I was recently in a conversation with a self-described MagaCommunist who held the position that the primary contradiction in the USA was that the financial owning class owned all of the means of production and that the contradictions of settler colonialism were secondary and could only be resolved through a workers’ state.
I realized that I hold the position that settler colonialism is the primary contradiction in the USA, but I also found that I struggled to articulate it effectively. I’m looking for your own thoughts or writings that I can study to learn more on this topic.
Patsocs have a weird fixation with financial capital as opposed to industrial capital, but regardless where did that capital in the US come from? From settler-colonialism.
They argue against this by saying essentially that the colonisation of the US has been realized and so you shouldn’t focus on it because it’s impossible to undo it at this point. This is the same position basically all communist parties in the US hold as well.
But this is not true because there’s basically nothing different between “Israel” and the United $$naKKKes of AR-meriKKKA (couldn’t resist lol). Genocide is still ongoing in the US, and we can point to many events that still show this to be true but I think the most famous one in recent memory is the Dakota Access pipeline. There’s a reason it went through native land and not through a nice white neighborhood.
I think decolonization takes a lot of characters, as varied as colonialism is. The decolonization of a 400-year project has never been done before, so we’re treading uncharted territory here. I don’t think that “lack of prior practice” is a valid reason to say welp, let’s just forget about this and do what we know instead.
They argue against this by saying essentially that the colonisation of the US has been realized and so you shouldn’t focus on it because it’s impossible to undo it at this point. This is the same position basically all communist parties in the US hold as well.
Honestly, i don’t think this is wrong. The process is largely over at this point in north america, the vast majority of people in the US is of non-native origin and native americans, while not privileged by any means, are pretty much assimilated at this point they even serve in the military. Of course, the US does and will support ongoing genocides abroad like Palestine, latin america and future ones (Syria comes to mind), because it’s an effective anti-communist policy. At this point the US is the stronghold of the entire world’s bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
Not trying to agree with the patsocs, since they’re just social imperialists after all, what i am trying to say here is that it’s not the primary contradiction in the world right now, it is the USD hegemony which pretty much enables the currently existing settler-colonialism and other reactionary movements around the world.
Largely finished is still not 100% finished. As long as even one Indigenous American is alive, then the contradiction isn’t solved and will always plague the minds of the settlers. This brings its own contradictions and this is why you have Indigenous people serving in the army, but I think it’s pretty self-assured that all other things equal, one is better off being born white over being born Indigenous, in the US.
The thing with primary contradictions is they drive secondary contradictions but whether one should tackle the primary or secondary contradiction first is not unequivocally proven in terms of tactic. We can certainly say that it seems more difficult, when thinking about it, to organize a communist movement over decol rather than anti-imperialism. But all major US communist parties for the past 150 years have been organizing over anti-imperialism and have nothing to show for it, so the record doesn’t really support the theory.
I don’t even think the settling of the United States is anywhere near largely finished. Indigenous people have shown how strong their mobilizations can be. People point at the numbers of Indigenous versus settlers but settler is a social relation and not everyone is a settler, and secondly communists aren’t exactly a majority in the imperial core either and that doesn’t stop us from organizing.
Should communists in settler territories only organize over decol? Maybe, maybe not. I think there’s bound to be some historical attempts we can learn from and synthesize into new practice to be tried out. Ultimately in the conditions of the US there are three things going hand in hand: settler-colonialism, slavery, and imperialism. In the US they refuse to look at settlerism because that would expose their settler ass, and in Europe we refuse to look at imperialism because that would expose our imperialist ass. Instead we prefer to think of ourselves as lackeys of the US without agency of our own and start claiming that our workers don’t actually benefit from imperialism as if they had the same living conditions as a mine worker in Peru.
So, I went that route but it was insufficient for the discourse. The fixation was that the working class of the USA could seize ownership through revolution and then use their ownership to develop an industrial base, which would benefit everyone. They would do this in collaboration with the first nations, who also need to be part of the ownership of the MoP. So the fixation on finance was sufficiently contextualized.
What they said was that making decolonization a prereq to socialist revolution was essentially a fatalist position and that decolonization could only happen under a DotP.
So, I agree with everything you said, but it was insufficient in the discourse and I am looking to develop my understanding more.
They’re basically trying to do everything but realize the contradiction staring them in the face because they know that they’re a settler and they’re scared what decol means for them. That’s all there is to it. Their class interest as settlers prevents them from accepting the contradiction.
I understand there’s no point in me debating them through proxy because you and I agree. If I had some writing I could recommend I would. I know of some decol works, but if I haven’t read them myself I wouldn’t recommend them. I’ve done that before and then sometimes it turned out the work contained inaccuracies or flat out wrong facts. I can recommend The Wretched of the Earth because I’ve read it, but it’s not really a how-to guide so I’m not sure how much it will help you. It’s still a good read though.
Still to explain what I mean by their internal contradiction:
use their ownership to develop an industrial base, which would benefit everyone.
the US was industrial under slavery and it didn’t benefit _every_one. Because they’re a patsoc they’re basically saying they want economic growth to be based on “real” production, i.e. the transformation of resources instead of finance. But that by itself does not necessarily mean progress for the population. In capitalism we produce tons of value and all of it goes to the bourgeoisie – and I’m not convinced patsocs want to do away with the bourgeoisie at all considering they say shit like recognizing small businesses.
Basically what they’re proposing, at least from what you’re saying, isn’t sufficient. It doesn’t explain how Indigenous nations will be able to defend their minority interests against the larger settler population. It’s on them to offer a solution to this.
do this in collaboration with the first nations
Trying to decide for Indigenous Americans what is best for them is exactly settlerism. The Lakota for example signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1866, in which the US federal government recognized the Black Hills as “unceded Indian territory” meaning that they basically recognized sovereignty of the Lakota over this land. In 1872 gold was discovered in the Hills and the US Army went to war against the Lakota to allow settlers to move in. But the Lakota never rescinded the treaty, and have been calling for the US federal government to recognize it year after year.
Are patsocs ready to recognize all the treaties (and there are many, I’m planning on making a list) the US government signed with Indigenous tribes? Are they ready to cede this land back as per the treaties?
decolonization could only happen under a DotP.
It happened just fine in Haiti under a bourgeoisie. More than fine actually. They’re putting this off as a detail for later basically.
