The Limits of Representation

Let’s check some boxes.

With Pyotr Malatesta.

It is no secret that women and minorities are underrepresented among the heights of political and corporate power in the United States. Consequently, liberals often prescribe representation of these groups in powerful government and business roles as a remedy for systemic inequality, looking to figures such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as proof that such injustices can be overcome. But, what problems are actually solved by representation, and at what point does it cease to be helpful?

The liberal theory of representation is that, by lifting up members of marginalized communities to positions of power, those communities will effectively have “a seat at the table,” and therefore benefit. Their needs and interests will be given voice among those with the power to actually address them in substantive ways.

And, sometimes, this even works. Having a more diverse group of people running things occasionally leads to issues being addressed that otherwise wouldn’t. It also serves to demonstrate that members of those marginalized communities can, and should, aspire to similar positions.

The problem is that, more often than not, the very act of placing someone in a position of power separates them from whatever community they are meant to represent, by virtue of class. And class comes with a built-in set of interests and motivations.

“[The very act of seeking public office] speaks to a desire to leave behind, rather than fight for, the working class and marginalized communities in which they have their roots.”

This is why, for instance, it’s not hard to find black mayors cracking down on BLM protesters or pushing to expand funding for police and prisons even as doing so perpetuates the brutalization of black people. Those in power, regardless of their identity, do not have the same class interests as those they are meant to serve.

Class is obscured by the mainstream focus on identity, which serves to shield those in positions of power who also happen to be members of oppressed identity groups from genuine and necessary criticism — even as they use the oppressive machinery of the state and private capital to bring harm to those communities. Liberals¹, both cynical and well-meaning, view class in individualist terms because their understanding of political reality is not rooted in a material analysis, but in an individualistic, moralistic one.

But, the plain facts cannot be ignored: Aspects of identity such as race, gender, and sexuality are socially constructed. That is, they are defined and redefined in surprisingly different ways across different eras and cultures. For example, our understanding of what it is to be “white” and to whom that label applies in 21st century America differs wildly from that of, say, 18th century English aristocrats.

Class, however, is not culturally contingent. Liberals will often mistake class for “socioeconomic status,” which is fluid and depends upon the overall economic conditions of a society. But, in a Marxist sense, class is an objective observation about one’s relationship to private capital: You either work (i.e., sell your labor) for a living, or you don’t. You either extract profits from people you employ, or you don’t. You either own the means of production, or you don’t.

So, when leftists point out that members of marginalized identity groups in positions of relative power do not share the class interests of those beneath them in the socioeconomic pyramid, it is not a judgment of their moral character. Nor is it a statement about whether marginalized people are deserving of, or should strive toward, career advancement. Rather, it is a reiteration of one of Marx’s very simple, very correct observations: The powerful stand to materially benefit from the exploitation of the powerless. The exploited stand to materially benefit from an end to their exploitation, while their exploiters benefit from its continuation. Therefore, the interests of the exploited and exploiter classes are necessarily at odds with each other.

Furthermore, the very act of seeking public office, or a management position at a private firm, sets one apart from one’s community, as well as from the broader population. Those who aspire to power already, on some level, must believe that they are worthy of wielding that power over others. But, it speaks to a desire to leave behind, rather than fight for, the working class and marginalized communities in which they have their roots.

This is, in part, why leftists are so critical of figures like Pete Buttigieg or Neera Tanden, who have (or nearly have) been granted positions of power in the Biden administration. It is true that they are, technically, members of marginalized groups: Buttigieg is a gay man and Tanden is the daughter of Indian immigrants. But, their respective academic and professional achievements set them apart from vast majorities of both of these groups, as well as the overall population. They are privileged and protected in ways that most members of their respective communities are not. This raises some reasonable doubts about the extent to which LGBTQ+ or Indian Americans are actually represented by these individuals or the policy agenda to which they have committed themselves.

Is Diversity the Only Goal Worth Striving For?

The personal and professional histories of individual politicians are only a part of the picture. Consider also the untold death and suffering that has been visited upon the poor and marginalized, both here and abroad, as the ideology of neoliberalism has manifested itself: Endless wars, worsening ecological collapse, constant pruning of the welfare state, undermining of voting rights, and the suffocation of organized labor and union power. All of it has been overseen by plenty of rich old white guys, to be sure, but also by people of more diverse backgrounds such as Hillary Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, Neera Tanden, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, and others.

Consider also that cabinet appointees and other government officials basically serve to spread and enforce that ideology. To black residents of South Bend displaced from their homes by Mayor Pete to make room for Big Tech, is it really of any benefit that he also happens to be a member of an oppressed minority? To people living in countries like Libya, reduced to rubble at the urging of hawks like Neera Tanden, is it of any great help that Tanden herself is the daughter of immigrants?

