Identity politics

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue May 26 12:10:27 PDT 1998


Max Sawicky wrote:


>Tell me why a lot of the politics of long-run
>ecological catastrophe, indigenous peoples,
>race/gender/sexual orientation discrimination
>doesn't reduce to class-indifferent solutions
>(if not worse)

How do you make this reduction? Why are they class-indifferent? What do you mean by "class" anyway? If you're talking about ownership and control of property and labor, then sex and race are on the scene from the first. It wasn't all that long ago that women couldn't own property, and it wasn't all that long before that that black people were property. Assaults on indigenous peoples have come in the same package with austerity programs, land grabs by multinationals, and toxic dumping.

If you're talking about bigtime ecol catasrophe, then not even Bill Gates could buy his way out of that. If you're talking about more routine disaster, then the poorer you are, the more likely you are to be poisoned, at home or on the job.


>If I thought it worked, I'd go for it, believe
>me. At the very least, it would be better for
>my career.

Really? You work for an institution with ties - personal, intellectual, and financial - to organized labor, which isn't known for foregrounding "identity" politics. (I'm not knocking EPI, I think you guys are great.) The economics profession isn't known for it either. So where would these better opportunities lie?

Doug



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