[A-List] The Limits of Identity Politics

["Tony B." <tal1@xxxxxxxxx>]

The Limits of Identity Politics


ISR Issue 57, January-February 2008


The politics of identity

SHARON SMITH argues that identity politics can't liberate the oppressed

FIGHTING AGAINST oppression is an urgent issue in U.S. society today. 
Racism, sexism, and homophobia have all reached appalling levels-that seem 
only to rise with each passing year. White students in Jena hang nooses, and 
Black students end up in prison.1 Squads of Minutemen vigilantes patrol the 
Mexican border with impunity, for the sole purpose of terrorizing migrant 
communities.2 College campuses across the U.S. commemorate "Islamo-fascism 
awareness week" as if it were just another legitimate student activity.3 
Fred Phelps and his Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church congregation 
regularly picket outside funerals of gay soldiers killed in Iraq, 
proclaiming that they belong in hell.4

To be sure, the problem extends way beyond the extremist fringe. Media 
pundits barely comment on the outrages described above, while mainstream 
discourse regularly heaps contempt on those attempting to fight against 
oppression-including young women organizing against date rape (which is 
assumed to be a figment of their feminism-charged imaginations) and 
immigrants demanding basic legal rights (as if they are out to steal jobs 
from native-born workers). If the "playing field is level," as so many in 
the mainstream media assume, those who object must therefore be seeking an 
unfair advantage.

It is no wonder, therefore, that so many people who experience oppression 
feel so embattled in the current political climate. Only a movement aimed at 
fighting oppression in all its forms can challenge the victim-blaming 
ideology that prevails today. The pressing need for such a movement is 
acknowledged here. Indeed, this article is intended to address the issue of 
how to most effectively fight back, since different political strategies 
lead to quite different conclusions about the kind of movement that is 
needed to challenge oppression. The bulk of this article is a critique of 
the theory behind what is known in academic and left circles as "identity 
politics"-the idea that only those experiencing a particular form of 
oppression can either define it or fight against it-counterposing to it a 
Marxist analysis. My central premise is that Marxism provides the 
theoretical tools for ending oppression, while identity politics does not.

Personal identity versus the politics of identity

It is important to make a clear distinction between personal identity and 
identity politics, since the two are often used interchangeably. But there 
is a substantial difference between these two concepts.

Possessing a personal "identity," or awareness of oneself as a member of an 
oppressed group-and the anger associated with that awareness-is a legitimate 
response to experiencing oppression. Racism is, of course, experienced on a 
very personal level-whether it takes the form of institutional 
discrimination (racist hiring practices, police brutality) or social 
interaction (racist jokes, violence from an acknowledged racist). Personal 
experience, furthermore, helps to shape one's political awareness of 
oppression. It makes perfect sense that experiencing sexism on a personal 
level precedes most women's political consciousness of sexism as a form of 
oppression that degrades all women.

Indeed, no white person can ever understand what it is like to experience 
racism. No straight person can understand what it is like to experience 
homophobia. And even among people who are oppressed by racism, every type of 
experience is different. A Black person and a Native American person, for 
example, experience racism differently-as does a person from Mexico versus a 
person from Puerto Rico. A gay man and a lesbian have quite different 
experiences.

At the same time, personal experience is quite separate from the realm of 
politics, which involves strategies to affect society as a whole. Personal 
identity only becomes political when it moves beyond the realm of life 
experience and becomes a strategy for fighting against oppression. Every set 
of politics is based upon a theory-in this case, an analysis of the root 
causes of oppression. So the analysis of oppression informs the politics of 
social movements against oppression.

There are clear differences in strategy between Marxism and the theory of 
identity politics, which will be examined below. It is first necessary, 
however, to make clear which facts are not in dispute. Both theories are in 
agreement that all oppression is based on genuine inequality. Men and women 
are not treated as equals in society. Whites and African Americans are not 
treated at all equally. Oppression is not a matter of perception, but of 
concrete, material reality.

Nor is there any doubt that struggles against oppression should be led by 
the oppressed themselves-women themselves can and will lead the struggle for 
women's liberation. This has always been the case historically, from the 
struggle for women's suffrage to the fight for abortion rights. The same 
dynamic is true of the struggle for Black liberation. Former slaves and 
other African Americans led the battle for Reconstruction aimed at 
transforming Southern plantation society in the decades following the Civil 
War. African Americans led the mass civil rights movement that finally 
struck down Southern segregation in the 1950s and 1960s.

