The perm is insufficient to overcome the pervasiveness of capital accumulation—only a full-fledged commitment to labor analysis and organizing can resist Capitalism.

The existence of capital is informed by a continuous confrontation between accumulation and legitimacy. Capitalism has survived, partly, through the absorption of critique.[40] The spirit of capitalism is the backbone of accumulation, which both places limits upon legitimate accumulation and is able to disarm potentially dangerous critique. In many ways, the radical challenge of identity politics has been disarmed and subsumed under neoliberalism’s valorisation of individual difference. Without an explanatory theory for identity, identities appear as ready-made, crystallised facsimiles of social struggle. Divorced from the material history of identity, identity politics becomes complicit with diversifying capitalism. This is exemplified by the calls to end ‘classism’ as discrimination against working-class people, a misguided attempt at understanding how relations of domination function through class. ‘Classism’ is a symptom of a capitalist society which relies upon class exploitation. Focusing on the cultural effects of identity leads to a dematerialised analysis which cannot understand the class system as necessitated by the exploitation of labour, rather than in terms of a denigrated identity which must be liberated. This is contextualised within the social and political logic of neoliberalism which treats the market forces of capitalism as inevitable and unassailable. The prevalence of discursive shifts towards framing oppression in terms of prejudice and stigma, which the language of classism epitomises, is part of this naturalisation. This decouples oppression from a useful systemic analysis which acknowledges the crucial systemic function that oppression plays. In turn, this naturalises systems of oppression. Classism is the most obvious example of this. In this analysis, poor and working-class people suffer because of the attitudes of middle and ruling-class people towards them, rather than because they are exploited by capitalist modes of production. Wealth- and income-inequality is attributed to prejudice: ‘classism is differential treatment based on social class or perceived social class. Classism is the systematic oppression of subordinated class groups to advantage and strengthen the dominant class groups. It’s the systematic assignment of characteristics of worth and ability based on social class.’[41] The organisation Class Action has as its tagline ‘Building Bridges Across the Class Divide’, locating class discrimination in interpersonal relationships that stem from systemic patterns of prejudice. Instead of abolishing class relations, classism emphasises the mitigation of the individual effects of the class relationship, for example, ‘feelings of inferiority to higher-class people’. Instead of seeking to dismantle the capitalist class-system, Class Action emphasises recognition of the suffering caused by interpersonal relations as a solution to inequality, flattening the function of race, class and gender by equalising them through the prism of descriptive identity. I do not dispute that the suffering which marks the lives of oppressed subjects must play a role in resistance to oppression. However, the impulse towards culturalism evidenced in contemporary identity-politics leads to resistance being conceived of as an inward turn towards the symptoms of oppression and away from the systemic causes. This turn to the self is embodied in the popularity of privilege theory. Privilege theory is an example of how structural inequalities are located in individual subject-positions. Peggy McIntosh’s conception of white privilege is germinal to current understandings. She compiles a list of 50 daily benefits of white privilege: ‘I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious’.[42] The concept of personal privilege as ‘unearned advantage … because of prejudice’ has become ubiquitous in identity-politics discourse.[43] ‘Check your privilege’ has become a political rallying-cry, suggesting that resistance must begin from acknowledgement of one’s own personal positionality within the system. Again, the systemic effects of oppression are held to be located in the individual. Not only is politics individualised, but it relies on ‘new and seemingly progressive ways of centering politics on the white identity’.[44] This reduces solidarity with the oppressed to a politics of guilt, where political agency is replaced with moralism and self-denunciation. Privilege discourse is geared towards individual affect; all individuals are privileged in some way and must accept their privilege: ‘the next step is one of simple self-realization: you are privileged. … What you need to realize is that we all have privilege to some degree: white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, etc.’[45] Its contemporary popularity is in line with the neoliberal individualism which renders it compatible with systemic injustice; as a programme for action, privilege theory foregrounds change upon the self, rather than upon the world, as resistance is reduced to self-reflection. Undoubtedly, making visible what the social system renders unseen is important in challenging the lived effects of oppression, and challenging individual effects and attitudes is crucial in the process of collective-building. However, when resistance is held to be located primarily in individual actions and beliefs, the political becomes wholly a question of ethics, leading to a depoliticised politics which seeks justice through interpersonal relations. Racist and patriarchal systems become reduced to racist prejudice and sexist attitudes.