Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.

[eoin_k]

Not sure about anyone else but I would appreciate some kind of description/explanation of what is meant by 'cultural Marxism'. Clarifying terminology helps keep everyone included in the conversation afterall.

mojo pixy has identified the right-wing conspiracy theorists I was alluding to, but lets remember those who make sense of their lived experience through these lenses rather than just the propagandists, themselves.

 

[kabbes]

Interesting. But presents a lot of questions! What is "the nature of society"? Where does it come from? What do you understand by the distinction between industrial and consumer capitalism? What shapes how people see themselves?

Sorry it has taken me a few days to get to this, but better late than never.

By the "nature of society", I mean a lot of things, including:

• The activities and practices people engage in as part of society
• What the priorities and principles are of the society
• How identity is formed in that society
• The social order (i.e. how and why the society coheres)
• The nature of what is produced and how this is done

These things are all inter-related, as are many more concepts that become relevant depending on what is being considered, such as how technology affects all this, or how external factors might create pressures on it. It's a big concept.

The nature of society evolves and is messy. There are no clean breaks, and attempts at categorisation will always leave pieces unmatched. However, we can broadly tell the following very brief story of the UK. Following all kinds of historical types of society -- Feudal, agarian and so on -- we had the Enlightenment, which prioritised a certain type of identity and mindset, followed by the Industrial revolution, which created other types of social pressure. During this period, the foundations of capitalism were laid as the economic basis. By the time we reached the 20th century, we had a capitalist society that was built on industrialism. It relied on skilled labour, the most important freedoms were political in nature, people defined themselves by the jobs they did within that society (paid or unpaid). The "activities and practices" people engaged in were those of industrialism, namely communities built on this working self-definition. The social order was that of people having their place and understanding themselves through that place.

At some point in the latter half of the 20th century, however, things started to change. Consumerism started to take over, in which people defined themselves by "what they are into" rather than "what they do". Important freedoms became those of individualism, choice, market freedom. The "activities and practices" people engaged in started moving towards shopping as leisure, the advertising industry grew to drive a wedge into this self-expression through market choice and lever it wider. People were capable of building their own bespoke identity through their selection of goods and services to consume, and the use of these things as extensions of the self. Old social order broke down -- people became less sure of their "place" and they replaced it with a custom-made template of what "people like them" do, hang out with and spend money on. This happened in parallel with the nature of what is produced transitioning from large-scale manufacturing to a service-based and then increasingly finance-based economy, which can make use of transitory and unskilled labour.

I really don't think you can make general points about structures within capitalism and ignore these changes. At a surface level, the same critiques all still apply -- ownership of the means of production is still the engine of power, interests are still aligned along class lines, capital still protects itself. But the specifics of what that means for a society is very different. Individuals who have built their identity through the accumulation of consumer self-extensions engage differently to those who have built their identity through understanding their place within their work-based community.

Capital already understands this, though. Because capital's great strength is its inherent flexibility to make use of whatever the prevailing spirit of the age happens to be. When consumerism started to get off the ground, it was capital that was there to develop all the marketing tools around promoting individual self-expression through consumption. Freedom through spending. It was capital that was there to exploit people's new-found desire for individual freedoms to repackage poor working practices as personal choice. Capital saw women demanding equal status and repurposed it to trap two people into full-time employment rather than one. Capital doesn't care whether the people buying its things are black or white, gay or straight, cis or trans. If it suits capital to cohere nuclear families, it'll promote "traditional values". If it suits capital to splinter society, however, it'll bring the hammer.

That's why just considering the capitalism dimension of the multi-dimensional nature of society will not provide the complete toolkit. You'll end up fighting battles that capital has already changed its position on, and is using your own position against you. My suspicion is that a lack of understanding of this is a key reason why the hard-left has found it so hard to engage with people these last 30 years. They're still using the tools useful for unpicking industrial capitalism, but capital itself has long since abandoned that mode of power.

 

[butchersapron]

look under any definition of identity politics in a political dictionary or similiar and self-determination comes up immediately
one of countless examples Identity Politics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

And there we have it - an example of an individuals self-determination becoming a collective understanding that all members of a nation have the same interests.. A mass homogensiation under the flag of difference.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Yes, I think I would generally hold a similar idea of structure, the political and economic, the historical formation...though I'm struggling to be as precise about it in my mind as I'd like to be.