Your understanding is fine I think. Maybe what you’re looking for is not necessarily theory as a set of methods but pure history. To understand decolonization we must first understand colonialism and how it played out.
Are patsocs ready to recognize all the treaties (and there are many, I’m planning on making a list) the US government signed with Indigenous tribes?
This line of questioning was pretty solid as it through them into a tailspin and they landed on: the bourgeoisie wouldn’t respect the treaties but a DotP would, so first, we do the DotP and then we’ll resolve the treaties and we’ll renegotiate them to the mutual benefit of all. When I raised the fact that the indigenous can’t trust the settlers, the response was the same: they can’t trust the class-based settlers, but they could trust a DotP. When I said that needed to be part of the platform, I was met with: that’s just putting in a purity test and will divide the efforts to establish a DotP.
decolonization could only happen under a DotP.
It happened just fine in Haiti under a bourgeoisie
The argument there was that the Haitian revolution was massively in favor of the enslaved - there were 500k enslaved and only 30k colonists. Compare that to the US context and the indigenous do not have the numbers to force the issue. Essentially, he was putting “might makes right” into a “realpolitik” framing.
Your understanding is fine I think.
I’m not ready to accept that. I want to learn more.
Maybe what you’re looking for is not necessarily theory as a set of methods but pure history. To understand decolonization we must first understand colonialism and how it played out.
I think I need to understand a) what is the precise formulation that makes colonialism a contradiction and b) why is that contradiction salient to a proletarian revolution
I think I need to understand a) what is the precise formulation that makes colonialism a contradiction and b) why is that contradiction salient to a proletarian revolution
I will probably get back to you on that in a few hours if I don’t forget.
Gentle reminder as I’m curious as to your response.
It seems to me that the simplest aspect of it is that two opposing forces can’t both occupy and control the same land at the same time. The colonists decide before they leave home that they are willing to do whatever it takes for absolute control over the colony.
That contradiction is salient because the coloniser is always an oppressor even if they also work. The mere act of going to work in a settler colony involves recreating the settler-colonial relationship. Life might not be great for every settler but any glimpse of prosperity comes at the expense of the indigenous.
I’ll be honest I’m just lazy over having to type out the response and think about how I want to lay it out. I can tell it’s gonna take me some time lol.
I might eventually get to writing it but you’re basically on the right track. Indigenous exists in relation to settler and everything flows from there. @freagle@lemmygrad.ml
Hah! I feel that!
The argument there was that the Haitian revolution was massively in favor of the enslaved - there were 500k enslaved and only 30k colonists. Compare that to the US context and the indigenous do not have the numbers to force the issue. Essentially, he was putting “might makes right” into a “realpolitik” framing.
Exactly, they reframe everything to always come out right. Your interlocutor is arguing in bad faith so that’s why I think your understanding is fine or at least not in massive jeopardy.
their response was that the treaties would be ‘renegotiated’ and this wasn’t sufficient to you. The treaties exist, they just need to be enforced by the US. Indigenous nations have been calling for the government to stop violating them year after year. As you said, to come around and tell them “actually we’re going to renegotiate them for ‘mutual benefit’” sounds like settlerism.
There are around 4 million Indigenous Americans in the US today, and probably not one more communist than that. Should communists also abandon revolution because they don’t have the numbers required? The tailist patsoc would have to say yes to that. They should become conservatives instead and – they did.
Of course they would say “but we can build socialism!” but why can’t you build decolonialism? Do you need to be Indigenous to fight for Indigenous rights? Do you need to be socialist to fight for socialism?
They make an a priori postulate that “seems” reasonable but isn’t backed up by theory or practice because they have yet to put it into practice. Like I said in another comment all the major parties in the US reject the settler-colonial aspect of the US bc they’re settlers themselves (but when you look at Palestine right now it’s pretty evident), but their anti-imperialist line has not been successful either for the over 100 years they’ve been at it. So is it really reasonable to say that tackling decol is harder than tackling imperialism?
These are good points!
One quibble. South Africa has about the same amount of time as a settler colonial project, though of course with its own unowue history. Decolonization there is, of course, incomplete, but has certainly advanced.
I would argue that the primary contradiction in the imperial core is neither monopoly finance capital nor settler colonialism (except perhaps in places like Hawaii and some of the European overseas territories, and of course occupied Palestine where settler colonialism is obviously and by a wide margin the primary contradiction), though both are of course major existing contradictions, but rather imperialism itself.
So long as imperialism continues to loot the rest of the world and use those spoils to keep the imperial core population placated, neither decolonization nor a communist revolution are likely to find fertile ground to grow in. Anti-imperialism needs to be the primary concern of communists as well as non-communist advocates of decolonization in the imperial core.
The good news on this front is that the more the global south develops (which on the whole is currently happening at a rapid pace, barring a few setbacks here and there), the weaker the grip of imperialism becomes and the more other, presently suppressed contradictions begin to come to the forefront in the imperial core. We have been seeing signs of this for a while in the social tensions that have given rise to the new wave of far right movements both in Europe and the US.
So long as imperialism continues to loot the rest of the world and use those spoils to keep the imperial core population placated, neither decolonization nor a communist revolution are likely to find fertile ground to grow in. Anti-imperialism needs to be the primary concern of communists as well as non-communist advocates of decolonization in the imperial core.
its a very complex issue since such a movement would hardly gain any support in the imperial core since anti-imperialism directly hits their living standards, which is also why communist parties in the imperial core are just social imperialist populists, i ultimately think that nothing good will come out of the imperial core and no one should expect anything out of them.
I think if you live in the imperial core adopting Lenin’s revolutionary defeatism is the only correct position, that is ensuring that your country and the broader imperialist camp lose the new cold war against the global south, economically, politically and militarily. This is the only way for the conditions necessary for a real revolution to be created, is for the West to lose and lose decisively in its attempt to keep the global south subjugated and underdeveloped, and thus to lose access to the free resources and wealth that it extracts from its neo-colonial relationship with the global south.
This means opposing any form of sanctions or political meddling in the affairs of other countries, opposing any form of militarism or re-arming, joining the anti-war movement, and standing in solidarity with all (real) enemies of western imperialism regardless of the nature of their social and economic systems.
If there will be a revolutionary movement within the imperial core it will come from undocumented workers and prison labor.
