Base and Superstructure

Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

Category: Race (Page 1 of 11)

These are posts on race from the blog Base and Superstructure. Race is one of the most important issues of political and social power. Topics include the relationship between race and class, racism in the United States and the rest of the world, and the relationship between race and political movements.

Re-Assessing Trump’s Base

November 14, 2024 / / 0 Comments

After Trump won the 2016 election, the mainstream media – and even many leftists! – promoted a certain falsehood. They claimed Trump won on the strength of a working-class voter base.

The reality was much different.

In fact, Trump’s base looked similar to the typical GOP base. It differed only in degree. Trump won on the strength of voters who combined a high income with a low education. Most of these voters were a part of what Marxists call the ‘petty bourgeois’ class, and many of them were just regular wealthy people. I covered this more extensively in a 2018 post and a later Medium article.

The ‘one weird trick’ Trump pulled led to all the confusion. It’s a specific rhetorical trick. In short, Trump speaks about one audience, but to another. He often expresses the hopes and fears of working-class people, but he targets wealthier voters with the message. The press conflates the subject audience with the target audience. Readers can review that argument here.

But we’re not here to talk about 2016 or 2020. Trump won again in 2024, and the mainstream media – and even many leftists! – make the same claim.

So, how about this time? Surely Trump attracted a working-class target base in 2024, right?

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An imagine of the Johnson County Iowa Board of Supervisors meeting room.

White Liberal Guilt Goes 0 for 2

November 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Complaining aside, there’s a lot to like about politics in Iowa City. We have little in the way of genuine right wing politics, for one. Sometimes we even hold elections where all candidates genuinely want to use government to solve problems.

That’s nice.

But on the flip side, white liberal guilt is one of our biggest vices, as one might expect in a place so dominated by highly educated, mostly white progressives. White liberal guilt causes lots of problems for us.

It forms a serious barrier to our leftist political scene, a barrier we rarely notice. Our activist scene is large enough that we fill our orgs with the ‘usual suspects,’ i.e., people already integrated into one of Iowa City’s activist subcultures. These communities are predominantly white, well educated, LGBTQ heavy, and constantly concerned about their lack of non-white members.

And while I focused in the last paragraph on activists, the same point applies to liberal and progressive politics more generally.

It’s not a problem that Iowa City progressives and leftists worry about their lack of black members. Indeed, they should worry about it. Unfortunately, the white liberal guilt they carry blocks them from addressing the issue in a satisfying way.

Here’s the quick story. In a place with a critical mass of white, well educated, wealthy progressives, those local progressives turn inward. They talk only to each other, disconnected from the realities of working-class life.

Many working in the Marxist tradition would call this an ‘ultra-left’ tendency. I prefer to call it ‘ultra-progressive,’ as most people in this camp don’t actually hold leftist views. But no matter what one calls it, it blocks real orgs from recruiting across racial lines.

And that’s bad.

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A photo of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris engaging with a crowd.

Identitarians Can’t Explain Harris

July 22, 2024 /

The tide turned hard against the Biden campaign about a week after the debate, around the July 4 holiday.  When it happened, my thoughts turned to an old debate at the heart of this blog.

Across many posts, I ask the question: what force drives society at its most fundamental level? At the ground, do we find a system of class relations and class conflict? Or do we find identities such as race and gender? Marxists argue for the former, while identitarians argue for the latter.

Joe Biden’s decision to step down in favor of Kamala Harris suggests, strongly, that it can’t be the latter. At the very least, it suggests the left-leaning version of identitarianism doesn’t work. And the far right version never made much sense, anyway.

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A sketch of two hands clasping together with the caption: 'together we lift the sky.' Intended to represent the modern abolitionist movement.

Am I An Abolitionist, Too?

January 15, 2024 /

I’ve written specifically about prison abolition on this blog. But I haven’t written about modern abolitionism as a movement. Nor have I specified whether I’m an abolitionist. In that previous post, I discussed how disagreements over the concept of ‘prison’ produces misunderstandings. It clouds political debates in ways we can, and should, get past.

Of course, I wrote that first post 4 years ago. These debates took quite a turn in the summer of 2020. A more comprehensive abolitionist movement emerged into the stage of mainstream politics.

How does abolitionism, in its modern form, relate to prison abolition?

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