>>> <wrobert at uci.edu>
On this note, the film Salt of the Earth, which had substantial CP
involvement has a strong anti-sexist, anti-racist, workers' power
message to it. If anything, it offers an analysis that looks
something like intersectionality avant la lettre (to be honest, it
might be a little more sophisticated.)
^^^^ CB: Ah yes. Those CPer's are so unsophistcated. Lets see. Intersectionality before the letter . Qu'est-que ca veux dire ?
^^^^^
On the other hand, I've been confused about the term 'identity' within this debate, why is the term 'identity' exclusively tied to post 68 liberal multiculturalism? Why isn't Marcus Garvey's movement equally about identity? Or 19th century feminism? Or Black Power? Or Negritude? (I can go on.) All of these movements were tied to something that could be called identity. I'm more than willing to be proven wrong here, but isn't it possible to separate something that might be called politics of identity from liberal multiculturalism, and instead see liberal multiculturalism as a sort of apparatus of capture of several modes of political organization that had some linkages to something called identity? Robert Wood
^^^^ CB: I'd say you ask a good question. I was thinking about it after I wrote what I posted. Communists would tend to call Garvey and the Panthers "national liberation" movements, the national question and all that. The National question referred to an effort to solve very sticky issues, problems.
By the way, the Panthers had significant commie consciousness. For example the slogan "All power to the People", seems derived from "All power to the Soviets". Their ten point plan includes a full employment demand, et al.
Negritude might be more of an identity type movement. Garveyism and the Panthers tended to be more nationalist/national liberation in their self definition ( Self-definition, by the way, is an element of self-determination, which is an important national liberation issue).
The CPUSA position from about 1920 to 1950 was that the Negro People had a right to self-determination, with all that implies in the Leninist conception ( See Mark Solomon's _The Cry was Unity_).
Isn't "identity" a self-naming by some post 1968 left people, in order to distinguish themselves from the "Old Left" ? I think the problem is that some New Lefties explicitly disdained the CP tradition, and so gave themselves new names. Anti-Communism, anti-Sovietism and anti-CPism were a big contradiction in the US New Left.
> ^^^^^
> CB: Also, Communist slogans like "Workers of all countries , unite"
and
> "Black and white, unite and fight" , and concerns such as "the
national
> question " and " the woman's question" were pre-identity
politics.They
> were put forth , not because the working class was thought to be
> unitary, but because it was seen as not unitary, as diverse, and had
to
> be united across its diversity to carry out its historic task. The
> diversity of the working class was recognized by Communists before
the
> identity politics movement.
>
> Did the identity politics movement frame itself as in this
tradition
> that preceded it ? From what I can tell , the identity politics
movement
> acted as if was the first to deal with these questions. That is
what
> seems implied in Kim Moody's comment.
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