I myself am a class-first leftist, and indeed the penultimate chapter of my new book is titled “Why is Class First?” And the answer is that class comes first because class approaches to politics are the best approach to combating injustice, including racial injustice. Being class-first is an instrumental position, not a moral one; it’s an approach to means and not a definition of ends. My basic gloss on racial inequality has been the same for forever: it’s futile to try and get everyone to not be interpersonally racist, but we can economically empower Black people and other people of color such that interpersonal racism no longer has the power to hurt them. A lot of people hate rich people, hate them reflexively and passionately. It doesn’t matter because rich people have money and money gives them power, which means the hate that’s directed towards them is impotent. Interpersonal racism, the state of some people hating other people because of their race, is unlike any other form of human hatred. But the same basic logic applies - if we dismantled Black people’s economic disadvantage, the structures that make up structural inequality, then the interpersonal hatred just won’t matter to anything like the degree it matters today. Of course I want people not to walk around with personal racial animus, but politics is about what can be achieved materially, not about manipulating people’s emotional attitudes.
You could contrast this with, say, Robin Diangelo and her obsession with ending micro-aggressions. Even if you could eliminate all of those little vestiges of social racism (you can’t), doing so would not put a dent in the Black-white wealth gap or eliminate mass incarceration of Black men or anything of that nature. That kind of focus does, however, fit comfortably with the social expectations of the kind of educated white liberals who buy her books. (
De Boer is a curiosity--a throwback, class-first Leftist. Not many of those around today. Too bad because he's mostly right. But his Left is not what passes for the Left these days. Class analysis and organizing requires real work and comes off as dry and abstract, while woke cultural politics costs little and is emotionally energizing--no matter how stupid, politically ineffectual, and downright counterproductive it is.
Woke Politics just feels so morally right, right? And that's what matters, feeling good about yourself and then everybody you know feeling god about you too, no matter how self-delusional in any deeply true moral sense such feelings are. This is not a Left that grownups can or ought to take seriously.
And then these members of the establishment Left in the universities and media wonder why so many young intellectuals are attracted to the Right. Why? Because it's what's you do these days if you want to be a rebel bad boy. It's not that hard to understand why some spirited young people feel a need to say No to a suffocating Niceness that passes these days for moral seriousness. That they do so is reactive, delusional, and predictable.
I want to live in a world where people are kinder to one another, but most grownups resist being treated like kindergartners who must learn to play nice by the unctuously patronizing politically correct. Maybe this explains why DEI trainings don't work. I understand the good intentions, but this is a counterproductive strategy that gives Liberals a feeling that they are doing something constructive. But isn't such a program only asking people to behave with kindness to other human beings? Do people who have a good measure of kindness in them need to be taught to act? Can such a program work with people who are bigoted? Or Can mandating a DEI training create kindness where there's little of it to work with? And isn't such a mandate more likely to make the bigoted more angry and resentful when they are forced to take such trainings?
8/16/ Update: From Edsall's column quoting former AFL-CIO Political Director Michael Podhorzer:
The idea that the Democrat Party is a pro-business party, Podhorzer wrote, “is hardly a bulletin. It’s been pro-business since Carter. Deregulation (including Glass-Steagall, holding companies, communications, etc.) as well as trade agreements (NAFTA, China WTO, proposed TPP, etc.) are all Democratic Party ‘accomplishments.’”
Podhorzer, however, took sharp issue with Hersh, Shah and Teixeira. “I find Teixeira’s constant harping on Democratic ‘elites,’ as well as Hersh’s and others’ use of the term to be playing with fire at this moment,” he told me.
The focus on cultural elitism, in Podhorzer’s view, masks billionaires’ collective influence over the political process or the ways in which their success is responsible for immiseration and what we call “inequality.” This enables fascist politicians to shift the blame to intellectual and cultural “elites,” like liberals or people with college degrees, redirecting the inevitable resentments of the losers in the winner-take-all economy.
For that reason, Podhorzer continued, "Centrist commentators and Democratic strategists who have aggressively and continuously diagnosed the party’s capture by a woke 'elite' unwittingly — and without justification — affirm the fascist worldview in which 'cultural,' rather than economic or political, elites are the source of their disappointments."
I don't understand Podhorzer's problem with what Teixeira is saying. Doe he not think that the Democratic Party's capture by cosmopolitan elites and their values is a problem? Does he not understand that if they don't shift their branding strategy along the lines Teixera is suggesting that they will lose not just white blue collar voters, but black and and brown blue collars as well? These working class folks don't need Teixera to tell them that Democrat elites don't share their cultural values. They just need to watch the Dems who show up on mainstream media or to attend a typical local Democratic district meeting.
The educated White, Black, and Brown elites who are running the Democratic Party do not, of course, think of themselves as serving billionaires' interests, but they do serve their interests to the degree that they (1) promote Neoliberal policies, and (2) promote extreme woke cultural values that drive culturally conservative blue collars into the party of Trump and DeSantis.
They do less of the first thanks to the influence of Bernie, but they are doing more of the second. Does Podhorzer not get that what Teixera calls Brahmins are making the Democratic Party a hard place for non-college-educated, culturally conservative working class people of any skin color to feel at home?
BTW, this is what Teixera says to Edsall--
Democrats continue to be weighed down by those whose tendency is to oppose firm action to control crime or the southern border as concessions to racism, interpret concerns about ideological school curriculums and lowering educational standards as manifestations of white supremacy, and generally emphasize the identity politics angle of virtually every issue. With this baggage, rebranding the party — making it more working class oriented and less Brahmin — is very difficult, since decisive action that might lead to such a rebranding is immediately undercut by a torrent of criticism.
[Edsall] asked Teixeira whether the changing Democratic Party has reached a point of no return on this front, and he emailed back:
A good and big question. In the short run it looks very difficult for them to shed much of their cultural radicalism and generally make the party more attractive to normal working class voters. Over the medium to long term, though, I certainly think it’s possible, if there’s an internal movement and external pressures/market signals consistent with the need for a broader coalition. That is, if enough of the party becomes convinced their coalition is too narrow and therefore some compromises and different approaches are necessary. That may take some time.
That just seems to be common sense. Nobody's talking about restoring a politics of Meanness toward historically marginalized constituencies. The GOP has a monopoly on that. Rather it's a question of pushing a class-first strategy that is designed to support the welfare of everyday American working families. Who's not for that?
A sane politics is not a moral crusade to force everybody to think and behave and you do, but rather a very practical project to find common ground with people who have shared interests. Everybody, except GOP Libertarian cranks, wants to support working families, and that should be the Democratic Party's brand. Warren, Sanders, and even Biden seem to get this. It's not that others Dems are against it; it's just that other identitarian issues are for them more salient. The Robin DiAngelos should be listened to and treated with respect, but they should not be allowed in any way to become the face of the party.
It's more complicated than that, of course. The meaning crisis that flows from the slow-motion crackup of the Liberal Order still looms in the background. For there to be genuine relief, there has to be a shift in the zeitgeist that addresses these deep meaning needs. But in the meanwhile, we need to support a politics that mitigates the most negative consequences of the Neoliberal social order on the lives of ordinary working Americans.