Red Polemique - Marxism and The Question of Identity

1/14/2019 Marxism and the Question of Identity | Red Polemique
Red Polemique
For A New Revolutionary Praxis…
Marxism and the Question of Identity
June 21, 2018 Red Polemique

Abhinav Sinha
Presented in the Left Forum, 2018, New York (USA) on June 3, 2018
The question of identity has remained a debatable issue among Marxists-Leninists since at least four
decades. The question, in effect, pertains to a Marxist understanding of social oppression based on
identity. The Identity Politics theorists claim that Marxism ignores or plays down the role of various
forms of social oppression and reduces everything to class. Even some Marxists-Leninists had a moment
of epiphany following such claims by Identity Politics theorists, Privilege Theorists, and in general by
Postmodernists and Post-Marxists in the 1970s and 1980s and accepted that Marxism in its current form
is class reductionist and economistic and lacks the ability to understand the question of social
oppression. By the beginning of 1990s, such ‘common sense’ had become axiomatic in academic circles
in the developed world and by mid-1990s, it was beginning to infiltrate the major academic centres of
excellence in India and other so-called ‘Third World’ countries, especially in the form of the Subaltern
Studies. The only difference is that due to a different location in the Imperialist chain, the so-called
‘Third World’ countries never witnessed the flourishing of identity politics in real movements in a big
way, though there are notable miniscule exceptions.
This paper a empts to probe this very question: Can Marxism understand social oppression and the
question of identity in general? Can communists fight against social oppression? What is Identity? What
is social oppression? What are the roots of various forms of social oppression? What is class? Is it just
another identity intersecting with other identities? What is the relation between class-based exploitation
and oppression on the one hand and the other forms of special oppression based on race, gender, caste,
sexuality, etc? What is the relation between capitalism as a system and different forms of social
oppression? These questions need to be answered also in view of the revival of interest in Marxism and
the first signs of revival of popular movements against capitalism, especially in the so-called ‘Third
World’ countries since the beginning of the current economic crisis in 2007-8. The lull in the working-
class movement is breaking, though in the lack of any political and ideological leadership, the movement
faces a crisis and has not been able to go beyond spontaneous outbursts. However, this much is certain,
that the descent is about to be over, though the ascent is yet to begin. At this specific historical juncture,
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it is imperative for Marxists to answer the above questions. This is what this paper humbly aims to do. In
this process, I will also a empt to present an understanding of the caste question in the context of Indian
society and how the question of the caste is articulated with class struggle, with some concrete facts.
Historical Context of the Emergence and Rise of Identity Politics
First of all, let me point out that the question of identity came to prominence only towards the end of the
fateful 1960s in the developed world. If we look at the Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences of 1968, wri en
most likely in the mid-1960s, we find that there is no entry under the word ‘identity’. The only entry
pertaining to identity is about the ‘psychosocial identity’, which talks about the kind of identity crisis
which the adolescents have while entering youth. This is only one allusion to the fact that the question of
identity became a polarizing question only after the so-called ‘new social movements’ of the 1960s and
later with the theorizations of these social movements by different Postmodernist scholars in the 1970s
and by Post-Marxists like Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in the 1980s. By 1990s, the question of
identity had become the dominant fetish of academia in the developed world and the same was
happening in India, when I entered university in 1999, though on a much smaller scale.
Secondly, it also needs to be reminded that all of this was happening in a particular historical context. By
1953-56, the capitalist restoration took place in the USSR. The Twentieth Congress of the CPSU (B) in
1956 was an open declaration of this restoration. Khrushchev came up with the theory of ‘three
peacefuls’ (peaceful co-existence, peaceful competition and peaceful transition) as the modern revisionist
theory. It did not take much time for the revisionist USSR to show its true character at the international
level. The USSR had turned into an imperialist power from a socialist country and her imperialist
ambitions were exposed in her interventions in a number of countries, often in competition with the US
imperialism. The incidents in Hungary and later in Czechoslovakia came as a shocker to the progressive
students, workers and intelligentsia in general. The communist parties in a number of European
countries took a revisionist position in the Great Debate, which took place between the Soviet revisionist
party and Communist Party of China, under the leadership of Mao. Once they took a revisionist
position, these parties supported the misdeeds of the Soviet social imperialism and were obliged to take
opportunist and chauvinist positions in the politics of their respective countries too. The reaction of the
progressive and radical students and intelligentsia was pathological. Barring a few saner minds, most of
them mistook the crimes of Soviet social imperialism and social chauvinism for the inherent tendencies
of Marxism; the call for something ‘more radical than Marxism’ was raised. The pe y-bourgeois class
position of the pe y-bourgeois intelligentsia and students played a role in their pathological reaction. At
the same time, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was interpreted by certain “Maoists” in an anti-
Leninist “massist” perspective in Europe; such “Maoists” had the seeds to fall into the pit of Post-
Marxism eventually from the very beginning and claim that the GPCR was ‘revolution against the party’
marking the beginning of an era when the categories of party, state, class etc. had become irrelevant for
the human emancipatory project. Maoism must be saved from such “Maoists”. The capitalist restoration
in China with the defeat of “the gang of four” gave impetus to such tendencies. The Tiananmen Square
incident in China was taken as a vindication of the pathological reaction against Marxism. The fall of the
Berlin Wall and the collapse of the social imperialist USSR brought this process to a culmination. It must
also be noted that the revolutionary communists around the world, except may be a few notable
exceptions, could not present a balanced sum-up of these defeats and a critique of modern revisionism
after Mao due to their own economistic and class-reductionist errors. Defeat of Socialist experiments in
the USSR and then in China and the rise of economism and class reductionism in the revolutionary
communist movement forms the first co-ordinate of the historical context that gave rise to identity
politics and its various strands, and their philosophical bases were provided by Postmodernist theories
churned out from the confused political atmosphere of 1960s, especially in the developed world.
The other co-ordinate of this historical context was the beginning of neoliberal onslaught in 1970s and
1980s. Thatcherism and Reagonomics were the most explicit political expressions of the era of neoliberal
globalization. These neoliberal policies began as a response to the Crisis of the 1973 and were
characterized by deregulation and financialization, flexibilization of the labour markets, a ack on the
labour rights. These were the policies which were later characterized collectively as the policies of
neoliberal globalization. The era marked beginning of the emergence of the increased flow of capital
across national boundaries, revolution in information technology, transportation and communication,
the so-called post-Fordist assembly line (a fragmented global assembly line) and contractualization and
informalization of labour. The economism and trade-unionism prevalent in the working-class movement
disarmed and disabled it from responding to these changes in the modus operandi of world capitalism.
One of the expressions of this economism and trade-unionism was the narrow sectarian focus on factory
worker and work-place organizing, rather than concentrating on the entire working class and
neighbourhood-based organizing, along with work-place organizing. Consequently, the defeat and
retreat of the working-class movement, characterized best by the defeat of the iconic coal-miners’ strike
in England in 1984-5, led to an atmosphere of demoralization and pessimism among Marxists-Leninists,
many of whom turned to the so-called “more radical theories” of identity politics, Postmodernism, Post-
Marxism, post-colonial theory, etc. Thus, the collapse of socialist experiments, rise of revisionism and
economism, the neoliberal onslaught and the defeat and retreat of revolutionary working-class
movement in the developed world form the two co-ordinates of the historical context in which
Postmodernist theories of identity politics, privilege theory, intersectionality theory flourished and
infiltrated the progressive mass movements that had come into being in the 1960s against racism,
sexism, colonialism, casteism, etc.
It is necessary to understand this overall historical context in order to comprehend the contours of the
theory of identity politics and that is why it was imperative a present a very brief account of the political
developments between the 1960s and 1990s.
Identity and Social Oppression
Let us begin from the beginning. The question that must be asked at the outset is: what is identity? The
question can be answered in many ways, but to answer it in the simplest form, identity is a sense of
belonging to a particular group based on the difference that is constituted by physical a ributes (like
gender or race), geographical a ributes, or socially-constructed or ossified a ributes like caste, religion,
ethnicity, etc. or a mix of these. It is essential to understand that the difference based on the physical or
geographical a ributes do not in themselves and by themselves constitute a social antagonism and
therefore a root of social oppression. These differences became the basis of identity-based social
oppression at a particular moment of history. For instance, sexual difference became the basis of
oppression of women only with the emergence of surplus production, private property, emergence of
class divisions, need of determining a definite line of inheritance, and the beginning of monogamous
heterosexual family and patriarchy. Therefore, the oppression of women has a history. Of course, the
oppression of women assumed different forms under different social formations as it was co-opted, re-
adjusted and re-moulded according to the new relations of production and reproduction of life.
However, this much is certain and can be historically proven that the oppression of women began at a
