Marxism vs. Identity Politics

This was a talk I gave as part of a weekly meeting of the Bath branch of the Revolutionary Communist Party, as preparation for our recruitment drive within the universities.

Introduction

Okay yes so this is a lead off on Identity Politics. Where did it originate? Its flaws (it's idealistic, and divisive), and why Marxism is the only valid alternative.

Students

But firstly I wanted to say why have a lead off on this topic, and why now? Well from next week we're really going to start our recruitment campaign within the Universities. and Identity Politics is likely to come up, and we should all aim to be equipped to patiently explain its flaws in favour of Marxism.

And more broadly, while the work in universities presents an enormous possibility for us, it also contains some risks. Obviously the RCP is a militant marxist organisation, and we've essentially chosen to embed ourselves, for multiple weeks, within some of the most reactionary, petty-bourgeois institutions in the country. The Universities are full of these alien class ideas, and the majority of students will be heavily under the influence of bourgeois thinking. And as capitalism decays, the universities are often the environment within which the resulting reactionary ideas are allowed to flourish, and it is the first duty of Marxists to combat these ideas.

However, the universities are also an aggregate of the most radical layer of society, i.e. the youth, many of whom will have started to draw revolutionary conclusions. It is this advanced layer we are attempting to connect with, who already recognise the flawed system and are searching for a genuine political programme.

In either case, we've, so far, succeeded in maintaining a solid and ideologically homogeneous organisation. However, small mistakes in method, erroneous slogans and formulations, can develop into more serious problems. As Lenin put it, 'a single scratch can cause gangrene.' To allow any kind of petit bourgeois ideas into the organisation would lead to its eventual destruction. So we need to get this stuff right, basically.

History

So first off, as Marxists we are obviously dialecticians, so we look at things in their motion, in their development - so to truly understand Identity Politics, we have to delve into the history a little bit. For now, as a working definition, we can understand Identity Politics simply as political activism that revolves around identity. And we're using identity to mean the characteristics determining who a person is: someone's gender, race, sexuality, religion, etc.

Postmodernism

But we first have to quickly go into something called Postmodernism. And Postmodernism, as the name implies, follows on from Modernism. Modernism is essentially the belief in human progress through the development of human knowledge. It was born from the enlightenment era, which really pursued truth, reason, rationality, empiricism, as the way of driving humanity forward, as opposed to religious thought, essentially.

Postmodernism, which emerged in Europe after WW2, sees Modernism, and says: 'well what is objective truth?', 'can we even know anything?'. Postmodernism says there is never any single, objective way to view something. Actually truth, and knowledge, are creations by the brain, and therefore steeped in subjectivity. And knowledge is disconnected from reality, because knowledge has to be communicated through language, and language itself is not objective. So language being the medium of knowledge, means knowledge itself is inherently compromised, and distanced from objective reality.

And for a modernist to say that the scientific method is objectively the best framework for trying to understand the world, a postmodernist would say: 'well you can't be fully sure of that, who are you to say that's objectively correct. To say that your values are superior to those from other cultures, perhaps a religious culture, is to marginalise that culture. The idea that empiricism is the best way to get to the truth over spiritual methods; that idea actually has an oppressive character to it'. But as a philosophy, Postmodernism offers no tangible solution to all this. Because to prescribe such a solution, would come from subjectivity, and to impose those subjective ideas on others would therefore be oppressive.

And it's this philosophy which identity politics emerges alongside, out of, in a dialectical fashion.

Identity

So Identity Politics originated during the 1970s really. Now this was a time where the class struggle experienced a lot of defeats, and a lot of people subsequently became disillusioned with Marxism. The catalyst for this was the continued degeneration of the USSR under Stalinism, where this supposedly Communist state had not eliminated oppression at all. The labour movement was weak at the time as well, and there was poor leadership, so it was not a good time to be a Communist, basically.

