Communists must Focus on Class Only

In the current political climate, it is fashionable to internalize identity politics. This, however, only serves to weaken the Communist movement.

Division has always been a powerful tool. When you want to subjugate a populace, the best strategy is to divide them into smaller sub-groups; not only will this make these smaller groups easier to manage, it will also give those groups reasons to turn on each other, rather than on you.

In geopolitics, we have seen a fair share of divisions in order to keep the defeated polities weak, and there are no better examples than what happened after the end of the Cold War. Everyone knows about the (illegal) dissolution of the Soviet Union, but many people glance over other important examples of national dissolution, such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.

Creating divisions is also useful for keeping political opponents weak, and there is no better example than the focus on identity politics in contemporary Communist movements.

The Communist idea is the most dire enemy of the established Capitalist world order. A unified movement of all workers would bring the Capitalist system to its knees. Of course, the proponents of Capitalism fear this outcome more than anything.

Capitalist ideologues were successful in preventing the creation unified worker's movements in the Imperial Core (countries benefiting the most from the exploitation of other nations; these beneficiaries include the United States, the European Union and other associated nations) by simply destroying the idea that class should be the main unifying line for the Communist movement. They drew heavily from Capitalism's focus on the individual and, over time, transposed this obsession with individuality onto Communist movements in their countries.

This leads to many Communist movements, especially those in the United States and United kingdom, being obsessed with so-called identity politics.

Identity politics shift focus from unifying along class lines onto breaking up the Communist movement along racial, gender and ethnic lines.

Many Western communists have internalized identity politics as the correct approach for Communist thinking, stating that these identity issues allow marginalized communities to not be overpowered by other, larger communities.

While at first glance, this line of thinking makes sense, it falls short under deeper scrutiny.

Not only does breaking up the class unity of workers make the movement overall much weaker, it also assumes that discrimination along those lines will still be present after the overthrowing of Capitalism. And while it is idealistic to think that the overthrowing of Capitalism would automatically make any discrimination disappear overnight, discrimination under a revolutionary Communist government would be greatly diminished.

Overall, if the Communist movement wants to achieve any meaningful gains, it must focus on class as its only defining principle. After Capitalism is successfully overthrown, the Communist movement can focus on solving the issues of identity. Until then, breaking up the Working Class only serves to weaken the movement and bolster the existing Capitalist order.