You are describing the present while I was describing the future.

Excerpt:

I’m a Marxist. Though I’m a fairly unorthodox one at this point, I would still love to see a Marxist revolution. You know, an international movement of workers rising up and taking control of political and economic systems, and distributing resources and labor based on need, while organized under the principle of shared ownership of the productive apparatus of society.

But with American progressivism focused on identity politics, not class interests, forever wandering from the righteous to the ridiculous, this appears to be an unrealistic dream. So I’m left to settle for a set of lefty policy preferences that I can live with—a child tax credit, far more muscular laws protecting labor organizing, single-payer health insurance, reparations for slavery, and so on.

Anyone can put together their list of preferred policies. But there is little point in doing so given the ways in which the left has lost its way. Before we can debate the merits of specific proposals, progressives must break some of the bad habits that have got us into this mess. Here’s where to start.

Take Opportunities for Solidarity Where You Find Them

Lately, it’s become the fashion to declare that cisgender white gay men are not part of the LGBTQ+ community. They are, apparently, too laden with privilege to be considered part of the coalition of the noble suffering.

That sort of thinking is permanently alien to me, so I can’t comment on the moral logic at play. But politically it’s suicidal; there are millions of cisgender white gay men, they’re disproportionately well-connected in politics (yes, thanks to racism and sexism), and they played an outsize role in the fight for gay marriage, one of the most stunningly successful progressive movements in our country’s history.

And yet, take this 2017 piece titled “White Gay Men Are Hindering Our Progress as a Queer Community” by Gabriel Arana, with its subhead “You had your time—now, we have other things to fight for.” To which I ask, if that’s true, and the LGBTQ+ movement should no longer fight for white gay men, why would white gay men fight for the LGBTQ+ movement?

If your interest lies in sniping at people on Twitter, then sure, go ahead and chop up the pool of potential supporters for progressive change into smaller and smaller pieces, and tell most people within it that their problems aren’t problems. If you want to actually change things, then you need to make sure everyone within your movement is taken seriously and treated well.

The problem with identity politics is that any given identity is always going to be smaller than the broader possible coalition you could assemble, and almost always smaller than you need to create change.

Consider police violence. Annually, a majority of people killed by the police are white. During the days of greatest public anger about George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, pointing out this fact came to be seen as wicked and racist; we weren’t worrying about white people in that moment, the story went. But white people have a large numerical majority in the United States, an even larger numerical majority among voters, and (as the anti-racist set will tell you) enjoy disproportionate power in our political system.

So, what’s the more effective message?

Police violence is a black people problem that only black people suffer from, a message that will convince a lot of white people that it’s not their problem?

Or:

Police violence falls especially hard on the black community, but it hurts all of us, and, in fact, a majority of the victims are white?

We need a national reckoning with this problem to stop the violence and save innocent people of all races. It’s in the best interest of all of us.

The second message avoids defining the problem as a “black problem.” We can still recognize, as a community of the like-minded, that police violence against black Americans is vastly disproportionate and an expression of racism. But when we engage in politics, in the work of trying to build the biggest coalition possible for making change, we should not pretend that police violence is only a black problem. We also shouldn’t compromise on the actual policies that we demand. But we must work to build the biggest possible coalition, which always entails appealing to people’s sense of self-interest, not to their abstract sense of justice for others.

I say that as a big fan of caring about the justice of others.

Is that “fair”? Who cares? If you want change, you have to enlist the help of the powerful. That’s life. Do you want to lose pure, or win by compromising? Not even compromising on goals, just on messaging! The question answers itself.

Class Matters

Labor unions have long been one of the best counterweights to corporate influence in politics. They are also traditionally a means of organizing that cuts across racial and ethnic lines. Obviously, shared participation in a union does not eradicate bigotry, and there is an ignominious history of unions perpetuating racial inequality. But it’s also true that, at their best, labor unions have helped workers (mostly men) of different racial backgrounds see their shared interest as workers. This solidarity could never fully erase racial division, but it could convince people that their similar needs could unite them around common purpose.

Too often, the left today seems determined to take the opposite approach. Many people on the left seem so dedicated to dividing up the world into smaller and smaller constituencies. You might consider the narrowing of “people of color” to “BIPOC,” black and indigenous people of color. The purpose of that distinction is to underline the greater oppression that black and indigenous Americans have endured than other people of color. And they probably have. The operative question, though, is: What is the political value of dividing up progressive constituencies into smaller and smaller groups? How does that help anyone achieve any of their specific aims, including BIPOC people?

Organizing along class lines does not mean we should stop messaging about race, gender, or sexual identity. When the problem is racism, call it racism. Never shy away from confronting racial or gender inequality in explicit and frank terms. But orienting around class lines means we create the majorities necessary to actually do something about racism, about sexism, et cetera.

Younger generations of Democratic activists and staffers tend to insist that we ostentatiously put identity issues first. That, after all, was the story of the 2016 Democratic primary, where the old-school class politics of Bernie Sanders were pitted against the purposefully complex intersectionality of Hillary Clinton. Joe Biden’s messaging around economic issues suggests the muscle memory for addressing pocketbook issues exists within the Democratic Party. What approach wins the day will help determine the future success of the left.

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