“It does not serve the interests of the oppressed to take part in their own oppression, or that of others. Marginalized and vulnerable communities come no closer to meeting their needs when one of their own rises to the ranks of the colonialist oppressors.”

To both questions, the answer is a resounding “no” for the same reason that, say, a trans murder victim gains nothing if their killer also happens to be part of the LGBTQ+ community or another marginalized group. When it comes to representation for the marginalized, the old adage that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” does not hold. Representation alone cannot achieve all of the goals liberals claim it does. More to the point, the marginalized do not gain from representation within organizations that perpetuate their marginalization.

Therefore, elevating women, racial and ethnic minorities, and LGBTQ+ individuals to positions in which they can work as thieves and murderers for corporate and government bodies — which effectively exist to plunder and slaughter — may be representation, but it is not good representation. It does not serve the interests of the oppressed to take part in their own oppression, or that of others. Marginalized and vulnerable communities come no closer to meeting their needs when one of their own rises to the ranks of the colonialist oppressors.

We need to consider, then, whose interests are served when legitimate criticism of those in power is stifled by reference to their particular identities. When Kamala Harris uses her power and influence as San Francisco District Attorney to inflict significant harm on her vulnerable constituents, who benefits? When, as California Attorney General, she helps wage a campaign of mass incarceration targeting the poor and people of color, who benefits? And, what about when she continues to do the same and worse as U.S. Senator, and now as Vice President? Who stands to gain from telling observers of these plain facts to sit down and shut up? It is certainly not the poor, the disenfranchised, or people of color.

Harris herself benefits, of course. Painting all criticism of her record — legitimate or not — as rooted in racism and misogyny shores up political support among her base. It’s the same basic Trumpian strategy that has served Republicans so well in recent years: The plain evidence in front of us is to be ignored. Don’t trust your lying eyes. History does not exist; all that exists is now. Harris is a progressive champion, therefore she has always been so. Those who insist otherwise really just don’t like that she’s a woman of color, or so the ad hoc rationalization suggests. Never mind that many of her critics are people of color, like herself, or that they routinely level similar criticism against reactionaries like Joe Biden and Donald Trump who, inconveniently, are white men.

Those of us on the bottom understand that representation helps us direct resources more equitably. The Democrats understand that identity can be used as a shield to stifle criticism.

The social and political discourse itself is damaged by this reflexive defense of representation as an end unto itself. By choosing a person to represent a group on the basis of their identity, all criticism of that individual’s actions can be reconfigured into an attack on their identity, and therefore on the entire identity group. Suddenly, the only reason to dislike Pete Buttigieg is that he is gay, not because he is an imperialist. Kamala Harris can only be disliked because she is a black woman, not because she is a cog in the prison-industrial complex. Elizabeth Warren must be disliked because she is a woman and not because she backtracked on key progressive policies, sold out Bernie Sanders twice, or fabricated her self-identification as a Native American for personal and political gain.

To be sure, there are plenty of bigoted, retrograde assholes out there who make bad-faith attacks on such figures on the basis of their own prejudice. But, silencing and dismissing legitimate, factual criticism of those who wield power through the cynical deployment of identity politics² is counterproductive to the aims of a genuine left politics. Again, ask yourself: Who benefits when feminism is used to shield women as they use their power and influence to impoverish and brutalize other women? When a gay man uses his office to inflict suffering on the poor, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community, who stands to gain by slandering those who take notice as “homophobic”?

It can be said that the way the people view representation and the way the Democratic Party views representation are radically different. Those of us on the bottom understand that representation helps us direct resources more equitably. The Democrats understand that identity can be used as a shield to stifle criticism. If you take issue with Kamala’s heavy-handed criminal justice policies, maybe it’s because you have a problem with immigrants. If you dislike Pete’s anti-black governance, maybe you just don’t like that he’s gay. If you criticize Tanden’s corporate fealties, maybe you’re just a misogynist³.

As if it needed to be said, it is those with power who gain something. They gain and maintain that very power they exercise with such abandon. And this is why leftists regard liberalism as a functionally right-wing ideology. Its function — regardless of the intent of actual liberals — is to preserve and justify existing socioeconomic hierarchies, whereas any politics that is meaningfully left-wing would seek to dismantle unjust hierarchies and achieve a more equitable distribution of power.

Class and Identity

Leftist politics is rooted in the fundamental belief that society functions best without arbitrary, unjustified hierarchical organization — that is, without dividing people into classes. We affirm that a society which is maximally humane, just, and good is one in which power is distributed evenly among all people, without prejudice. It is a state of affairs in which class itself does not exist.

Liberals may say (though many will not bother with such pretenses) that this is what they are ultimately striving for but, unlike the radical left, their incremental approach is (ostensibly) more reasonable, mature, and realistic. To call it more reasonable than the vision of radical socialists, however, is both enormously hubristic and, frankly, ignorant.