And there is a CIA report which was written about the origin of identity politics, which sums this up, and it says:

'but leftist intellectuals have been distancing themselves from socialism – both the party and the ideology – at least since the early 1970s. Led by a group of young renegades from Communist ranks who billed themselves as New Philosophers, many New Left intellectuals have rejected Marxism and developed a deep-rooted antipathy toward the Soviet Union. Anti-Sovietism, in fact, has become the touchstone of legitimacy in leftist circles, weakening the traditional anti-Americanism of the leftist intellectuals and allowing American culture … to find new vogue'

And there's a relevant passage from Trotsky on this, which describes this phenomenon, and keep in mind the origins of Postmodernism as I read this:

"The tragic defeats suffered by the world proletariat over a long period of years doomed the official organisations to yet greater conservatism and simultaneously sent disillusioned petty bourgeois 'revolutionists' in pursuit of 'new ways.' As always during epochs of reaction and decay, quacks and charlatans appear on all sides, desirous of revising the whole course of revolutionary thought. Instead of learning from the past, they 'reject' it. Some discover the inconsistency of Marxism, others announce the downfall of Bolshevism. There are those who put responsibility upon revolutionary doctrine for the mistakes and crimes of those who betrayed it; others who curse the medicine because it does not guarantee an instantaneous and miraculous cure. The more daring promise to discover a panacea and, in anticipation, recommend the halting of the class struggle. A good many prophets of 'new morals' are preparing to regenerate the labour movement with the help of ethical homeopathy. The majority of these apostles have succeeded in becoming themselves moral invalids before arriving on the field of battle. Thus, under the aspect of 'new ways,' old recipes, long since buried in the archives of pre-Marxian socialism, are offered to the proletariat."

So as the class struggle receded, Marxism was rejected, and petit bourgeois intellectuals in Europe started looking for something else to latch onto. This is the time when Postmodernism becomes popular. As the CIA report alludes to, these intellectuals also looked to America, and the Civil Rights movement that was taking place at the time. America being a nation founded on liberalism, which says that society should be structured around the needs and freedom of the individual.

And you combine this individualism of liberalism, and the subjectivity of Postmodernism, and you can see how Identity Politics starts to take shape. The first known written appearance of the term is found in a 1977 statement from a Black feminist socialist group based in Boston, called The Combahee River Collective, who in their founding statement, said:

As children we realized that we were different from boys and that we were treated different—for example, when we were told in the same breath to be quiet both for the sake of being 'ladylike' and to make us less objectionable in the eyes of white people. In the process of consciousness-raising, actually life-sharing, we began to recognize the commonality of our experiences and, from the sharing and growing consciousness, to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression....We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work. This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else's oppression.

So, from that point on, Postmodernism and Identity Politics became the escape route, if you like, for the 'leftist' petit-bourgeois intellectuals. Here was a convenient way of deserting the class struggle and abandoning socialism, whilst continuing to pay lip service to 'progressive causes'. The petit-bourgeois intellectuals at the time acted as a conveyor belt for these ideas, bringing them into left movements. As for the ruling class, far from feeling threatened by any of these 'radical' new ideas, they welcomed them wholeheartedly, as valuable tools in the ideological struggle against Marxism.

And in the late 80s and 90s, there was an effort to academically fuse Postmodernism and Leftist Identity Politics, which resulted in a Radical Postmodernism. And this combination sort of leads to the consequence of, if you were to ask a radical feminist for evidence to substantiate a claim they've made. They might say something like: 'I don't need evidence, science is a white male concept, women already know what's true'. The movements that Radical Postmodernism popularised - like Queer Theory, several strands of Radical Feminism, and Intersectionality - revolve around this 'authority of experience', and the 'collective known truth'.

Problems

So we'll get into a bit more of what Identity Politics actually is as we begin to criticise it

As the quote from the Combahee River Collective shows, the logic of Identity Politics assumes that the victims of oppression are best placed to use their lived experience and feelings as a lens through which they can understand and fight oppression, and they will be the ones to take that fight most seriously. Postmodernism says it is precisely because of their experiences: women must lead the fight against patriarchy, Trans people must lead the fight against transphobia, people from ethnic minorities must lead the struggle against racism. Those, from other groups, who are sympathetic to these struggles are relegated to a secondary role as passive supporters.

And this elevation of the subjective experience under Postmodernism, with the class character stripped away, the fight against oppression is staged at the interpersonal level. The relationship between individuals is seen as the location for oppression. And at this level of the individual, people are understood only by the way they choose to conduct themselves. The fight to end oppression therefore becomes the fight to change behaviour, and without the class character, these behaviours can only be explained as stemming from the ideas that people hold. And so the goal becomes to change the ideas in society.

And it's here that we reach the sharpest analysis of identity politics - this is the first really important point to remember, is that Identity Politics is pure idealism! Idealism, as a reminder, being the concept that the material world is a reflection of the ideas that exist. Identity Politics says patriarchy, racism, transphobia, you name it, originates from faulty or unfortunate ideas.

As a movement, it therefore rests on a very weak political basis. With its idealistic, interpersonal character, the activism of identity politics revolves solely around subjectivity: who is speaking, in what order, at what time, for how long, in what pitch, in what spaces, with what language.

