Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 02:13:48 -0500
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: M-TH: Re: M-I: Re: Marx on Native Americans


I send this to thaxis as Jim failed too. It is a great reply by him against 
Proyect and his liberal whining these days..By the way the stuff on "Jack 
Straw" i find a bit moralistic and it never takes up the real question of 
the subservial attitude that the left has to Tony Blairs "New" labor..

Warm regards
Bob Malecki

>This is a bit of a mess, because Louis is angry about something that
>gets in the way of his thinking, but here goes:
>
>
>In message <3.0.3.32.19980102130900.006ba0fc-AT-pop.columbia.edu>, Louis
>Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu> writes
>>
>>Or was "ennobling" American Indians just a convenient fiction?
>
>Isn't that what I said? Fictitious. Property in land was an institution
>that was alien to native Americans.
>
>>The notion that there was any sort of class ties between the colonizers and
>>the Calibans of the New World is actually an obscene lie. 
>
>Indeed it is is! Who is the dastardly character who dared say such a
>thing. I'll have him!
>
>>LM:
>>The early Colonists lived in peculiar subservience, often as indentured
>>servants to their English masters. The monopoly over the land held by a
>>handful of English lords guaranteed their servitude and their masters power.
>>
>>Louis Proyect:
>>So the early Colonists lived in subservience? This is a novel view, I must
>>say, in light of all the Marxist research into American society of the
>>1600-1800 period. What history book did you consult to come up with this
>>startling statement? I was under the impression that there was a landed
>>aristocracy in colonial America. How did they disappear in your account?
>
>Again, where is the controversy. The the estates were held by landlords
>of English Origin like William Penn (the name of a nearby School when I
>was a boy, we called them 'Billy Biro'.) These men were naturally closer
>to England than America in the emerging conflict, as English ships were
>the garantor of their power. They were also hostile to expansion
>Westwards because that undermined the monopoly power over the means of
>subsistence that their land ownership represented.
>
>>Louis Proyect:
>>Again, with the absence of an American landed aristocracy, LM's history
>>makes perfect sense. 
>
>Whoever said it. The expansion westwards was driven by a desire to
>escape the social domination of landlords.
>
>> Marxists prefer to include
>>all major classes, however, when we evaluate history and not leave a single
>>one out. On the question of the tensions between Indians and frontiersmen,
>>it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to factor in the landed aristocracy, the class
>>LM relegates to Derridean "erasure."
>
>Bizarre. It was me who introduced the discussion of the monopoly over
>land into the equation.
>
>> It was not an "English governor" that
>>the poor whites were in struggle with, but the emerging American
>>bourgeoisie who were wealthy tobacco, cotton and livestock farmers.
>
>Of course there was that small matter of a War of Inependence, and
>indeed of Nathaniel Bacon's revolt. But why let historical facts
>interfere with myth-making. And now suddenly the landlords have
>transformed themselves into a bourgeoisie! Where was the struggle that
>facilitated that change?
>>
>>In the Bacon Rebellion of 1676 in Virginia, poor whites drifted westward
>>when they were left out of huge land grants awarded to plantation-owners.
>>On the frontier they collided with Indian tribes. Wealthy Virginians
>>playing Indians against poor whites is a familiar pattern in American
>>history. The goal was to punish Bacon's rebels and prevent the Indians from
>>uniting against them. 
>
>I'm not sure that this accounts for Bacon's bloodcurdling demands for an
>aggressive Indian policy. If it was a matter of playing Indians of
>againsst poor whites in classical divide and rule mode, it didn't
>exactly work, issuing in the overthrow of the governor on that very
>issue. The point was that the frontiersmen were constantly tempted to
>press West to escape the heavy hand of the East coast ruling class.
>
>>After some skirmishes between frontiersmen and
>>Indians, the ruling class in Virginia DECLARED WAR on the Indians. Why do
>>you leave out this fact, Heartfield? 
>