This strikes me as fertile ground. So if the primary contradiction in the USA is imperialism, anti-imperialism would therefore necessarily entail smashing the ready-made apparatus of the state - and specifically that apparatus which serves imperialism: the military, the stock market, the banking systems, the IMF, the WTO, the various treaties, the oil and natural gas frameworks, the telephone and Internet frameworks, the media and IP frameworks, etc.
Is that generally the direction you’re pointing?
Sure. All those things. Anything to weaken the power of imperialism. But don’t discount labor organizing. That also has a beneficial effect as it highlights the contradictions of capitalism, and we as Marxists understand that the declining rate of profit makes it impossible to go back to old concessions that the working class used to get. This heightens the class struggle in a time when there is less and less imperialist plunder to go around (if the global south continues to develop its own productive forces) and more factions are fighting over it.
My point was that if you organized labor, and then seized the state, if you didn’t smash the ready-made apparatus of the state, then you would have a labor aristocratic party holding the reins of an imperialist power and without smashing them, they would maintain the contradictions of imperialism.
Depends on the scale you are analyzing things.
On a global scale, the primary contradiction is US imperialism through the USD hegemony, the main tool used to extract wealth from the rest of the world.
Could that be resolved by a DotP in the USA?
Hard to say, we are treading uncharted territory here. Even if somehow a principled communist party that understood the global class struggle took power, it would be extremely hard to manage considering the drastic drop in living standards it would mean to drop US imperialism.
But then again, political parties mantaining power through insane drops of living standards is not unheard of (the dismantlement of the USSR for example).
My honest opinion is nope, nothing good will come out of the US and other imperial core countries, the working class of these countries is largely reactionary and would be more than eager to genocide other nations to get theirs.
considering the drastic drop in living standards it would mean to drop US imperialism
I think this is pretty important and something I didn’t have a good line of reasoning on. But from other replies I’m understanding that ending imperialism means ending dollar hegemony and that would immediately raise the price of everything in the USA. Are there other ways to understand the drop in living standards that ending imperialism would mean?
Its hard to say, but massive shortages in a wide array of commodities, a massive shift from bs white collar jobs to more exhausting blue collar jobs while they redevelop some industries, massive loss of labour-power since migrants would definitely leave, loss of purchasing power, etc…
I dont think it will be as massive as the crisis in venezuela, north korea, china, the ussr, etc because of how priviledged the US is in terms of strategic resources like arable land and oil reserves and no one would enforce a criminal blockade like they have done, even if they deserve it.
but massive shortages in a wide array of commodities
Caused by the end of dollar hegemony or caused by something else?
a massive shift from bs white collar jobs to more exhausting blue collar jobs while they redevelop some industries
Caused by the end of dollar hegemony or caused by something else? Of note, the MagaComm thinks the 25% blue collar workers have the revolution potential but hasn’t said what the 50% white collar workers would be in their analysis, which is a good line of questions for me to pursue.
massive loss of labour-power since migrants would definitely leave
This one is interesting. Why would migrants leave if, for example, a DotP took hold in the USA?
Countries all over the world need to mantain trade surpluses (value $ of export more than import) in order to get dollars in order to pay debt or buy other commodities, like oil from saudi arabia (which explicitly only sells it on USD, aka the petrodollar).
Who produces the dollars? The US. So basically the US can mantains this insane trade deficit (value $ of import more than export) because they literally have the ability to print the international reserve currency and the currency does not super hyper inflation because of the high demand worldwide, any currency would collapse in a minute with a trade deficit like the US.
So the USD losing its global status would mean that the US can no longer import as much commodities as they do, theyd need to start producing much much more commodities to balance their international trade.
In order to produce more commodities, more productive blue collar workers will be needed instead of the non-productice finance white collar bs.
Caused by the end of dollar hegemony or caused by something else?
Yes, Dollar hegemony makes it viable for the US to import a much larger quantity of commodities than would be otherwise possible. The loss of imports would not just affect consumer goods, but also intermediate goods. The loss of dollar hegemony will cause a temporary slowdown in many of the productive industries that America does have.
Any Western “”“communist”“” that wants to dismiss the settler-colonial question needs to grapple with the fact that there’s a bourgeoisified portion of the working class within the imperial core that owns property, investments, savings, and has class mobility.
So let us imagine a hypothetical worker. They went to college on the GI Bill and have clear path of advancement in their career, they have retirement savings in the stock market and savings in the bank, they have a home which is accruing value in the real estate market, and they keep up with their credit and debts and bills because of that well paying job. Their kids can grow up to be real estate agents, investment bankers, and corporate executives.
What interest would this worker have in a revolution?
So let us imagine a hypothetical worker. They went to college on the GI Bill and have clear path of advancement in their career, they have retirement savings in the stock market and savings in the bank, they have a home which is accruing value in the real estate market, and they keep up with their credit and debts and bills because of that well paying job. Their kids can grow up to be real estate agents, investment bankers, and corporate executives.
To me this seems like the equivalent of saying “imagine a perfectly spherical ball rolling across a smooth frictionless surface” in terms of picking a member of the “bourgeouified portion of the working class”. Note that, I’m going to refer to the “bourgeouified portion of the working class” as being members of the “labor aristocracy” for this reply. That may lead to some disagreement, but from my understanding both of what labor aristocracy means and of your post, this is essentially what we are talking about.
- Going to university on the GI Bill could be a veteran or it could be a spouse or child of a veteran, so this complicates the analysis slightly. Especially because not every household of this demographic is the idyllic leave-it-to-beaver family with kids that are like “Gee golly mom/dad, it sure was swell that you killed all those people overseas when you were in the Army”, even if they do directly benefit from their parent doing that. Plus, the existence of anti-imperialist and/or socialist veterans implies, to me at least, that even amongst this demographic, there must be something which could interest this worker in socialism.
- Barely any careers have a clear path of advancement anymore. I can’t even really think of more than 10, and even amongst those, not all of them would be jobs I would consider to be apart of the labor aristocracy.
- The portion of college graduates who can comfortably save and invest has gone down dramatically (see the next point).
- The portion of college graduates who are able to afford a home (which is accruing value) has gone down dramatically. I mean, the average age of first time home buyers increased from 35 to 38 in just this last year.
- It seems dubious that, even if you did find someone for whom all the above factors do hold, that they would assume that their child would be able to easily be successful in any of the types of career which do enjoy an elevated relationship over ordinary labor, especially in 2024/2025.
