(rms-settler-colonialism)=
What is Meant by, and What is, the Fundamental Contradiction of Our Society?¶
Fundamental vs Principal Contradiction¶
First, before diving into the document, I would like to understand the reasoning that the Comrades chose to use Engels’ phraseology of Fundamental Contradiction instead of Mao’s Principal Contradiction. Comparing Mao‘s definition which I cited above, to Engels’ definition laid out in the paper, they both seem to be more or less similar in nature. So I guess I am firstly curious why a Maoist group would not use the Maoist phrase here. Admittedly this is a minor point of clarification and not the most important, but I still would like to understand the word choice here as perhaps it might give some insight into the thought process of the comrades who wrote this document.
Settler Colonialism - What Is It?¶
The Comrades speak the phrase “Settler Colonialism” on many occasions in this document, yet not once was this phrase defined. This leads to some confusion, and makes it hard to criticize the argument as it forces me to guess as to what the author’s intentions are and what they understand the process of settler colonialism to consist of. It is unclear, so firstly I would like to seek clarification from the MCU Comrades to give a precise and scientific definition of settler colonialism, since it is the fundamental subject of this document. To ensure clarity in my criticism, I restate my own definition I am using here:
Note
Settler Colonialism (as defined in Criticism of the Maoist Communist Union): A form of colonialism distinguished by the intent to permanently occupy and replace the indigenous population rather than merely extract resources. Unlike extractive colonialism, settler colonialism is a structure, not an event.
Firstly, I would ask the Comrades to offer up their own definition, should they find mine unsatisfactory. Secondly I would like to know what the Comrades of MCU think of my own definition of Settler Colonialism, and if they have any criticisms of it. If so, I would like to know what those are so that we can come to a better understanding and hopefully a resolution of the points of contention.
In lieu of a precise definition from the MCU comrades, I believe that they have an erroneous understanding of settler colonialism based on the content of this. The comrades write:
Marxists understand this contradiction to be that between labor and capital. Those who ascribe to settler colonialism understand it to be between settled and settlers. To help think this through, let’s imagine what a society defined by the latter contradiction would look like:
Indigenous people make up less than 3% of the population and 87% live outside of reservations. For the purposes of this exercise, let’s say that since 82% of the population lives in cities, 71% of indigenous people--overall–live in cities (this is of course very rough statistical work, mostly gotten from the 2020 census, but should serve us fine). Do the contradictions between people who are indigenous and people who are not dominate city life?
This indicates to me that the comrades understand Settler Colonialism not as an ongoing and dynamic process, but rather as a conflict between two groups of individuals without stating what exactly is the cause of that conflict. The comrades highlight as evidence the proportions of the population made up of Indigenous people, and highlights a difference between rural and urban. I find this to be erroneous. As Marxists, we know that although Urban and Rural environments have special characteristics, they’re not really social relationships at odds with one another. In fact, it is a classic technique of reactionaries to put rural versus urban as some kind of substitution for class conflict. I do not mean to imply that the MCU Comrades are reactionaries of any sort, rather that this conception of settler colonization being predicated on city life as well as the divide between urban Indigenous, rural Indigenous, and Indigenous people who live on reservations is a sign of unclear thinking and a misunderstanding of what settler colonialism is. But without the comrades offering up a precise definition of what they mean, I cannot say for sure.
An MCU Comrade[1], when clarifying the position paper, stated that:
Also how is it settler logic to understand time is linear? That seems like a basic scientific discovery that generally all humans across all of time have observed and abided by, and certainly the settled do too. There is a past, there is a present, seconds turn into minutes turn into days turn into years. I’m pretty confused by this point. Just because I say that slavery happened and ended in the past doesn‘t mean I’m absolving the horrors of slavery, but making an extremely basic observation about it.
While the stats used are rough, they aren‘t undialectical and certainly materialist. A thorough analysis of the situation will of course require a more thorough analysis, but **the point being made is that a contradiction which settler colonialism says primarily concerns less than .4% of the population cannot be a fundamental contradiction. Do you disagree with this and why?
Warning
Notwithstanding the unnecessarily confrontative and rude posturing here, to answer his question: I do disagree with this assessment in the strongest possible terms. The portion I have bolded from the anonymous Comrade’s comment is further evidence that MCU fails to understand the nature of the Settler Colonial contradiction because he clearly states that it is “a contradiction which primarily concerns less than 0.4% of the population.”
A Materialist Definition of Settler Colonialism¶
Important
Settler colonialism as a material contradiction represents a process that’s carried out for material reasons. In other words, settlers do not eradicate the Indigenous nations because they are mean, or because they are evil, or some other metaphysical moralistic idea. Settler Colonialism is fundamentally a question about property relations governing the ownership and use of land.
