Here is a definition of Identity politics from the Marxist Glossary. As always I post things to engender discussion and debate. And I never know what will get me kicked off of this list communist discussion list. :-) Identity politics Identity politics is political action based on what social groups have in common other than their economic class. It is an ideology, encourages women to fight men, blacks to fight whites, chicanos to fight non-chicanos, youth to fight older people, etc. and renounces the fight against the capitalist system and the state that protects it. Identity politics arose in the 1960s when the industrial revolution was completing its last stage and capitalism was experiencing its last great period of expansion. Various social groups fought to reform the system in their favor. The bourgeoisie fought to reform the system and bring new groups into the economy as worker-consumers -- people that could be exploited. The yearning of the oppressed and marginalized to end discrimination coincided with the needs of the capitalist to exploit more labor. The bourgeoisie promoted identity politics as an ideology. The material foundation for identity politics has been eliminated by the new economy. Identity politics is a leftover residue of bourgeois politics of the industrial epoch. During the 1960s, the civil rights movement shaped the social and political landscape. Although the black civil rights movement dominated this period, chicano groups, Native American and nationality groups of all kinds along with the women’s movement and the LGBT currents pressed against the system seeking greater measures of equality, concessions and ending their lower status in society. While the struggle of the oppressed and marginalized and specific issues dealing with police murder, extra and illegal violence, inequality based on color and women-ness, wage inequality including uncompensated domestic labor and a range of humiliations and insults remain, these issues cannot and will never be won based on identity politics. Without bringing the most exploited and oppressed sections of white workers into the fight on the side of the cause of the destitute proletariat, emancipation from capital, by all social groups, is impossible. Identity politics excludes the destitute proletariat. Identity politics, no matter how refined and noble sounding, must pit the different sectors of the proletariat against each other, in a classic instance of divide and conquer. Identity politics today is a tool of ruling class ideological and political strategy. The economic basis of the identity politics of the past was expanding employment opportunities. With the electronic revolution destroying labor in production and the capitalist no longer needing to bring these social groups into production, the basis for achieving reform through identity politics has been eliminated. amazon/Marxist-Glossary-Expanded-Twenty-First-Narrative/dp/1499145500
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 15:18:02 +0000
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