Perspectives for the coming revolution in America: Race, class and the fight for socialism
I've read a lot on this topic since this thread began but this I think might be one of the more interesting pieces, also from WSWS. I'll quote a few sections
[...]decided to hold a series of meetings on the New York Times’ “1619 Project.” Understanding and combating the conceptions advanced in this “project,” which is being aggressively promoted at schools and campuses throughout the country, is of immense importance for the working class and youth.
What is involved is a form of historical revisionism and contemporary politics that is aimed at elevating race as the central social and political category—indeed, that is aimed at promoting racial conflicts. At the very point that masses of workers and youth all over the world are entering into struggle over issues of class, there is a conscious effort to divide and disorient.
One must state at the outset: there is nothing left-wing about this campaign. It shares more in common with the fascistic reaction of Donald Trump than anything traditionally associated with progressive politics.
On Marxism vs identity politics:
The great advance of Marxism was the materialist conception of history, the understanding that at the foundation of society are definite forms of production, and that to the phases in the development of these forms of production correspond definite social, that is, class relations. In particular, modern capitalist society is characterized by private ownership of the means of production, which are in the hands primarily of the owners of the banks and giant corporations.
The working class as a class is united in its relationship to this process of production. It is that class of people, today the majority of the world’s population, that must sell its labor power on the market for a wage. The fundamental unity of the working class, across nationalities, races, ethnicities, genders or any other category, is defined by this relationship.
The politics of race and identity begins not with the process of production and the objective interests, independent of thought, that are determined by this production process, but by racial divisions. Where does racism itself come from? It is “endemic,” the “original sin,” embodied in the “DNA” of white people, per the Times. History is not the transition from one form of social organization to another—from slavery to feudalism, then capitalism and finally to socialism—but merely different forms in the eternal persistence of racial antagonisms.[...]
The politics of racial, gender and other forms of identity is the politics of the upper-middle class, of all races and genders. It is a mechanism for dividing the working class, subordinating it to the right-wing, pro-war politics of the Democratic Party, and a mechanism for carrying out bitter struggles within the top ten percent for access to positions in academia, corporate boardrooms and the state.
On the right wing character of racialist politics:
The theoretical and political conceptions promoted by this layer have absolutely nothing to do with “left” politics. Indeed, the irrationalist, anti-Enlightenment, anti-Marxist and anti-working-class perspective developed over the past half-century has brought the pseudo-left into increasing alignment with the conceptions and politics of the far-right. The obsession with race, the interpretation of history in terms of the conflict of races, the categorization of society into “white America” and “black America,” “white people” and “black people”—this is not the language of the left, of progressive social reform, let alone socialist revolution.
This was one of the better pieces that I read during the original CRT thread. People should read it.