As I've argued before, against those who disparage identity politics as a kind of interloper that has usurped the true politics of class struggle, identity politics actually derives from what Postone calls "traditional Marxism" which posited a Subject of History -- the working class. Practically, in the U.S. this translated into a tendency for Marxist groups to believe that they should help the working class become conscious of its class position, the better to ensure that it truly become the grave digger of capitalism.
But, historical events meant that Marxists ended up feeling betrayed by the working class and the search was on for a new Subject of History: in the U.S. it was the black liberation struggle, which was often tied to third world people; then there was the Marxist arms of the feminist movement which saw women as the Subject of History; enter a critique of feminism from the standpoint of black women, and queer black women, and queer black working class and poor women (an internal critique of, for ex, the Combahee River Collective Statement); etc.
Postone's argument is that this search for the Subject of History -- the epistemological standpoint of the "most oppressed" and "marginalized" which would shine the light of Truth on "what is to be done" -- is a misapprehension of Marx's engagement with Hegel. Moreover, in the endless debate between Carrol and Doug re: subjectivity -- with Doug claiming that Carrol espouses some sort of determinate logic of history unfolding before us with which we cannot possibly have much to offer -- well, Postone isn't making that argument:
"Marx's critique of Hegel, then, is quite different for Lukacs's materialist appropriation of Hegel, for it does not identity a concrete, conscious, social Subject (for example, the proletariat) that unfolds itself historically, achieving full self-consciousness through a process of self-reflexive objectification. Doing so would implicitly posit "labor" as the constituting substance of a Subject, which prevented the capitalist relations from realizing itself. As I implied in my discussion of "Ricardian Marxism," the historical Subject in that case would be a collective version of the bourgeois subject, constituting itself and the world through "labor." The concepts of "labor" and the bourgeois subject (whether interpreted as the individual, or as a class) are intrinsically related: they express a historically specific social reality in ontological form.
Marx's critique of Hegel breaks with the prepositions of such a position ... Rather than viewing capitalist relations as extrinsic to the Subject, as that which hinder its full realization, Marx analyzes those very relations as constituting the Subject. This fundamental difference is related to the one outlined earlier: the quasi-objective structures grasped by the categories of Marx's critique of political economy do not 'veil' either the 'real' social relations of capitalism (class relations) or the 'real' historical Subject (the proletariat). That, those structures *are* the fundamental relations of capitalist society that, because of their peculiar properties, *constitute* what Hegel grasps as a historical Subject. This theoretical turn means that the Marxian theory neither posits nor is bound to the notion of a historical meta-Subject, such as the proletariat, which will realize itself in a future society. Indeed, the move from a theory of the collective (bourgeois) Subject to a theory of alienated social relations implies a critique of such a notion. It is one aspect of a major shift in critical perspective from a social critique on the basis of "labor" to a social critique of the peculiar nature of labor in capitalism, whereby the former's standpoint becomes the latter's object of critique.
... We have seen that the traditional assumptions regarding labor and social relations in capitalism lead the Hegelian concept of totality to be adopted and translated into "materialist" terms as follows: Social totality is constituted by "labor," but is veiled, apparently fragmented, and prevented from realizing itself by capitalist relations. It represents the *standpoint* of the critique of the capitalist present, and will be realized in socialism.
Marx's categorial determination of capital as the historical Subject, however, indicates that the totality has become the *object* of his critique. As shall be discussed below, social totality, ... is a n essential feature of the capitalist formation and expression of alienation. The capitalist social formation, according to Marx, is unique inasmuch as it is constituted by a qualitatively homogeneous social "substance"; hence, it exists as a social totality. Other social formations are not so totalized: their fundamental social relations are not qualitatively homogeneous. They cannot be grasped by the concept of "substance," cannot be unfolded from a single structuring principles, and do not display an immanent, necessary historical logic.
Marx's assertion that capital, and not the proletariat or the species, is the total Subject implies that the historical negations of capitalism would not involve the *realization*, but the *abolition,* of the totality. ... Considered on another level, it indicates Marx's mature understanding of history cannot be grasped adequately as an essentallly eschatological conception in secular form."
pp. 78-79
"let's be civil and nice, but not to the point of obeying the rules of debate as defined by liberal blackmail (in which, discomfort caused by a challenge is seen as some vague form of harassment)."
-- Dwayne Monroe, 11/19/08
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