Month: December 2019

Intersectionality vs dominant identity politics*

John Quiggin11 Comments

Shorter JQ: Although the idea of intersectionality emerged on the left as a solution to problems involving class and identity politics, it turns out to the be the natural response to the rise of dominant identity politics on the right.

As I see it, intersectionality combines a recognition that people are oppressed both through the economic structures of capitalism and as members of various subordinate groups with a rejection of both:

  • “essentialist” identity politics, based on the claim that some particular aspect of identity (gender, race, sexuality, disability etc) should trump all others; and
  • “working class” politics, presented as a politics of universal liberation, but reduced by the failure of revolutionary Marxism to another kind of identity politics (I took this formulation from Don Arthur on Twitter. I had something to say about class and Marxism a while back)

The point about intersectionality is that there many kinds of oppression and injustice, and they interact in complex, more than additive, ways. The resulting political strategy for the left is not so much that of a “rainbow coalition” of distinct identity groups but a kaleidoscope in which different facets come to the fore at different times and places.

Now think about dominant/default identity politics (I’ll use the US/Australian version, but other versions can be obtained just by changing the dominant identity). The key idea, is that well-off, white, Christian men are being oppressed by virtue of challenges to their natural position of dominance, and rejection of their natural expectation of deference.

The central claim is also addressed to white Christian women, particularly married women, who are assumed to identify their interests with those of their families.

Looked at this way, the claims of dominant/default identity politics are the exact opposite of those underlying intersectionality. The more someone deviates from the “typical” American/Australian, the more they are seen as benefiting unfairly from social welfare systems, anti-discrimination policy and so on.

The right (along with much of the centrist commentariat,least until recently) at mostly fails to understand its relationship with intersectionality, in two ways.

First, they mostly don’t recognise their own politics as identity politics, though this is changing. This recognition is welcome for overt white supremacists, but more problematic for those who want to retain the illusion that their movement is based on broad ideological principles.

Second, they miss the point of intersectionality completely, seeing it as just old-style identity politics on steroids. That’s unsurprising, since they never paid much attention to disputes within the left over class and identity politics, and have used “identity politics” as a rhetorical cudgel.

How will all this develop? As white Christians become a minority, the implied political strategy is a combination of political mobilization for rightwing whites and voter suppression for everyone else. If this succeeds, we’ll be well on the path to dictatorship. If it fails, the right will need to expand the notion of acceptable identity, a path proposed, and then abandoned, after their 2012 election defeat.

  • As usual from me, amateur analysis, probably unoriginal and possibly wrong. Feel free to point this out in comments.

Tolerance, acceptance, deference, dominance

John Quiggin19 Comments

Warning: Amateur sociological/political analysis ahead

I’ve been thinking about the various versions of and critiques of identity politics that are around at the moment. In its most general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But “fairer” can mean lots of different things. I’m trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal, but I’m hoping I can say something new.

Starting from the left (in more senses than one), tolerance involves the removal of legal barriers to being recognised as a participating member of the community, with legal freedom from persecution, voting rights, property rights and so on. Women, gays, religious minorities and people of colour have all had to struggle to obtain this recognition. But, as has been pointed out many times, mere legal tolerance is demeaning and discriminatory. Identity politics involves a demand not merely for tolerance but for acceptance.

Jumping to the right, the idea of tolerance implies the existence of a dominant group that does the tolerating, either as a result of moral suasion or as a response to political pressure. Moving from tolerance to acceptance implies an erosion of that dominance. It becomes unacceptable for members of the formerly dominant group to express or act on the view that the other group is inferior: such views, once expressed openly without fear of adverse consequences, are now criticised as racist, misogynistic, homophobic.

The most difficult term in the series is deference. In sociology/anthropology, it’s typically used in counterpoint with “dominance”, as the attitude displayed by one submitting to dominance. But in the context of identity politics, I think there’s something more subtle going on.

Members of the formerly dominant group may be willing to extend acceptance to others, but they still expect a kind of deference in return. Most obviously, they expect to be treated as the default identity for the community as a whole, as “typical”, “real”, “true”, Americans, Australians, Finns or whatever.

When that expectation of deference is not fulfilled, the choices are to accept the new situation, or to support what might be called default identity politics. More or less inevitably, that implies an alliance with those who want to reassert or restore the group’s dominant position: racists, theocrats, and so on, depending on which aspect of the dominant identity is being challenged.

That makes default identity politics a “double or nothing” bet. If it’s political successful, it’s dragged further and further towards entrenched minority rule by members of the dominant racial or religous group, and typically towards some form of personal dictatorship. If it’s unsuccessful, the divisions it creates risks a reversal of the previous order. Instead of being accepted as one element of a diverse community, the formerly dominant group becomes the object of hostility and derision. The signs of that are certainly evident, particularly in relation to the culture wars around religion.

Back to man bites dog: yet another #Ozfail

John Quiggin3 Comments

Yesterday, the Oz ran the headline “Labor fails to win the middle ground”, reporting the unsurprising Newspoll result that high income earners[1] on $150000 or more mostly vote for the LNP.

Today, it’s done a backflip, quoting Joel Fitzgibbon as saying that Labor is losing its working class base.

Nothing too surprising here, but its worth remembering that the two-party preferred vote in the May election was 51-49 for the LNP, whereas the polls predicted 51-49 for Labor. If Labor were losing badly among both the well-off and the working class, this would be impossible.

[1] Recall that in Ozspeak, “middle” means “upper”

Dog bites man: also, high income earners vote LNP

John Quiggin5 Comments

To read political commentary recently, in Australia and elsewhere, one would imagine that working-class voters have deserted Labor and other left parties en masse, and that these parties now depend on the votes of wealthy inhabitants of the inner city.