definite stage of development of human society and the sexual difference does not automatically lead to
oppression of women. The same goes for other forms of social oppression based on difference
constituted by physical a ributes, like race. If we look at the origin of racism, it becomes clear that
racism too has a history and racial difference became the basis of social oppression only at a particular
juncture of history. It came into being as an ideology to justify the enslavement of blacks by Europeans
and early-European se lers in America. Thus, the identities based on difference constituted by
physical a ributes become the site of social oppression only in the moment of class exploitation and
oppression. In other words, it is class antagonism that leads to the emergence of these special forms
of social oppression.
Similarly, the difference based on socially-constructed or ossified a ributes, like caste, were constituted
by the very process of class formation. Varna/caste division came into existence in the North-Western
part of the Indian subcontinent in the la er part of the Early Vedic Period (1700 BC – 1000 BC) around
th th
11 c. BC to 10 c. BC. It originated in a society under transition from nomadic pastoralism to
agriculturalism. The varna divisions at their point of origin represented the labour division and
embryonic class division of the late-Early Vedic society, undergoing the transition to agricultural
civilization. In other words, varna divisions were the class divisions of the late-Early Vedic society. They
became a socially-constructed identity only with a religious-ritualistic ossification of this labour division
by the ideologues of the emerging ruling class, the Brahmins. Every ruling class undertakes the task of
constructing an ideological justification for its rule. In the context of the late-Early Vedic society, this
legitimation took a peculiar form – religious-ritualistic ossification, or codification of the labour division
of a particular period into religious scriptures. This, on the one hand, provided a “divine aura” to the
class division and the rule of the ruling class and, on the other, ossified/fossilized the labour division of a
particular period. In this process, varna/caste became a socially-constructed identity and, rather than of
overlapping, a relationship of correspondence developed between class and caste. Caste relations were
relatively less dynamic and relatively autonomous from class relations; however, their dynamic was also
constrained by changing class relations. That is why, temporally as well as spatially, one can witness
significant variations in the varna/caste system, which is due to the different class structures of different
periods or different regions. In this way, caste became an identity. As we can see, this identity was
socially-constructed in the framework of the class dynamics of the late-Early Vedic period, when class,
state and patriarchy were emerging. We cannot go into the details of this process (interested readers can
refer to my paper on history of caste here:
h ps://redpolemique.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/historiography-of-caste-some-critical-observations-and-
some-methodological-interventions/ (h ps://redpolemique.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/historiography-
of-caste-some-critical-observations-and-some-methodological-interventions/)), however, this much is
certain, the socially-constructed social difference which later became an identity and site of social
oppression, was constructed at the site of class struggle.
There is another kind of identity that is based on the life-style choices of individuals. The transwomen or
transmen are examples of such chosen identities. It is noteworthy that even the transmen or transwomen
face social oppression due to the set standards of family and sexuality, which are essential for capitalism.
The heterosexual monogamous family helps capitalist to ‘privatize’ the time, labour and money costs of
reproduction of cheap labour-power. Any kind of sexually-deviant behaviour is seen as a threat to this
family structure, which is essential for capitalism for reasons pertaining to its class domination. As a
result, the capitalist system perpetuates oppression of the transgender people in formal and informal
ways through innumerable channels, in a systematic fashion. Evidently, such identities too, become a
source of social oppression only in a particular class framework.
In short, we can say that identity becomes a site of social oppression only because of class antagonism, or, all forms
of social oppression have a history and they are caused by class antagonism. Not understanding this would
tantamount to etherealization and eternalization of identity-based social oppressions and will lead to a deep sense of
pessimism.
Second point to understand is that once difference becomes the basis of identity-based oppression, it
assumes a relative autonomy and reacts back upon the dynamics of class exploitation and oppression,
though in the final instance, they are determined and constrained by class. Social oppression and
ideologies of social oppression come into being because of class exploitation and oppression and because
of the needs of the ruling class; but they percolate among the masses for a variety of reasons including
the illusory sense of supremacy promoted by the ruling classes among certain sections of the working
masses, the construction of an ‘imaginary enemy’ to deflect the anger of the masses from the real cause
of their hardships, dividing the people in order to conquer them, etc. The ruling classes are able to do all
this because they have control over the means of mental production too and therefore their ideas become
hegemonic in the society, including the working masses. Thus, a process of ‘othering’ is inherent in the
construction of antagonistic identities. These identities are not based principally on what their members
have in common. Members of an identity generally do not have much in common except not being ‘the
other’.
Third important characteristic feature of identity is that every individual in a class society has many
identities based on their race, caste, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, etc. Unless and until we are told that we
cannot belong to multiple identities simultaneously, it comes naturally to us that we have multiple
identities, none having primacy over the other. Usually people do not have any problem with that,
rather, they do not even bother about it until and unless they are asked about it. For instance, before the
rise of identity politics, most of the Americans, 54 percent to be precise, were either unable or unwilling
to answer questions about their ethnicity. However, between 1960 and 1990, the number of Americans
reporting themselves as American Indians/Native Americans quadrupled from half million to two
million, an increase which is far more than could be explained by normal demography. It only shows
that identity politics does not come naturally to people. It becomes an issue only when it becomes a site
of oppression and therefore a site of resistance and consequently a site of politics.
Fourth important basic feature of identity is that it is not fixed. They shift, mutate and can change. For
instance, many non-ethnic groups suddenly assumed an ethnic identity like the Southern Christian
Baptist Church under Martin Luther King; or the 6 million Mahars who constituted a new religious
identity after converting to Buddhism.
Fifth identifying feature of identity is that it depends on the historical context of its construction. For
instance, Eric Hobsbawm talks about the case of a Protestant professor who was expert of German
Classical literature in Berlin. After the rise of the Nazis to power, he suddenly discovered that he was a
Jew! Not only him, many protestants discovered that according to the new standards set by the Nazis,
they were Jews and they were either ghe oized or fled Germany.
In sum, it is essential to understand that differences (natural or socially-constructed) that constitute an identity
does not give rise to special forms of social oppression by themselves. Identity becomes a site of social oppression
only within the framework of class; moreover, the identities are not fixed, but mutate and change and the reason for
this mutation too, is changes in the political and social class struggle; identities and their expressions also change
with changing political and historical contexts. If we do not take into consideration the historicity of identity, we
would not be able to understand their contemporaneity. The result will be reification of identities, their fetishization
and their uncritical celebration.
Identity Politics, or, The Politics of Depoliticization
Identity politics today is an ensemble of different theories. However, the basic tenets of identity politics
shared by all these theories can be summarized fairly well. Identity politics claims that only those who
experience a particular type of social oppression, can understand and fight against it and all others are
part of the problem or benefit from it, even if at the unconscious level. The second basic argument of
identity politics is that various forms of social oppression based on identities are autonomous and
independent social antagonisms. Consequently, all these autonomous and independent spheres of
oppression demand autonomous and independent struggles, comprised of those who face those
particular forms of oppression, because vis-à-vis each particular form of oppression, all others are
beneficiaries, privileged, etc. Therefore, identity politics emphasizes that there should be an independent
and autonomous movement of each oppressed section of society, it should be led by the people from
that oppressed section itself and it should be independent and autonomous from other particular
struggles against oppression and also class struggle against class-based exploitation and oppression.
Another characteristic of identity politics is that, with it, social oppression becomes a subjective entity
rather than an objective material reality. The very notion of oppression inherent in identity politics is
based on the self-experience of the oppressed. This notion is self-referential, self-defined and subjective.
The result is an idealist understanding of oppression rather than a materialist and historical
understanding. The most important questions are not asked or are even prohibited: how and why did
various special identity-based oppressions came into existence? How did they evolve through history?
In identity politics, identity-based oppression becomes a mere discourse and comes to depend upon the
self-experience of the oppressed. This makes oppression a subjective and relative thing, rather than an
objective and structural relationship of subordination and domination. That why the panacea suggested
is change in one’s self, as Patricia Hill Collins said. For instance, the “anti-oppression training”, “self-
awareness”, “creating safe spaces”, “to learn to speak in non-oppressive language”, etc. This reminds me
of Marx’s remark on such subjectivist understanding where he says that for the broad masses of working
people to rise from their knees, “it is not enough to do so in thought and to leave hanging over one’s real
sensuously perceptible head the real sensuously perceptible yoke that cannot be subtlized away with ideas.” (The
Holy Family)
One important sub-category of identity politics is Privilege Theory. This theory focuses on personal
relationships as the basis of understanding of oppression. The emphasis here is more on the beneficiaries
of oppression, rather than the oppressed themselves. ‘Privilege’ here refers to the ‘unearned benefits’
that a group of people enjoys because of its particular identity. For instance, a privilege that a white
person enjoys due to being white, or a savarna enjoyed due to being savarna, and so on. The beneficiary
might be unaware of these privileges and they might function at the level of the unconscious. That is
why, the privilege theorists focus so much on making the beneficiaries ‘aware of their privilege’, ‘making
the privilege visible’, etc. Peggy McIntosh, a privilege theorist has identified 46 areas of social life where
she enjoys the privilege of being white and compares this privilege with a ‘knapsack without weight’. If
we get to the bo om of her description we find that these are expressions of racism in the social life.
Identifying the ways in which racism functions in social life is only the recording and collection of facts.
It is observable to naked eye that men get higher wages than women, white people or savarna people are
less likely to be harassed by the Police as compared to the blacks or Dalits. A mere recording of this reality
does not tell us anything about how and why these forms of oppression came into being. Was it there from
eternity? Or does it have a history? Does it belong to the reign of subjective experiences or is it rooted in
the material objective reality of social relationships? As Marx had noted long ago, “All science would be
superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincide.” Privilege theory, like
all other strands of identity politics, does not go beyond seeing and recording the apparent reality and in
this sense are subjectivist positivism. Privilege theory argues that since men are beneficiaries of oppression
of women, they cannot and would not fight against the oppression. As we can see, the basic premise of
this theory is deeply pessimistic and disarming. It reifies each oppressed section and fetishizes it.
Individuals enjoying privileges cannot rise above their benefits and prejudices owing to their social
position. Thus, they are denied any political autonomy because identity replaces politics. Thus, the only
option left to them is to become “sensitized”, “self-aware”, etc. Besides, this view of oppression and
‘privilege’ makes the very notion of oppression very ambiguous. Since the notion of oppression itself is
based on subjective experiences, anything can be defined as oppression or ‘privilege’. Thus, the
Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois has listed a number of forms of privilege that should be
checked, including ‘body size privilege’, ‘life on the outside privilege’, ‘passing as white privilege’, etc.
The amusing thing is that most of the privilege theorists are themselves highly privileged and belong to
the university academia. Their privilege flows from their class position in the society, however, this fact
is never recognized by them, whereas the fact is that it is the bourgeoisie and the higher echelons of
pe y-bourgeoisie which are the most privileged sections of society, even when they belong to an
oppressed identity. This privilege stems from their access to and monopoly of material resources and
also their access to the privileged conclave of the university, where most of these theories are churned
out.
Another strand of identity politics is Intersectionality theory. In our part of the world, a joke was going
around when Hillary Clinton was running her presidential campaign and was expected to win the
elections. A guy from the US says to a guy from West Asia, “Thanks to the beauty of democracy, first we
had our first black president, and now we are going to have our first woman president; now, what do
you call it?” The guy from West Asia responds, “intersectional imperialism!” This joke succinctly sums
up the core of intersectionality theory. From time immemorial human beings have known that they have
multiple identities and based on this there is an “intersection” between the forms of social oppression
that they face. Claiming novelty on the basis of making this argument, is like inventing the wheel all
over again and then exclaiming, “Eureka, Eureka!” The theories of intersectionality emerged with the
black feminist thought. Later, these theories were systematized by Kimberle Crenshaw and more
importantly Patricia Hill Collins. Hill argued that the intersection of different forms of oppression does
not create an “additive” impact but lead to a new form of experience of oppression. This theory does not
have any analytical power, but only descriptive power. This too, does not go beyond describing the apparent
reality. Of course, a good description makes our knowledge more nuanced, but by itself, even the best
description can only be a placebo for a real materialist and historical analysis. Despite intersectionality of
different forms of social oppression, the struggle against each form of social oppression would be
autonomous and independent from each other, because even when different social oppressions intersect
each other, they do not have a causal relationship and are autonomous from each other. Therefore, there
can be at best temporary aggregative unity of struggles against different forms of oppression. The
fetishization of the fact of intersectionality among different forms of social oppression and between
social oppressions and class-based exploitation and oppression, prevents us from undertaking a rigorous
analysis of how exploitation and special oppressions articulate, how class antagonism leads different
identities to become sites of social oppression. There is no historical and scientific analysis of the
overlapping and intersection of different forms of social oppression and class exploitation. The reality is
that different forms of social oppression exist and intersect in the moment of class, which is not a
separate identity (we will come to this point later).
Identity politics is also characterized by its fetish for political correctness and logic of tolerance. There is
immense emphasis on using the ‘politically correct language’ in order not to be oppressive. This fetish
exacts a heavy price by replacing the real material fight against oppression with a kind of linguistic
fundamentalism that is out-and-out elitist and exclusivist. Most of common people with no access to
university education do not know about this linguistic political correctness and use the ‘politically
incorrect’ language. Consequently, they become the enemy. In fact, the ability to know and use the
‘politically correct’ language itself is a privilege! Moreover, since the very notion of oppression is
subjectivized, ‘culturalized’ and considered as a discourse rather than an objective reality, another logic
put forward by identity politics is the logic of tolerance. The problems of racism, casteism, sexism
become the problem of tolerance and intolerance. The logic of linguistic correctness and tolerance
becomes an ersa for struggle for real material change in the material situation. Such a logic creates a
buffer-zone of political correctness between the oppressed people, between individuals, and between
movements and precludes any possibility of real and organic solidarity. In this sense, the logic of
political correctness and tolerance is actually anti-solidarity.
Another characteristic feature of identity politics, which flows from above-mentioned characteristic
features is depoliticization. Since oppression becomes a subjective, self-defined, self-referential thing
rather than an objective material reality, since the location of oppression is in inter-personal relationships
and since all identity-based oppressions are autonomous and independent, the political struggle against
the entire system and the state is replaced by personal struggle, life-style changes, the struggle for
recognition, representation and accommodation. Thus, the state is out of the dock! Even, the bourgeois
liberal state can be an ally in a number of struggles, since the issue at stake now is not overthrowing the
entire capitalist system and the capitalist state, but recognition, representation and accommodation. Of
course, the capitalist class and state welcome this logic! The politics of Catherine Mackinnon is a
representative example of the disastrous results of such a politics.
In sum, identity politics believes that (i) only those who experience a particular form of identity-based
social oppression can understand and fight against it; (ii) different forms of social oppression are
autonomous and independent from each other; (iii) therefore, to fight against different forms of
autonomous and independent social oppressions, different autonomous and independent struggles are
needed; (iv) those who benefit from any form of oppression, even if unconsciously, cannot become a part
of struggle against it and the maximum they can do is become “self-aware” and “sensitized” from anti-
oppression training, etc; (v) different forms of oppression intersect each other and give rise to new types
of experience of oppression but still they are autonomous from each other and require different
struggles; (vi) even when the different anti-oppression struggles form fronts, they are aggregative fronts
and they still remain autonomous from each other; (vii) the source of oppression is identity itself and
therefore it is constituted by the subjective experience of the oppressed, in other words, oppression is
self-defined, self-referential and subjective, rather than an objective social relationship rooted in the
overall exploitative and oppressive system of capitalism; (viii) such a notion automatically absolves the
capitalist class and state from any culpability and consequently the struggle for revolutionary political
and social transformation is replaced by separate struggles of different identities for recognition,
representation and accommodation or even not raising any demand to the state and retreat to the sphere
of the personal in the form of life-style changes, anti-oppression training, “safe spaces”, etc; (ix) class
itself is an identity and the oppression based on the identity of class is manifested in “classism”,
“snobbery”, etc.; (x) no identity, including class, has any primacy over the others.
As we can see, such a politics of depoliticization can only lead to endless and continuous
fragmentation of movements. The reason is identity politics is based on methodological
individualism, subjectivism and solipsism. The empirical evidence proves this. All the movements
against different forms of social oppression that came into existence in the 1960s in the developed world,
like the feminist movement, the gay movement, the black liberation movement (though to a lesser
extent), the Dalit movement in India ended up into innumerable fragments. The organizational
anarchism (in the name of non-hierarchical structure) of these movements contributed to this process of
fragmentation. The reason is that the basic logic of identity politics is reification and uncritical
celebration of fragments. Such a logic can only lead to this result.
Now let us move to the philosophical and theoretical roots of identity politics in order to understand the
