The following is a response to Sharon Smith's (a steering committee member of the International Socialist Organization) critique of identity politics that originally appeared on Good Morning, Revolution. Posting here is not necessarily meant as an endorsement, but as an opening up of a discussion in the process of reconception and refoundation.
A Critique of ISO on Identity Politics
By Comrade Baba
In an article “The politics of identity” published in the journal of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), a Trotskyist group in the US, Sharon Smith argues:
“At the most basic material level, no one group of workers ever benefits from particular forms of oppression.”(1)
Smith’s reasoning: “Whenever capitalists can force a higher paid group of workers to compete with a lower paid group, wages tend to drop. . . . The only beneficiaries are capitalists, who earn bigger profits, while ensuring the survival of the rule of the profit system.”
Smith’s argument, an attempt to undermine identity politics and “counterpos[e] to it a Marxist analysis,” greatly oversimplifies the problems of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Rather than a Marxist analysis, a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, the argument reduces social reality and its multiple contradictions into a single abstract contradiction between Labor and Capital.
While the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is the fundamental contradiction in capitalist society, the social relations in capitalist society are too complex and particular to be reduced to extensions of the fundamental contradiction. These social relations have their own histories and particularities. They have to be understood in their own right.
All revolutionary-minded people share the commitment to developing a movement to end all exploitation and oppression. Class reductionism holds back this process.
In the final analysis, no groups of oppressed and exploited people have a historic interest in capitalism. However, the system is structured in ways that different classes and strata effectively play roles of maintaining oppression.
Within capitalism, these classes and strata do benefit “at the most basic material level” from certain forms of oppression of others. Material interests under capitalism need to be distinguished from the larger historic interests of oppressed and exploited people. These larger historic interests can only be understood from the perspective of revolutionizing the existing social conditions.
Smith’s reasoning and the only reasoning offered in the article for her position — “[w]henever capitalists can force a higher paid group of workers to compete with a lower paid group, wages tend to drop” — comes essentially from a trade unionist, not a communist, perspective. It is confined within the logic of the capitalist system.
As long as the only issue at stake is the increase or decrease of wages, as long as the discussion does not break out of the realm of possibility of capitalist production relations, the solution for higher paid groups of workers to wage competition is to restrict the labor market and support protectionist trade policies, rather than fight oppression.
As demonstrated by the ugly history of the labor movement in the U.S., from the exclusion of women and Black people by unions to the campaigns against Asian immigration and the ethnic cleansing of Chinese people throughout the West Coast, from the chauvinist “Buy American” campaigns to the collaboration of the AFL-CIO with U.S. imperialism, the trade unionist perspective in this country inevitably leads to reaction.
Furthermore, Smith’s reasoning cannot explain the role of oppression on its own economic terms. If there exist stable groups of lower paid workers, why don’t capitalists employ more of them? Why are the unemployment and underemployment rates among oppressed people consistently higher than, even double or triple, the national rates?
It is only from a communist perspective, from the standpoint of the abolition of wages, the crossing of the narrow horizon of bourgeois right, and the abolition of the proletariat as a class, that the role of oppression in capitalist society becomes clear. The oppression of non-white people, women, and LGBTQ people helps to reproduce the conditions of capitalist production by preventing a combined political challenge to the system.
The system prevents this political challenge and the development of revolutionary movements of exploited and oppressed people through the relative material privileges extended to all white people, all men, and all heterosexual people based on their membership in these groups. Recognition of this is the key element missing from Smith’s piece. These material privileges reinforce racist, sexist, homophobic ideas. The fight against the structures that create these privileges and ideas is central to the development of revolutionary consciousness.
Lenin used the concept of “privilege” to describe the national privileges extended to oppressor nationalities under imperialism.(2) In her path-breaking essay “The Question of Women’s Leadership in People’s War in Nepal,” Comrade Parvati, a leader of the Nepali Maoists, used the concept of privilege to describe male privileges, such as the “monopoly on mental work” granted to men by the “old traditional division of labor” and the corresponding relegation of women to manual work, and argued that male cadre in the revolutionary party must struggle to “[relinquish] the privileged position bestowed on them by the patriarchal structure.”(3)
The concept of “false consciousness,” which Smith employs, does not explain why racist, sexist, and homophobic ideas are widespread in this society and why people act on them. Saying that the effects of these ideas on people’s behaviors “vary from individual to individual” and “change according to changing circumstances” does not explain why these ideas, and not others, are dominant.
