Class Analysis of Identity Politics

Discussion

A short text I wrote on Facebook, in August 2019:

How to understand the current extremisation of authoritarian identity politics of the left. Here is a potential narrative of the class dynamics behind this phenomena.

1.

1968 came at the end of a very large redistribution of wealth that had started after WWII, but this favouring of 'demand' , started to create a crisis of supply, i.e. of capital, which would express itself in the great crisis of 1973. According to a book by Luc Boltanski (le nouvel esprit du capitalisme), faced with this combined rebellion of working class and middle class youth, the rulers of the day decided to give in to the cultural demands of the middle class youth rebellion (civil rights and rock and roll), but also decided consciously to start de-industrializing the West, which would be expressed with the Thatcher/Reagan governments in earnest. Thus the ruling coaltion of the post war years, a coalition between capital and the reformist leaders of labour, made way to the neoliberal coalition, ie. financial capital with the leaders of the civil rights movements. It brought great strides in culture, but stagnation in income. In the 70s-80s, a male worker could still manage to feed his whole family (i.e. the return of women to household work in the 50s), by the 90's, without 2 earners, this was now impossible. The stagnation and/or decline was somewhat compensated with the lower prices of chinese goods, but aggravated with real estate speculation. Anyway, the defeat of Hilary Clinton, who more than anyone else represented this neoliberal alliance, and who represents those that were willing to sacrifice the Nation to Empire, lost to those who were willing to sacrifice the Empire to the Nation. Now while Trump is mostly rhetorical and use identity politics to bind the working class to his new coalition, in EUROPE , the right-wing populists have socialist policies that are to the left of the left parties, and they are succeeding in consolidating these new populist coalitions (a hungarian worker with 3 kids gets 700 euro from the state);

2. the left wing cultural revolt of 1968, which ended in political defeat, saw the actors of this revolt, move to the universities, and , as this was part of the new neoliberal compact, this was tolerated. The ruling class of the period, and this worked until 2016, consisted of the merchant right, the neoliberal social-democrats (Democratic Party) in the US , and the postmodern left in the universities, in charge of demoralising struggles through their ideologies of defeat and fragmentation. As long as they were in the ascendancy, i.e. getting compromises that advanced civil and cultural rights, they continued their long march in the institutions. But with the rignt-wing populist revolt, and the breakup of the neoliberal coalition, their 'children' went into traumatic shock, and this is what weaponized identity politics. People in shock retreat to their more primary identities, for the right, this means the Nation, and perhaps right-wing identity politics, for the 'left', this means the regression to identities of race and gender and other forms of marginalisation.

It is important to understand that the class dynamics have completely changed since the 1980s. There are today, 3 social groups that are in inter-relationship. One is the 'merchant right', i.e. the financial class that controls the world system, but also linked to more localist industrial classes (the protectionists who support Trumpian and right-populist forces); the second force is the cognitariat, what Thomas Piketty has called the 'brahmin left' and that Emmanuel Todd describes in his briliant Lineages of Modernity. While they have often little access to financial and industrial capital, they have access to education. BUT IT IS IMPORTANT to say that higher education today IS NOT LONGER A LEVER FOR EQUALITY, BUT FOR INEQUALITY. Thus, the cognitive class has access to careers, or at the very least to precarious freelance jobs that occasionally pay well; the uneducated are now largely surplus labor, i.e. if they do not find a industrial job with declining wages, or a low paid service job, they are confined to a closed future. Right wing populism is an alliance between the localist industrial class (those who want to sacrifice the Empire to the Nation) and the resentment of the uneducated working class, against the educated elites. From a worker's point of view, a merchant can at least provide jobs, while what they are getting from the educated class, is very often contempt. Nothing less expresses this more than the frequent expressions of contempt from the left identitarians against the habits of the working class, who are not politically correct.

4.

Alex Foti, in his last book on the Precariat, makes a brilliant link between the kondratieff cycles (high and low growth 2-cycle combination of 50-60 years within capitalism), the lib-lab political development as per Polany, and the succession, every 20-25 years of crises of supply (1973-1980) and of demand (2008). High growth favours labour but weakens capital, ending in a crisis of supply, and historically these have been radical and revolutionary); low growth neoliberal cycles, favour capital, and end with a crisis of demand (i.e. labor purchasing power). 2008 was a typical 'lab' crisis, a crisis of demand, which normally leads to left and right populist movements (see Polanly, the Great Transformation); the question however, is, now that capital is so transnational, is there any realistic chance of pulling off a transformation within the nation-state level. I suspect: no. However, due to special circumstances, some countries, like Hungary and Poland, who are the global south to Germany, can temporarily profit from restructurings of capital. This is why they are successful for the moment. The problems we are having now, is that with increasing numbers of the left, even further abandoning the working class for identity politics, there seems little prospects of breaking the right-wing populist coalitions. Literally the last chance we have, is that Sanders/Warren/AOC can stay sufficiently on course, to obtain the popular support of working class voters.