I think it's probably impossible to be precise, because structure is fluid - it morphs to the political, social and economic conditions of any time.

I think that maybe for some the idea of structural reaches the level of the individual, that it's in you and me, maybe as an internalised structure, not a thing out there.

I'd say that - to use a Foucaultism - that structure is "inscribed" on us by living in the world, but that it isn't inherent, it's an imposition, if you see what I mean. That inscription means that we kind of accept a set of predicates that structure imposes on us, and naturalises across society. We police ourselves, we obey laws etc because we're told that to do so is "good" for all, but obviously more good for some than others.

 

[Red Cat]

We all internalise don't we? That would include aspects of the 'structural', ideas, processes etc.

Yes, we all internalise.

What I'm attempting to do is to think about what we (those involved in this conversation) mean by structural, because it has been used a lot lately in these conversations, and to think about the degree to which structural is/can be also considered internal, individual and interpersonal. Otherwise we get stuck on terminology that means different things to different people.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Well I'm talking about conspiracist right-wingers like Henry Makow and Alex Jones and David Icke. Of course their 'lived experience' is valid but their views are toxic and stupid, and to me the term cultural marxism belongs squarely in that context. So, dodgy.

Yeah, this basically. TBh I think this is creating a problem where there isn't one really. I don't think anyone other than obvious twats interprets their lived experience through a lens called CM.

 

[ViolentPanda]

We all internalise don't we? That would include aspects of the 'structural', ideas, processes etc.

We effectively have no choice to internalise, if we wish to live in society. It's that old anarchist quandary of having to live in the state's society, with all the internalised norms, in order to effect change on the structure.

 

[DotCommunist]

Yeah, this basically. TBh I think this is creating a problem where there isn't one really. I don't think anyone other than obvious twats interprets their lived experience through a lens called CM.

anders breivik and Melanie Philips et al

 

[eoin_k]

The appeal to lived experience, although important, also runs into limits at the other end of the spectrum: where we all agree that the grievance is legitimate and the affected groups have insights that should be taken seriously. Take women's rights as an example. Even if we leave aside the issues of how sex intersects with say race and class, different women interpret what they share in terms of their lived experiences through different more-or-less explicit theoretical lenses. Radical feminism, socialist feminism, eco feminism, autonomist feminism, marxist feminism, liberal feminism, catholic doctrine, the broader ideological matrix we all confront in our daily lives...

How do we deal with the tension between recognising the importance of lived experience and the need for emancipatory politics to be about people freeing themselves from their own specific contexts, on the one hand, and recognition that these different theoretical frameworks are incommensurable in ways that require others to make political choices about, which voices they listen to and how that affects their political practice. On what basis beyond lived experience should we make these choices?

 

[Treacle Toes]

We effectively have no choice to internalise, if we wish to live in society. It's that old anarchist quandary of having to live in the state's society, with all the internalised norms, in order to effect change on the structure.

Well yes. This is why I don't really understand the squimishness about a bit of self reflection of the ways we each may have internalised and/or looking at the personal ways that we may benefit from the 'system' in ways that others don't. I think it's an important of understanding not only our place and experiences in society in terms of class and identity, but globally too.

 

[danny la rouge]

And there we have it - an example of an individuals self-determination becoming a collective understanding that all members of a nation have the same interests.. A mass homogensiation under the flag of difference.

Pretty much what I was going to post, but more concisely put.

 

[eoin_k]

Yeah, this basically. TBh I think this is creating a problem where there isn't one really. I don't think anyone other than obvious twats interprets their lived experience through a lens called CM.

Lived experiences are like assholes, everyone has one. Referring to these 'obvious twats' isn't meant as a form of trolling, which is how it is often received. It is an attempt to point out that there might be a very real problem if our shared politics don't provide us with tools to distinguish between a legitimate appeal to lived experience and an illegitimate one.

 

[eoin_k]

Well yes. This is why I don't really understand the squimishness about a bit of self reflection of the ways we each may have internalised and/or looking at the personal ways that we may benefit from the 'system' in ways that others don't. I think it's an important of understanding not only our place and experiences in society in terms of class and identity, but globally too.

