Evolution and Consequentialism

Although only implicit in Politics for the New Dark Age, my current research interests lean heavily towards evolutionary understandings of political and social science. In short, generalised Darwinism proposes that the evolution of species, the development of individual biological organisms, and the growth and spread of cultural norms, practices and beliefs are all controlled by the same processes of variation, selection and replication. Evolutionary approaches explain the emergence of order from anarchy, of function from randomness, and of cooperation from conflict. What such an approach seeks to understand is the success of strategies or decision-rules: ideas that transform information about the external environment into motivated action. So far, so good.

Philosophical conundrums

The key component of all evolutionary approaches is selection by consequences, or as it is commonly (and inaccurately) known, survival of the fittest. Strategies that are effective (or neutral) relative to their peer competitors will survive or even expand their frequency in the next generation, and strategies that are ineffective will reproduce or be copied less often. Thus, over time evolved strategies can converge on certain optimised mathematical equilibria. But doesn't an evolutionary approach to understanding social and political life then merely offer a justification for a utilitarian "ends justify the means" ethical philosophy? Since utilitarianism is the best-known school of consequentialist philosophy, isn't a model of social life governed by consequences hypocritical given my opposition to utilitarian governance and preference for liberal, democratic processes?

The short answer is no. Evolutionary models do not guarantee that strategies with the highest payoff will prevail. They suggest (at best!) that those strategies which are resistant to attack from alternatives can become dominant or 'fixed' in a population (an 'evolutionary stable strategy'). In the classic iterated prisoners' dilemma, for example, there are strategies that can perform better than the classic 'tit-for-tat' solution, by exploiting its short memory and capacity for forgiveness. But in a population-level model, exploitative strategies cannot do better than tit-for-tat in the long run, and cannot themselves work together to prevent being exploited by others.  

Many simplified or hedonistic forms of utilitarianism, predicted on the maximisation of some common currency such as utility or pleasure, do not concern themselves with the importance of procedure and social resilience to decision-making (but see "rule utilitarianism"). Often, inefficient social practices and norms make societies better off in the long run, likely because they allow competing signals to be taken into account or because they encode relevant information below the level of conscious awareness. Moreover, rapid variation in social and ecological circumstances may suddenly change the definition of fitness that a given strategy must produce. A decision rule that produce optimal results may not survive against a decision-rule that is less efficient but more robust in a variety of contexts, if the selection pressures are sufficiently strong.

What evolutionary thinking is not

There is a fundamental philosophical difference between ethics and material determinism: or in other words, between is and ought. Cultural evolution, like class analysis, may suggest what social and economic strategies ultimately prevail, but it is an entirely different question for us to ask what sort of strategies should prevail.

It’s impossible to use evolution as an ethical philosophy because the consequences of decisions can only be known as probabilistic likelihoods, and even then only poorly. Evolution is consequentialism under conditions of uncertainty: we have imperfect information about future events and our beliefs about the likely consequences of our decision-making are irrevocably tinged by our innate moral preferences and personal experiences. Under these conditions, as I have written in the past, the ethical thing to do to is to advocate for one’s beliefs as strongly possible and let the chips fall where they may. Each of us finds our own ethical should from within ourselves, and by own power and agency we can shape social outcomes to increase the likelihood of our preferred outcome. Importantly, by adding our power together with like-minded others, we can substantially change the probability of our preferred strategy becoming fixed in the population.

Two Critiques

Two critiques can be levelled against the evolutionary perspective from a progressive ideological worldview. Firstly, while an evolutionary understanding provides no ethical guidance for decision-making, it may imply that existing social norms and roles are already effective ways to govern a society. An evolutionary view can offer partial support to a conservative worldview, because any decision-rule that currently exists must be hypothesised to be effective for the society in which it evolved. Secondly, an evolutionary approach can be considered a rejection of enlightened humanism, since on its face it discounts the possibility that reason alone can improve society: it subjects human optimism about the future to structural forces of history and biology that are beyond individual control.

