Towards a Critique of Actually-Existing Identity Politics, Parts 1&2

In the last few months, I've been in Mexico, working with the left and anarchist movements here and there when I get the chance. While doing this, I've come to realize that the Mexican and U.S. radical movements are extremely different, not just the work that they do and how they see themselves, but the internal culture and theory that promotes day-to-day functioning of organs of struggle. One giant difference in the internal cultures is the role of identity politics. I have become attentive to the way in which identity politics functions, or rather doesn't, in the Mexican movement. Yet somehow, despite the apparent lack in many situations of identity politics, the movement continues to have very high levels of participation and leadership by marginalized groups, some (women and queer folks) more than others (indigenous folks), in a culture considered both internally and externally to be quite "machista" and sexist. So how did this happen?

I'm going to set out in the next couple of weeks to write an account, rambling and undoubtedly full of occasional errors, of how identity politics functions in the United States anticapitalist movement and the ways in which it, at times, derails our work. I do not predict this project will be popular nor do I predict that I will change anyone's mind one way or another. More than anything, I want to set down in writing my thoughts on how identity politics work can hurt our organizing. Corresponding with friends, I have recently heard about several different problems created or exacerbated by identity politics in the movements I'm involved in at home. I am not interested in banishing identity politics or stop talking about oppression within movements, but rather showing how they function and ways that they at times hurt us, in order to build a more inclusive and successful revolutionary movement. I am not arguing against the use or function of identity politics as a whole, but instead pointing out particular uses or incarnations of identity politics with which I see problems.

1. Where I'm At

At the outset, I feel I should state several "proclamations of the faith." One of the first problems that one challenges dogma, as I believe I am about to do, is that one gets discredited for one's faith and I do not want that to be what turns people off from this project. Obviously, if the reader sees beliefs that they do not share, this may make the rest of this project irrelevant to them.

• I believe that we need to make a revolutionary change to form anarchist socialist societies, immediately and globally, and will do what I can to help that revolution in any way.
• I believe that to make those societies a reality, we need to struggle not just against an economic system, but a wide range of oppressions.
• I believe that fighting prejudice inside movements is almost or as important as struggling against oppressors.
• I believe in the right of free speech and open, respectful critique within the movement.
• I believe that the anarchist movement should strive to make strategic decisions based on empirical facts, not common sense or habit
  
• I recognize that I come from a specific background that gives me, in the United States, a series of privileges based on my race, gender, and sexual identity. I do not believe that disqualifies me from having a voice in the conversation about identity.
• I believe in the right and importance of my comrades who do come from oppressed communities to assert their control over their lives and to defeat intra-, inter-, and extra-movement oppression.
• I reject claims that logic is completely culturally conditioned.

That last bit is a whole other story and debate already taken up by people far smarter than myself. But what it means here is that I reject the "hard postmodernist" position that logic, science, and rationality in general are equally as valid as any number of irrational schemes. I don't plan on arguing that position here, but briefly, my defense of this rejection is that to embrace this "hard" position is to embrace a worldview of extreme theoretical eclecticism and nihilism, to accept a world that is fundamentally unknowable, even in its smallest mechanisms. Which is something I refuse to do and which I believe is fundamentally irreconcilable with the project of human liberation.

A final warning before I proceed with my actual critiques: I am familiar with identity politics almost exclusively through its use in the circles I have been involved in, ranging from affinity groups to national and international anticapitalist organizations. I am only slightly familiar with the vast body of theory regarding identity and politics, through a few classes in Black Studies and Women's Studies that I have taken in college. Hence the name of this project. I will likely not be quoting a lot of theoretical texts, but may use pamphlets and zines that discuss questions of identity politics within the movement. I will mostly be referring to the general zeitgeist of the logic and practices of identity politics because that is what actually forms our practice, not something that a scholar wrote about identity politics. What matters to me is what we do, not what we think we do.

2. Defining Identity Politics

One problem with identity politics and their use in radical circles is that we have unclear and conflicting definitions of what the term and associated ones mean. The idea of identity politics comes from a variety of different radical and bourgeois traditions and from a variety of different times periods and social contexts. I will only be talking about identity politics in the U.S. setting, because those of the ones I am familiar with.

A few terms we define to start with:

• Identity refers to the way that one sees oneself or the way that one is seen in society, and the various cultural and social beliefs, practices, and relationships that develop because of the interactions between and within identity.
• Politics refers to the interactions between people with varying degrees of power in society.
• Identity politics then refers to the interactions between people with varying degrees of power as seen the through the lens of identity. Taken to a practical level, it has come to mean the promotion of certain identities which are disadvantaged in relations of power, through the use of both internal and external activism.
• Anti-oppression politics is a similar term which I would argue is a subset of identity politics. It is used almost exclusively by radicals and I think probably represents a particular incarnation of identity politics that is uniquely radical. Anti-oppression politics posits that identity politics, as popularly conceived, does not connect the dots and that rather than individual identity groups struggling against dominant ones, that identities and struggles intersect and that intersection produces unique social locations and hardships, as well as possibilities for struggle. I will use basically use the term interchangeably in this essay, as it is not bourgeois identity politics that I am discussing, but radical ones.
• Feminism is 1. a theory and practice that takes up the fight against patriarchy with the ultimate goal of liberating people of all genders from oppression and 2. a theoretical critique which deconstructs and analyzes the way identity is used.
  

