Another critique of IP dates back to 1987, by Jenny Bourne: 'Homelands of the mind: Jewish feminism and Identity Politics' (Race & Class, July 1987). It opens with the often-cited lines:
Jenny Bourne wrote:
Identity Politics is all the rage. Exploitation is out (it is extrinsically determinist). Oppression is in (it is intrinsically personal). What is to be done is replaced by who am I. Political culture has ceded to cultural politics. The material world has passed into the metaphysical. The Blacks, the Women, the Gays have all searched for themselves. and now, combining all their quests, has arrived the quest for Jewish feminist identity.
I mentioned that on this thread (which discussed a similar topic as this one, so let me repeat some other points made there):
https://libcom.org/forums/general/michael-rectenwald-doing-christopher-hitchens-28022017?page=1
"Criticism can be directed even against the best forms of IdPol. And it's not just pointing at its re-integration into the system, but it sabotaging actual resistance or even feeding into rightwing (ethnic/religious) identity politics."
Mike, like Steven here, then asked me "Can you define what this is though and give examples?"
I said:
"By best forms of IdPol, I mean those that acknowledge the reality of class struggle. That's a low bar (French liberal historians discovered it already). Jenny Bourne's article mentioned Bundism, which retro-actively can be classified as a form of IdPol. Even political Zionism had a large socialist current within it (Israel as a safe space)."
See Lenin's (and young
Stalin's) writings against the identity politics of the Bund. A more recent example: the LRBW's black nationalism, criticised e.g.
here .
(btw, even Hilary Clinton can speak about structural racism, so acknowledgement of material social, as opposed to mere "ideological", causes for oppression of POC etc. is not really revolutionary yet.)
And then I turned the tables on Mike (R Totale et al.):
"Why do you rant about boilerplate critiques of IdPol (as the one by Link in the present thread), when in fact your problem really is with "workerist" social democratic politics and rightwing/mainstream attacks on the lifes of minorities? Isn't it "idealistic" to regard the rightwing assault as based mainly on their having a critique of IdPol and appealing to the (white) working class? That's just a mirror version of the rightwing's story that the mainstream/elite's IdPol ideology is the tool of a leftwing ploy to destroy the country.
When good faith critique of genuine communists "falls far short of the mark", then, if "which is which" is to matter, in your view they must be complicit in "policy/attacks on the lifes of minorities". So why do you rant about those genuine communists' misguided boilerplate critiques of IdPol, if really your concern with them is that they their are complicit in or enabling policy/attacks on the lifes of minorities? "
"I posit that when anyone (in the mainstream/rightwing) rants about IdPol they don't have in mind the people on the street in Baltimore.
I posit that when anyone rants about IdPol they mean the dominant, non-class vulgar form of IdPol."
"When the Right (or anyone) rants about IdPol, I posit they have in mind primarily the non-class, vulgar form of IdPol, symbolic things like speech, cultural appropriation in the media and campus, not black youth on the streets of Baltimore or Ferguson."
"I differentiated the vulgar IdPol from the class-recognising IdPol, and indeed said that even the best form (the latter) can be criticised (for their IdPol). But I'm not oblivious to the fact that there is a difference between vulgar and class-recognising IdPol."
"Of course Reed does criticise even the "left" anti-racism (class-recognising IdPol groups). Perhaps you find some passages where his argument sounds too much like a lazy slippery-slope fallacy. But pointing out similarities doesn't mean to deny there is difference. Lenin dared to equate some Bundist claims to those of outright Zionism, however, that doesn't mean he believed they were literally no better than Zionists. "
But suppose we jettison all critiques of IP as useless, would that advance us closer to revolution?:
"Suppose you're right and everyone who rants about IdPol does have in mind people like the non-activist ordinary Ferguson protestors (i.e. ordinary people with serious grievances; organisers of sweatshop workers, protestors against police violence, fracking, unsafe drinking water, etc.), who are not positively engaged with, their voices not heard, dismissed/ignored/criticised. If it weren't for those ranters against IdPol, would then the local protestors' voices be better heard, would they be more positively engaged? What does that mean concretely?"
To paraphrase Fleur's sarcasm: if it weren't for those old class-struggle IP-critical dinosaurs (like Link), us enlightened modernist activists would have ended capitalism with its racism, sexism, etc. by now.
unironic meme:
In response to the inevitable retort, "ok suppose you class struggle dinosaurs are right about IP" "what should we do then?" i.e. you suggest doing nothing:
"This whole reasoning sounds much like when you criticise the unions or parliamentary parties and people reply; so you want to do nothing? Are you against organising/politics?
Is it really necessary for Reed (or even Spiked), to say that they are fine with ordinary people protesting police violence? Concretely it would not mean much any way, if Reed et al. did, nor does it mean much that you are saying 'let us not neglect the ordinary protestors'. "
and:
"activism, like anyone knows, can take passive forms from writing pamphlets or holding demonstrations to armed insurrection."
--
btw, a more quirky philosophical note, but for a critique of the concept "identity" see Thomas Wallace's 1827 pamphlet: A review of the doctrine of personal identity, in which are considered and compared the opinions of Locke, Butler, Reid, Brown, and Stewart, upon that subject.
https://archive.org/details/areviewdoctrine00wallgoog
or at google:
https://books.google.com/books?id=i4jc-lm-ZkAC
