How will decolonization work?
How will decolonization work?
I thought about it but I couldn't think of a proper answer.
I guess it would make the most sense to let the colonized decide what to do with the colonizers, since they are the victims.
And what would happen with the people that were brought in as slaves by the colonizers?
I hope someone smarter than me can explain 🙏🥺
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Well first of all the indigenous nations as cultural and political entities still exist and still claim territory stolen by the settlers. The majority of settler owned land will be taken back into indigenous sovereignty. Many nations including the Americans and Black people will want to use the same resources. They can share through agreements reached in decolonial states. In my prediction, these states will be confederations between the peoples that inhabit and use the lands and resources in question. Equality of nations rather than equality of individuals will necessarily be the lower stage of Decolonization where individual equality will be gained towards the higher stages as the decolonial states wither away. Africans in the Americas are nations born into world through their struggle against slavery and colonization, but we must be careful reactionary ideas such as a Black Belt state as there are indigenous nations who claim and live in that region still.
Any system where Americans exercise political supremacy over colonized groups will necessarily reproduce settler Colonial relations. There will be no reforming the American annexationist system, only the the de-fanging of their previous annexations and thus their access to further annexations and Imperialism.
I am very much in favor of decolonization but this is pure idealism and a recipe for disastrous defeat. If this is really the political platform that indigenous revolutionaries intend to adopt then there is a major risk that the settler colonists will simply decide it is safer to complete the genocide of indigenous people to the last person, as such a plan will be perceived as an existential threat. There is very little chance that the settler majority will allow itself to be turned into second class citizens in what they view as their own land. The fact that it is in fact stolen land may give indigenous people the moral high ground but it does not change the reality of which group has the numbers and the power to dominate it.
A minority cannot rule over a majority for any extended period of time and even to attempt it requires massive violence of the likes we saw in apartheid South Africa and which we are seeing today in the Zionist entity. It is why the Zionists are attempting to demographically engineer a settler majority in the stolen land. And it is a fact that indigenous people in the US are a very small minority, in fact without the allyship of other colonized nations trapped inside the US prisonhouse of nations, such as the black and latino populations, they stand almost no chance of taking even the smallest chunk of land away from the settler state due to their numbers being so small. They will simply be brutally crushed.
Any viable strategies will have to involve allyship with a portion of the settler proletariat, possibly to arrive at a model similar to that of the USSR and the Russian Federation, with national republics on specific territories where the minority nations hold a majority. This will involve population transfers, there is no other way around it if you don't want minority nations to be politically dominated by the settler majority inside these new political entities, a state of affairs which you rightly point out carries the risk of a reproduction of colonial dominance relations.
Whether or not the US as it exists today will be dissolved and experience secessions by then does not change this logic, because there is no contiguous territory in the continental US that both lacks a settler majority and is capable of supporting an independent state. In whatever states secede from the US settlers will still be a majority and the revolutionary strategy will still require involving at least a portion of them, which is only possible if enough of them perceive the revolutionary project as being also in their interest. You don't win people over by promising them that they will be politically disempowered if you win.
Instead of fantasizing about the impossible turning back of the historical clock to pre-colonial times, which, while it may feel morally righteous is not realistic as it does not take into account the material realities of the world as it exists today, i would instead start thinking more practically about how the inevitable war against the settler state will be organized. What will the political leadership structures of the revolution look like, where will the manpower, the material and the logistical support come from, how will the population that supports the revolution be fed, how will the blockades and the bombings be withstood?
You literally do not understand that the American nation "owns" 98% of the land but occupies around a quarter of it. This land is owned only for the purpose of extraction which allows Americans to live far beyond their means. This territory, the majority of territory in the US and Canada, will be taken from them. If you'd study the land question in the US you'd understand what we're talking about. This is a matter of state and sovereignty, the Americans aren't entitled to their own sovereign state, only a decolonial one. There is no point in time to return to. The conservative, reactionary position is settler sovereignty over the lands.
There is no idealism or moralism except the white guilt and entitlement, to land they don't even use, felt by settlers. The Americans are already genocidal, and we know that they will seek a final solution to their Indian and Black problem. There are tens of millions of us colonized, and there will be tens of millions of white comrades to fight with us.
