On May 1st, 2018 a sportswear multinational company released an advertisement featuring black lives matter activist and sportsperson Colin Kaepernick which was later, met with some backlash. This coincidentally also happens to be ‘Labor Day’ in the US. By September 2018, the sportswear company in fact earned 6 billion USD since the release of the advert despite suffering the backlash. We have witnessed similar trends of multinational brands appropriating women’s rights movements with an aim to turn “activism” into profits in the west whilst employing anti-labour policies in the Global South. In fact, feminist movements were the first to fall prey to these neoliberal perversions. With the second-wave and third-wave of feminism, the concept of agency, choice and freedom should have further rooted the fight against inequality but became a constricted narrative of realising the economic potential of women in a capitalistic design. As a consequence, this fragmented women who are now active contributors and enablers of the neoliberal- patriarchal agenda. Lean-in feminism is a prime example of this manifestation. Fraser writes “(…) feminist ideas that once formed part of a radical worldview are increasingly expressed in individualist terms. Where feminists once criticised a society that promoted careerism, they now advise women to "lean in"”. The International Working Women’s Day, today celebrated on March 8^th as International Women’s Day, was proposed by the International Socialist Women’s Secretariat aimed at recognising women’s suffrage and labour and as symbol of resistance against capitalism has been co-opted by the same constructs. One can observe these perversions in the context of the American civil rights movement as well. Black capitalism was used as a tool to divide and disempower the “African [class] consciousness that informed black radical politics”. In India’s context, Karthikeyan draws such parallels among arguments made in favour of Dalit capitalism. He further adds that such perversions often receive the backing of the state. This fundamentally comes at the cost of redistributive politics which is at the centre of challenging class structures and any form of inequality.

Capitalism is successfully selling us the brand of ‘inclusive capitalism’ which is more ethical and reformed. Under this form of capitalism, capitalists belong to all races, gender or caste. A kind of capitalism that would be much harder to criticise and resist, by carefully disguising the social character of capital. The neoliberal capture uses working-class politics to undercut identity politics and vice-versa, thereby, individualising resistance to ultimately dull any anti-capitalist sentiment. In this era of constant “othering”, identity politics provides comfort and a call for recognising one’s intersectional oppression. At the same time, it is crucial to recognise how the neoliberal agenda shapes the socio-politics of a region in the presence of vulgar marginalisation and inequality by perpetuating xenophobic or anti-minority narratives. Albert Terry III writes that in order “to counter interpretations of privilege theory by arguing that there is no white, male, cis-, or hetero- privilege is to ignore the material realities of capitalist society.” Moreover, at this point, one must add that not all our societies are binary and heteronormative. Culturally, societies in the Global South have been persecuted by colonialists for being historically non-binary. Colonial laws on homosexuality, transgenders and women are condemnable and require true international solidarity to fight. Movements on liberation and expression cannot be expected to take a backseat by leftists while we wait for a socialist one to happen.

What is clear is that class struggle in itself is diverse and cannot be bifurcated in binaries. Without working-class politics, identity politics will remain hollow and short-sighted and without identity politics, understanding the division of labour (as per gender, caste, race, sexual orientation, geography etc.) and its social power dynamics as underlying constructs of class structures will remain unconceivable. While identity politics identifies how one is oppressed, class struggle identifies those structures of oppression, both being the two most formidable forces of intersecting resistance against capitalism.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the position of CBGA. You can reach Sakshi Rai at sakshi@cbgaindia.org.