction some are making. This is especially the case where I've seen this argued over elsewhere as some of the more ostentatious anti identity types often seem to turn out to be supporters of the Labour or Democratic Party, or some are reactionary 'anti imperialist' nationalists, in which case I wonder just what the difference really is. Don't most of the same criticisms apply? Obviously they might say that it's the best option at the moment and we can still make gains within that context, yet supporters of liberal identity politics could say the same. And when we look at more class based organisations/movements, at least nominally anyway, it seems they too often accommodate themselves to capitalism, even turning against the working class and suppressing struggle. The history of the socialist/labour movement is far from an entirely shining example in that respect.
I think it becomes clearer to me at least when we focus less inwardly in terms of the ideology or analysis held by groups/movements towards more a question of actual activity. so that in terms of fighting social divisions for example based around racism or sexism, if we want to succeed ultimately we cannot accommodate ourselves to structures that support and reproduce those oppressions. For me identity politics is a liberal politics that has made that accommodation (or didn't need to in the first place perhaps). It uses identity to conceal its class position and interests, something which becomes apparent where critique of structures is excluded in favour of explanations centred on personal prejudice. Which is not necessarily to dismiss gains made within that framework, just like I wouldn't dismiss gains made through social democratic parties if they bring us benefit, but at the same time those gains tend to be based on more radical foundations (which are often obscured, sometimes deliberately). A truly liberatory politics will find itself opposed to liberal anti racism, liberal feminism just as it will be opposed to much 'socialism'.
I think it becomes clearer to me at least when we focus less inwardly in terms of the ideology or analysis held by groups/movements towards more a question of actual activity. so that in terms of fighting social divisions for example based around racism or sexism, if we want to succeed ultimately we cannot accommodate ourselves to structures that support and reproduce those oppressions. For me identity politics is a liberal politics that has made that accommodation (or didn't need to in the first place perhaps). It uses identity to conceal its class position and interests, something which becomes apparent where critique of structures is excluded in favour of explanations centred on personal prejudice. Which is not necessarily to dismiss gains made within that framework, just like I wouldn't dismiss gains made through social democratic parties if they bring us benefit, but at the same time those gains tend to be based on more radical foundations (which are often obscured, sometimes deliberately). A truly liberatory politics will find itself opposed to liberal anti racism, liberal feminism just as it will be opposed to much 'socialism'.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Meaning that if there is a revolutionary process of transforming society, then this process will be changing people in, and through, this process of transformation.
Can you not conceive of a society where class distinctions have been eliminated but there still exists prejudiced against minority groups? In such a society how would that prejudice be tackled?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
I think this thread's gone a bit muddled as defining ID politics goal posts seem to be shifting. I don't like the US wheel of oppression stuff. But to answer your question.
not that I'm exactly politically active as such. But where issues of wider solidarity, general rights, workers rights, of course I'd like to see all sections of the working class cooperating.
In areas of specific points of discrimination, it's necessary and sensible for groups facing a particular oppression, to take the lead on combatting it; To be the prime voice directing efforts to combat said oppression. That just seems self evident, the experience of those facing racisms, sexism, disablism etc. Ideally though, with a recognition that the bedrock of power relations is often the class position.
Conflicts may arise between these 2 approaches, or attitudes. i.e. the old board room representation argument. I'm afraid I'm not going to waste much effort in arguing for better representation in board rooms but I'm not going to attack an a discriminated against individual fighting their corner in that arina either.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Sorry to have neglected the thread, but I’ve been unwell. There have been a lot of replies to me, but if I try to respond to everyone individually in this post it’ll soon become unreadable. So, apologies for not replying individually to everyone who was awaiting a response.
So, where to start? Well, one of the reactions I predicted in my OP did in fact occur: some people appear to have conflated a) identitypolitics with b) all anti-racism (or all feminism, or all anti-homophobia or all anti-transphobia) etc. I am not criticising b), I’m criticising one approach to it, namely a). The two are not synonyms. As I mentioned in my OP, these have become synonyms in the contemporary popular imagination, but I’d argue that has happened largely through the agency of top down Multiculturalism, (itself co-opted by neoliberalism). But in criticising identitypolitics I am not criticising all struggles by oppressed people against oppression. I am criticising one approach.
So, what specifically are my objections? Chiefly that it has borrowed the language and concepts of the far right (and these have now been borrowed back by the so-called alt-right). In particular, the language of biology was adopted by identitypolitics. It has become common to see the formulation “you can’t understand my experiences because you don’t share my skin colour/chromosomes/mDNA/brain chemistry* etc”. Well, OK, maybe. But you can tell us.
