Class Struggle and Identity Politics

Class Struggle and Identity Politics PDF

Author: Marc James Léger

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-06-03

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1040035817

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Contemporary bipartisan politics undermines socialist solidarity by ignoring class issues and pitting advocates of social justice against ethno-national chauvinists. This guide to the recent wave of "woke" culture wars provides a radical class analysis and critique of the most popular academic trends around diversity and inclusion: radical democracy, intersectionality, privilege theory, critical race theory and decoloniality. The book further explains the complexity of today’s cultural conflicts by examining how these issues are viewed across the political spectrum, including populist and postmodern perspectives. Exploring historical, cultural, political and economic developments since the postwar era, this follow- up to Identity Trumps Socialism provides the reader with everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about the campus wars that have gone mainstream.

Mistaken Identity

Mistaken Identity PDF

Author: Asad Haider

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 1786637383

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A powerful challenge to the way we understand the politics of race and the history of anti-racist struggle Whether class or race is the more important factor in modern politics is a question right at the heart of recent history’s most contentious debates. Among groups who should readily find common ground, there is little agreement. To escape this deadlock, Asad Haider turns to the rich legacies of the black freedom struggle. Drawing on the words and deeds of black revolutionary theorists, he argues that identity politics is not synonymous with anti-racism, but instead amounts to the neutralization of its movements. It marks a retreat from the crucial passage of identity to solidarity, and from individual recognition to the collective struggle against an oppressive social structure. Weaving together autobiographical reflection, historical analysis, theoretical exegesis, and protest reportage, Mistaken Identity is a passionate call for a new practice of politics beyond colorblind chauvinism and “the ideology of race.”

Blood and Money

Blood and Money PDF

Author: David McNally

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1642592064

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The history of money and its violent and oppressive origins from slavery to war—by the author of Global Slump. In most accounts of the origins of money we are offered pleasant tales in which it arises to the mutual benefit of all parties as a result of barter. But in this groundbreaking study, David McNally reveals the true story of money’s origins and development as one of violence and human bondage. Money’s emergence and its transformation are shown to be intimately connected to the buying and selling of slaves and the waging of war. Blood and Money demonstrates the ways that money has “internalized” its violent origins, making clear that it has become a concentrated force of social power and domination. Where Adam Smith observed that monetary wealth represents “command over labor,” this paradigm shifting book amends his view to define money as comprising the command over persons and their bodies. “This fascinating and informative study, rich in novel insights, treats money not as an abstraction from its social base but as deeply embedded in its essential functions and origins in brutal violence and harsh oppression.” —Noam Chomsky “A fine-grained historical analysis of the interconnection between war, enslavement, finance, and money from classical times to present.” —Jeff Noonan, author of The Troubles of Democracy “McNally casts an unsparing light on the origins of money—and capitalism itself—in this scathing, Marxist-informed account . . . . McNally builds a powerful, richly documented argument that unchecked capitalism prioritizes greed and violence over compassion . . . . [T]his searing academic treatise makes a convincing case.” —Publishers Weekly

Elite Capture

Elite Capture PDF

Author: Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2022-05-03

Total Pages: 111

ISBN-13: 1642597147

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“Identity politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media, both online and off. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity politics is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests. But the trouble, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò deftly argues, is not with identity politics itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, Táíwò identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests. Táíwò’s crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond a binary of “class” vs. “race.” By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.

Fractured

Fractured PDF

Author: MICHAEL. CHARNLEY RICHMOND (ALEX.)

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780745346601

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Identity politics has smeared political discourse for over a decade. The right use it to lament the loss of free speech, while many on the left bemoan that it will be the end of class politics. It has been used to dismiss movements such as Black Lives Matter and brought seemingly progressive people into the path of fascism. It has armed the march of the transphobes. In Fractured, the authors move away from the identity politics debate. Instead of crudely categorising race, gender and sexuality as 'identities', or forcing them under the heading of'diversity', they argue that the interconnectedness of these groupings has always been inseparable from the history of class struggle under British and American capitalism. Through an appraisal of pivotal historical moments in Britain and the US, and a sharp look at contemporary debates, the authors tame the frenzied culture war, offering a refreshing and reasoned way to understand how class struggle is formed and creating the possibilities for new forms of solidarity in an increasingly fractured world.

Identity

Identity PDF

Author: Francis Fukuyama

Publisher:

Published: 2019-09-05

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9781781259818

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Currently in Bill Gates's bookbag and FT Books of 2018Increasingly, the demands of identity direct the world's politics. Nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, gender: these categories have overtaken broader, inclusive ideas of who we are. We have built walls rather than bridges. The result: increasing in anti-immigrant sentiment, rioting on college campuses, and the return of open white supremacy to our politics. In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American and global institutions were in a state of decay, as the state was captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatens to destabilise the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to 'the people', who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole.Identity is an urgent and necessary book: a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continual conflict.

Muslim Women, Social Movements and the 'War on Terror'

Muslim Women, Social Movements and the 'War on Terror' PDF

Author: Narzanin Massoumi

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 1137355654

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On 15th February 2003, two million people marched in the streets of London to call on the British government not to go to war with Iraq. Though Britain did enter war, the movement did not rest in defeat. This book tells the story of what happened behind the scenes of this extraordinary mass movement, looking specifically at the political relationship between Muslim and leftist activists. Crisis narratives about Muslims assume that they are only engaged with sectarian communalist forms of identity politics or that their supposed religious and social conservatism is incompatible with progressive values. Through telling this story, Massoumi looks closely at the role of identity politics within social movements, considering what this means in practice and whether we can meaningfully speak of identity politics. Arguing that identity politics can only be understood within the context of a wider social and political structure, this book analyses the conditions through which Muslim and leftist engagement emerges within this movement, and highlights the decisive leadership of Muslim women.

Marxism Missing, Missing Marxism

Marxism Missing, Missing Marxism PDF

Author: Tom Brass

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-02-15

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9004445781

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The book constitutes an attempt by Marxist political economy to extricate itself from mistaken attempts to conflate it with the cultural turn, identity politics, bourgeois economics, or varieties of populism and nationalism, together with the danger of not doing so.

The Politics of Identity

The Politics of Identity PDF

Author: Stanley Aronowitz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-02-25

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 113520554X

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In The Politics of Identity, Stanley Aronowitz offers provocative analysis of the complex interactions of class, politics, and culture. Beginning with the premise that culture is constitutive of class identities, he demonstrates that while feminist analyses of both racial and gay movements have discussed these components of culture, class contributions to cultural identity have yet to be fully examined. In these essays, he uses class as a category for cultural analysis, ranging over issues of ethnicity, race and gender, portrayals of class and culture in the media, as well as a range of other issues related to postmodernism.

Identity

Identity PDF

Author: Francis Fukuyama

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2018-09-11

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0374717486

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The New York Times bestselling author of The Origins of Political Order offers a provocative examination of modern identity politics: its origins, its effects, and what it means for domestic and international affairs of state In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people,” who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole. Demand for recognition of one’s identity is a master concept that unifies much of what is going on in world politics today. The universal recognition on which liberal democracy is based has been increasingly challenged by narrower forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, which have resulted in anti-immigrant populism, the upsurge of politicized Islam, the fractious “identity liberalism” of college campuses, and the emergence of white nationalism. Populist nationalism, said to be rooted in economic motivation, actually springs from the demand for recognition and therefore cannot simply be satisfied by economic means. The demand for identity cannot be transcended; we must begin to shape identity in a way that supports rather than undermines democracy. Identity is an urgent and necessary book—a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.