Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
These four posts are the political and intellectual foundations upon which the blog Base and Superstructure rests. We all have a point from which we’re starting. These posts lay out mine. I chose these posts carefully and placed them at the very beginning of the blog. I make frequent reference to these posts later, and so I set them aside as a quick reference tool. One foundational topic is Marxist social analysis, especially the base and superstructure vision of society. Another is the basic definitions of identity politics and identitarianism. There’s a discussion of basic principles of how to conduct successful activist movements. Finally, there are some general thoughts about class, class politics, and the relationship between class interests and socioeconomic status.
‘Class’ is another of those terms we use, but we don’t use it in a standard way. For many of us it boils down to, ‘I know it when I see it.’
I’m going to use Michael J. Roberts’ work (Class: The Anthology) as a framework.
I’ll lay out two approaches and say a bit about why I prefer the second.
Everyone’s new to political activism at some point. We probably know we’re not going to change the world in a day. No one was born with a bullhorn in hand and a cowering group of bourgeoisie 5 feet in front of them. To change the world takes time, comrades, and effort.
But sometimes movements come along and sweep up far more newbies than usual.
The 2016 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders is one of those movements. It was neither the first nor even the most recent. It’s not even the only one with current impact (see, e.g., Black Lives Matter, pro-immigrant movements gaining steam since 2016, etc.). But it’s one that included many, many, first-time activists.
You can find Sandersistas doing many things now. They’re joining the Democratic Socialists of America and running for Congress. They’re working on immigration or housing or employment justice. These Sandersista newbies tend to be: 18-30 years old, either in college and afraid of student debt and part-time, dead-end work, or currently engaged in part-time, dead-end work that they’d like to escape. They’re a racially diverse coalition. Economically, they’re largely from middle and upper-middle class backgrounds, but precariously so. Consequently, they’re worried that they could backslide.
They’re correct to worry.
I’ve been engaged in activist-y type activity (‘change the world’ type stuff, broadly construed) since sometime in the late 90s or so. Consequently, I feel I’ve picked up a few things along the way. These are a few lessons I’ve learned in that time that maybe the Sandersistas will find useful:
Identity politics, in various forms, have become perhaps the political ideology of our time and place. I suspect this is true in many places. But I limit my scope in this post to recent politics in the United States. People sometimes toss around the related term ‘identitarianism.’
The trouble is that we don’t really know what ‘identity politics’ means. Or, perhaps worse, we all know what it means. It’s just that no one agrees on what it is they all know.
I’m going to define ‘identity politics’ and ‘identitarianism’ in this post. I don’t claim that my definitions are the right ones, or that everyone else’s are wrong. I’m just laying out how I’ll be using those terms in this blog. Hopefully you’ll find this both explanatory and helpful when looking at real problems and issues.
‘Base and Superstructure’ is the title of this blog. And so you might think it’s central to my approach to politics.
That’s true, as far as it goes. But it turns out it impacts things in a variety of ways.
‘Base’ and ‘superstructure’ are complementary terms from Marxist theory. They are the two sides of a division of society. The base includes human labor power and its tools, machines, etc. It also includes people’s relations in economic production. Think about, for example, employers and employees, coworkers, etc. The superstructure includes most of the rest of visible society: culture, religion, ideology, values, beliefs, social institutions, personal and group identities, etc.
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