Above all of that, climate change affecting them or their children, decreasing standard of living and lowering life expectancy all still seem like plausible reasons for even this hypothetical worker to adopt socialist politics, even if it’s unlikely.
However, I don’t dispute the existence of a labor-aristocracy and it being the difficult obstacle to overcome still, especially when we consider the direct relationship members of the labor aristocracy have with settler-colonialism and imperialism in the US. I just think that as the contradictions inherent in capitalism continue to progress into their terminal phase, we’re going to see less and less of this type of worker because the US capitalist system is being forced to liquidate this exact kind of worker at the moment in order to stay alive. Consequently, I think that this type of analysis is becoming increasingly outdated at the moment.
Okay, maybe I need a more extreme example.
Do you think that the white Jewish workers in “Israel” and the workers in Palestine have the same class interests?
I don’t think you needed a more extreme example and I’m not really sure what this question is aiming to achieve. This is like asking “did Frontiersmen in the United States have the same class interests as the Native Americans that they were slaughtering for sport?” To which the answer is clearly no.
Your reply reads as combative to me, by the way, due to the way you’ve instantly decided to purity test me on the issue of Israel-Palestine. I’ve been a vocal critic of the apartheid state of Israel in real life for over 12 years. So can you please explain to me why you’ve decided to pursue this question?
I made my reply to say that doing the mind game of “pick a hypothetical worker” isn’t a very good form of analysis in the United States because this hypothetical worker increasingly doesn’t exist and more than that, is incomplete when we are talking about settler colonialism. I mean, this hypothetical example could’ve actually applied to a Native American person, who, even if they are in a compradore relationship with settler-colonialism, has a fundamentally different relationship to it than an actual descendant of settlers.
The point I’m trying to make is that there are workers who are not revolutionary subjects because of their material conditions under settler-colonialism. That’s it. The settler-colonial question is real and has to be grappled with. Bourgeoisified workers are not frictionless spheres in a vacuum on a perfectly flat plane, they’re like, probably at least 20% of the US workforce.
A MAGAcommunist like the one in the OPs question basically rejects settler-colonialism as a factor entirely, and the OP asked how to deal with that. So, I pointed out the obvious material reality: bourgeoisified workers materially benefit from settler-colonialism and imperialism, which means they are not revolutionary subjects.
What, exactly, did you disagree with? Cuz it sounded like you were saying the settler-colonial question has been settled and doesn’t matter anymore, because people who go to college don’t always get guaranteed career paths. Not to be combative, but that basically sides you with the MAGAcommunist.
Cuz it sounded like you were saying the settler-colonial question has been settled and doesn’t matter anymore
I don’t really know how you read that in my reply when I even said “…I don’t dispute the existence of a labor-aristocracy and it being the difficult obstacle to overcome still…” in the last paragraph of the original reply.
Not to be combative, but that basically sides you with the MAGAcommunist.
Okay, well I’m glad that you’ve jumped to this conclusion as a result of not fully reading what I wrote, but yeah, I don’t think Jackson Hinkle and his ilk are very smart people with a lot of interesting things to say. I believe that Settlerism is a fundamental contradiction and needs to be reckoned with if we want to have any serious discussion of discussing revolution and capitalism in particular in the United States. I really know what else to say to that.
What, exactly, did you disagree with?
I think this is the misunderstanding though. I didn’t disagree with you. Like, I don’t intend to be lecturing here, but when high school/freshman college students consider the “perfect sphere rolling across a frictionless surface” the point of doing so is because they haven’t developed enough knowledge of physics to be able to analyze more complex physical dynamics, in other words, because the discussion of physics of such a scenario is incredibly theoretical and simple. But everything said about such a hypothetical is entirely correct and applies downstream when considering perfect spheres rolling across surfaces with friction, and imperfect spheres rolling across frictionless surfaces, and then what needs to be developed for these students to be able to analyze this is a more complicated understanding of physics. Apologies for the analogy but I hope we can see where I’m going here?
I want to now keep in mind this part of the reply:
Bourgeoisified workers are not frictionless spheres in a vacuum on a perfectly flat plane, they’re like, probably at least 20% of the US workforce.
as I respond to what we might disagree with (and more specifically, to say what I’m trying to say more in a more plane fashion).
I think that, as United States hegemony, and respectively, the capitalist system of the United States dies, that members of the labor aristocracy will continue to become proletarianized and ergo have the potential to become revolutionary anti-capitalists. Granted, this is like classic Marx and Engels levels of analysis, but this is alluded to in the Manifesto and then later developed further in developed a bit in Das Kapital.
Okay great, so if you agree with me on that, then, while at the moment, as you say probably 20% of the population exists as members of the labor aristocracy, then, your analysis is correct, right now and the nature of settler colonialism makes it the primary obstacle of concern in developing revolutionary socialism in a settler colonial state.
But I think that it is increasingly become less and less correct; as I allude to in my original reply, financial capital is consuming the wealth of the labor aristocracy in an effort to stay alive at the moment. In which case, given, I don’t know, say 10 - 15 years, I think that the present situation will develop in an entirely new and unexpected direction with the potential for this fundamental contradiction to not be able to be fully explained by Sakai-style-capital-S Settlerism anymore at the level of just principally the class of US Laborers.
So now, as a reply to the original post, and a point made by a few other replies, my argument is that settler colonialism is going to continue to erode as the primary contradiction and become simply one of the many primary contradictions, and I hope that clears up what I was and am trying to say.
but when high school/freshman college students consider the “perfect sphere rolling across a frictionless surface” the point of doing so is because they haven’t developed enough knowledge of physics to be able to analyze more complex physical dynamics
Okay, so how else am I supposed to read this than; “Your analysis is oversimplified because you haven’t developed enough knowledge of class stratification to be able to analyze more complex class dynamics.” It read to me as a direct attack against the settler-colonial question. Also, kinda against me, basically calling me a highschooler.
Also, regardless of whether or not the settler-colonial situation is destabilizing as settlers are debourgeousified, it’s currently the primary contradiction. Which is what the OP was about?
For what it’s worth I agree, I think the limits to growth and the tendency for the rate of profit to decline mean that there won’t always be superprofits to redistribute to the settlers. Eventually they get cut off.
I don’t think we’re there yet.
