The debate that arose among left-wing activists following Sophie Straat’s performance at the Gentse Feesten has long since ceased to be about a single concert or a single symbolic act. It touches on a fundamental debate raging within the left: how do we build unity within the working class? By taking the different experiences of exploitation and oppression seriously, or by subordinating them to what some consider the “real” class struggle?
The reactions to Sophie Straat were particularly revealing in this regard. After she spoke about the impact of racism and patriarchy at concerts and invited white men to step back for one song so that women, queer people, and people of color could stand at the front, a predictable wave of outrage followed. Not only from the right, but also from people who call themselves leftists or even Marxists.
That in itself is remarkable. We live in a time when misogyny, racism, transphobia, and authoritarian nationalism are regaining strength worldwide. Elections are being won by attacking migrants, trans people, and feminists. The far right is systematically trying to pit segments of the working class against one another, and the mainstream parties are following in their wake. One would expect that, in such a context, the left would unhesitatingly take the side of those hardest hit by these attacks.
But exactly the opposite seems to be happening. More and more often, we hear from parts of the left that women, people of color, or transgender people should not make their experiences too visible, because doing so would play into the hands of the far right. As if it were not the reactionaries who are responsible for the wave of hate, but rather those who refuse to remain silent about oppression any longer.
That is dangerous reasoning. It undermines the foundation of solidarity and lends legitimacy to far-right hate speech.
The familiar cliché
In the discussion about Sophie Straat, the now-familiar reference to Donald Trump and how he came to power appeared almost immediately. Among other things, we read:
“For years, the U.S. Democratic Party has been lost in identity-based debates. It’s one of the main reasons they lost the election; they no longer spoke the language of the working class, they no longer addressed the issues that truly keep that very heterogeneous working class up at night. So I’ve developed a strong aversion to words like ‘white,’ ‘privilege,’ and ‘safe space’…”
And also:
“As X (the author of the piece above) rightly writes: a key factor that helped bring Trump to power was identity politics, exploited by right-wing demagogues: remember their impactful commercials claiming that the Democratic Party wants to grant ‘men dressed as women’ access to the restrooms where the daughters of U.S. voters go.”
It’s an argument that keeps cropping up. As soon as racism, sexism, or transphobia are raised by victims, sooner or later the warning follows that this divides the working class and strengthens the far right. To some, it seems like plausible reasoning, but it is viciously reactionary. If you take a moment to dissect this reasoning, you’ll see that it completely turns reality on its head.
Sophie Straat brought oppression to light
To begin with, the criticism is based on a misrepresentation of what Sophie Straat actually did. She wasn’t presenting an abstract theory about “white privilege.” She wasn’t giving an academic lecture on intersectionality. She drew on concrete experiences.
She spoke about how women, queer people, and people of color often experience concerts differently than white men. It’s about sexual harassment, physical violence, and racist remarks. About constantly having to assess whether a space is safe. About experiences that are part of daily life for many people but remain largely invisible to others.
Afterward, she invited white men to take a step back during one song. Not as a humiliation. Not as a punishment. But as a symbolic exercise that momentarily made visible the unquestioned way in which space is occupied.
That is precisely where the significance of her action lies. She wasn’t just trying to name oppression. She was trying to make it tangible. And that, precisely, proved unbearable for many.
Not listening, but denying
What stood out most in the reactions was how little interest there was in the experiences Sophie Straat spoke about. Almost immediately, the discussion shifted.
The central question was no longer whether women are indeed more frequently confronted with inappropriate behavior. Nor whether racism plays a role in how people experience public spaces. Nor was it about how concerts can be made safer for everyone. The focus was almost exclusively on the form of her intervention. She was said to be “divisive.” She was said to be “excluding people.” She was accused of engaging in “identity politics.”
We see this mechanism time and again whenever oppression is brought to light. As soon as women call out sexism, the discussion suddenly shifts to the tone in which they do so. As soon as people of color denounce racism, the focus shifts to whether they are polarizing society. As soon as trans people stand up for their right to exist, the warning is that they are providing electoral ammunition to the far right. The original experience disappears from view. This is not a neutral shift.