These critiques are valuable, but repeat the naturalist fallacy of basing what ought to be on the basis of what is. Evolved cultural norms and institutions can and should be routinely challenged by progressives using reason. Doing so creates the very selection pressures cultural evolution needs to operate - not challenging the status quo may allow poorly adapted (or unethical) norms to survive longer than necessary. Existing beliefs and practices may preserve biological or cultural prejudices that were adaptive, neutral or merely competitive in an earlier period in human history, but which have become maladaptive, harmful or illiberal today.

This goes to my earlier post about ethics, adaption and maladaption: how do we know if a particular social rule is worth preserving? We don’t! Social norms and institutions may be historically and culturally contingent; they may have no overall effect on social outcomes, or they may be maladaptive in modern contexts which they could not envisage when first evolved. The only way to know for sure is to seek to change them and see what happens.

Why ‘Libertarian’ Socialism

The introduction and promotional materials of Politics for the New Dark Age are fairly upfront about the ideological perspective I’m arguing from:

“[I]t articulates a holistic progressive ideology located at the nexus of two broad themes: first, the practical superiority of cooperative solutions in social problem-solving, and second, a liberal, rights-based understanding of the social contract predicated on the equal inherent dignity of all human beings.”

Throughout the book, I employ the common term ‘socialism’ to describe the first such theme, and likewise ‘libertarian’ for the second. Although the book shies away from debates about ‘-isms’ – because all such things have been written before and better – it’s fair to locate the book within the libertarian socialist tradition. Now, I could just as easily have employed ‘democratic socialism’ or ‘liberal socialism’; I don’t see sufficient difference to warrant splitting hairs. Regardless of terminology, at the core of my argument is the necessity of progressives putting the liberal democratic social contract back at the centre of our political and economic program, particularly in these times in which democracy is under conscious attack by those on the right who would prefer to see it fail.

Ultimately I elected to use the word ‘libertarian’ consciously, which connects best with the psychological roots of political behaviour that underlie my model. We are a social species: we achieve our greatest potential when part of an interdependent whole. Yet our individual attitudes towards freedom and authority are prior to the social constructs in which we operate. Libertarianism is “not anarchism, which seeks the destruction of all cooperative social institutions,", but a recognition that the objective of social cooperation is to maximise the freedom of the individuals that comprise that society to seek their own happiness. 

Five Reasons to be Left-Libertarian

So if we presume that our choice of particular words has value, what does ‘libertarianism’ as a concept do for us on the left? Here are some (interrelated) ideas:

1)      It correctly identifies our opposition as authoritarians – on both right and left.

First and foremost, libertarian self-identification makes it clear that those, on both the right and left, who would replace dynamic social interaction with hierarchy [and violence] are the primary opponents of social and economic progress. Hierarchy can be socially useful in some circumstances as a mode of organisation - otherwise we as a species wouldn't have a capacity for it. But decision tyranny is anti-thetical to democracy, equality and liberty; we don't accept it in our politics and we shouldn't accept it in our economics either. 

2)      Putting the individual first inhibits recourse to utilitarian and centrist arguments.

Secondly, and as I write in Chapter IV, liberal individualism prevents us from falling into the trap of utilitarian thinking (which is often closely related to, but distinct from, authoritarianism) which would put the needs of the many ahead of the needs of the one. In the same way, it ensures that technocrats and centrists, who would impose public policy out of their own sense of the greater good, are prevented from doing so against the consent of individuals directly affected by their decisions.

3)      It disavows revolutionary instincts which put the social contract at risk

Equally importantly, a liberal or democratic socialism disavows the revolutionary, anarchist and/or separatist instincts of some political actors (including on the left). In chapter IV, I describe how the desire for social and conceptual cohesiveness can drive those with a low tolerance for compromise to seek to impose revolutionary change on others (through authoritarian and violent means), or separate themselves from society altogether. I note that this revolutionary tendency is an explicit part of traditional Marxism; and the same tendency for utopian thinking remains a problem on the left (and right) to this day.

Although Politics argues that the Manichean conflict between left and right is not to be feared, there is a limit to how far that conflict can be taken while maintaining a viable society. Fighting to advance social progress is one thing, ripping apart the social contract altogether in the name of one’s ideology is quite the other. Preserving the corrective and selective properties of the political ecosystem is key to ensuring that social equilibria are adaptive. So this tension, between fighting political battle  and the preservation of society as a whole is, I believe, the central challenge of all democratic politics. How hard can we seek to reshape social equilibria without destroying it?