The issue isn't just about self-reflection, which isn't to say there isn't a need for this when people who claim to have class politics try to take up positions in relation to say sex and race and where their material interests and ideological positions come in to play. There is also a need for other tools. An appeal to lived experience and demands for self-reflection are not enough.

 

[Treacle Toes]

The issue isn't just about self-reflection, which isn't to say there isn't a need for this when people who claim to have class politics try to take up positions in relation to say sex and race and where their material interests and ideological positions come in to play. There is also a need for other tools. An appeal to lived experience and demands for self-reflection are not enough.

I'm not sure that anyone has actually said it's just about one thing or another...the conversation is about which elements are needed/helpful isn't it?

 

[mojo pixy]

Not sure about anyone else but I would appreciate some kind of description/explanation of what is meant by 'cultural Marxism'. Clarifying terminology helps keep everyone included in the conversation afterall.

That's what I was asking, really.

What's cultural Marxism, and how / to whom is it oppressive? I've only ever heard this term in dodgy contexts so I think it needs clarifying.

 

[butchersapron]

That's what I was asking, really.

He's simply using a trope that some people use to identify their interests and thus build a political identity. It happens to be illegitimate and false. To say that we must have some grounding to say that what people think based on their experience can be wrong (or not useful) . Thus its relevance to thread on which people are coming close to arguing that an identity and politics based on that are unchallengable - or worse.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The issue isn't just about self-reflection, which isn't to say there isn't a need for this when people who claim to have class politics try to take up positions in relation to say sex and race and where their material interests and ideological positions come in to play. There is also a need for other tools. An appeal to lived experience and demands for self-reflection are not enough.

I think we may be talking at crossed purposes in the way I described earlier. Lived experience is just that. It doesn't provide answers - in itself it merely poses questions. Clearly analysis requires other tools.

To be more explicit about my earlier example of everyday low-level racism, it might take the form of someone being rude or a bit off with you in a shop. You know full well that this happens to you more often than not because of your race, but you tell this to someone who doesn't experience racism directly and their immediate reaction may well be to look for an alternative explanation - they're having a bad day/rude to everyone, etc - which may just be true in this instance but isn't true as a general rule and is not the explanation for the experience taken in its totality. That's what I mean about paying attention to the lived experience of those whose experience you yourself cannot share.

 

[mojo pixy]

He's simply using a trope that some people use to identify their interests and thus build a political identity. It happens to be illegitimate and false. To say that we must have some grounding to say that what people think based on their experience can be wrong (or not useful) . Thus its relevance to thread on which people are coming close to arguing that an identity and politics based on that are unchallengable - or worse.

fwiw I see "cultural marxism" as a shorthand / dog whistle term signifying the oppression certain people feel (but that isn't actual oppression) when their privilege is threatened by other people's equality. Like the cultural effects of marxism , or something. It shows a misunderstanding of 'marxism' and I would argue also of 'culture'.

It tends only to be used by right-wingers and conspiracy types (of course there's some considerable crossover there)

But how I understand it isn't necessarily how someone else uses it, hence my asking for clarity. Not a major point tbh.

 

[eoin_k]

fwiw I see "cultural marxism" as a shorthand / dog whistle term [..]
I understand it isn't necessarily how someone else uses it, hence my asking for clarity. Not a major point tbh.

No, we were on the same page at the beginning and somehow things got mixed up. The identity politics of right-wing conspiracy theorists speaks to some people's lived experiences, their sense of injustice and oppression, however much we disagree with them. Identity Politics by itself doesn't seem to provide the tools for distinguishing a legitimate sense of grievance from an illegitimate one, a lived experience that demands solidarity or not. The flip side is that where we agree that there is a legitimate grievance and that lived experience can offer powerful insights, how members of the affected group make sense of this experience differs among themselves. We can't even recount a lived experience, or choose which ones are worth recounting without it being shaped by theory and ideology. Do I tell you about my experience of discrimination at work, or how someone used inappropriate language with me? Do I focus my concerns on male sexual violence, the sexual division of labour, or both? Do I call it sex work, or prostitution? Do I want a queer mutiny, or a gay community? Did it happen in Northern Ireland, or the six counties? Is Black a category I use exclusively for people of African descent, or as a political category counterposed to an equally socially constructed whiteness, or do I prefer to say people of colour/African/afro-caribbean etc., or shift between terms depending on the context

 

[mojo pixy]

The problem with all the words for things is that when we insist on use of certain terms, we're telling people how to speak. Being told how to speak can feel like being told what to think, and nobody likes it much. In the end lived experience is lived experience and when we base a discussion on that then someone says well my experience is X then someone else says well my experience is Y and someone else says well my experience is D etc. All valid, where are we going?

