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The term "identity politics" can be used in a dismissive and polemical fashion, but what can't be? The concept of identity politics was very specifically defined back in the 1920s, by social scientists attempting to expand an idea of consumer identity to an understanding of voting and voting patters. Understood and used for what it is, it's a perfectly legitimate concept, though--like any other (including Marxism)--it is misused and misapplied if it confuses more than it explains.... Too, observers can and have talked about worker identity in this way, because it is part of the same package...both in practice and function...and in terms of public relations and marketing. This isn't the same thing as late 19th century-early 20th century social democratic or labor concessions. It's not about classical social imperialism or the capitalists sharing anything with much of anybody. Not in the sense that Marx or Lenin or Kautsky or Trotsky would see as such.... Rather, it's about creating the APPEARANCE OF SHARING. And THAT, it turns out, IS a sharing of sorts. In the aftermath of the upsurges of the 1930s and 1940s, you do have something of a worker identity with some potential market clout. And they use it through the new medium of television to reach customers. Other considerations, of course, work to reshape and diffuse that worker identity to make it more middle class and de-emphasize anything distinctively about workers. You shift from "Life with Riley" and "Honeymooners" to the socially nondescript generic white financially stable but not wealthy nuclear family facing the same problems of growing up and getting by...sapped of any class content. This continuum of facing the same familiar and familial problems can be cast even in terms of people in the business world. The point is that this sort of social invitation for working class people to think of themselves as sharing these problems and values with those in professional pursuits or even successful businesses can be successful if the workers buy in. Later, this same process was applied in terms of blacks and Latinos, though this proved to be more difficult for them to resolve. The reason is, in large part, a matter of material incentives for the marketers. Disproportionately poorer consumers can't afford to buy as much. However, it hasn't prevented the mass media molders of identity from trying to remake people of color into respectably middle class people of color. What "identity politics" means is also very different. A worker identity in politics arguably meant voting Democratic in the 1940s and 1950s, but I don't think it means anything particularly today. In contrast, black identity--for example--is a more real factor. Support for Obama in my neighborhood isn't universal, but it's very close to it. The closer you look at that support, the more interesting and complex it becomes. It is almost never uncritical, but it is rooted in the deep (and untestable) belief that, somehow, having a president of color is better than not having a president of color. ML ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
