No Politics But Class Politics

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The essays skillfully explore how this neoliberal version of social justice has gained hegemony in our major institutions. Discourse on education has become centered on creating racially proportionate opportunities for people to overcome poverty instead of eliminating poverty in the first place. Here is a clear-cut example of the difference between a class-based approach and one based on eliminating disparities. A class-based approach posits that the lower-paying jobs in our society, which also happen to be in the fastest growing sectors and disproportionately held by workers of color, should be made into high-quality, good-paying jobs. The identitarian approach instead focuses on how to make sure that these low-paying jobs are held by the proportionately correct number of white people. Eleonora Roldán Mendívil is a political scientist and educator. She has taught at several universities in Germany and Austria on intersectionality, racism and colonial history. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Kassel (Germany). Her research interests include Marxism, (anti-)racism, gender relations and historical education. Together with Bafta Sarbo she has published the anthology Die Diversität der Ausbeutung. Zur Kritik des herrschenden Antirassismus (The Diversity of Exploitation. A Critique of prevalent anti-racism) in 2022, now in its 3rd edition. It’s not hard, then, to see the outline of a class-based campaign against sexism, one that would unite ordinary women and men for a demand that would materially change family life for the majority of society.

In his recent book, Poverty, by America, Matthew Desmond writes, “Poverty might consume your life, but it’s rarely embraced as an identity. It’s more socially acceptable today to disclose a mental illness than to tell someone you’re broke.” 1 The striking thing about this statement is the degree to which it is both completely true and totally wrong. For one thing, it makes sense that poverty is rarely embraced as an identity—namely, because it isn’t one. It’s a material condition produced by inequality. And while there are undoubtedly widely shared experiences that emerge from poverty, it’s unclear why anyone would want to celebrate these as an identity. Indeed, as Desmond’s next sentence reveals, poverty is painful, demoralizing, and often shameful. This is why he compares the stigma of poverty to the stigma of mental illness. But this comparison isn’t right either, because while it’s true that poor people shouldn’t be made to feel badly about being poor, the real injustice of poverty isn’t the stigma; it’s that you’re poor, and that your poverty is a necessary condition for the wealth of a much smaller fraction of people. Getting everyone to feel more accepting of poor people will not change this fact. Circumstances meant that I had my first vote in 1966 in the UK as a Commonwealth Graduate Student in London. I observed that economic equality was much more present in the UK than in North America and that period was actually when both measures economists use to measure economic equality were the most equal they have been since World War II. The class distinction in England was pronounced as evidenced in conversation and even accent. The shift particularly since 1980 away from economic equality is observed but not as readily a part of the political discourse as it should be according to these authors. Some of this is outlined in contrasting the Labour Party before and after Thatcher. It is time to build Australian first,” he says, “buy Australian first in our contracts and employ Australians first.”

Race vs Class:

Lily Jamali is a senior reporter covering business and the economy at American Public Media's Marketplace, airing on hundreds of NPR stations across the country. Prior to Marketplace, Lily spent three years as co-host and correspondent at KQED’s The California Report. Lily has also worked as an anchor for Bloomberg TV Canada, reporter and producer at Reuters TV in New York and San Francisco, and as a freelance foreign correspondent in Central and South Asia, and Latin America. No Politics but Class Politicshas come right on time. Edited by Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora, the book is a collection of essays by Adolph Reed Jr and Walter Benn Michaels that explore the class nature of the growing discourse centered around racial disparities and diversity. Spanning the last two decades and covering a diverse range of topics, from electoral politics and movement history to film and art, this collection offers a comprehensive analysis of the limits and contradictions of anti-racist politics. A significant new book Richard D. Kahlenberg, The Liberal Patriot No Politics but Class Politics is blunt, biting, and provocative. It has to be. Paul Prescod, Catalyst

This insight becomes important when considering the “race and class” rhetoric that is popular among many on the Left. Attempts to define class as yet another identity fall on their face. Unlike race, one’s class is determined by what you do, not what you supposedly are. As Michaels explains, “The identity that is identical to action is not really an identity — it’s just the name of the action: worker, capitalist.” A core commitment to civil rights and nondiscrimination is, and should be, an essential part of what it means to be a liberal. But Michaels and Reed are troubled that a worldview which sees race as the defining feature of American inequality has “become the absolute moral center of the professional managerial classes.” The authors also reject divisive policies that flow from the race essentialism of upper-middle class white liberals, such as a perpetual system of racial preferences and a full-throated endorsement of race-specific cash reparations for slavery. In adopting this racial program, Michaels and Reed say, highly-educated white liberals display four problems:For centuries, the right-wing has used race to divide and disempower working-class Americans. Michaels and Reed submit that white liberal support for policies such as racial preferences has played right into the hands of conservatives. Nor is it hard to grasp how such a push would reshape the political landscape, as the so-called populists of the right abandoned their radical rhetoric and united with their liberal opponents to defend the status quo against ordinary people. It’s easy – or, at least, possible – for Malcolm Turnbull to denounce ABC journalists as elitists. It’s much harder for him to use the same language against people like Nicole Brooks.