As it happens in some ways I do sympathise with the argument that far. I’ve asterisked one of the biological signifiers I could use: brain chemistry. I experience endogenous depression. It has resulted in my losing jobs and job opportunities, and makes my CV apparently toxic. As a direct result, I reply on self-employment. Which means that during my present recuperation from my current health problems (an unconnected physical condition) I am not only not earning, I am not receiving employer’s sick pay.
So, it irritates me when someone who hasn’t experienced those issues takes it upon themselves to be an expert. I can therefore fully appreciate an argument that we need to hear more of the voices of people who experience mental ill-health. What I do not think follows is that I should in any way suggest that by not sharing my brain chemistry you are participating the oppression against me.
It is this attribution of responsibility by biology that I strongly object to. It is dodgy science and dodgy politics.
Here’s a vivid example of what I mean:
“They came trudging up the hill from a soggy Epping Forest, a rag-tag huddle led by a young black woman. Behind her were five middle-aged white men and a 15-year-old boy, looped together by a length of chain. Around the necks of the boy and a man in his 60s was a makeshift wooden yoke that twisted the man's head as they walked. Each of them, including a clutch of children running alongside - but not the black walkers - wore a T-shirt with the stark legend: "So sorry".
Andrew Winter, a designer from London, gave up his job to join the latest tour. His wife Vonetta, who is from Barbados, is also on the walk, though she doesn't wear a "So sorry" shirt. Their mixed race son Josh, who is 10, sometimes wears one, sometimes doesn't.” (My bold).
Marching to London to hear a single word ... sorry
This illustrates the utter ridiculousness of apportioning responsibility for slavery according to “race”. The son is mixed race so sometimes responsible for slavery and sometimes not. If that doesn’t make you by turns nauseous, angry and bleakly amused then there is something you’re seriously not getting.
By this ludicrous example, because of my skin colour (as far as records show, I’m of Scots-Irish ancestry), I’m personally responsible for slavery. Whether I condone slavery or not is ignored in this mindset. Instead, the issue is that I am nevertheless somehow responsible because of my skin colour.
Now, whatever your ancestry, if your parent, grandparent, great-grandparent, committed any crime, whatever that crime, no matter how serious – rape, murder, violent assault, anything – you are not responsible. Not even a little bit.
In any case, in the instance of slavery, it totally ignores class to suppose that the ancestors of all white people had the same relationship to the slave trade. My ancestors are miners as far back as I can trace. And Scottish miners were themselves, until 1775, actual (not metaphorical) slaves too: Colliers and Salters (Scotland) Act 1775 - Wikipedia
Those who might say this ludicrous example of the Epping Forest march is at the absurd end of identitypolitics, what about this viewpoint? It was widely shared, and surfaced on these boards:
“White women: your hands may not have held most torches this wknd, but you birth, feed, caress, screw, raise, and love the systems killing us” (link).
How “intersectional” is it to lay the blame on mothers? This is the next problem of identitypolitics that I want to highlight: the atomisation of solidarity into competing, mutually suspicious, ghettos.
On and off for many years I was involved in disability activism. However, in the early ‘00s, in a group I was involved in, some members started to challenge whether I was “really” disabled. These were people with physical disabilities who didn’t see mental ill-health as a “proper” disability. People I’d known for years started referring to me as “the TAB man”, and challenge my right to speak at meetings. “Will the TAB* man stop speaking?” And so on. (*temporarily able bodied). They were trying to split into ever smaller interest groups, and saw “their” section of the existing group as having competing interests to “my” section. This is a group where six people at a meeting was a great turnout. I left, but it also shook my confidence at the time. I was questioning whether I had been dominating meetings, whether I had the right to call myself disabled, and so on. It wasn’t pleasant at all. But the saddest thing is that a group that was already tiny was making itself smaller and cutting itself off even from alliances that had founded the group! This same tendency could be seen in the recent thread about feminists and trans women.
If we do that, if we retreat into mutually suspicious ghettos, we weaken any capacity for fightback. If we see all outsiders as oppressors, and disallow them, then how do we win them over? If only the “right” people can be pure fighters against disablism (or transphobia, sexism, racism or whatever), then how can it ever be defeated?
