To put it as plainly as possible, if the proponents of the U.S. settler-colonialism theory are correct, then there is no basis whatsoever upon which to build a multinational working class communist party in this country. Indeed, such a view sees the “settler working class” as instruments of colonialism, hostile to the interests of the colonized people, rather than viewing all working and oppressed people as natural allies in the struggle against imperialism, our mutual oppressor.
A shame, a sad sad shame. For anyone that’s read settlers, or knows about the history of labor zionism, or prioritizes any kind of indigenous voice in their praxis, this is really bad. No peace for settlers! Settlers cannot lead the revolution! I hope we see an end to any respect given to this “settler colonialism is over” politic soon.
“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.
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.
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.