What Is Identity Socialism?
There’s a new socialism in town. Its foundations are more cultural than economic. Dinesh D’Souza explains this major development in leftist thinking and its impact on your life.
What is Identity Socialism first and foremost about?
inclusionnationalismdivisionclassWhen did Herbert Marcuse join U.C. San Diego?
1965195519451898Marcuse found that the working class in the U.S. aspired to overthrow the existing order.
TrueFalseMarcuse used The Great Refusal as a term for ______________________________.
the acceptance of college students into the draftembracing the sovereignty and defense of U.S. bordersthe rejection of the Feminist movementthe repudiation and overthrow of free market capitalismMarcuse believed that universities could produce a new type of _________ over time.
economyclassculturepatriotism
- The new socialism taking over college campuses and corporations alike focuses on identity groups rather than economic class.
The theories of German philosopher, historian and economist Karl Marx focused on stirring revolutionary socialist sentiment among the working class, or proletariat, which Marx predicted would overthrow the elite bourgeoisie and seize control of the means of production.
View sourceThe form of socialism increasingly taught on U.S. college campuses focuses less on economic status and more on race, gender and sexuality — pitting “underprivileged” identity groups against those perceived to be among the “privileged” majority.
View sourceCampus identity culture is metastasizing into the culture of the broader society. As liberal writer Andrew Sullivan declared “We all live on campus now.”: “When elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education as we have long known it toward the imperatives of an identity-based “social justice” movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy as well. If elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large. What matters most of all in these colleges — your membership in a group that is embedded in a hierarchy of oppression — will soon enough be what matters in the society as a whole.”
View source- Identity socialism is first and foremost about division: race division, gender division, sexuality division, religious division.
Identity socialism is founded on dividing people by various identity groups broken up by race, gender, sexuality, religion and culture. This ideology privileges groups that are defined as “historically underprivileged,” elevating some ethnic and racial minorities over whites and minorities that do not make the “intersectional” list. Women are privileged over men, LGBT individuals privileged over so-called “cis-genders.” The result is a culture of division.
View sourceAndrew Sullivan writes on the growing trend of treating people as representatives of designated groups rather than individuals: “Almost every corporation now has affirmative action for every victim-group in hiring and promotion. Workplace codes today read like campus speech codes of a few years ago. Voice dissent from this worldview and you’ll be designated a bigot and fired (see James Damore at Google). The media is out front on this too. Just as campuses have diversity tsars, roaming through every department to make sure they are in line, we now have a 'gender editor' at the New York Times…”
View sourceWhat is portrayed by the Left as the politics of “inclusion” inherently focuses on exclusion of those deemed “privileged” or who do not conform to left-wing ideology.
View source- The founder of identity socialism refocused Marxist theories on identity groups and targeted college students.
Political philosopher Herbert Marcuse (b. 1898) fled Germany at the dawn of the Nazi era and relocated in the U.S. After teaching at Columbia, Harvard and Brandeis, Marcuse moved to California, where he joined the University of California at San Diego in 1965. He was a “prominent member of the Frankfurt School of critical social analysis, whose Marxist and Freudian theories of 20th-century Western society were influential in the leftist student movements of the 1960s, especially after the 1968 student rebellions in Paris and West Berlin and at New York City’s Columbia University.”
View sourceThroughout the 20th century, economic socialism did not sell well in the U.S., where economic mobility has rated higher than many other countries and capitalism elevated the standard of living for citizens over the decades.
View sourceAs the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, Marcuse tapped into the revolutionary movement among students of the 1960s and focused his Marxist theories on identity more than class struggle: “The student movements of the 60s were not based on class struggle, but rather, a rejection of their own repression as well as a growing lack of tolerance for war and waste. … The student protests of the 1960s were a form of Great Refusal, a saying ‘NO’ to multiple forms of repression and domination. This Great Refusal demands a new/liberated society. This new society requires what Marcuse calls the new sensibility which is an ascension of the life instincts over the aggressive instincts (Marcuse 1969: 23). This idea of a new sensibility is yet another move beyond Marxism insofar as it requires much more than new power relations. It requires the cultivation of new forms of subjectivity.”
View source- Identity socialists target groups with grievances against society in order to promote their radical agenda.
The theories of Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse proved appealing to many students in the 1960s, the era of the Vietnam War, for which students faced the prospect of being drafted. Marcuse and his acolytes turned self-interest into righteousness by teaching students that they were not draft-dodgers; rather, they were noble resisters who were part of a global struggle for social justice. Marcuse portrayed Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong as a kind of Third World proletariat, fighting to free themselves from American Imperialism (The United States of Socialism, Ch. 3, p. 13).
View sourceThis new identity socialism gained traction in the Black Power movement, a militant adjunct to the civil rights movement. The beauty of this group, from Marcuse’s point of view, was that, unlike white students, its members would not have to be instructed in the art of grievance since the black community had legitimate grievances dating back centuries. Through another Marxist transposition, race took the place of class (ibid).
