Even if a communist can colloquially describe themselves as being on the left, there’s a distinction between communism and “the left.” This is implied right in the title of Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. Whereas the left, a big tent term for a myriad of incompatible ideologies, aims merely to act as an opposition towards the present order for the sake of it, communists have a coherent vision for how to defeat the system: by advancing history’s development to the next stage. The left, because of its lack of commitment to that central Marxist goal, naturally takes on an opportunistic role. Because when you want only to build a movement as an end in itself, rather than use this movement as a means for defeating the system, you become nothing more than an actor who benefits from discontent without helping solve the problems behind that discontent.
While I respect your willingness to call a spade a spade as you see something as such, I have to disagree with much of what you have said. I’m unfamiliar with Sakai, however comrade Shea does not come off as a settler-minded person to me. I will also note that although there are far less minorities in the bourgeois class, there still are some, and so a race-based analysis will not suffice here as a shortcut towards class, nor should it even if this were the case as liberalism is the ideology which views the world according to conqueror v conquered constantly seeking exploitation of another, as Marxists we view the world through dialectical materialist and historical development - the clashing of opposites based on their contradictions to create a new tomorrow, not the outright rejection of a portion of that synthesis.
If you’ve never read Sakai’s work, you have no frame of reference for what he’s talking about when Shea completely misses the point to damn near misconstrument w/rt what Settlers was trying to say. And it’s not the first time he’s swung at “Sakaists”, either.
Which is a matter for the community to handle; not for you to talk on from outside. Do you think we don’t talk amongst ourselves about these Thomas DuBois-assed, Boulé-assed misleaders?
Do you really think this mentality can be excised from the settler without incurring losses, heavy losses? How many of our leaders do they have to kill? How many of our babies? And how many of the so-called ‘good settlers’ that so many take pains to emphasize they’re not part of the malevolence will get in the way of those bullets when they come? I have my doubts.
This is why I say if you’ve never read Sakai’s work, you have no frame of reference-- because Sakai’s work looks at the historical trend of Amerikan settlerdom closing ranks around settlerdom at times like these; and posits that historically, they’d rather die than give up the fruits of their labors. It doesn’t immediately discount the potential for enclaves of desettlerized proles to happen; but it does point to how unlikely that’d be with 400+ years of settlerdom baked into the white Amerikan experience.
So what’s the answer to that? Trust in some nebulous ‘plan’ the settlers push forward that’s totally not gonna get vast swathes of us killed when the backlash hits? Or how about exporting the theory of another nation in a different part of the world whose material conditions don’t line up 1:1 with ours, leaving the historically-colonized to fall through the gaps where y’all didn’t account for having to adapt parts of that lifted philosophy to your own conditions?
I recognize how Marxism is supposed to work in a society not polarized across racial lines as atrociously as the two Amerikas are. What I feel settlers and settler-adjacent leftists miss, though, is that Amerika is a unique and pernicious abomination in history, buoyed by a hundred and fifty years of the most potent propagandizing the earth has ever seen. In light of that understanding, I don’t believe the methods we lift from anywhere else will 1:1 apply to our experience, and I especially don’t believe settlerdom capable of changing its ways on trying to conserve as much of their plunder as possible without a catastrophe hitting. An outright nation-balkanizing catastrophe.
“Which is a matter for the community to handle”
The progress of society (socialist construction) is not a “race” matter, it is a class matter, no matter it’s racial complexion.
“Do you really think this mentality can be excised from the settler without incurring losses, heavy losses?”
You missed my point about the liberalism conflict concept. I was not saying Shea was phrasing things as a matter of conflict, I am seeing yourself focusing too much on racial divide and not enough on class imo. Race isn’t removed, but this isn’t a “racial revolution” it’s a socialist one, one based in economic progression, of advancing the mode of production and relations so as to meet the new needs of society today (justice, equality, even distribution of resources).
“So what’s the answer to that?”
Although I am unfamiliar with Sakai I am not ignorant of the settler state issue. I would never say to put your trust in anything you yourself do not have a direct say in, that’s a bad idea go move forward with. I recommend you work with your class no matter it’s racial complex for the interest of your class and your race’s unique needs. And I’m saying due to being the same class, and the proletarian class whose interest is equality, that it is within the goals within socialist construction to address the unique needs of all sections of the proletarian class.
