ZD: How do you understand the role and function of identity politics and multiculturalism, which are currently prevalent in the Western left?
GR: Identity politics, like the multiculturalism affiliated with it, is a contemporary manifestation of the culturalism and essentialism that have long characterized bourgeois ideology. The latter seeks to naturalize social and economic relations that are the consequence of the material history of capitalism. Rather than recognizing, for instance, that racial, national, ethnic, gender, sexual, and other forms of identity are historical constructs that have varied over time and result from specific material forces, these are naturalized and treated as an unquestionable foundation for political constituencies. Such essentialism serves to obscure the material forces operative behind these identities, as well as the class struggles that have been waged around them. This has been particularly useful to the ruling class and its managers as they have been forced to react to the demands of decolonization and of materialist antiracist and antipatriarchal struggles. How better to respond than with an essentializing identity politics that proposes false solutions to very real problems because it never addresses the material basis of colonization, racism, and gender oppression?
The self-proclaimed anti-essentialist versions of identity politics operative in the work of theorists like Judith Butler do not fundamentally break with this ideology.36 In purporting to deconstruct some of these categories by revealing them as discursive constructs that individuals or groups of individuals can question, play with, and re-perform, theorists working within the idealist parameters of deconstruction never provide a materialist and dialectical analysis of the history of the capitalist social relations that have produced these categories as major sites of collective class struggle. They also do not engage in the deep history of actually existing socialism’s fight collectively to transform these relations. Instead, they tend to draw on deconstruction and a practically dehistoricized version of Foucauldian genealogy to think about gender and sexual relations discursively, and they are at best oriented toward a liberal pluralism in which class struggle is replaced by interest-group advocacy.
By contrast, the Marxist tradition—as Domenico Losurdo has demonstrated in his magisterial work Class Struggle—has a profound and rich history of understanding class struggle in the plural. This means that it includes battles over the relationship between genders, nations, races, and economic classes (and, we could add, sexualities). Since these categories have taken on very specific hierarchical forms under capitalism, the best elements of the Marxist heritage have sought to both understand their historical provenance and radically transform them. This can be seen in the longstanding struggle against the domestic slavery imposed upon women, as well as the battle to overcome the imperialist subordination of nations and their racialized peoples. This history has played itself out in fits and starts, of course, and there is still much work to be done, in part because certain strains of Marxism—such as that of the Second International—have been tainted by elements of bourgeois ideology. Nevertheless, as scholars like Losurdo and others have demonstrated with remarkable erudition, the communists have been at the vanguard of these class struggles to overcome patriarchal domination, imperialist subordination, and racism by going to the very roots of these problems: capitalist social relations.
Identity politics, as it has developed in the leading imperialist countries and particularly the United States, has sought to bury this history in order to present itself as a radically new form of consciousness, as if communists had not so much as thought of the woman question or the national/racial question. Theorists of identity politics thus tend to assert arrogantly and benightedly that they are the first ones to address these issues, thereby overcoming an imagined economic determinism on the part of the so-called vulgar reductionist Marxists.37 Instead of recognizing these issues as sites of class struggle, moreover, they tend to use identity politics as a wedge against class politics. If they do make any gesture toward integrating class into their analysis, they generally reduce it to a question of personal identity, rather than a structural property relation. The solutions that they put forth therefore tend to be epiphenomenal, meaning that they focus on issues of representation and symbolism, rather than, for instance, overcoming the labor relations of domestic slavery and racialized superexploitation through a socialist transformation of the socioeconomic order. They are thereby incapable of leading to significant and sustainable change because they do not go to the root of the problem. As Adolph Reed Jr. has often argued with his signature biting wit, identitarians are perfectly happy to maintain extant class relations—including imperialist relations between nations, I would add—on the condition that there is the requisite ratio of representation of oppressed groups within the ruling class and the professional managerial stratum.