Learning about each other's experience of life in this world is important, it shows us there's more than what we know, that there are ways of looking at the world we've never considered. Cultural evolution, becoming better collectively and individually, all that. I can't help feeling though, that when it comes to concrete social change on the broad scale, it's about capital, capitalism and wealth; what's it for, who gets to benefit from it and how important it is. IMO those kind of questions can't be answered by focusing on identity groups.

 

[mojo pixy]

The people I work with are seriously disabled. That's an identity group. They get the shit end of every stick there is.

Because they're disabled? In part, yes. In terms of interpersonal relations, the disabilities are right there in your face. Deal with it, show what you're really like, be real. Do you see a person or a disability?

More to the point, do they identify as a disabled person?

Well, as far as I can see (ablesplaining? Maybe, there you go I'm the correspondent from this particular frontline for the duration this post), the worst part of their experienced reality must be the poverty. Not just the personal poverty, the having £20 a week or less to spend - in a way so much is laid on in terms of heating, water, food, transport that spending money isn't the main point. But the support resources are limited. Extremely limited. That means support isn't always available to do more than look after the house and get to appointments. A social life is pretty much impossible, and going to shows is out of the question. Even when disabled access is good - and it almost always is - it's still £20-30 for a concert ticket, the same for a football match. Frankly, going to the supermarket or a walk in the park is a day out.

This isn't an issue of identity, really - though they are poor because they're disabled. But it's not the disability which is the problem, it's the socio-economic model that considers them unproductive and treats them as detritus (while wanking on constantly about 'dignity' in official documentation, hypocritically enough). They're really in the lowest class there is.

 

[kabbes]

The people I work with are seriously disabled. That's an identity group. They get the shit end of every stick there is.

Because they're disabled? In part, yes. In terms of interpersonal relations, the disabilities are right there in your face. Deal with it, show what you're really like, be real. Do you see a person or a disability?

More to the point, do they identify as a disabled person?

Well, as far as I can see (ablesplaining? Maybe, there you go I'm the correspondent from this particular frontline for the duration this post), the worst part of their experienced reality must be the poverty. Not just the personal poverty, the having £20 a week or less to spend - in a way so much is laid on in terms of heating, water, food, transport that spending money isn't the main point. But the support resources are limited. Extremely limited. That means support isn't always available to do more than look after the house and get to appointments. A social life is pretty much impossible, and going to shows is out of the question. Even when disabled access is good - and it almost always is - it's still £20-30 for a concert ticket, the same for a football match. Frankly, going to the supermarket or a walk in the park is a day out.

This isn't an issue of identity, really - though they are poor because they're disabled. But it's not the disability which is the problem, it's the socio-economic model that considers them unproductive and treats them as detritus (while wanking on constantly about 'dignity' in official documentation, hypocritically enough). They're really in the lowest class there is.

This is all consistent with the late 20th century and early 21st century sociological work done on consumerism. Zygmunt Bauman split society into the seduced and the repressed.

http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/archives/Identity/1.1FBauman.pdf

The seduced are those who actively take part in consumerism. The repressed are those unable to. Since identity in consumerism is constructed by the extension of self gained by consuming goods and services, the repressed have devalued identities. This goes beyond merely being poor, they are actively despised by a society that views them as defying its social order.

The devaluation of identity is also often internalised, leading to mental health issues, as the self becomes disconnected.

It’s a good example of what I meant when I said you can’t analyse capitalism without also taking account of the other dimensions of social structure. You articulated it perfectly, mojo pixy, so thank you for that.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I know the thread has moved on a bit since but I want to go back to the question of class and ethnicity in relation to bosses and workers that rutita and others were discussing.

I think an obvious place where identity politics (or at least the form of identity politics I would disagree with - where ethnicity is seen as purely as a cultural-political identity rather than a feature of wider class structures - just as class can be understood as a cultural identity or a structure) falls down is on this question.

