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Progressivism, Identity Politics, Law and the End of the World
1. Identity and Progressive Politics
In conversation with a friend of mine recently, he was saying that 'identity politics' was a big theme in progressive politics. He described it as "demographic indicia and solutions/approaches for people who are marginalized or oppressed", and involving an "evolution from 'equal rights' to 'equal outcomes'", but he lamented a consequent "Balkanization of progressives into identity groups competing for recognition".
Samples of 'identity' he listed ranged from race, gender and LGBTQ2, all the way to 'furries'. While I personally don't take 'furries' seriously (to the extent that it's real, I view it as primarily social media-induced trivia of the attention-economy - even less serious that goths), the extension of the debate to include them reveals an important aspect of 'identity'. This aspect is the undeniable tendency for humans to form into social groups (cliques, packs, whatever you want to call them) according to common group features or affinities.
My first instinct to explain 'identity politics' is as a straight-forward aspect of our evolutionary origins - after all, in one sense we're not much more than sophisticated primates - and primates are social beings (albeit in our case ones with a serious penchant for tool-making). Since time immemorial we have obtained food, shelter and protection by forming into groups, eventually establishing villages - and now into modern-day towns and cities - all 'groupings'.
We still continue to draw social supports like acceptance, recognition and validation - and yes, 'identity' from our social groups. For example, it's not surprising that something as obvious (and visible) as skin colour should form an early and primary basis of one of our several identities. The term 'visible minority' is quite appropriate and communicates well.
That other features important to the human animal - like sexuality, age, spousal status, disability - form the bases of our other 'identities', is also not surprising - they have been undeniable features of status-ranking from the times of tribal fires to those of corporate boardrooms.
It's no understatement to describe a goal of 'progressivism' as that of imposing 'fairness' and 'non-discrimination' over these ancient social rankings by sheer force of reason. As material scarcity has wained we no longer have any argument to justify our old status rankings - no sexual division-of-labour, no marginalization of the disabled. As racial intermingling increases we no longer have any visceral reason to justify reduced fear of different races.
It's no surprise that Trumpism finds it's major support in areas of the US that have a history of slavery, single racial dominance, and then - consequent to the abolition of slavery - profound resistance to the recognition of racial equality of non-whites. It's also no surprise that a culture that once lacked ethical qualms with treating people as property, can't be expected to (even now) easily embrace human equality on a thoroughgoing basis. This is truly a 'culture war', though even progressives shy at stating it in these raw historical terms in the hope of saving face in the 'other' when and if civil rationality finally wins.
Such is the stuff of identity. It runs deep, it is ever with us and it's significance is second to none.
2. Identity Law
As with all battlefields where 'reason' is deployed, the primary weapon is law - and the pursuit of equality is absolutely no exception. Two separate and central legal regimes, one provincial (the Ontario Human Rights Code) and the other federal (the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s.15 'Equality Rights') embody this law.
It's enlightening to compare the critical operative wording of these two key laws:- Human Rights Code
. Protected Activities
s.1 Services, Goods and Facilities - 'right to equal treatment'
s.2 Accomodation - "right to equal treatment"
s.3 Contracts - "right to contract on equal terms"
s.5 Employment - "right to equal treatment"
. Prohibited Grounds
"race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status or disability." [HRC, s.1]
- Charter s.15 Equality Rights
"Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability."
This phrasing captures both 'enumerated' categories, and additional - potentially new - analogous categories [eg. 'same-sex' relationships as spousal: Halpern et al. v. Attorney General of Canada et al. (Ont CA, 2003)].The profound significance of identity - and 'identity politics' - are embodied within the very legal body of our state, and at high constitutional and quasi-constitutional levels at that.
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To anticipate the next section, you can see that Canadian and Ontario 'equality law' is mostly about 'rights'. That is, it prohibits barriers against fairness in 'oppourtunity' - but it doesn't even pretend to guarantee actual equality. 'Rights' are about making the playing field fair ... but you still have to play, and play hard.
That's not to say that actual material results are of no concern in equality law. The HRC's 'prohibited grounds' dabble in actual equality-outcomes in the added category of "receipt of social assistance" in one 'protected activity' - accomodation [s.2(1)] (and the related 'harassment in accomodation [HRC s.2(2),7]). Also, 'receipt of social assistance' was held to be an analogous ground of discrimination under s.15 of the Charter in Falkiner v Ontario (Ont CA, 2002), paras.84-91. It's no surprise that this occurs in the prohibited ground that reflects the best analogy to 'poverty', a theme that bears further discussion below.
3. Rights, Outcomes and The End of the World
A read of the last section shows that identity law is overwhelmingly about 'rights'. But progressives, being sensible and compassion people, are concerned about more than that - they are concerned about actual material equality, what my friend calls 'outcomes' (as mentioned in the first section of this essay).
Illustrating the difference between 'rights' and 'outcomes' is simple. What progressive doesn't roll their eyes whenever they hear the adage that: 'everyone can be a billionaire'? Sure, a few every generation perhaps, but what about the other 8 billion of us?
So, when my friend laments the failure of progressives, burdened by a dysfunctional 'identity politics' that results in a "Balkanization of progressives into identity groups competing for recognition", as opposed to an actual "evolution from 'equal rights' to 'equal outcomes'" - I expect this is what he is talking about.