This is untrue. The class matter is enforced via the race matter. It is literally impossible to solve the class matter without simultaneously solving the race matter. If you attempt to only solve the class matter, it will fail because the race matter will reproduce it. Race and class exist in a dialectic and they cannot be solved independently.
This critique is tone deaf and identifies you as a settler. You are focusing too much on class and not enough on race. You clearly haven’t read the mountains of analysis about how race is a vehicle of class war and how race and class interpermeate.
It’s necessarily both, because if it’s one or the other, it’s neither. If you don’t have a racial revolution, meaning a changing of the power holders, then what you imagine is a socialist revolution will be born as a fascist revolution. The analysis is fairly strong on this point. Read Sakai, read Tuck and Yang, read Crenshaw, read Fanon, read Freire.
This necessarily requires the dismantling of race. Race is not epiphenomenal. It didn’t just accidentally emerge from the state of production. The way that production was developed was through racism. The way that society is organized is through racism. The existence of counties, towns, cities, and states in the US is literally a structural replication of indigenous genocide. The existence of police forces in the US is literally a structural replication of black genocide. The solution must be a racial revolution - that is replacing the power structures of today with new power structures, and that must be proletarian AND colonized AND women, intersectionally. If it remains white and man and colonizer, then the resulting structure will incorporate the structures of racism which are literally inextricable from the structures of capitalism.
You are completely ignorant of race. Race’s don’t have unique needs. Races don’t have a base. They exist only in the superstructure. The only solution to racism is destroying race entirely, and the only people who can do that are the racialized. White people are unracialized - they stand outside of race by definition. Each racialized group has only one unique need, which is the dismantling of racism. Dismantling racism means destroying huge sections of law, huge swathes of the built environment, huge chunks of ideology. And all of these destructions result in harm to white people, which is why white people will become reactionary and use their positions of power to replicate oppression and ultimately reproduce capitalism. It’s why reading theory is so critical, because you don’t think you personally would ever do it, but when you analyze history through historical materialism you see it clear as day.
This is not true. Placing race above class is liberalism. I am incorporating an understanding of ethnic relations and the necessities of minority workers into my analysis, to promote this any further would place identity or race above class relations which again is liberalism.
One cannot be a settler when one has not settled or currently maintains the relations of settlerism. This is because after the Civil War, slave relations were abolished and the economy evolved to worker-owner relations under bourgeois democracy. I have already explained this, I’m unsure what you’ve missed on this.
"It’s necessarily both, because if it’s one or the other, it’s neither. If you don’t have a racial revolution, meaning a changing of the power holders, then what you imagine is a socialist revolution will be born as a fascist revolution. "
We are saying the same things however you misunderstand “racial revolution”, this would be a fascist revolution.
“The way that production was developed was through racism” No, you have it reversed. Superstructure (such as apartheid or other racist laws) serves to reinforce the base (economic relation to the means of production). The system creates racists, racists did not create a racist system.
Back in slavery times, the mode of production was crafted to serve the needs of humanity. A hierarchy was crafted and so were “lessers”. This became racist the same way imperialism does - one values their herd, their family, their nation over those of whom they do not share an intimate relation with. These modes of production necessitate expansion and as is demonstrated by imperialism today, and so they necessitate intimate and foreign to be compared within the minds of those within said system. “White” people were not born racist, the material conditions following the dialectic process of development created the idea of racism as well as created racists.
“The solution must be a racial revolution - that is replacing the power structures of today with new power structures, and that must be proletarian AND colonized AND women, intersectionally. If it remains white and man and colonizer, then the resulting structure will incorporate the structures of racism which are literally inextricable from the structures of capitalism.”
We are Marxists, we are not liberals. We promote and select leaders based on merit, not based on their identity or racial terms. This is because socialism itself is a system which promotes and is made of merit. Capitalism is a system which superfluously promotes various products to reach an ideal profit and then collapse and repeat the process (such as white supremacy, black supremacy, LGBT supremacy one day, etc…). Of course we must incorporate the needs of minority workers, however this should be done as it was in the Soviet Union, through ethnic councils whose membership consistency and purpose is to address the needs of minority workers. Of course all laws must be made with consideration to the needs of minority workers as well, my issue is with the idea of appointing someone based on their ethnicity, sex, gender, etc… and not on their merit.
