The End Point

In chemistry the “end point” is the point in a titration at which a reaction is complete – often marked by some sort of visible change. 

In social chemistry, sex self-ID may be seen as the end point of the hyper-individualisation and the denaturing that sits at the very heart of capitalism. 

To me, the “identity over material reality” issue is an outflow of an essentially individualist and individualising ideology which – in the service of globalised corporate capital –  is aimed primarily at destroying left wing collectivism. Not the interest-based politics of the white left, with its inherently unstable coalitions, but the class based interests of the red left. That remains capitalism’s main enemy. 

Capitalism is essentially malign; it deforms and destroys; it shoves people into straitjackets, it is chewing up the entire planet faster and excreting more shit than ever, and it has learned how to defend itself by turning its opponents against each other. 

This has never been more clear than in this current iteration of divide and rule.

The ruling class have long known how easy it is to use ideology to divide and dominate any opposition, and social media has made their job easier than ever. 

The ideology is the velvet glove; inside it remains the iron fist of the state machine working in the interests of the ruling class, aided these days, by the coercive agencies of the deep state, and by private militias. 

From the acorn of interest group politics, the tree of identity politics grew, protected and fertilised by various agents and agencies that don’t give a toss about the ever-proliferating groups clustering around various forms of identity.  

They want, above all else, to divide in order to continue to rule. 

To that end, they want any nascent opposition to be, from its embryonic form, already primed to break into competing interest groups. 

If those interest groups are in pursuit of something which also creates markets, so much the better. 

If, by pushing for sectional interests, these groups encroach on others’ interests, and thereby create divisions between natural allies, even better. 

“There is no society, there is only the individual and the family” – thus spake Thatcher in advancement of Neo-liberalism, tacking the family on as a sop to religious interests. 

The whole idea of the “self” – the stand-alone individual and her/his social and legal rights – was a product of capitalism. And like other aspects of capitalism, there is some good in it.  But humans are ineluctably social, and stripped of natural community, we either fall into an utterly dysfunctional and harmful isolationism, or we create our own communities. 

In the modern era, inside the imperial bubble, that’s now often a virtual community, sometimes centred around a subjective, empirically unverifiable, and shifting, sense of self. 

It’s a spin doctor’s / agent provocateur’s wet dream. 

The aims of the ruling class first were to destroy the dream – ie the very belief in the possibility of structural/systemic change – and one of the main planks in that strategy was to attack and discredit Marxism and all that was informed by it. 

Post modernism was not just tolerated by the agents of the ruling class, it was actively promoted for its capacity to undermine Marxism.

At the same time, they sought to destroy the means by which the dream of a better world could be effected, ie the mass collectives which are the only way the powerless can wrest power from the ruling class.

They have done so, and continue to do so both by undermining and discrediting any collectives which look like becoming mass movements – left wing parties, trade unions, and other anti-capitalist collectives; and by promoting hyper-individualist and individualising ideologies which spawn inherently competitive factions.  

This has never been more clear than in this current iteration of divide and rule.

Sex self-ID is not a coherent, overarching conspiracy; it’s the result of a set of ruling class, interest-based objectives. Sometimes those interests overlap and coalesce and cooperate with each other.

The individualist identity interests of billionaire cross-dressers and trans-humanists co-exist for the moment with those of the US-centred global military-industrial complex, but they would be sacrificed in a heartbeat if the real power saw a financial or a strategic advantage in, for example, fully unleashing the pit bulls of the far-right.

What those feminists who argue that sex self-ID is the preeminent issue confronting women, need to realise is, the pit bulls won’t stop with trans people. Trans people may become the first victims but they sure as hell won’t be the last. 

The far more wide reaching danger is that sometimes the handlers underestimate the pit bulls’ capacity to turn on them.  When that happens, we see the full horror of barbarism. 

There is only one line of defence in the world today, and that’s the old Red Left. It’s also why it remains the primary target.