4)      Focusing on choice and freedom allows a critical perspective on all forms of power, both political and economic, that oppress the individual

Libertarian, or democratic socialism, recognises the fundamental equivalency of all forms of power. The adoption of individualism renders choice and freedom the key determinants of a just society. While a classical liberal will recognise the essential need of all individuals to have the equal right to self-determination, the liberal socialist recognises that inequalities of wealth and power will make some individuals more free than others. What the libertarian socialist seeks is decision freedom and the end of decision slavery: the state wherein no individual is forced to choose between two undesirable outcomes purely as a result of material necessity. The ‘democratisation of the means of the production’ means precisely that: expecting the same standards of democratic accountability, transparency and participation in economic life as we routinely expect in political life.

5)      It requires permanent scepticism towards traditional forms of hierarchy and power, challenging social adaptations that can no long justify their usefulness

Lastly, from an evolutionary perspective, a critical or libertarian approach institutionalises a position of permanent intellectual scepticism towards all forms of traditional power. As argued elsewhere, one of the key challenges of a political activist with an evolutionary perspective on social and cultural institutions, is to question whether social norms and rules are functional and adaptive or maladaptive and harmful. While the conservative instinct is to see traditional or “common sense” rules as adaptive by default, a libertarian mindset does not accept the legitimacy of any source of authority that cannot continue to justify its ongoing existence. In this way, it acts as a permanent check against the ossification of social structures and a key driver of sustainable progress in the social status quo.

Equality Matters. Period.

Politics for the New Dark Age covers a wide variety of topics in my quest to provide a comprehensive approach to modern progressivism. Some chapters look at areas of traditional strength for parties of the left (health, education), others look at areas of traditional weakness (individual rights, foreign policy). But no issue is arguably more important to left identity than inequality, which I tackle at length in Chapter IX. My central thesis, that socialists’ focus on equality and fraternity represents a necessary return to the core values of the liberal enlightenment, is a philosophical call to arms.

In some ways, I wish I’d been bolder. Tackling inequality was an unsexy concept in the 90s and early 2000s when I was educated, and it’s rarely taken seriously as an ethical or policy position in Canberra. Classical liberals, including many in the centre-left, argue at length that what matters most is inequality of opportunity. Beyond pointing out the importance of inequality of risk as well, in the book I argue that material inequality is bad for society largely in terms of its negative effect on material outcomes: lower, shorter, riskier economic growth. In other words, I am fighting for equality on the enemy’s [technocratic] territory. It’s an argument I think the left can win on the evidence, but it’s not our best frame.

The bottom line

So let me be clear: equality of outcomes matters for every single metric of a good society the left should hold dear. Whether it’s individual or group performance; economic or productivity growth; citizens’ trust in and the resilience of social institutions; or individual health and well-being. Material and social inequality is universally and uniquely harmful. It is harmful to the social contract, inasmuch as it creates markers of hierarchy and difference that corrode the mutual trust necessary for people to act cooperatively. And it is deeply corrosive for individuals, as we are all biologically conditioned by evolution to react to markers of hierarchy and difference with psychological responses and behaviour sets that are socially and personally harmful. There is no single policy the left could pursue that could have better results on every metric of social health and resilience than to advance equality at every turn.

Which brings to an article in Evonomics (which I highly recommend) by the power duo of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Wilkinson & Pickett’s 2011 book, “The Spirit Level: Why Equality Makes Societies Stronger”, lays out the fundamental evidence for inequality’s pernicious effect(s) on social outcomes; the piece is a useful and timely reminder of the book’s key arguments. Wilkinson & Pikett are epidemiologists first and foremost, and what biology tells us is that citizens of more equal societies life longer, healthier lives than citizens of unequal countries regardless of their absolute level of income. The harms of inequality are:

“not caused by the society not being rich enough (or even being too rich), but by the material differences between people within each society being too big. What matters is where we stand in relation to others in our own society.”