In addition to helping displace class politics and analysis within the Western left, identity politics has made a major contribution to dividing the left itself into siloed debates around specific identity issues. Instead of class unity against a common enemy, it divides—and conquers—working and oppressed people by encouraging them to identify first and foremost as members of specific genders, sexualities, races, nations, ethnicities, religious groups, and so forth. In this regard, the ideology of identity politics actually is, at a much deeper level, a class politics. It is the politics of a bourgeoisie aimed at dividing the working and oppressed peoples of the world in order to more easily rule over them. It should come as no surprise, then, that it is the governing politics of the professional managerial class stratum in the imperial core. It dominates its institutions and informational outlets, and it is one of the primary mechanisms for career advancement within what Reed insightfully calls “the diversity industry.” It encourages everyone involved to identify with their specific group and advance their own individual interests by posing as its privileged representative. We should note, moreover, that wokeism also has the effect of driving some people into the arms of the right. If the dominant political culture encourages a clan mentality combined with competitive individualism, then it is unsurprising that white people and men have also—as a partial response to their perceived disenfranchisement by the diversity industry—advanced their particular agendas as “victims” of the system. Identity politics devoid of a class analysis is thus absolutely amenable to right-wing and even fascist permutations.
Finally, I would be remiss not to mention that identity politics, which has its recent ideological roots in the New Left and the social chauvinism V. I. Lenin had earlier diagnosed in the European left, is one of the principal ideological tools of imperialism. The divide-and-conquer strategy has been used to splinter targeted countries by fostering religious, ethnic, national, racial, or gender conflicts.38 Identity politics has also served as a direct justification for imperialist intervention and meddling, as well as destabilization campaigns, if it be the purported causes of liberating women in Afghanistan, supporting Black rappers “discriminated” against in Cuba, backing purportedly “ecosocialist” Indigenous candidates in Latin America, “protecting” ethnic minorities in China, or other such well-known propaganda operations in which the U.S. empire presents itself as the benevolent benefactor of oppressed identities. Here we can clearly see the complete disconnect between the purely symbolic politics of identity and the material reality of class struggles insofar as the former can—and does—provide thin cover for imperialism. At this level as well, then, identity politics is ultimately a class politics: a politics of the imperialist ruling class.
I like some of Rockhill's thoughts, and he is clearly very well-read and he has very impressive credentials and background, and he has a way with words. Maybe it's just me, but he still seems to take a slightly dismissive attitude towards "identity politics". I get the sentiment behind his words, but it rings slightly dismissive to me.
This is my first contact with Gabriel Rockhill, and that was also the impression I had as I was reading. I see this sentiment sporadically, that class struggle and the overthrow of capitalist social relations will usher in a new wave of equality that all of these islands of identity are struggling for. It often rings to me as a kind of shallow assessment of these struggles and their relationships to society at large. I've been subconsciously building this list in my head of shibboleths within Marxist commentary in online spaces, and things like "class struggle" or "improve material conditions" tend to give me pause if there isn't much elaboration as to what the writer means by this exactly. I think if challenged, we would see folks with limited theoretical understanding unravel as they try to explain exactly what "material conditions" need to change and why, or exactly how "class struggle" will ultimately emancipate marginalized communities. That isn't to imply that I think Rockhill is guilty of this here, but I can see how someone would read this and parrot it without much critical thought.
Here I do see where Rockhill is coming from. This idea that "identity" is a construct of the ruling class and its efforts to stifle collective class consciousness rings "true" to the ears. However, I feel identifying it simply as "politics of the imperialist ruling class" does nothing to change the realities of those who fall into these "identity" groups. Each group has its own unique history and development, each one solidifying under decades or even centuries of repression from various ruling classes. They struggle against real forces that will persist even after this supposed working-class revolution in the west.
His adoption of this notion of the "diversity industry" cuts really close to the current right-wing obsession with "DEI". It almost implies that diversity equity and inclusion initiatives are strictly performative in their nature. Except that there is a growing body of research that shows companies with a highly diverse workforce see higher productivity, higher levels of "innovation", workers with diverse leadership see their ideas developed and implemented, and so on. It's clear that CEOs believe these initiatives are worth investing in. This to me reads as a kind of emerging social relation under capitalism, that to maximize earnings, it may become necessary to include as many different perspectives as possible to eventually appeal to the widest number of people across demographics, or to become better at hyper-targeting these demographics individually.
This brings me back to the social relations of capital. Often we frame the actions of the ruling class as what I would call "intentioned". That is to say, in this context, that identity politics is something the ruling class engages in with the intention to sow discord. However, I think identity politics have organically formed through the evolving capitalist social relations of history. As more and more people were driven out of the rural areas and into the industrial factories, it also forced all these diverse groups of people together for long periods of time. In this highly competitive space, I think it is only natural that this large group would collect together into smaller groups based on how they relate to each other. Their shared experiences acting as the foundation of their group, binding them together. Existing divisions, such as the divisions between the poor whites and newly emancipated slaves, were only worsened as both social groups now competed in the labor market. Queer people now lived and worked in much tighter groupings than ever before, allowing them to find each other and build a community, where before they had none. Women, pulled into the workforce as a result of war production during WW2 found community among their fellow women, sharing their struggles and building up their solidarity among each other. These are only some examples from the past that show how these groups form as a result of the demands of capital, I'm sure much smarter people than me have written volumes on this topic.
As these groups became more solidified, it also made them more visible, drawing them in contrast to the "norms" of society. Through their communities, they finally could express their individual struggles to sympathetic ears, building solidarity among each other, transforming individual struggle into collective struggle, and eventually engendering a feeling of empowerment born out of the security that comes from community, allowing them to advocate for their existence. All of these groups put forth a challenge to the white heteronormative hegemony that dominated society. Their integration into greater society naturally won them sympathies outside their communities, sympathies among other repressed groups.
At some point, the ruling class has to address these growing social contradictions. The risk of leaving them to fester would only lead to more civil unrest. There are, I think, only two obvious positions to take on these matters: embrace these identity groups and by virtue bestow them an amount of your power to make incremental change on their behalf. Or reject these groups and appeal to the norms, granting those members of societies hegemonic identity a bulwark against change. The adoption of these two paths, born out of real struggle for acceptance, shaped the electoral landscape. It created new incentives inside the electoral process, new pathways to exploit to secure victory. These pathways open up at different points in history, and not all at once. However, the desires and needs of these groups are always secondary to the primary goal, which is maintaining the empire. This shelving of social responsibilities might have the appearance of "intention", but I think it truly is a matter of prioritization. The demands created by these social relations are not equal, and the demands of maintaining empire far out weigh the demands of the imperial core's social fabric.
To believe that all of this rhetoric about identities or social issues, even down to issues surrounding the Second Amendment, are all part of a conscious, and collaborative effort to undermine revolutionary change, I think robs the individuals within the ruling class of their own identities. It creates a kind of conspiratorial collective hivemind who all equally understand that they are putting on a very well-rehearsed play. The notion that there isn't a single agent within the ruling class who believes exactly what they say, that are just as uninformed and prejudice as they present themselves, seems hard to believe. The demands of empire and the demands of capital ultimately drive these individuals. I think this is why you see this kind of transformation within representatives. Once you are awash in this culture long enough, the pressures within this group, the goals inherited by the past, and the demands of maintaining empire, eventually take a person like AOC for example, and shape and warp their perspective, filing away all the sharp edges, leaving only a dull and toothless version of their original worldview intact. Their goals are reprioritized, but their rhetoric must remain, as that is what earned them their place within this group to begin with.
The clandestine organizations and their cutouts understand the nature of this history. In many ways, they practice a kind of dark materialism. Their goals, however, are not destabilization within the imperial core, but destabilization on the edges of the empire, in service of the empire's goals. They recognize how destabilizing the struggle of these marginalized groups can be, and weaponize this history in modern times against states like Bangladesh. It is the only explanation as to why a Conservative NGO would be engaging in the promotion of Queer rights in foreign lands. They haven't suddenly become allies of the Queer movement. Instead, they understand history, and understand the power these marginalized groups have to press for change. They understand that capturing that energy and directing it carefully can create the right conditions for "revolutionary" change. In their case, bourgeois revolutionary change. Left on their own, they understand that these movements eventually become socialist movements. Our own history shows us this time and time again, and shows what these clandestine groups are willing to do to preserve the bourgeois character of these struggles.
I say this regularly to people I know regarding Third-Party candidates. The idea that someone like RFK Jr. or Jill Stein could ascend to the role of president, and somehow overcome the demands and priorities of the empire so that they can perform real change in the four short years they would have, is a silly notion at best. The empire is a moving object, forever in motion, and to change its course in another direction is a task worthy only of Sisyphus.
So to me, there is no "conspiracy" of division at play here. The division is a byproduct of the long history of evolving social relations under capitalism. They are deeply engrained within the minds of the citizens of the imperial core. The competing ideological frameworks within each faction of the ruling class is hinged on these divisions. Their ideological character born out of these relations of identity. They are as vital to their respective movement as air and blood are to the body. To change rhetoric now only sharpens the contradiction at play, and we may be seeing some of that playing out in real time. As the Democratic Party adopts more right-wing positions, it creates a vacuum waiting to be filled by some other political force willing to take up the progressive crown they once adorned. Adopting these right-wing positions chains them to right-wing demands built up over decades of electoral politics.
I guess I've run out of things to say on this topic, but that covers my perspective on the matter.
Thanks. I could have kept writing and writing, but I had to get some work done today, ha! Also, I hit the limit on comment size. I hate to leave it without some kind of call to action, or some kind of way to engage with these identity groups that can build revolutionary potential. I am, however, not an organizer. Likewise, I'm not part of a marginalized group. So I'm not sure if I would have anything new to really add.
I think that there is a danger of dismissing "Identity Politics" as a tool of the ruling class. I think we need to embrace these marginalized groups, as our comrades in the past had done. History shows us these groups have revolutionary potential, that the politics of their identities can form unique socialist perspectives that should be incorporated and not discarded. All things being dialectical means that if there exists bourgeois identity politics, then there naturally exists revolutionary socialist identity politics.
That is precisely what Black Liberation is, what Queer Liberation is, and what Women's Liberation is. All of them have their revolutionary history, and revolutionary literature.
These are def sensitive topics, and the class-essentialist politics (which often turns into outright racism, sexism, and anti-lgbtq takes) of a lot of western communist parties like CPGB makes people not want to dive into those debates. Its hard too because social media platforms intentionally twist all the debates around them into hair-raising ragebait, so that it becomes difficult to parse out what. Even during the 1960s, they had better terms for what rockhill is calling idpol, like tokenism, that ppl like Malcolm X rightfully called out.
I had that reaction at first until I read how he's using the term, which to me seems to be more close to liberal tokenism.
I don't have anything to add, because there are excellent answers below, but this Gabriel Rockhill interview by Zhao Dingxi has an interesting few paragraphs on liberal idpol:
ZD: How do you understand the role and function of identity politics and multiculturalism, which are currently prevalent in the Western left?
GR: Identity politics, like the multiculturalism affiliated with it, is a contemporary manifestation of the culturalism and essentialism that have long characterized bourgeois ideology. The latter seeks to naturalize social and economic relations that are the consequence of the material history of capitalism. Rather than recognizing, for instance, that racial, national, ethnic, gender, sexual, and other forms of identity are historical constructs that have varied over time and result from specific material forces, these are naturalized and treated as an unquestionable foundation for political constituencies. Such essentialism serves to obscure the material forces operative behind these identities, as well as the class struggles that have been waged around them. This has been particularly useful to the ruling class and its managers as they have been forced to react to the demands of decolonization and of materialist antiracist and antipatriarchal struggles. How better to respond than with an essentializing identity politics that proposes false solutions to very real problems because it never addresses the material basis of colonization, racism, and gender oppression?
The self-proclaimed anti-essentialist versions of identity politics operative in the work of theorists like Judith Butler do not fundamentally break with this ideology.36 In purporting to deconstruct some of these categories by revealing them as discursive constructs that individuals or groups of individuals can question, play with, and re-perform, theorists working within the idealist parameters of deconstruction never provide a materialist and dialectical analysis of the history of the capitalist social relations that have produced these categories as major sites of collective class struggle. They also do not engage in the deep history of actually existing socialism’s fight collectively to transform these relations. Instead, they tend to draw on deconstruction and a practically dehistoricized version of Foucauldian genealogy to think about gender and sexual relations discursively, and they are at best oriented toward a liberal pluralism in which class struggle is replaced by interest-group advocacy.