I remember an episode of HIGNFY when an item about racism was being discussed (I forget exactly what) and Reginald D. Hunter was on the panel. The rest of the panel and the host looked to him for an answer. He replied something along the lines of “Hell, am I the only one allowed to know this is wrong? You folks just can’t tell one way or another?” And that’s exactly where we’ve ended up.
Identitypolitics, in the sense I have described it, is of course a response to material conditions, but it became adopted by the class steering neoliberalism, because they, run now by the babyboomer generation, had identity issues that they wanted to address. This is why it, in the sense I describe, has become effective in ensuring diversity in the managerial classes, but these advantages don’t seep into the working classes. This “failing” (actually not a failing, since that’s its purpose) has been critiqued at length by writers such as Kenan Malik, bell hooks, and Asad Haider. (Incidentally, all people of colour, so the criticism levied earlier in the thread that it’s mainly people not affected by oppression who criticise identitypolitics is wide of the mark. And in any case, working class people are affected by oppression. However, we should in any case examine the merits of the argument).
This very individualist and liberal (and I use the term in the sense I have described elsewhere) form of “response” to oppressions etc does indeed stem from material conditions, but it has gained the ascendency in contemporary culture. It informs the response of TV panellists, it informs soap opera and sitcom scriptwriters, it informs HR awareness training sessions, it informs the cultural consensus on sensitivity towards the gamut of identity issues. It has this position in contemporary common sense because the class which is the dominant material force in society is therefore the dominant cultural and intellectual force. As Marx and Engels say (in the German Ideology), the ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas.
And that ruling class is quite satisfied with the divide and rule effect of identitypolitics. This is why rebuilding solidarity and reidentifying the correct targets (ie not each other!) is the way to proceed.
So, where to start? Well, one of the reactions I predicted in my OP did in fact occur: some people appear to have conflated a) identitypolitics with b) all anti-racism (or all feminism, or all anti-homophobia or all anti-transphobia) etc. I am not criticising b), I’m criticising one approach to it, namely a). The two are not synonyms. As I mentioned in my OP, these have become synonyms in the contemporary popular imagination, but I’d argue that has happened largely through the agency of top down Multiculturalism, (itself co-opted by neoliberalism). But in criticising identitypolitics I am not criticising all struggles by oppressed people against oppression. I am criticising one approach.
So, what specifically are my objections? Chiefly that it has borrowed the language and concepts of the far right (and these have now been borrowed back by the so-called alt-right). In particular, the language of biology was adopted by identitypolitics. It has become common to see the formulation “you can’t understand my experiences because you don’t share my skin colour/chromosomes/mDNA/brain chemistry* etc”. Well, OK, maybe. But you can tell us.
As it happens in some ways I do sympathise with the argument that far. I’ve asterisked one of the biological signifiers I could use: brain chemistry. I experience endogenous depression. It has resulted in my losing jobs and job opportunities, and makes my CV apparently toxic. As a direct result, I reply on self-employment. Which means that during my present recuperation from my current health problems (an unconnected physical condition) I am not only not earning, I am not receiving employer’s sick pay.
So, it irritates me when someone who hasn’t experienced those issues takes it upon themselves to be an expert. I can therefore fully appreciate an argument that we need to hear more of the voices of people who experience mental ill-health. What I do not think follows is that I should in any way suggest that by not sharing my brain chemistry you are participating the oppression against me.
It is this attribution of responsibility by biology that I strongly object to. It is dodgy science and dodgy politics.
Here’s a vivid example of what I mean:
“They came trudging up the hill from a soggy Epping Forest, a rag-tag huddle led by a young black woman. Behind her were five middle-aged white men and a 15-year-old boy, looped together by a length of chain. Around the necks of the boy and a man in his 60s was a makeshift wooden yoke that twisted the man's head as they walked. Each of them, including a clutch of children running alongside - but not the black walkers - wore a T-shirt with the stark legend: "So sorry".
Andrew Winter, a designer from London, gave up his job to join the latest tour. His wife Vonetta, who is from Barbados, is also on the walk, though she doesn't wear a "So sorry" shirt. Their mixed race son Josh, who is 10, sometimes wears one, sometimes doesn't.” (My bold).
Marching to London to hear a single word ... sorry
This illustrates the utter ridiculousness of apportioning responsibility for slavery according to “race”. The son is mixed race so sometimes responsible for slavery and sometimes not. If that doesn’t make you by turns nauseous, angry and bleakly amused then there is something you’re seriously not getting.
By this ludicrous example, because of my skin colour (as far as records show, I’m of Scots-Irish ancestry), I’m personally responsible for slavery. Whether I condone slavery or not is ignored in this mindset. Instead, the issue is that I am nevertheless somehow responsible because of my skin colour.
