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FRSO's news organ does settler apologia in further proof yts will never lead the revolution
(fightbacknews.org)
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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The problem with such statements is that they are inherently defeatist attitudes that only breed complacency and apathy, as if you're right, then what the hell is the point of trying to organize within nations such as the United States. Further how do you classify who is a settler in a state such as the modern day United States? Do you lock mixed race people out of the movement as well? How about if they are white passing? Or how about recent "white immigrants"? What about the millions of white appearing people descended from settlers that live in abject poverty or are crushed under the oppression of capitalism? You can't seriously believe that there's absolutely no way such people could be mobilized or organized to join or lead a revolution, can you?
In such a racially and ethnically diverse nation like the United States, do you genuinely believe that you will ever effectively mobilize the working class if you limit your demographics to... who exactly? "Pure" Native Americans and "pure" black individuals who can trace their roots back to slavery and have no race mixing in their lineage?
I also fail to see the issue with the article, the author agrees that the United States is a settler colonial project, and that the lasting consequences of this must be addressed within a socialist society. However, all he states is that chasing bizarre notions of racial purity when organizing only sets back the movement by isolating elements of the working class that are ripe for education and radicalization. What do you see wrong with his statements?
Ok, lets say you're right and are able to effectively exclude who you label settlers. Ok... what now? How does this benefit your organizing, popularity among the proletariat, and ability to sway the population to your side?
The issue with the article is that it practically implies that there aren't any contradictions between settlers and non-settlers. It acts as if settlers class interests don't often align with that of the bourgeoisie. Practically an outright denial of the labour aristocracy. And let's just be honest, no one has ever advocated for barring white people from participating in the workers' movement. Not one.
OPs past comments explicitly state that that’s what they wish for.
Also this is a conflation of the current stage of settler colonialism in states such as Zionist Israel and the United States. Settler interests are not a thing anymore in the United States, beyond maintaining the systems of power and consequences of previous colonial policy. Also no one is denying the labour aristocracy, however being a “settler” does not impart magical labour aristocracy privilege to even the vast majority of “white” people directly descendant from settlers.
Also labour aristocracy arises from workers exploiting super profits from external colonies. How does the author sweep aside that in any way?
Listen Ive had this convo with you before, at this point don't say your idealogy has anything to do with the liberation of native/black people and tell it like it is, you want to organize with and for white people only. This shit doesn't fly for anyone that's interacted with the prison system, lived on a reserve, been priced out or kicked out of their land. It's ridiculous, you can't imagine settlers/yts not having a front and center place in the revolution I'm saying they need to be subjegated to the native/black proletariat ala EFF or BPP, or move back to europe. There's plenty of room for praxis, hell look at the EFF it's being done today in a settler colony like cmon
I think you posting screenshots of our old conversations as to prove I just hate white people is much more vindictive. I'm sick of settler communist spaces leading action in the US and I do work with many other people who are as well. I am voicing things that are not unique to me or even this country and you are denying our real life experiences with angry attempted owns and half-responses, even if you disagree there is no need to be so combative to a viewpoint EXTREMELY common to natives in marxist spaces. You just push people away from marxism and keep it another white space. Talk about bad faith.
You live in a fantasy world you’ve made in your own mind. You’re acting like I have any problem with indigenous people AT ALL, and not that my problem is you frothing at the mouth about how white people keep ruining any Marxist spaces and that it’s YOUR space because YOU want it to be.
I am trying to act in good faith but you are saying you "dont have a problem with native people" so if native people are uncomfortable with your rhetoric or settler communist spaces at large it is their fault. You are being actively hostile to the idea this should be bettered and denying the fact that this real life opinion even exists. Even if I outright hated all white people no matter what you need to understand that would come from a legitimate outright revolutionary place, and that if communism or marxism is actually to be the idealogy of the oppressed in America it will be made up in majority of those who have been hurt most by capitalist colonialism and its superstructure of white supremacy (even the white people!)
And who are you to speak for all Native people? Or are you saying they are a monolith who share your identical approach? Or are those other native people wrong and only you're right?
Neither am I hostile to the idea they should be bettered. You can keep making any claim you'd like, that doesn't make it true. So please, stop trying to shove words into my mouth.
Not once in the article is it mentioned that certain parts of the "multinational" US have vested interest in imperialism and internal exploitation. I'll show you two places where this is completely omitted despite being crucial to the topic
OP didn't mention that in this thread though. Albeit i haven't checked their past comments on other threads
I would suggest reading through their comments. They believe that no one beyond black individuals descended from slaves and indigenous population deserve to participate and lead revolutionary organizations and that white participants can neither understand nor have a place in a decolonial world.
They froth at the mouth about “Starbucks leftists” over and over. This person is not serious.