This is because liberals, while professing to believe in many of the same things as leftists (and they genuinely seem to) — equality, justice, etc. — they are ignorant, often to the point of total denial, of how liberalism precludes the achievement of such goals. Ask your average liberal about capitalism and they’ll respond that, while it’s far from perfect, a communist or socialist reorganization of the economy would be too extreme, unfeasible, and unpopular to ever implement, even if they wanted to — which they don’t.

Liberal politicians are even more forcefully “pragmatic” than their constituents. Figures such as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are quite open about their devotion to upholding the current system of neoliberal capitalism and the destructive market forces that drive it, even as they pay lip service to tweaks and reforms to make this system slightly less brutal as it devours the vulnerable.

But, so what? Can’t you oppose injustice — misogyny, racism, homophobia, and all other forms of bigotry — and still think that the economy should be organized around the accumulation of private capital?

You can’t, actually. At least, not if you want to be consistent in your opposition to those injustices.

The very function of capitalist markets is to sort people into classes. They create and preserve socioeconomic hierarchies. Therefore, to the extent that liberals support a neoliberal, market-based economy, they have adopted a right-wing politics and are acting accordingly.

The overarching goal of the political right is, and has always been, to see to it that power is vested in the hands of a wealthy elite who rule over the rest of us like royalty. Not coincidentally, the farther back you look at the history of conservatism, the more literal their devotion to upholding a ruling body of royalty becomes. From the Russian Revolution, to the French Revolution, and even back to the English Civil War, their stance remains the same — and that same impulse still lies at the core of their ideology to this day.

By contrast, the goal of the left is to do away with those unnecessary hierarchies because they entail an underclass of people whose role is to be ruled over, to languish in poverty with no means of escape as the wealth they generate is siphoned off by the rich. To ease the tension between their professed desire for social justice and love of the economic arrangement that generates injustice, liberals sometimes repeat cliched rags-to-riches stories to give us positive examples of the system occasionally benefiting the least fortunate among us. In the absence of “everyone can succeed,” the mantra becomes “anyone can succeed.” In their warped view, the idea that “anyone” can become rich is somehow more important than everyone having enough to survive. It’s a thought-terminating cliché employed to alleviate liberal anxieties about just how damaging their preferred system is.

But, there is a world of difference between these two statements. After centuries of chugging along, the great capitalist machine has not only failed to eliminate poverty, but actively feeds wealth to the top by extracting it from the bottom, thereby reinforcing the hierarchical structure that conservatives adore and liberals pretend to oppose.

Lipstick on a Capitalist

So, when ostensibly progressive politicians talk about how we need to help the poor, invest in communities of color, lift up the voices of the oppressed, and create programs to help women and LGBTQ+ individuals achieve equal standing with straight, white, cis men, there is something of a contradiction at work. They may recommend more robust social welfare, anti-racism workshops, affirmative action, and all manner of programs designed to lessen the severity of inequality (i.e., to flatten the hierarchy a little). But, what they’ll never suggest is that the system itself — the capitalist mode of production — is broken and must be replaced.

But, because capitalist markets necessarily create a state of affairs in which there are rich and poor classes who consistently get richer and poorer, respectively, this means that liberals themselves are not committed to demolishing unjust hierarchies. Rather, they merely want to lessen the negative effects of some of them, in order to make the current capitalist paradigm — and all the injustice and devastation it wreaks — more sustainable.

At best, the liberal vision is that the poor and working class would be slightly better off — just enough to extinguish any sentiment favoring a popular uprising. But, no matter how much they may dress it up with flowery promises of resisting bigotry and injustice, they are still acting in defense of hierarchy. While they believe conditions for the underclass can and should be improved, they nevertheless believe that there ought to be an underclass (as implied by any politics acknowledging a supposed “middle” class). While they claim to despise structural inequality, they adore the structures that are unequal.

At this point, we could examine the varied reasons why they believe the hierarchy of class should be maintained. Some are genuine ideologues, as committed to neoliberal capitalism as the most bloodthirsty conservatives. Others may simply see no possible alternative to the exploitative capitalist system. Those at the top of the hierarchy, even if they feel genuine pity for the poor and marginalized, have a vested interest in maintaining that hierarchy purely by virtue of their position within it. But, the reasons why are of secondary concern here.

What matters is that the creation and defense of class — a hierarchy — is a function of capitalism. And, because capitalism is a complex system of interconnected structures, the intent of particular individuals has little to no bearing on it. Whether its defenders are cynically pandering to the ignorant, exploited masses or truly believe capitalist markets can lift the poor out of poverty is of no consequence. Given certain starting conditions (i.e., a handful of wealthy elites already owning the means of production), the system simply chugs along to the logical outcome of a system based on market competition. Sure, bureaucrats do interfere here and there, but the overall trajectory remains: the accumulation of ever greater wealth and power by an ever smaller group of elites, and therefore the perpetual expansion of an ever poorer remainder.

