[lbo-talk] My soul is made of uranium hexafluoride

wrobert at uci.edu wrobert at uci.edu
Tue Jan 8 19:51:14 PST 2008



>
>
>>>> <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 ?

I may not have been clear here. I was trying to argue that Salt of the Earth may be more nuanced than intersectionality. It actually reminds me of the Marxist feminist analysis of some of the Italian feminists of the '70s like Dalla Costa, etc that focused on the unvalorized reproductive labor of the household... Far from a critique of the CP or the film, I thought it was a powerful and subtle analysis. But then again, maybe I'm missing something in your comment....


> 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).

Without disagreeing with you, both the Panthers and Garvey emphasized identity as an essential element of this national liberation. I'm particularly thinking of the Garvey parades, which emphasized a pride in blackness through uniform selection (all white to emphasize the contrast).

Another example might be the concept of a new 'soviet man.'


> 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.

I'm mixed on this. I think that you're right that there was a certain amount of cold war thinking that could be seen in the analysis of the new left. (Which is not surprising, these were the children of the McCarthy era.) But at the same time, I think it was also a legitimate effort to try to create a radical politics that responded to the conditions of the times. I don't think that this is exclusively tied to 'identity.' For instance, the new communist movement was also highly anti-soviet....

Robert Wood



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