Every revolution is a fight for survival. Ours has been constant.
the American nation “owns” 98% of the land but occupies around a quarter of it
I had no idea it was that low. I'm not Amerikan and don't know the details of the situation, but this sounds like a promising approach for decolonization. Has there been success in seizing/recovering those territories?
The military occupies these territories, and has since they were taken through the Indian Wars, which lasted into the late 1890s. Armed occupations of rivers in Washington State, the Wounded Knee site, and physical occupations of the DAPL and KXL pipelines and Alcatraz occurred in the 1900s and 2000s. The plains and plateau tribes put up the biggest and longest fight against the US and British through extended guerrilla campaigns because they could live off the land, especially the buffalo. The US army (consolidated after the civil war) and states sponsored settler civilians to exterminate the buffalo, killing tens of millions and driving them to near extinction where they remain today. This ended the Sioux Nation's contest with the Americans. For the Yakama in the inland PNW, if there were more than 2 Yakama males together in a group it was considered a war party and soldiers and settlers were encouraged to lynch them.
It's actually less than that. A quarter includes agriculture, where a fifth of it is sold to our colonies over seas:
Less than 6% of US land is considered developed. Let's also look at how they "developed" that land:
De-colonization is not just about people, it's about our non-human neighbors as well. If I may share a tweet of mine: https://twitter.com/probablykaffe/status/1662860482360020992?t=-px_6GplvTFzoPrXTOH9zQ&s=19
There's a level of American Exceptionism that occurs in the decolonial reaction. This myth that the Americans seriously control the vast territories within their border. They really live far beyond their means and bringing them back to balance is really the only goal we can have. Half of Americans live in single family suburbs. This is unacceptable land use and they will consolidate their space.
This sounds like it should be a very prominent point for any Amerikan communist organization. Do you know of a good source for updates on the progress of decolonial efforts?
Decolonized Buffalo is an educational working group and probably the most radical. There are extant groups of Panthers and AIM. We are really in the educational phase of needing to radicalize our families and communities. Getting CPUSA and PSL to recognize the primary contradiction. The water seems to be heating up though. There are in the ML sense spontaneous protests against the colonial conditions, but there isn't an organization that really guides these moments yet.
by what metric could u say that 60% people occupy 25% of the land cuz if its 25% of all land then thats kinda stupid like who cares what matters is what percentage of accupiable or worthwhile to occupy land they occupy like who cares if whites dont live on the mountains or in the middle of a forest almost no one lives there or is going to live there. like the other 75% of land isnt occupied by oppressed peoples its mostly not occupied at all and opressed people almost certainly occupy less land than white people because 1 they are just less and 2 most white people live in fucking suburbs why is about as inefficient as land use gets
You know that it isn't occupied because it is reserved for extractive industries right, the state gives extraction rights to private corporations. And 17% of total land is for agriculture which most of it goes over seas for food dependency imperialism or is wasted rotting in dumpsters in settler communities. Y'all don't even own that shit it is locked up by your kulaks who are direct descendants of the settlers who killed for the land. We will help you expropriate their land and we are taking most of it. 🤷🏾
1 seem like u are calling me white/american which frankly disrespectful. and 2 all that says is the corporations and rich people need to own a lot less land (non to exact) but it says nothing about the ability of opressed peoples to take and occupy that land u have been saying this statistic as if its prove indigenous people can take on the capitalists state but it just doesnt if 60% of the people in the usa can occupy only 25% of the land what makes u think less than that can occupy 75% of it. also why should a small minority of people control the majority of the land thats like the whole thing that we are against here.
If you aren't American, be a bystander then. When the Israelis become the majority after killing enough Palestinians should they get to keep their stolen land?
You have zero understanding of the American conditions. The Black and Migrants joining with the political structures of the indigenous nations alongside radicalized working class de-settlers will defeat the white supremacist system.
also why should a small minority of people control the majority of the land thats like the whole thing that we are against here.