And the pressure to conform within those spaces is often very difficult to go against. And obviously I'm not a proponent of the phrase 'you can't say anything anymore', but those who espouse such a view are responding to something real. People will effect change in the only way they know how, and so the goal of the proponents of Identity Politics is often to force the facts of oppression upon the public consciousness. As a result, one of the only things that Identity Politics really gives us is an ever growing list of possible transgressions. 'How do I make it clear I'm not mansplaining?', 'How do I talk about racism without defining someone else's oppression?', 'Is LGBTQIA+ the most up to date acronym?', or even 'Can I rate this film 5/5 even though it fails the bechdel test?'! The interpersonal becomes politicised, dramatised, and moralised. And the strength of the moralising is a direct reflection of the political impotency of Identity Politics, where the final expression ends up in shouting-matches, boycotts, and cancel-culture. This generates an environment of fear, it shuts down debate, and stifles progress. The political points that are made, don't even enter into the equation!

And this is the second really important point, that identity politics is inherently the politics of division. The ruling class have always striven to sow division in the working class, to turn one section of workers against another: the religion, the national question, and now identity, these are all tools used by the ruling class to divert the attention of the workers away from the class struggle.

And while, yes, this stuff manifests as fights on Twitter, it does have really damaging, real world implications. If we read this quote from a radical-feminist written around 1970. It says: 'I haven't the faintest notion of what possible revolutionary role that white heterosexual men could possibly fulfil since they are the very embodiment of reactive vested interest power'. And we saw this concept play out in the 2018 women's day strike in Spain, where the leadership of that strike encouraged women-only pickets, and separate women-only blocks. Men were therefore largely absent from this strike which meant that they were at work, and through no fault of their own, were effectively acting as strike breakers!

By demarcating on the lines of identity, rather than class, those with a 'privileged' set of characteristics are seen to be the perpetrators of, and benefit from the oppression of marginalised groups. In other words: oppression is caused by the non-oppressed. So men are responsible for women's oppression, white people are to blame for racism, Heterosexual people are to blame for homophobia, and so on. It turns the majority of workers into the oppressors themselves, and into a fight of oppressed against oppressed.

Intersectionality

And pitting different groups against each other like this, focusing on 'privilege' is where we can return to the concept of intersectionalinity, where there is a specific emphasis put on the different combinations of various discriminations and privileges. And this list of intersections can be endless really, and the inevitable result is the atomisation of the movement. Instead of fighting against a common enemy, every segment of the oppressed is encouraged to focus on their own form of oppression and argue against every other segment of the oppressed. Again, the emphasis on what divides us over what unites us.

And to be quite honest, If it is true that every segment of oppressed people experiences oppression in a different way, it can be argued with equal validity that as inevitably every individual is unique, and has their own unique experience of capitalism, no organisation of any kind is possible.

And we return to idealism: intersectionalists imagine they can build a pure organisation that is purged of discriminatory behaviour. They don't understand that any organisation will be under pressure from the society in which it is built. The intersectionalists end up focusing all their energy into building this utopian prototype of the future society within the confines of the current system. Reforms like 'gender neutral language' are put forward, 'gender neutral bringing up of children', etc. Through these methods, the 'intersectionalists' imagine, again, that somehow the root of oppression is to be found in bad ideas that can simply be 'educated away'. It is a completely reformist and utopian conception.

DEI

And we see this reformist streak in the concept of quotas as well. This form of positive discrimination on the grounds of identity, deepens the sense of competition within the working class. In this era of crisis-capitalism, the idea that there are priority lanes for people based on their minority status, or their gender, is really potent. It provides a petri-dish for a whole number of reactionary ideas that can get the ear of certain backward sections of the working class, who can draw the reactionary conclusion that our problems do not derive from capitalism as such, but from the presence of national minorities and immigrants, from women claiming rights, etc.

And of course this is capitalised upon by right-wing movements, who seek to stoke division among the working class - who claim we do not have enough jobs or housing, due to the quotas granted to certain groups. All this helps to spread the poison of racism, misogyny, and so on.

We saw this with Trump's 'war on woke': his rallying against DEI - Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - which are being used to help justify the ICE raids which we are all too familiar with. The election of Trump shocked a lot of people, but we saw it as the expression of class anger that had been bubbling away: an anger, in part, at the Left, who had subscribed to Identity Politics so heavily.