“Deep issues due to the settler base of the parties”
Ie: it’s not government interference or other issues, it’s the white people who ruin everything.
Okay, yeah i don't agree with that view. I just misunderstood OPs views
Still a sprinkle of truth to be found in there though. Specifically when they mention CPUSA, Maki, SACP struggling with the labour aristocracy due to, again, many of them having a vested interest in maintaining the present state of things.
I mean, that's what I believe. I don't think settlers can't participate but they need to be subjegated to the actual proletariat (ie join the PFLP and not Maki, the EFF not SACP) and focus on decolonial marxism and not a labor politics that ignores very real contradictions. When they lead a communist party, you have a party with labor aristocracy conciousness. Also, I don't think Ive ever mentioned "starbucks leftists" like was claimed, no clue where that came from other than trying to make me out as a crypto conservative
Alr, thanks for clarifying
This is where Starbucks leftist came from. No clue who he is referring to with this. This is the classic conservative line.
I'm talking about self described leftists who actively chose not to boycott Starbucks for Palestine because they'd rather their blood soaked US-imperialist slave picked treats over any form of activism, usually under a mis-appropriation of the term "No ethical consumption under capitalism". You use the term Starbucks leftists as if I said the ACP line of "Baristas can't be revolutionary" when I never said that and minimum wage work can often be more revolutionary than many other jobs in the imperial core.
No one said anything about the labour movement in the US needing to bar white people from participating in it. The problem with the article is that, one, it is completely unnecessary because, again, no one had advocated for barring white people from organising. It's just pointless. Two, it outright denied the existence of a labour aristocracy which is often aligned with the bourgeoisie. This is seen in the text the OP quoted.
“No one said anything….”
Who is OP referring to then. Which group of people do we think op is talking about.
"Settlers cannot lead the revolution!" doesn't mean white people shouldn't be barred from organising. Settlers have a vested interest in protecting the racist, colonial institutions of the US. This does not say settlers should be barred from leadership positions, it says that the interests of the settler colonial class shouldn't dictate what the revolutionary movement does. The same thing as you wouldn't want the labour aristocracy in charge of labour movements, as they have vested interest in protecting the current order. Look at what happened to the communist parties of the US and Europe.
What is your definition of a settler? To me, it is someone actively expropriating and profiting from indigenous people. Where is there a homesteader or a militia forcing people off the land in the US?
Are you kidding? Youre kidding. What? Police brutally enforce natives off the land when someone wants to put a pipeline or mine in a reservation which, mind you, is another settler construct only in existence because of the police which allows even less native autonomy on anywhere outside the reserve. The same police that force black people to be homeless because the same settler colonialist system purposefully does not give them opportunities and keeps them in debt so they are forced to take extremely low paying jobs, thus providing super profits for settlers. This is the case in Israel, this is the case here, this is the case in Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and the relative comfort of the settlers is all based on the suffering, underpaid, over policed, exploited masses on which the majority of the labor rests. The black man cleans the toilets for pennies so yts can engineer software for thousands, the native lives in a concentration camp so a euro-american can live in the suburbs.
You are not responding to my main point which is that these acts are not the primary aspect in the economy. The primary contradiction is not between internally oppressed nations and the United States, it is between the United States and peripheral nations. I completely agree that Black, indigenous and other nationally oppressed people are disproportionately exploited, underpaid, and policed. However, I do not agree with your slippery and unsubstantiated claims that 1) this is the primary aspect in the US economy, and 2) whites are settlers whose principal economic basis is the primitive accumulation of oppressed nations. White workers are shielded from the most intense exploitation because of the super-exploitation of oppressed nations and so hold a dual-character but the settler characterization is absurd.
But this primitive accumulation is a never ending process. The violence never ended and is at the basis for the continuation of our society as America. I don't see how it isn't primary to the question of building the communist movement within the US.
OP gave the game away. They legitimately just despise white people and saying that white people should not be part of the revolutionary movement is exactly what they meant with their statement.
This seems to be a category error. Settler and white aren't synonyms even if there is significant overlap in a white supremacist system.
Then who is a settler in the United States at this point? For Israel the distinction is easy. The lines are to muddied in the US.
Yes it is a white supremacist system, but settlerism is entirely obsolete save for the vestiges of colonial policies that are still maintained.
I think determining who is a settler is like our Marxist definitions of class - it’s not meant to categorize every single person into a category, its only meant to describe a group that doesn’t have firm boundaries. White people in the US are settlers. The fact that who is “white” has a very fuzzy and fluid definition doesn’t take away from being able to identify a group (white people) and classify them as settlers.
