>I think if you're an oppressed nation/race etc. and you're supposed to
>follow the program and perform under some other official identity, it's a
>step forward to assert what you feel is your more genuine identity. But, I
>think it's a transitional step, not the final one. The misfortune of
>identity politics is that it does make it the final step.
I think it is more than that - identity politics is reactionary in the truest sense of the term. It is a response that shuns technological superiority instead of adopting it, and thus substitutes material resources with symbolic opiates.
In what is now a sociological classic, Thomas and Znaniecki (_The Polish Peasant in Europe and America_) show that Polish peasant immigrants at the beginning of the 20th century who failed to successfully adapt to the host society often went back to radical communalism, Catholicism and nationalism, forming the core of the Polish "identity politics" at that time and further diminishing their chance for adaptation and economic success.
If you look at this from a broader perspective, the history of humankind is the history of successful adaptations to superior modes of production, and vanishing of falling behind of those who could not make that adaptation. This, IMHO, is the essence of the argument presented by Jarred Diamond in _Guns Germs, and Steel_ - where the progress of civilization is explained in terms of spreading innovation. Social groups that could not adopt these innovations because of their geographical isolation did not progress as fast as those who could.
Spreading innovation has never been a peaceful process. Social groups always tried to use new technologies to gain competitive advantage over other groups. A successful response to that challenge was the adoption of the innovation by other groups. This, I belive, was the crux of Marx's view of class struggle - the productive tools of capitalism will be taken over by the working class and used to their advantage. Lenin & Co. understood that very well when they embarked on the program of rapid industrialization based for the most part on the Western models.
An unsuccessful response, on the other hand, is the failure to adopt to the innovation under the guise of identity politics espoused by assorted third-worldists, from Mao to Mugabe, who opted for rural backwardness to cling to power against modernizers.(i.e. "we reject capitalism, Eurocentrism etc. and espouse our local identity). This rejection of the "oppressor's culture" does nothing to change the balance of power, and makes the material conditions of the subordinate group even worse.
wojtek