33 thoughts on “Joshua Mitchell on identity politics”

1. Conservatives reject identity politics? Identity politics can be positive as well:

   1) In the case 1980 Ronald Reagan it is important to remember the importance of the Moral Majority ‘identity’ politics electing him. In Jan 1980, there was a question of electing a former actor hard right as President and the Moral Majority was the primary identity that ensured his election. (The Moral Majority ensured a Primary victory and directed a lot of Christians away from the extremely religious Jimmy Carter.)

   2) When we talk about what Christian voters want we focus COMPLETELY on white Christians. In terms of the Democratic Primary, we say Joe Biden is winning with African-American voters not Joe Biden is winning with Christian Democratic voters. That is a big preception

   3) Probably the biggest problem of many conservatives anti-identity political writing is they tend to focus on the US being a European background (a lot true) and that minorities are lucky to ‘included’ instead of being equal citizens. This especially true with African-Americans where Af-Am are lucky to be part of the our United States even if they are born here.

   4) Finally I still think a lot of IDK is just Ted Talks for mild racist and anti-Feminist. For instance Jordan Peterson still sounds like anti-feminist writer for Playboy magazine from the 1970s. And the bridge from IDK to Claremont Institute is a lot shorter than you think.

   5) The right is following a lot identity politics. The palo-conservative movement is very focus on small town manufacturer workers as being pro-worker. Josh Hawley is howling at liberal elite tech companies are bad for working Americans.

   • I would say that the people with the least identity politics are large multinational companies. And for the most part that is because they have customers all across the globe.

     (Note: What companies have is Company Identity for their workers. So at a Sales Meeting they promote their Sales Team is Company X identity and they are solve the world’s problems selling their products.)

     • I like the use of the term “identity” as a replacement for the old way “nationality” was used. The term nationality has morphed into a synonym for “citizenship” in the age of nation-states as well as a synonym for “ethnicity” in the age of Social Justice Activism.

       Identity is a very flexible term and it emphasizes the individual’s choice. Collin’s Company Identity example is an interesting one because it highlights this flexibility but I don’t think it is necessarily a lack of identity but more an emphasis on identity through a different lens.

       In the consumer world, Chevy vs. Ford and Coke vs. Pepsi are weird versions of identity politics. In terms of Corporate Identity, direct competitors take on the role or arch-enemy. Historically, the animosity between the Italian Maritime Republics of Venice and Genoa between the 4th Crusades in 1204 and the fall of Constantinople in 1543 looks more like warring corporations than independent city-states.

       • I say the biggest issue with conservatives and young generation is it taking longer for young people to achieve career goals to where they can start believing their identity is a worker for large Company X. (Also the other issue is young people are putting off marriage and children which is the best to make people conservative in nature.)

2. Re: “It appears to me that young people on the left find the concept of earning to be somewhat foreign. Entitlement makes more intuitive sense to them. How much of this is Home Appiens, who takes YouTube and Facebook for granted, without having to earn them? If we are entitled to Google Maps, why aren’t we entitled to health care?”

   You’re onto something! Fresh, incisive, insightful—and disarmingly phrased. I suppose the mechanism is a twist on the availability heuristic. The Google Maps effect in political psychology!

   Let’s hope that your aperçu somehow will reach the radar screen of research psychologists (Jonathan Haidt?), who might figure out ways to study the mechanism empirically.

   A question arises: Is psychology so short-circuited that people don’t discern the difference between loss leaders supplied by private internet firms and services funded by taxation?

3. It describes a relationship of transgressor and victim.

   There is a history of ressentiment (pronounced in the French way) being a source of identity:

   ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one’s frustration

   Steven Pinker talks about it negatively in either Better Angels of Our Nature or Enlightenment Now.

   • Ressentiment in Wikipedia

4. Google Maps is free in part because the government would have a much stronger monopoly-busting case against Google if it charged for its services. (Ditto for other Internet services).
   In this sense anti-monopoly law can be seen as a strange form of demand subsidy which applies to quasi-monopolies.