So I took the position that the MAGA movement has a massive petite bourgeois element to it, and that many of them play a role that is strongly correlated with the kulaks, but that was rebuffed with an equally well supported position as neither of have any data to back it up.
But the point about people having to give up their interest in the stock market is answered by “that’s why we’re fighting against the bourgeois financial class”. Which makes sense because you don’t need money to survive retirement once the DotP arises.
His point was also that the number of people who voted for Trump is far larger than the number of people that own Air BnBs or other forms of rental income, which I think is probably accurate.
I think what you’re getting at is the point made by Tuck and Yang in Decolonization is not a Metaphor about incommensurate interests between the settlers and the indigenous and ADOS.
I am looking for more analysis along that line, something I can read and analyze.
Interestingly, his focus on finance capital isn’t in contradiction with an understanding of imperialism. The World Bank, IMF, and WTO are agents of the empire that use financial tools (debt and credit and currency exchange and bonds and shares etc etc) to enforce austerity and dismantle the sovereignty of indigenous governments in the periphery, transfer superprofits from them to the imperial core, and redistribute the superprofits among a specially elevated core of bourgeoisified workers through their investments.
The workers who are invested in real-estate and the stock market are invested in imperialism. We have to fight against the bourgeois financial class, but we also have to recognize which workers have become entangled and enriched by superprofits - and we can’t ally with them, because their interests only align with empire.
The workers who are invested in real-estate and the stock market are invested in imperialism. We have to fight against the bourgeois financial class, but we also have to recognize which workers have become entangled and enriched by superprofits - and we can’t ally with them, because their interests only align with empire.
I think that’s entirely true for what we could consider petite bourgeois in the early 1900s - small time landlords and small business owners. I think the fact that USA workers are invested in the financial sector (ignoring their own personal businesses or Air BnBs) makes them resist the liberation of OTHER nations, but I don’t actually think it creates resistance for their OWN liberation. Yes, if they abolished securities overnight their net worth would drop but most of that securitized worth is intended as retirement savings. A revolution that abolished the bourgeoisie would immediately solve the retirement problem and no one would need a savings to make that happen. So I don’t think the retirement investments, which makes up the bulk of what you’re talking about, creates material conditions that would cause reaction.
Land reform would absolute create reaction among landlords, and abolishing the financial sector would absolutely create reaction among independent financial planners, independent tax accountants, day traders, etc. But I’m fairly certain they make a minority even of the MAGA contingent.
I think the fact that USA workers are invested in the financial sector (ignoring their own personal businesses or Air BnBs) makes them resist the liberation of OTHER nations, but I don’t actually think it creates resistance for their OWN liberation.
Yes, but these things are directly connected. Our liberation is contingent on their liberation. As long as our class enemies have an army of surplus labor to superexploit around the world, we can never challenge them at home.
A revolution that abolished the bourgeoisie would immediately solve the retirement problem and no one would need a savings to make that happen.
I’m not so sure. Someone who saved for 45 years suddenly seeing their savings evaporate and be replaced by a government pension would feel resentment towards people who didn’t have retirement savings that now get to enjoy the same government pension. They materially sacrificed all their life, and now it’s all worthless. I don’t think investors will accept that.
Land reform would absolute create reaction among landlords, and abolishing the financial sector would absolutely create reaction among independent financial planners, independent tax accountants, day traders, etc. But I’m fairly certain they make a minority even of the MAGA contingent.
Not just landlords, but anyone who owns property - including all home owners. Homes are investments, not just places to live.
Is it not easier and neater to describe this worker as being part of a class of lifetime net creditors, as opposed to lifetime net debtors?
Wouldn’t a “lifetime net creditor” be someone who lends money? I really don’t know what you’re describing tbh
Put together all of the rent, interest payments, insurance (minus payouts), mortgage (minus home value), etc. that a given person pays throughout their life.
Put together all the capital gains (stock dividends and appreciation, real estate appreciation, bank interest, etc.) that the same person pays throughout their life.
Now compare the two. On average, do they have more passive income, or more passive expenses? This concertely quantifies the relationship of how participating in the financial capitalist world benefits or hurts each individual. This unavoidably needs to be done, because the line between capitalist and proletarian has been blurred: you can have a worker making 80k a year who’s never been in control of the means of production yet invests a large chunk of income in the stock market, and thus ends up owning more financial capital than many business owners. It is very common for a person to skim surplus off people they can’t even identify, and also have their own surplus skimmed off by people they’ve never met. 37% of people in this country rent, 52% pay a mortgage, only 11% own outright. Some disturbingly large fraction of people are permanent debt slaves. A large supermajority are lifetime net debtors. A small fraction (maybe 10%) are pretty close to breaking even, and a tiny stratum is made up of unambiguous beneficiaries.
With colonialism, once you colonize all the land you then run into a barrier where you can’t squeeze any higher returns out of the land, and with classic capitalism, you reach a point where there’s not much more that people can use. With financial capitalism, though, you can create limitless things that you charge people for, thus removing the cap on local/national land or labor productivity, and also it ties right in to global imperial power. Plus it can sustain many of the illusions and narratives of affluence.
Remember, about 40% of US GDP is remuneration for labor, and 60% is capital gains. There are people who get almost all their earnings through labor, there are people who get almost all their earnings through capital, and there are people who have a mix.
Ah! I see what you mean now. Yes yes that definitely aligns with how I understand bourgeoisification. By becoming invested in stocks and properties and businesses the worker gains a mixed class status, the so-called “middle-class”, which enables a pseudo-bourgeois lifestyle and entanglement with the health and wealth of the capitalist economy.
This is also how we can understand the proletarianization of highly educated professionals, like tech workers and doctors. They have mountains of debt and are worked to the bone, even if they can afford luxuries we’re also seeing them form unions and gain a class consciousness of themselves as part of the larger working class. They’re being debourgeoisified/proletarianized in real time as the ever present reach for yield forces these high paying industries to stretch workers thinner and thinner to achieve the same amount of growth. And the amount of debt heaped onto them increases with every new doctor or engineer, because the cost of their education continues to skyrocket out of that same reach for yield and tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
This process is coming for everyone. Maybe not finance, but anyone who performs socially necessary labor will be proletarianized.
But more importantly, it’s simple and intuitive and very easy to define. You don’t need to establish the entirety of what “proletarian” or “bourgeois” (let alone “middle-class”) really means, you just need to ask “are you stealing more money from others through the system, or are others stealing more money from you”. It only requires a base level of recognizing that the economic/legal scaffolding allows some to clearly benefit at the expense of others.