An example from my work experience should illustrate this quite well. I've posted about this before so it's the same story and I'm going to c&p chunks from an old post I made:

I used to work at a Turkish owned kebab shop as a delivery driver. The drivers were all 'white British' (for want of a better term) and the people who worked in the kitchen were Turkish-Kurdish immigrants - I suspect illegal ones.

We were paid cash in hand - £20 a night if we worked 5pm - 10pm and £30 a night if we worked 5pm - 1am, with 70p for each delivery to cover petrol (we had to use our own cars and didn't get anything towards insurance, so were forced to break the law as there was no way we could pay for business use insurnace - it would have cost more than we earned). So that's between £3.75 and £4 an hour, depending on what shift we were doing. This was in 2008, so even then it was well below the minimum wage, for a job where you risked being mugged, beaten up, etc.

The lads in the kitchen had it far worse. They all lived in a house owned by the owner of the shop, and for the first few months I was there I didn't know how badly they were being ripped off because the people who worked there at that time only spoke very basic English. But a few months after I started he took on a new lad who had been living in London for a while and spoke very good English. We got on really well and he used to come round my house on his day off to have a smoke and that. Anyway, he came and saw me after he got his first pay packet. He'd worked 6 days, from 4 in the afternoon until 3 in the morning - 66 hours. He'd been paid £3.50 an hour - so he got about £230. But the owner had taken £150 off him for board and lodgings, so he was left with about £80 for working 6 11 hour shifts.

They were worse off than us because of racism. There's simply no other explanation, it's as unambiguous as it gets. Racist immigration laws meant they didn't have the same rights as the rest of us. It doesn't get much more clear cut than that.

They were Turkish Kurds, the same as the owner. But in this instance he had a direct material interest in maintaining the racist institutions that were enabling him to exploit them more than he could 'British' workers and more than he could them if they had the same rights.

If anyone at that place had an interest in helping them it was us drivers, since all we were ever told when we complained about our money was how much better off we were than them - he used that racism to keep our wages down too.

He no doubt shared their experience of racial abuse and discrimination but he was the one using racist tools to exploit them. Without an understanding of the specific relations of exploitation (class, and a solid class analysis always takes in specificities relating to ethnicity, gender or anything else that is important to the functioning of that system) the obvious answer is they share an experience of racism with that boss so they should join forces with him to fight it. I was 'benefiting' from that racism in that I was getting more money than them.

To me, if your politics is informed by the kind of materialist analysis I have alluded to above - one where things like ethnicity and gender are an integral part of a class system - then you don't subscribe to identity politics. I think the difficulty we have discussing this stems from different understandings of what identity politics is. To some, anything that aims to further the cause of a specific oppressed groups is identity politics and so anyone arguing against it is saying those issues either don't matter or are at best secondary to the class struggle (rather than a vital part of it). Then, partly because of this misunderstanding, you've got the other side assuming anyone who says they're into identity politics is someone who takes subjective identity as their starting point and ignores class.

I think the only way around this is to be as clear as we can in our definitions - so if we employ a contested concept, explain what we mean by it in that context - and to ask others for clarification if they do the same.

But the solidarity you show to them is based on class - their boss isn’t showing any solidarity based on shared identity, is he?
Maybe he’d join those very same people on an anti-racism demo - if his business was threatened by fascists I’m sure he’d soon find common ground then - but after that it’s business as usual.

Are the wider Turskish Kurd community showing them solidarity based on identity?

 

[SpineyNorman]

But the solidarity you show to them is based on class - their boss isn’t showing any solidarity based on shared identity, is he?
Maybe he’d join those very same people on an anti-racism demo - if his business was threatened by fascists I’m sure he’d soon find common ground then - but after that it’s business as usual.

Are the wider Turskish Kurd community showing them solidarity based on identity?

No and no, which was my point.

 

[Athos]

Sorry it has taken me a few days to get to this, but better late than never.

By the "nature of society", I mean a lot of things, including:

• The activities and practices people engage in as part of society
• What the priorities and principles are of the society
• How identity is formed in that society
• The social order (i.e. how and why the society coheres)
• The nature of what is produced and how this is done

These things are all inter-related, as are many more concepts that become relevant depending on what is being considered, such as how technology affects all this, or how external factors might create pressures on it. It's a big concept.

