“Raising the standard of living for the working class by increasing the minimum wage, creating stronger worker protections and job security, funding education and job training, making housing affordable, and socializing healthcare would benefit the entire working class, which includes racial minorities, women, gay, and trans people. However, such policies would provide much less benefit to the Professional Managerial Class, who can already afford those things due to their significantly higher salaries and greater degree of education. For them, such “economic theory” is irrelevant and unable to provide what they are most concerned about: equitable and inclusive access to the higher tiers of salaried positions.”
The corporate trend of adopting equity and related principles into business models has been described by some as a form of “elite capture” or recuperation of more authentic anti-racist and gender activism.
Examples of such apparent “misuses” of identity politics and social justice themes abound throughout corporate advertising and political speech, including US vice-president Kamala Harris’s inclusion of her pronouns (she/her) on her personal Twitter bio. This goes beyond corporations: the Central Intelligence Agency and the US Military have created recruitment advertisements narrated with direct reference to social justice identity politics. But are these really misuses?
Often citing the concept of recuperation as first iterated by the Situationist International, some radical theorists insist that the use of identity politics and cultural-political forms by the powerful are merely cynical attempts to strip a liberation theory of its power. Such an idea seems to have merit on its face, until we again remember the economic and social status of those who originated these ideas. That is, rather than an organic and lower-class revolutionary politics, the foundational theories of this framework all originate within the Professional-Managerial Class.
A deeper analysis is needed here, as the adoption of this framework by the powerful is precisely what has helped give it the political clout to displace and suppress class analysis. Neither Goldman Sachs, the United States Army, nor most definitely the CIA can be said to have a particular desire to see a massive redistribution of wealth along the lines of Marxist class revolt in the US. In fact, we might be forgiven for suspecting such institutions are deeply interested in making sure such a thing never happens.
On the other hand, nothing within the framework of intersectional social justice is incompatible with the continuation of capitalism or of the United States’ military policies. A non-binary or a trans soldier is just as capable of enforcing the will of the capitalist class upon the people of other nations as a cisgendered one. Investing in black-owned businesses and hiring more black woman bankers, stock brokers, mortgage lenders, or corporate board members and CEOs would not actually alter capitalism itself, only the aesthetic of capitalism and the skin color of capitalism’s managers.
This observation is the inverse of a rather famous speech made by Hillary Clinton to a private, union-organized rally in 2016, during a time when her leading rival for the Democratic National Convention nomination was senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders’ campaign platform, while not explicitly Marxist, included many reform proposals directed at the working class and employed a popular critique of the financial institutions from whom Clinton was known to derive significant funding and support. According to the Washington Post’s account of her speech:
“Not everything is about an economic theory, right?” Clinton asked her audience of a few hundred activists, most of them wearing T-shirts from the unions that had promoted the rally. “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow — and I will, if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk, I will — would that end racism?”
“No!” shouted her audience.
In her speech, she then continues with the call-and-response, asking if such an action would end “sexism,” “discrimination against the LGBT community,” “make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight,” or “solve our problem with voting rights” before finishing with:
“Would that give us a real shot at ensuring our political system works better because we get rid of gerrymandering and redistricting and all of these gimmicks Republicans use to give themselves safe seats, so they can undo the progress we have made?”
“No!”
From a class analysis, this dichotomy is an obviously false one. Raising the standard of living for the working class by increasing the minimum wage, creating stronger worker protections and job security, funding education and job training, making housing affordable, and socializing healthcare would benefit the entire working class, which includes racial minorities, women, gay, and trans people. However, such policies would provide much less benefit to the Professional Managerial Class, who can already afford those things due to their significantly higher salaries and greater degree of education. For them, such “economic theory” is irrelevant and unable to provide what they are most concerned about: equitable and inclusive access to the higher tiers of salaried positions.
To put this in a more direct way, the Professional-Managerial Class stands to gain very little from political movements and reforms that target the poor and the non-salaried working class. On the other hand, they are much more likely to benefit from racial and gender reforms, as well as from cultural movements which favour their lifestyles and political fashions over those of rural and non-urban people. Professionals who work in technology, finance, and in management greatly benefit from globalization and the trade policies (such as NAFTA) which harmed lower-class workers. As such, it’s not difficult to understand why they might resist all efforts to discuss class and instead favour a political framework built upon identity.
Here Be Monsters speaks to a left that has forgotten its history, its potential, and its power.
Gramsci spoke of a time of monsters or morbid symptoms. In the ancient world, monsters were not enemies, but rather divine warnings, symptoms of a world out of balance. Here Be Monsters meets these monsters and listens to what they have to tell us.
Interweaving personal stories with engaging histories of political thought and the meanings of monsters, Rhyd Wildermuth reveals the roots of current identity conflicts and political contradictions in feminism, anti-racist theory, Marxism, Frankfurt School theorists, and the many other leftist attempts to put the world back into balance.
The left has always been the province of dreamers and visionaries, or as Ursula K. Le Guin named them, “realists of a larger reality.” Here Be Monsters is an urgent and deeply engaging narrative to help us remember that reality once more.
https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/identity-politics-and-the-professionalmanagerial-class/
Read: https://mega.nz/file/J2tw1aAb#lZZcqyB0tUTlHfOAuWnnob-5DbRra7i-tZ7WIY72rHs
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