theoretical foundation of the notions of identity politics.
Theoretical Foundations of Identity Politics
“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
-Shakespeare (Macbeth)
The theoretical foundations of identity politics come mainly from two interrelated sources: the
Foucauldian Postmodernism and the Post-Marxist thought of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Let us
first discuss the first source, that is, Michel Foucault’s Postmodernist theories.
Foucault is one of the high priests of Postmodernism and is especially known for his works on madness,
crime, punishment and his critique of Enlightenment modernity. One of the most important
philosophical sources of Foucault is Nie sche, known for his critique of Enlightenment modernity and
his anti-humanism. We cannot deal with entire Foucauldian theory here. Here Foucault’s concept of
Power is most relevant which informs most of identity politics. Foucault argues that Power is decentred
and everywhere. It is not held by a ruling class or its state. It is distributed throughout the society.
Rather than being unitary, Power is a multiplicity of specific and localized relationships that infiltrate
and percolate the entire social body. Moreover, Power is impersonal and is not held by a particular
individual or collective, but it is constituted by a combination of localized discourses, institutions,
tactics, practices, etc. in accordance with the dominant apparatus of Power-knowledge. Every power-
relationship creates its own forms of knowledge, which in turn presupposes a particular kind of power-
relationship. Secondly, power is not simply repressive, but it is productive. It does not function by
repressing people but by constituting them as subjects. Wherever there is power, there is resistance.
However, since power itself is dispersed and localized, the resistance also has multiple autonomous
points.
The second important tenet of Foucauldian theory is his rejection of any theory of subject. In fact, and
Foucault accepted it, he takes the challenge to the theory of subject beyond Althusser or Levi-Strauss.
Foucault argues that it is Power that constitutes the subject, which then becomes its carrier. Now, if the
subject is constituted by Power and is its carrier, then it can resist Power only when allowed by Power!
At the same time, Foucault says that wherever there is Power, there is resistance. Then what is the source
of this resistance? The particular examples of resistance that Foucault discusses reveal his
instrumentalist and functionalist understanding of resistance as something which allows Power-
knowledge apparatus to change and restructure itself. Obviously, this tenet is in contradiction with the
first characteristic that we discussed. But such contradictions abound in Foucault.
Thirdly, Foucault critiques the very notion of objective knowledge and science. For him, knowledge is
subjective and constantly changes according to the changing apparatus of power-knowledge. The very
notion of scientific knowledge, universality, generalization is rejected as part of the domination project
of the Enlightenment modernity and Marxism is implicated as a part of it. Foucault’s notion of
knowledge somehow relates to the relativism of Nie sche’s notion of knowledge, according to which
every knowledge is judged according to the particular will to power which it embodies. However, this
creates a contradiction again. Because if every knowledge is based on some will to power, what can be
the vantage point of Foucault’s theory? Which will to power does it represent against which it can be
scrutinized? Anyhow, according to Foucault, Marxism also is based on the notion of ‘totality’,
characteristic of the power-knowledge apparatus that came into existence as the result of the
Enlightenment modernity and scientific reason. With its totalizing stress on class struggle, Marxism fails
to address the need of multiple points of resistance to oppose multiplicity of oppressions. That is why,
Foucault saw May 1968 as a thoroughly anti-Marxist event. Such a critique of the notion of universality
and totality, taken to its logical culmination, was bound to reject any idea of collective resistance,
because every collective is formed on some sort of generalization based on a notion of totality. Therefore,
every collective resistance is bound to lead to an oppressive structure. Therefore, the only site of
resistance that we are left with is individual and personal relationships.
These are some of the basic foundations of Foucauldian theory which became the guiding light of
identity politics.
The other and immediately more important theoretical source for identity politics was the Post-Marxism
of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, which was deeply influenced from Postmodernism. The
publication of their work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy can be considered as the inauguration of Post-
Marxist thought. We have already described the global political climate of the period from the late-1960s
to the 1980s. It was in this context of historical defeat, retreat of the working-class movement, the rise of
revisionism in the USSR and then in China, the revisionist betrayal of a number of European communist
parties, the pathological response of the radical progressive intelligentsia of Europe to this reversal and
betrayal, rise of movementism and the search for “something more radical than Marxism”; that this book
was published. It soon assumed, along with the writings of Foucault and other Postmodernists, the
status of a classic among the pe y-bourgeois intelligentsia of the Western world.
In this work, they argue that the collapse of socialism in the USSR and then in Eastern Europe,
Campuchia, etc. was due to essential lacunae of Marxism. They argued that the whole analysis of
Marxism is based on the idea of ‘totality’ and ‘universal’. These ideas, according to Laclau and Mouffe
are insufficient to understand the society. They reject the emphasis of Marxism on class analysis and
class struggle, which for them is a narrative based on totality. For them, the society is constituted by
many ‘partial discourses’ of social relationships. The authors here follow the Postmodernist idea that
there is no such thing as ‘universal’ or a ‘totality’. The impact of Althusser is unmistakable here, who in
his project of refutation of economism, went so far as to claim that society is constituted by many
autonomous structures, social, political, ideological and economic with their own autonomous
movement and these structures do not have a direct causal relationship, but a conjunctural relationship.
The economic structure plays a determining role only in the ‘last instance’ which never comes. The
second Althusserian idea which has a partial influence on the Post-Marxist theories is the idea of history
as a process ‘without a subject’.
Laclau and Mouffe under the multiplicity of influences conclude that society is not constituted as a
totality of economic, social and political relationships, as a socio-economic and political whole, but is a
‘field of criss-cross of different antagonisms’ in which class struggle is just another antagonism and does
not have any primacy over other antagonisms or any determining role. The concept of state that follows
from such an understanding is very obvious: the state too, is an autonomous and independent body
from class. It is not simply an instrument of domination because power itself is dispersed and decentred.
Therefore, there is not one struggle against the state but a multiplicity of struggles against a multiplicity
of social oppressions. These multiple antagonisms do not constitute a ‘diversification’ but a ‘diversity’
from which we cannot be led back to a point of totality. Consequently, either there is no need to put
demands in front of the state, or at most the demands for recognition, representation and
accommodation in front of the state that does not represent any class: a liberal state above classes. At
worst, such “struggles” take place only in the personal sphere and are limited to life-style changes, self-
awareness, creating “safe spaces”, anti-oppression training, etc. The state is effectively absolved and can
even become an ally in case of particular anti-oppression struggles.
Laclau and Mouffe argue that the working class does not have any historical consciousness stemming
from the lack of access to ownership of the means of production and commodification of their labour-
power, on the basis of which it can be considered the ‘productive’ revolutionary agent. Instead, there are
multiple ‘subject positions’ based on the multiplicity of oppression. Since there are no historical objective
class interests, there are no ‘privileged’ subject positions and therefore the working class cannot be
considered a revolutionary agent.
Once causality in social relationships is abandoned, history becomes a series of contingencies and
accidents, a free-floating set of criss-cross of totally autonomous antagonisms with no root in any
primary source of exploitation and oppression. Each particular form of oppression is reified,
dehistoricized and fetishized and becomes the result of ‘an ensemble of social practices, of institutions,
and discourses’ which produce the subject (women, blacks, Dalits, etc). Thus, a kind of phenomenalist
and impressionistic understanding of oppression is presented, where the very notion of oppression
becomes self-referential, subjective and self-defined, having no basis in the real social relations of
production and reproduction of life.
Laclau and Mouffe go even further and claim that any relation of subordination does not by itself
constitute a relationship of oppression. It does so only when it is consciously articulated through a
‘discourse’ by the oppressed themselves as a relation of oppression. Thus, ‘slavery’ or ‘serfdom’ are just
relations of subordination and they become relations of oppression only when they are constituted as
such by a ‘discursive discourse’ like the inalienable ‘Rights of Man’, etc. Thus, exploitation and
oppression are not objective and structural social relationships but subjective things based on ‘discursive
discourse’.
Moreover, the notion of oppression is generalized in an anarchist fashion to include the relationship
between the leader and the led even within an organization of the oppressed. Thus, a general ‘anti-
authoritarianism’ is preached in an anarchist fashion. No distinction is made between the authority of
the state institutions based on class exploitation and oppression and coercion on the one hand and the
authority of an elected leadership of a revolutionary or anti-oppression organization, on the other. Who
and why wields the authority is immaterial in this notion. Needless to say, such a theory will lead to an
organizational line that would either lead to continuous fragmentation or will make the organization a
debating club or society. A part of this line of argumentation is also the rejection of the very notion of a
vanguard party. Since there are no objective historical class interests, there can be no revolutionary party
representing these non-existent interests, and if there is, it is bound to become authoritarian. Some of the
followers of Laclau and Mouffe are even uncomfortable with the idea of a movement based on a ‘grand
narrative’, a ‘grand political program’ because there can be none!