Solidarity begins with recognition
For a left-wing movement that seeks to oppose all forms of oppression, this should be a self-evident starting point. Solidarity does not begin with the claim that differences do not matter. It begins with the willingness to take others’ experiences seriously. Instead of viewing them as threatening, we should see such calls as a call for solidarity.
When women speak out about sexism, when Black people speak out about racism, or when transgender people speak out about daily discrimination, the reflex should not be to explain to them how they can do so better—or, in the worst case, why they’d be better off keeping quiet. The first reflex is to listen.
For anyone who refuses to acknowledge the experiences of a segment of the working class cannot possibly claim to be fighting for the unity of that same class. What some critics propose is, in reality, not unity. It is silence. Victims of oppression are expected to subordinate their experiences to a supposedly higher interest: the unity of the class.
But a unity that is only possible as long as certain people remain silent about their reality is not unity. It is based on exclusion.
The Myth of the Homogeneous Working Class
Much of the criticism directed at Sophie Straat implicitly stems from a certain image of the working class. That image is rarely explicitly articulated. But it is constantly present.
The “ordinary working person” on whose behalf people claim to speak turns out, strikingly often, to be white, male, heterosexual, and cisgender. His experiences are presented as the universal experience of the class. Anyone who calls attention to racism, patriarchy, ableism, or queerphobia is then said to be deviating from “real” class politics and preoccupied with “identity.”
But the working class is by no means homogeneous. It never has been. It consists of women and men; of people with and without immigrant backgrounds; of cis and trans people; and of people who, in addition to economic exploitation, face various forms of oppression.
Filtering that reality out of the analysis does not make the class more inclusive. On the contrary. It elevates the experience of one segment of the working class—a minority—to the norm for everyone. And that is precisely where the irony lies.
The Identity Politics of the So-Called “Identity-Less”
The accusation of “identity politics” is often itself the most successful form of identity politics. It presents the experience of one segment of the working class as neutral, universal, and self-evident, while the experiences of everyone else are portrayed as “special interests.”
But the norm is also a position. It has simply become so historically dominant that it no longer recognizes itself as a specific experience. When a white, heterosexual, cisgender worker speaks about his working conditions, it’s called class politics.
When a Black woman speaks about the combination of exploitation, racism, and sexism at her job, it is suddenly called identity politics. Not because her analysis is any less about class or because she is any less a part of the class. But because she makes it clear that the working class has never consisted of a single experience. Intersectional Marxism, therefore, does not engage in identity politics.
On the contrary, it shatters the illusion that the experience of a single group represents the experience of the entire class. This is not a deviation from the class struggle. It is a necessary condition for making it truly universal.
Not Marx, but Reductionism
Criticism of Sophie Straat is often presented as a defense of Marxism against so-called “identity politics.” As if Marxists should concern themselves exclusively with economic exploitation—and thus with issues like wages and pensions—while all other forms of oppression are mere distractions or side issues. “What does Sophie Straat have to say about pensions?”, we read in a commentary.
But that is precisely where the problem lies. The problem is not that intersectional Marxism distances itself from Marx or that intersectionalism is opposed to a class-based approach. The problem is that a reductionist reading of Marxism has come to present itself as the only orthodox interpretation of Marxism. The Marxist method, however, begins with the concrete analysis of concrete reality. Theory must not simplify reality in order to make it fit better into a pre-existing schema. On the contrary, theory must constantly allow itself to be corrected by reality itself.
Marx never analyzed capitalism as a purely economic system. In Capital, he devotes extensive attention to the way in which women’s and children’s labor is exploited to drive down wages and increase profits. In his analyses of Ireland, he demonstrates how national oppression was deliberately used to pit English and Irish workers against one another. And in his support for the struggle against slavery in the United States, he viewed the emancipation of enslaved people not as a distraction from the class struggle, but as a prerequisite for its development.
