Re: Marx on Native Americans
Some of this thread reminds me of just what is wrong with our academic style. Heartfield seems adapt at appropriating some very important texts and turning them into silliness. I would like merely at this time to interject a few questions. 1. If more slaves died from disease during the Middle Passage than died from maltreatment by their slavemasters, could that justify slavery? 2. Marx did justify slavery in a world historical sense. It helped to discipline workers and to accumulate capital. Nobody in his right mind would use Marx to defend slavery. 3. The way that I read Heartfield, the following scenario would make sense. I declare myself to be smarter and better educated than he is. I with a gang of toughs go to his place, kill him or push him into destitution. With my newfound wealth, I accumulate still more. I live well and enjoy life. After I die, I have my new place turned into a university. Would my actions be justified by him. 4. He declares that the westerner farmers were proletarians escaping Eastern elites. The cost of a homestead was about $1500. Few proles had that type of money. Most western farmers were previously eastern farmers. In the Great Lakes area, you did have quite a few Scandanavian immigrant farmers. But other than that, Heartfield needs something more stable. 5. Heartfield, like slavery and the conquest of the Indians, may have served a positive purpose by setting off an interesting thread, by his recent responses now seem predictable and so serve little purpose. Written hastily under jet lag, -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Louis Proyect wrote: 1) Dee Brown -- Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee > 2) Peter Mathiessen -- In the Spirit of Crazy Horse > 3) Peter Mathiessen -- Indian Country Matthiessen, Peter [2 t's also wrote, at least I thought it was him, maybe someone else can correct me] a book with a title with "the rise and fall". In any case, it panoramically began with the groups from Mass. and moved out west, showing the great differences in the lives and cultures of the various tribes. After reading that book, I never felt comfortable generalizing about the customs and mores of all those disparate people. I seemed like luming the indigeneous people of Algeria with those of present day South Africa. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Doug, You might want to look at: Klein, Laura & Lilian Ackerman (eds.) Women and Power in Native North America (1995 Norman, OK) Bernstein, David J. Prehistoric Subsistence on the Southern New England Coast (1993 San Diego) Simmons, Wm. S. The Narragansett (1989 NY) Sharer, Robert The Ancient Maya (5th ed. 1994) Wallace, Anthony F. C. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (1969) Gerald Sider who is an anthropologist at CUNY Grad Center has written an interesting book about the Lumbee Indians who were/are attempting to be recognized as an official tribe by the US government. It is: Sider, Gerald Lumbee Indian Histories: Race, Ethnicity and Indian Identity in the Southern U.S. (1993 NY) The University of Oklahoma publishes quite a bit about the Indians of North and Meso-America. They probably have a web page. Good luck, Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, 5 Jan 1998, Doug Henwood wrote: > Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about > their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about > their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? > > Doug > > >
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Louise Erdrich. Great author. Wonderful insights. Love Medicine is the second title. Sid > > I liked "Bingo Palace". I can't remember the woman's name who wrote it, she > also wrote Heart Medicine? (or Love Medicine?) or something like that and > "Beets... something" I know it's very current, were you looking for olden > days stories? I'll dig you up a better reference if you don't mind reading > about living people. Ellen > > >Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about > >their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about > >their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? > > > >Doug > > >
Re: Marx on Native Americans
I liked "Bingo Palace". I can't remember the woman's name who wrote it, she also wrote Heart Medicine? (or Love Medicine?) or something like that and "Beets... something" I know it's very current, were you looking for olden days stories? I'll dig you up a better reference if you don't mind reading about living people. Ellen >Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about >their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about >their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? > >Doug
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? Doug
Re: Marx on Native Americans
See the book edited by Annette James, "The State of Native America". It was published by South End press in 1992 or 1993. there ar many excellent articles dealing with land, fishing rights, water, governance, and resistance. On Mon, 5 Jan 1998, Doug Henwood wrote: > Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about > their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about > their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? > > Doug > > >
Re: Marx on Native Americans
On Mon, January 5, 1998 at 13:23:13 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: >Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about >their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about >their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? You might try: Alvin M. Josephy, Jr (ed.). *America In 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus*. Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Bill