We can easily guess the political prescriptions of such a theory. Since there are multiple autonomous and
independent spheres of oppression, therefore, we need multiple autonomous and independent spheres
of struggles. In other words, the call is for autonomization of struggles. These autonomous struggles, in
the opinion of Laclau and Mouffe, will lead to a ‘new kind of radical politics’ that in turn would lead to a
‘democratic revolution’. This, by them is considered ‘a step forward from Marxism’. The overthrow of
capitalist state with use of force by the proletariat under the leadership of its vanguard is a thing of past
for them because the state itself is not an instrument of class domination but an autonomous and
independent sphere itself. This liberal, pluralistic, democratic state can even become ally in certain
particular struggles against a particular form of oppression. The whole struggle is now not for a
revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and capitalist state, but a struggle for representation and
recognition, at most. The struggle is now against ‘bureaucratization’, ‘homogenization’ implicit in
modern social life. In ‘the great imagery of liberty and equality’, according to our authors, the emphasis
now is on liberty and that is why many struggles are not taking the form of collective struggles against
state, but a kind of ‘armed individualism’.These are the basic tenets of the Post-Marxist theory of Laclau
and Mouffe. As we can see, it is not actually “Post”-Marxist but anti-Marxist. It a acks the revolutionary
core of Marxism-Leninism, that is, the notion of class, class-struggle, class dictatorship, the state, the
party. Along with Foucauldian Postmodernism, the anti-Marxist theories of Laclau and Mouffe form the
theoretical foundation of identity politics.
In India, these theories along with the linguistic turn introduced by Edward Said’s Orientalism found
manifestation in the post-1986 Subaltern Studies. Before that the Subaltern Studies was broadly within the
framework of the British historiographical tradition of ‘history from below’. However, after 1986, when
Spivak and Said wrote preface to a volume of Subaltern Studies, this project of history-writing collapsed
into Postmodernism and post-colonial theory. The basic argument of the Subaltern Studies was simple:
Enlightenment modernity is a project of western domination; this includes all theories based on the
notion of scientific reason, totality, the concept of universal; thus it includes Marxism too; the Indian
Nationalism was a derivative discourse of the western modernity and that is why it was a still-born
project; there is only one alternative, namely, resorting to the spheres and identities which are
uncontaminated by Western modernity and Enlightenment reason; like the domestic sphere of Hindu
family, or the spontaneity of the tribal people, the spontaneous activity of the Subaltern Hindu
communities, etc. This is a very short introduction of the basic logic of Subaltern Studies. Such a logic led
the theories of these Subalternists to objectively lend support Hindutva Fascism and karseva which led to
the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, which was taken as an outburst of subaltern energy! It is not
surprising because we cannot expect anything else from the reification and uncritical celebration of
fragments. The Subaltern Studies was a project which applied Postmodernism in Indian history-writing.
It is largely discredited now, though some of these trenchant critics of western modernity are still
churning out their obscurantist theories in the centres of western modernity and western domination.
The Marxist Understanding
The Marxists without being apologetic claim that their project is universalist. Some Marxists, in the name
of learning from Postmodernism and identity politics, become apologetic about it and begin their
blabbering that their project too, is “pluralistic” acknowledging the multiplicity of oppressions, etc. Such
Marxists end up practising aggregative equationalism. For instance, in India, there are so-called Marxists
who have been trying to strike an equation of Dalits + Muslims + Tribals + Women as the magic formula
to defeat Fascism and neoliberalism! Winning majority is not equal to adding up minorities. The very
idea of non-organic aggregative unity between identities is flawed and it is bound to end up in
frustration, as many ‘eager to learn Marxists’ are slowly learning. Only class can be the basis of an
organic unity between all exploited and oppressed. Let us elaborate why.
First of all, let me refute some ‘common sense’ notions about Marxists, prevalent among the progressive
intelligentsia influenced by identity politics.
Marxists are not opposed to struggles against oppression. They know and understand that multiple
forms of social oppression based on gender, caste, race, sexuality, etc. do exist and Marxists know the
need to fight against these special oppressions. In fact, Marxists globally have been at the forefront of the
struggles against these oppressions. Class-reductionism was never the argument of Marxism,
notwithstanding the economistic deviations that prevailed in the Second International, against which
Lenin fought, and during the period of Stalin in the Bolshevik Party, with which Stalin himself
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continued to grapple. In fact, even in the late-19 century, the Social-Democratic movement of Europe
was in the leadership of all the movements of oppressed sections of society. Social-Democrats were
involved in all struggles against all forms of oppression and exploitation in all countries. In countries
where industrial development was not considerable, and proletariat constituted a small minority in the
th
population in the late-19 century, the Social-Democrats won 30 to 47 percent votes. The reason was
that they were leading not only the working-class movement for its economic demands, but were
leading the political movement of all oppressed and exploited people against capitalism. That is why
Lenin called the Socialist movement as the ‘tribune of the people’ and said, “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 ma er what class is affected – unless they are
trained, moreover to respond from a Social-Democratic point of view and no other.” Similarly, Marx
criticized the British working-class movement for its inability to take a revolutionary position on the
oppression of the Irish people in these words, “This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the
English working-class, despite its organization. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its
power. And that class is fully aware of it.” Therefore, the basic Marxist logic was never ignoring or
downplaying the forms of social oppression but to understand their material history and their causal
link with class antagonism.
Marxists do not say that class is the only form of social division and know that there are other forms of
social division based on identities. Class is not an identity, but a social relation based on production,
which is independent of the subjective experiences of the exploited and oppressed. It is an objective
social relation. When Marxism claims that the role of the working-class was central to the cause of
revolutionary transformation and human emancipation, it was not based on the sectional interests of the
workers, as a section or identity. The trade unions pursued the particular economic interests of the
working-class and that is why the relationship between the party and trade unions was always in a
constant dialectical tension. The logic of communist parties was not like that of the trade unions, while
emphasizing the centrality of the working class as the revolutionary productive agent. The Marxist logic
depends on two things: (i) working-class has a central role as a revolutionary agent in revolution against
capitalism, because capitalism as a mode of production and a socio-economic and political system,
depends on the exploitation of the labour of the working class. The surplus extraction from the working
class through the commodification of the labour-power of the worker and monopoly of the capitalists
over the ownership of the means of production is at the root of the rule of capitalist class and
reproduction of capitalism as a system; without this surplus, the ruling classes would be deprived of
their means of rule as well as their means of subsistence; working-class, therefore, is in a unique position
due to its contradiction with the bourgeoisie, to play the role of productive agent; (ii) the second reason
is that all forms of identity-based social oppression came into existence, evolved through history and
intersect with each other in the moment of class. It is class antagonism that makes identity the site of
social oppression and is articulated with this social oppression. In this articulation, it is the changing
class dynamics which play the determining role ultimately. The political line of the revolutionary
organization must take notice of this articulation of class-based exploitation and oppression and
different forms of social oppression; but it is political line which must take precedence over identity. Due
to these two reasons, it is essential to understand that class is not just another identity based on the
subjective notions of the oppressed; it is a social relation of production that is constituted through the
process of production and reproduction of life. It is an objective relation independent of what one
perceives or not perceives.
When economism hegemonized the communist movement during the period of the Second International
and then during the period of Stalin, who was grappling with this error till the end but could not reach
the solution, the sectional pecuniary interests of the working class became dominant in the working-
class movement. In fact, everywhere in the communist movement, communists have to wage constant
struggle against economism which is bourgeois ideology that infiltrates the ranks of communists.
Wherever the communists fail in this struggle, economism becomes dominant and leads to trade unionism,
anarcho-syndicalism, non-party revolutionism, autonomism, workerism, some of which are a form of
identitarianism themselves. These forms of workers’ identitarianisms ossify the social class into an identity. Such
alien tendencies, wherever they became dominant, disabled the working class from becoming the leader
of the working masses in the revolutionary movement against capitalism. It denied the working class the
chance to become the leader of all exploited and oppressed masses. In India, we have been witnesses to
the disastrous results of this economism since the late-1920s itself and especially during the rise of
Fascism in India. Leaving apart the revisionists, even the revolutionary communists who were active
among working-class could not go beyond militant economism and workerism. Similarly, in Britain, the
militant economism prevalent in the working-class movement antagonized the other sections of the
society to such an extent in the period of crisis that they drifted towards Thatcherite Toryism.
Some Marxists have claimed that it was only due to the economistic mistake of communists that identity
politics became dominant. This is only the part of reality and reducing the whole failure to the subjective