Why this lengthy aside? What does any of this have to do with Neera Tanden or Pete Buttigieg?

The mistake of their liberal defenders — those who try to wave away criticism on the basis of their particular identities — is to assume that they share the politics of the marginalized communities they purportedly represent.

They do not.

Tanden is a careerist political consultant, advisor, and lobbyist who has occupied the upper echelons of national politics in multiple presidential administrations. Buttigieg is an overachieving corporate shill, imperialist, and probable CIA asset who has spent virtually his entire career working on behalf of unscrupulous business interests. To suggest that these two, or people like them, genuinely represent the interests of the working class as a whole, or any marginalized community in particular, is farcical. If the term “progressive” still means anything, these two do not fit the bill.

Furthermore, it is obviously an expression of bigotry to assume that all people of color, or all LGBTQ+ people, have the same political interests. To make such an assumption is to violate the basic principles of liberal intersectionality by ignoring how class colors the experiences of people in these oppressed groups.

What’s more, assuming that powerful members of marginalized groups necessarily represent the interests of those groups despite their class interests is a failure to understand class itself. Or perhaps it is understanding class all too well. Certainly, there are many well-meaning liberals for whom criticizing people like Buttigieg and Tanden seems superficially similar to right-wing attacks on gay and non-white public officials. Such attacks are often motivated by simple bigotry, so the perception is understandable.

But, there are definitely liberals who know better, but make the same argument anyway. They’ll argue that it is wrong to criticize Buttigieg for his well-publicized record of victimizing poor people of color because he is a gay man. They say we’re not allowed to notice that he has worked on behalf of some of the most morally bankrupt corporations in the country because his sexual orientation means that he is necessarily progressive. (Never mind that, like all communities, the LGBTQ+ community does produce its fair share of bigots and reactionaries.)

They’ll say that it is misogynistic to notice when Nancy Pelosi consistently works against the interests of the working class. They’ll say it’s racist to point out that Barack Obama is aware of, and consciously rejects, left-wing politics. They’ll say it’s racist and misogynistic to note that the bad aspects of Kamala Harris’ record as a public servant drastically outweigh the “good” she does by simply being a black woman in public office.

By shielding these people and their actions in defense of hierarchy, liberals are defending that hierarchy. If representation is to be the standard of progressivism, then liberal progressives are functionally conservatives — just with a friendlier outlook toward minorities. They still want the diverse working class to remain easily exploited by corporations, brutalized by police at home, and bombed into ruin abroad. They want a permanent underclass of workers who will readily accept the least favorable terms of employment out of sheer desperation. (And if you want to smoke some menthols on your break to calm your nerves, then I guess you can just go fuck yourself.) They want the state and private capital to keep the boot on our collective throats.

But, hey, at least the people wearing the boots will be of diverse backgrounds. At least women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ folks now have a chance to do some of the exploiting. That’s fair, apparently. That’s good and just, and if you notice otherwise then you must simply be a misogynist, a racist, a homophobe, a bigot. We must elevate these marginalized groups by allowing the richest and most privileged among them into the ranks of the oppressors so that we can have a diverse ruling class of exploiters, warmongers, plunderers, and murderers.

Maintaining that hierarchy between rulers and ruled — that’s real progress.

1. This is equally true of conservatives, who are also “liberals” in the sense that they favor a capitalist mode of production despite having opposing views on particular social issues to self-described “liberals.”
2. Defined as, “a tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics,” identity politics is the type of politics most commonly practiced by liberals — and conservatives — today. It is separate from, and opposed to, the leftist conception of how political power is built and wielded. That is to say, it is used (both naively and cynically) to stifle leftward progress toward a more just and equitable society. The particulars are beyond the scope of this piece, but it will suffice to say that this is accomplished by narrowing the focus of politics to the particular, often competing, interests of identity-based groups. Though their grievances are in many cases perfectly legitimate, this form of politics prevents the formation of a broad, diverse working-class coalition that would normally form the backbone of a genuine labor party. Furthermore, the transparently self-serving ways in which identity politics is used by politicians has helped to generate reactionary sentiment in opposition to both “identity politics” as a general concept as well as the specific policies marginalized identity groups seek to enact.
3. It’s worth noting here that one of the most pernicious aspects of this way of thinking is that it stoops to a sort of pop-psychoanalysis that would be too Jungian even for Jordan Peterson. Disagreement with the party line is not just rejected, but pathologized as some sort of character flaw, moral failing, or other abnormality. It’s not just an unverifiable, unfalsifiable claim to know the inner workings of someone else’s mind. It’s also the logic of cults; those who reject the dogma are to be distrusted, shunned.