In Defense of Universalist Class Politics

Abstract A universalist, class-first strategy for socialist politics assumes that the most effective means of making progress toward socialism, as well as mitigating stubbornly persistent extraclass inequalities in liberal capitalist democracies, is to mobilize the working class around broadly shared material interests. A standard criticism of class-first politics is that it is founded on a deeply mistaken theoretical account of class structure under capitalism, especially as it relates to various forms of extraclass forms of oppression. This criticism finds expression in the familiar charge of class reductionism and the more recent charge of abstractionism. These charges misrepresent standard Marxist assumptions about class-class structure and the role of these assumptions in motivating class-first politics. While such assumptions do support the position that the working class is central to socialist politics, the view that mobilizing the working class around broadly shared material interests is the most effective means to achieve our political goals must be justified by concrete, strategic arguments.