Doctors and engineers are not “debourgeois-ified” just because they temporarily have a networth below zero. They can still expect to earn several million over the course of their careers, and they will likely have plenty of opportunity to buy stocks. There’s a reason why the metric is “lifetime total credit received” minus “lifetime total debt paid”. If the lifetime earning prospects ever stopped becoming attractive, you’d see a sharp drop in these professions.
Doctors are being debourgeoisified, I didn’t say the process was complete. Their conditions are often deplorable: massively long weeks in health threatening conditions doing highly self-destructive emotional labor, with massive amounts of debt. They’re highly compensated, of course, but healthcare has gotten so much worse as staff levels are slashed to nothing and doctors are forced to work outside their training to cover the needs of their patients. There’s a reason doctors are going on strike with nurses, physicians, and midwives now. The material conditions are changing. They’re not some revolutionary vanguard, but doctors taking strike actions is extremely rare for a reason - and if that’s changing, we need to be paying attention.
Also… are you advocating we drop proletarian and bourgeois from our vocabulary?
The manager/administrator class is certainly taking over hospitals as much as other institutions, but I don’t think doctors can be fully proletarianized for as long as they remain scarce, and carrying a certain prestige, and able to have their own firms individually.
I’m not saying the classic terms of proletariat and bourgeoisie aren’t useful anymore, but it’s more and more difficult to see pure manifestations of them like you could a century or two ago. This is part of why if you talk about these classes to anyone who’s not already a socialist, you get a blank stare at best and an eye roll at worst, because without an extensive explanation it seems foreign or scholarly and then people won’t apply it to their worldviews.
With so much production being obscured across national borders, it’s harder for people to identify themselves exclusively in relation to production. Consumption, especially powered by debt, is a huge part of how people today identify. Having a quantifier for the relative monetary relationship is something that applies to consumption of products and especially strongly to interactions with financial institutions, while still being applicable to employment. And crucially, it can take into account the opposition* between core countries and peripheral countries.
*using this word instead of “contradiction”, for accuracy and versatility
Imo the US is kind of unique in that it is an extreme example of a society where you have many different types of exploiting and exploited classes and they are all important in the analysis of American society. There are too many contradictions in American society, each with a large influence, to say that any one of them truly dominates. This is not to mention, that the American contractions reinforce one another.
This is partly a result of the USA being very large in size (closer to a continent than a single country) and partly a result of the fact that the US developed an industrial capitalist economy very late compared to the Europeans (thus its contradictions haven’t fully “boiled down” to a simple bourgeoise vs proleteriat contradiction yet).
Any successful communist movement in the united states will have to address the mess of American contradictions at once. Either that, or by the time conditions in the US become revolutionary, some of its existing contradictions will have already collapsed. Certainly, I can see the collapse of American imperialism (which is happening right now) happen before a communist revolution in the US. Furthermore, settler rule in the US also appears to have reached a terminal crisis, with the newer generations no longer able to participate in the settler real estate bubble that began after WW2.
So the question to answer is WHY is it required to address all these contradictions at once? What is the material basis for this position? My interlocutor’s position was that the bourgeoisie would never allow the working class to build a movement with the indigenous to such a mature state that it resolves the settler contradiction while it resolves the bourgeois contradiction. Therefore, his position continues, the primary contradiction is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and resolving that contradiction creates the material conditions necessary to solve the other contradictions.
Part of that position is that the indigenous population in the US is simply too small, too divided, and lacks sufficient power over productive forces to have revolutionary potential.
This is not a moral question. It’s a material question. I agree with your position, but I am looking for a stronger material analysis to back up the position I share with you.
Maybe I need to reread Settlers and Colonization is Not a Metaphor and On the National Question. But is there more I could read to strengthen my understanding of this topic?
So the question to answer is WHY is it required to address all these contradictions at once?
This is because all of the 3 major contradictions of American society (capitalism, settlerism and imperialism) are already “matured” contradictions. Instead of developing “positively”, these modes of surplus extraction are all running into their ultimate limits. In most AES societies, capitalism had developed to a very limited extent, which is why most AES societies had to/will have to undergo quite a bit of development before they could/can abolish commodity production, which is the ultimate source of all of modern society’s contradictions.
This is not the case for the US. There is no need to undergo a period of state capitalism or anything similar. There is no “primitive” development to wait for. All of the 3 major contradictions of the US (capitalism, settlerism and imperialism) are in their terminal phase right now. In fact, the material basis for imperialism (which is dollar hegemony) and settlerism (which today in America I hypothesize is suburban development [1]) are already collapsing, and may collapse even before a worker’s state is established.
My interlocutor’s position was that the bourgeoisie would never allow the working class to build a movement with the indigenous to such a mature state
They will never allow the working class to build a movement, with or without the indigenous.
Therefore, his position continues, the primary contradiction is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and resolving that contradiction creates the material conditions necessary to solve the other contradictions.
It is the other way around. The American bourgeoise possess basically unlimited purchasing power because of Imperialism, and settlerism has allowed them to buy the loyalty of the American working classes. As long as America remains settler and imperialist, the bourgeoise in America cannot be abolished.
Part of that position is that the indigenous population in the US is simply too small, too divided, and lacks sufficient power over productive forces to have revolutionary potential.
It is the task of the revolutionary movement to change this fact. If revolutionaries cannot even win over and organize the most fucked over victims of American capitalism, how are they supposed to overthrow the government?
But is there more I could read to strengthen my understanding of this topic?
I am honestly not aware of any marxist works that deal with the present state of class contradictions in American society with the level of broad overview necessary to see the whole picture. My position that I am articulating is largely the synthesis of what I have learnt from other comrades and from American history
[1] even if it isn’t, my point still stands, as the growing housing and healthcare crisis is proleterianising the latest generations of Americans en masse.
I think you’re absolutely correct in seeing settler colonialism as a primary contradiction in the imperial core. I think it should be prioritized at least as much as the class contradictions and should inform the revolutionary line as such. Looking at the US, Canada, etc as a prison house of nations and working to settle the national question through a line of self determination, special representation, reparations, and affirmative action is key to any positive socioeconomic movement here. This struggle goes hand in hand with class struggle, neither will be complete without the other. AES gives us many examples of this approach; first in my mind is the USSR
Can you expand on your point that the USSR gives us an example of an approach involving prioritizing the national question going hand in hand with prioritizing class struggle?
