Identity politics

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Identity politics (shortened as IdPol) is politics centered around and dividing up identity groups, rather than as part of the larger class struggle against capital. Identity politics are the various ways capitalist divide the proletariat on lines of gender, race and so on. This is purely concentrated on the superstructure, meaning they ignore the origins of the antagonisms between identities, and ignore class struggle as a result. Identity politics has been utilised by liberals, and liberal theories such as intersectionality were created.

Seizing upon anything but class, U.S. leftists today have developed an array of identity groups centering around ethnic, gender, cultural, and lifestyle issues. These groups treat their respective grievances as something apart from class struggle, and have almost nothing to say about the increasingly harsh politico-economic class injustices perpe­trated against us all. Identity groups tend to emphasize their distinctiveness and their separateness from each other, thus fractionalizing the protest movement. To be sure, they have important contributions to make around issues that are particularly salient to them, issues often overlooked by others. But they also should not downplay their common interests, nor overlook the common class enemy they face. The forces that impose class injustice and economic exploitation are the same ones that propagate racism, sexism, militarism, ecological devastation, homophobia, xenophobia, and the like.

History of identity groups as part of class struggle

In the 1883 preface to the Communist manifesto Engels writes "all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social evolution." Domenico Losurdo drawing from this and from the rest of Marx and Engels works, notes that they spoke of multiple forms of class struggle existing alongside one another. The oldest being the struggle of domination and oppression that has characterized relations between men and women for all of recorded history. Losurdo further notes that Marx and Engels always described class struggle in multiple spheres.

The communist manifesto itself notes how Poland and Ireland are oppressed nations whose nation struggles are part of the greater class struggle between socialist and capitalist lines. Or in modern Marxism-Leninism language, anti-imperialism. One of if not the most important part of global class war today.

All Societal struggles within and between societies anywhere and everywhere are a part of class struggle. The classes that beget the modern world, namely the feudal classes have created the greatest struggle in human history yet seen. This struggle between proletarian society and capitalist society, the largest class struggle in history, is itself composed of larger and more diverse groups of class struggles than ever before.