Just as many American leftists resist the division of labor within organizations, they also resist it across organizational lines. Again and again academic leftists are told that they can't be 'real' leftists unless they're out in the street, just as political activists outside the academy are chastised for being inadequately nuanced or 'vulgar'. Few seem content with the split between the academic and non- academic lefts. Marx did suggest that the realm of freedom would be a place where everyone could do what they wanted, that one could be a fisherman one hour and a scholar the next. He did not, however, advocate abolishing the division of labor within political organizations dedicated to supplanting capitalism.
Collective work requires that people assume particular roles.
Organizations function better when different people do different tasks. Just because we lament the effects of the division of labor within capitalist practice does not mean that our goal should be to eradicate all divisions of labor. In renewing my commitment to Bad Subjects for a third year, I will seek to do precisely that. Fantasies of identity that categorically equate the assumption of any particular role within a system or organization with unfreedom are every bit as destructive for the American left as the fantasies of identity we associate with identity politics that essentialize on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation. We must not reject the division of labor within our organizations and the left as a whole merely because it makes capitalism work better.