Analysis and critique of identity fetishism as a political phenomenon, from a Marxist perspective.

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What is Identity Politics?

[Identity] politics is not an alternative to class politics; it is a class politics, the politics of the left-wing of neoliberalism. It is the expression and active agency of a political order and moral economy in which capitalist market forces are treated as unassailable nature.

An integral element of that moral economy is displacement of the critique of the invidious outcomes produced by capitalist class power onto equally naturalized categories of ascriptive identity that sort us into groups supposedly defined by what we essentially are rather than what we do.

– Adolph Reed

Foundational Texts

Collection

Adolph Reed Jr:

• The Adolph Reed Collection

• The Limits of Anti-Racism

• Black Politics After 2016

• The Myth of Class Reductionism

• From Jenner to Dolezal: One Trans Good, the Other Not So Much.

Walter Benn Michaels:

• The Trouble With Diversity

• The Political Economy of Anti-Racism

Barbara and Karen Fields:

• Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life

• Interview with Jacobin

Mark Fisher:

• Exiting the Vampire Castle

• The Joy Beyond Identity (interview with Doug Lain)

Stuart Hall:

• Some 'Politically Incorrect' Pathways Through PC

• The facts are in: Political Correctness is the ideology of rich whites

Freddie deBoer:

• The Iron Law of Institutions and the Left

• Planet of Cops

Assorted Texts

Critiques of Intersectionality:

• Intersectionality: A Marxist Critique by Barbara Foley

• I am a Woman and a Human by Eve Mitchell

• Intersectionality and the Feminist Project in Law by Joanne Conahagan

• Get to know Teresa Ebert (the Adolph Reed of Feminism)

Other Topics:

• Black political life and the blue lives matter presidency by Cedric Johnson

• “American Thought”: from theoretical barbarism to intellectual decadence by Juraj Katalenac

• The Truth About 'Cultural Appropriation' by Kenan Malik

• France's Anti-Liberal Left and An interview with Jean-Claude Michéa

• Identity Politics and the Left by Eric Hobsbawm

• Defining My Own Oppression: Neoliberalism and the Demands of Victimhood by Chi Chi Shi

• Anti-Essentialism Series by the Dead Pundit Society podcast

• Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander

• Leftist Spaces in Antiquity (Monty Python) by Monty Python

Original Productions

• Breaking Free From Identity Politics by Tiffany Warren

• Disability Speaks by /u/bigtittyhimmler

Friends of Stupidpol

Class Unity: a caucus fighting for class politics both inside and outside of the DSA

De-Classcucking Memes for Non-Sectarian Proles: our affiliated Facebook meme page.

r/StupidpolEurope: A place to critique identity politics and general discussion of Europe from a Marxist perspective.

r/LeftistLit; A resource for books on theory relevant to the left.

r/poldersocialisme: A community for socialists in the Netherlands.

r/thefunhouseofideology:Culture war shitposting. Memes, social media screenshots, leftist Twitter drama, and bad Medium articles where cultural slap fights are mistaken for politics.

Inspirational Business Quotes:

We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism.

– Fred Hampton

The campaign against "anti-Semitism" in the Labour Party] takes hold of a vulnerability of the broad left - its intersectionality, its inability to confront identity-oppression claims. By doing so it weaponises the idea of anti-racism.

– Mike Macnair, editor of Weekly Worker

One unfortunate thing about [the slogan] Black Power is that it gives priority to race precisely at a time when the impact of automation and other forces have made the economic question fundamental for blacks and whites alike. In this context a slogan ‘Power for Poor People’ would be much more appropriate than the slogan ‘Black Power."

– MLK

“In combating racism we do not make progress if we combat the people themselves. We have to combat the causes of racism.... Many people lose energy and effort combating shadows. We have to combat the material reality that produces the shadow.”

– Amilcar Cabral

All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.

– The Moor (Capital Vol. III)