And you really must drop the term “racial revolution”, it implies a revolution based solely on race alone, of which you clearly do not aim for.
“You are completely ignorant of race. Race’s don’t have unique needs. Races don’t have a base. They exist only in the superstructure.”
…You have critiqued yourself while referring to me, you do realize this don’t you?
“And all of these destructions result in harm to white people,”
I believe we’ve found the root cause of our disagreement. Show me the laws or actions which treating “black” Americans worse than they treat “whites” makes a net positive for “whites”. This a false paradigm following a zero sum game. The bourgeois do not treat “white” Americans better because they treat “black” Americans worse, they simply treat “black” Americans worse however we are all living in hell as workers (and not labor aristocrats). They are more oppressed however this does not mean that “white” workers are not oppressed, this is exactly what the democratic party emphasizes, that only minorities in America are oppressed and not workers. This is IDPOL. This is liberalism selling us minority supremacy, another product to profit from (check all of the blm gear and rainbow merch floating around).
Marxists reject this analysis of reality (individualism) and this methodology of action which is a critique which is safe for the power relations: “We simply need more minorities in power and all is well”. I believe you understand the necessity for the end to reflect both economic and cultural evolution from revolution, however some of the specific details are still being viewed through a liberal framework.
You lack reading comprehension. At no point did I say race is above class. In fact, I explicitly said that class is enforced via race. Literally, race is a mechanism by which class warfare is prosecuted. The idea that you can solve class first and then racism completely misunderstands the role race plays in society.
Reducing racism to ethnic relations and minority needs it to completely ignore racism entirely. If this is the entirety of your understanding and commitment, you are incapable of establishing a sustainable revolutionary movement. You fail to understand the difference between race and ethnicity, the difference between racism and ethnic relations, and the difference between the needs of minority workers and the oppression of the global majority.
Let’s take that as a given. The existence of municipalities in all former and current European colonies is literally the maintenance of setterism. The consumption of fresh water extracted from indigenous lands in the maintenance of settlerism. The consumption of petroleum to fuel your vehicles so you can get to work is the maintenance of settlerism. Working in factories that rely on extraction of natural resources from unceded territory from indigenous nations is the maintenance of settlerism.
What I missed is your level of ignorance. Slave relations were NOT abolished. First of all, slave relations were maintained through indentured servitude, through sharecropping, through prison slavery, and through indigenous boarding schools. Second, under Jim Crow and under much of the current legal regime, black workers were used explicitly to appease white workers, by assigning to black workers the most abusive and lowest paying jobs so that white workers wouldn’t revolt. This still continues to this day, where the historically marginalized both in the US and around the globe are sacrificed to the machine of capitalism in order to appease the white worker. Reversing this course would immediately through white workers into revolt and the fascist populists have been repeating the propaganda that the problem is black and brown bodies harming the economy, and a large portion of the North Atlantic believe this to be the case. Reversing this course will cause immediate violent reaction of white people against brown people, because melanated people working shit jobs and dying early is literally part of the system that reproduces the lives of the white labor aristocracy.
Calling national liberation of black and brown peoples “fascism” is the most reactionary take I’ve seen from someone who considers themselves a communist. This is usually a position I see from white supremacists. You are woefully on the wrong side of history, comrade.
Perhaps you don’t understand what racism is. The System of Racism created racist people. The System of Racism was created by the bourgeoisie to implement class warfare and extraction of surplus value. The entire system of production in the US was built on the backs of slaves. Without slaves, the system of production would have been different. Without Racism, slavery would be untenable. Racism and Slavery and Production INTERPERMEATE. You cannot abolish capitalism and then demand racial reckoning take a back seat on the theory that eventually racism will go away. In order to abolish capitalism you must ALSO abolish the System of Racism, and when black and indigenous MLs write about this, that means national self-determination inline with Lenin’s theory.
