AN EARLIER Q&A on identity politics argued that there’s a sense in which all politics are to do with identity.

We all have multiple “identities,” some of them in tension. Some — our sex, ethnicity, family background — we’re born with. Others — job, hobbies, parenthood, age — we acquire in life.

Many of us suffer disability of some sort. For each of us, such identities interact to create a whole which is richer and more complex than each of its component parts. No one of them totally defines an individual.

To allow for this complexity, theorists of identity politics have created the concept of intersectionality, where each of our identities may interact with any of the others.

A commonly cited example of intersectionality is the case of a black woman who is doubly discriminated against because of both her colour and her sex.

Kimberle Crenshaw argued in 1991 that intersectionality theory arose from “a rich history of struggle. […] There were those of us who by virtue of our experience, not so much by virtue of academic analyses, recognised that we had to figure out a way to bring these issues together. They weren’t separate in our bodies, but also they are not separate in terms of struggles.”

Since then, as a recent article in the Marxist journal People’s World (successor to the US Daily Worker) declares “the establishment (including mainstream media, the military-industrial complex, and educational institutions), has watered down their powerful ideas.

“Bought out by private corporations, these terms are now weaponised against liberation movements for women (and particularly black women), pretending to be ‘allies’ without actually challenging exploitation and systems of oppression.”

Today, intersectionality theorists are often critical of Marxism, claiming (wrongly) that it explains the world in terms of binary oppositions and reduces all oppression to class oppression.

That has never been the case. Communists celebrate diversity and have always fought oppression and discrimination wherever it exists and however it manifests itself.

Marx and Engels both recognised the importance of gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion and culture in people’s lives; that these could never be reduced solely to class, and that class struggle manifests itself in different ways at different times and places and among different groups.

Marxists are, however, critical of intersectionality theory when it sees class as merely one among a host of “identities” from which an individual is free to choose.

This approach treats identity as a subjective choice rather than a material reality. As Mary Davis declares in a recent pamphlet Women and Class, today “intersectionality is far removed from its origins in the anti-racist struggle. It […] relegates class to a mere aspect of identity — thus defining it as a subjective choice rather than a material reality, and hence undermining the possibility of collective struggle against the very system which fosters discrimination, division and exploitation — capitalism.”

Though intersectionality theory may recognise that not all identities are of equal political or social significance, it has no criteria for assessing their relevance to changing the status quo.

Some theorists, recognising that not all identities have equal significance, have proposed that class, sex and “race” are much more important than others, and that this trilogy can provide a framework for analysis and action.

But this doesn’t solve the problem. For, even if we agree that the trilogy includes our most significant identities, the theory provides no framework for evaluating the interactions between them.

A Marxist approach offers a way out of the impasse. Most people recognise that class is an important criterion of identity. Sociologists, and indeed the general public, define class in several different and sometimes conflicting ways — by occupation, income, education, life style, accent.

For Marxism the sole criterion of class is power: whether or not a person enjoys ownership of the means of production and all that goes with possessing or not possessing them.

If you work for a living, or you depend on someone who does, and you don’t exploit the labour of others, then you’re working class.

For Marxists, class is an identity qualitatively different from all the others. In a capitalist society the vast majority of people belong to the working class.

Whether conscious of their status or not, they have to sell their labour power and are exploited, directly or indirectly for private profit.

This fundamental relationship influences everything we think and do. In particular it affects the way we act out all our other identities. An earlier answer in this series showed that historically the oppression of women arose with the emergence of class divided societies and that it serves the interests of the ruling class.

So does the exploitation and oppression of ethnic and other groups, the nature of which varies from place to place but always helps capital to maintain control and maximise profits. At the same time, associated sexist and racist ideas help to divide the working class and secure capital’s cultural hegemony.

As Angela Davis argued in Women, Race and Class: “It is often assumed that diversity is equivalent to the end of racism … we sought to name the process of moving toward justice and it seems that when the word diversity entered into the frame, it kind of colonised everything else … sometimes it means to integrate different looking people into a process that remains the same!”

She goes on to point out that this is why “diversity and inclusion” was so quickly taken up as a corporate strategy, saying that corporations “don’t reorganise the exploitative character of capitalist production, [they] just make sure that more black people, more women, and more Latinos can actually profit from that exploitation.”

Individuals are increasingly encouraged (not least by advertising) to consider themselves free to choose what characteristics they will use to define themselves.

Class itself is conceived merely as an issue of individual or (only slightly better) collective identity; either way, it negates understanding of the way that oppression and exploitation are integral to the structure of capitalism.

Intersectionality will always be a diversion unless it is linked to a realisation that only struggle against all forms of domination can be a source of true liberation.

Identities — individual and group — are critically important. But as Davis declares, divorced from class, “identity politics turns its back on such collective movements for social change. It renounces class and collectivism in favour of individual self-identity.

“It has traversed the boundaries of wacky theories to become a mainstream narrative which has permeated all aspects of civil society including the labour movement and especially the Labour Party.”

“Race” and gender oppression are functions of class society and the super-exploitation of women and ethnic groups will not be finally ended until all exploitation is abolished.

The practice of patriarchy and the doctrine of white superiority are among the means of oppressing women and black people — but they are not the cause of oppression.

Women, black people, and other disadvantaged groups need their own movements to co-ordinate activity and maximise impact.

But unless such movements are linked with the mainstream of the labour movement in an alliance against capital, they can hold back the advance to socialism which is the only way oppression and discrimination will be finally ended.

Copies of previous ‘Full Marx’ answers (this is number 80) can be found at www.tinyurl.com/FullMarx. Mary Davis’s 2020 pamphlet Women and Class is published by Manifesto Press www.manifestopress.org.uk.