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I'm not sure whom you are referring to when you say "these people". Intersectionality (which btw refers to almost the exact opposite of what most people think

by hnbad 6y ago

I'm not sure whom you are referring to when you say "these people". Intersectionality (which btw refers to almost the exact opposite of what most people think of as "identity politics") is absolutely compatible with (and arguably necessary[0] for) leftism. Class reductionists OTOH certainly think of themselves as leftists and can be instrumental to leftist politics. They however run the risk of also being useful to other political permutations (e.g. they might be more open to "red-brown alliances", which generally lead to non-leftist "red" ideologies like national bolshevism and ultimately fascism). Not every intersectionalist is a leftist (e.g. liberals often acknowledge intersectionality to some degree but don't see private property as a social power structure) and not every leftist is an intersectionalist. I would argue that leftism without intersectionality is leftist, but in an incomplete form. That said, "leftism" is a somewhat arbitrary label as its original meaning simply referred to opposing the monarchy in France, so policing who gets to call themselves that is probably pointless. [0]: An example for how racism and class warfare can intersect is how the widespread racism in the early 20th century US prevented Black workers from joining unions, resulting in them becoming strikebreakers and thus undermining the collective bargaining power of those unions.

BlueTemplar 6y ago
I'm using the definitions of left vs right as being how much power should the lower classes get ("opposing monarchy" kind of already fits, though AFAIK after the revolution farmers quickly lost most of their power to the profit of citizens). It has been pointed out decades ago that capitalism would try to subvert some of the left by evacuating the class issues to the profit of ethnic issues and then pitting ethnic groups against each other. In fact you could say that this dates at least back to Marx' "On the Irish question." IMHO this is what is happening currently - it's really sad to see supposedly left parties to ally themselves with people pushing ethnicist and sexist ideologies (but where white or man = "worse" instead of the previously common ethnicist and sexist ideologies where it was "better" - that "all lives matter" ended up being considered an ethnicist slogan is probably making Martin Luther King roll in its grave !)
- hnbad 6y ago
  That's why I said intersectionality is distinct from identity politics. IDPOL is actually the norm in most modern politics (e.g. NIMBY). As for Marx, Engels and the Irish: their position wasn't that Ireland was only divided along class lines which merely "happened to" mostly follow the British-Irish divide, at least not as they learned more about Ireland and British colonialism in Ireland. Instead they argued that Ireland should be granted independence and then join a socialist Wales, England and Scotland as a socialist federation. This is literally an intersectional understanding of the problem: Britishness and Irishness played a part, but so did the class divide. BTW, you're mixing jargon by referring to Marx while also talking about "the lower classes". Marx only knows two classes: the working class (who have to perform wage labor to survive) and the owning class (who rent out their private property or pay workers to use it to produce goods for surplus value). The distinction of "citizens" and farmers is as meaningless in a Marxist context as you claim other distinctions to be. You're right that capitalists will try to pit groups against each other and this is what IDPOL is. But there is a significant difference between liberal IDPOL and leftist intersectionality. Division is not created by pointing out the existence of differences but rather the creation of power imbalances along those dividing lines. It's naïve to think that racism will automatically go away if we can overcome capitalism even if capitalism is actively reinforcing racism to divide the working class. To pick up on your example of All Lives Matter: the claim of BLM isn't that Black Lives Matter And Others Don't. Their claim is that Black Lives Matter But Others Treat Them Like They Don't. The slogan "All Lives Matter" was intentionally pushed by white supremacists as a counter to remove the focus on "Black Lives" specifically. The point wasn't to say other lives don't matter, in general, but that right then, right there, this is putting "Black Lives" front and center for once because nobody is paying attention to their suffering. "Blue Lives Matter" went even further: since one of the core complaints of BLM was police killings of Black people, the substitute of "Blue" for "Black" was a direct inversion shifting the support from the oppressed to the oppressor. MLK most certainly wouldn't be rolling in his grave.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Right, thanks, I'll have to look more into the difference between intersectionality and identity politics. ---- "Racism" seems now to me to be a very bad term (in a way, it's racist itself) - we have many examples of similar kind of strife wrongly called racist, while it should probably called "ethnicist" (?) instead : - (Protestant ?) White North Americans vs (Catholic ?) White Central & South Americans. - Muslim Semites vs Jewish Semites. ---- My main point is that BLM shot themselves in the foot by using this slogan - something like "Black Lives Matter too !" wouldn't have allowed their opponents to claim this kind of Orwellian inversion of terms.