During the late 1960s, the powerful civil rights movement inspired the rise 
of movements for women's and gay liberation, while the struggle for Black 
Power emerged from the civil rights movement itself. All of these new 
movements were, in turn, inspired by the armed struggle of the North 
Vietnamese resistance against the forces of U.S. imperialism. The Gay 
Liberation Front (GLF) chose its name as a formal identification with the 
National Liberation Front (NLF)-the Vietnamese resistance.

But it is also the case that women and African Americans were not alone in 
fighting against their oppression-thousands of men took part in the women's 
movement in the 1960s, and many thousands of whites actively supported the 
civil rights movement. The gay liberation movement was the first of its 
kind-erupting in the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, when New York City police 
raided a gay bar and touched off a riot among gays that lasted for three 
days. Although the gay movement won little support in its early stages, 
movement leaders soon convinced the Black Panther Party to formally endorse 
gay rights. In 1970, Black Panther leader Huey Newton announced his 
solidarity with the gay movement: "homosexuals are not given freedom and 
liberty by anyone in this society. Maybe they might be the most oppressed 
people in the society,"5

Who's the real enemy?

As the experience of the 1960s shows, it is not necessary to personally 
experience a form of oppression to become committed to opposing it. Yet the 
central premise of the theory of identity politics is based on precisely the 
opposite conclusion: Only those who actually experience a particular form of 
oppression are capable of fighting against it. Everyone else is considered 
to be part of the problem and cannot become part of the solution by joining 
the fight against oppression. The underlying assumption is that all men 
benefit from women's oppression, all straight people benefit from the 
oppression of the LGBT6 community, and all whites benefit from racism.

The flip side of this assumption, of course, is the idea that each group 
that faces a particular form of oppression-racism, sexism, or homophobia-is 
united in its interest in ending it. The theory of identity politics locates 
the root of oppression not with a capitalist power structure but with a 
"white male power structure." The existence of a white male power structure 
seems like basic common sense since, with rare exceptions, white men hold 
the reigns of the biggest corporations and the highest government posts.

That is true, but it only tells half the story. It would be highly 
inaccurate to assume that all oppressed people are powerless in U.S. society 
today. Since the movements of the 1960s and 1970s, a significant number of 
women, gays, Blacks, and other racially oppressed minorities have managed to 
climb up the corporate and political ladder and become absorbed into various 
power structures. These individuals have achieved a fair amount of power in 
their own right. In the upcoming 2008 presidential election, the two 
Democratic Party frontrunners are a woman (Hillary Rodham Clinton) and an 
African American (Barack Obama). The speaker of the House of Representatives 
is a woman, Nancy Pelosi. The U.S. secretary of state is a Black woman, 
Condoleezza Rice. One of the most powerful politicians in Washington is 
openly gay Congressman Barney Frank.
Whose interests have these women, gays, and African Americans represented 
once they have achieved some power within the system? The answer is fairly 
plain to see-not necessarily by believing their rhetoric, but by judging 
their actions. Rather than fighting against the racist, sexist, and 
homophobic policies of the system, they become part of enforcing them.

For example, when the city of San Francisco began handing out same-sex 
marriage licenses in 2005, did openly gay Barney Frank embrace it as a step 
forward for civil rights? On the contrary, Frank called a press conference 
to attack gay marriage as "divisive."7

Has Senator Barack Obama rushed forward to defend the six Black youths 
victimized by racists in Jena, Louisiana? The candidate did not make an 
appearance at the historic civil rights protest in Jena on September 20, 
2007.8 Yet Obama has devoted ample time on his recent speaking circuit to 
exhort Black men to become better fathers, as he did in June 2005 addressing 
Black worshippers at Chicago's Christ Universal Temple: "There are a lot of 
folks, a lot of brothers, walking around, and they look like men...they 
might even have sired a child.... But it's not clear to me that they're 
full-grown men."9 If a white politician had delivered a similar lecture, it 
would have immediately-and accurately-been denounced as utterly racist.

Nor does Condoleezza Rice hesitate to perform her duty as she wanders the 
globe in her role as U.S. imperialism's key international enforcer-traveling 
to the Middle East, for example, to enforce Israel's racist apartheid 
policies against its occupied Palestinian population. Iranian people will be 
no better off if and when the U.S. decides to bomb them if Clinton or Obama 
occupy the White House than Iraqi people were when the Bush administration 
decided to invade their country.

What all of these examples show is that there is no such thing as a common, 
fundamental interest shared by all people who face the same form of 
oppression. Oppression isn't caused by the race, gender, or sexuality of 
particular individuals who run the system, but is generated by the very 
system itself-no matter who's running it. It goes without saying that we 
must confront incidents of sexism, racism, and homophobia whenever they 
occur. But that alone is not going to change the racist, sexist, and 
homophobic character that dominates the entire system.

