Mythical Class Reductionists vs. Actual Race Reductionists

“If any class-reductionist leftists actually exist they would still be 100 times more helpful to black people than neoliberals.” — Leslie Lee III

“Nothing declares one’s own class allegiances more eloquently, after all, than the accusation that one’s opponents care only about class.” — Adolph Reed

The first time I was called a class reductionist, I was baffled. Socialists have been at the front of every struggle for social equality. Were W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Sylvia Pankhurst, and Emma Goldman class reductionists? Socialists know that racism and sexism are problems so long as any racist or sexist has the power to affect another person’s life. Marx condemned racism when he wrote, “Labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded.” Engels condemned sexism when he wrote, “The first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male.”

When I took a closer look at people who talk about class reductionists, I saw the accusation is made by race reductionists whose beliefs can be traced to Derrick Bell, “father of Critical Race Theory”, a member of the black owning class who said he never read socialist works. Because Bell’s followers have a shallow understanding of capitalism, they think their critics have an equally shallow…