5. ” Instead of talking about justice vs. mercy, I would talk about earning vs. entitlement.”

   Would you (Arnold) then point out that every “entitlement” has to be supported by an equal or greater obligations, or series of obligations?

   Are those obligations then imposed on others or voluntarily assumed?

   If imposed, as most are through coercions (taxation, etc.) what does that do to all the relationships affected?

6. But ah! what once has been shall be no more!
   The groaning earth in travail and in pain
   Brings forth its races, but does not restore,
   And the dead nations never rise again.
   -Longfellow

7. Excellent article. And if one has the time, maybe even more so after reading two pieces linked to today on Marginal Revolution, first, the new Martin Gurri blog piece, and the post about Nadia Urbinati’s Me, The People. Together they bump along fairly well and one suspects raindrops are being formed in the clouds. Perhaps it’s the title of the Urbinati’s book, but one wonders how much of an analogy can be drawn between the US political climate today and the ancient Pharisees and their oral law, the extinct Saduccees and their embrace of the written, and the ascetic Essenes who left it all behind. Thinking the Essenes maybe are pointing the right direction.

8. Non-progressives who have been paying close attention to these matters for a long time generally converge on the understanding that in the implicit progressive scheme, ‘identity’ corresponds to social ‘rank’, inverse to ‘privilege’, and with a somewhat dynamic ordering based on the latest zeitgeist of perceived severeity of oppression, exclusion, discrimination, and victimization.

   Just like in the military, whenever there is any dispute, whether professional or personal, it is always possible for someone to ‘win’ not by merit but by ‘pulling rank’, that is, exercising the power deriving from one’s ability to leverage external sources of intimidating pressure on his side.

   The emergence of this kind of “ideological narrative of social inversion” is not historically uncommon, and anyone can recognize the elements of it in Christianity and Marxism. People not on top (often just below the top, in the nature of things) will say that those on top do not “deserve” to be on top, because (insert concocted political, historical, and/or moral story as necessary).

   The advantages of being able to pull rank generate pernicious and socially corrosive incentives, both in terms of the temptation to abuse it for personal reasons for people who already have the status of having a high number of victim points, but also in terms of people trying to acheive promotion (often subconsciously) by doing what they can to adopt or signal higher-ranking identities. In the past, when being white was high status, people of mixed or non-European ancestry who could barely pass as white were incentivized to claim they were white.

   Today, as the progressive ideology of social transvaluation dominates, there is the ‘flight from white’, and people are eager to emphasive non-white aspects of their heritage or identity, however small or remote (e.g., Elizabeth Warren, or groups of Arab-Americans who once lobbied to be counted as white on things like the census, and now lobby for new non-white categories.)

   Power and status is the root of what it’s all about, and everything else is intellectual Potemkim decorations for plausible deniability and generating a social consensus for acceptable excuses for otherwise illegitimate behaviors.

   • There’s an interesting connection to the anti-monopoly laws I mentioned above. Google has a ready defense against monopoly accusations if its products cost consumers nothing. In the same way, a ready defense against racism-accusations is to advocate for others to pay tribute (in money, status, etc.) from one racial group to another.

     The idea that the price of Google’s products is (mostly) free hardly seems like sufficient justification to legally exempt them from competition from other business. So either Google’s anti-competitive behavior is morally justified or the law needs redrafting.

     In the same way, advocacy for transfers of wealth or status, etc between sets of people seems like implicit racism, no matter how much lipstick you put on it. Individuals are individuals, and they ought to be free to offer or take charity as they desire.

   • Whether you think it is “pulling rank” or attempting to equalize a status difference depends on whether you think that status inequality between different identity groups pre-exists the rank pulling, I guess.

