Since the 2016 US presidential election, if not before, a fierce debate has raged on the left in Australia and elsewhere as to the relative weight that should be placed on what is often called ‘identity politics’ as opposed to the politics of class or economics. The former is the progressivism that fights for gay rights, racial justice and gender equality; the latter’s defining interest is ending poverty and all forms of inequality. At its best, identity politics builds election-winning coalitions across diverse groups; at socialism’s best, it articulates a coherent platform that appeals to all. The best people on both sides recognise that this is not an either/or proposition: one can and should advocate for both. But, unfortunately partisans accuse one another of imposing a ‘litmus test’ of ideological purity, of giving one set of interests priority over the other. Much of the debate turns on the political role of ‘working class [white] men’: are they oppressed or oppressor?

My own default position on all this is clear, and my book, “Politics for the New Dark Age” is honest in the “Introduction” that the progressive politics I espouse is not rooted in identity alone. The citizens you’ll encounter across the book's twenty chapters are Rawlsian ciphers, stripped of their differences in order to focus on their shared interests. I also share the observation made in Best of the Left episode #1109 that many political leaders who talk first and foremost about identity-based forms of justice are also the least comfortable discussing real economic change. That said, I am not hostile towards identity politics as a philosophy, and consider Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectional approach essentially correct. Chapter IV of my book discusses the inherent tension between the ideological self and the need for compromises to build dominant coalitions. The question is never one (economic justice) or the other (racial and sexual justice) but “both and”. 

A Second Look

This blog post is an effort to take a second look at the issue. My book avoids the topic of “identity politics” – but what would I say about it if asked to give a more fulsome appreciation? Note that this entry will be about the political philosophy of identity, because as a political practice (to which I'll return at the end), coalition-building amongst groups facing multi-dimensional oppression and building linkages across issues is the best and perhaps only way for progressives to win power.

First of all, let’s talk about what (almost) everyone agrees identity politics is not: identarianism. Identarianism (in all its various manifestations) argues that individuals are defined by their group identity, and that this identity grants them an essential and unchanging set of interests shared with everyone else in their group and no one outside the group. The critique often made by conservatives and anti-democrats about identity politics is that democracy is more or less a competition for payoffs between fixed groups with defined interests. Far-right and particularist groups that are strongly distrustful of others advance this sort of politics, and in a sort of mirror-imaging, imagine that their progressive opponents are doing the same. 

But there’s a kernel of truth to their critique. For example, a mistake that many well-meaning pollsters and social scientists make is to reduce individuals to members of a group category and thereby persuadable in terms of group interests. This allows them to ignore economic and other forms of difference within each category. While such approaches may seem like cost-effective campaigning, it discourages coalition-building across group lines and in my experience had led to some very nasty electoral surprises for its proponents. And in some countries, intra-state violence has broken out when politics has been reduced to precisely this form: when social entrepreneurs activate the salience of group identities and portray politics as a “winner-takes-all” battle for political patronage and the spoils of state power.

Communism makes the same mistake, by treating classes as fixed and historically-invariant social groups. Classes, like other types of groups, may have defined interests and even stories that members of the group tell one another about those interests. What distinguishes group-centric stories from true, universal ideologies is that the satisfaction of group or class interests do not prescribe how to regulate a society that includes other groups. Absent a story about inter-group cooperation, class or group pride becomes the politics of dominance by default when power is obtained over other groups The major step that all democrats and liberals, on both right and left, take to distance themselves from this narrow sort of politics is to see every citizen as a member of a single society, with diverse and complex interests that must be taken into account.

A better sort of politics

The second type of identity politics is one that is unique to progressives, and is rooted in our innate distaste for hierarchy and authority. It is to recognise that some categories of people are structurally advantaged (or ‘privileged’) by society and others are structurally disadvantaged (or ‘oppressed’). Many conservatives will be psychologically incapable of recognising this aspect of identity, since they are pre-disposed to see hierarchial social relations and traditional authority as legitimate. But when socially-constructed categories (including race and gender) are used to systematically and structurally discriminate against identity groups, even classical liberals must admit that the much-vaunted principle of equality of opportunity becomes violated in practice even if not in law.

It’s for these reasons that "straight pride" is not semantically the opposite of "gay pride"; nor "mens rights" a response to feminism; and why “All Lives Matter” is not a valid critique of “Black Lives Matter”. One identity serves as a marker of the need for liberation, the other as a rallying cry for the continuation of the supremacy of the status quo. Identity politics in this sense regards some identities as being structurally empowered over others in ways that are measurable in terms of social outcomes that are universally valid. The debate is over what to do about these differential outcomes. Clearly, some kind of reparative justice is necessary. 

The concern I (and others) have about giving this "identarian liberalism" too much emphasis is that securing mere greater recognition or representation of minorities in a statistical sense is not enough to make a full political program, and can result at worst in tokenism and the strengthening of the existing social order. For example, improving equality of opportunity to ensure greater female representation on corporate boards or having more gay or trans CEOs will not change the fact that authoritarian corporate structures will always disadvantage workers regardless of colour, gender or sexual orientation. Having different viewpoints in power is important, but will forever be limited in impact if the inherent hierarchies of the system which intersect with identity are unchanged.  

Identity Politics as Practice

To my mind, the only way to use “identity politics” productively is as a practice which recognises that everyone has multiple identities, some of which may be oppressed and some privileged, depending on context. Amartya Sen has written that we all wear different hats depending on our current social and cultural environment: we don’t have a single identity but rather a complex matrix of social roles. Rather than focusing exclusively on the sources of our own oppression, we should recognise in solidarity that the alienation of anyone from less than full citizenship affects everyone. We should admit when we are lucky, and recognise that expecting help from others requires offering what support we can for their cause in return.

The purpose of this sort of self-examination is not, as right-wing fantasists insist, to conduct an ‘oppression olympics’ and thereby select the individual or group most deserving of political or economic support. Creating that kind of moral hierarchy is precisely the opposite road to take to reach true equality. Instead, we must all begin to empathise with the sources of oppression and alienation in everyone else’s life and recognise that we all share an interest in the elimination of all forms of hierarchy and discrimination. Thus we (including cis white males such as myself) must recognise that the categorical identity to which we belong is complex. We both benefit and suffer from existing patterns of power simultaneously and that our privileges and suffering interact in complex ways. 

This, I believe, is the foundation of good ‘ally-ship’: to approach others’ claims of alienation from a position of empathy and as an opportunity to learn and improve society as a whole. Rather than strive for the Platonic ideal of oppression and privilege as immanent and transcendent forms, we should start from the position of seeing every individual’s subjective experience as authentic and true. Greater equality for some is no equality at all if others are systematically excluded: only solidarity between races, gender and all other categories of difference can result in truly transformative social liberation.