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

[danny la rouge]

Take your nonsense elsewhere please Ralph Llama

 

[NoXion]

Could you give me sources on this. NOW !

There's no need for this. She's talking about her experiences, not making a claim.

 

[danny la rouge]

There's no need for this. She's talking about her experiences, not making a claim.

I think he needs to be banned from the thread. His indecipherable beefs with random posters can be carried out elsewhere.

 

[bimble]

Or just put him on ignore. I feel you wouldn’t be missing much.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I've put on a thread ban.

 

[danny la rouge]

Thanks FridgeMagnet

 

[chilango]

What the thread. I wouldn`t bother. Everybody knows identity politics is a load of pointless destructive I dont know what idiot started this thread TBH.

Thanks for reminding me, I'd forgotten to do this. See ya...

 

[BigTom]

This is an interesting critique of the neurodiversity (aka "autistic rights") movement, which I found after masochistically going though the Twitter profile of one particularly unpleasant example of extreme IDpol (the 'identity' in question being disability). I have experienced first hand some of the bullshit that is spouted by disabled people's rights (and especially autistic people's rights) activists, which was my first taste of IDpol as discussed in this thread (Full disclosure: I have Asperger's Syndrome, like the author of the article). There is not much here that I disagree with, and plenty which at least gets me thinking about certain issues and specific dogmas which are held by the "neurodiversity movement". Having gone through his Twitter, there are some things I do not wholly agree with, but having seen how it is demanded that autistic people acquiesce to the needs to the so-called "autistic community" (as if we were all one collective mind with one common purpose and a set of common enemies), with any deviance resulting in the most vicious of attacks for daring to engage in wrongthink, I fully sympathise with him. Furthermore, his day job is working as a shop assistant, hardly a position of privilege in class terms, although as someone who is struggling with finding suitable work and struggling the benefits system I will say that I have to deal with a much larger sword of Damocles in the form of the DWP and the imminent arrival of Universal Credit - but that could easily be him too not so far down the line.

So, for people like him and me, identity politics has utterly failed us, and there is a lot more that could be done to further both our interests through some good old fashioned class struggle.

Problem being that for the past ~40 years good old fashioned class struggle has failed to deliver widescale, meaningful change. It's great to talk about unionisation of workplaces but when nobody in your workplace wants to join a union, or is even likely to stay in the job for long enough to consider the workplace a community to be improved (rather than a shithole to be abandoned) it's difficult to see the practical path through which class struggle politics proceeds / expresses itself.
With the wider question/issue of precarious working and the social security system tying up with the employment system to ensure people in yours and his positions are not completely screed it's even more tricky. Poll tax at least is a (albeit singular) example of class struggle outside the workplace succeeding in producing significant change. We don't have much else though and that's a full generation ago.

 

[Tom A]

Problem being that for the past ~40 years good old fashioned class struggle has failed to deliver widescale, meaningful change. It's great to talk about unionisation of workplaces but when nobody in your workplace wants to join a union, or is even likely to stay in the job for long enough to consider the workplace a community to be improved (rather than a shithole to be abandoned) it's difficult to see the practical path through which class struggle politics proceeds / expresses itself.
With the wider question/issue of precarious working and the social security system tying up with the employment system to ensure people in yours and his positions are not completely screed it's even more tricky. Poll tax at least is a (albeit singular) example of class struggle outside the workplace succeeding in producing significant change. We don't have much else though and that's a full generation ago.

By "good old fashioned class struggle" I wasn't saying we should turn the clock back 40 years and use the tactics developed back then. I was implying that, regretfully, the entire concept of class struggle is considered old fashioned. However new movements based on ideas of class struggle and solidarity that is updated for 2018 (as opposed to harking back to the glory days before Thatcher) will succeed in bettering working class people's lives where identity politics tends to leave them behind and even resort to cross-class alliances to defend the in-group from its critics.

 

[mather]

Problem being that for the past ~40 years good old fashioned class struggle has failed to deliver widescale, meaningful change.

