This is a contentious subject. Please keep the discussion respectful. I think this will get more traction, here, but I’ll cross-post it to !Communism, too.
Workers who sell their labour power for a wage are part of the working class, right? They are wage-workers because they work for a wage. Are they wage-labourers?
“They’re proletariat,” I hear some of you shout.
“Not in the imperial core! Those are labour aristocrats,” others reply.
So what are the workers in the imperial core? Are they irredeemable labour aristocrats, the inseparable managers and professionals of the ruling class? Or are they proletarian, the salt of the earth just trying to get by?
It’s an important distinction, even if the workers in any country are not a homogenous bloc. The answer determines whether workers in the global north are natural allies or enemies of the oppressed in the global south.
The problem is as follows.
There is no doubt that people in the global north are, in general, more privileged than people in the global south. In many cases, the difference in privilege is vast, even among the wage-workers. This is not to discount the suffering of oppressed people in the global north. This is not to brush away the privilege of national bourgeois in the global south.
For some workers in the global north, privilege amounts to basic access to water, energy, food, education, healthcare, and shelter, streetlights, paved highways, etc. As much as austerity has eroded access to these basics, they are still the reality for the majority of people in the north even, to my knowledge, in the US.
Are these privileges enough to move someone from the ranks of the proletariat and into the labour aristocracy or the petit-bourgeois?
I’m going to discuss some sources and leave some quotes in comments, below. This may look a bit spammy, but I’m hoping it will help us to work through the several arguments, that make up the whole. The sources:
- Settlers by J Sakai
- Corona, Climate, and Chronic Emergency by Andreas Malm
- The Wealth of Nations by Zac Cope
- ‘Decolonization is Not a Metaphor’ by Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang.
I have my own views on all this, but I have tried to phrase the points and the questions in a ’neutral’ way because I want us to discuss the issues and see if we can work out where and why we conflict and how to move forwards with our thinking (neutral to Marxists, at least). I am not trying to state my position by stating the questions below, so please do not attack me for the assumptions in the questions. By all means attack the assumptions and the questions.
‘Decolonization is Not a Metaphor’ by Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang
I mention this source because it re-frames class structure in the US. From the abstract:
Because settler colonialism is built upon an entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires of white, non-white, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation that actually further settler colonialism.
Later (page 3):
The too-easy adoption of decolonizing discourse (making decolonization a metaphor) is just one part of [a] history [that] … taps into pre-existing tropes that get in the way of more meaningful potential alliances. We think of the enactment of these tropes as a series of moves to innocence …
The basic idea is that people living in the US cannot claim they are innocent just because they were not the white Europeans who first arrived on Turtle Island and committed that original genocide.
If Tuck and Yang are correct, then we need to re-frame the first interpretation of Sakai’s comment about ‘revisionists’, in the comment above: So:
- Don’t appeal to the white working class because its interests do not align with the interests of oppressed peoples. Becomes:
- Don’t appeal to the
whiteworking class because its interests do not align with the interests of indigenous nations and oppressed peoples [in the global south].
Tuck and Yang argue that the interests of most people in the US are aligned with the ruling class. This includes even the descendants of slaves because their jobs, homes, businesses, etc, all rely on the continual refusal to give the land back to the indigenous nations. Following this logic, all workers in the US would rather side with the ruling class against the indigenous nations and oppressed peoples outside the US.
This may seem to be an extreme position. But look at the numbers in the Cope and Malm comments: all workers in the global north benefit from global mechanisms of unequal exchange; using the land for anything other than reparations to indigenous nations may amount to a refusal to decolonise the US.
This refusal supports colonisation by providing a bulwark between oppressed indigenous nations and the ruling class – the ruling class can rely on the more privileged workers to defend their property rights, because the alternative (without revolution and solidarity) is becoming destitute.
I’ll note here that although Yang and Tuck rely on Franz Fanon, they are not Marxists. If they are, their Marxism is deeply problematic. In the cited article, in footnote 2 on page 4, they write (references omitted):
Colonialism is not just a symptom of capitalism. Socialist and communist empires have also been settler empires (e.g. Chinese colonialism in Tibet). “In other words,” writes Sandy Grande, “both Marxists and capitalists view land and natural resources as commodities to be exploited, in the first instance, by capitalists for personal gain, and in the second by Marxists for the good of all” (…).
FWIW Tuck and Yang’s paper argues against the trend to treat decolonisation as something that can be achieved just by talking about and recognising colonialism: adding a few classes on colonialism into a curriculum, for example. They argue that this will not decolonise the US. Their paper is very good at highlighting and articulating the problem. The question for Marxists is whether their (Tuck and Yang’s) solution is correct, and if not, what is the right way forward.
Edit: added a line as my editing made it look like my summary was part of a quote.
To be honest I am pretty put off that they discredit some of the biggest strides in decolonization, and I think it stems from a lack of class analysis. Why do they see exploitation of the land for the good of all as settler colonialism?
From what I have garnered so far, settler colonialism is based on hierarchy of “national classes” (for lack of a better word). Nations have a class of proles and bourgeoisie, when in a settler colonial state the bourgeoisie give a their proletarian cultural group a priority and kickbacks for settling hence the bourgeois position. So the settler proles and oppressed proles hold contradicting positions, as long as the settler proles hold a bourgeois position.