It's their land, it was stolen. More people doesn't mean more land. You realize you're just looking to let the Americans keep their Lebensraum right? We will dismantle their Lebensraum.
im not just a by stander because while im not american i live in this shithole and idk if i get to be a citizen in your particular flavor of dystopia as it stands im fucked but im certainly not gonna support a revolution to then also be fucked at the end of it, if its people like u or capitalists, i guess im a splitter but i would much rather just a revolution led by leftists. and two because and maybe its just me but if something is morally wrong then idk im against it.
idk where this magical coalition is at, i certainly i havent seen it around and if u want indigenous supremacy (which if it is according to you their land and therefore they should rule it u clearly do) then i dont see why such a coalition would ever form.
and what makes it their land, who lives where thru out the world has been ever changing why is the rightful snapshot of territory that most be preserved for eternity 1 second before the whites arrived why not a little earlier why not a little later u makes these statements as if they are simply fact but they arent, why should land belong to whoever happen to be living at any one place 400 years ago
You keep mentioning morals as if that has shit to do with our oppression. Scientific Socialism finds solutions without bending to settler morality.
Settlers are in fact, a bourgeoisie toward the colonized peoples.
As I already said, natives are not gone, they are just silenced and deprived of their rights. What is your alternative? A settler socialism where we continue to rule only we are internally more equal? In that case you may as well be an imperialist socdem. The “magic coalition” is possible. If you read the BAR articles about “black rage” you will understand the revolutionary potential of Black USians. Fanon shows us the most oppressed are the most willing to fight. The most oppressed here are Black people, colonized peoples, and immigrants. There will be settler allies, people know capitalism and settler colonialism is messed up, especially poor white people which are greater in number than most assume. I myself am a settler ally, willing to fight for decolonization.
This is where international solidarity is required. The number of people colonized by Europeans is far far larger than the Europeans occupying the Americas. The indigenous nations of the Americas don't need to worry about being a minority when the majority of the world recognizes their sovereignty and understands that the super structural basis for that sovereignty is critical to their own. The settlers in the Americas will be dispossessed by a coalition of the global majority, not by the slowly recovering indigenous populations of Turtle Island.
That is a nice fantasy but i don't think there is any intention by anyone in the international community to get involved in internal US affairs. The US is a mess and most countries will probably prefer to just isolate the US so that it does as little damage as possible outside its own borders and let things inside play out to whatever conclusion. China's non-interventionist model is likely the one that will prevail on the international scene. A revolution that only succeeds because of outside interference is not a genuine revolution of the people and will not have long term staying power once the outside support dries up. It is up to the people inside the US to liberate themselves. Only if the revolutionary forces on the former territory of the US can establish themselves as legitimate state governments with stable borders will other countries start trading and offering material support to them.
The problem is that you're still operating on the false assumption that the settlers have a legitimate claim to be there. They do not. And the international community will trade with the black diaspora nation and the native nations and embargo the white settler nation. It's not that hard, we've been watching the US do it to minortarian bodies for decades. The tables will turn because it is in the interest of the global proletariat to turn those tables. It is actually against their interest to allow the white settlers to continue their settler state and they will see to it that the pressures exist to dismantle white sovereignty.
The fantasy is that white people on turtle island are going to be fine because they are strong, they are dominant, they are numerous, and they can sustain themselves. The reality is that white settlers will fold pretty much immediately under the weight of climate catastrophe coupled with dedollarization. And the global majority will be very clear that to alleviate the suffering they will need to abdicate their manifest destiny and deny the doctrine of discovery and establish the new super structure that disenfranchises them. If they don't, they'll suffer total collapse.
what makes anyones claim to land legitimate? imma be real with u i dont think people who lived somewhere 200+ years ago have a more legitimate claim to a place than whoever lives there right now
Indigenous people didn’t go extinct or leave. They are alive across the continent in reservations and in settler communities. I’m not defending their right moralistically, it’s materially necessary. It is settlers and the horrible land use and environmental practices inherent to settler colonialism that is driving us into the ground. The only reason we’re still existing is because immense amounts of resources stolen from the global south. If we are going to face our great environmental challenges like climate change the people who have lived here for millennia who understand how this land works will need ownership of the resources.
California has over 10x the population of Nevada. Should California be entitled to 10x the land of Nevadans? No, it's nonsense. The population of a people is dependent on the resources which they have access to. Americans are not entitled to their annexations, most of which is reserved for future exploitation while they suck the rest of the world dry.
Well yes, actually they probably should be. More people require more land. What entitles any group to land if not necessity? Why should a minority be allowed to claim for itself a majority of the land and resources? And more importantly, how? What is going to prevent the larger population from just taking what they perceive as their "fair share" (regardless whether this perception is true) of the land by force? Indigenous people were defeated before and their numbers were much greater and the material, organizational and technological advantages of the settler state was not as great back then as it is now.
