#old left

Is it to blame for Trump's win?

Up to you. But it's important to know the history.

Before the 1960s the Left was hugely anti-capitalist. By the 1960s, however, this fell out of favour. Why? Because it finally became clear by then how awful Stalinist Russia was + post-WWII life in the First World had gotten pretty sweet: the welfare system was created, softening capitalism's harshness! Living standards were rising! There was 1950s abundance! Treat yourself to a TV, a big skirt and a banana split! And after the hell of a World War, people weren't digging talk of big militant fights.

So the Left started splintering to niche fights for minority rights - blacks, women, queers etc. This was known as the "New Left" (and is basically what we now call "identity politics"). This upset the Old Left. What about class? What about economics?? The New Left argued two things. First, women, blacks and others rightly pointed out how their particular interests were often silenced by lots of Marxist white bros who dominated the Old Left. So even if the Old Left won and capitalism went down, patriarchy would still exist. White supremacy would still exist. These other fights need focus too. Fair point I reckon.

Secondly, the New Left had NOT forgot class and economics, at least not initially. In the 1960s and 70s, for example, there was radical talk about restructuring the economy so women's caring work was paid and women had economic freedom from men. Martin Luther King Jr, who endorsed socialism, knew that Black rights and combating poverty were deeply linked. He was gearing up to launch big campaigns to merge race and class fights - but then he was killed.

What has happened since then, however, is that the Old Left were proven kinda right. Radical economic/ class-based ideas kinda got put on the backburner. A lot of the Left embraced capitalism and neoliberalism, especially after the Cold War ended in 1990 and capitalism seemed the only game in town. Hawke/Keating/Clinton/Blair all tempered their leftyness to be capitalism-friendly.

But now ... now it's clear capitalism is at the root of a lot of the problems we face. It's feeding climate change and deepening inequality and corrupting our democracies in a systematic way. It's like a machine on autopilot trudging along, no longer doing much good but difficult to stop.

That's why there's bitterness that the Left's ability to critique capitalism and find its replacement or mutate it to something less broken has atrophied. Their job is to provide people with alternatives! They're progressives, they're the ones who are meant to have the road-map of how to "progress" when the status-quo is failing! Them damn New Left/identity politics jerks in the 90s and 00s, however, thought success was getting more diverse people in capitalist structures (Hillary! Obama! Oprah!) rather than replacing capitalist structures.

And that's why there's an interest in those that represent the Old Left, like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, both of whom are 800 years old and have just been hanging around with the same ideas while the Left abandoned them then came back around.

So is identity politics bad?

No. Maybe some of the ways ID politics have been fought are crappy (eg. too much focus on minutia or optics - the first woman drone pilot! the first trans sweatshop manager! - rather than changing structures of power) but the basic idea of fights focusing on "niche issues" of race, gender, disability etc? They're absolutely vital. You can't rely on "if we just dealt with the issue of class and economic anxiety, all these other issues and bigotries would just melt away". That's fairy-tale thinking.

The future of the Left (and just finding a solution that's more tempting to people than Trumpism for all our good) is in finding how all these struggles weave together - class, race, environment, gender, disability etc. That's fair to everyone - white, black, man, woman, etc.

To be honest, the best vision of an alternative I've ever seen, is Naomi Klein's "Marshall Plan for the Earth" in her book "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate". Here's a summary. Here's the full book free (or buy it). It’s worth your time.