Kenan Malik explains beautifully how identity politics flourishes in the empty space left by the death of class consciousness.
The damage done by the absence of even the most rudimentary forms of class consciousness is enormous. People on minimum wage sincerely believe that billionaires will defend their interests. There isn’t even a glimmer of understanding of how class interests work and how class antagonisms – which don’t disappear because you refuse to notice them – shape our lives.
haven’t had time to read the article yet, but i think one thing missed is blue collar workers often like the wealthy, but despise the “professional” / middle class manager.
Why?
The wealthy pay their paycheck and they are also not really in contact with the average worker. They sort of admire the boss (not always of course, but sometimes).
The middle manager? They are the person who rides their ass day after day. Who they see arriving in a nicer car. Who gets the bigger bonus. Who often is / does acts superior to their face. This class divide, rightly or wrongly, is often perceived as bigger by retail / blue collar / low paying white collar jobs.
Makes intuitive sense and read a paper / scholarly article on it a few months ago but can’t find it right now.
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FYI, the link does not work.
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The damage done by the absence of even the most rudimentary forms of class consciousness is enormous.
Careful. If you keep this up, people on twitter will start calling you a Marxist dudebro 🙂
workers often like the wealthy, but despise the “professional” / middle class manager.
Right. The practice of directing anger at the most immediately visible representatives of the system that’s exploiting you, rather than at the workings of the system itself, is extremely common.
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My thanks to Clarissa for linking to my post. Unfortunately there was a cock-up (the original post went up by mistake) and the link does not work. The actual post – entitled ‘From the End of History to 2016’ – is here: https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2016/12/29/from-the-end-of-history-to-2016/. My apologies for any confusion. And thanks for the interest. Kenan Malik.
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Thank you so much, Kenan Malik! I love your writing.
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That is a great article.
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Malik is one of my favorite bloggers.
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Have you read his book, The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society, London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1996? I assigned it to my post-graduate class on the History of Race in Ethnicity at the University of Ghana every year.
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No. I didn’t know about it but I totally want to read it now.
Wait, weren’t you supposed to be an evil conservative? 😆
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I am much futher to the right than conservative. But, Malik’s book is great and goes 100% against the orthodox line on race regarding the USSR enforced in the US by people like Francine Hirsch. My Ghanaian and one US graduate students always said Malik was one of their favorite readings from the class.
http://jpohl.blogspot.com/2012/04/more-on-why-hirsch-is-wrong.html
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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