The contradictions between white people and non-white people, between men and women, between heterosexual people and LGBTQ people are rooted in material reality. As Lenin made the distinction between oppressor nations and oppressed nations, Marxists today must make the distinction between oppressor and oppressed in each of these social relations.
Saying, as Smith does, that “Both exploitation and oppression are rooted in capitalism. . . . In each case, the enemy is one and the same,” overlooks the fact that all white people, all men, and all heterosexual people perpetuate oppressive social relations through their normal participation in society, even though these relations are indeed rooted ultimately in capitalist state power and can only be fully uprooted through proletarian state power.
Furthermore, each of these contradictions must also be understood in its particularity and resolved in its particularity. The contradiction of race, inseparable from the system of national oppression in the U.S. and the existence of the U.S. as a prison-house of nations where a dominant Euro-American nationality oppresses entire subject nations and nationalities, will be resolved differently than the contradiction of gender, which predates capitalist society and is bound up with the existence of private property. As Mao wrote, “Qualitatively different contradictions can only be resolved by qualitatively different methods.”(4)
Smith’s solution — “[build] a united movement against capitalism” that will “train workers to act in solidarity with all those who are oppressed and exploited by capitalism” — does not deal with the need to deliberately uproot the contradictions of race, gender, sexual orientation, as well as the contradictions between mental and manual labor, between urban and rural areas, and others.
Resolving these contradictions in their particularity is part of the communist transformation of society. This transformation begins in our mass organizations and revolutionary parties, to the extent possible in the old society, and continues under the dictatorship of the proletariat until humanity reaches a classless, stateless world. Marx summed up the goal of the communist project and Zhang Chunqiao gave it the name of the “Four Alls”(5):
“[S]ocialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.”(6)
1. Sharon Smith, The politics of identity, International Socialist Review, January-February 2008, http://www.isreview.org/issues/57/feat-identity.shtml.
2. V.I. Lenin, Theses on the National Question, June 1913, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jun/30.htm.
3. Com. Parvati, The Question of Women’s Leadership in People’s War in Nepal, January 2003, http://www.monthlyreview.org/0203parvati.htm.
4. Mao Tse-tung, On Contradiction, August 1937, http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/OC37.html.
5. Chang Chun-chiao, On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie, 1975, http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/ARD75.html.
6. Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France: 1848-1850, October 1850, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/index.htm.
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Luis V.
said:
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... I've found this line of argumentation used by Smith relatively prominent, which always surprises me given how incredibly faulty and reductionist it is. It is the same line of thinking that states, plainly and simply, that imperialism only benefits the ruling class. Okay, in the final sense yes, that's true. But the caveat is missing, that so long as capitalism exists, imperialism DOES benefit the working class in imperialist countries. The same is true here: While in the final sense divisions based on gender, race, sexuality, etc. only benefit the ruling class, so long as capitalism exists there are particular benefits for the dominant gender, race, sexuality, etc. |
Luis V.