Only problem with that sentence is that is for the most part not true. The last 40 years has seen large sections of the left withdrawal from the class struggle and working class communities and get taken over by the middle classes and academia. With this we have seen the left move away from issues that concern the working class (unions, housing, pay, cost of living etc...) to the pet issues of the middle class (ID politics, open borders/no borders, transexuals etc...).

 

[danny la rouge]

Another example of the media trying to sell us this idea that somehow the conditions of the very rich are representative of us all.

More women at Davos won't make an iota of a difference to you or me, whatever our gender.

"The millionaires' club with too few women" The millionaires' club with too few women

 

[BigTom]

By "good old fashioned class struggle" I wasn't saying we should turn the clock back 40 years and use the tactics developed back then. I was implying that, regretfully, the entire concept of class struggle is considered old fashioned. However new movements based on ideas of class struggle and solidarity that is updated for 2018 (as opposed to harking back to the glory days before Thatcher) will succeed in bettering working class people's lives where identity politics tends to leave them behind and even resort to cross-class alliances to defend the in-group from its critics.

Agreed, i had misread what you meant by old fashioned, but these new forms have not emerged, and this (along with attacks on the organisations and methods that existed before) has left/created a space for idpol to grow/be inserted.

Only problem with that sentence is that is for the most part not true. The last 40 years has seen large sections of the left withdrawal from the class struggle and working class communities and get taken over by the middle classes and academia. With this we have seen the left move away from issues that concern the working class (unions, housing, pay, cost of living etc...) to the pet issues of the middle class (ID politics, open borders/no borders, transexuals etc...).

If you mean that the issue isn't that class struggle has failed to deliver change, but that the left has not delivered class struggle i would broadly agree but as with my reply above the move away from class struggle is i think down to the failures of and attacks on the left and class struggle methods and organisations in the late 70s and 80s.

 

[Tom A]

Another example of the media trying to sell us this idea that somehow the conditions of the very rich are representative of us all.

More women at Davos won't make an iota of a difference to you or me, whatever our gender.

"The millionaires' club with too few women" The millionaires' club with too few women

The idea is that if the rulers are more equal and represent diverse groups, then the rest of society will become more equal as a result, and groups will have their interests properly met. Trickle down theory strikes again.

Agreed, i had misread what you meant by old fashioned, but these new forms have not emerged, and this (along with attacks on the organisations and methods that existed before) has left/created a space for idpol to grow/be inserted.

I fully understand that, and some times idpol groups have been part of that attack (not to dismiss legitimate criticism of the left for letting down women, black people, disabled people, etc in the past).

If you mean that the issue isn't that class struggle has failed to deliver change, but that the left has not delivered class struggle i would broadly agree but as with my reply above the move away from class struggle is i think down to the failures of and attacks on the left and class struggle methods and organisations in the late 70s and 80s.

I'll agree with that, and back before the political upheavals of past two years I was very pessimistic, and came to the conclusion that the left had failed the working classes, however the left continued to act as if it was the working classes that had failed the left.

 

[chilango]

Class struggle has very clearly delivered change over the last 40 years.

It's just been for the other side.

 

[bimble]

This is a small report on what was discussed at the recent Labour NEC the other day.
It says "Members will be able to indicate if they self-identify as BAME or disabled ". So these too (like the category of people called 'woman') are just Identities now, which people can self-define in or out of based on how they feel. I guess that's progress.
Labour NEC Report – 16 January 2018

 

[danny la rouge]

This is a small report on what was discussed at the recent Labour NEC the other day.
It says "Members will be able to indicate if they self-identify as BAME or disabled ". So these too (like the category of people called 'woman') are just Identities now, which people can self-define in or out of based on how they feel. I guess that's progress.
Labour NEC Report – 16 January 2018

Will they "be able" to wear armbands?

 

[Fozzie Bear]

What's the alternative to self-identification though? Some panel of judgement?

 

[bimble]

What's the alternative to self-identification though? Some panel of judgement?

I guess if I self-identify as disabled I'd get to park in the disabled bays?

 

[DotCommunist]

I guess if I self-identify as disabled I'd get to park in the disabled bays?

File a PIP claim. Get refused even though you have no legs. Win on appeal. Then you get blue badge.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I guess if I self-identify as disabled I'd get to park in the disabled bays?