By any definition, I’m white. I’m a settler. That doesn’t mean I should just take myself out of the game and stop organizing. But that does mean I should be aware of my own privilege and be careful to check my own assumptions and thought. And when my non-white comrades call me out on something, I am 100% going to really take what they say to heart.
What is your definition of settler?
More or less someone who takes land away from an indigenous population and treats it as their own, OR the descendants of those who did so long as there is a material benefit received by the settler’s descendants.
But of course this definition leaves gray areas; even situation is different as the material situation is different.
Wouldn’t quite literally every single person in the United States fit the first definition?
Unless you mean directly which means that the population percentage which fits that definition drops to a tiny tiny amount.
No. It wouldn’t apply to, for example, African Americans; whose ancestors were brought to this country by force and can hardly be said to have benefitted from the original stealing of the land.
Settlement involves the forcible appropriation of land (and the ethnic cleansing that involves), then removing all the indigenousness of that land and making it “your own”. What this creates is a settler class that enjoys in perpetuity the fruits of that appropriation.
White people in the US are settlers. Because it was white Europeans who stole the land and committed genocide. This settlement created an entire social strata that benefitted from this appropriation. And the benefits accrue to successive generations of white people. I saw a stat somewhere that said ~25% of all wealth in the US today can be traced to the Homestead Act, which excluded black and indigenous people.
Look, I’m a settler. I’m also middle class / labor aristocrat. This is simply a material fact. But none of that means I cannot devote my life to breaking the system that allows settler colonialism, white supremacy, and capitalism to persist. The history of communism is littered with class traitors and others who recognized the privileges they had and sought their destruction.
It is muddied, I agree. The question is who maintains those policies and by what processes of production and reproduction. Legislators don't achieve anything by writing a new policy or law; it takes thousands to carry out their will, either consciously or accidentally.
Two other important points are that (1) settler isn't necessarily a permanent description—settlers can choose a different path—and (2) in the US context, settler-coloniser involves internal and external relations (in terms of inside and outside the US)—being a US settler means e.g. demanding a redistribution of wealth to provide social services and healthcare without acknowledging that most of that wealth flows in from the periphery and much of the 'domestic' wealth creation is clever 'value added' accounting.
Doing something about the problem is a quick way of negating the description of settler even for those who objectively and clearly fit it (e.g. middle managers in arms factories, officers in the military, the police, and haute bourgeois ranchers on the border of reserves). Things that can be done:
There are a lot of ongoing manifestations and practices of settler colonialism. It's difficult to pick out and articulate the role of specific individuals who are settlers but it's not impossible to consider the system as a whole and then analyse any individual's or group's position/role in the system.
Even the American liberals realise that vast differences exist in the wealth of the different races in America that are the direct result of explicit discrimination that existed just 2-3 generations ago and implicit discrimination that still exists today. The existence of a settler class in America is undeniable.
Finding out which individual belongs to which class is one the other, almost always a pointless endeavour since classes are an emergent phenomena in groups of people.
Again, you are conflating race and settlerism. The US is a white supremacist state, but you are using settler and race interchangeably.
Who is a settler?
Race is entirely a product of settlerism in the first place.
The settler class as a whole inherited humongous amounts of real estate wealth (which then exploded exponentially further under neoliberalism) and live in the more developed neighbourhoods of the country.
Think of suburban single family homeowners. These people are settlers in the truest sense of the word. They are the urbanised version of the settler yeoman farmer. They use more land, water and energy than basically any non-bourgeois class on earth, and by a long shot.
Their lifestyle and luxury is fueled by government subsidies (distributed on a racial basis) to the massively inefficient infrastructure and agriculture needed to sustain them.
When I say that the US and Canada continue to practice settler colonialism and still have a settler mode of production, I mean it quite literally. North american suburbs are notorious for their urban sprawl, that is, uncontrolled expansion, which is/was fueled by tearing apart dense developments suitable for the lifestyles of the proletariat. Not to mention that the urban proletariat's production is siphoned off to the suburbs via the government.
I agree wholeheartedly with your point.
The only problem is that utterly massive portions of the black community, Latino community, Asian communities, and other races all participate in that “suburban settlerism”. Making race based division in this case pointless.
The author doesn’t refute labour aristocracy? He simply states that even the labour aristocracy can be mobilized against the the bourgeoisie because they themselves are suffering under capitalism.
A McDonald’s worker is “labour aristocracy”, do you think they aren’t ripe for radicalization? The author is stating that pushing them away from the movement based on race is foolhardy and bizarre.
I mentioned this in another comment here, but this topic cannot be properly analyzed without mention of the labour aristocracy and the fact that certain sects of the population materially benefit from the exploitation internal exploitation of native, black and other minorities. It mentions the need to combat imperialism but doesn't mention that portions of the US populus, at least in the short term, would lose many privileges.
Examples of this being omitted: