Identity Is Functioning As the New Imperialist Cosmology

Discussion

Rhyd Wildermuth:

"Social justice identitarianism and social justice identity politics are much more accurate labels (than 'woke'). Plenty might argue with these terms too, especially the “identitarian” part because of its association with right-wing movements. But what else do you call a politics that attempts to organize groups around their racial, sexual, and other identities against groups with other identities except “identitarian?”

The more important part of those terms is anyway the first part, “social justice.” The various movements called “woke” differ from traditional leftist movements in their focus on the social rather than the economic: making changes in the way humans relate to each other to affect justice rather than changing underlying material conditions and class relations. That is, fighting racism, sexism, transphobia, able-ism, and all the other “systems of oppression” rather than capitalism or as a means of transforming capitalism into something nicer.

I tend to agree more with the conservative writer John Gray that social justice identity politics is functioning as a “successor” ideology to neoconservativism, and with black Marxist Adolph Reed that it’s the core moral constellation of neoliberalism. Though coming from apparently different political traditions, they—and quite a few others—are essentially arguing the same thing: identity is how capitalism intends to perpetuate itself.

This is really a change in cosmology. Identity relations are replacing class relations as the dominant field of political struggle, which mean we’re replacing functional and material relations with social characteristics. Formerly it was the capitalists against the working class, and everyone knew that these were functional positions (one owned, the other labored) rather than eternal or inherent characteristics. There was nothing inherent or intrinsic about the capitalist herself which made her the enemy, it was what she did and how she colluded with others to make sure she could keep doing it. There was nothing inherent or intrinsic to the working class that made them good or evil, but rather only a functional relationship of being exploited for their labor and the material state of having no access to land or the “means of production.”

Within this newer cosmology, it’s because a person is cis-, or able-bodied, or male, or white that they are oppressive. None of these are functional relationships, but rather identity markers that point to something “inherent” about the oppressor. There’s also nothing functional about being black, or female, or trans, or disabled: they, too, are all identity markers pointing to an “inherent” victimization by the oppressors.

In other words, in the older cosmology, a worker is exploited by a capitalist. In this successor cosmology, the black disabled trans woman is oppressed by the white cis heterosexual able-bodied man. Before, it was because of what a person did that injustice arose. Now, it is because of who a person is.

This arrangement suits capitalism quite well, because it cannot challenge the exploitation of workers by the owning class. In fact, within it a capitalist can even claim to be oppressed and victimized by the people she exploits if she has more oppressed identity markers (black, trans, disabled, etc) than the people whose labor increases her wealth.

It’s really an ideal situation for the capitalists. That’s why so many corporations, banks, and neoliberal politicians have readily adopted the language of identity and at least the aesthetic of diversity and equity in their hiring practices, management styles, and political platforms. They have every reason to be happy with this cosmological shift, since they still get to keep property relations intact as long as they offer more expression to identity concerns.

...

Identity Is Functioning As the New Imperialist Cosmology. European colonialism didn’t just spread pre- and early capitalist property relations to the rest of the world, but it also spread a particular Christian cosmology. There was only one god, rather than the thousands upon thousands of gods the conquered people knew. Humans stood outside of nature and in linear time, rather than as part of nature and within animist conceptions of time. By converting the colonial subjects to this newer cosmology, European capitalists were able to re-create the world that created them, over and over again in each new place.

What is happening now is the same thing: identity politics allows Anglo-American neoliberalism to recreate itself throughout the rest of the world. The problem everywhere becomes racism and anti-genderism, not capitalism, meaning that the solution everywhere becomes identity politics, not anti-capitalist revolt. As such, the core theorists of identity politics become like the early church fathers or the Reformation figures, providing the sacred cosmology for imperialist conquest.

I think the sudden rush to defend identity politics against leftist critiques is thus a sign not that we have reached some peak, but rather that many more are starting to sense where this is actually heading. It’s becoming harder to pretend it ever had any real revolutionary potential, but those who believe it does or did will inevitably try to rally the last remaining faithful to its fallen flag."

(https://rhyd.substack.com/p/identity-is-how-capitalism-intends?)