Identity Politics and the War Against Working class Class Consciousness.

Richard Mellor

I think this is a a pretty accurate description of identity politics today and its growth in the post World War 2 era; the era of the "American Dream" The global domination of US imperialism with its bourgeois culture strengthened the view among US workers in particular that they were middle class and that's exactly how most workers identified themselves when I came to the US in 1973.  I was told I was middle class. I had no aspirations to be middle class and considered it a bit insulting, like, maybe I wasn't doing something right. Do I sound pretentious? Arrogant? What am I doing wrong?

But it's no accident that US workers in the post war era identified themselves in this way. It preceded sexual, gender, racial or religious identity made easier by the material conditions that were the basis for it. It was the result of the class war. When the class question is undermined by both material conditions and the propaganda from the mass media, the pulpit, the universities and education system, then it becomes that much easier to introduce the reactionary identity politics.

The preponderance of identity politics, the pronouns, the obsession with sex and gender and all the other diversions is clearly a first world problem. It is being exported just like the poisonous fast food, art, culture film and language is. The bourgeoisie, as Marx pointed wrote in 1848, "....... creates a world after its own image." The bourgeois, or capitalist class is strongest in the United States, we are in the belly of the beast here and the US working class is among its victims.

Identity politics itself is thoroughly reactionary and is a war against the working class and our recognition that we are a class with our own interests, a class unto ourselves; it is the one thing common to us all but that doesn't mean we do not recognize the special oppression that others of our class face and that we must combat them as they weaken class solidarity and our social power. It is in the interest of the working class as a whole to fight racism, women's oppression, religious bigotry and nationalism. The failure of the leaders of the workers' organizations and workers political parties have also failed to combat this war against class consciousness while adopting identity politics as a safe alternative.

But in the last analysis, consciousness is rooted in material conditions, is a product of being, and the pendulum will and is swinging back in the other direction. I think this video is worth sharing.