If you draw your system boundary around the imperial core you can’t really discuss imperialism because it crosses the boundary: it is profits off of exported capital. But why draw that boundary? It’s useful for trying to understand subsystem dynamics and domestic politics, I guess, but necessarily incomplete because the imperialist flows are very important for how society is constructed. If you remove the boundary, imperialism is certainly the primary contradiction.
To be honest I don’t think any “MAGACommunost” even knows what a contradiction is, let alone primary vs. secondary. They are probably just misusing left words to be national chauvinist.
That’s interesting. I wonder if Marx/Engels had any writings on what would happen with a DotP in Britain vis-a-vis their imperial apparatus. I know Lenin wrote about the national question and took action to give nations under the Russian empire self-determination.
To be honest I don’t think any “MAGACommunost” even knows what a contradiction is, let alone primary vs. secondary. They are probably just misusing left words to be national chauvinist.
Usually I would agree, but in this case I feel compelled to challenge myself to improve my understanding by assuming they are earnest.
Hmm I don’t remember whether they wrote about that. They became pretty pessimistic about the revolutionary potential of imperialist English.
Challenging yourself is good! We are, unfortunately, saddled with knowing a ton about most things so that we can oppose liberal hegemonic thinking.
Two questions:
One, what is the mechanism by which the US ruling class owns all its means of production?
Two, how do MAGA ‘communists’ hope to seize the means of production without a socialist workers’ state that has ignored its settler characteristics?
Answering these questions will not automatically tell you what the primary contradiction is in the US but it will demonstrate the severe flaws in the MAGA’s ‘reasoning’.
As for that primary contradiction, the US sits at the top of a global empire. The ruling class gets it’s power from exploiting the whole world, not just the US. The means of production that it owns are not just those of settler-yanks. Fighting for control over those means of production as a kind of benevolent act of self-appointed righteousness to seize world power while ignoring the importance of settler colonialism is problematic at best.
Whatever way you slice it, it isn’t communist. The only way I can make it make sense is if I see it as a kind of vanguardism. But a vanguard of and for the petty bourgeois elements of the existing ruling class to re-divide the spoils among itself? That’s exactly what we already have but with some minor reconfiguration of which portion of the ruling class holds power. It’s another route to choosing reform over revolution with communist aesthetics. We’ve seen what that looks like before.
A key indicator that settler colonialism is the primary contradiction (rather than a self-serving version of imperialism that can be separated from settler colonialism) is that settler colonialists fight hard to hide that they are or want to be (the) settler colonialists at the top of the class structure. Why should indigenous people (and all colonised and exploited people around the world) have to wait patiently for MAGA types to get theirs first?
And what level of arrogance makes these settlers think that everyone else will wait patiently and potentially even support their ‘revolution’? The MAGA type might be convinced that the contradiction that appears most important to them in their class position is the primary contradiction but that’s a one sided view.
It’s not like in China, where the CPC could work with the KMT to kick out the Japanese because in the US, the ‘Japanese’ and the ‘KMT’ are the same people, a US-JKMT, if you will. Maybe actual communists could work with segments of the ruling class to topple the US-JKMT but that doesn’t work at all if it really means selecting ‘communists’ from and creating a communist party within this US-JKMT.
It would be like asking the CPC to wait for Japanese and KMT officials to seize power from the Japanese emperor on the promise that the very people who have carried out the emperor’s wishes would later use their power to save Chinese peasants. It’s fantasy.
It is hard to articulate a response. Partly because MAGA types do a lot of gish galloping. It’s hard even to parse the argument, nevermind counter it. I’m not sure I’ve achieved either in this comment! I’m sure a MAGA type could argue they I’ve misunderstood their viewpoint.
One, what is the mechanism by which the US ruling class owns all its means of production?
This is a great question.
Two, how do MAGA ‘communists’ hope to seize the means of production without a socialist workers’ state that has ignored its settler characteristics?
Did you drop a negative here?
I would have thought you would ask how to MagaComms hope to seize the means of production without a socialist workers’ state that hasn’t ignored its settler characteristics. Because they DO hope to seize the MoP with a socialist workers’ state that has ignored its settler characteristics.
As for that primary contradiction, the US sits at the top of a global empire. The ruling class gets it’s power from exploiting the whole world, not just the US.
This is a good area for me to explore rhetorically.
The means of production that it owns are not just those of settler-yanks. Fighting for control over those means of production as a kind of benevolent act of self-appointed righteousness to seize world power while ignoring the importance of settler colonialism is problematic at best.
So I think that’s the interesting question. Is the MagaComm advocating to seize the global MoP from the seat of the USA as a “benevolent act of self-appointed righteousness to seize world power” or is the MagaComm saying, they will only be able to break the financiers’ hold on that global ownership by establishing the DotP in the USA and executing land reform and eliminating the legal means of ownership of the MoP?
It’s another route to choosing reform over revolution with communist aesthetics. We’ve seen what that looks like before.
Can you help me with some examples of what you mean here?
Why should indigenous people (and all colonised and exploited people around the world) have to wait patiently for MAGA types to get theirs first?
The answer from the MagaComm is that the MAGA are the class with revolutionary potential by virtue of their ability to shutdown the economy by withholding their labor, whereas the indigenous are not, unless they join with the MAGA (the reverse is not the case as the workers keeping the economy going are far and away more MAGA than indigenous). He advocates to not be exclusionary towards indigenous and ADOS but that the working class does not need to tail them to succeed in establishing a DotP.
And what level of arrogance makes these settlers think that everyone else will wait patiently and potentially even support their ‘revolution’?
I think it’s a similar position to Marx saying that the proletariat has revolutionary potential but the lumpen do not. Yes, the lumped would benefit from a DotP and yes the lumped have needs potentially not represented by the proletariat, but to Marx the lumpen did not have revolutionary potential and so they would have to tail the proletariat whilst they made revolution. This would be a similar position on the part of MagaComms that the indigenous and ADOS don’t have revolutionary potential and so must tail the class that does or risk fighting against the revolution that would bring about the DotP.