Class inequality and oppression

The entire element of social class is missing from the theory of identity 
politics. The same analysis that assumes Barack Obama shares a fundamental 
interest with all African Americans in ending racism also places all 
straight white men in the enemy camp, whatever their social class. Yet, the 
class divide has rarely been more obvious than in the United States today, 
where income and class inequality is higher than at any time since 1929, 
immediately before the onset of the Great Depression.10 It is plain to see 
that the rich obtain their enormous wealth at the expense of those who work 
for them to produce their profits, a process known as exploitation in 
Marxist parlance.

Class inequality is not a side issue, but rather the main byproduct of 
exploitation, the driving force of the capitalist system. Class inequality 
is currently worsening by the minute, as the economy edges its way toward a 
deep recession. Yet the theory of identity politics barely acknowledges the 
importance of class inequality, which is usually reduced to a label known as 
"classism"-a problem of snobbery, or personal attitude. This, again, should 
be confronted when it occurs, but such confrontations do not change the 
system that relies upon class exploitation. \

In contrast to the inconsistencies and contradictions of identity politics, 
a class analysis bases itself on materialism-a concrete and objective 
measure of systemic benefits derived from racism, sexism, and homophobia. In 
short, the ruling class has an objective interest in upholding the 
capitalist system, which is based upon both oppression and exploitation, 
while the working class has an objective interest in overthrowing it. For 
the special oppression of women, Blacks, Latinos, other racially oppressed 
populations, and the LGBT community actually serves to increase the level of 
exploitation and oppression of the working class as a whole.

The ruling class has always relied upon a "divide and conquer" strategy to 
maintain its rule, aimed at keeping all the exploited and oppressed fighting 
against each other instead of uniting and fighting against their real enemy. 
At the most basic material level, no one group of workers ever benefits from 
particular forms of oppression. The historic role of racism in the U.S. 
provides perhaps the clearest example. The prevailing view is that if Black 
workers get a smaller piece of the pie, then white workers get a bigger 
piece of it.

In fact, the opposite is true. In the South, where racism and segregation 
have traditionally been the strongest, white workers have historically 
earned lower wages than Black workers in the North.11 The same dynamic holds 
true for men and women workers. When lower paid women workers enter an 
occupation, such as clerical work, in large numbers the wages in that 
occupation tend to fall. The dynamic is straightforward: Whenever 
capitalists can force a higher paid group of workers to compete with a lower 
paid group, wages tend to drop. The same dynamic also holds for the global 
capitalist system. When U.S. capitalists force their workers into 
competition with workers in the poorest countries, U.S. workers' wages do 
not rise; they fall. And that is precisely why U.S. workers' wages have been 
falling in recent years. The only beneficiaries are capitalists, who earn 
bigger profits, while ensuring the survival of the rule of the profit 
system.

It is also important to recognize that all working-class people suffer from 
some forms of oppression. Workers pay much higher proportions of their 
incomes in taxes than rich people and have far less leisure time; 
working-class schools are underfunded and overcrowded, poorer neighborhoods 
are more run-down, and the streets have more potholes. Perhaps most 
significantly, prevailing ideology regards workers as generally too stupid 
to run society-assuming this is better left to the "experts," dooming the 
vast majority of workers to a lifetime of alienated labor.

So oppression is something that even most white male workers suffer to some 
degree. If one were to compare the self-confidence of the vast majority of 
white male workers to that of the arrogant Hillary Clinton or Condoleezza 
Rice, it would be clear that something more than personal politics is a 
determining factor in oppression. The problem is systemic.

The point here is not at all to trivialize racism, sexism, or homophobia-but 
to understand that the entire working class faces oppression and has an 
objective interest in ending it.

To be sure, workers don't always realize this. Male workers can behave in an 
utterly sexist manner; white workers-male and female-can embrace racism; and 
straight workers-Black, white, and Latino-can be completely homophobic. But 
such behaviors are subjective-they vary from individual to individual and, 
unlike objective interests that remain the same, subjective factors change 
according to changing circumstances.
Most important among these is the Marxist concept of "false consciousness." 
The definition of false consciousness is straightforward: whenever workers 
accept ruling-class ideologies, including racism, sexism, and homophobia, 
they are acting against their own class interests-precisely because these 
ideas keep workers fighting against each other. False consciousness is not 
unique to white, male workers.