The scales are even more tilted today, there is no reason to expect anything but a repeat of the previous result unless a different strategy is adopted, namely of appealing to a significant enough portion of the settler proletariat to recognize that the settler colonial state model no longer serves their best interest. The decline of capitalism is too advanced and the free lunch they got through robbing the indigenous population and expanding into their land is no longer sufficient. You described the brutal and genocidal methods that the settlers have used to beat the indigenous population into submission in the past, what do you think they would do today and how do you plan to guard against being starved out, having your crops burned, your waters poisoned and your land made uninhabitable? Because there are enough of them who would rather make sure no one can use that land if they can't have it.
It is also a very unwise thing to do to keep insisting that the settler majority is still able to benefit the same as before from maintaining the settler-colonial relations. You are in effect making the argument that their interest is best served by holding on to all of the land since that enables their system to continue. I believe this is not the case, i believe the colonized peoples have a chance to succeed today where they did not succeed in the past precisely because the conditions are such that capitalism can no longer be sustained through the same methods as before. Because it is becoming the best interest of more and more of the settler proletariat to ally with the colonized nations and to overthrow the existing socio-economic and political order. If this was not the case as you seem to imply, i would struggle to see any hope of success. People will not go against their material interests for the sake of moral righteousness.
We really don't care. Anything short of land back is genocide so we are going to fight against the reaction. The Americans are not ready to feel the frontiers again and the frontiers are ready to fight back. The US military collapses if the Black, Latino, and indigenous soldiers mutiny. I've pointed out that Americans occupy less than 25% of the lower 48. Winnable odds, much more winnable than any existing attempts of radicalizing the white workers. This country runs on us.
If population means share of land then we might as well give a fifth of the world to China.
And the Americans still benefit from settler colonialism. I pointed out Alaskan drilling and the hydro-electric battery being built on Yakama land against the tribe's wishes. Homesteading ended in the 70s and the American landlord class is made of those settlers who got free land. Americans as a people do not need or intend to live on a vast majority of the lands they own, we are taking them back.
You are in effect making the argument that their interest is best served by holding on to all of the land since that enables their system to continue.
If this was the case then what the hell would we all be doing on anti-Imperialism forums? The Americans do benefit from colonialism and imperialism. The contradictions with their Bourgeoisie are being hidden through the consumption granted by the empire. Even if the systems of oppression benefit settlers, they don't have any freedom to meet human needs. If they are content with finishing our genocide rather than working towards internationalism then let them be consumed by history.
To me that all sounds a bit too much like wishful thinking. I fear you are underestimating the strength of the settler nation and their determination to violently defend their gains. Then again, as someone who has never even been to the US i won't pretend that i know the local conditions better than those who actually live there. Maybe my analysis as an outside observer is wrong and maybe your strategy is the correct one. All i can say is good luck and i hope you succeed, that would be of great help to our struggles here on the other side of the world where the primary obstacle to our own revolutionary liberation is still the stranglehold of US imperialism.
i find it interesting that u fixate so much on the idea that americans benefit from imperialism which is true compared to non americans but i think its worth asking if most americans get more out of the systems than they are required to give to it, probably not. Either way whats really interesting is that u are absolutely convinced that poor/working class americans CAN NOT be radicalized atleast not in numbers because they have this privileged position but all people who live in the usa enjoy a privileged position compared to the global south, for example latin american people in the usa have a median income of around 35k whereas the same people earn 6 times less just across the border in Mexico and even less in other parts of latin america, same thing with black people the usa and africa or indigenous people in the usa and south america.
so then question is if white people can not be radicalize because of their benefiting from imperialism can other peoples? and if they can why not white people and what of asian people who are even more privileged than whites in the west but generally oppressed outside of the west. I just dont think that there is as little potential as u think in whites and that "anti colonial" struggles are not necessary anti capitalist or even anti imperialist
White people can absolutely be radicalized and we expect many to be. We just have higher expectations of settler communists than they currently set for themselves.
Many indigenous American households don't have running water or electricity. The extractive industries on their lands do. This is the contradiction we are talking about.