The nature of society evolves and is messy. There are no clean breaks, and attempts at categorisation will always leave pieces unmatched. However, we can broadly tell the following very brief story of the UK. Following all kinds of historical types of society -- Feudal, agarian and so on -- we had the Enlightenment, which prioritised a certain type of identity and mindset, followed by the Industrial revolution, which created other types of social pressure. During this period, the foundations of capitalism were laid as the economic basis. By the time we reached the 20th century, we had a capitalist society that was built on industrialism. It relied on skilled labour, the most important freedoms were political in nature, people defined themselves by the jobs they did within that society (paid or unpaid). The "activities and practices" people engaged in were those of industrialism, namely communities built on this working self-definition. The social order was that of people having their place and understanding themselves through that place.

At some point in the latter half of the 20th century, however, things started to change. Consumerism started to take over, in which people defined themselves by "what they are into" rather than "what they do". Important freedoms became those of individualism, choice, market freedom. The "activities and practices" people engaged in started moving towards shopping as leisure, the advertising industry grew to drive a wedge into this self-expression through market choice and lever it wider. People were capable of building their own bespoke identity through their selection of goods and services to consume, and the use of these things as extensions of the self. Old social order broke down -- people became less sure of their "place" and they replaced it with a custom-made template of what "people like them" do, hang out with and spend money on. This happened in parallel with the nature of what is produced transitioning from large-scale manufacturing to a service-based and then increasingly finance-based economy, which can make use of transitory and unskilled labour.

I really don't think you can make general points about structures within capitalism and ignore these changes. At a surface level, the same critiques all still apply -- ownership of the means of production is still the engine of power, interests are still aligned along class lines, capital still protects itself. But the specifics of what that means for a society is very different. Individuals who have built their identity through the accumulation of consumer self-extensions engage differently to those who have built their identity through understanding their place within their work-based community.

Capital already understands this, though. Because capital's great strength is its inherent flexibility to make use of whatever the prevailing spirit of the age happens to be. When consumerism started to get off the ground, it was capital that was there to develop all the marketing tools around promoting individual self-expression through consumption. Freedom through spending. It was capital that was there to exploit people's new-found desire for individual freedoms to repackage poor working practices as personal choice. Capital saw women demanding equal status and repurposed it to trap two people into full-time employment rather than one. Capital doesn't care whether the people buying its things are black or white, gay or straight, cis or trans. If it suits capital to cohere nuclear families, it'll promote "traditional values". If it suits capital to splinter society, however, it'll bring the hammer.

That's why just considering the capitalism dimension of the multi-dimensional nature of society will not provide the complete toolkit. You'll end up fighting battles that capital has already changed its position on, and is using your own position against you. My suspicion is that a lack of understanding of this is a key reason why the hard-left has found it so hard to engage with people these last 30 years. They're still using the tools useful for unpicking industrial capitalism, but capital itself has long since abandoned that mode of power.

Aren't we arguing the same thing i.e. that there's a base (economic - in this case the capitalist mode of production) and a superstructure (social practices/ attitudes/institutions), in a reciprocal relationship, such that, any sensible analysis requires a consideration of both?

 

[eoin_k]

Aren't we arguing the same thing i.e. that there's a base (economic - in this case the capitalist mode of production) and a superstructure (social practices/ attitudes/institutions), in a reciprocal relationship, such that, any sensible analysis requires a consideration of both?

The meaning and the usefulness of the terms base and superstructure have been contested fairly vigorously within Marxism for decades. Many of those who have continued to see value in using these terms are probably best known for the caveats they introduced (e.g. Althusser's* 'determined in the last instance', etc...).

* Never a good source to cite in a discussion of Identity Politics.

 

[seventh bullet]

I know the thread has moved on a bit since but I want to go back to the question of class and ethnicity in relation to bosses and workers that rutita and others were discussing.

I think an obvious place where identity politics (or at least the form of identity politics I would disagree with - where ethnicity is seen as purely as a cultural-political identity rather than a feature of wider class structures - just as class can be understood as a cultural identity or a structure) falls down is on this question.

An example from my work experience should illustrate this quite well. I've posted about this before so it's the same story and I'm going to c&p chunks from an old post I made:

I used to work at a Turkish owned kebab shop as a delivery driver. The drivers were all 'white British' (for want of a better term) and the people who worked in the kitchen were Turkish-Kurdish immigrants - I suspect illegal ones.