Inequality doesn’t only affect the worst-off in society (that’s poverty, a denial of basic rights), but worsens social and individual outcomes for everyone. If you consider how rising middle-incomes in Australia and other developed countries have been coupled with massive increases in social fear and anxiety, you can start to see how the effect operates. Beyond the physiological impacts, the effects of inequality on cognition and individual behaviour are even more concerning. Multiple recent studies have shown that priming children with an awareness of their place in social hierarchies dramatically lowers test performance. 

Once this realisation is made, policy interventions to address social harms rapidly simplify:

“[Traditionally, e]very problem is seen as needing its own solution—unrelated to others. People are encouraged to exercise, not to have unprotected sex, to say no to drugs, to try to relax, to sort out their work-life balance, and to give their children “quality” time. The only thing that many of these policies do have in common is that they often seem to be based on the belief that the poor need to be taught to be more sensible. The glaringly obvious fact that these problems have common roots in inequality and relative deprivation disappears from view. However, it is now clear that income distribution provides policymakers with a way of improving the psychosocial well-being of whole populations.”

As I have written elsewhere, we don’t need to merely educate people to eat right, exercise and avoid self-destructive behaviours. We need to address the root cause of why they perform those behaviours in the first place. In fact, telling people how to behave without addressing the underlying material and social inequalities that affect them will likely only exacerbate such behaviour. When people are economically and socially secure, when they believe that risk and opportunity are socialised, then I suspect we’ll find that many of their anxieties about novelty – for example, doing something in energy policy to prevent climate change, or to help refugees fleeing conflict ­– will similarly melt away.

In the final analysis therefore, when someone on the left equivocates about whether or not striving equality should be our goal, look them in the face and tell them it must be.

Guaranteed vs Universal Basic Income

Politics for the New Dark Age explicitly disavows a revolutionary approach to political activism. It requires us to engage with our societies, our democracies and our natures as-they-are rather than how we would have them be. As a result I expect to cop some flak from comrades for being insufficiently bold, or even legitimising and defending the liberal (read: mixed capitalist) status quo. Yet I think what I have been successful at showing is that even using only a handful of very basic, shared premises the left can achieve policy progress that is downright radical. Today’s blog will look at one of those bold prescriptions: Guaranteed Minimum Incomes. 

The Welfare Principle

For those yet to read it, the central connection I make between rights-based individualism and the need for social cooperation is what I term the ‘welfare principle’. The welfare principle requires that, when competitive institutions or self-help cannot guarantee citizens’ fundamental rights, cooperative institutions must be and are created to do so. Although I will freely admit to borrowing the principle from human rights law, I’ve not seen it used much in political philosophy, much less in socialist discourse. Since society and social institutions exist to guarantee individual’s civil, political, economic and social rights, and self-help through market mechanisms is very often unable or unwilling to procure them, institutions – including the state itself – arise in order to secure the positive enjoyment of those rights for all.

Which brings us to the topic of poverty. In a liberal, rights-based framework, poverty must be understood as the denial of an individual’s fundamental economic and social rights. It is a failure to secure the income and resources needed to acquire an adequate standard of living (given the surrounding society’s level of economic development). In a monetised society, a person’s standard of living can be approximated by their income – which is a measure of their power to obtain ("purchase") goods and services. Since the value of money is essentially arbitrary, we define poverty as falling before minimum income without which a person can no longer be said to enjoy adequate access to essential human goods and services. As Martin Luther King Jr once said, "the solution to poverty is to abolish it."

As I write in Chapter VII of the book:

“[I]f markets operate efficiently to produce full employment, the state would have only minimal cause to intervene to provide incomes directly to citizens. . . . Everyone could obtain a job that provided for their fundamental needs and wants, and upon retirement, workers would have access to either sufficient savings or a workplace pension to see them through their retirement. Such a society would likely see lower levels of taxation and redistribution, but a lower profit outlook for private economic actors; it is a rough approximation of societies like Japan and South Korea.”

But of course, pure self-help does not generate full employment. In additional to the well-known economic literature on market failures, social interdependence means that economic equilibria may very well not be optimal. And even if they were, vast numbers of people, including children, students, the elderly, the disabled and carers would likely not have access to an adequate standard of living. To that end, I propose the guaranteed minimum income as a way of satisfying the right to an adequate standard of living: a way of simplifying and unifying existing benefits schemes so as to ensure that no one lives in poverty if they do not earn a minimum standard of living by market mechanisms. 