By contrast, the Marxist tradition—as Domenico Losurdo has demonstrated in his magisterial work Class Struggle—has a profound and rich history of understanding class struggle in the plural. This means that it includes battles over the relationship between genders, nations, races, and economic classes (and, we could add, sexualities). Since these categories have taken on very specific hierarchical forms under capitalism, the best elements of the Marxist heritage have sought to both understand their historical provenance and radically transform them. This can be seen in the longstanding struggle against the domestic slavery imposed upon women, as well as the battle to overcome the imperialist subordination of nations and their racialized peoples. This history has played itself out in fits and starts, of course, and there is still much work to be done, in part because certain strains of Marxism—such as that of the Second International—have been tainted by elements of bourgeois ideology. Nevertheless, as scholars like Losurdo and others have demonstrated with remarkable erudition, the communists have been at the vanguard of these class struggles to overcome patriarchal domination, imperialist subordination, and racism by going to the very roots of these problems: capitalist social relations.
Identity politics, as it has developed in the leading imperialist countries and particularly the United States, has sought to bury this history in order to present itself as a radically new form of consciousness, as if communists had not so much as thought of the woman question or the national/racial question. Theorists of identity politics thus tend to assert arrogantly and benightedly that they are the first ones to address these issues, thereby overcoming an imagined economic determinism on the part of the so-called vulgar reductionist Marxists.37 Instead of recognizing these issues as sites of class struggle, moreover, they tend to use identity politics as a wedge against class politics. If they do make any gesture toward integrating class into their analysis, they generally reduce it to a question of personal identity, rather than a structural property relation. The solutions that they put forth therefore tend to be epiphenomenal, meaning that they focus on issues of representation and symbolism, rather than, for instance, overcoming the labor relations of domestic slavery and racialized superexploitation through a socialist transformation of the socioeconomic order. They are thereby incapable of leading to significant and sustainable change because they do not go to the root of the problem. As Adolph Reed Jr. has often argued with his signature biting wit, identitarians are perfectly happy to maintain extant class relations—including imperialist relations between nations, I would add—on the condition that there is the requisite ratio of representation of oppressed groups within the ruling class and the professional managerial stratum.
In addition to helping displace class politics and analysis within the Western left, identity politics has made a major contribution to dividing the left itself into siloed debates around specific identity issues. Instead of class unity against a common enemy, it divides—and conquers—working and oppressed people by encouraging them to identify first and foremost as members of specific genders, sexualities, races, nations, ethnicities, religious groups, and so forth. In this regard, the ideology of identity politics actually is, at a much deeper level, a class politics. It is the politics of a bourgeoisie aimed at dividing the working and oppressed peoples of the world in order to more easily rule over them. It should come as no surprise, then, that it is the governing politics of the professional managerial class stratum in the imperial core. It dominates its institutions and informational outlets, and it is one of the primary mechanisms for career advancement within what Reed insightfully calls “the diversity industry.” It encourages everyone involved to identify with their specific group and advance their own individual interests by posing as its privileged representative. We should note, moreover, that wokeism also has the effect of driving some people into the arms of the right. If the dominant political culture encourages a clan mentality combined with competitive individualism, then it is unsurprising that white people and men have also—as a partial response to their perceived disenfranchisement by the diversity industry—advanced their particular agendas as “victims” of the system. Identity politics devoid of a class analysis is thus absolutely amenable to right-wing and even fascist permutations.
Finally, I would be remiss not to mention that identity politics, which has its recent ideological roots in the New Left and the social chauvinism V. I. Lenin had earlier diagnosed in the European left, is one of the principal ideological tools of imperialism. The divide-and-conquer strategy has been used to splinter targeted countries by fostering religious, ethnic, national, racial, or gender conflicts.38 Identity politics has also served as a direct justification for imperialist intervention and meddling, as well as destabilization campaigns, if it be the purported causes of liberating women in Afghanistan, supporting Black rappers “discriminated” against in Cuba, backing purportedly “ecosocialist” Indigenous candidates in Latin America, “protecting” ethnic minorities in China, or other such well-known propaganda operations in which the U.S. empire presents itself as the benevolent benefactor of oppressed identities. Here we can clearly see the complete disconnect between the purely symbolic politics of identity and the material reality of class struggles insofar as the former can—and does—provide thin cover for imperialism. At this level as well, then, identity politics is ultimately a class politics: a politics of the imperialist ruling class.
I like some of Rockhill's thoughts, and he is clearly very well-read and he has very impressive credentials and background, and he has a way with words. Maybe it's just me, but he still seems to take a slightly dismissive attitude towards "identity politics". I get the sentiment behind his words, but it rings slightly dismissive to me.