by hnbad 6y ago

BlueTemplar 6y ago

I'm using the definitions of left vs right as being how much power should the lower classes get ("opposing monarchy" kind of already fits, though AFAIK after the revolution farmers quickly lost most of their power to the profit of citizens). It has been pointed out decades ago that capitalism would try to subvert some of the left by evacuating the class issues to the profit of ethnic issues and then pitting ethnic groups against each other. In fact you could say that this dates at least back to Marx' "On the Irish question." IMHO this is what is happening currently - it's really sad to see supposedly left parties to ally themselves with people pushing ethnicist and sexist ideologies (but where white or man = "worse" instead of the previously common ethnicist and sexist ideologies where it was "better" - that "all lives matter" ended up being considered an ethnicist slogan is probably making Martin Luther King roll in its grave !)

hnbad 6y ago
That's why I said intersectionality is distinct from identity politics. IDPOL is actually the norm in most modern politics (e.g. NIMBY). As for Marx, Engels and the Irish: their position wasn't that Ireland was only divided along class lines which merely "happened to" mostly follow the British-Irish divide, at least not as they learned more about Ireland and British colonialism in Ireland. Instead they argued that Ireland should be granted independence and then join a socialist Wales, England and Scotland as a socialist federation. This is literally an intersectional understanding of the problem: Britishness and Irishness played a part, but so did the class divide. BTW, you're mixing jargon by referring to Marx while also talking about "the lower classes". Marx only knows two classes: the working class (who have to perform wage labor to survive) and the owning class (who rent out their private property or pay workers to use it to produce goods for surplus value). The distinction of "citizens" and farmers is as meaningless in a Marxist context as you claim other distinctions to be. You're right that capitalists will try to pit groups against each other and this is what IDPOL is. But there is a significant difference between liberal IDPOL and leftist intersectionality. Division is not created by pointing out the existence of differences but rather the creation of power imbalances along those dividing lines. It's naïve to think that racism will automatically go away if we can overcome capitalism even if capitalism is actively reinforcing racism to divide the working class. To pick up on your example of All Lives Matter: the claim of BLM isn't that Black Lives Matter And Others Don't. Their claim is that Black Lives Matter But Others Treat Them Like They Don't. The slogan "All Lives Matter" was intentionally pushed by white supremacists as a counter to remove the focus on "Black Lives" specifically. The point wasn't to say other lives don't matter, in general, but that right then, right there, this is putting "Black Lives" front and center for once because nobody is paying attention to their suffering. "Blue Lives Matter" went even further: since one of the core complaints of BLM was police killings of Black people, the substitute of "Blue" for "Black" was a direct inversion shifting the support from the oppressed to the oppressor. MLK most certainly wouldn't be rolling in his grave.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Right, thanks, I'll have to look more into the difference between intersectionality and identity politics. ---- "Racism" seems now to me to be a very bad term (in a way, it's racist itself) - we have many examples of similar kind of strife wrongly called racist, while it should probably called "ethnicist" (?) instead : - (Protestant ?) White North Americans vs (Catholic ?) White Central & South Americans. - Muslim Semites vs Jewish Semites. ---- My main point is that BLM shot themselves in the foot by using this slogan - something like "Black Lives Matter too !" wouldn't have allowed their opponents to claim this kind of Orwellian inversion of terms.