No Politics But Class Politics

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This book - collection of essays is highly repetitive but has one main theme. We focus too much on identity politics (racism) when we should be focused on economic inequality. The essays skillfully explore how this neoliberal version of social justice has gained hegemony in our major institutions. Discourse on education has become centered on creating racially proportionate opportunities for people to overcome poverty instead of eliminating poverty in the first place. Here is a clear-cut example of the difference between a class-based approach and one based on eliminating disparities. A class-based approach posits that the lower-paying jobs in our society, which also happen to be in the fastest growing sectors and disproportionately held by workers of color, should be made into high-quality, good-paying jobs. The identitarian approach instead focuses on how to make sure that these low-paying jobs are held by the proportionately correct number of white people. It’s on that basis that Turnbull can see the US election as a vindication of his “jobs and growth” mantra, and a rejection of the “elite” agenda of the left.

This is hardly surprising, and perhaps even tautological. In a capitalist society, laws are written primarily by and for the protection of financial institutions, and laws that help the poor are laws that are bad for those institutions. But what it does politically is produce a tendency to frame problems in terms of identity, which our laws recognize as a protected category. As Adolph Reed Jr. puts it, “Legal remedies can be sought for injustices understood as discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or other familiar categories of invidious ascription; no such recourse exists for injustices generated through capitalism’s logic of production and reproduction without mediation through one of those ascriptive categories.” 2 The relevant takeaway from this, however, is that such remedies, while morally correct, still function as class politics. They just happen to be completely compatible with the politics of the ruling class, who will concede to no longer discriminate against workers so long as they can continue exploiting them. Still, it’s possible to reject some of the extreme views Michaels and Reed advance while also appreciating their critique of contemporary white liberalism’s obsession with one side of the race and class equation. Most observers expect the Supreme Court to curtail or strike down these preferences, and Biden will surely be tempted to denounce the decisions as racist or racially insensitive, perhaps drawing parallels to the Supreme Court’s worst decisions on race like the “separate but equal” Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896.They unwittingly feed right-wing efforts to divide and conquer multiracial working-class coalitions that are necessary for social change; and

Of course we should do what we can to protect and buttress the antidiscrimination apparatus, which includes an affirmative dimension. But this might also be of interest to readers: All too often, the proposed remedies to the existence of disparities tend to emphasize various schemes of individual wealth-building. As Reed and Chowkwanyun point out, “Such stratagems represent détente with rather than commitment to changing capitalist class relations, including those that contribute to intra- and inter-racial disparities in the first place.” Research on disparities often give causal power to auxiliary dynamics or outcomes as opposed to tracing racial disparities to fundamental economic issues such as employment, public services, land use, etc.It’s importantly true that racism and sexism have played the central role in selecting the victims of American inequality, but it’s also true and just as important that they have not played the same role in creating the inequality itself. Paying workers less than the value of what they produce does that.” 4

Anyone interested in the politics of race and class must push aside the dogma of identity and grapple with what Reed, Jr. and Michaels have been arguing for decades.–Jodi DeanNo Politics but Class Politics drives home the point that the current brand of identity politics, with its centering of disparities as the ultimate measure of inequality, is not only a form of class politics but also a politics that aligns with and reinforces the basic tenets of neoliberalism. These questions strike at the heart of the contradictions inherent in the identitarian reactions to Rachel Dolezal. Those who deny the validity of Dolezal’s claim on the basis that there’s more to race than identity have waded into some dangerous territory. As Reed points out, this view reveals a belief in “a view of racial difference as biologically definitive in a way that’s even deeper than sexual difference.”

For decades, Adolph Reed and Walter Benn Michaels have brought common as well as uncommon sense to the analysis of politics under oligarchic late capitalism." —Barbara J. FieldsEleonora Roldán Mendívil is a political scientist and educator. She has taught at several universities in Germany and Austria on intersectionality, racism and colonial history. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Kassel (Germany). Her research interests include Marxism, (anti-)racism, gender relations and historical education. Together with Bafta Sarbo she has published the anthology Die Diversität der Ausbeutung. Zur Kritik des herrschenden Antirassismus (The Diversity of Exploitation. A Critique of prevalent anti-racism) in 2022, now in its 3rd edition. Mostly analytically and politically maddening, occasionally turgid and incoherent, with a few brilliant and perceptive insights. Walter Benn Michaels is Professor of English at the University of Illinois Chicago. An influential scholar in the fields of literary theory and American literary history, Michaels is also a high-profile polemicist whose political writings have appeared in publications including The American Prospect and the London Review of Books. His most recent books are The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality and The Beauty of a Social Problem: Photography, Autonomy, Economy. For decades, Adolph Reed and Walter Benn Michaels have brought common as well as uncommon sense to the analysis of politics under oligarchic late capitalism." Barbara Jeanne Fields historian, Columbia University professor