"The inauguration of Donald Trump as President crystallises what can happen when centre left / left parties abandon transformation of the economic system and rely on identity politics."
So posts the great man, Richard Burgon, on Facebook.
Of course, he is quite right.
Clinton cultists, this is your Inauguration Day.
This is the Inauguration Day that you made possible, and even inevitable.
There is a need to move, as a matter of the utmost urgency, away from the excessive focus on identity issues, and towards the recognition that those existed only within the overarching and undergirding context of the struggle against economic inequality and in favour of international peace, including co-operation with Russia, not a new Cold War.
There is a need to move, as a matter of the utmost urgency, away from the excessive focus on identity issues, and towards the recognition that those existed only within the overarching and undergirding context of the struggle against economic inequality and in favour of international peace, including co-operation with Russia, not a new Cold War.
The inauguration of Donald Trump as President crystallises what can happen when centre left / left parties abandon transformation of the economic system and rely on identity politics."
ReplyDeleteSo posts the great man, Richard Burgon, on Facebook.
This shows a complete failure of analysis (the same mistaken analysis that led Marx to predict the the world's workers would unite in a revolution to overthrow the bourgeoise). It didn't happen because identity politics (then taking the form of patriotism and religion) is far more powerful than economic interests.
Marx forgot people have spiritual needs, not just material ones.
When World War One came along the workers of Europe voluntarily signed up, in their mass millions, to fight for their old nation states against each other.
Identity politics will always have far greater "pull" than economic concerns.
Trump won not because the Left focused on identity concerns over economic concerns but because Trump articulated a far more powerful form of identity politics abandoned by the Left; patriotism.
"Buy American and hire American" said Trump at his inauguration.
"We will put America first."
Patriotism is the strongest and most unifying form of identity politics and he's the first President in decades to articulate it.
The leftwing alternative is a weaker, divisive identitarian politics based on sex, race, sexual preference, culture and lifestyle.
You don't know what the words mean.
Delete