said:
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...As demonstrated by the ugly history of the labor movement in the U.S., from the exclusion of women and Black people by unions to the campaigns against Asian immigration and the ethnic cleansing of Chinese people throughout the West Coast, from the chauvinist “Buy American” campaigns to the collaboration of the AFL-CIO with U.S. imperialism, the trade unionist perspective in this country inevitably leads to reaction. It might behoove of the author to, instead of simply highlighting the ugly aspects of the labor movement, present a more factually accurate history. That is not to say that a lot of very chauvinistic and anti-worker campaigns were not undertaken, but as communists I think we would be wise to show the contradictions that were involved, as well as the 'selling-out' era of the labor movement that spawned much of its later reactionary nature. |
Timo
said:
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... I have recently met people from the ISO and was referred to an article on China by the ISO. It is equally reductionist, full of distortions, and removes things from there context. I don't know all that much about the ISO but much of their stuff I have read seems to suffer from similar problems. Supposedly the ISO is the largest leftist organization and If this is the kind of things they put out I can't see how that is a good thing. Oh if you enjoy reading crap, here is that article I was talking about. [url= http://www.isreview.org/issues...ng_1.shtml |
jason
said:
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... Just a note that the League for the Revolutionary Party (www.lrp-cofi.org), also a Trotskyist group, has long argued against the ISO on this issue. Three former members of the ISO wrote an open letter in part in response to such nonsense: "This crap should be outrageous and offensive to every anti-racist fighter. The difference between ghetto and barrio life on the one hand, and the average white working class neighborhood on the other, is not imaginary. Nor is the fact that workers of color are so often forced into the hardest, worst paying jobs, and a multitude of other forms of oppression and exploitation. "White workers enjoy the privilege of being spared the worst forms of oppression and exploitation, which capitalism saves for people of color, in order to divide and rule. Interracial working class unity against capitalism will not be achieved by ignoring the real divisions that exist within the working class under inane slogans like "Unite and Fight," but by focusing attention on these lines of oppression and consciously fighting them. "Similarly, American workers are pacified by the higher standard of living and democratic rights they enjoy as a direct result of American capitalism's imperialist super-exploitation of the ‘Third World.' "They will not be able to overthrow capitalism until they are won to the perspective of uniting with their brothers and sisters in other countries fighting US imperialism. "Such rotten excuses for Marxist theory as the ISO's understanding of racism are indicative of their approach to all theoretical questions. Many of the ISO's theoretical views are examined in the pamphlet LRP vs. ISO: Trotskyism Versus Middle Class Opportunism (http://www.lrp-cofi.org/archive/ISO.html), and in the LRP's major theoretical work, The Life and Death of Stalinism: A Resurrection of Marxist Theory. http://www.lrp-cofi.org/book/index.html" |
eric r
said:
 |
... Per a request from the ISO, I have changed the title of this article to reflect that this is a critique of Sharon Smith's view (Sharon Smith is a member of the steering committee of the ISO), and perhaps not that of all individual members of the ISO. I think their request has some validity in that we should not see organizations as singularities, and should actually understand nuance and contradiction. |
Timo
said:
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... At the risk of turning the discussion away from the article what exactly is the ISO? Are they a political party? Do they have an official line? |
eric r
said:
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... Timo: here is the ISO's "Where We Stand" document: http://socialistworker.org/where-we-stand I'd like to engage these line questions in a way that isn't "us vs. ISO." I think that there is much value in this piece, but in some ways it can actually be problematic if we understand polemics as being against specific organizations but not the lines involved, so I will discuss things on that basis. In short, though the ISO does not claim to be a party, they are organized much in the way that a party would be. Setting aside the particular line differences being discussed by this piece for a moment, I think it is worthwhile to discuss some of the questions raised by Timo: I agree with the ISO on their assertion that there is no party in the United States. But we have profoundly different views of where serious revolutionary organization comes from. There is a view in many trends that believes that the way the revolutionary organizations are formed is by a small handful of people coming together and developing a checklist of organizational principles, and political line from the "classics," and then going out and convincing others to get on board. That is not my view. I think revolutionary organizations have always formed every time in history out of larger conversations in society that preceded those organizations, and not from small groups that decide on their line, and then try to telescope themselves into a mass political force. If we looks at the experience of China, with hundreds of communist study groups, revolutionary nationalist organizations, etc. preceding their consolidation and absorption into the CCP, this is a really different experience. Same with the Maobadi who emerged through ideological struggle from a mass revisionist party. Or in the sixties, radicals like the Panthers. The Panthers formed by absorbing an already existing movement after a period of an entire generation discovering communism, rejecting the old and decaying parties and organizations that had come before them, and in the midst of a widespread radical and revolutionary terrain. In the situation we find ourselves in now, our generation finds itself deeply entrenched with anti-communism, bourgeois democratic illusions, and more. Speaking on this present debate, will a serious revolutionary organization really come out of pre-deciding that the particular Trotskyist version of democratic centralism and the vanguard party is correct, and that people just need to be won to that? Is the principle task really building the worker's movement, as some have implied? What does it mean to make our focus on movement building in the absence of both revolutionary strategy and revolutionary organization? I think it isn't enough to admit that there isn't the kind of organization we need in the US, and then going along as if we have the answers to how that will come into being, and what it should look like. My view is that these questions need to be opened up, and reconceived. Not by any one organization, but among all who demand revolution. We have to be able to listen and learn from one another, and discover the way forward together. |
