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.
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.
This is a great question.
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.
This is a good area for me to explore rhetorically.
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?
Can you help me with some examples of what you mean here?
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.
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?