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.
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I’m not ready to accept that. I want to learn more.
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
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?
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!
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.
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.