The settler-Indigenous contradiction is therefore not one of some kind of metaphysical conflict between people as an inherent property of them, but rather represents an irreconcilable conflict over land ownership – the epitome of a material question if I’ve ever heard of one. Since 100% of the people in the US lives on some portion of land, it is frankly chauvinistic and dismissive to say that Settler Colonialism only affects 0.4% of the population.
The paper goes on to state that “neither does this contradiction even dominate the lives of Indigenous people who live in cities, nor accurately describe their oppression, ultimately leading us to be unable to overcome it.“ Again, I believe this represents a subconsciously chauvinistic misunderstanding of the nature of the settler colonial contradiction. Clearly, as a contradiction that focuses around the ownership of land, this absolutely dominates the lives of Indigenous people regardless of whether they live in a city, a reservation, or elsewhere. The fact we are even bringing up the location of where Indigenous people live as if it’s relevant at all to this discussion exemplifies what I believe to be a core misunderstanding of the contradiction being debated and discussed.
(economics-settler-colonialism)=
The Economics of Settler Colonialism¶
The paper goes on to state that ”Our economy, every day, sits on and subsists off of, the working class, which no ethnic group exists entirely without of in this country.” While I do not dispute this fact, it’s also not telling the whole story. A cursory glance at the Bureau of Economic Analysis Corporate Profits and GDP by Industry in the first quarter of 2024 will give us some statistics which back up my claim.
Note
The following analysis is based on Q1 2024 Bureau of Economic Analysis data showing $49.187 trillion in total US industrial gross output.
Private Industrial Economic Output¶
We see a 1st quarter 2024 Gross Output of all US industries amounting to \(49.187 trillion. Of that \)49 trillion in GDP, we see the following industries which can be said to be directly tied to and enabled by settler colonialism by virtue of their nature:
Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting: $0.5848 T
Mining: $0.6676 T
Construction: $2.4715 T
Utilities: $0.6262 T
Real Estate and Rental and Leasing: $5.4098 T
Administrative and Waste Management Services: $1.5832 T
TOTAL PRIVATE: $11.3431 Trillion
Federal Government Expenditures¶
Additionally, there are Federal government expenditures that factor into the $49.187 directly related to issues of land as well as Indigenous relations.
Bureau of Indian Affairs: $0.0046 T
Department of Agriculture: $0.160 T
Department of Interior: $0.0891 T
Department of Energy: $0.1610 T
Department of Housing and Urban Development: $0.0726 T
US Customs and Border Patrol: $0.0175 T
**TOTAL FEDERAL: $0.5048 Trillion
State and Local Government Expenditures¶
Finally, there are similar expenditures from State and Local governments[2]:
Highways and Roads: $0.207 T
Housing: $0.067 T
Sanitation: $0.111 T
Sewerage: $0.074 T
Solid waste management: $0.037 T
Parks and Rec: $0.037 T
Natural Resources: $0.037 T
TOTAL STATE AND LOCAL: $0.563 Trillion
The Net Material Benefits of Settler Colonialism Quantified¶
Important
The sum total of private economic output in addition to federal, state and local government spending which can plausibly be attributed directly to settler colonialism viz a viz its relationship to the land, therefore, amounts to **\(12.4109 trillion dollars**. As a fraction of a total economic output of \)49.187 trillion, the spoils of settler colonialism represent a whopping 25.23% of the total economic output of the United States.
On the Indigenous Bourgeoisie¶
I have demonstrated the incorrectness of settler colonialism as being anything but the principal contradiction, and will now turn to the issue of the Indigenous bourgeoisie. The paper states:
If they are unable to sustain themselves through their own internal economic processes, and must interact in significant ways with the broader US economy–which is one of capitalist-imperialism and defined by the contradiction between labor and capital–then we cannot say that they have an independent bourgeoisie and working class–which are not dominantly influenced by the contradictions born from the US economy.
Firstly I would like to seek clarification from the comrades on how exactly they draw this conclusion. For arguments sake, I will break it down into a series of constituent claims that form an argument. The Comrades’ statement consists of three essential parts:
A) Indigenous nations are able to sustain themselves through their own internal economic processes
B) Indigenous nations must interact in significant ways with the broader US economy.
C) Indigenous nations have an independent bourgeoisie and working class which are not dominantly influenced by the contradictions born from the US economy.
From the numbering of these statements, the logical form of the comrades’ argument is therefore:
In other words, the logical negation[3] of claim A and claim B imply that the logical negation of claim C is necessarily true.
