Globalizing Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics

Abstract

Capitalism has penetrated societies and spanned the globe. In this sense, it is homogenizing social life. But instead of universalizing popular politics, capitalist expansion is weakening and conceivably destroying working class politics. The advance of international markets and technological change are eviscerating the mass production industries, at least in the mother countries, diminishing the working class numbers and organizations which once gave life to the idea of the proletariat as the hope of humankind. And the new mobility of capitalist investment is also reducing the autonomy of the nation state, with a crushing impact on existing forms of working class organization and influence. Moreover, instead of wiping out all ancient prejudices, a globalizing capital is prompting a rising tide of fractious racial, ethnic, religious and gender conflict. It is contributing to an identity politics which expresses not only the ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions which were presumably to be swept aside, but the apparently inexhaustible human capacity to create new prejudices and opinions, albeit often in the name of an imagined ancient past.