Now, whatever your ancestry, if your parent, grandparent, great-grandparent, committed any crime, whatever that crime, no matter how serious – rape, murder, violent assault, anything – you are not responsible. Not even a little bit.
In any case, in the instance of slavery, it totally ignores class to suppose that the ancestors of all white people had the same relationship to the slave trade. My ancestors are miners as far back as I can trace. And Scottish miners were themselves, until 1775, actual (not metaphorical) slaves too: Colliers and Salters (Scotland) Act 1775 - Wikipedia
Those who might say this ludicrous example of the Epping Forest march is at the absurd end of identitypolitics, what about this viewpoint? It was widely shared, and surfaced on these boards:
“White women: your hands may not have held most torches this wknd, but you birth, feed, caress, screw, raise, and love the systems killing us” (link).
How “intersectional” is it to lay the blame on mothers? This is the next problem of identitypolitics that I want to highlight: the atomisation of solidarity into competing, mutually suspicious, ghettos.
On and off for many years I was involved in disability activism. However, in the early ‘00s, in a group I was involved in, some members started to challenge whether I was “really” disabled. These were people with physical disabilities who didn’t see mental ill-health as a “proper” disability. People I’d known for years started referring to me as “the TAB man”, and challenge my right to speak at meetings. “Will the TAB* man stop speaking?” And so on. (*temporarily able bodied). They were trying to split into ever smaller interest groups, and saw “their” section of the existing group as having competing interests to “my” section. This is a group where six people at a meeting was a great turnout. I left, but it also shook my confidence at the time. I was questioning whether I had been dominating meetings, whether I had the right to call myself disabled, and so on. It wasn’t pleasant at all. But the saddest thing is that a group that was already tiny was making itself smaller and cutting itself off even from alliances that had founded the group! This same tendency could be seen in the recent thread about feminists and trans women.
If we do that, if we retreat into mutually suspicious ghettos, we weaken any capacity for fightback. If we see all outsiders as oppressors, and disallow them, then how do we win them over? If only the “right” people can be pure fighters against disablism (or transphobia, sexism, racism or whatever), then how can it ever be defeated?
I remember an episode of HIGNFY when an item about racism was being discussed (I forget exactly what) and Reginald D. Hunter was on the panel. The rest of the panel and the host looked to him for an answer. He replied something along the lines of “Hell, am I the only one allowed to know this is wrong? You folks just can’t tell one way or another?” And that’s exactly where we’ve ended up.
Identitypolitics, in the sense I have described it, is of course a response to material conditions, but it became adopted by the class steering neoliberalism, because they, run now by the babyboomer generation, had identity issues that they wanted to address. This is why it, in the sense I describe, has become effective in ensuring diversity in the managerial classes, but these advantages don’t seep into the working classes. This “failing” (actually not a failing, since that’s its purpose) has been critiqued at length by writers such as Kenan Malik, bell hooks, and Asad Haider. (Incidentally, all people of colour, so the criticism levied earlier in the thread that it’s mainly people not affected by oppression who criticise identitypolitics is wide of the mark. And in any case, working class people are affected by oppression. However, we should in any case examine the merits of the argument).
This very individualist and liberal (and I use the term in the sense I have described elsewhere) form of “response” to oppressions etc does indeed stem from material conditions, but it has gained the ascendency in contemporary culture. It informs the response of TV panellists, it informs soap opera and sitcom scriptwriters, it informs HR awareness training sessions, it informs the cultural consensus on sensitivity towards the gamut of identity issues. It has this position in contemporary common sense because the class which is the dominant material force in society is therefore the dominant cultural and intellectual force. As Marx and Engels say (in the German Ideology), the ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas.
And that ruling class is quite satisfied with the divide and rule effect of identitypolitics. This is why rebuilding solidarity and reidentifying the correct targets (ie not each other!) is the way to proceed.
As thread is moved on. The blame Capitlism for everything thing tendancy. Risible.
Marx might be useful still. Certainly in terms of economic class relations. But cleaving to his words, looking at everything through a Marxian lense. Jam tomorrow if we could just destroy capitalism. What of fudelism and other systems. What and by whom' are these systems enforced. Power, hirearchies don't just disappear. Just as they didn't emerge in the 17th Century.
Marx might be useful still. Certainly in terms of economic class relations. But cleaving to his words, looking at everything through a Marxian lense. Jam tomorrow if we could just destroy capitalism. What of fudelism and other systems. What and by whom' are these systems enforced. Power, hirearchies don't just disappear. Just as they didn't emerge in the 17th Century.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
hope you're much recovered
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Indeed.
And that is why I'm talking about "revolution" (not my choice of word here, but rolling with it for now) as a process. A process that changes people involved in it. So this is why when Lambert Simnel asks whether I can "conceive" of a class less society that still has racism etc. I think he's asking the wrong question. It isn't just the absence of class that's important but rather what has to be done to get to that point.
mojo pixy
שיר חדש
For what it's worth, I can't really imagine that if society had transformed to the point where class privilege was gone because the structures maintaining class privilege were gone, there would be anything such as racism, sexism and homophobia left. Maybe in a small minority of people. There'll always be a small minority of people too stupid to get on well with other people.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Getting there thanks.
andysays
Love and solidarity
Great post danny la rouge - anyone who doesn't get what this thread is about after reading that probably never will, frankly.
And good to hear you're recovering and back with us.
And good to hear you're recovering and back with us.
Tom A
Goat among sheep
I have a very similar story. Seven years ago I discovered the disabled people's rights movement (for the record, my 'disability' is an autistic spectrum disorder). At the time I thought great, people who understand me, and finally everything makes sense, all the hassle with not being able to hold down a job, the struggles I have in social situations, it all fits together! For the first time really I could stop being ashamed about not being able to fit in, armed with the social model of disability which states that society disables people, rather than people being disabled by their impairments (which I still have a lot of time for TBF). However, even a few weeks after attending a meeting, there was a huge spat on one of these organisations' mailing lists regarding how 'accessible' our meetings were which essentially boiled down to it being totally wrong to hold any meetings until ALL people meeting could possibly attend. There weren't many meetings after this. However I remained Facebook friends with a few key people, and tried to organise around disability issues, particularly regarding benefit sanctions and the Work Capability Assessment, two major issues which directly affect me and my relationship with the benefits system.
It is through these people I start getting acquainted with the intersectional buzzwords you are now familiar with (including the aforementioned 'TAB'). Many of these people I met were also heavily involved in LGBT (and particularly T) stuff as well - and they seemed to be subscribe to a school of disability politics that massively overlapped with queer theory. I quickly learned that I would not be very popular if I (as a cisgender straight person) voiced an independent opinion on trans issues other than to amplify the voices of trans people present. I was told I was being reactionary, ableist and heterosexist if I opposed incest(!!!) and got short shrift when I challenged them when they supported someone sharing the "die cis scum" meme on Facebook. I previously asked the same person if all cis people were inherently responsible for transphobia (for which I got the answer 'yes' - by the way this same person is now involved in the organisation responsible for the 'kerfuffle' with the radfems at Speaker's Corner mentioned on the other thread, in fact they helped start it up alongside two other activists I knew). Progressive stacking was seen as the way forward, where only people in an in-group had a legitimate say on discussion about issues affecting the in-group. I found myself getting uncomfortable about some of the ideas being circulated by these people but kept quiet lest I get accused of not checking my privilege. Unlike you danny la rouge, I never got challenged for talking because I quickly learned to hold my tongue if I wanted an easy life. However at the time I thought this was all for the greater good.
Over time I started becoming more and more critical of their attitudes. In 2014 a series of Facebook events were created by some misguided but well meaning people (mostly of the Anonymous/Occupy milleu for better or worse) calling for protests against ATOS assessment centres. A lot of these activists I knew poured scorn on these events, especially since they had appeared out of nowhere without any consultation with any of the main organisations or without knowing anything about disability rights. A spat unfolded, with both sides behaving pretty unpleasantly towards each other. The consensus was that we would critically support the demonstration. Meanwhile, by this time I was now involved in Left Unity, where I started to meet people with a much more open attitude to the demonstrations. Eventually what happened was it was by far the most successful anti-ATOS demonstration ever, with about 80 people involved in the Manchester demo alone, with participation from disabled rights activists, Left Unity, the anti-fracking movement, and the nascent Unite Community branch, in spite of what all the naysayers who I considered the core of the disability rights movement were predicting.
