Identity Politics: A Marxist View

Abstract

This article has three main sections. In section 1, I discuss what identity politics is and what are its theoretical presuppositions. I also talk about the nature of the political action in identity politics, and about its limits. In section 2, I present my views on Marxist politics, which is centered on the theory and the politics of class, combined with the class-theory and class-politics of anti-oppression. I unpack what I consider are the Marxist notions of 'the common ground' and of 'the majority', as important components of Marxist politics. The majority, in the Marxist sense, are those who are objectively subjected to classexploitation. And in terms of the common ground for politics, there are two aspects: a) the majority of people experience one common fate, i.e. they are exploited, and b) this exploited majority are subjected to one or more of the many mechanisms of oppression (race, gender, caste, etc.), all of which represent one experience: attack on democratic rights (or the experience of 'tyranny', in Lenin's sense). In the final section, I conclude the article and draw some implications of my arguments.

Whom Should a Christian Vote? Facing Identity Politics from Biblical Perspective on Presidential Election

“…Identity politics is a political means that focuses to rally people's recognition or respect for the right of autonomy with the basis of an individual or group's shared attributes or interest (Das, 2020). Identity politics has these underlying presuppositions: resorts in subjectivity, advocating inadequacy towards whole society components, and divisive (Hekman, 1999).…”

What is Marxist geography today, or what is left of Marxist geography?

“…Social oppression is an important fact of life, as are struggles against it. Yet, in Marxism, the basic division of society is the class division and not the one between blacks and whites or women and men or lower and upper castes, and so on, and the most crucial struggle is the struggle of working-class men and women of different social-cultural backgrounds against their exploiters and the capitalist state (Das, 2020b). The most fundamental form of power is class power which is tightly ‘linked to’ state power.…”

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“…Many of them sympathize with the social-democratic movement (and with Third World statism, or 'Third world bourgeois nationalism' 7 ). Many (among so-called post-Marxists) treat political and cultural matters as being autonomous of economic processes and of class relations, and sympathize with 'identity politics', a mode of thinking and political action politics that separates oppression based on racial or gender or other such non-class relations from capitalist social relations and class (Das, 2020c). For those thinkers, more than workers' own class organizations, it is non-class social movements that will provide the real agency for change (Petras, 1997).…”

“…Similarly, it takes oppression of racialized and other minorities seriously, connecting such oppression to class exploitation. Both are done without compromising with any idea or practice that simply is focussed on recognition-ism and on the concessions to the privileged layers of women and other minorities (Das, 2020c). Indeed, Lenin's 'Tribune of the people' is a fundamental Marxist principle in relation to the ongoing racial oppression and police violence against oppressed groups such as Blacks in the United States and Dalits (ex-untouchables) and Muslims in India.…”