Identitetspolitik och marxism

På konferensen Socialism 2008 i Chicago pratade Sharon Smith om identitetspolitik och marxism. Hon menade att identitetspolitik och post-modernism också var post-marxism, ja i själva verket anti-marxism:

In this meeting, I am going to be critiquing the theory of ”identity” politics and counterposing a basic Marxist analysis as a much more effective means for fighting against oppression.

I plan to illustrate my argument with actual living experiences we can all relate to, including the recent Clinton-Obama debacle, in order to show that what we just witnessed in the primary season was not a fluke, but that the logic of identity politics leads to divisions between oppressed groups who have no reason to be fighting each other and every reason to unite and fight against all oppression.

By the way, though I’m not going to go into it much here, the theory of identity politics is really a product of academic post-modernism. They theory defines itself as a post-Marxist theory, and in reality, it’s an anti-Marxist theory. So I just want to make it clear that this defense of Marxism isn’t coming out of the blue, but as a defense against an anti-Marxist theory.

Samtidigt som hon menar att identitetspolitik och postmoderna teorier är antimarxism säger Sharon Smith följande:

Now, before I continue, I also want to make clear that I am not, in any way, shape or form, making an argument against the legitimacy of individual personal identity, nor am I saying that people’s individual experiences don’t make up a great deal of everyone’s personal identity. That goes without saying.

It makes perfect sense that a woman’s personal identity is shaped in large part by her own experiences facing oppression in her own life–and that those experiences help her shape her political consciousness and awareness of women’s oppression. In the same way, it makes sense that if you are African-American, Latino, Arab, Muslim–the list, of course, of racially oppressed populations is very long–your awareness of racism comes in large part from your personal experience.

No white person can ever fully understand what it’s like to experience racism. No straight person can ever fully understand what it’s like to experience homophobia. And even among people who are oppressed by racism, every experience is different. A Black person and a Native American person, for example, experience racism differently–as does a person from Mexico versus a person from Puerto Rico. A gay man and a lesbian have very different experiences in their personal lives. These are facts, and I’m not disputing any of them.

I samband med detta klargör hon också att man måste dra en skiljelinje mellan det privata och det politiska. Vidare menar hon att man inte personligen behöver ha upplevt ett förtryck för att kunna vara motståndare till det. Något som postmoderna teorier ofta hävdar är fallet. Omvänt är det inte heller självklart att bara för att man tillhör en grupp som är förtryckt så kommer man att bekämpa detta förtryck. Som exempel på detta nämner Smith en amerikansk bög, tillika kongressledamot, samt presidentkandidaten Barack Obama och Condolezza Rice:

Let’s take Barney Frank as an example. When the city of San Francisco first started to hand out same-sex marriage licenses back in 2005 (not this time; again, that’s a cause for celebration that gay marriages are taking place), did openly gay Congressman Barney Frank embrace it as a step forward for civil rights? No, he called press conferences so that he could attack it, calling it ”divisive” in the mainstream media.

Does Barack Obama champion the rights of Black men at a time when it’s desperately needed? No, Obama has made it a regular practice to give a stump speech lecturing Black men for being too immature to take responsibility for their own actions and set a proper example for their children.

[…]

Nor is it any more compassionate when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a Black woman, travels to the Middle East to enforce Israel’s racist apartheid against its occupied Palestinian population. Now let’s go out on a limb and say: Iranian people will be no better off if and when the U.S. decides to bomb them with Obama in the White House than the Iraqi people were when the Bush administration decided to invade that country.

Dessa exempel visar, enligt Sharon Smith, att förtryck inte skapas av personerna i ett system som det kapitalistiska systemet utan av systemet själv. Därför har inte heller alla människor (individer) med samma sexuella läggning, av samma kön eller tillhörande samma klass automatiskt samma intresse. Klassens intresse kan alltså skilja sig från det intresse som en individ tillhörande en viss klass har. Samma gäller också andra förtryckta grupper.

Identitetspolitik och postmoderna teorier bortser oftast helt och hållet från klass och klassbegrepp. Det är kanske det allra största problemet med dem. Sharon Smith menar därför att marxismen är överlägsen de postmoderna teorierna när det gäller att förklara samhället och de olika förtrycksmekanismer som finns:

Contrary to what many people believe today, the special oppression of women, Blacks and the LBGT community actually serves to increase the exploitation and oppression of the working class as a whole.

First, and in a way, most importantly, the ruling class has always relied on a ”divide and conquer” mentality. Why? Because it keeps all the exploited and oppressed fighting against one another instead of uniting and fighting against them. It’s that straightforward.

[…]

The prevailing view is that if Black workers get a smaller piece of the pie, then white workers get a bigger piece of it. In fact, the opposite is true. In the southern United States, where racism and segregation have historically been the most brutal, white workers in the South have typically earned lower wages than Black workers in the north.

The same dynamic holds true for men and women workers. When lower-paid women workers enter an occupation–like clerical work, which happened in the 1920s–the wages in that occupation tend to drop. The dynamic is simple. It’s about competition. Whenever capitalists can force two groups of workers into competition with each other, then wages tend to drop.

Smith menar vidare att identitespolitik och postmoderna teorier inte tar i beaktande alla de framsteg som faktisk skett i människro smedvetande kring exempelvis homosexualitet, jämställdhet och rasism de senaste 40-50 åren. Avsevärda förbättringar faktiskt:

Even in the absence of large-scale struggle, consciousness has been changing dramatically under our feet over the last few years–for the last 15 years or so, but even more accelerated between 2000 and 2008.

Let’s look at the changes in consciousness in this country around the issue of race, gender and sexuality in the last few years. A 2007 USA Today/Gallup poll showed 94 percent of U.S. respondents said they would vote for a Black presidential candidate, while 88 percent said they would vote for a woman, and roughly the same percentages said they would vote for a Latino.

It’s also important to appreciate this seismic shift. A Newsweek poll just a few weeks ago showed 70 percent of voters agreeing that the country is ready for a Black man to serve as president. Only 37 percent that agreed with that in the 2000 election. That’s roughly double.

I motsats till identitetspolitik och postmodernism kan marxismen beakta sådana här framgångar menar Smith och avslutar hela föredraget med att säga att eftersom alla typer av förtryck har samma orsaker, det kapitalistiska systemet, produktionsförhållandena, så måste kampen mot de olika typerna av förtryck ske ihop. På en gemensam front och då är marxismen överlägsen de postmoderna teorierna.

Postmodernismen är helt enkelt inget för vänstern. Identitetspolitik är helt enkelt fel och queer har inget med socialism att göra.

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