I finally cut my ties with them a month later, what happened was someone said that a specific word (won't say which one because it may distract from my point) I used on a totally unrelated thread on Facebook was disablist. There may be some debate about the usage of some words but I really didn't see any issue with it, and I am disabled too FFS! I have never been the most "politically correct" person and having discovered a new group of comrades (disabled and able-bodied) who didn't subscribe to this BS give me the impetus to just unfriend them en masse, making a point of saying I wouldn't attend the next meeting due to "irreparable differences" between me and them. They tried to see if they could talk it over and get me back (it must have been a pretty big shock to see years of bottled up frustration get unleashed in one go) but I was having none of it, so there endeth my involvement with them. The one thing that's a damning indictment on them is how their support for a cause is conditional on people following their rules to the letter, and woe betide anyone who steps out of line.
Today I am still involved in fights against attacks on benefit claimants, mostly with my local Unite Community branch, and occasionally am also involved in the People's Assembly. Left Unity, as many of you on this board are aware, became yet another political dead end with its own bunfights. I am aware that people suffer unique oppression due to race, gender, sexuality, disability, etc, but I feel that the fight for their rights needs to be taken in context of the wider class struggle, with the more positive aspects of what is known for better or ill as "identity politics" supplementing class struggle rather than trying to supplant it. People from all walks of life need to be able to participate in the debates in where this struggle goes and be judged solely on the merit of the argument being made, not just dismissed purely because they are considered a "privileged" person in that one context.
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BigTom
Well-Known Member
I'm a pretty orthodox marxist when it comes down to it (particularly when we are talking about pure economics), but I think that sexism, homophobia, racism, transphobia and probably most if not all the other oppressions can be largely if not entirely removed within capitalism.
Hierarchies change. Anyone sensible will say that we can't know exactly what socialism will look like, we can say - by definition - that there won't be hierarchies based on class or the economic distribution of material goods (Marx said almost nothing about what Socialism would look like - "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" must be the central organising principle of any socialist economy, if you can't say that about an economy, it isn't socialist). What other hierarchies might emerge, and how those of us who would prefer non-hierarchical societies oppose those at that time is speculative really. Many marxists say that we will still have to deal with racism, sexism, homophobia and other discriminations in socialism, but that without the pressure of capital and the ruling class to ferment these divisions within us, it will become a downhill run rather than an uphill struggle. Given the depressing amount of racism, sexism, homophobia, disablism and every other discrimination amongst socialists I think even that's optimistic but like chilango says, revolution is a process, and the process of revolution from feudalism to capitalism spanned at least 500 years, from the black death to the industrial revolution, but we still have feudal institutions, hierarchies and power structures so it's arguable if we're even there - every piece of history leaves a trace of itself in the future... or as Marx said (paraphrased cos I'm lazy), we make our own history, but we do not do so under circumstances of our choosing. The choices of the dead lie like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
If socialism, as an ideal, means that we have economic equality, then the logic for me says that an equal economic base should tend towards producing, or support the production of, an equal social superstructure. Hopefully it'll happen beforehand (because it's tangibly close in some respects now where the end of the revolutionary process is beyond vague), but if not I think it'll be easier to complete in a socialist economy (personally I would not consider it socialism if discriminations and oppressions still exist, the end of the revolutionary process means true equality).
Maybe the event that will be looked back on as the equivalent to the black death has already happened (eg: microchips/computers -> AI and fully automated production + invention of infinite energy and resource recycling systems = utopic socialism ftw!... or if you prefer the dystopia... industrial revolution -> climate change -> need for sustainable society which profit driven capitalism can't sustain -> deep green eco-socialist future) and the moves towards equality post industrial revolution (I guess - anti-slavery movement, suffragettes and chartism?) will be the start of superstructural moves as the contradictions of the capitalist economic system fail to deal with the material changes that have occurred.
andysays
Love and solidarity
Great post, but I'm going to focus on just one para because you've reminded me of something I was trying to remember yesterday on the "transgender" thread, when searching for an explanation of how transphobia grows out of the material conditions of capitalism.
The simplistic answer is that industrial capitalism required a way of ensuring the reproduction of its workforce, and the nuclear family was the form which this took. This includes women having the role of unpaid carers of their children, and it also involves the imposition a particular set of social/sexual norms.
But the current material conditions of later capitalism no longer require the "traditional" nuclear family, indeed they require women to engage in the labour market to the same extent as men, and simultaneously require that childcare is largely removed from the area of unpaid work and becomes a market based service like so many others.
So even though the social/sexual norms which were part of the nuclear family (and which are challenged/undermined by "deviant" behaviour including by transpeople) are no longer materially necessary, they remain as the choices of the dead lying like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
(This may also be of interest to Athos)
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
Capitalism still requires labour power to reproduce itself though.
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