I think you and I share a particular position, which is that a MAGA revolution with communist aesthetics would become a 4th Reich fascist regime co-opted by the bourgeoisie using divide and conquer strategies along race, ethnicity, religion, and other idpol lines. Mao solved this with the mass line: “win a victory for the people, win the advanced over to socialism, and strike a blow to the enemy, or win the advanced to socialism, influence the intermediate, and isolate the backwards.”
I think potentially this reminds of another line of reasoning - the MagaComm is arguing from Marxism-Leninism with a heavy emphasis on Marx’s writing on the proletariat. What they downplay is how wrong Marx has been, historically, that the proletariat has revolutionary potential. As far as I’m aware, all of the successful revolutions that have created a DotP have been peasant revolts, not proletarian ones. Do you have any thoughts on that?
I don’t understand the word ‘contradiction’, doesn’t that mean something is impossible?
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Contradiction let me know if it helps because if it doesn’t it means we need to rewrite it
Contradictions are “impossible” in combinatorial logic. In combinatorial logic, the output of a logical formula is determined entirely by the inputs. For example
True = (false) OR (true)
In such a formula, the output of a “contradiction” is always false, regardless of the input. The classical example of a contradiction is
(A) and (not A)
Which always outputs false, in combinatorial logic. Combinatorial logic is not the most advanced form of logic available in maths. It is infact the most basic with the least computing power, and virtually every computation ever performed is at the bare minimum a sequential logic.
In sequential logic, we introduce memory, or time. In sequential logic, contradictions are not only “possible”, but extensively used. The most famous such contradiction is
0 = 1
Which in sequential logic produces a square wave oscillation. Basically, if you were to create an electrical circuit to compute 0=1, the circuit would oscillate between 1 and 0, thereby creating an oscillator. This is infact how digital clocks are created!
This is very similar to how contradictions are used in dialectics. They act as “motors” which produce a time or progression effect. Basically, a society without contradictions will have no movement. In human societies, class contradictions are the primary contradictions which dominate the progression of the society.
You should note that Marx and Engels were not aware of sequential logic, so they would have explained things differently.
Wow thanks that makes perfect sense!!
In this context it is a reference to dialectical thinking, specifically dialectical materialism, where we say there are two opposing forces in order to understand a situation. If we are right that these forces are in opposition and struggle against one another, our insights from this framing will be more correct. For example, imagine an ice cube in a freezer. If we open the door of the freezer, the ice cube might stary to melt, but this really depends on the dynamics of opposing forces: those tending to heat the cube, namely the ambient air, and those tending to cool the cube, namely the compressor and how active it is. If the room is nearly at freezing already (tendency to heat is weak) and the compressor fairly strong, the ice cube won’t melt. But we can imagine other scenarios where it might start melting. This is the usefulness of dialectical thinking, you can think of situations in terms of how they are changing based on where they are now and how they function.
Socialists are concerned with dialectical situations like class struggle or imperialism.
For primary vs. secondary, this isn’t much more thsn just saying one of the dialectical situations is the most important, it has so much more impact tjat if even determines the others. This is not always a useful way of thinking, but you can think of it as thinking of the dialectics between dialectical situations.
The ice cube metaphor is good, but better framed as follows:
I want ice. to get ice I need to reduce the temp. To reduce the temp, I need a compressor. To run the compressor I need to raise the temp.
To lower the temp I need to raise the temp is a contradiction. That contradiction, on the larger scale plays out in global warming. I need lower temps. So I run AC, which raises the temp, generating more demand for ACs to lower the temp which raises the temp. A contradiction.
In both cases, you can’t solve your issue by continuing to invest in the contradiction, you have to break out of the contradiction.
That’s a good framing for diamat, since it involves social action constrained by material forces. Mine was more of dialectics that happens to have a materialist situation.
In terms of breaking the contradiction, what we are usually after is a negation of the contradiction in favor of our desired outcome, done by positioning ourselves on one side of the opposition between bourgeoisie and proletariat (or global north vs south, etc).
Struggling to figure out if you’re running into the 2-into-1 vs 1-into-2 debate. Are you saying the 2 things in the contradiction resolve when one destroys the other?
There are often two negations considered. One is when one of the opposing elements seemingly “wins”, but we must acknowledge that elements of the other remain. The other is when the other has effectively been erased. In terms of socialist thought we can see examples of the first in revolution, dotp, the ruled becoming rulers, etc, but capitalist aspects will of course remain. Socialism negates capitalism in the first sense. The second kind would result from longer struggle, e.g. achieving communism. They are very similar in concept, but useful to think about.
The 1-to-2 and 2-to-1 concepts are very relevant but I was just referring to dialectics’ version of a resolution of contradiction - though of course it is less of a resolution than a transformation.
Not really.
It means there’s two opposite sides to an issue. If I destroy one side, the contradiction goes away. E.g. I take the monarchy and lop their heads off -> feudalism gone.
If you ask me, just like how a capitalist class is most effective in politics in the shell of a liberal “democratic republic” I think pure bourgeois origin capitalism, less, if not mostly lacking from feudalism remnants, is most effective in settler-colonialism
I’m struggling to understand your thought.
a capitalist class is most effective in politics in the shell of a liberal “democratic republic”
Got it.
pure bourgeois origin capitalism, less, if not mostly lacking from feudalism remnants, is most effective in settler-colonialism
I can’t figure out how to parse this. Can you rephrase it?
I think it’s a reference to the history of the US. It did not properly go through feudalism. There was a period of primitive accumulation (genocide, slavery), followed by a brief revolutionary civil war. Kind of feudal, I suppose. But it was kind of capitalist from the beginning. At least in terms of forming the US state(s) and in terms of capitalism emerging at about the same time as the Europeans landing on Turtle Island. There wasn’t ever really a European US without capitalism.
The US bourgeoisie, e.g. didn’t have to fight it’s own feudal relations as they weren’t well established. Possibly because there was too much land to keep feudal working class labour on the land and working to a corvee system. In France, if the peasant hated the landlord, tough; the next bit of land also has a lord. In the US, the farmer just went further west and did a bit of their own settlor colonialism.
This does make sense as a thought. But I am not sure how it helps me understand that settler colonialism is the primary contradiction in the USA.
settler-colonialism abroad is the logical solution to socialism indoor, genocide the indigenous population of X land in order to settle it with the increasingly uncontrollable proletariat of their country, this way you reduce the local unrest and create a strong ally elsewhere. american settlers were english proletariat looking to get their part of the cake.