     While I’m on the subject, I’ve decided I like the term “status inequality” better than “privilege” because it doesn’t come with any of the wierd connotation of having been granted a higher status by some overriding authority. “Status inequality” allows one to capture the informal nature of the status difference between blacks and whites for instance without passing judgement about it.

9. I don’t think I’d associate identity politics with mercy. In fact the desire to punish people seems to be a big part of it. Even ‘free stuff’ policies are often defended on the fact that they will kneecap hated people or industries. Elizabeth Warren seems to spends more time talking about punishing sinners than about feeding the hungry. Even many academic economists, a la Saez and Zucman, view such policies more as a means to harm the (supposedly) undeserving than to reward the deserving.

   • I agree. In areas like racism, feminism, and “transphobia” the movements have moved away from seeking fairness and equality and are now focused more on revenge. They don’t want equality, they want power.

10. I think it’s possible young people today are more entitled, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the internet or phone apps.
    What you’re describing sounds a lot like my younger sister, at least when she was in high school. She immediately thought that college should be free, along with pretty much all the other necessities of life. I think it’s partly because she picked up a little bit of marxist dogma about the “problem of production” having been solved (i.e. there’s plenty of stuff for everyone, so just distribute it to them!), but also because, as the youngest child, she got kind of spoiled. I think maybe the issue is that people are having smaller families, so children are more spoiled.

    • I think post scarcity economics has become a defining feature if a lot of thinking across the political spectrum. It’s the animating thought behind a lot of Silicon Valley philosophy especially. I think they watch Star Trek and think we are just a generation away from the equivalent of replicators + infinite free energy.

      This is rather odd considering the productivity slowdown and the fact that most of the goods these people focus on are services and thus completely immune to being post-scarcity. I can believe that the modern economy can provide infinite mass produced breakfast cereal to everyone. I don’t see how a doctor provides infinite healthcare (there are only 24 hours in his day).

      This is mostly something the UMC+ and their kids believe, in part because they don’t actually have to make financial trade offs on anything but luxury goods they could take or leave. For instance, I haven’t balanced my checkbook in basically forever, and I don’t keep a budget of any kind. I know of course I can’t go on a luxury cruise every week, but nothing I really want is denied to me.

      Of course the stuff I do worry about a lot. Medical bills, real estate, schools, aren’t subject to productivity improvements and are zero sum.

      P.S. I will leave a nice Star Trek clip below if it doesn’t get censored link.

      • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx5I7uEEEYo

      • I seriously doubt “most tech workers have to make financial trade offs on anything but luxury goods they could take or leave.” They are with extreme real estate costs (some of this housing regulation doing) and service cost. And in terms of college these families tend to most Tiger Moms.

        I know Andrew Yang or Ro Khanna, etc are somewhat in this boat but they are the minority.

        • Yes, real estate in the valley is expensive. But they believe that NIMBYs are doing that and if they were defeated that all real estate would be cheap too.

          Even so, it’s not like these people are forced to live in slums, even if they sometimes have to take on roommates. I’d say the frustration mostly comes from an inability to buy a house to raise a family in.

          When you make six figures, the kind of tradeoffs ordinary people make with things like basic goods and services just aren’t there. I remember making all sorts of economic tradeoffs when I was younger before I was making genuine professional wages. And when I was a child things were tighter still. We sold the family piano I wanted to play to pay the mortgage. The idea that you had to genuinely suffer to save money is something the UMC just can’t understand.

11. Plumbers win with the five different genders, then we have the busers making buck off the four colors.

12. And here we have another tone deaf, and poorly researched post about Millennials and the “hard-left”.
    1. The hard-right employs identity politics as much as the hard-left. In fact you could argue that since the president uses identity politics as the executive, the IP on the right is more manifest.
    2. Young people on the left are much less entitled than the boomers. Statistically, they work longer hours, for less pay, and are saddled with debt. The plea for government intervention is a result of the lack of economic opportunity that, incidentally, was available to the boomers as they pulled the ladder up after them.