>Well, it was only a sketch. As to the declaration of war, I would see it
>as the attempt by the Virginia gentry to get back in the saddle and take
>hold of a situation that was running out of their control.
>
>>Isn't it of interest to note that such
>>an event took place? Doesn't the truth matter to you?
>
>Now you're just being rude.
>
>>
>>The fundamental class struggle in the New World was not between
>>"revolutionary" capitalists and precapitalist social formations in alliance
>>with the French or British Crown. It was rather between the emerging
>>American ruling class and an array of subclasses: landless whites, Indians,
>>and African slaves.
>
>This all seems a bit formulaic to me. Your 'emerging American ruling
>class' is a broad abstraction that ignores real historical developments.
>The conflict between the British and the French, between colonists and
>the British, between the East coast elites and the West, and between
>North and South in the Civil war are all subsumed into a ready-made
>moral schema of rich v poor. That might make you feel good, but it
>hardly describes the real conditions when the 'landless whites' were at
>the forefront of the seizure of Indian lands, or that the Northern
>Industrialists finally abolished slavery, (while the Southern poor
>fought to defend that peculiar insitution). Were the Colonists wrong to
>seek their independence? Was Marx wrong to side with Lincoln? 
>
>Lenin, citing James Connoly poured scorn on those revolutionary purists
>who will not endorse a struggle unless the two classes line up in
>perfect formation against each other, like two armies on a battle-field.
>As he said anyone who expects the class struggle to take such a pure
>form will never live to see it. Real history is a lot messier than that.
>
>
>>Marxists in 1998 should identify with these subordinate
>>classes and not try to create artificial identities between the oppressor
>>and the oppressed as LM does.
>
>This is just rhetoric.
>
>> By the way, my source on Bacon's Rebellion is
>>Howard Zinn's "People's History of the US". What is your source, Heartfield?
>>
>Funnily enough, Howard Zinn.
>
>>And what was the war of 1812 all about? 
>
>Are you proposing a new topic? Are you supporting George IV? Are you
>proposing a withdrawal from Florida? Anyway. wasn't I the one who said
>that the colonists were predisposed to see the Indians as their enemies?
>
>> Furthermore, aren't you
>>aware that not all Indians were in favor of war with Washington? The Creeks
>>were divided, some just wanted to live in peace. 
>
>Oh yes the pro-US Indians, I had forgotten their great contribution to
>the struggle.
>
>>Louis Proyect:
>>What garbage. "Colonists" is a term that has no class meaning. It is like
>>saying that the Indians were an obstacle to the eastward expansion of
>>"Americans". 
>
>By 'class meaning' you mean lifeless formula, by virtue of which all
>history can be subsumed under the one universal truism:
>
>
>>The real story of this continent--as it is in Europe and
>>elsewhere--is a story of the ruling classes versus the underclasses. 
>
>There is an English song 'it's the rich what gets the pleasure, it's the
>poor what gets the blame, its the same the whole world over, ain't that
>a bleeding' shame'. Compared to Louis' tract, that is a triumph of
>historical analysis.
>
>
>>When I
>>get into my re-examination of American history, Native Americans and the
>>Marxist outlook, I will argue that any attempt to identify the bourgeoisie
>>with progress in its attacks on Indian land claims is deeply inimical to
>>genuine progress, in other words, socialism.
>
>And good luck to you, because I never sought to identify the bourgeois
>with progress in its attacks on Indian land claims (as though such
>claims were ever the product of native American society), only to
>understand the forces at work in the American history.
>
>But then that is your problem. You always want to rush to a position, or
>moral stance. Real facts are just raw material to reproduce the timeless
>story of the underdog. Too much meditation on historical change
>threatens to overturn your little moral universe of good and evil and
>most be short-circuited as quickly as possible. Real social classes, and
>the different social relations that sustain them are quickly merged into
>a caricature of 'rich and poor'.
>
>Fraternally
>-- 
>James Heartfield
>
>
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