The Oz (not linked) has just down a breakdown of recent newspolls, which shows this to be pretty much the exact opposite of the the truth. Of course, being the Oz, this is given the negative spin that “Labor fails to win back the middle” (remember that in Ozspeak, and most political commentary, “middle” means “top”[1]. It’s also important to note that most of the discussion compares Labor to the sum of the Liberal and National Parties. This count the Greens, who are effectively part of a fractious left coalition, as well as centrist and right wing minor parties.

The key finding

The greatest margin in favour of the Coalition was among those with household incomes of between $100,000 and $150,000, with a split of 50 per cent to 28 per cent.

There was a similar picture among higher-income earners targeted by Labor’s class war on the wealthy — those earning household income of more than $150,000 — with the government holding a 21-point lead, 50 per cent to 29 per cent.

Under normal circumstances, this would be the ultimate “dog bites man” story. But, given the absurd state of political commentary, particularly from the Murdoch Press, it will come as a shock to many.

An unsurprising implication, given that high income earners tend to live close to the central business district is that the Liberal party holds most seats in these areas (archetypal examples are Kooyong and Higgins in Melbourne and Wentworth and Bennelong in Sydney, but the pattern extends to through the Eastern suburbs in both cities and the North Shore in Sydney). The exceptions are a handful of seats in formerly working class areas very close to the CBD, where a combination of gentrifying young professionals and the remainder of the old working class population vote for either Labor or the Greens (Albanese’s seat of Grayndler for example).

Again, for anyone who paid attention to the outcome of the election rather than the spin put out by (for example), Blue Labor, there would be no surprises here.

Burning the surplus

John Quiggin22 Comments

Scott Morrison’s total paralysis in the face of the bushfire emergency gave rise to the most convincing excuse for his recent disappearance – he wasn’t doing anything anyway, so why shouldn’t he go?

Part of his problem is that any serious discussion of the problem involves climate change, and even one pull on that thread would risk unravelling the shroud of deception he and the rest of the right are sheltering beneath.

But surely Scotty from Marketing could come up with a campaign that appeared to take action on the bushfires themselves without doing anything about the underlying cause. There’s another factor that hasn’t been mentioned, as far as I can see.

What credibility the government has is tied to its claim that this is the year we will return to surplus for good. The mid-year outlook makes this pretty shaky, projecting a $5 billion surplus this year and $6 billion next year.

The economic impact of the fires is going to be at least as big as that, and the cost of a comprehensive program to respond to them even more. Property damage must be well into the billions (for comparison, the 2011 floods in Queensland were estimated to cost $10 billion), and the loss of business, particularly in tourism, much more than that.

Think of what would be needed for a basic program responding to the new normal (that is, normal, until things get even worse in the future). That includes payment of volunteer firefighters, massive new purchases of firefighting equipment, reequipping the defence forces to make them more useful in emergencies like this, and replacing damaged public infrastructure. It’s obvious that $5 billion a year would be little more than a down payment.

Until this particular element of reality penetrates Scott and Josh’s bubble, nothing serious will be done.

Open forum for climate denialism

John Quiggin60 Comments

Following some recent discussions, I decided to relax my usual policy of banning climate denialists. So, I’m opening a forum where anyone who thinks they have something useful to contribute on the topic. Some rules

  • Real names only, no pseudonyms. If you have something to say on this topic, own it.
  • If your point is on this list, don’t bother making it.
  • For the moment, only climate science arguments, not policy claims like “Australia only contributes 1 per cent”.

Initially, at least I’d prefer to leave the field open to sceptics/deniers. The rest of us can have our say a bit later.

To prevent spam/trolling etc all posts from new contributors will be moderated.

Mainstream media remains quiet on Scott Morrison’s untimely holiday

John Quiggin69 Comments

That’s the title of my latest column in Independent Australia, which came out on Thursday. The news has just come in that Morrison is to curtail his trip and return home. Strikingly, it was the lead headline on news outlets, including the ABC, Guardian, and Fairfax/Nine that failed to report Morrison’s absence for days, then buried the news in stories leading with other topics.

All of that led me to some ill-tempered Twitter exchanges (the usual kind of Twitter exchange, I guess) with a variety of journos, including Lenore Taylor and Katharine Murphy, who gave equivocal denials that the PM’s Office had ordered their papers not to report to the trip, before closing the discussion, and declining further comment.

The core of the problem, I think, is that I’ve given up on Labor. Hoping for the Greens to replace them as the major left party may be forlorn, but it’s more likely, in my view, than that Labor will propose a policy remotely appropriate to the crisis we face.

But that’s not a tenable position of you want to be a political correspondent for a major newspaper. You can back one or other of the major parties, or be neutral between them, but you can’t suggest an alternative to the existing system. This piece by Katharine Murphy makes the best of the case for pushing Labor to improve, but it doesn’t convince me.

It’s already been stated that Labor won’t proposed anything to limit coal exports, which are Australia’s biggest contribution to the global climate disaster. Even achieving a 45 per cent reduction on 2005 emissions, as proposed in the last campaign will require much sharper policies than could have been applied if Labor had won, especially if we rule out accounting cheats.

A hypothetical Albanese government will be starting in 2022, with three more years of rising emissions outside the electricity sector. We’ll need organised shutdown of coal-fired power, a massive investment in renewables, reforestation of land cleared under Coalition lawa a government-driven electrification of the coal fleet. Does that sound like Albo to you.

About the only way this could happen is if the Greens somehow give Labor such a scare that they stop worrying about a handful of seats in coal-mining areas and start worrying about losing the great mass of their supporters. Giving Labor the benefit of the doubt is the worst thing we can do,