    These critiques of the “hard-left” seem to focus in on wacky college students and loud leftist loonies, RATHER than serious hard-left political thinkers. Why is this? Do you not know who they are, or are you instead afraid of engaging leftist thinking in a serious way? Its redundant to say that its low hanging fruit to calling out AOC’s tweets as silly, but does anyone care about what Chomsky is saying? You know he is still alive and writing correct?

    I see a disingenuous and half-hearted attempt by the older generation of supposedly “intellectual thinkers” to engage with young people akin to “old man yells at cloud”. I am on the left, and there is reason that when I criticize right wing ideology, I don’t pick on Alex Jones or Rush Limbaugh – I would not be treating the ideas of the right in good faith. I expect the same from the other side.

    • I do read Chomsky. What I find most fascinating about his brand of leftism (he has referred to himself as both “anarcho syndicalist” and “libertarian socialist”) is that it seems perfectly compatible with existing liberal democracy, no revolution required. If you like the man’s ideas, why not walk the talk? Start an egalitarian community with the pacifist conviction of the Amish/Mennonites, the modern methods of the Israeli Kibbutz, and anything else Chomsky finds necessary. He has talked about his short Kibbutz experience. Why not try to apply his convictions? If you don’t like the American Empire, why not build a better alternative one committee and one community at a time? Some kind of modern Voluntary Anarcho Fabianism.

      • I think you may have missed the point of my post, which was that the OP and others like it seem to paint a vast swath of leftists in the same light based on the silliest of points of view. That seems intellectually dishonest to me, and I would prefer instead that conservative critics engage those who have serious points of view. I pointed out Chomsky because he is very famous but there are many examples of serious left wing thinkers in economics and political science.

13. Mitchell says two of the “chief targets of identity politics” are commerce and tradition.

    Richard Posner’s list was a lot more comprehensive because he counted “liberalism, capitalism, individualism, the Enlightenment, logic, and science, the values associated with the Judeo‑Christian tradition, the concept of personal merit, and the possibility of objective knowledge.”

    Posner: “Having demolished to its satisfaction universal values and criteria, it has cleared the way for the claim that the most important thing about a person is his or her race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, and degree of physical or mental disability (what else is there?); and that good jobs and the other rewards of social life should be distributed across groups in proportion to their fraction of the population, except that women are entitled to live longer than men and blacks to dominate professional basketball. For if there is no such thing as individual merit‑‑if ‘merit’ is just the preference for your own kind‑‑the only fair way to allocate goods is randomly, and this will tend to produce an allocation proportional to the relative size of groups.”

    That was in 1997. And it all sounds relatively bloodless and technocratic compared to the religious zeal of today, with our roving mobs of angry followers and their merciless score-settling. At least in 1997 you could still use the word “allocation” with a straight face. Now there’s just this frenzied clawing and hacking away at people.

    • It’s not enough to merely be allocated this or that “desirable thing”. There is a demand that everyone acknowledge that you truly and morally deserve it. It’s not enough to say “we are giving you X% of desirable things as a political payoff”. There is a reason people say that affirmative action or reparations or anything else can never TRULY erase the original sin. They don’t just want your compliance, they want conversion. They want you to agree 2 + 2 = 5.

      Partly I think this is the easily understandable psychology that if its widely known you don’t really deserve something, your hold over it is tenuous at best. In the past people have usually fought over moral claims to rights because once you lose that claim, its only a matter of time before someone physically tries to re-allocate what your were claiming.

      The King controlled the army, so why did he devote 10% of his economy to the priests to say he had the Divine Right of Kings? Why bother? Because the moral claim to rights does matter, even when it seems a sham.

      And of course there is the personal psychology of it. Maybe some of it is just a subconscious understanding of the above logic, but people don’t like thinking of themselves as frauds or thieves. Even when those things are actually true, they come up with elaborate rationals as to why it’s OK. Only the truly psychopathic seem able to operate without such rationalizations, most people need them or they can’t keep their own scam rolling.

