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.
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.
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.