Re: Marx on Native Americans
> Received: from MAILQUEUE by OOI (Mercury 1.21); 5 Jan 98 10:27:35 +800 > Return-path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > 5 Jan 98 10:27:25 +800 > Received: from host (localhost [127.0.0.1]) > Mon, 5 Jan 1998 10:26:37 -0800 (PST) > Received: from mail1.panix.com (mail1.panix.com [198.7.0.32]) > for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Mon, 5 Jan 1998 10:22:40 -0800 (PST) > Received: from [166.84.250.86] (dhenwood.dialup.access.net [166.84.250.86]) > for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Mon, 5 Jan 1998 13:22:56 -0500 (EST) > Message-Id: > Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 13:23:13 -0500 > Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > From: Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Marx on Native Americans > In-Reply-To: > References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Mime-Version: 1.0 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN > X-PMFLAGS: 34078848 > > Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about > their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about > their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? > > Doug Perhaps take a look at Jack Weatherford's "Native Roots" and "Indian Givers". Jim *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Re: Marx on Native Americans
> Doug Henwood wrote: > > > > Can anyone recommend anything good to read on Native Americans/Indians? > I found Ronald Wright's _Stolen Continents_ a real education. His account of the Spanish conquest is incredible. If I remember correctly, Wright estimates that 9/10s of the Indian population died from new diseases before the actual military conquest occurred. New research on the (much later) contact here along the Fraser River in B.C. also suggests that 9 out of 10 died in smallpox epidemics (previous research had estimated death rates of about 25%). Such estimates have real political importance, particularly in light of the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision that Indians DO have title to much of the land mass of Canada (including most of BC), and establishing continuous occupation and use as one of the criteria for proving title. I look forward to more discussion of the alliances between Indians and the French and British and Americans against each other. Any effort to paint Indians as reactionary for lining up with the British against the Americans is surely out of line. I happened to go to a high school named after the Indian leader Tecumseh, who provided the majority of the actual fighting forces on the British side in the war of 1812, but who was abandoned in battle and killed, and the British promises to provide land for his fighters were, of course, never honored. But they didn't tell us about that in high school! Canadian marxist historian Stanley Ryerson quotes an 18th century historian about the Iroqois strategy: "to hold the scale evenly balanced betwen the two [white] nations, whose mututal jealosy the Iroqois sought by both and ensured their safety". Similarly, he quotes a New York official of the alliances in the earlier French period: "To preserve a balance between us and the French is the great ruling principle of modern Indian politics." Bill Burgess
Re: Marx on Native Americans -Reply
There was a book in the late 70s or early 80s called KEEPERS OF THE GAME by an anthropologist (Calvin ???) whose last name I cannot remember. He makes a very interesting and HIGHLY controversial argument about how the tribes in the northeast and northwest (that is, what we now refer to as the Midwest) had no "scientific" way to explain the diseases brought by the Europeans (Dutch, French, English, others) were striking down their populations. They reasoned that their gods were angry at them and they sought revenge against animals whom they thought were the channels for disease. This confluence of interpretations coincided with the extinction and near extinction of many species (e.g., beaver, mink) through their increased hunting for the fur trade. We're probably talking mid- to late-18th century in North America. This book was really controversial. It is well-argued and documented, but there are some leaps that the author had to explain and document. I don't remember what consensus emerged from the brouhaha. One major objection was that it really takes the gloss off of the image of Native Americans as somehow more spiritual and loving stewards of the natural world. It was, after all, as the book shows, Indian warriors and hunters who showed the European fur traders where the habitats of these animals were and helped kill them. In California, disease (venereal, and small pox among them) was also believed to cause an 80 percent drop in the populations of the California tribes in the 50 years subsequent to the arrival of the Spaniards in the late 18th Century. That stat is my recollection; it was incredible the impact of disease here though. My (recalled) source on that is Sherburne Cooke's book on the California Indians from the 1940s. This was also true of Cortez' conquest of Aztec Tenochtitlan too, and Pizarro's conquest of the Incas. The native peoples on both continents had no immune defenses against the critters the Europeans brought. Same with Hawai'i when contacted in the late 18th Century by Captain Cook, particularly with sexually transmitted diseases. The list is a long, sad one.