Relieving poverty has been a laudable and honourable goal, perhaps starting likely with Jesus and wending it's way through Marx and the early socialists - but in 2024 it is now an obsolete one, at least insofar as it's a problem of not having more 'stuff'. Our problems now are ones of distribution, and that calls for a whole different skill-set.
To understand 'manufactured need' one need not go much further back than Marx's historical materialism (a quite valid doctrine), and then to update it in light of the present advanced stage of modern capitalism. Recall that under historical materialism, the 'mode of production' produces the institutions and ideologies of society. The mode of production comes first - that is, it is causal; the 'rest' (that is, the entirety of human social and economic existence) are 'mere' non-causal epiphenomenon.
The classic progressive activist (or 'socialist', if you prefer) operates in a world of material scarcity. But capitalism has advanced well beyond that. Despite local and contingent still-existing material shortages amongst some groups in the world, capitalism has essentially 'won' the socialism-capitalism wars. The material shortages that remain are ones of distribution, not capacity.
In short, we have had - for decades now - an abundance of material production capacity. We now live eating perfect-shaped vegetables grown thousands of miles away, plastic 'consumer goods' from halfway around the world, making major purchases like cars according to the manufacturer's planned obsolescence schedule, and fending off ever-present advertising as though it was an insect swarm. We have been way past material scarcity for decades now.
Capitalism has achieved what it's proponents promised - to end scarcity. But (big BUT coming), the problem is it can't stop. There are far too many of us dependent upon the continued spinning of it's wheels for that to happen. The monster still lives, and still it must feed - and the process of that feeding is materially destroying the habitable world.
In frank 'historical materialism'-speak, the monster is capitalism and it eats material 'need' - ie. it only functions (and thus supports it's populating humans, insofar as it does), when can satisfy material need - (which, if we are to speak honestly, we have quite run out of). Now you'd think that's good thing - you'd think that we could get up one day, heave a sign of relief and say: "well I'm glad that's over, I've been wanting to catch up on my reading ..." but that's not to be, we've got bigger problems now.
To recap. It's true that capitalism is a monster, and it needs need, which we have run out of. Well, at least we have run out of it in it's previously-supplied form, that of 'actual' need. We ran out of that a while ago, but the monster ever-hungers.
Capitalism is a clever, versatile monster, it can pretty much satisfy any need - including a 'need for need'. It can entice humans to fabricate not only the actual material stuff that they truly need to satisfy themselves, but when it finishes with that it can make even more need. Welcome to the era of 'manufactured need'!!
Capitalism - ever eager to serve - is ready to ... well, serve. In fact it's been doing so, without pause or even a slight hiccup, uninterrupted for quite some time now - despite the switch from 'actual' to 'manufactured need' (what with being a mindless monster it didn't really notice).
Some theorists describe a 'late-capitalist' world, that's wrong - we are rather in a 'late historical materialist' world, as capitalism is doing great and has a bright future ahead of it. In fact, capitalism has more lately shifted qualitatively beyond it's scarcity-origins, and has reached a form of immortality - well, immortality as long as it doesn't kill off it's hosts (that's us). Like any self-respecting parasite, the question that arises is whether it will do that (ie. kill off it's hosts) or learn to limit it's hunger to a stable level and only develop a symbiosis.
But, I digress- that's an issue for another SB essay.
The upshot is that socialism didn't work - and while you still have distribution and end of the world problems, gross material 'outcomes' are moot. Capitalism won, sorry.
4. Identity (and Identity Politics) Ain't Going Anywhere Soon
While my friend, like me, still wants a better 'outcomes' results: ie. "... but I really feel we should focus on housing and poverty", this - at least if you buy the above argument - is a politically moot issue. Capitalism won, and the dynamics of it's (tragically now quaint) opposition to socialism are obsolete.
While, even if that weren't the case (ie. had socialism won), I don't see any compelling reason for 'identities' to wither away any time soon. That hope(?) seems to me to be wishful thinking, perhaps an aspect of a general 'all will be better after the revolution' motif?. There is hope in things like racial intermingling, but that's long-off.
In any event, identity is - in my estimation at least - a natural function of human society, indeed a driving dynamic. If identity is not going anywhere soon, neither is identity politics.
In fact, I suspect this a good thing. If 'groups' serve their collective interests better than an uniform and homogenized 'whole', then more power to them.
In recent history, the evidence is that we've done well with an 'identity politics' structuring of our political energies - certainly better than over prior eras. Take race relations for example - never before in history have we had such legal and moral acceptance of equality of the races. Women's rights, not a bad last century you have to admit: voting, wage equity, family law - to name some big ones. Sexual orientation and gender identity? - also not bad, though later than women's rights - it's been a hectic (but very successful) last few decades.
On the downside - disability? Lots of sidewalk curb ramps, more automatic door openers ever year - but (as David Leposky would attests, if he's feeling nice that day) it's a, ummm ... 'work in progress'. And that's for physical disability - mental disability is another story (but it's a toughie) ...
Age? It's amazing what addressing material need can do (thank you CPP/OAS/GIS!), which is good because we haven't done much else - but older folks tend to feather their nests on their own not bad.
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God knows that we've got more to do, but the old monster have been renewed into far more dangerous forms. 'We' - that is each other, regardless of our 'identity' categories - need all the help we can get, we'd best not criticize ourselves needlessly.
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