Like any scientific theory, Marxism is not a closed system, but a living tradition. Marx laid its foundations, but he never claimed to have provided a definitive explanation of history. Since then, generations of Marxists have developed this theory further by taking new social developments and the lessons learnt from social struggles seriously.
The struggles waged by women, colonised peoples, racialised communities and LGBTQIA+ people have not distanced these activists from Marxism. On the contrary, they have challenged Marxism to apply its own method more consistently to a constantly changing social reality.
These struggles have thus helped to enrich and deepen the Marxist understanding of society, by highlighting forms of oppression and exploitation that earlier generations of Marxists had not always taken sufficiently into account.
And what does that reality look like today? It consists of a capitalist society in which economic exploitation is constantly intertwined with racism, patriarchy, colonialism, queerphobia, transphobia, ableism, and other forms of oppression.
Capital exploits this. Not because capitalism invented all these forms of oppression, but because it constantly reproduces, adapts, and utilizes them to keep the working class divided, make labor cheaper, and perpetuate existing power relations.
Anyone who reduces that reality to a single contradiction between labor and capital does not make the analysis any clearer. They impoverish it. A Marxist analysis that abstracts concrete reality into a schema in which only the economic contradiction remains ceases to be a Marxist analysis. It becomes dogmatic.
That reductionist tradition, however, was never the only voice within Marxism, even though it became dominant—through reformism and Stalinism—in what we know today as “Marxism.” As early as the beginning of the twentieth century, Clara Zetkin opposed socialists and Marxists who wanted to postpone the women’s struggle until “after the revolution.” She emphasized that a revolutionary, socialist politics could not possibly succeed if half of the working class were asked to temporarily ignore its specific oppression.
The same was true of revolutionaries like Alexandra Kollontai, who demonstrated that women’s liberation would not automatically follow from the abolition of capitalism, but required a conscious political struggle. The history of Marxism, therefore, is not the history of a single reductionist tradition. Above all, it is the history of Marxists who have constantly fought against that reductionism.
The historical blind spot among large segments of the left
This is not merely a theoretical discussion. It is a history from which we must draw lessons. Throughout much of the twentieth century, women’s movements were told that their struggle endangered the unity of the working class. Anti-racist movements were accused of diverting attention from the “real” economic struggle. Queer people were told to wait until “after the revolution.” As if liberation were always something that would come later. But “later” rarely came.
This gave rise to a mutual distrust that has caused enormous damage to the revolutionary left. Not because feminists, anti-racists, or queer movements rejected the class struggle. Rather, because large sections of the left were never willing to recognize their experiences as an integral part of that class struggle. Anyone who claims today that intersectionality divides the working class is repeating exactly that historical mistake.
Here, the work of the African American Marxist W.E.B. Du Bois is particularly relevant. He analyzed why white and Black workers in the United States found it so difficult to build a united movement. His answer was crystal clear: not because Black workers spoke out against racism, but because the ruling class gave white workers a “psychological wage”—a symbolic wage in the form of social status, privileges, and the feeling of being superior to Black workers. As Du Bois wrote: “One must not forget that white workers, although they received low wages, were partially compensated by a kind of social and psychological wage.” As long as that artificial hierarchy persisted, the capitalist class could pit the two groups against each other. For Du Bois, the struggle against racism was therefore not a distraction from the class struggle, but a necessary condition for truly uniting the working class. His analysis remains particularly relevant today. It is not the acknowledgment of racism that divides the working class; it is racism itself that keeps it divided.
And what is the United States really learning?
That brings us back to the reference to Donald Trump. As if his election victory were the ultimate proof that the left would do better to remain silent on racism, sexism, or transphobia. That analysis is problematic for several reasons.
To begin with, the Democratic Party is not a left-wing party. It is not even a party that has ever pursued a consistent class-based political agenda. For decades, together with the Republicans, it managed neoliberal capitalism. It supported free-trade agreements that disrupted industrial regions, gave more power to large corporations, accepted Wall Street’s financial logic, and offered millions of working people no fundamental alternative to growing inequality and economic insecurity.