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Doug Henwood wrote: > > Can anyone recommend anything good to read on Native Americans/Indians? Ward Churchill is about as much native american as most white radicals can handle. He has written much to challenge white radicals' views and stands on native american issues. I always find his writings insightful and provocative. I usually agree with him more than most of my white progressive friends do. I by no means always agree with him. He has written books for South End Press and Common Courage Press and others over the past 15 years. He has also published some challenging pieces in Z Magazine from time to time. He writes much more extensively for a variety of indigenous publications. I think his first book with South End Press was titled Marxism and Native Americans.
Re: Marx on Native Americans
A comment on this thread, from near Zimbabwe: > Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 10:56:43 + > Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Louis: > >These questions are popping up everywhere in the world today. The NY Times > >reported that Mugabe is threatening to finally expropriate the rich white > >settlers and give the land to the land-based Zimbabweans. The whites > >complain about the injustice that is about to be done to them. Poor dears, > >where will they go... James: > Quite different questions altogether. In Zimbabwe land-ownership and the > displacement of blacks is a social condition of their exploitation at > the hands of white farmers today. There property in land is the > instrument of exploiting black labour in the here and now, not an > historical question.. Comrades the sad reality is that Mugabe is not going to give the 1400 farms (mostly white-owned) designated for redistribution recently to the landstarved peasants. His Agriculture Minister, Kumbirai Kangai, announced on radio last month that rich folk -- he specifically mentioned government ministers -- will be the prime beneficiaries as they are the ones he deems capable of running the giant farms. Some designated farms are clearly just political spoils. One (Simukai) is run by a reknowned left cooperative that came from the minority Ndebele tribe's liberation army and represents the country's most advanced form of searching for new agrarian relations of production. Another is run by a friend of mine in the eastern region of the country, a white hippy from old Rhodesian stock who married a black woman, and whose 60 acre farm has 40 acres of steep mountain land, 10 acres of arable veg garden and 10 acres of minefield since it borders Mozambique and the Rhodesian army lost track of where it laid mines. Anyhow to illustrate the silliness, this place was designated, for the sole apparent reason is that it is extremely good terrain for smuggling goods (especially grass) from Mozambique (there are a couple of safe trails across the mine field). The local political bureaucrats who made the call had no other obvious reason. My bet is that in any case Mugabe doesn't follow through with more than 20% of these because even giving only partial compensation to the owners (on buildings not land), his treasury is bust. There is general chaos in Zimbabwe (I spent much of last month there, completing a book out soon.) The central bank upped the interest rate 6% in Nov-Dec, the currency fell 55% against the US$, the stock market is down 45% since August and now the land market is paralysed. All of this is structural, of course, a reflection of the damage done by Mugabe's orthodox structural adjustment policies, the failure of which he's now trying to distract his citizens from through another round of populist posturing. 17 years too late on land reform, and it won't even happen. The good news is that on Red Tuesday, December 9, more than a million Zimbabweans joined a stay-away and tens of thousands participated in street protests in all the major centres. This was a trade union-led protest against increased taxes to pay for liberation war veteran pensions, but in fact had a very progressive content against Mugabe's overall patronage-tinged neoliberalism. The police responded by bashing Harare protesters as well as thousands of bystanders; the trade union leader -- quite a tough leftist, Morgan Tsvangirai -- was beat up the next day at his office; and the scene is now set for some form of (probably half-assed) popular front political party challenge to ZANU in 2000. The land designation will cost a couple or more GDP points next year and probably in '99 if it really gets even partially implemented, but won't make any other dent in social relations (the minister-farmers are not great as baases); there's lots more interesting stuff in Zim that bears watching and solidarity. Patrick Bond HOME:WORK: 51 Somerset Road University of the Witwatersrand Kensington 2094 Graduate School of Public and Johannesburg, South Africa Development Management Phone: (2711) 614-80882 St.David's Road, Parktown E-mails: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Work phone: (2711) 488-5700 Fax: (2711) 484-2729