dan
said:
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... a couple of things: eric. i appreciate that you changed the title of this. thanks. but i want to take on some of your comments that i disagree with. first: "I think revolutionary organizations have always formed every time in history out of larger conversations in society that preceded those organizations, and not from small groups that decide on their line, and then try to telescope themselves into a mass political force." this statement us historically inaccurate. revolutions fail in large measure because there is NOT a revolutionary organization preceding a revolutionary situation. i agree that during a revolutionary period orgs pop up because of the larger questions in society but that is not a recipe for success. look at iran 1979, poland 1980, or chile 1973. there were large questions in society and a ton of people with revolutionary answers but because there was no org to express and organize around them, those revolutions failed or succumbed to counter-revolution. secondly you juxtapose that position as against small groups with the correct line that want other people to follow them. what is problematic about this statement is that i do not see politics as a manifestation of a 'correct line'. if you look at the russian experience the revolutionary party grew up at the same time that the working class was in motion. as lenin and the russian orthodoxy was moving out of propaganda into agitation the working class was getting more and more combative. as the crises of ww1 and the czarist state in general became more and more acute the rsdlp became more and more of a draw. but it was not because they had the correct 'line' it was because they proved themselves in practice. they fought alongside the working class to increase militancy and confidence within the class. they argued around specific and concrete positions that the working class rallied around. those positions may have been crystallized in a 'line' but a 'line' was not what the working class was following. and the idea of a vanguard party is not a trotskyist conception. he was against the idea early on. it was mainly lenin's conception. either way, it is not the rcp conception of a group making a declaration. the vanguard party, from a leninist conception, is merely the grouping of the most militant, class-conscious workers. it is not something you can declare nor is it something you can really quibble with. it is just the working class people that are most won to a communist project and are willing to fight for it. we have a tiny (or non-existent) vanguard in this country. the political project i am engaged in is in service of building or knitting that together. we do not proclaim ourselves to be the vanguard though we proclaim ourselves to be vanguardist. but this is something that develops organically. it can not be called out of thin air but it can also not be denied. it will come regardless of what you or i do. while not to be mechanistic i do believe that the revolution will occur (because the other option is extinction) but i believe that the early successful resolution of the conflict will come with a material understanding of what the revolutionary party is and how we get there. that might be something we disagree about but i am sure we can talk more later... |
Zack
said:
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... I'm a bit conflicted here. After reading both articles I've come away agreeing with parts of each of them and also disagreeing with parts. I think that some of Baba's criticism is on target but I'm a bit disappointed that there's nothing addressed to the point Smith makes regarding the ultimate dead-end of identity politics (being relied on alone). That frustrated me a bit. On the other hand, the skimming over of the particularities to which various individuals of different genders/skin pigment/sexual orientations/etc. within the Smith piece is problematic in itself. Both are kind of right and both are kind of wrong. Hmm. |
eric r
said:
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... In response to Dan: Much thanks for joining the conversation, I really value your view in this mix. i agree that during a revolutionary period orgs pop up because of the larger questions in society but that is not a recipe for success. look at iran 1979, poland 1980, or chile 1973. there were large questions in society and a ton of people with revolutionary answers but because there was no org to express and organize around them, those revolutions failed or succumbed to counter-revolution. I think there are two aspects to what is being said here. First off, yes, the lack of serious revolutionary organizations in those experience did lead to disastrous results. These are experiences we need to learn from. But, I think there is a logical fallacy here. The assumption is that just because those experiences turned out the way that they did, it would have been possible for a small sect formed before the upsurges to take root. As painful as it is for us to admit, that logical does not follow. Never in history has there ever been a historical precedent where a Party was formed, and hung around as a small sect for decades, and then suddenly telescoped into power. Sometimes vanguards have been forged in one upsurge, and then led another to revolution, as in the Bolshevik revolution which you alluded to, but that experience needs to be discussed in