ABSTRACT
In “The Use and Abuse of Class Reductionism for the Left,” Marc James Léger addresses three interrelated phenomena on the contemporary left and in the era of intersectional theory: the call for class struggle rather than culture wars, the consequent charge of class reductionism, and the acceptance of that charge in the name of class struggle. With reference to the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, and through the example of Marxist theories of science, Léger argues that leftists need not accept economism as the last word on Marxist method. To the extent that the left has replaced class struggle with anti-classist sensitivity, leftists have abandoned the universalist claims of socialism and the agenda of political revolution, substituting radicalism with the kind of social justice that conforms to the expectations of postmodern academics, global corporations, neoliberal governments and activists in the third sector. This replacement of socialism with the politics of diversity is referred to as “wokeism.” Léger uses the metaphor of “woke baseball” to describe the various ways in which “woke” activists dismiss the left as class reductionist. Rather than play this game, he advocates a better understanding of the Marxist critique of reductionism as well as a stronger sense of socialism’s historical promise of human progress beyond capitalism.
