To be on the Left used to mean to be primarily concerned about economic justice, to be pro-worker, to see the biggest problem in American society as the astonishingly inequitable distribution of wealth and the disproportionate power and influence of the wealthy. So it was interesting to me to read this morning in Thomas Edsall's column about how my idea of what it means to be Left hardly figures into some political scientists' idea of it any more. For instance:
Along similar lines, Viviana Rivera-Burgos, a political scientist at Baruch College of the City University of New York, pointed out how much the liberal agenda has transformed in a relatively short time:
Issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights, and immigration have become important ideological cleavages in the past 40 years or so. Being a liberal today means you’re most likely pro-choice, pro-same-sex marriage, pro-expansion of LGBTQ+ rights, and anti-restrictive or punitive immigration laws. These issue positions couldn’t be inferred based on someone’s ideology alone 40 years ago.
Economic justice doesn't even make it to the list. Are cultural/identitarinan politics the only things that matter now on the Left? Is there any wonder Democrats are hemorrhaging working class voters, especially those with traditional values?
The column makes clear that this kind of cultural liberalism is typical of affluent, educated white folks, not rank-and-file Black and Hispanic folks. This is a completely ineffectual, irrational politics of white Liberal guilt born at best from naive good intentions that inevitably results in the bad guys continuing to do as they please without repercussions.
Compassion for the marginalized cannot be effectively politicized, and when politicized is counterproductive to the degree that it traffics in the tactics of shame. Real compassion can't be forced; it can only be inspired heart by heart and usually through interpersonal connection.
Politics is about power, and the culture war is being waged on behalf of factions that are relatively speaking powerless. Both belligerents misidentify who should be their enemies--if they had a lick of sense they'd realize they are those who wield real power because of their disproportionate wealth. It would be more likely that those in opposing culture-war factions would learn to respect and understand one another if they got to know one another better as comrades in arms working together in common cause for good, old-fashioned economic justice.
But we know that won't happen. Why? Because identity is proof of existence, and because hardly anybody knows who they are in any deep interior, intrinsic sense, they must put these extrinsic identifiers on their flag and go to battle waving it aloft in the hopes that in obliterating their enemy they will prove to themselves that they exist. This is what identitarian politics is at bottom--a primitive prestige battle where the outcome is zero/sum. If we don't win our enemy will annihilate us, so we must annihilate them. It's not true, of course, but that doesn't matter.