Jesus christ. No. Stop. Racism is not about familial ties. It’s not an individual problem. You are the liberal here. You think racism is what people feel in their hearts. Racism is literally a legal system whereby throwing black people off a ship in the middle of the Atlantic was not considered murder but was instead considered destruction of property! Literally! Argued in court that legally black people aren’t people and therefore cannot be murdered! It has nothing to do with individual beliefs about people being lesser. It has everything to do with a system of extraction that reifies profit extraction from the bodies of workers to the degree that it literally consumes the bodies of the workers. The only way it could get to this level was to create a system that ensured one part of the working class would not be consumed and another part of the working class would, so race is enshrined in law and then rationalized through the university system. It has nothing to do with people valuing their family over others.
RACISM CREATED RACISTS
This is so insultingly dismissive. I’m not talking about selecting a leader, I’m talking about theory. It is impossible to establish a sustainable communist society within a settler colony where the entirety of that colony is predicated on the continued oppression, genocide, rape, pillage, and extraction from subjugated peoples. Lenin’s theory on this is quite well supported. National self-direction is critical to the establishment of sustainable communism. And that means indigenous and black national self-determination on Turtle Island, free from the dominance by the settler colonial state that rules them.
Yo, what the fuck? You think socialism is a meritocracy? Ok, now I know you’re a lost cause.
They’re not minority workers. They literally constitute the global majority. White Europeans are the global minority. So long as you keep thinking that white people are the majority, you are going to continue to have incorrect understand of the world and how it works and therefore will be incapable of formulating correct theory.
What are you talking about? This is the least of what the USSR did. They established completely autonomous nation-states for national populations and gave them autonomy over their nation and established the constitutional right for them to secede at any time without penalty. You completely skip over the national question entirely with your liberal understanding of racism. You don’t even seem to understand the difference between race and ethnicity.
This is the most white European thing I’ve heard on Lemmy.
I don’t think you understand what revolution is. Revolution means a replacement of existing power structures. There absolutely must be a racial revolution. There cannot be a socialist revolution without a racial revolution. They must be the same thing, and that means that the leaders of that ONE revolution must not consist entirely of white European men attempting to maintain the integrity of their settler colonial state on the premise that eventually everyone will be assimilated into it without oppression. Assimilation into white settler states is genocide.
Oh god. No, comrade, I am not critiquing myself. You are simply trapped in your false beliefs and that is preventing you from understanding the point. The superstructure itself manifests racism, not the base. The national borders, the municipalities, the system of courts, the rights to water, the rights to land use, the treaties, the allocation of resources, there are all superstructural and they all manifest racism. To abolish race requires the abolition of this superstructure, and that means entire cities become unlivable immediately. It means displacing millions of settlers. It means giving sovereignty to nations that have been denied sovereignty by that very state. We’re not talking about meeting the needs of racialized groups, we’re talking about abolish race.
Seriously? Go read about water rights. Go read about land distribution. Go read about national parks. Go read about adoption laws. Go read about red lining. Go read anything even remotely rigorous about reparations. I mean, it’s all around you. You’re swimming in it. White people live in places explicitly because they were stolen by white people from melanated people. White people rely on international subjugation to ensure the flow of cheap goods. The US and Europe have no ability to supply themselves with necessary goods anymore, they rely entirely on subjugating labor internationally. They rely entirely on white ownership of resources that exist in the homes of non-white people, both domestically and abroad. The very concept of the Grand Canyon National Park is “we had to get rid of all these indigenous people so you could enjoy this park”. The drought in Lake Mead and Lake Powell are requiring EVERYONE who is party to the water rights treaty to reduce consumption by 15%. But those lakes represents theft of water from indigenous communities that were displaced entirely and subjugated, and the resulting concentration camps where they live today barely use any water and their portion is already vanishingly small, by treaty, but now because white people water their lawns, indigenous people have to go without more water.
It’s literally happening every single day thousands of times a day that the superstructure of white society is inextricably interlaced with racial oppression. Go fix your ignorance.
This is what we refer to as White Fragility. You refuse to see how you play the role of an oppressor in society while you simultaneously refuse to even listen or read works from those people who have been organizing against oppression for over a century.
We’re not playing oppression olympics. We’re engaging in theory. The white working class is exploited. They are also enlisted by the bourgeoisie into supporting the exploitation of racialized peoples. The ruling class has organized society for 600 years to align the interests of white workers against the interests of racialized workers. They have done through numerous institutions, one of the largest being - settler colonialism, wherein the reproduction of white worker society is predicated on the continued oppression of racialized peoples.
The fact that you think I’m espousing this line, after multiple engagements with you, means you have a blindspot that prevents you from seeing the actual arguments at play here. You are arguing with ghosts in your own head.
You haven’t even managed to approach my argument, you have no standing to levy this critique. You haven’t bothered to read anything that would disagree with you. Your position is one of ignorance, reductionism, and deliberate and willful dismissal of the actual work of the oppressed, including revolutionary MLs who have written extensively on this.
“Reducing racism to ethnic relations and minority needs it to completely ignore racism entirely.”
I am not reducing racism I understand as you should that when the relations to the means of production advance, the social relations which maintained the previous mode of production will be shed as the new relations necessitate equality (all share the same class), and so the physical reason for racism to exist has been purged. This is the elimination of racism. What remains are capitalist pre-conditioning which must be combated via education, socialization, and solidarity.
"Race"s do have unique needs, as do sexes and genders. An ethnic minority who has been the victim of racism requires justice, requires a remedy for this injustice on a systemic level, requires protection and expansion of their ethnic cultures which were oppressed and mocked under white supremacy. Just as women require the remedy for sexism, and trans people require social justice and healthcare.
To ignore these needs is to perpetuate the same sort of cultural downfall the Soviet Union failed with and Mao aimed at solving. It is purging the superstructure of the capitalist system and creating the superstructure of the socialist system.
"The existence of municipalities in all former and current European colonies is literally the maintenance of setterism. "
This isn’t the maintenence of colonialism, it is the dialectical process of development. The global south is exploited by the social democratic European nations. This is not the same system, it grew out of it and share similarities however the relations to the means of production and the mode of production are different.
“What I missed is your level of ignorance…slave relations were maintained through indentured servitude, through sharecropping, through prison slavery, and through indigenous boarding schools. Second, under Jim Crow and under much of the current legal regime, black workers were used explicitly to appease white workers, by assigning to black workers the most abusive and lowest paying jobs so that white workers wouldn’t revolt”
(proceeds to demonstrate their-own) I have already covered this in my previous reply. You are not taking in the information I am providing. You said it yourself: “black workers were used explicitly to appease white workers, by assigning to black workers the most abusive and lowest paying jobs so that white workers wouldn’t revolt” WORKERS not SLAVES. The means of production were evolved and so the economic relations evolved. I am not saying nor have I ever said that the racist social relations which originated from Slavery went away entirely, I am saying they evolved and no longer govern the process of production. They are inferior to the relations of worker and owner, not that society hasn’t retained any semblance of Slavery. This is evident if you look at the overall picture of society and not solely the experiences of minorities in America who experience the effects of the remnants of these relations. It is possible for black Americans to own businesses, there are latino labor aristocrats, etc…this was not possible under Slavery. And yes I recognize the lag between abolition and the Civil Rights movement, but you must also recognize the ability for the Civil Rights movement to succeed under capitalist relations where it could not before industrialization and worker - owner relations developed within the late old system. So again, what are you missing here?
“Calling national liberation of black and brown peoples “fascism” is the most reactionary take I’ve seen from someone who considers themselves a communist. This is usually a position I see from white supremacists. You are woefully on the wrong side of history, comrade.”
A strawman…I expect this from Reddit liberals not here.
“The System of Racism created racist people. The System of Racism was created by the bourgeoisie to implement class warfare and extraction of surplus value.” That’s capitalism you’re describing and calling it “The System of Racism”. Are you referring to apartheid, a divide and conquer technique leveraging PRE-EXISTING social relations and the new advent of the middle class to maintain power (a form of superstructure OF CAPITALISM)?
“Racism and Slavery and Production INTERPERMEATE. You cannot abolish capitalism and then demand racial reckoning take a back seat on the theory that eventually racism will go away. In order to abolish capitalism you must ALSO abolish the System of Racism, and when black and indigenous MLs write about this, that means national self-determination inline with Lenin’s theory.”
