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.
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.
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 Consequently, I think that this type of analysis is becoming increasingly outdated at the moment.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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.