14. It appears to me that young people on the left find the concept of earning to be somewhat foreign.

    I think much of it it that modern society is so complex that the relationship between their work and their rewards seems obscure and arbitrary. My mom grew up on a farm, and the relationship between raising chickens and eating chicken was very simple. The relationship between running a cash register and enjoying cell phone service is not.

    • It’s worse in an office. I understood my productivity when I worked a cash register. In the office world there seems to be zero relation between productivity and reward.

      • I’ve participated in decisions for hiring, pay, and promotions for an office where it is very, very hard to assess individual or overall value or productivity, and yes, certain people are punching well above their short-term pay and others well below (though I’d argue that the correlations get tighter if one considers output and income over a whole lifetime), but even I wouldn’t say “zero” relation.

        What ends up happening is what seems to happen in Communist countries trying to deal with shortages and gluts and allocation problems, but without markets and price signals, which tends to be a constant effort in reactive mode to keep a lot of plates spinning, trying ones best to detect and deal with wobbles, with a few plates inevitably falling down and shattering.

        What you need is a substitute for price signals, which turns out to be painful failures, embarassing disasters, and also complaints, weighted by the “pull” of the individual making the complaint.

        “Why did X blow up” – “We didn’t have enough people, if it happens again, it will blow up again.” – “Ok, we’ll give you more people, and take some from a place where nothing has blown up for a while, which means they probably have some slack.”

        “Why did Y blow up, you have plenty of people.” – “Yes, but they are garbage. We are only allowed to hire low rank, low pay, with no promotions. Adverse selection – the best leave, the worst stay. A slot for higher rank, higher pay, means a much smarter, higher quality, and more productive person, who will do better work than three garbage employees.” – “Ok, we’ll modify your authorized table of personnel, and steal the budget from …”

        As clumsy and crude and slow as this process tends to be, and as fraight with perseve results like punishing success by stealing resources, it turns out to be better than nothing, and I’m often surprised how (in that long-term averaging view above) things tend to shake out very roughly in line with my perceptions of individual quality and marginal productivity.

        • True, but from the new hire’s point of view this all seems mysterious and inscrutable. Management is making seemingly-random changes, everybody seems annoyed, and they’re vaguely aware that stuff might be blowing up.

          It gets much worse if the new hires are below average but their school experiences have been entirely supportive and they never developed a realistic sense of how they compare to others. One young guy I know occasionally refers to himself as “the brain” while other coworkers refer to him as “the moron”.

        • Somewhat true. And I’ll admit that my experience is working in particularly opaque and corrupt industries with lots of perverse incentives.

          As far as I can tell the biggest driver of pay is immediate threat. Things like “someone made me a better offer”. Even when receiving a raise, it’s rather annoying to be told that they knew you deserved more money all along, but unless you are constantly threatening to leave they aren’t actually going to pay you what you are worth. Of course that immediate threat has to be coupled with the particular ability of the person in question to give you a raise, which is based on immediate threat as well. And whether or not something is a genuine threat isn’t something management can understand well.

          A particularly crazy anecdote. My company assigns fixed costs based on variable measures. So as we sell more policies, more fixed costs are assigned to us…

          • It’s crazy, but a lot of them have attitudes that don’t help. A decade ago I had a college-age guy who was my semi-subordinate, by which I mean I was responsible for his output but had zero power to fire or otherwise influence him. He had a full time job and he was usually around about two hours a week. Most days he just didn’t show up.

            He used to say things like “I want to get a job at (very prestigious place) when I graduate”. I replied “everybody wants to get a job as (place)”. It apparently had never occurred to him that a B- average from a third tier university combined with a poor work history would be career limiting.

            One time he said “Wow, this project would really be in trouble if I quit.” I said “Nah, we’d have (useful employee) do it.”

            Last I heard he was living in his car.

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