View sourceAnother emerging source of disgruntlement were feminists. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, Marcuse was extremely interested in the feminist movement because “he saw in this movement the potential for radical social change. The process of rethinking femininity and masculinity could be the beginning of redefining male subjectivity so that it develops in a way that males become less aggressive.”
View sourceMarcuse recognized feminists could be taught to see themselves as an oppressed class. “Women” would now be viewed as the working class and “men” the capitalist class; the class category would now be shifted to gender.
View sourceOver time, Marcuse maintained, the university could produce a new type of culture — radical students becoming radical professors who would produce even more radical students — and that culture would then spill into the larger society to infect primary education, the news media and entertainment. Eventually, even big business, the hated capitalist class, itself, would succumb.
View source
There’s a new socialism in town. I call it identity socialism.
The old socialism, the kind Karl Marx dreamed up, was all about the working class, the sort of blue-collar worker who, ironically, voted for President Trump. But today’s socialist couldn’t care less about the guy in the hardhat. He had his chance at revolution and blew it. Today’s socialist is all about race, gender, and transgender rights. Class is an afterthought.
To understand this is to understand the Left’s takeover of the college campus and all the ills that takeover has spawned: from MeToo to Black Lives Matter to girls competing against biological boys. But campus culture has now metastasized into the culture of the whole society. As liberal writer Andrew Sullivan has put it: “We all live on campus now.”
Identity socialism is first and foremost about division. Not just class division, but now race division, gender division, transgender division. Blacks and Latinos are in, whites are out. Women are in, men are out. Gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, transgenders are in; heterosexuals are out. Illegals are in, native-born citizens are out.
One may think this is all part of the politics of inclusion, but to think that is to get only half the picture. The point, for the left, is not merely to include but also to exclude.
So, where did this identity socialism come from? Meet Herbert Marcuse.
Born in Berlin in 1898, Marcuse fled Germany at the dawn of the Nazi era. After stints at Columbia, Harvard, and Brandeis, Marcuse moved to California, where he joined the University of California at San Diego in 1965. You’d think that living in a paradise like Southern California with all the comforts and privileges of academic life, might have softened Marcuse’s Marx-like hatred of capitalism. But it was not to be. If anything, the more he prospered the more he wanted to bring the system down.
He had a problem, however. A big one. Socialism didn’t work in America. Life was too good. The working class in the US didn’t aspire to overthrow the existing order, they aspired to own a home. How could you foment revolution without revolutionaries? Classic Marxism had no answer for this. But almost a hundred years after Marx, Marcuse did. The answer was college students. They would be the recruits for what he termed the Great Refusal—the repudiation and overthrow of free market capitalism.
Conditions were perfect. The students of the sixties were already living in what was in effect a socialist commune—a university campus. Rather than being grateful to their parents for providing them with this opportunity to learn and study, they were restless and bored. Most importantly they were looking for “meaning,” a form of self-fulfillment that went beyond material gratification.
Of course, as with all successful social movements, timing was critical. Here Marcuse was very fortunate. The sixties was the decade of the Vietnam War. Students faced the prospect of being drafted. Thus, they had selfish reasons to oppose the conflict. Marcuse and his acolytes turned this selfishness into righteousness by teaching the students that they weren’t draft-dodgers; they were noble resisters who were part of a global struggle for social justice.
Marcuse portrayed Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong as a kind of Third World proletariat, fighting to free themselves from American Imperialism. This represented a transposition of Marxist categories. The new working class were the Vietnamese “freedom fighters.” The evil capitalists were American soldiers serving on behalf of the American government.
Marcuse found, in addition to the students, other groups ripe for the taking. The first was the Black Power movement, which was a militant adjunct to the Civil Rights Movement. The beauty of this group, from Marcuse’s point of view, was that, unlike white students, its members wouldn’t have to be instructed in the art of grievance; blacks had grievances that dated back centuries. Through another Marxist transposition, “blacks” would become the working class, “whites” the capitalist class. Race, in this analysis, took the place of class.
Another emerging source of disgruntlement was the feminists. Marcuse recognized they too could be taught to see themselves as an oppressed class. This of course would require a further Marxist transposition: “women” would now be viewed as the working class and “men” the capitalist class; the class category would now be shifted to gender.
Marcuse recognized that educating and mobilizing all these groups— the bored students, the aggrieved blacks, and the angry feminists—would take time. But he wasn’t in a hurry. Soon enough the radical students would be the radical professors teaching identity socialism to a fresh crop of impressionable recruits.
Over time, Marcuse believed, the university could produce a new type of culture, and that culture would then spill into the larger society to infect primary education, the news media, and entertainment. Even big business, the hated capitalist class, itself, would succumb.
He was right. Identity socialism has arrived.
I’m Dinesh D’Souza for Prager University.
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