Stay Woke
R.S.
“I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there – best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”
–-Lead Belly, 1938 recording of ‘Scottsboro Boys’
Decades after Black American folk singer Lead Belly’s song, Black activists in the US would popularise ‘woke’ to refer to an awareness of racial discrimination; the term would be formally added into the Oxford English Dictionary by 2017. Although it took on different meanings over the years, including general cultural awareness or even being suspicious of a partner cheating, ‘stay woke’ began to be loosely linked to awareness of social justice issues in the early 2000s.[1] Its popularity surged with the BLM movement and it became more explicitly tied to an awareness of racial justice and police violence issues.
In the past few years, the term has been coopted by right-wing politicians and Fox News pundits as they unironically argue over ‘wokeness’ going too far and cancel culture limiting their freedom of expression. It’s now frequently used as a pejorative to mock ‘overrighteous liberalism’ and moralising.[2]
Similar arguments are taking place all over the world, although often in these parts, ‘culture war’ is the expression of choice. It would be disingenuous to equate anti-woke or anti-‘culture war’ arguments from the left and the right; nonetheless, the potential harm from shutting down ‘woke’ discourse is significant either way.
Rightwards
Conservatives and far-right activists have used arguments around ‘wokeness’ to shut down any progressive debate. Arguments against racism, over housing rights, or for Trans healthcare are derailed into pedantic arguments about language. Wokeness, which began as an acknowledgement of the many ways capitalism harms ethnic minorities and women, was caricatured and redirected to arguments around casting movie characters and public restrooms.
Counting on the same lack of awareness that ‘woke’ activists tried to confront, these arguments were then cleverly used to push through more oppressive policies, like the recent UK Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of a woman or the Irish contact rugby ban on trans players. The US, a trailblazer in the field, saw the “Stop WOKE Act” signed into Florida law. Certain provisions were later overturned, but the law was intended to shut down any discussion around race or gender, with far-reaching consequences driven by a particular hysteria around ‘critical race theory.’
“As the right takes control of the conversation, they continue to fabricate moral panics that lead to “anti-woke” oppressive politics.”
The risk here is clear. As the right takes control of the conversation, they continue to fabricate moral panics that lead to ‘anti-woke’ oppressive policies. In Ireland and the UK, the very real injustice of gender-based violence is turned into anti-immigrant or anti-trans attitudes.[3]
Leftwards
On the flipside, some on the left are worried about being dragged into identity politics and liberal rhetoric that distracts from the real fight––against capitalism. Many Jacobin contributors and the like have written about the damage that ‘woke’ rhetoric and culture wars are causing.[4] These arguments achieve a similar effect to those made by the right. Struggles against actual experiences of oppression are reduced to debates about ‘alienating language’. Nonetheless, language matters.
In his book, The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates describes the case of a teacher in South Carolina having to fight students, parents, and administrators to be allowed to teach material that dealt with race because it made the (white) students feel “uncomfortable” and “ashamed.” As with ‘wokeness’, discussions around safety and comfort on campuses in the US had been derailed from their origins around gender-based violence to instead shut down difficult conversations around race. Coates goes on to describe how language can shelter oppression: “Oppressive power is preserved in smoke and fog, and sometimes it is smuggled in the unexamined shadows of the language of the oppressed themselves.”[5]
That is not to say that we should spend our time arguing over terminology or ostracise anyone for not always getting it right. But we should not spend our time arguing against terminology either. Language has always evolved alongside the way we think about and view the world. We can use it as a powerful tool to learn and invite various layers of the working class into leftist political spaces.
Others are concerned that once we turn towards minority cultural movements, we inevitably shift right and get lost in these struggles.[6] They worry about pandering to liberal politics, pitting working class people against each other, and diverting the attention away from those actually responsible. Is there room for class war and culture war?
The reality is that there is not one entry point to struggle. People are often moved by the issue that resonates with them and their conditions at that point in time––for some, this is their economic conditions, for others, it is their bodily autonomy or freedom of movement or their national identity. And that is because people experience their class through their oppression.
Claudia Jones was one such person, a black activist in Chicago who joined the Young Communist League after hearing their position on the trial of the Scottsboro Boys (as in Lead Belly’s song above).[7] The Scottsboro case of nine young black boys falsely accused of rape was not just about class, it was foremost about race. Jones would go on to become one of the most prolific communist activists of her time. She also placed a particular emphasis on the distinct oppression of black women workers and how their marginalisation was being replicated by communists at the time–whether through social exclusion or the failure of socialists or trade unionists to organise these workers.