That is the context in which Trump was able to rise. Trump did not win because of a recent shift in the Democrats’ course. Rather, he won as a result of decades of deep disappointment in a party that claims to stand up for the working class but, in practice, always sides with the capitalist elite. Anyone who wants to understand the Democratic Party’s defeat must start there—not with the question of whether some Democratic politicians occasionally used the word “privilege.” Moreover, it is misleading to portray the Democratic Party as a model of intersectional politics. What it mostly did was combine a limited form of liberal representation with neoliberal economic policies: more women in leadership positions; More people of color in leadership positions. More symbolic recognition. But without fundamentally challenging the economic power structures. That is not intersectionalism. That is neoliberal pluralism. And it is precisely that neoliberal pluralism that ultimately achieved neither economic justice nor genuine emancipation. On the contrary.
That is why it is so harmful to frame this debate about the Democratic Party as in the first quote at the beginning of this text: “They no longer spoke the language of the working class; they no longer cared about everything that truly keeps that very heterogeneous working class awake at night.” This sentence creates the impression that the Democratic Party was ever a party of the heterogeneous working class. Wrong. Without saying so explicitly, this quote claims that the only things that truly keep the heterogeneous working class awake at night are socioeconomic issues. Twice wrong.
A curious line of reasoning
Even if we take the United States as our starting point, the logic of the argument remains curious. Republicans wage hate campaigns against transgender people. They spread racist lies. They stir up moral panic. And the conclusion some people on the left then draw is that transgender people, anti-racists, or feminists would be better off keeping a lower profile.
That’s like claiming that anti-colonial movements were responsible for colonial repression. That the Palestinians themselves are responsible for the genocide. The blame keeps shifting. It’s not the reactionaries who are held accountable for their campaigns, but rather those who resist oppression. That’s not class analysis. That’s victim blaming.
Moreover, it is a strategic capitulation. Because if the left remains silent every time the far right tries to co-opt an issue, then ultimately the far right determines what can still be discussed. That is not a strategy to defeat the far right. That is a strategy to cede ground.
It demands that the entire working class recognize itself in the so-called common struggle for liberation. That is only possible when the experiences of the most marginalized and oppressed groups are taken seriously—not as an afterthought, not as “identity,” but as an essential part of the social reality in which capitalism operates.
A Marxism for the Twenty-First Century
That is why we reject the false choice between class struggle and the struggle against oppression. We refuse to choose between economic exploitation and racism. Between socialism and feminism. Between anti-capitalism and queer liberation. In reality, all forms of oppression and exploitation are constantly intertwined.
The working class can organize itself as a political force only when all its members feel truly seen. Not when some are asked to temporarily set aside their experiences in the name of an abstract unity.
The task of the genuine left is therefore not to erase the differences within the working class. Rather, it is to take those differences seriously, to understand them politically, and to turn them into a common struggle. That is the aim of intersectional Marxism. Not a mere sum of identities. Not a competition between forms of oppression. But an attempt to understand—and to change—the full reality of the working class.
The choice facing the left today is therefore not between “classical Marxism” and “intersectionality.” The real choice is between a reductionist Marxism that simplifies reality and a dialectical Marxism that seeks to understand it in all its complexity.
Anyone who today dismisses the struggle against racism, patriarchy, ableism, queerphobia, or transphobia as “identity politics” is not defending a stronger Marxism. They are defending an impoverished version of Marxism that has all too often brought the history of the class struggle in the twentieth century to a standstill. We choose a different kind of Marxism. A Marxism that is not afraid of the complexity of reality. A Marxism that does not start from a Eurocentric, patriarchal, and heteronormative interpretation. A Marxism that understands that the working class becomes strong precisely by embracing its full diversity. A Marxism that does not ask the most oppressed to be quieter, but that wants to change the world together with them.