We have seen settlers and indigenous nations work together to overthrow colonialism, in the USSR, China, Cuba and even with bourgeois democratic states in LatAm. Why is this? I believe it is because the class of settlers have been proletarianized enough to align with the oppressed and synthesize into a new state. Russians, Han Chinese, and Spaniards under the boot of Imperialsm had proletarian positions, and thus could synthesize with any oppressed nationalities With DOTPs specifically we see the first blow to settler colonialism, the elimination of the bourgeoisie as an oppressing class and thus the need for nations in the first place has started crumbling.
Sadly Tuck and Yang’s Liberalism holds them back from a class analysis, but their own class interests allow them to address settler colonialism. At the moment, they ARE right in saying that the most progressive way to decolonize the US is putting land back in Indigenous hands (proletarian hands). This is because as long as US Imperialism exists (as it does now) the Euro Americans hold a bourgeois and counter revolutionary position. (keep in mind this is not an exact science, and anglos are being proletarianized more and more each day. Hell I am a white settler and I am living barely on paycheck to paycheck).
What happens is the Indigenous revolutionary kernel is much more developed compared to the Settler revolutionary kernel. Thus the indigenous people hold a vanguard position, as any indigenous population has always had across history. Only when settler’s kernel is developed enough can it synthesize with the oppressed nations into a DOTP. And you can see indigenous leaders for decolonization even without a class analysis advocate for this synthesis. The more settlers work together with the oppressed nations, the less it will be solely indigenous but until that happens it holds an indigenous character (if that makes sense)
Is it accurate to refer to the indigenous populations of settler colonies as proletarian? Do they work in factories to reproduce their society or do they work in factories to reproduce someone else’s society?
Can the indigenous trust the settler proletariat? Is it possible to build solidarity while there is oppression? Tuck and Yang talk about the interests of the indigenous being different than the interests of the settler proletariat. That’s not to say that the settler proletariat is inherently bourgeois-aligned, but rather that the satisfaction of the indigenous interests necessarily destroys, through synthesis, the way of life of the settler, which generates reaction.
The question isn’t one of idealism but rather one of the dialectic. It challenges us to consider whether the idea of international worker solidarity in the context of settler colonialism is actually an idealist position.
Settlers by J Sakai
Sakai argues the US was never founded on a white proletariat. At the 1775 War of Independence, 80% of European Settlers were bourgeois or petit-bourgeois. The others (15%) were ‘temporary workers’ and (5%) labourers. Most of the temp workers tended to be young men who arrived, worked, then bought land and moved upwards, to be replaced by more hopeful petit-bourgeois Europeans.
Sakai criticises ‘“Don’t-Divide-the-Working-Class” revisionists, who want to convince us that the Euro-Amerikan masses are “victims of imperialism” just like us’ (footnote on page 12). This can be interpreted in two ways:
- Don’t appeal to the white working class because its interests do not align with the interests of oppressed peoples.
- Don’t appeal to white racist / chauvinist workers because they have no interest in aligning their interests with oppressed peoples, even if their material conditions can be similar (i.e. they still work for a wage).
I think there’s scope to say that Sakai means #2. I suspect most of you will agree with #2 even if some would think that Marxists should still try to reach white racist / chauvinists to persuade them not to be racists and chauvinists rather than class-conscious members of the vanguard.
- What if Sakai meant #1? Does that change your view?
- If Sakai meant #1 or #2, does that mean there can never be solidarity between workers in the US and indigenous nations and other oppressed peoples?
- And has the situation changed since Sakai wrote this?
- What about the rest of the Euro-Amerikan empire? Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan?
i dont think that little statistic about whites in 1775 america means anything, that was pre industrial and pre imperial power america it has nothing to do with the reality we live in now.
if sakai meant the first then idk he was smoking something mighty cuz the US is 60% white you cant just actively ignore 60% of people outright and build a revolution from there its not gonna work
there has to be solidarity otherwise this isnt gonna work, besides its not like white poor people are particularly advantage compared to black poor people or other poor oppressed people white people are just significantly more likely to be born richer to begin with (you know inherited wealth and a history of slavery/genocide/immigration dont generally go together) (not saying systemic racism doesn’t exist just that generational wealth is one of the biggest mechanism thru which it operates)
i dont think the situation has changed much i think settlers was just mostly wrong to begin with
idc thats for them to figure out im too ignorant and disinterested to have an opinion, tho im curious what you mean by japan do you mean Okinawa or the general american occupation of Japan
i dont think that little statistic about whites in 1775 america means anything, that was pre industrial and pre imperial power america it has nothing to do with the reality we live in now.
Yeah who needs history? That is unless you needed to show that the idea of a temporarily embaressed millionaire comes from our settler qualities and not from our position as hegemon after WW2. Or if you wanted to find evidence for white upward mobility as a factor that existed even at the founding of the US.
Also the US immediately began expanding territory via genocide to make way for the slave economy that built Wallstreet and the same financial institutions that run the global political economy today. Surely this too is irrelevant to the history we presently must suffer.
its not like white poor people are particularly advantage compared to black poor people or other poor oppressed people white people are just significantly more likely to be born richer to begin with
This isn’t true in the slightest. Generational wealth is hardly the only factor. Every single crisis that harms poor whites harms colonized people two fold or more. For example, half of black wealth was destroyed in 2008 and covid was much much worse on Native peoples.
Settlers isn’t wrong. You just don’t think history matters enough.