Read several paragraphs up. As for the line of national self-determination I agree and this is not contradictory. America and the native tribes are already separate though interconnected countries. America is of land stolen from the latter yes but it is a distinctly separate country as are the native territories despite the capitalist system not respecting them. We can and should talk about changing the size of these nations to be more just but to pretend America isn’t a country (in fact) and to conflate it with it not being a country (in terms of historical lineage and of course justice) is idealist. America, the country with the capitalist mode of production and relations, exists today. It should no longer exist and we work towards this goal but to say “it’s simply land stolen” is to ignore socialism and aim for communism as the anarchists do. It ignores a vital step of addressing the physical issue of the resolution of that state known as America. And in this resolution, the nation of America must determine it’s future as well. One cannot simply ignore the existence of America and the people (workers) who live in it for historical justicial needs of the native territories. And do not conflate this with “you see, the whites will revolt”, I never said we would have to choose to maintain America, in fact I have brought forth several arguments as to why I believe the two nations will merge and the cultural roots of the former could be migrated into the new nation (akin to handing the new nation to the natives), however the natives are not currently in a state where they are able to govern a socialist country but they can be.
I see what you are saying I believe, a nation is not a race and so it is not liberalism to advocate they govern. Yes, this makes sense, we must simply train them in Marxism. Yes in the case of the natives it makes sense to advocate they lead. In the case of other minorities this is again necessary so they can ensure justice for their groups specific needs however simply excluding non-minorities from governing because they do not suffer under the modern remnants of slave relations isn’t based imo. American workers who are not labor aristocrats suffer under the yoke of capitalism and no longer benefit above the rate of poverty due to their lack of suffrage under the modern remnants of slave relations.
“Racism is literally a legal system whereby throwing black people off a ship in the middle of the Atlantic was not considered murder but was instead considered destruction of property! Literally! Argued in court that legally black people aren’t people and therefore cannot be murdered! It has nothing to do with individual beliefs about people being lesser.”
I have been moving forward under an understanding of this premise. I understand what racism is, I’m not a suburban labor aristocrat, I grew up and am still poor, I am white however I have seen racism first hand with friends and family. You misjudge me.
“RACISM CREATED RACISTS” Yes, but Slavery and agriculture created racism. This is what I’ve been trying to get you to understand. That fact and it’s implications.
“They’re not minority workers. They literally constitute the global majority.” I’m speaking on national terms. In America they are minorities. I believe we are speaking on America yes?
"They established completely autonomous nation-states for national populations and gave them autonomy over their nation and established the constitutional right for them to secede at any time without penalty. "
This is part of what I was referencing, I simply gave the example of the committees. We must build on the successes of previous worker states in similar situations.
“This is the most white European thing I’ve heard on Lemmy.” (continues to use the term ‘racial revolution’ unironically)
“White people live in places explicitly because they were stolen by white people from melanated people.”
I am aware of this. America developed on an injust notion of imperialism. This is why we oppose America and believe it must be destroyed. I’m not sure what notion you are going off of here comrade, I am trying to work with you but you are presenting a lot of misjudgements in regards to me despite my best efforts to demonstrate my positions to you. Much of what we are arguing about we agree on the what just not the how.
“You haven’t even managed to approach my argument, you have no standing to levy this critique.”
I’ve rebuffed your arguments continuously, I believe I do. I have not read anything you have suggested as you continue to demonstrate a lack of fundamental understanding on Marxism. Why would I expand my knowledge outward when you have not satisfied the rudimentary? Why is that necessary if we cannot agree on the process of economic development, social relations under the means of production, or dialectics? This would be entertaining building a roof when the base has not been set.
I mean, this all that needs to be said, isn’t it? There has been so much scholarship on this topic. So much written. So much conflict in the CPUSA on this topic that eventually led them to full on revisionism. And yet, you won’t read Haywood, Crenshaw, Fanon, Freire, Tuck and Yang, Newton, X, because I personally haven’t managed to get through your rhetorical smokescreen?
Why would you expand your knowledge? Because you claim to be a Marxist. What you demonstrate, however, is that you are a chauvinist.
This is chauvinism.
I mean, I don’t know what to say anymore. I have clearly stated that racism is not what your friends and family do, that it is a super structural system, and you make noises with your rhetoric to pretend like you understand what I’m saying. And then you say this? I mean, at this point I just walk away.