mistake of communists would be subjectivism. It is true that the economism prevalent in the communist
movement contributed to the rise of Postmodernism and Post-Marxism, however, there was a fertile historical
th
context for this. Otherwise, these ideologies could have emerged in the late-19 century itself. In that period too,
economism was active in the communist movement. Therefore, we need to understand the dialectics of subjective
and objective dimensions of the whole historical context in which identity politics emerged and became dominant.
Moreover, some Marxists in the process of refuting class-essentialism and class-reductionism tend to
prove too much and go to the other extreme of de-economizing class. It is true that workerists (operaists)
reified social class and ossified it as an identity and led to what can be termed as workerist
identitarianism. We need to make a distinction between spontaneous workers’ consciousness and
proletarian consciousness which is constituted through constant political struggles. The former is only
potentially progressive and prone to hegemonization by an ensemble of bourgeois and pe y-bourgeois
ideologies. However, it is the social class of workers that is historically at a vantage point to internalize
proletarian consciousness through political struggles. Otherwise, one would be obliged to argue that any
class can internalize the proletarian consciousness and lead the revolution. It would be divorcing the
political class from the social class. The social class becomes political class through real struggles which first
lead to the constitution of the vanguard, which itself is a result of a particular moment in this process of becoming,
and then develop further under the leadership of the vanguard.
The real Marxist-Leninist project is universal because it does not aim to fight against one or two
particular forms of oppression, though it supports all struggles against oppression. Since it sees all forms
of social oppressions originating and evolving in the moment of class antagonism, which itself is
constantly in motion, it sees the causal links between class exploitation and oppression on the one hand
and all identity-based oppressions on the other. Consequently, it fights against the entire capitalist
system which breeds, sustains, co-opts, re-adjusts, re-structures, moulds and remoulds different forms of
identity-based social oppressions.
Identity politics (Postmodernism and Post-Marxism in practice) reifies, de-historicizes and fetishizes the
fragments, the identities, and uncritically celebrates them. In this way, these identities are also
eternalized and etherealized. They are completely separated from their material history. Consequently,
their notion of social oppression reduced to the multiple autonomous sites of identities, totally divorced
from their material basis, prevents us from comprehending the essence and the inner dynamics of
oppression. Identity politics depoliticizes social oppression by making them a subjective thing and
divorcing it from the capitalist system and state. In this way, the state is absolved and all anti-oppression
struggles are reduced to the sphere of inter-personal relations, like anti-oppression training, creating
safe-spaces, becoming self-aware, etc. The state would not only welcome it but might even help in this!
In fact, almost all the NGOs involved in such activism are ge ing funds from governments of imperialist
countries and imperialist funding agencies.
If we fail to see the fact that all forms of identity-based social oppression originate, evolve, and intersect
in the moment of class, we cannot devise a revolutionary program for the elimination of all forms of
social oppression. It is only by a historical materialist understanding of the origin and evolution of
different social oppressions that we can see that it is the capitalist system that causes, sustains, co-opts,
re-adjusts all forms of social oppressions and only with this realization can we devise a program for the
revolutionary unity of all exploited and oppressed people for the revolutionary overthrow of the system
that breeds and sustains class exploitation as well as social oppressions. It is class struggle that is the key
link in overthrowing capitalism as an exploitative and oppressive system, not the separate struggles of
multiple identities. A class-based movement against all forms of social oppression is needed. The
demand for autonomy embodies a deep sense of pessimism that the working-class movement cannot
fight against various forms of oppression and even the acceptance that even all oppressed cannot unite.
The very logic of identity politics is ‘othering’, autonomy, isolation. This precludes any possibility of
building a broad-based movement that can lead to the end of oppression. Only class provides a basis
that can unify all oppressed and exploited and build a movement that has the potential to overthrow
capitalism and thus all forms of oppression and exploitation. Even the working-class cannot succeed if it
does not unite with all oppressed people in their fight for liberation. However, this is not an aggregative and
coalitionist unity, but an organic unity along class lines. A socialist revolution will lead to the liberation of all
women, but all women do not fight for the socialist revolution against capitalist system. As Alexandra
Kollontai said in The Social Basis of Woman Question, “The women’s world is divided, just the world of
men, into two camps: the interest and aspirations of the one group bring it close to the bourgeois class,
while the other group has close connections to the proletariat, and its claim for liberation encompass a
full solution to the woman question. Thus, although both camps follow the general slogan of the
‘liberation of women’, their aims and interests are different.”
Summing up the revolutionary Marxist position, it can be said that Marxism believes that production
and reproduction of human life forms the foundation of society. The class struggle is the driving force of
history and various forms of social oppression come into existence, evolve, overlap and intersect in the
framework of class antagonisms and are articulated with class struggle. In this articulation, class
dynamics plays the dominant role in the last instance. Marxism shows that various special forms of
oppression came into existence at different moments of the evolution of the class society. For instance,
women oppression came into existence with the evolution of private property, monogamous family,
class and state; similarly, caste came into existence with the religious-ritualistic ossification and
codification of the embryonic class division of late-Early Vedic Period. Racism on the other hand came
into existence with the emergence of capitalism and modern slavery. Capitalism has co-opted women
oppression and caste-based oppression by re-adjusting and restructuring them according to its own class
framework. Today, it is capitalism which causes, sustains and co-opts all forms of social oppression and
therefore is the root cause of class-based exploitation and oppression as well as all forms of identity-
based oppressions. Working-class is the revolutionary productive agent because capitalism as a system
depends on the exploitation of labour of the working-class, without which it cannot reproduce itself.
Since the existence and reproduction of capitalism depends on the working-class, it is in a unique
position in relation to capitalism and as far as revolutionary transformation is concerned. Class unity
across identities to fight against exploitation and all forms of social oppression is the only revolutionary
way to end all forms of oppression. Working-class as revolutionary agent is not a given or foregone
conclusion for Marxists, but a real potential. Capitalism compels workers to organize and fight against
capitalism, but it also divides and disorganizes them by obliging them to compete with one another in
the labour market. This competition among workers creates the ground for growth of ‘false
consciousness’ amongst them, that is, the influence of bourgeois ideologies of racism, casteism, etc
amongst them. It is an empirically proven fact that racism, xenophobia, casteism, misogyny often soar in
the periods of economic crisis. In India’s post-independence history, it can be shown with fair amount of
preciseness, be it the Ram Janmabhoomi Movement of the 1980s, the Mandal Movement of 1990s, or the
Maratha, Jat and Patel agitations for reservation in the 2000s and 2010s. All of these periods witnessed
serious economic crises. At the same time, it can be shown that such ideologies become, at least, less
effective in the periods of intensification of class struggle, especially under a correct political line and
leadership. The transformation of the objective potential (class-in-itself) into subjective agency (class-for-itself) is
a historical process which requires intervention of revolutionary organization in political struggles, which itself
emerges at a definite moment in the process of becoming of the spontaneous working-class consciousness into
proletarian political consciousness.
Who is the Enemy?
To answer this question, we need to answer who benefits from social oppression. The privilege theorists
would argue that vis-à-vis every particular form of social oppression and its victims, all the others are
beneficiaries and are complicit in this oppression and therefore they are the enemy. However, it can be
shown with fairly conclusive evidence that men are not the objective beneficiary of oppression of women,
non-Dalits are not the objective beneficiary of Dalit oppression and Whites are not the objective beneficiary
of racism. That they are affected with the ruling class ideologies of sexism, Brahmanism, and racism is a
different question altogether. The fact that even workers fall prey to ideologies of sexism, racism,
casteism, etc. only shows that the spontaneous consciousness of workers is not automatically and
always-already proletarian and is prone to fall prey to bourgeois ideologies. However, such behaviours are
subjective and vary from individual to individual, unlike the objective interests of the working class as a whole,
which remain the same for all workers.
In India, it can be shown that the oppression of Dalits also makes the working masses among other
castes much more vulnerable to caste-based oppression as well as class exploitation. It can be
demonstrated that wherever the women are oppressed, get less wages, are confined within the ambit of
the household, the male workers also get less wages, are faced with the task of economic sustenance of
the family alone, and the working-class family as a whole is much more vulnerable economically.
Similarly, it can be proven, as the study by Michael Reich shows, that wherever the wages of the Black
workers are depressed, the white workers too get less wages.
The second way in which these ruling class ideologies work against the working masses and in the
benefit of the capitalist ruling class is that it allows the capitalists to over-exploit the oppressed sections
of the society. In India, the average wages of the Dalit workers (89 percent of Dalit population is either
rural or urban worker) is lower than the overall average wage in India. This also creates a downward
pressure on the wages of non-Dalit workers. The result is higher rate of exploitation for the capitalist