We were paid cash in hand - £20 a night if we worked 5pm - 10pm and £30 a night if we worked 5pm - 1am, with 70p for each delivery to cover petrol (we had to use our own cars and didn't get anything towards insurance, so were forced to break the law as there was no way we could pay for business use insurnace - it would have cost more than we earned). So that's between £3.75 and £4 an hour, depending on what shift we were doing. This was in 2008, so even then it was well below the minimum wage, for a job where you risked being mugged, beaten up, etc.

The lads in the kitchen had it far worse. They all lived in a house owned by the owner of the shop, and for the first few months I was there I didn't know how badly they were being ripped off because the people who worked there at that time only spoke very basic English. But a few months after I started he took on a new lad who had been living in London for a while and spoke very good English. We got on really well and he used to come round my house on his day off to have a smoke and that. Anyway, he came and saw me after he got his first pay packet. He'd worked 6 days, from 4 in the afternoon until 3 in the morning - 66 hours. He'd been paid £3.50 an hour - so he got about £230. But the owner had taken £150 off him for board and lodgings, so he was left with about £80 for working 6 11 hour shifts.

They were worse off than us because of racism. There's simply no other explanation, it's as unambiguous as it gets. Racist immigration laws meant they didn't have the same rights as the rest of us. It doesn't get much more clear cut than that.

They were Turkish Kurds, the same as the owner. But in this instance he had a direct material interest in maintaining the racist institutions that were enabling him to exploit them more than he could 'British' workers and more than he could them if they had the same rights.

If anyone at that place had an interest in helping them it was us drivers, since all we were ever told when we complained about our money was how much better off we were than them - he used that racism to keep our wages down too.

He no doubt shared their experience of racial abuse and discrimination but he was the one using racist tools to exploit them. Without an understanding of the specific relations of exploitation (class, and a solid class analysis always takes in specificities relating to ethnicity, gender or anything else that is important to the functioning of that system) the obvious answer is they share an experience of racism with that boss so they should join forces with him to fight it. I was 'benefiting' from that racism in that I was getting more money than them.

To me, if your politics is informed by the kind of materialist analysis I have alluded to above - one where things like ethnicity and gender are an integral part of a class system - then you don't subscribe to identity politics. I think the difficulty we have discussing this stems from different understandings of what identity politics is. To some, anything that aims to further the cause of a specific oppressed groups is identity politics and so anyone arguing against it is saying those issues either don't matter or are at best secondary to the class struggle (rather than a vital part of it). Then, partly because of this misunderstanding, you've got the other side assuming anyone who says they're into identity politics is someone who takes subjective identity as their starting point and ignores class.

I think the only way around this is to be as clear as we can in our definitions - so if we employ a contested concept, explain what we mean by it in that context - and to ask others for clarification if they do the same.

Stick around Spiney, haven't seen you in ages. What's frogwoman up to these days?

 

[frogwoman]

On a bit of a break. I'll be back soon though

 

[Athos]

The meaning and the usefulness of the terms base and superstructure have been contested fairly vigorously within Marxism for decades. Many of those who continued to see value in using these terms are probably best known for the caveats they introduced (e.g. Althusser's* 'determined in the last instance', etc...).

* Never a good source to cite in a discussion of Identity Politics.

Yes, I appreciate those ideas are far from unversally accepted, and that much of the nuance is missing. But, those categories work as (an admittedly somewhat crude) shorthand for the distinction about which kabbes and I are speaking.

 

[eoin_k]

Yes, I appreciate those ideas are far from unversally accepted, and that much of the nuance is missing. But, those categories work as (an admittedly somewhat crude) shorthand for the distinction about which kabbes and I are speaking.

The missing nuance might raise a few eyebrows among our fellow urbanites who take a different view of identity politics, especially if the alternative seems to reduce all politics to an epiphenomena of a narrowly-conceived economic base. After the welfare state saved capitalism from itself, after second-wave feminism raised serious questions about what constitutes work and how labour power becomes available, when we are more likely to work in a service-sector job creating value for an employer without making pig iron or linen shirts... It seemed worth acknowledging a lack of consensus about how useful it is to talk about base and superstructure.