I would ask the Comrades what theoretical basis do they have for making this claim that ”there must be an internal and independent bourgeoisie for the oppression of indigenous working class by their indigenous bourgeoisie to not matter”? First off, saying that this doesn‘t matter is an undialectical approach. The exploitation is secondary in importance, it’s not that it isn’t important. I interpret the Comrades’ argument as implicitly stating that the Indigenous bourgeoisie are collaborators with the US Federal government as well as various State governments. The largest employer on Indigenous reservations across the board is Tribal governments. This is according to the document which the comrades cite in their footnote. In this document, Dr Miller states that:
In fact, Indian reservations in the United States have been compared to “third-world countries.” Moreover, American Indians own private businesses at a much lower rate per capita and the businesses they own produce less income on average than all other racial groups.
Attempts to address these economic problems, however, have largely focused on tribal governments. The majority of the public and private efforts to create and sustain economic development on Indian reservations have dealt with tribal governments funding, starting, and operating business activities. Today, Indian tribes organize, fund, and in many instances, operate or direct the day-to-day affairs of many of the businesses and the majority of the economic activity in Indian country. This situation is a result of, or an “accident” caused by, federal control over Indians and Indian tribes, federal funding of tribal operations, and over two hundred years of Federal Indian law and policy. It has resulted to a large degree in the formation of what looks to the untrained eye to be socialistic economies in Indian country because the federal and tribal governments control most of the economic activity and jobs. … In Indian country, however, the opposite paradigm prevails because federal policy has allowed and actively encouraged tribes to organize and operate businesses.
This paper makes it clear that although Indigenous nations each have their own particularities and nuances, an overarching theme seems to be that there isn’t really a national bourgeoisie to speak of. The Tribal government is the bourgeoisie. This is is a very unique circumstance which warrants careful consideration. Seeing as Dr Miller later states “Socialism, or tribal and federal government control of reservation economic life, is not the most effective way nor the only avenue to develop reservation economies”, we should take his analysis with a heaping spoonful of salt and a large dose of skepticism. He may get individual facts correct, however we should not be trusting of his overarching analysis due to his own admitted anticommunism.
I do not have the answers to this peculiar scenario. However, I would criticize the MCU Comrades as not having done much of a thorough investigation. I get the impression that this document they cited was hastily skimmed over and milked for supporting evidence without giving it due consideration. Merely from reading the first page, it becomes clear to me that we can’t really form analogs with other situations such as the Chinese revolution. National bourgeoisie had nowhere near the same dynamics that the bourgeoisie of Indian Country, which resembles a form of state capitalism so-called more than anything else, have. Sloppy historical analogs simply will not do. This is doubly true, because its abundantly clear that the author takes on a pro-capitalist stance.
Warning
My criticism therefore, as regards the question of the bourgeoisie of the myriad Indigenous nations, is that I feel that the Comrades did not at all research or give careful consideration to this question. Their responses seem hastily assembled. I would encourage the comrades to thoroughly investigate this matter, and come up with a cogent theoretical response that has all of the nuance and particularities necessary to do proper justice to this topic.
What is the alternative?¶
Simply put, what I propose is that **settler colonialism and the national questions facing the United States are principal contradictions as defined by Mao Zedong. As I have demonstrated above, settler colonialism is more than just a relationship of one group of people to another. It is fundamentally about a conflict over the ownership of land. Although the settler colonial process in the United States is the most mature example in the world[4]. But to consider the process of settler colonialism as a settled affair in the past is not only wrong, but it is a kind of chauvinism.
The curious reader may ask ”What are some examples of settler colonialism in the United States that are ongoing, or occurred within the past decades?” Examples include the struggle at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Red Hill water supply contamination, our governments genocidal support of the Zionist Entity and its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the construction of Cop City in the Weelaunee Forest, and the Stop Camp Grayling movement to name just a handful.
Important
By refusing to acknowledge the reality of settler colonialism and its primacy (which implies the ongoing status of it as a process), the MCU is depriving itself of potentially participating in some of the most acute struggles in the present-day. If we want to find the advanced sections of the masses, they shall be found here.
I am not a member of the MCU, but I want to see the communist movement overall strengthened, and that means drawing in the most advanced, educating them in the science of Marxism, and winning them over to the cause of Communism and Maoism.
In conclusion, the settler colonial contradiction is indeed the primary one because it is a struggle over land. Much of not only the working class, but also bourgeois wealth is tied up in the land. And as Marx demonstrates in Critique of the Gotha Programme, the land itself can be considered an additional source of value.
Settler colonialism also bleeds into the consciousness of the masses, as I shall demonstrate in my criticism of the MCU line of the Industrial Proletariat. However, for now, I hope this has been an illuminating dive into the issue of settler colonialism.