Does the Labour Party control access to disabled parking bays now?

 

[bimble]

Does the Labour Party control access to disabled parking bays now?

I just think the current concept of 'self-identification' is interesting. That it is now extending beyond membership of the groups called women and men and into self-identifying as disabled or BAME for the purposes of Labour party equalities stats interests me.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I just think the current concept of 'self-identification' is interesting. That it is now extending beyond membership of the groups called women and men and into self-identifying as disabled or BAME for the purposes of Labour party equalities stats interests me.

I agree. But this is more of a question of how the bureaucracy of identity is organised than anything else.

 

[LDC]

Problem being that for the past ~40 years good old fashioned class struggle has failed to deliver widescale, meaningful change. It's great to talk about unionisation of workplaces but when nobody in your workplace wants to join a union, or is even likely to stay in the job for long enough to consider the workplace a community to be improved (rather than a shithole to be abandoned) it's difficult to see the practical path through which class struggle politics proceeds / expresses itself.
With the wider question/issue of precarious working and the social security system tying up with the employment system to ensure people in yours and his positions are not completely screed it's even more tricky. Poll tax at least is a (albeit singular) example of class struggle outside the workplace succeeding in producing significant change. We don't have much else though and that's a full generation ago.

Surely all struggle has on a large scale failed though, hence we 're in this position now?

There's a danger of people seeing class struggle as being purely workplace struggle, or at least if there's any acknowledgement that it happens outside workplaces the scope with which it's seen is very narrow.

If capitalism is everywhere, then so is the class struggle against it, even if it's not always articulated as such by those involved.

For example, I'd see some of the ecological struggles of the 90/00s as having class struggle dynamics within them, as have many other areas not always considered part of the class struggle.

 

[bimble]

I agree. But this is more of a question of how the bureaucracy of identity is organised than anything else.

Yep. But does (I think) illustrate and maybe help entrench the idea that everyone's got a place somewhere in the Identity boxes that they somehow feel from the inside to be a core part of their selves.

 

[danny la rouge]

Yep. But does (I think) illustrate and maybe help entrench the idea that everyone's got a place somewhere in the Identity boxes that they somehow feel from the inside to be a core part of their selves.

Well, it's more that a working group the Labour Party tasked with finding ways to engage more with BAME and disabled people decided that the best way was to tell current members they can indicate if they identify as belonging to one of those groups.

In other words, no additional engagement is planned. In its place a bureaucratic notion of "action" was substituted.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I just think the current concept of 'self-identification' is interesting. That it is now extending beyond membership of the groups called women and men and into self-identifying as disabled or BAME for the purposes of Labour party equalities stats interests me.

wrt BAME, there is only self-id really. Wherever this question is asked, it is answered purely on a self-id basis. We don't have an 'official' racial status in this country, which is a very good thing imo.

 

[bimble]

wrt BAME, there is only self-id really. Wherever this question is asked, it is answered purely on a self-id basis. We don't have an 'official' racial status in this country, which is a very good thing imo.

True. I'm probably reading more into it than is there. The word 'self-identify' is surplus to requirements really, it could've just said 'identify as' or would describe yourself as, for all practical purposes.

 

[8ball]

True. I'm probably reading more into it than is there. The word 'self-identify' is surplus to requirements really, it could've just said 'identify as' or would describe yourself as, for all practical purposes.

It's implicit to the idea of self-identification that you may be something different to what you say you are.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

True. I'm probably reading more into it than is there. The word 'self-identify' is surplus to requirements really, it could've just said 'identify as' or would describe yourself as, for all practical purposes.

Or just a simple 'are' - a 'tick the boxes that apply to you' type thing. wrt ethnicity, I think the census gets this about right - a pretty exhaustive list to choose from but also an option not to be in any of the boxes. And I think I'm right in saying that you have the option not to say in any monitoring-type document.

 

[8ball]

Or just a simple 'are' - a 'tick the boxes that apply to you' type thing. wrt ethnicity, I think the census gets this about right - a pretty exhaustive list to choose from but also an option not to be in any of the boxes.

Although it loses a bit of info if you fit into more than one of the boxes.