William Clare Roberts criticises the confused notion that class war and culture war must be at odds:
“The underlying notion that class struggle has been or can be displaced or replaced by culture wars is not so much mistaken as it is confused. It cannot be the case that “culture wars have displaced class struggle as the engine of politics,” because class struggle has only ever been – could only ever be – the engine of politics insofar as it takes the form of a culture war. A basic tenet of Marxism is that we must “distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production” and “the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.” It is puzzling, then, that those who wish to unhold the tradition of hard-headed Marxian class analysis are abandoning this distinction in favor of the self-defeating belief that ideological struggle – for this is what “culture war” amounts to in the older idiom – could displace class struggle, that the lived experience of class struggle could displace the class struggle of which it is the lived experience.”[8]
We can look at the historical record and ask whether the fight for abortion rights in Ireland, the struggle against occupation in Palestine, or the civil rights movements in the US, among many others, were out of order. These mass movements certainly have a class dimension, but they were cross-class and emerged from lived experiences of oppression—most would agree that they should not therefore be dismissed. In many cases, like in the Palestine movement, where thousands of lives are at stake in one of the most heinous displays of imperialist expansionism in recent years, socialists cannot afford to wait for the ideal conditions or for the issue to become ‘mass’ enough. Those bearing the brunt of transphobia or racism or sexual violence cannot simply be asked to set this aside.
“Socialists have to be careful when they talk about alienating the “working class” that we are not fixed to a rigid view of who makes up that class.”
However, in the absence of socialists intervening in these movements, they are less likely to confront the capitalist system at the heart of these issues or take on a class perspective. Through their involvement, socialists can contribute their perspective and their knowledge of history and strategy but they can also learn from these movements — not as a detached layer but as an integrated part of the working class, connected to its struggles against class and other forms of oppression.
It is true that posturing language will likely alienate people, even those it is designed to attract. That is not unique to ‘woke’ rhetoric; it applies to all political speech. We can compare the recent campaigns of Kamala Harris and Zohran Mamdani, both viewed as (brown, non-Christian) ‘woke’ candidates in their country.[9] Where Harris tried to pander to progressive liberals and gun owners and failed miserably, Mamdani built a solid campaign combining a case for affordability with genuine solidarity with Palestine and other woke/unpopular issues in the US, breaking new ground for socialists in the country. Socialists have to be careful when they talk about alienating the ‘working class’ that we are not fixed to a rigid view of who makes up that class. Genuine solidarity with different oppressed sections of workers can draw them in. We risk alienation as much by abandoning ‘unpopular’ movements.
Keep your eyes open
Our role is therefore not to turn away from ‘culture wars’ but to lay out how these struggles are connected to each other and to class oppression. With the rise of fascism in many countries, heightened inter-imperialist tensions, and the majority of the working class strained under a growing cost-of-living crisis, reactionary attitudes are also on the rise. With this, it is important to recognise that the whole of the working class is not a uniform mass and the interests of different layers are not always aligned. Socialist economic demands can win over people, but so can reactionary demands that line up with capitalist interests and scapegoat certain layers. Such conditions will continue to give rise to movements that will try to alleviate lived oppression. It is tempting to feel disheartened or even frustrated at movements around language or gender or race moving forward while socialist politics and class movements idle. But we cannot sit on the sidelines waiting for things to get better. We can fight for things to get better by joining in these movements and bringing class to the culture war.
Notes
Aja Romano, “What is woke: How a Black movement watchword got co-opted in a culture war”, Vox, 9 October 2020.
Steven Poole, From woke to gammon: buzzwords by the people who coined them, The Guardian, 25 December 2019.
Stephanie Hanlon, “Weaponizing Violence Against Women: The Far-Right’s Use of Moral Panics and the Politics of Fear”, Rupture Issue 10.
For example, Dustin Guastella, “We Need a Class War, Not a Culture War”, Jacobin, 25 May 2020.
Ollie Power, “Red Network | "Class War Not Culture War" Reviewed”, Red Network, 12 June 2025.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Message”, 2024.
Jess Spear, “Lesser-spotted Comrades - Claudia Jones”, Rupture Issue 2.
William Clare Roberts, “Class in Theory, Class in Practice”, Crisis and Critique Volume 10.
For example, mainstream news coverage of Mamdani “After a stunning NYC primary, Democrats try to embrace Zohran Mamdani’s energy if not always his ideas”, CNN, June 25, 2025 and of Harris, “Kamala Harris learns hard way that woke doesn't work in US”, New York Post, November 8, 2024.
See also How the word ‘woke’ was weaponised by the right The Guardian, 21 January, 2020 and The culture wars: a Marxist analysis, International Socialism, 26 June 2024