Re: Marx on Native Americans
On Sun, January 4, 1998 at 15:17:35 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: >Can anyone recommend anything good to read on Native Americans/Indians? > >I notice lots of people here & on the Spoons Marxism lists using "Indians." >Is "Native American" just not sticking? Here are some I have found helpful: Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall. *Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement*. South End Press, 1990. Ward Churchill. *Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema and the Colonization of American Indians*. Common Courage Press, 1992. Ward Churchill. *Indians Are Us?: Culture and Genocide in Native North America*. Common Courage Press, 1994. Vine Deloria, Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle. *American Indians, American Justice*. University of Texas Press, 1983. Richard Drinnon. *Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building*. Schocken Books, 1990 [1980]. Francis Jennings. *The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest*. W. W. Norton and Company, 1975. Francis Jennings. *The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies*. W. W. Norton and Company, 1984. Francis Jennings. *Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America*. W. W. Norton and Company, 1988. Hans Koning. *The Conquest of America: How the Indian Nations Lost Their Continent*. Monthly Review Press, 1993. Francis Jennings. *The Founders of America: From the Earliest Migrations to the Present*. W. W. Norton and Company, 1993. David E. Stannard. *American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World*. Oxford University Press, 1992. Russell Thornton. *American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population Survey Since 1492*. University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. Tzvetan Todorov. *The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other*. Harper Perennial, 1984 [1982]. Bill
Re: Marx on Native Americans
At 03:17 PM 1/4/98 -0500, you wrote: >Can anyone recommend anything good to read on Native Americans/Indians? > >I notice lots of people here & on the Spoons Marxism lists using "Indians." >Is "Native American" just not sticking? > >Doug 1) Dee Brown -- Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee 2) Peter Mathiessen -- In the Spirit of Crazy Horse 3) Peter Mathiessen -- Indian Country 4) Vine Deloria Jr. -- Custer Died For Your Sins 5) Ward Churchill-- From a Native Son, selected essays in indigenism, 1985-1995 All of these are in print. I suspect that Indian is the term that has the most common usage without any "PC" implications one way or the other. Louis Proyect
Re: Marx on Native Americans
James Michael Craven wrote: >The point is that the robbing of territory, displacement of Indians >and genocide idicted Capitalisms own private property institutions >and legal criteria for establishing "ownership". On the basis of what >has been done to Indians, presumably anyone with a bigger gun and who >is more ruthless can effectively take over, hold, maintain and make >nominal improvements of someone else's territory and call it "land" >and then call it "privately owned" land and generic private property. If I'm remembering correctly, James Blaut says in The Colonizer's Model of the World (Guilford, a couple of years ago) that European diseases killed many more indigenous North and South Americans than European guns. Blaut writes with great confidence - is this a controversial claim at all? Doug
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Can anyone recommend anything good to read on Native Americans/Indians? I notice lots of people here & on the Spoons Marxism lists using "Indians." Is "Native American" just not sticking? Doug
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Blaut made the memorable statement that indigenous people weren't conquered -- they were _infested_! (This drew a hearty laugh from a Guatemalan friend of mine.) Sid > > If I'm remembering correctly, James Blaut says in The Colonizer's Model of > the World (Guilford, a couple of years ago) that European diseases killed > many more indigenous North and South Americans than European guns. Blaut > writes with great confidence - is this a controversial claim at all? > > Doug > > > >
Re: Marx on Native Americans