One of the these things is not like the other

Since I wrote those words, the related idea of a universal basic income (or UBI) has gained a certain amount of popularity (or at least, curiousity) in policy wonk circles. This is perhaps exemplified on the left by the overrated books “Post-capitalism: A Guide to Our Future” by Paul Mason and “Utopia for Realists” by Rutger Bremen. But UBIs are not merely a socialist "fairy-tale": they’re also modestly popular on the right and even in the centre. UBI schemes have been rolled out on a trial basis in several localities in the US and EU. In Alaska, every citizen receives a royalty cheque from the state’s oil production each year, and certain native American groups have had great success addressing poverty and inequality by directly distributing the proceeds from tribal businesses. 

The debate on universal or minimum incomes is becoming rapidly complex, so I thought I should clarify my own stance. I tend not to endorse the most common, universalist models of UBI.  This recent article in Evonomics provides a useful way of categorising different approaches to basic social incomes. The author, Charles Young, proposes a typology of UBIs which either:

·       Recalibrate existing tax and benefit systems (more common on the left); or

·       Replace the Welfare State (more common on the right); or

·       Communalise the profits from common assets. 

Thumbs Up: Universal incomes that satisfy basic needs

In the first category are proposals that

“restructure[e] the existing ‘inefficient’ and ‘unfair’ benefit systems. Advocates tend to offer what is referred to as a ‘no-frills’ UBI: subsistence or sub-subsistence levels of income . . . . . .[Such p]roposals . . . often set out to combat inequality and poverty, including through the dismantling of poverty traps such as the sudden removal of benefits as low-earner's incomes rise.”

My own prescription of a guaranteed minimum income fits solidly in this category. If we want a minimum income scheme to be achievable, we should be iterative and target our interventions where they will deliver the most benefit. While others on the left may see the revolutionary appeal of more grandiose schemes, as you’ll see below, I think such a revolution would be potentially catastrophic for the goals we're trying to achieve.

Thumbs Down: Voucherisation

The second category of UBI is supported by “[e]conomists and political theorists on the right, especially those identifying as libertarian, [who] see UBI as a vehicle through which to reduce government intervention in public and private life at large.” Right-wing support for UBI schemes essentially represent the ‘voucherisation’ of the tax-and-transfer system. Rather than benefits targeted at specific inequalities, conservatives argue that everyone is entitled to the same ‘payout’ from the state’s taxation system regardless of their socio-economic status. Schemes of this type include negative income tax proposals and it should come as no surprise that Milton Friedman is one of the intellectual originators of such ideas. 

Essentially, right-libertarians seek to remove any role for collective decisions in the allocation of social resources. The seek to privatise the benefits that accrue from the tax-and-transfer system, hoping that people won't realise that all the power and risks of that system are simultaneously being privatised. As Chapter XI of Politics for the New Dark Age argues, many social costs are distributed probabilitically, and if your basic income doesn't cover the cost of a car accident or cancer treatment, well then you're just unluckly. The privatization of social benefits also (deliberately) restricts the capacity of individuals to band together and bargain collectively; to share risks and costs and arrive at  solutions to collective problems that are sustainable at lower cost.

Means testing (i.e. restricting benefits only to those in need) has its flaws, certainly: it imposes administrative costs and tapering effects must be carefully accounted for. But the idea of government cash grants to already wealthy citizens is not only perverse, but unnecessarily costly and inefficient when the wealthy already possess the power and resources to meet their own need. I have doubts that a basic income that was truly universal would have much of effect on alleviating poverty and inequality at all: price inflation would be a huge risk and likely wipe out most of the gains in purchasing power of the least well-off.

A UBI of this model would also put downwards pressure on wages and thus reduce the labour share of surplus value produced by enterprises. Concerns are widely expressed about the ongoing automation of an increasingly large proportion of the economy, which is set to increase the profit share of capital owners at the expense of workers. But despite what UBI proponents like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musks would have you believe, a UBI is like the exact opposite of what we would need to do to actually fight inequality. While big business would happily pension off the working class if it allowed them to keep their monopolistic economic and political power, democratic socialists should look for ways to increase democratic control of the means of production and reverse the alienation of workers from the products of their labour. 

