Let Proletarian Class Struggle Rise Against the Ideological Mask of Identity Politics

In recent months, the newly installed Trump administration has decided to eliminate the so-called DEI programs (workplace programs and policies that focus on the vague concepts of “Diversity,” “Equity,” and “Inclusion”) at the federal level. This has caused quite the stir on both sides of the Atlantic.

Simply put, we’re talking about those directives aimed at promoting “pink,” “black,” and “rainbow” quotas in companies and institutions of various kinds, as well as professional training courses to raise workforce awareness on certain “sensitive” issues, etc. This is all in the name of diversity and inclusion in matters of gender, race, sexual orientation, and so on. According to years of petty rhetoric, the goal was to ensure fair and equitable treatment for various “groups” historically discriminated against or underrepresented in certain sectors of the American workforce.

These programs can be traced back to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which abolished (very timidly, even in its words) any type of discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation, etc, in the workplace. Yet, Trump’s new directives have resulted in dozens and dozens of companies (Google, Amazon, Meta, Disney, GE, Intel, PayPal, Morgan Stanley, to name a few) changing and backtracking on programs they had been committed to for years. Others, like Apple, Microsoft, and Costco, appear intent on continuing them. Needless to say, Trump’s (perhaps) sudden initiative has sparked strong opposition in the parlors of the Democrats and their ilk. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said the new administration’s approach “upends longstanding, bipartisan federal policy meant to open doors that had been unfairly closed.”

Of course, while there is a fuss about this issue from both sides of the bourgeois camp, they are definitely not referring to the diversity, equitability, and inclusivity of the American countryside. Here, the vast majority of the workforce is represented solely by enormous hordes of super-exploited Mexican laborers.

It is true that the anti-DEI shift suggests some companies are temporarily challenging personnel policies deemed not in their best interest and exacerbating competition within the company to increase labor exploitation, as well as to present investors with a corporate image consistent with government guidelines. Overall, however, the situation of most workplaces is not going to be significantly altered by the DEI U-turn, especially in the lowest paid sectors.The objective nature of capitalist oppression has been, is, and always will be, the oppression of one class over another. This is not a question of DEI or similar slogans.

Rather, it is worth pausing to remark upon the festering pit that constitutes the realm of bourgeois rhetoric. This poison of the proletariat has been increasingly strewn with identity-based references of all kinds. The factions that participate in these macabre debates accuse each other of racism, misogyny, or homophobia, or, on the other hand, reverse racism, misandry, etc. Behind all of this is the game of charades, the ancient mantra of divide and conquer. The ultimate goal is to facilitate the capitalist mode of production and the preservation of the class domination of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. The ultimate task of opportunism is to subject the proletariat to the interests of the national economy (and therefore to the bourgeoisie) while maintaining social peace. The ruling class knows that it must use the possibility of “granting” democratic and civil “freedoms”—which can always be questioned at a later point in time—and apply policies aimed at “integrating” the workforce.

From schools to stadiums, the ruling class has promoted moral initiatives in favor of integration and inclusiveness, aping the most shallow anti-racist demagogy. In the context of a mature capitalism where the network of interests has taken on an extremely global character, that very ruling class claims to celebrate a thousand “foreign” customs and traditions while expanding its business and lifestyles: after all, skin color and passports ultimately have little impact on the unfolding of the processes at the base of capitalist production and the accumulation of capital.

The aspirations of reformism cannot help but stop at mere cultural intermediation, which remains an impossibility for bourgeois society. Still, bourgeois society necessarily needs to be able to make use of fratricidal warfare between the exploited, and knows how to exacerbate it in order to hinder the maturation of the class front. Ultimately, they want to lower wages for all proletarians. In any case, the bourgeois class produces and reproduces the internal dividing lines within the proletariat (which every bourgeois camp recognizes): white and black, native and immigrants, men and women, heterosexual and homosexuals, etc. It doesn’t matter if these divisions have emerged from within capitalist societies or are the inheritance of now backwards historical forms that the once revolutionary bourgeoisie promised to relegate to the dustbins of history. That same bourgeois class can—in accordance with the requirements dictated by historical continuity—tip the scales towards “progressive” inclusiveness or towards “nationalist populism.”

Because of the inexorable maturation of social contradictions and the advance of the capitalist crisis, today more than ever every faction of the bourgeois front has moved to instill identity politics in the proletariat. Every front is committed to pigeonholing workers into various interclass blocs and movements based on race, gender, or sexual orientation.

According to the major news outlets in the United States, the statistics show that the number of articles and news items dedicated to or in any way referring to issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc, has seen a tremendous—in many cases exponential—rise since the beginning of the last decade. This has produced a monstrous profit model—by now as pervasive as it is irreversible—built on selling ads to traffic driven by clickbait headlines and irrational outbursts. But don’t be surprised. Due to factors such as 1) the vaunted “change” and strengthening of the welfare state promised by Obama’s first term losing the momentum it had gained among the proletarians, 2) the preparations and strategies for his following presidential campaign and above all 3) the shockwaves caused by the significant 2008 crisis, the American bourgeoisie and its lackeys were forced to ever more frequently plunder from the miserable arsenal of “identity” in order to dull the workers and nip the resurgence of more intense class struggle in the bud. In 2020, following the widespread protests following the disgraceful murder of George Floyd, many of the companies now withdrawing their DEI programs made a big deal about them, and others promised to introduce them. The African-American bourgeoisie immediately seized the opportunity, steering street protests towards the preparation for the electoral “confrontation.”

The African-American bourgeoisie has for decades been working to mobilize the black proletariat. Whether it makes use of the illusion of racial unity, reverse racism, or “identity politics,” its goal is to increase its influence within the Democratic Party. Today, the Trump administration leverages entrenched racial and sexist prejudices, as well as the desperate mantra of “every man for himself,” and seeks to delude the white worker by telling him the fairy tale that he will return to being as “great” as America was when other white workers like him still enjoyed significantly higher wages, services, and benefits than their class brothers and sisters of other colors.

But communists are neither horrified nor surprised by the lies of capital’s puppets. They are aware that “the true struggle of the working class coincides with the defense of its weakest section” and that only in this way “can the relatively least exploited workers protect themselves first and foremost from the downward competition of their more blackmailable class brothers.” We communists are organized in the International Party of the Proletariat, which knows no division within its ranks. The Party’s militants are communists and nothing else, the party places no distinction based on race, gender, or sexual orientation. Above all, we communists are aware that only through unification for the united class front, beyond any barriers and “identitarian,” nationalist, or warmongering rhetoric, can the working class return to the path of revolutionary struggle. Thus, the proletariat will finally fulfill its historical task: communist society. Communism will be “the overcoming and synthesis of the ancient historical cultures of man in a superior form that will deny them all.”