“identity politics” can mean a few different things. But overall, these are not separate things under capitalism. Capitalism creates, for example, racial categories by which to designate a particular subclass of human in a given society, one that can be hyperexploited, mistreated, and scapegoated for problems, driving a false consciousness. And that racial oppression is a real, existing thing that takes on its own life and forms, stoked or suppressed as needed for the liberal order. Saying, “stop talking about racial oppression so much” ignores an extremely important material reality of capitalist society, really an essential aspect, and the point of doing a class analysis is to explain how we can come together for mutual liberation from these oppressions. For example, the liberation of women was essential to most socialist revolutions, the oppression of women also being intrinsically tied to capitalist oppression, typically to make them marginalized unpaid workers whose role is the reproduction of labor, the creation and maintenance of the reserve army of labor and the other workers, generally designated male. This also made women more precarious overall and paid worse than men for the same job, fulfilling a similar role for hyperexpoitation as race.

A leftist who says, “it’s about class not identity” is not well-versed in basic Marxist analysis or history. They are forwarding a wrong and counterrevolutionary line. They should always say, “yes and” to describe both class antagonism and marginalizationa related to identity politics as both emerging from capitalism. Class conflict isn’t even always the primary contradiction in a nation, such as in Palestine where it is settler colonialism (and internationally, imperialism). One should always be able to recognize the real existence of marginalization and its function in the service of capital, spreading a coherent, united approach towards contradictions.

Now, there is a common and liberal form of identity politics that is mostly just a self-serving form of tokenization. Like the 3rd generation gusano that says, “how dare you tell me Castro did good things, he took my family’s slave plantation farm!” These are cynical weapons that are themselves inherently racist, sexist, transphobic, etc etc by flattening a ethnic group, gender, etc into just one experience that somehow, through the magic of liberalism, ends up justifying fascism, genocide, war, imperialism… We do have to push back against this.