Probable Also Thumbs Down: Common Resource Rents

The third and final category of UBI consists of proposals that would:

“communalis[e] common assets  . . . [such as] the carrying capacity of the biosphere, atmospheric carbon, fisheries and forests, unearned income, or even the productive capacity of automation and technological change. The fundamental assumption here is that such assets – be they physical, biological or cultural – should be respected as the common property of all, rather than be the source of exploitative disparities from unequal access and power.”

I’ve seen such proposals from my own Australian Labor Party (ALP) brethren: often suggested somewhat cynically as way to generate public support for new taxes by promising voters that all the proceeds will go directly into their pocket (so then, I wonder, why bother?).

Certainly, in small, specialised economies with few, but highly productive common assets, such proposals might make sense (although a better approach might be a managed sovereign savings fund to prevent inflation and Dutch Disease). But in a modern diversified economy, such payments are likely to be complex to manage and insufficient to cover the cost of a guaranteed minimum income for all. I also see risks in aligning the interests of voters with particular, already highly profitable, extractive industries. If everyone is receiving a cheque direct from the profits of extractive, gambling or polluting companies, it would create disincentives to properly regulate them (an argument currently made on both right and left about Venezuela). In other words, although the profits would be socialised, the risks of social and environmental harms from those industries couldn’t be. It would align the interests of the majority against those of affected minorities.

Identity Politics, a Second Look

Since the 2016 US presidential election, if not before, a fierce debate has raged on the left in Australia and elsewhere as to the relative weight that should be placed on what is often called ‘identity politics’ as opposed to the politics of class or economics. The former is the progressivism that fights for gay rights, racial justice and gender equality; the latter’s defining interest is ending poverty and all forms of inequality. At its best, identity politics builds election-winning coalitions across diverse groups; at socialism’s best, it articulates a coherent platform that appeals to all. The best people on both sides recognise that this is not an either/or proposition: one can and should advocate for both. But, unfortunately partisans accuse one another of imposing a ‘litmus test’ of ideological purity, of giving one set of interests priority over the other. Much of the debate turns on the political role of ‘working class [white] men’: are they oppressed or oppressor?

My own default position on all this is clear, and my book, “Politics for the New Dark Age” is honest in the “Introduction” that the progressive politics I espouse is not rooted in identity alone. The citizens you’ll encounter across the book's twenty chapters are Rawlsian ciphers, stripped of their differences in order to focus on their shared interests. I also share the observation made in Best of the Left episode #1109 that many political leaders who talk first and foremost about identity-based forms of justice are also the least comfortable discussing real economic change. That said, I am not hostile towards identity politics as a philosophy, and consider Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectional approach essentially correct. Chapter IV of my book discusses the inherent tension between the ideological self and the need for compromises to build dominant coalitions. The question is never one (economic justice) or the other (racial and sexual justice) but “both and”. 

A Second Look

This blog post is an effort to take a second look at the issue. My book avoids the topic of “identity politics” – but what would I say about it if asked to give a more fulsome appreciation? Note that this entry will be about the political philosophy of identity, because as a political practice (to which I'll return at the end), coalition-building amongst groups facing multi-dimensional oppression and building linkages across issues is the best and perhaps only way for progressives to win power.

First of all, let’s talk about what (almost) everyone agrees identity politics is not: identarianism. Identarianism (in all its various manifestations) argues that individuals are defined by their group identity, and that this identity grants them an essential and unchanging set of interests shared with everyone else in their group and no one outside the group. The critique often made by conservatives and anti-democrats about identity politics is that democracy is more or less a competition for payoffs between fixed groups with defined interests. Far-right and particularist groups that are strongly distrustful of others advance this sort of politics, and in a sort of mirror-imaging, imagine that their progressive opponents are doing the same. 

