Leftist Infighting: A community dedicated to allowing leftists to vent their frustrations

"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 advise you to read Marx and Lenin

As though I haven't. Thanks, though.

I’m unfamiliar with Tuck and Yang, and since they are not well known Marxist theorists such as Marx or Lenin

Your lack of reading past Lenin is not my problem. There's an entire contribution to critical theory in intersectionalism, post-colonialism, and decolonization. You could read Fanon, Freire, Sakai, or Tuck and Yang. In fact, I recommend you read all of them and wrestle with their writings in earnest. They may not have everything correct, but the process of moving beyond Lenin is important for all of us to continue to develop our understanding of the world in the spirit of scientific socialism.

One cannot simply walk into a theoretical space and say “x is fact, read person largely unknown in the space” and expect myself or others to simply accept the authority of these authors.

I don't. I expect you to commit yourself to reading the continuously developing and evolving corpus of theory as the world continues to develop.

Here's a link to Tuck and Yang's Decolonization is not a Metaphor.

And here's an excerpt from their 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. The metaphorization of decolonization makes possible a set of evasions, or “settler moves to innocence”, that problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity. In this article, we analyze multiple settler moves towards innocence in order to forward “an ethic of incommensurability” that recognizes what is distinct and what is sovereign for project(s) of decolonization in relation to human and civil rights based social justice projects. We also point to unsettling themes within transnational/Third World decolonizations, abolition, and critical space-place pedagogies, which challenge the coalescence of social justice endeavors, making room for more meaningful potential alliances.

The argument is significant, and it draws upon decades of prior work, which it seems you may not have read, so it becomes difficult to summarize. Let me try to address your strawmanning of my position.

Cities and deserts are included in Marx’s evaluation of the contradictions between city and country side. The city exploits the country and in doing so must hold leverage over it (water).

First off, in the desert example I gave, the city is in the desert. The city does not exploit the country, it exploits quite literally another nation. The leverage it holds over this oppressed nation is genocidal leverage, meaning both mass murder of bodies and mass murder of cultures.

You conflate all of society which lives under settler society with those who benefit from it and thus maintain it.

This accusation is rich coming from someone who claims to read and understand Marx and Lenin. You may as well say Marx is conflating all bourgeoisie with those who have shared interests and thus maintain it. You have literally defined a class, a group of people who inhabit a structural role in society that share interests and use the mechanisms of the system, including violence, to maintain their shared interests through the reproduction of their way of life.

This is pointing to a contradiction which does not exist equating “white” Americans with the pette [sic] bourgeois simply because of their ethnicity.

This is also a complete misunderstanding of the colonial context. Settlers do not need to be equivalent with the petite bourgeoisie for them to share interests that are incommensurable with the interests of the colonized. It is, in fact, possible, and indeed is the case, that the settler proletariat do not have a shared interest with the colonized, most of whom would not neatly fit the definition of proletariat. In fact, this is the primary point. The colonized have interests and these interests are shared and the interests are maintained through reproducing their livelihood in a way that is fundamentally distinct from the settler proletariat.

Class not “race” determines politics, Lenin makes this perfectly clear.

Indeed, but race is an expression of class warfare and in colonial contexts is entirely inextricable from that class warfare. One cannot solve the class question without addressing the race question as equally urgent. It is not an either/or but a both/and. And it just this way because the bourgeoisie have used race as their secondary expression of class war, second only to private property, and private property in colonial contexts is inextricably bound up with the expression of race. In the colonial context, race and class interpenetrate.

Your argument that “all white people will band together to suppress the indigenous” falls flat once one looks to Standing Rock or the various pipeline protest movements.

Surely you just. No one ever said "all white people will band together" just like no one ever said all proletarians will join together simultaneously nor that no proletarians will betray their class nor that all bourgeois will use violence to defend their property. We are talking in terms of classes. Settlers, as a class, will see individuals who betray their class and stand with the indigenous. This is good, but it is in no way an indication of class interests breaking down, but rather a heightened consciousness of the settler class's place in history.

It is indeed at odds with the historical reality of settler colonialism, which has changed over time and is no longer the same as it once was. The descendants don’t magically have some racist gene, once’s interests are formed by their material conditions and their relation to the means of production of which the indigenous and proletarian “whites” share

This is a strawman of the actual argument. No one is arguing from a position of race. Settler colonialists obtained the land for their factories through genocide, rape, torture, child abduction, cultural grooming, and scorched-earth environmental destruction. The descendants don't need a racist gene. The descendants' entire way of life depends on the maintenance of the structural dispossession of the indigenous from their lands. Everything from language to education, from social mores to art, from religion to location, from production to consumption, absolutely everything about settler society is entwined legally, physically, culturally, ideologically, politically, and violently with the oppression the colonized. Decolonization explicitly works against the interests of the settlers AS A CLASS, regardless of their individual feelings or beliefs.

For every demand of the indigenous, there is a settler interest that will be impinged. There is no other way because settler society is structurally organized, intentionally, to harm and oppress the colonized. Whatever settler society is, it is such through a process of dispossession and genocide. Settler proletarians who have successfully taken control of the machine of state can negotiate nothing except either capitulation to indigenous leadership or oppression of indigenous needs. There is not middle ground because, as Tuck and Yang argue, the interests of the colonized and the settlers are incommensurable.

Each thing that the settler proletariat must solve for in the revolutionary mode - distribution of land, distribution of extracted resources, extraction planning, waste management, national defense - inherently will impinge on indigenous interests. Including indigenous leadership in the decision making process can only lead to either the interests of the indigenous being upheld or the interests of the settlers being upheld, with the possibility of the deferring of one of those interests to a later decision making time. In any case, there is no possibility of indigenous people's negotiating with a settler state in a position of equal power, and certainly in no way as nationally self-directed, as Lenin would require. Instead, the national boundaries would be those boundaries drawn by the settler imperialists, changing the boundaries would require settlers living their to live under indigenous sovereignty, and the indigenous may freely choose to organize their state according to settler interests or not. To assume that settler will simply adopt indigenous culture because all cultures are interchageable and the only thing that matters is one's relationship to the means of production is to completely misunderstood what is meant by "need".

That we're having this debate at all is indicative of a massive gulf that cannot be crossed by me attempting to summarize 60 years of theory and practice. Please read Fanon, Freire, Sakai, and Tuck and Yang. You'll find that these thinkers have read and engaged with the idea of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and others. There's an entire world of indigenous, anti-colonial theory that has been developing for decades and ignoring it will get you nowhere.