Why Marxism and Intersectionalism Aren't Kissing Cousins

I'm getting tired of how often I have to explain this these days, so I'm going to write about here so in future I can just post a link instead of writing another disquisition.

Mister Q @realMisterQ wrote:

I'm sorry but I don't see the difference between Marxist and Intersectionalist - both use identity politics. Both are class based. Intersectionality is the same method just applied to more "classes".

My response:

 

Marxism focuses on actual, concrete institutions whereby some people dominate others -- economic private property and the courts and police who enforce it, for instance -- and the one category, class, that exists only in function of these institutions' existence. Its critique is entirely in line with that of the earlier Enlightenment revolutionaries who agitated against the feudal aristocracy, but without the illusion that ending only those particular forms of domination would bring about "liberty, equality, and fraternity."

By contrast, intersectionalism dilutes this class analysis by falsely equating it with various categories that have an existence independent of, and in most cases predating, class; which are not specifically oppressed by any kind of formal institutions; and which merely correlate in a statistical sense with class for incidental historical reasons. While the former zeroes in on the concrete structures that need to be rooted out by a rising class having constituted its own structures in opposition (which is what makes it "radical"), the latter diverts attention to categories of inequality that are merely symptomatic, in the process steering self-conceived radicals into agitation for fundamentally co-optative programs (like affirmative action) whose function is to rejuvenate capitalism.