class as a whole. Regarding the articulation of class and caste in Indian society, I would like to present
three theses here: (i) Every worker is exploited, but the Dalit worker is over-exploited due to the excess of
vulnerability caused by the particular form of caste-based social oppression that they face; (ii) Every Dalit is
oppressed, but it is working class Dalits who face the most barbaric forms of anti-Dalit atrocities and caste-based
humiliation on account of the excess of vulnerability caused by their class position; and, (iii) the ruling class Dalits
as a class, even when they face anti-Dalit verbal humiliation, do not and would not militantly fight against
casteism as it brings the question of the culpability of the entire capitalist system to the centre eventually, of which
they are beneficiaries as well as functionaries.
Thirdly, such ideologies of the ruling class allow the capitalist class to ‘divide all to conquer each’ in the
words of F. Douglous. The clearest example was the recent movement of Marathas for reservation in
Maharashtra. Recent years have seen unprecedented rate of unemployment in India; at the same time,
capitalist development in agriculture has led to the ruination of a huge number of marginal and small
peasants in Maharashtra and other parts of India. This has created a situation of extreme social and
economic uncertainty and insecurity for working masses, giving rise to demands for reservation of seats
in government jobs and education by a number of peasant castes. The Marathas are one of them. The
reality is that 200 elite Maratha capitalist families control most of sugar mills, huge farms, factories and
government posts in Maharashtra. The huge bulk of working masses among Marathas are deprived of
all opportunities due to this Maratha ruling class. To blunt this increasing class contradiction, the
Maratha ruling class fanned the flares of casteism among the Maratha working masses by arguing that it
is the Dalits who are taking away the job opportunities of Marathas due to reservation. The immediate
incident of rape of a Maratha girl, in which the accused were from Dalit background, sparked off huge
Maratha Marches all across Maharashtra demanding either the end of reservation for Dalits or
reservation for the Marathas in government jobs and education. This is how the ruling classes use the
casteist ideology in dividing the masses, whenever there is an economic crisis, threatening to become a
political crisis. The class contradictions are misarticulated as caste contradictions by the political leaders and
ideologues of the ruling class. To be more accurate, whenever class contradictions do not find correct political
articulation they are misarticulated as caste, race, or gender-based contradiction by the ideologues and politicians of
the ruling class. The same thing happened with the Jim Crow segregation laws: the result was that the
blacks as well as white workers lost, whereas the ruling class benefi ed. Similarly, the oppression of
women and confining women within the ambits of household, allows the capitalist class to ‘privatize’
the costs of reproduction of cheap labour-power, in time and money, that it desperately needs. Even
when a section of women become part of work-force, their wages are depressed due to their primary
function of reproduction and child-rearing. And finally, the onus of being breadwinner falls completely
on the male, which creates the fear of being unable to provide for the family. All of this objectively
benefits the capitalist class. Working-class as a whole does not have any objective interest in any form of
identity-based oppression.
Contrary to the claims of identity politics which believes the enemy to be ‘white male power structure’,
or ‘white male heterosexual power structure’ or ‘Brahmanical Manusmriti’, it is the capitalist class which
is the common enemy for all oppressed and all exploited. A sizeable (almost 9-10 percent) Dalit
population has become the part of capitalist power structure in India; they do not have anything
common with the immense majority of Dalit working masses, who face the worst forms of casteist
atrocities. Their only complaint is that despite rising the economic and political ladder, they are not
treated as socially equals by their savarna counterparts in the bureaucracy or high government jobs.
They never agitate on the question of anti-Dalit atrocities, but raise a lot of hulabaloo for purely symbolic
issues like changing the name of some university to the name of Ambedkar or some other anti-caste
symbol. Obviously, it is their right to demand it. However, if their entire political activism is limited to
this hollow symbolism, while they maintain a conspiracy of silence on the most heinous anti-Dalit
crimes, then serious questions about their loyalty emerge. The truth is that this small Dalit section of the
ruling class is much more strongly linked with the system and therefore except paying lip-service to the
cause of equality, does not do anything for the cause of liberation of all Dalits. The same goes for a small
Black ruling class. The class-based anti-caste movement will also fight against the issues of caste-based
humiliation of, for example someone like Mayawati, as a part of struggle against the casteist ideology.
However, the focus of class-based anti-caste movement will be struggle against the anti-Dalit atrocities
and humiliations faced by 90 percent of Dalit working masses. In nutshell, the small ruling class that has
come into existence in all oppressed identities does not share anything with the immense majority of the
oppressed and exploited working masses belonging to these identities. From the example of Mayawati and
Ramdas Athawale to Obama and Hillary, it is clearly visible, if we leave apart the ridiculous logic that the Dalits
“feel empowered” when Mayawati became the chief minister of U ar Pradesh; the truth is that this feeling of
“empowerment” is illusory and elusive for 90 percent of working class Dalits.
Conclusion
Whenever the ruling class ideologies like racism, casteism, sexism, become dominant it is the working
class in particular and working masses in general that lose and the capitalist class which benefits. The
vice-versa is equally true. We saw how casteism, racism, sexism etc. serves the interests of the
bourgeoisie. However, these ideologies are not crafted in a planned fashion by the bourgeoisie. They have a
relative autonomy from the economic base but are also constrained by it. They are formed in generations
according to the class interests of the ruling class, by the ideologues of the ruling class, but in a very
complex dialectics of the objective and the subjective. These ideologies continue to exist even after the
economic base that they originally served is gone, and are co-opted and remoulded by new economic
base, if not eliminated in a gradual process.
The only way to fight against the influence of these ruling class ideologies among the working class is through real
political struggles. It is only in unified struggles against the system that breeds exploitation and all forms
of social oppression, that the working masses can fight against racism, sexism, casteism etc. As Marx
said, “The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that
circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must,
therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of
circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as
revolutionary practice.” Ruling class ideologies and backward ideas can only be challenged and fought
against in the process of unified, broad-based mass struggles against the entire system based on
exploitation and oppression. When people come to fight against any social oppression or exploitation,
they come with an ensemble of ideas, some of which are progressive, others reactionary and still others
confused. It is only in the process of struggle that people understand how capitalism utilizes the forms of
social oppression, identity politics, their own prejudices, and how capitalism as a system functions. It is
only through this understanding that they can fight against these ruling class ideologies, not by moral
preaching, of “self-awareness”, “sensitization”, “anti-oppression training”, “creating safe spaces”, etc.
Here it is essential to understand the difference between the antagonistic contradictions against the
enemy and the friendly contradictions among the masses in order to handle them correctly.
Finally, it can be said that (i) all forms of identity-based social oppression originate, evolve, overlap and
intersect in the framework of class antagonism; (ii) identity-based social oppressions articulate with class
antagonism in a dialectical fashion; (iii) class struggle plays the ultimately determining role in this
articulation; (iv) the causal link between class-based exploitation and oppression on the one hand and
identity-based social oppressions shows that the root of all forms of oppression and exploitation is class
antagonism; (v) today, it is the capitalist system which causes, sustains, co-opts, re-adjusts, re-structures
and remoulds all forms of social oppression and therefore is the common enemy; (vi) class is not an
identity but an objective material social relation based on production; (vii) in the struggle against
capitalism, the role of the working class is central not because of primacy of its sectional interests, but
because of the unique position it has vis-à-vis capitalism and the bourgeois ruling class; (viii) the
working-class is the revolutionary ‘productive’ agent because the reproduction of capitalism as a system
is based on the exploitation of labour of the working-class; (ix) the working-class cannot become political
in the genuine sense if it does not unite will all oppressed masses; (x) the different socially-oppressed
sections of society cannot liberate themselves without a broad-based revolutionary movement against
capitalism which causes and sustains all forms of social oppression; (xi) the separatist, autonomous and
independent anti-oppression movements cannot liberate the oppressed masses and are doomed to go
through endless fragmentation and splits and retreat to the sphere of the personal life-style changes; (xii)
to end all forms of social oppression as well as class-based exploitation and oppression, a revolutionary
Socialist movement under the leadership of the working-class is necessary; (xiii) even under Socialism,
the various forms of social oppression cannot be eliminated immediately and it will take many cultural
revolutions before the inter-personal disparities can be eliminated and the hegemony of ruling class
ideologies can be decisively broken, through ‘perpetual revolution’ in the sphere of superstructure,
constant development of productive forces and the revolutionization of production relations; (xiv) the
present immediate task for communist revolutionaries is building class-based militant revolutionary
movements against social oppressions, which exposes the capitalist system and brings it to a point of
impossibility and resist the a acks of chauvinists, in every sense of the term.
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One thought on “Marxism and the Question of Identity”
1. Elche says:
S b 1 1 43
September 21, 2018 at 9:43 pm
Hello comrade!
I’m an Iranian political activitist, we have many communism party in Iran.

