3.2 From Class to Identity: A New Center of Gravity

How a Moral Framework Shifted the Axis of the Left

From Class Solidarity to a New Ideological Horizon

A central premise of this book is that the migration of the oppressor–oppressed framework from class to identity produced not just a shift in emphasis, but a distinct ideology. It was neither an extension of liberalism nor a vestige of classical Marxism. It inherited Marxism’s moral grammar, including the primacy of oppression as the organizing principle of history, yet replaced its economic foundations with identity-based hierarchies.

It could hide in liberalism because it spoke liberalism’s language: rights, equality, inclusion, dignity. Liberalism’s public morality gave it the perfect cover. Rather than attacking institutions from the outside, it worked through them, appearing to advance their stated aims while quietly redefining their meaning. A campaign for “equal opportunity” could become a demand for “equity of outcome”; “freedom of speech” could be reframed as a threat to the dignity of the marginalized. From the outside, this looked like liberalism fulfilling its promises. Inside, it was a quiet rewrite of the moral code.

It could also pass unnoticed by Marxists, many of whom mistook it for liberalism taken to its limits. Writers such as Sarah Garnham have even argued that it is a continuation of liberal or neoliberal logic. It was the moral face of capitalist individualism. The mistake lies in focusing only on the economic surface. While it operates within a capitalist order, its moral structure is not liberal. Liberalism rests on universalism: the belief that all individuals are entitled to the same rights and protections regardless of group identity. This new ideology rests on particularism: the belief that moral standing and justice claims are tied to group membership and historical position in the hierarchy of oppression. That difference alone marks a decisive break.

Its form also made it difficult to detect. Oppressionism had no manifesto, no party, no leader. Like a hive, it functioned through many autonomous actors working in alignment without central direction. This leaderless structure allowed it to incubate within liberalism, initially in academia and then spread ideas, build influence, and occupy key institutional spaces without drawing the kind of political attention that might have mobilized open resistance.

The migration of the oppressor–oppressed framework from class to identity was one of the most consequential ideological shifts of the post–Cold War era. It did not announce itself as a revolution, yet its impact would be vast.

In this chapter, we will trace how that transition happened. We will begin with the old paradigm of class-based politics, then examine the theoretical shift that displaced class with identity. Finally, we will analyse how this new framework established dominance on the left, marginalizing Marxism and redefining the role of the working class within its moral hierarchy. The claims made here will be explored and supported in detail as the chapter unfolds.

The Old Paradigm: Class as the Axis of Justice

For much of the twentieth century, the moral compass of the political left pointed firmly toward class. Economic inequality was the defining injustice, the axis around which progressive politics turned. Debates about justice centered on material distribution: wages, housing, pensions, public services, and labor protections. The aim was to close the gap between those who owned the means of production and those who worked within it. This struggle was framed as the correction of systemic oppression, set out in its most complete form in the writings of Marx and Lenin.

This frame had a clear organizing logic. In the Marxist tradition, society was defined by the conflict between the bourgeoisie, who owned the means of production, and the proletariat, who sold their labor.

In Leninist and communist states, this principle became a doctrine of political control. Class struggle was not just an analytic tool but the foundation for one-party rule, state ownership of industry, and the suppression of rival political or social movements. The party claimed to act as the vanguard of the working class, directing economic planning and controlling public life in the name of eliminating exploitation.

In the West, communist parties, socialist parties, and social democratic movements adapted it to work within liberal democracies, seeking to transform them from within. Their methods ranged from revolutionary agitation and direct confrontation to parliamentary reform and policy influence. Social democracy represented a third path, accepting the market economy while aiming to mitigate its excesses through redistribution and public services.

The institutional machinery of class politics in the West was built for economic solidarity across economic lines. Trade unions organised industrial workers into powerful bargaining blocs. Parties treated the “working class” as a coherent voting base. NGOs and campaign groups measured progress in expanded welfare states, stronger worker protections, and narrowed income gaps.

The moral narrative was universalist. The “worker” was a political subject who stood for all humanity against exploitation. This narrative could coexist with other rights movements such as civil rights, feminism, LGBTQ+ activism, and anti-colonial struggles, but these were often understood as complementary to, not replacements for, the core economic struggle. The aim was equality in material conditions, not restoration of past hierarchies.

The cultural sphere reinforced the frame. Novels, plays, and films depicted the lives of miners, dockers, and factory workers with moral sympathy and political urgency. Strikes, picket lines, and industrial disputes were portrayed as moral front lines. Even the language of politics came from the lexicon of class: “bourgeoisie” and “proletariat,” “middle class” and “laboring poor.”

Yet socialism in the West never replaced liberal democracy. In Britain, the post-war Labour government implemented the welfare state and nationalized key industries, but these reforms operated within rather than dismantled the market order, as Gøsta Esping-Andersen observed in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990). In Sweden, Social Democratic dominance through much of the twentieth century followed the same pattern, building generous welfare systems while leaving private ownership intact, a trajectory noted by Göran Therborn in Why Some Peoples are More Unemployed than Others (1986). These parties could shape policy, win workplace concessions, and expand welfare systems, but capitalist markets remained the foundation of economic life.

In the communist bloc, the promise of equality collapsed into entrenched political authoritarianism and economic inefficiency. János Kornai, in The Socialist System (1992), detailed how one-party control stifled innovation and central planning created chronic shortages. Alec Nove’s An Economic History of the USSR (1992) traced the suppression of political pluralism and civil liberties under the Soviet model. The credibility of state socialism among Western sympathizers eroded further after moments such as the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the repression of the Polish Solidarity movement in the 1980s, both chronicled in Tony Judt’s Postwar (2005).

By the late twentieth century, both revolutionary communism and gradualist socialism were in retreat. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 removed the geopolitical anchor for communist movements. Neoliberal reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, exemplified by Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US, rolled back many of the gains of social democracy. David Harvey, in A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), argued that this shift marked a decisive turn away from class-based transformative politics, even among center-left parties that increasingly embraced market-oriented reforms.