One of the most obvious examples of false consciousness has occurred in 
recent years, as large numbers of African Americans oppose immigrant rights 
using many of the same xenophobic arguments as anti-immigrant racists. 
Similarly, many Puerto Rican people exhibit prejudice against Mexican people 
(which is racist). Many women call each other "sluts" (which is sexist). 
These are all examples of false consciousness.

Whenever the levels of racism, sexism, and homophobia rise, the working 
class as a whole loses out. Workers do not unite to fight back, and living 
standards drop. Conversely, when workers move into struggle against the 
system in large numbers, false consciousness is challenged by the need for 
class unity, and class-consciousness rises-affecting mass consciousness as a 
whole. This process was demonstrated at the highest point of class struggle 
in the 1930s and again at the height of the movements of the 1960s. And it 
will be demonstrated again with the next rise in mass struggle.

As Marx argued in theCommunist Manifesto, "This organization of proletarians 
into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being 
upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever 
rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier."12 Put differently, Marx 
distinguished between the working class "in itself," which holds 
objective-but unrealized-revolutionary potential, and a working class "for 
itself," which acts in its own class interests. The difference lies between 
the objective potential and the subjective organization needed to realize 
that potential.

Politics in a void

But identity politics does not acknowledge the potential for mass 
consciousness to change. For this reason, the theory of identity politics 
can only be accepted at the highest level of abstraction. Ernesto LaClau and 
Chantal Mouffe, the originators of identity politics, do not seem the least 
bit concerned with any practical application of the theory laid out in their 
book, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic 
Politics. LaClau and Mouffe emerged from the postmodern wing of academia 
that flourished in the 1980s, proposing a set of theories aiming to prove 
that society exists not as a unified and coherent social and economic 
system, but rather in a range of subjective relationships.

LaClau and Mouffe posit their theory as a step forward from Marxism. In 
reality, their theory is not post-Marxist at all. It is anti-Marxist. These 
two academics set out to prove that Marx was wrong about the revolutionary 
potential of the working class-that is, its objective interest in and power 
to transform the system. This antagonism to Marx makes sense, because if 
Marx is right-if the working class is capable of building a united movement 
against all forms of exploitation and oppression-then their theory goes out 
the window.

There are two key components to LaClau and Mouffe's theory, both of which 
become problematic the moment the theory is put into practice. The first 
component is their definition of oppression. In contrast to Marx-who defined 
oppression and exploitation as objective and therefore unchanging, but 
consciousness as subjective and therefore ever-changing-LaClau and Mouffe 
regard oppression itself as entirely subjective.

This is a fundamental, not semantic, difference. Since oppression is an 
entirely subjective matter, according to LaClau and Mouffe, anyone who 
believes that they are oppressed is therefore oppressed. At its worst, that 
would include a white male who feels he has been discriminated against when 
his application is turned down for a law school that practices affirmative 
action. Conversely, even the most clear-cut instances of systematic 
brutality are not necessarily oppression. LaClau and Mouffe argue that even 
serfdom and slavery do not necessarily represent relationships of 
oppression, unless the serfs or the slaves themselves "articulate" that 
oppression.13

LaClau and Mouffe describe society as made up of a whole range of 
autonomous, free-floating antagonisms and oppressions, none more important 
than any other-each is a separate sphere of "struggle."14 But this concept 
falls apart once it is removed from the world of abstraction and applied to 
the real world. Separate struggles do not neatly correspond to separate 
forms of oppression. Forms of oppressions overlap, so that many people are 
both Black and female, or both lesbian and Latino. If every struggle must be 
fought separately, this can only lead to greater and greater fragmentation 
and eventually to disintegration, even within groups organized around a 
single form of oppression. A Black lesbian, for example, faces an obvious 
dilemma: If all men are enemies of women, all whites are enemies of Blacks, 
and all straights are enemies of gays, then allies must be precious few. In 
the real world, choices have to be made.

If LaClau and Mouffe are correct, and the main divisions in society exist 
between those who face a particular form of oppression and those who don't, 
then the likelihood of ever actually ending oppression is just about nil. At 
its heart, the politics of identity is extremely pessimistic, implying not 
just a rejection of the potential to build a broad united movement against 
all forms of exploitation and oppression, but also a very deep pessimism 
about the possibility for building solidarity even among people who face 
different forms of oppression.

The only organizational strategy identity politics offers is for different 
groups of oppressed people to each fight their own separate battles against 
their own separate enemies.

The second key problem with LaClau and Mouffe flows from the concept of 
autonomy that is so central to their theory. Most importantly from a 
theoretical standpoint, Laclau and Mouffe go to great lengths to refute the 
Marxist analysis of the state, or the government. Marxist theory is based 
upon an understanding that the government is not a neutral body, but serves 
to represent the interests of the class in power-which in the case of 
capitalism is the capitalist class. This should not be too hard to imagine 
in the era of George W. Bush, when the capitalist class has brazenly 
flaunted its wealth and power.