Already it becomes clear that identity politics can mean a wide range of practices at a wide range of levels. In my discussion of identity politics, I will be focusing on their function and use at the intra-movement level. Mostly, this is because I have not participated broadly in identity political movements that are focused externally, that is to say, those that struggle against oppressors outside of the movement (capitalists, governments, religions, etc). So my critique will be focused on these practices, which function within the movement and whose goal is to struggle against oppression and prejudice that is exhibited within the movement.

Reproletarianization and Consciousness

I was reading a collection of documents from the Love and Rage Federation the other day and came across a brilliant theory piece discussing the role of white youth in revolutionary struggle. It pointed out that white working class youth are "reproles," insofar as they are they children of a generation of workers that sold out to the capitalist state. Today, the white working class has been thrust back into the working world, the promises of their alliance with the capitalist class turned sour. (This isn't to argue against a white privilege analysis of racism, which is one I stand by. White privilege is still a powerful system, but the welfare state and its attendant ideologies have failed the white working class's attempt to escape from capitalist oppression. This also isn't to diminish the continuing struggles of white working class people who were never allowed into the "middle class." They never escaped and continue to fight capitalist exploitation.)

This concept of reproletarianization really grabbed me. It describes so perfectly what I have seen in my own life and in the lives of my friends and age cohort out of high school. Many of my close friends and classmates have become reproles. Their parents were raised to aspire to middle class ambitions and raised them to do the same, but the changing economy has not allowed them to take the same routes. This isn't to ignore the agency involved in these decisions. Many folks I know have left college, the traditional path to skilled worker positions, because they couldn't stand it any more. (This is something worthy of way more analysis, perhaps by someone with a stronger psychoanalytic knowledge than myself.)

My interest is how these reproles have proven so difficult to organize with. While I help out in the IWW, my role as a student means that I only have so much energy to spend on that project. But I have taken my training as a Wob and applied it. I routinely offer workplace advice to my friends and high school classmates. Nearly everyone I know gets screwed at work, inevitably in the service industry. (My friends in direct production roles, like in factories, actually seem to do better. I have no substantial proof of why, but my gut tells me that this is the remnant memories of class resistance by the old labor movement.) They don't get paid the right amount, no overtime/too much overtime, they have shitty bosses, etc. These complaints are nothing new to any young person working.

But my comments and suggestions go completely ignored by my friends and classmates. It's not that they don't have problems with the work, or that they're Mr. Block either. They hate their bosses, they know what they want changed, and I've helped them understand how easily they can bring about that change. The problem, I think, is consciousness and despair.

The reproles of my generation have no concept of class struggle or class consciousness. Thrust back into the working class, they have no models or history of struggle to look to and get inspired by. The white reproletarianized youth of today is divided by the historical barrier of race from workers of color, from whose history there is a lot to be inspired by. They seem to have no concept of what it means to be "working class," but also have not completely bought into the bootstrap myth. They remain ambivalent towards the welfare system, progressive on social issues, but confused about their historical role as workers. In fact, I think that one of the first bridges that I have to cross with these reproles is getting them to accept the word "worker" as a descriptor for their work.

I think that these reproles will play an important role in class struggle in the United States, particularly as the country's economic future becomes more and more clouded by China and the European Union. I accept Martin Glaberman's suggestion that action proceeds consciousness, so my concern is not in radicalizing these folks via ideology. Rather, I think what the revolutionary movement can do for these reproles is to continue the work started by the Autonomists for the Italian working class in the seventies: we must explore and valorize the kinds of resistances that these workers are already participating in. We must show these workers that their actions are already representative of class struggle, and that the next step must be to organize these individual actions that refuse work into collective refusal and creation of alternatives.

How we go about doing this is a big question, but I see it as one that I need to struggle with. I think my job as an anarchist revolutionary in the next few years is going to be focused on reproles and the process of action and radicalization amongst them. We'll see where that goes.

On class reductionism

I don't have any cohesive thoughts on this subject, but its something which has been playing on mind a lot after some discussion with a female comrade.

One of the irritating habits of the more Marxist-inclined anarchists (a group of which I am a member) is the ability to reduce all problems to problems of class. Clearly, this approach is outdated as other reductionist approaches, like petite-bourgeois anarchism (the State is the bad guy!) or jingoist workerism (the Foreigners are the bad guy!)

Noticing the development of the capitalist system, Marxist critics have far outweighed their anarchist comrades in their consideration of the system as scientific. The work of Negri, Tronti, and the autonomists has been particularly enlightening. But this is not enough.

Other thinkers, some of them Marxist, some of them not, have noticed that the oppressions present in capitalist society exist in non-capitalist society. The kneejerk reaction, that capitalism has imperialized its prejudices and internal contradictions, is simply not true. Non-capitalist societies are not paradises, they too have their problems (with gender in particular). Anthropology has been particularly helpful my understanding of the universalism of oppression.

So class reductionism is not enough. Clearly, as the autonomists have pointed out, the traditional role of women in capitalist society has functioned to reproduce labor. Likewise, as the Johnson-Forrest Tendency folks and their successors have indicated, the working class of color is the most revolutionary class in America. But these problems do not simply disappear when capitalism ends.

To build an authentically anti-capitalist movement of the working class, we cannot simply eschew personal and social racism, sexism, and heteronormativity as "liberal identity politics". To do so not only further oppresses already oppressed people, but discourages the development of people as people. If we seek to build an anarchist future, we must model the social relations we seek to create in our communities.

Nor can we fall into the trap of the liberals, who focus solely on personal and social oppression. But that is not my concern with class reductionists. They already know this part, but can't understand that the movement for workers' liberation must be lead by oppressed peoples, as they have the most to gain. Simply waiting for the OBU to organize them, or events to radicalize them, denies agency and is also poor strategy.