Identity politics vs class politics - 1: Introduction

Phil Goff has recently challenged issues that are at the core of socially liberal politics in New Zealand. The Labour Party leader has been asserting a more class-oriented and leftwing version of politics, effectively seeking to shift Labour away from a core part of its project of the last three decade: liberal identity politics. The meaningfulness and authenticity of this shift can be questioned, but the intrinsic tilt to the left cannot. While the conventional media and blogosphere interpretation of Labour’s new direction is to label it as either ‘social conservative’ or ‘rightwing’, Goff’s repositioning is in fact nothing of the sort. It is actually a newfound expression of relatively leftwing positions on important issues. What’s more, the controversy over the speech has sparked an important and long overdue debate within the New Zealand left about what it means to be leftwing in 2009, and what the way forward is for those interested in fighting for a more equal and just society. It has made the left confront questions of how concepts such as ‘social liberalism’, ‘political correctness’, ‘post-materialism’, and ‘identity politics’ fit into the leftwing project, if indeed they do at all. Yet, much of this significant debate occurs in an incredibly murky and confused manner, mainly due to an inability to conceptualise the different elements at play. So, in an attempt to contribute to this discussion, this blog post introduces a whole series of posts discussing these issues. The series attempts to reframe the debate and the terms of the debate in a way that is hopefully useful. It argues that to understand what’s going on in the Labour Party, what Goff has recently pushed for, and indeed what’s happened to the Green Party, is not a case of social liberalism versus social conservatism; nor is it left versus right; but instead it’s liberalism versus leftism – or simply: identity politics versus class politics. [Read more below]

Reframing the debate

Although the speech given by Phil Goff in early December 2009 to a small Palmerston North audience of Grey Power members will soon fade into memory and possibly warrant only a footnote in the history of the New Zealand Labour Party, the issues surrounding it, and the controversy that it has created, relate to much more important issues for politics in New Zealand. What’s at stake here are important differences over the nature of the leftwing project and the struggle for a better society. Do we continue to go down the path that most of the wider ‘left’ have chosen during the last three decades – of more social liberalism, increased so-called nanny state activity, an emphasise on biculturalism as a solution for Maori inequality, and a general fetishism for post-materialist politics? Or do we revert back to a more traditional leftwing project that is concerned with a universal struggle for equality and that centres on class? And, is a nuanced class-analysis needed – one that provides a materialist understanding of, and solutions to, non-class oppressions.

This blog post series examines the controversy of Goff’s ‘Nationhood’ speech, attempting to show how the speech and resulting controversy can best be understood within the conceptual framework of ‘identity politics versus class politics’. Along the way, an examination of concepts such as ‘social liberalism’, ‘new social movements’, ‘political correctness’, the ‘new left’, ‘new politics’, ‘post-materialism’, and ‘identity politics’ is developed. An argument is made that such political ideologies and projects no longer have much to do with progressive leftwing politics nor with liberation for groups like women, Maori and LGBT people. If anything, such liberal identity politics has actually gone hand-in-hand with neoliberalism – a development that is explained in detail in subsequent posts.