Identity Politics and Class Struggle

In: New politics: a journal of socialist thought, Band 6, S. 84-96

Abstract

Discusses the return of class politics, specifically, the arrival of identity politics, to the forefront of US political & social discourse. It is argued that the populist movement has wrongly embraced the narrow self-interests of race, gender, sexual preference, & disability to the detriment of what should be the Left's loftier & more universal ideals of class unity. The basis of Enlightenment thought & its "gift" of modern racism are discussed as prelude to further examination of the exclusionary views of the neo-Enlightenment Left, which is unable to see how class movements led by women, blacks, homosexuals, or other minorities can speak for the goals of universal humanism. It is concluded that a rethinking of movements that have been summarily discounted by neo-Enlightenment leftists as being too particularistic instead already embrace at their core the common ideals, goals, & vision essential to class struggle. B. Wolfe