Edit: Wow, guess a PatSoc got angry.
This is my first contact with Gabriel Rockhill, and that was also the impression I had as I was reading. I see this sentiment sporadically, that class struggle and the overthrow of capitalist social relations will usher in a new wave of equality that all of these islands of identity are struggling for. It often rings to me as a kind of shallow assessment of these struggles and their relationships to society at large. I've been subconsciously building this list in my head of shibboleths within Marxist commentary in online spaces, and things like "class struggle" or "improve material conditions" tend to give me pause if there isn't much elaboration as to what the writer means by this exactly. I think if challenged, we would see folks with limited theoretical understanding unravel as they try to explain exactly what "material conditions" need to change and why, or exactly how "class struggle" will ultimately emancipate marginalized communities. That isn't to imply that I think Rockhill is guilty of this here, but I can see how someone would read this and parrot it without much critical thought.
Here I do see where Rockhill is coming from. This idea that "identity" is a construct of the ruling class and its efforts to stifle collective class consciousness rings "true" to the ears. However, I feel identifying it simply as "politics of the imperialist ruling class" does nothing to change the realities of those who fall into these "identity" groups. Each group has its own unique history and development, each one solidifying under decades or even centuries of repression from various ruling classes. They struggle against real forces that will persist even after this supposed working-class revolution in the west.
His adoption of this notion of the "diversity industry" cuts really close to the current right-wing obsession with "DEI". It almost implies that diversity equity and inclusion initiatives are strictly performative in their nature. Except that there is a growing body of research that shows companies with a highly diverse workforce see higher productivity, higher levels of "innovation", workers with diverse leadership see their ideas developed and implemented, and so on. It's clear that CEOs believe these initiatives are worth investing in. This to me reads as a kind of emerging social relation under capitalism, that to maximize earnings, it may become necessary to include as many different perspectives as possible to eventually appeal to the widest number of people across demographics, or to become better at hyper-targeting these demographics individually.
This brings me back to the social relations of capital. Often we frame the actions of the ruling class as what I would call "intentioned". That is to say, in this context, that identity politics is something the ruling class engages in with the intention to sow discord. However, I think identity politics have organically formed through the evolving capitalist social relations of history. As more and more people were driven out of the rural areas and into the industrial factories, it also forced all these diverse groups of people together for long periods of time. In this highly competitive space, I think it is only natural that this large group would collect together into smaller groups based on how they relate to each other. Their shared experiences acting as the foundation of their group, binding them together. Existing divisions, such as the divisions between the poor whites and newly emancipated slaves, were only worsened as both social groups now competed in the labor market. Queer people now lived and worked in much tighter groupings than ever before, allowing them to find each other and build a community, where before they had none. Women, pulled into the workforce as a result of war production during WW2 found community among their fellow women, sharing their struggles and building up their solidarity among each other. These are only some examples from the past that show how these groups form as a result of the demands of capital, I'm sure much smarter people than me have written volumes on this topic.
As these groups became more solidified, it also made them more visible, drawing them in contrast to the "norms" of society. Through their communities, they finally could express their individual struggles to sympathetic ears, building solidarity among each other, transforming individual struggle into collective struggle, and eventually engendering a feeling of empowerment born out of the security that comes from community, allowing them to advocate for their existence. All of these groups put forth a challenge to the white heteronormative hegemony that dominated society. Their integration into greater society naturally won them sympathies outside their communities, sympathies among other repressed groups.
At some point, the ruling class has to address these growing social contradictions. The risk of leaving them to fester would only lead to more civil unrest. There are, I think, only two obvious positions to take on these matters: embrace these identity groups and by virtue bestow them an amount of your power to make incremental change on their behalf. Or reject these groups and appeal to the norms, granting those members of societies hegemonic identity a bulwark against change. The adoption of these two paths, born out of real struggle for acceptance, shaped the electoral landscape. It created new incentives inside the electoral process, new pathways to exploit to secure victory. These pathways open up at different points in history, and not all at once. However, the desires and needs of these groups are always secondary to the primary goal, which is maintaining the empire. This shelving of social responsibilities might have the appearance of "intention", but I think it truly is a matter of prioritization. The demands created by these social relations are not equal, and the demands of maintaining empire far out weigh the demands of the imperial core's social fabric.
