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.
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.