But Laclau and Mouffe insist that the state is neutral and autonomous. Even 
the different branches of government are autonomous from each other. 
Apparently, the Senate and the House of Representatives have no real 
relationship, and the White House is similarly autonomous. If that is the 
case, then the stranglehold of neoconservatives and the Christian Right over 
U.S. politics since 9/11 must have been a figment of liberals' imaginations.

Thus, there is a serious flaw in this logic. Oppression is built into the 
capitalist system itself, and the state is one of the key ways in which 
oppression is enforced-through laws that discriminate and the police who 
serve and protect some people while harassing and brutalizing other groups 
of people.

But the theory of autonomy leads to another theoretical problem as well: 
every separate struggle warrants equal importance, no matter how many people 
are involved on either side, and whether or not demands are being made 
against the state or other institutions. Indeed, LaClau and Mouffe carry 
this logic a critical step further, noting that "struggle" need not involve 
more than one person. It can simply denote a matter of achieving 
"increasingly affirmed individualism."15 The personal struggle in this 
process substitutes for political struggle, leaving the system that 
maintains and enforces oppression intact.

Like LaClau and Mouffe, theorists who advocate the most extreme forms of 
identity politics do not actually aim to build a movement, large or small. 
They prefer small groups of the enlightened few, who remain content in their 
superiority to the "ignorant masses." Marxism offers a way forward for those 
interested in ending oppression in the real world. As Marx remarked of his 
generation of smug academics, "The philosophers have hitherto only 
interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."16

Marxism and oppression

The caricature that often passes for a critique of Marxism today assumes 
that a united working-class movement of all the oppressed and exploited 
requires subordinating the fight against oppression to the fight against 
exploitation. But this caricature has been proven wrong historically. Both 
exploitation and oppression are rooted in capitalism. Exploitation is the 
method by which the ruling class robs workers of the wealth they produce; 
various forms of oppression play a primary role in maintaining the rule of a 
tiny minority over the vast majority. In each case, the enemy is one and the 
same.

As the Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin, put it, the Marxist vision of 
revolution is a "festival of the oppressed and exploited." But he also 
added: "Working class consciousness cannot be genuine political 
consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of 
tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected."17

The argument here is straightforward: The lessons of building a united 
movement against capitalism train workers to act in solidarity with all 
those who are oppressed and exploited by capitalism. The battle for 
class-consciousness is a battle over ideas, but it is one that must be 
fought out in the context of struggle, not the musings of self-important 
academics.


Sharon Smith is author of Subterranean Fire: A History of Working Class 
Radicalism in the United States (Haymarket Books, 2006) and "Mistaken 
Identity: or can identity politics liberate the oppressed?". She has a 
biweekly column in Socialist Worker that also appears on Counterpunch.

1 See Howard Witt, "Louisiana teen guilty in school beating case," Chicago 
Tribune, June 29, 2007.
2 See, for example, Judy Keen, "Calls to get tough on illegals grow; 
Residents far from border seek controls," USA Today, April 19, 2006.
3 Barbara Ehrenreich, "It's Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week!" Thenation.com, 
October 22, 2007, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071105/ehrenreich.
4 Brendan Bernhard, "Preaching a gospel of hate," New York Sun, December 4, 
2007.
5 Quoted in Barry D. Adams, The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement (Boston: 
Twayne, 1987), 80.
6 Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.
7 "Rep. Frank opposes gay marriage effort," CNN.com, February 19, 2004.
8 "Jesse Jackson: Obama needs to bring more attention to Jena 6," CNN.com, 
September 19, 2007.
9 Liam Ford, "Obama's church sermon to black dads: Grow up," Chicago 
Tribune, June 20, 2005.
10 Aviva Aron-Dine, "EW in in 2005data show income concentration jumped 
again in 2005: Income Share of Top 1% At Highest Level Since 1929," Center 
on Budget and Policiy Priorities, October 24, 2007. Available online at 
http://www.cbpp.org/3-29-07inc.htm.
11 See Victor Perlo, Economics of Racism U.S.A.: The Roots of Black 
Inequality (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 168.
12 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: 
International Publishers, 1948), 18.
13 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: 
Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso Press, 1985), 153-54.
14 Ibid., 178.
15 Ibid., 164.
16 Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach," Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume One, 
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969) 13-15, 
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm.
17 V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 5(Moscow: International Publishers, 
1961), 412.

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