To believe that all of this rhetoric about identities or social issues, even down to issues surrounding the Second Amendment, are all part of a conscious, and collaborative effort to undermine revolutionary change, I think robs the individuals within the ruling class of their own identities. It creates a kind of conspiratorial collective hivemind who all equally understand that they are putting on a very well-rehearsed play. The notion that there isn't a single agent within the ruling class who believes exactly what they say, that are just as uninformed and prejudice as they present themselves, seems hard to believe. The demands of empire and the demands of capital ultimately drive these individuals. I think this is why you see this kind of transformation within representatives. Once you are awash in this culture long enough, the pressures within this group, the goals inherited by the past, and the demands of maintaining empire, eventually take a person like AOC for example, and shape and warp their perspective, filing away all the sharp edges, leaving only a dull and toothless version of their original worldview intact. Their goals are reprioritized, but their rhetoric must remain, as that is what earned them their place within this group to begin with.
The clandestine organizations and their cutouts understand the nature of this history. In many ways, they practice a kind of dark materialism. Their goals, however, are not destabilization within the imperial core, but destabilization on the edges of the empire, in service of the empire's goals. They recognize how destabilizing the struggle of these marginalized groups can be, and weaponize this history in modern times against states like Bangladesh. It is the only explanation as to why a Conservative NGO would be engaging in the promotion of Queer rights in foreign lands. They haven't suddenly become allies of the Queer movement. Instead, they understand history, and understand the power these marginalized groups have to press for change. They understand that capturing that energy and directing it carefully can create the right conditions for "revolutionary" change. In their case, bourgeois revolutionary change. Left on their own, they understand that these movements eventually become socialist movements. Our own history shows us this time and time again, and shows what these clandestine groups are willing to do to preserve the bourgeois character of these struggles.
I say this regularly to people I know regarding Third-Party candidates. The idea that someone like RFK Jr. or Jill Stein could ascend to the role of president, and somehow overcome the demands and priorities of the empire so that they can perform real change in the four short years they would have, is a silly notion at best. The empire is a moving object, forever in motion, and to change its course in another direction is a task worthy only of Sisyphus.
So to me, there is no "conspiracy" of division at play here. The division is a byproduct of the long history of evolving social relations under capitalism. They are deeply engrained within the minds of the citizens of the imperial core. The competing ideological frameworks within each faction of the ruling class is hinged on these divisions. Their ideological character born out of these relations of identity. They are as vital to their respective movement as air and blood are to the body. To change rhetoric now only sharpens the contradiction at play, and we may be seeing some of that playing out in real time. As the Democratic Party adopts more right-wing positions, it creates a vacuum waiting to be filled by some other political force willing to take up the progressive crown they once adorned. Adopting these right-wing positions chains them to right-wing demands built up over decades of electoral politics.
I guess I've run out of things to say on this topic, but that covers my perspective on the matter.
Beautifully put.
Thanks. I could have kept writing and writing, but I had to get some work done today, ha! Also, I hit the limit on comment size. I hate to leave it without some kind of call to action, or some kind of way to engage with these identity groups that can build revolutionary potential. I am, however, not an organizer. Likewise, I'm not part of a marginalized group. So I'm not sure if I would have anything new to really add.
I think that there is a danger of dismissing "Identity Politics" as a tool of the ruling class. I think we need to embrace these marginalized groups, as our comrades in the past had done. History shows us these groups have revolutionary potential, that the politics of their identities can form unique socialist perspectives that should be incorporated and not discarded. All things being dialectical means that if there exists bourgeois identity politics, then there naturally exists revolutionary socialist identity politics.
That is precisely what Black Liberation is, what Queer Liberation is, and what Women's Liberation is. All of them have their revolutionary history, and revolutionary literature.
These are def sensitive topics, and the class-essentialist politics (which often turns into outright racism, sexism, and anti-lgbtq takes) of a lot of western communist parties like CPGB makes people not want to dive into those debates. Its hard too because social media platforms intentionally twist all the debates around them into hair-raising ragebait, so that it becomes difficult to parse out what. Even during the 1960s, they had better terms for what rockhill is calling idpol, like tokenism, that ppl like Malcolm X rightfully called out.
I had that reaction at first until I read how he's using the term, which to me seems to be more close to liberal tokenism.