But many of them struggle together, while son of former king is supported by his father money.
In this situation we want media supports, for example political pressure to west government in order
to reach our party name to ears of people.
There is some information about our party here:
h ps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker-communist_Party_of_Iran
(h ps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker-communist_Party_of_Iran)
Also because of security reasons in iran, it is be er to we are in connection via Telegram:

h ps://t.me/Jw962hj1 (h ps://t.me/Jw962hj1)
Lots thanks to you …
Reply (h ps://redpolemique.wordpress.com/2018/06/21/marxism-and-the-question-of-identity/?
replytocom=351#respond)
Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. (h ps://wordpress.com/?ref=footer_website)

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1/14/2019 Marxism and the Question of Identity | Red Polemique

For A New Revolutionary Praxis…

Marxism and the Question of Identity

June 21, 2018 Red Polemique

Historical Context of the Emergence and Rise of Identity Politics

Identity and Social Oppression

Identity Politics, or, The Politics of Depoliticization

Theoretical Foundations of Identity Politics

The Marxist Understanding

Who is the Enemy?

One thought on “Marxism and the Question of Identity”

I’m an Iranian political activitist, we have many communism party in Iran.

There is some information about our party here:

Also because of security reasons in iran, it is be er to we are in connection via Telegram:

Lots thanks to you …

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. (h ps://wordpress.com/?ref=footer_website)

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