276°
Posted 20 hours ago

No Politics But Class Politics

£10£20.00Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

For many on the left, social justice seems to consist of an equitable distribution of wealth, power and esteem among racial groups. They need to be not just propagandising about the iniquities of the system but working with others to take the movement forward, not just talking about revolution but ‘accelerating the maturing of…revolutionary tendencies’ and at the same time helping people to understand the significance of their actions. First and foremost, No Politics but Class Politics forces readers to confront and challenge commonsense understandings of what race really is. Because people without wealth are denied jobs all the time, we just happen to describe this as competition.

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. But if your stated aim is to eliminate economic inequality, even a more radical policy like reparations, which many socialists support, does in fact contradict this aim. It is increasingly clear that what is known today as “anti-racism” — with its accompanying displacement of political-economic questions to the realms of psychologistic babble, cultural navel-gazing, and disparities discourse — fits comfortably within the agenda of black elites and the broader ruling class.The division of labour, the reified nature of work, and the fact that workers produce a whole social world that they do not control create limits to understanding most of the time.

In this situation the left needs to develop an independent politics that fights for oppressed groups more effectively and as a whole, but also provides a way forward for working people in general.For many pundits and politicians, discussing class entails, almost by definition, rejecting the legitimacy of struggles against racism, sexism or other forms of oppression. But though identity politics started out as an attempt to force marginalised experiences into the mainstream, it has often led to the prioritisation of personal experience over general understanding.

Not only does the focus on the gap between white and black leave the gap between rich and poor untouched, it actually works to legitimate it.Michaels explores this more deeply in his provocative “Autobiography of an Ex-White Man” by challenging the common dictum, touted by both liberals and leftists, that race is a social construction. Yet clearly, white female voters didn’t think Clinton’s success in overcoming sexist obstacles to her candidature would make any difference to their own lives. In No Politics But Class Politics, a collection of published essays by Reed with frequent collaborator Walter Benn Michaels, the political tension between class and identity is examined through a number of lenses ranging from labor struggles to aesthetic production. When faced with, say, a Sanders-style option of making existing jobs better—so that they guarantee a living wage, benefits, and job security—or swapping out workers to match the racial and gender breakdown of the US census and avoid discrimination lawsuits, employers are not really faced with an option at all.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment