Two. The reason the working class is the subject of history is not because they're oppressed; it's because they materially create the material world we inhabit.
Identity politics was not a single thing. It was a progressive expansion of the concept of the working class to include all kinds of work; it was a regressive rejection of the historic role of the working class in inventing the suffering contests you mention; it was an expansion of the market; it was a way of dividing the working class; it was a subversion of radical feeling, and so on.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- From: "shag carpet bomb" <shag at cleandraws.com>
the rejection of the working class as the subject of history began in the 1920s already and was fully realized with the rise of fascism. it was the failure of the working class to fight fascism that led to the search for some other subject of history.
the problem isn't with the failure to get back to basics, sitcking with the working class. the problem is with thinking there's a subject of history at all.
identity politics was inevitable given this insistence on a perspective theory of truth, one where only the oppressed can know the truth of history. that's what people were bitching at lbo8250 for saying. for him, only the working class with their arms up the asses of goats can possibly know the truth of political struggle. the rest of us, in our cities, are far too alienated and aligned with the perspective of power, we don't have clue.
it's the same reasoning that underpins ID politics. you're white, so you can't know shit. they're black and, therefore, they know the truth. (weathermen)
wait, only black women can really know.
no no, it's black lesbians.
no, it's black poor lesbians.
no. it's black poor disabled lesbians.
no. it's blcack poor disabled lesbians in rhodesia.
no. she must also have HIV.
she should also be s transgendered lesbian
and have anorexia nervosa AND social anxiety disorder.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "shag carpet bomb" <shag at cleandraws.com>
>
> It creates a hiearchy of who is more oppressed because, underlying
> most
> western marxist and western marxish politics, there's the endless
> search
> for the subject of history - the "most oppressed" class which is
> supposed
> to truly understand how to struggle against capitalism and with whom
> we
> must align ourselves.
> ------------
> I thought this was a creation of the seventies. Because before that,
> the agreed subject of history was the working class.
>
> For some reason, in the seventies, people started saying that there
> was no more working class in the U.S., meaning that manufacturing was
> disappearing. Stephen Grenblatt, resident Marxist English Prof at U.C.
> Berkely, told me this point blank, while I stared back
> incomprehendingly.
>
> I think someone posted a nice essay by Tamas on this topic a while
> ago.
>
> Joanna
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>
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