So despite having been President once already, Trump was able to campaign, for a second time, on a ticket of 'anti-establishment' rhetoric, as Identity Politics was seen to be this embodiment of liberalism. To many, their impression of Identity Politics is this sneering, middle-class ideology which was telling workers (who were suffering under capitalism!) that they should 'check their privilege' and the like. As a movement, it left ordinary workers behind, and shouted them down when they raised any objection.

Trump's second presidency really represents the downfall of liberalism in many ways, where the heralding of 'woke is dead' is but one consequence. DEI programs have been scrapped, people have maybe realised that putting their pronouns in their LinkedIn profiles isn't actually going to change much. The receding of Identity Politics has emboldened right-wing leaders in Europe to ramp-up their anti-migrant rhetoric to new heights, and so, in the last analysis, it's not inaccurate to say that Identity Politics has actually led to an increase in racism..

Because what has Identity Politics actually achieved? You could argue that it's raised awareness of the issues that minority groups face, that it's 'shaped the conversation' undoubtedly. But, has it directly led to improvement of the material conditions of black people, gay people, trans people, women? It probably hasn't.

Our Role

And we know why, because we are historical materialists. We know women's oppression arises from class society, and private property. Homophobia grows from the Capitalist demand for the nuclear family, Transphobia stems from the subordination of women and the resulting stricter gender roles. Racism arose to justify slavery and colonialism. In other words: all oppression is rooted in class society.

This is not to say however, that we sideline the demands made by the oppressed, we don't push them aside until the arrival of socialism. It would be fatal for the cause of Marxism if women, for example, believed that Marxists were prepared to postpone the struggle for their rights until after the revolution. It goes without saying that Marxists oppose any discrimination against anyone for their sexual orientation, ethnicity or gender identity. We denounce all the oppression and injustice that capitalism causes, whoever may be suffering it.

When it comes to the present-day activism from oppressed groups, we answer their demands as follows: while we will fight to defend your rights, and for beneficial reforms, we are not prepared to subordinate ourselves to the leadership of bourgeois and petty bourgeois who pretend to be on your side while pursuing their own interests. It is strictly through these fights for reforms that the working class can acquire a sense of its own power, and raise its collective consciousness to the level demanded by history.

So it is our obligation to bridge the gap between the democratic, reformist aspirations of these oppressed groups, with the idea of a common struggle of all workers. As in any intervention in a mass movement, we need to use its most progressive and revolutionary aspects and propose, in a positive way, our own programme and strategy. To explain, in a comradely way that Marxism sees society in class terms, not in terms of gender, race, or anything else. That the most fundamental division in society is that between workers and capitalists. We of course, fully recognise that there are other kinds of oppression. But in the last analysis, not one of these can be solved within the confines of capitalism.

Conclusion

So as Marxists, as materialists, we recognise that experience of oppression is not enough to know how to fight it, and it does not give someone the automatic right to be the leader of a movement. No one is born knowing how to fight against oppression, you have to learn it.

Political leadership therefore should be based on political ideas. They have to know where oppression comes from, why it exists today, how to get rid of it, and the best tactics and demands to achieve that. And therefore you need to study history and analyse society, like we've done today. Because there is such a thing as objective reality, and being able to accurately describe it is very possible, and indeed is a signifier of human progress.

So to wrap up, I hope we've learned that identity politics is political activism that revolves around identity, assuming that the victims of each form of oppression are best placed to fight it. It's idealistic because the subsequent focus of identity politics is on 'educating away' prejudices, as if the world is a reflection of its faulty ideas. And the radical ideas of Marxism is the only alternative, because it is only historical materialism that can truly explain the roots of oppression, and the class struggle is the only method that can tackle these root causes; i.e. class itself.

And it's the students who are looking for these radical ideas, and who will be most open to them. So if we get this freshers campaign right, it could absolutely propel the party forward.

And I haven't really addressed the human side of all this, as I can't do it justice, and the political analysis has to take precedence for what we are trying to achieve. But part of why we do, what we do, is so women can go for a walk alone, at night. It's so a muslim can go to and from afternoon prayer without worry of being racially abused. It's so someone who knows they are a different gender from the one they were assigned at birth doesn't have to be on a waiting list for years, or be interrogated by their doctor 17 times. This is what we are fighting for, and we can be a beacon of hope to the next generation of students.

So let me impress upon you a sense of urgency, because in the words of Trotsky: 'Only here and only now, when the young [student] is to a certain extent freed from his family, and when he has not yet become the captive of his position in society, can I count on drawing him into our ranks. It's now or never.'

Thank you.