But there’s a kernel of truth to their critique. For example, a mistake that many well-meaning pollsters and social scientists make is to reduce individuals to members of a group category and thereby persuadable in terms of group interests. This allows them to ignore economic and other forms of difference within each category. While such approaches may seem like cost-effective campaigning, it discourages coalition-building across group lines and in my experience had led to some very nasty electoral surprises for its proponents. And in some countries, intra-state violence has broken out when politics has been reduced to precisely this form: when social entrepreneurs activate the salience of group identities and portray politics as a “winner-takes-all” battle for political patronage and the spoils of state power.

Communism makes the same mistake, by treating classes as fixed and historically-invariant social groups. Classes, like other types of groups, may have defined interests and even stories that members of the group tell one another about those interests. What distinguishes group-centric stories from true, universal ideologies is that the satisfaction of group or class interests do not prescribe how to regulate a society that includes other groups. Absent a story about inter-group cooperation, class or group pride becomes the politics of dominance by default when power is obtained over other groups The major step that all democrats and liberals, on both right and left, take to distance themselves from this narrow sort of politics is to see every citizen as a member of a single society, with diverse and complex interests that must be taken into account.

A better sort of politics

The second type of identity politics is one that is unique to progressives, and is rooted in our innate distaste for hierarchy and authority. It is to recognise that some categories of people are structurally advantaged (or ‘privileged’) by society and others are structurally disadvantaged (or ‘oppressed’). Many conservatives will be psychologically incapable of recognising this aspect of identity, since they are pre-disposed to see hierarchial social relations and traditional authority as legitimate. But when socially-constructed categories (including race and gender) are used to systematically and structurally discriminate against identity groups, even classical liberals must admit that the much-vaunted principle of equality of opportunity becomes violated in practice even if not in law.

It’s for these reasons that "straight pride" is not semantically the opposite of "gay pride"; nor "mens rights" a response to feminism; and why “All Lives Matter” is not a valid critique of “Black Lives Matter”. One identity serves as a marker of the need for liberation, the other as a rallying cry for the continuation of the supremacy of the status quo. Identity politics in this sense regards some identities as being structurally empowered over others in ways that are measurable in terms of social outcomes that are universally valid. The debate is over what to do about these differential outcomes. Clearly, some kind of reparative justice is necessary. 

The concern I (and others) have about giving this "identarian liberalism" too much emphasis is that securing mere greater recognition or representation of minorities in a statistical sense is not enough to make a full political program, and can result at worst in tokenism and the strengthening of the existing social order. For example, improving equality of opportunity to ensure greater female representation on corporate boards or having more gay or trans CEOs will not change the fact that authoritarian corporate structures will always disadvantage workers regardless of colour, gender or sexual orientation. Having different viewpoints in power is important, but will forever be limited in impact if the inherent hierarchies of the system which intersect with identity are unchanged.  

Identity Politics as Practice

To my mind, the only way to use “identity politics” productively is as a practice which recognises that everyone has multiple identities, some of which may be oppressed and some privileged, depending on context. Amartya Sen has written that we all wear different hats depending on our current social and cultural environment: we don’t have a single identity but rather a complex matrix of social roles. Rather than focusing exclusively on the sources of our own oppression, we should recognise in solidarity that the alienation of anyone from less than full citizenship affects everyone. We should admit when we are lucky, and recognise that expecting help from others requires offering what support we can for their cause in return.

The purpose of this sort of self-examination is not, as right-wing fantasists insist, to conduct an ‘oppression olympics’ and thereby select the individual or group most deserving of political or economic support. Creating that kind of moral hierarchy is precisely the opposite road to take to reach true equality. Instead, we must all begin to empathise with the sources of oppression and alienation in everyone else’s life and recognise that we all share an interest in the elimination of all forms of hierarchy and discrimination. Thus we (including cis white males such as myself) must recognise that the categorical identity to which we belong is complex. We both benefit and suffer from existing patterns of power simultaneously and that our privileges and suffering interact in complex ways. 

This, I believe, is the foundation of good ‘ally-ship’: to approach others’ claims of alienation from a position of empathy and as an opportunity to learn and improve society as a whole. Rather than strive for the Platonic ideal of oppression and privilege as immanent and transcendent forms, we should start from the position of seeing every individual’s subjective experience as authentic and true. Greater equality for some is no equality at all if others are systematically excluded: only solidarity between races, gender and all other categories of difference can result in truly transformative social liberation.