further detail.. "if you look at the russian experience the revolutionary party grew up at the same time that the working class was in motion. as lenin and the russian orthodoxy was moving out of propaganda into agitation the working class was getting more and more combative. as the crises of ww1 and the czarist state in general became more and more acute the rsdlp became more and more of a draw." The Bolsheviks emerged as a split from the larger RSDLP, which has been a broad (and ultimately non-revolutionary) framework with over 150,000 members. In 1905, the Bolsheviks had 46,000 members. This was a living revolutionary party. While it's numbers reduced between the "horrible years" before the 1917 revolution, it was always in the tens of thousands, and deeply rooted among the proletariat, and able to lead once the revolutionary situation did emerge. This is a completely different experience than that of the few hundred people who make up leftist sects in the United States. And it is just fundamentally wrong in my view to draw up a revolutionary organization with decided verdicts on organizational form, strategy, etc. in absence of a revolutionary movement that it is actually leading. Our poverty of both revolutionary strategy and revolutionary organization calls for reconception. It means that we have to have a broader framework in these non-revolutionary times. We need to firmly say that we are for revolution, but how we are going to get there needs to be opened up and figured out by a new generation. and the idea of a vanguard party is not a trotskyist conception. he was against the idea early on. it was mainly lenin's conception. either way, it is not the rcp conception of a group making a declaration. the vanguard party, from a leninist conception, is merely the grouping of the most militant, class-conscious workers. it is not something you can declare nor is it something you can really quibble with. it is just the working class people that are most won to a communist project and are willing to fight for it. we have a tiny (or non-existent) vanguard in this country. the political project i am engaged in is in service of building or knitting that together. we do not proclaim ourselves to be the vanguard though we proclaim ourselves to be vanguardist. but this is something that develops organically. it can not be called out of thin air but it can also not be denied. it will come regardless of what you or i do. I think you have misunderstood my point. Obviously the concept of a vanguard is not exclusively Trotskyist. But you clearly have affirmed a particular view of the vanguard party, with a whole set of assumptions and verdicts. The description of the vanguard party you have described here is completely different from the way that I have understood the concept of a vanguard, and I'm sure it is also very different from the verdicts and assumptions of countless other sects in the United States. What is the use of prematurely jumping to those verdicts in absence of a real revolutionary movement or a real revolutionary organization? Don't these questions need to be figured out and problematized on a broader basis? I think there is a very strong "pull of the sect" among American leftists, and it wasn't exclusive to the RCP. Perhaps given the crisis of our organization and strategy, we as communists need to be a bit more humble? Perhaps it is time that we open up, and listen and learn from people, and figure out these questions together with others (even while we argue firmly for the things we do know)? Glad to have you hear Dan  |
ShineThePath
said:
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... Hey, I know this article has been up for more than a quick minute - but it actually dawned on me that the name of this article has been changed. The article first appeared on the website with a title which was different and I think people should respect why we choose our title for our article. We understand that organizations are not singularities, but arguing against Sharon Stone's line is arguing against the dominant political line of the ISO - if cadre of the ISO would like to demonstrate differently, that is fine, but staking out in our title ISO as an organization directly makes this the necessary polemic that the cadre of their organization need to consider. |
eric r
said:
|
... Hey STP, I changed the title after receiving a request from the ISO stating that Sharon Smith's article shouldn't be taken as the line of the entire ISO. I am not familiar enough with the inner workings of that organization to know whether or not that is true. That said, my intention was never to distort your title, and actually, the change was really meant to focus the conversation on the actual line questions instead of petty arguments about whether Sharon Smith represents the whole ISO. Would it be okay with you if I added your original title under the linked title? |
ShineThePath
said:
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... It is already made clear that The Fire Collective does not endorse this piece as an organizational piece. The piece was produced by member(s) of the defunct Single Spark Collective and now Freedom Road Socialist Organization. I think this would certainly make this a little more clearer to the ISO cadre you were speaking to. But in the spirit of polemics, I have to insist that the original title be used, because the point of the the polemic was to demonstrate what is the dominant line of the ISO, if they disagree with that summation of their position - they should take up writing something to make the line of the ISO or themselves clearer. Sharon Smith's article appeared in an ISO periodical, she is a part of the ISO. Also if one reads (just google ISO and identity politics, or read Chris Day's criticism of them from SLAM days), there is organizational practice around this line, that even I have seen. I'll just demonstrate by analogy -I belong to another democratic centralist organization which has been critiqued as an organization for a number of practices and lines, if those critiques are made of our general organization (whether there are even different lines within the organization), we are the ones who need to explain our line, our practice. So I insist the original title - which is sharp and makes early demarcations, granted - be used. |
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