> Received: from MAILQUEUE by OOI (Mercury 1.21); 4 Jan 98 12:57:12 +800 > Return-path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > 4 Jan 98 12:57:04 +800 > Received: from host (localhost [127.0.0.1]) > Sun, 4 Jan 1998 12:56:15 -0800 (PST) > Received: from mailhub2.cc.columbia.edu (mailhub2.cc.columbia.edu [128.59.35.16]) > for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Sun, 4 Jan 1998 12:51:18 -0800 (PST) > Received: from My_Dell.columbia.edu (dialup-23-2.cc.columbia.edu [128.59.47.102]) > for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Sun, 4 Jan 1998 15:51:36 -0500 (EST) > Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Sun, 04 Jan 1998 15:46:24 -0500 > Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Marx on Native Americans > In-Reply-To: > References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Mime-Version: 1.0 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN > X-PMFLAGS: 34078848 > > At 03:17 PM 1/4/98 -0500, you wrote: > >Can anyone recommend anything good to read on Native Americans/Indians? > > > >I notice lots of people here & on the Spoons Marxism lists using "Indians." > >Is "Native American" just not sticking? > > > >Doug > > 1) Dee Brown -- Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee > 2) Peter Mathiessen -- In the Spirit of Crazy Horse > 3) Peter Mathiessen -- Indian Country > 4) Vine Deloria Jr. -- Custer Died For Your Sins > 5) Ward Churchill-- From a Native Son, selected essays in indigenism, > 1985-1995 > > All of these are in print. I suspect that Indian is the term that has the > most common usage without any "PC" implications one way or the other. > > Louis Proyect > Follow-up: Indians were not even made (de jure) American citizens until 1924. In Arizona, Indians could not vote until 1958. Many Indians see "Native Americans" as a term that gives some focus to being part of a nation that was formed well after their ancestors came and lived here--a nation that did not bother to include them as citizens until 1924 and still does not include them as citizens (do we have a Bureau of Caucasian Affairs or even a Bureau of African- American Affairs? Further, there was no referendum among Indians as to whether they wanted to be summarily declared to be American citizens in 1924. Those who use the term American Indian mean an Indian of what is now called the Americas. So Indians of South America are also referred to as American Indians by those Indians who use the term Indian or American Indian---it does not mean an Indian in/of the United States of America; nor does it mean Indian-American like Italian-American or even African-American. With this background in mind, perhaps there is indeed a big difference between the term "Native American" and Indian or even American Indian. Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Re: Marx on Native Americans
> Received: from MAILQUEUE by OOI (Mercury 1.21); 4 Jan 98 12:18:39 +800 > Return-path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > 4 Jan 98 12:18:30 +800 > Received: from host (localhost [127.0.0.1]) > Sun, 4 Jan 1998 12:17:54 -0800 (PST) > Received: from mail1.panix.com (mail1.panix.com [198.7.0.32]) > for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Sun, 4 Jan 1998 12:17:04 -0800 (PST) > Received: from [166.84.250.86] (dhenwood.dialup.access.net [166.84.250.86]) > Sun, 4 Jan 1998 15:17:20 -0500 (EST) > Message-Id: > Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 15:17:35 -0500 > Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > From: Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: Marx on Native Americans > In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Mime-Version: 1.0 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN > X-PMFLAGS: 34078848 > > Can anyone recommend anything good to read on Native Americans/Indians? > > I notice lots of people here & on the Spoons Marxism lists using "Indians." > Is "Native American" just not sticking? > > Doug The myth goes that the term "Indian" came from Columbus who thought he had hit "India". Pure crap. In the 15th Century there was no such thing as "India" as what is now called India (in Hindi Bharatha) was a collection of Maharaja-run "states" and regions. The term Indian actually came from In Dios when Columbus referred to indigenous peoples as La Hiente In Dios (People with God) as he wrote that the indigenous peoples were warm and loving and easy to trick, control, enslave, steal from etc (Diaries of Columbus). Check out "Rethinking Columbus: Teaching About the 500th Anniversary of Columbus's Arrival in America" by Rethinking Schools Ltd or Jack Weatherford's "Native Roots" and "Indian Givers" or for basic chronologies Judith Nies Chronology of Native American History. Many non-Indians and some Indians use "Native American" while others see "Native American" as a somewhat solicitous, perhaps well meaning but nonetheless rather patronizing term. I can tell you that on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, the term "Native American" is rarely if ever used--the term is American Indian just as in the American Indian Movement rather than Native American Movement. It is sort of like "people of color" may or may not be used for nefarious and ahistorical purposes. On the issue of numbers of Indians killed by diseases as opposes to guns and other methods, on what basis does this author make this assertion. I have a copy of a 1755 Proclamation from William Hirley, Governor-General of the Massachusetts Bay Colony offering 40 pounds for the scalp of an adult Indian male and 20 pounds for the scalp of an Indian woman or child (scalping goes back to ancient Greece) and there is so much evidence of deliberate, calculated genocide through very overt and brutal means. Even on the issue of diseases, there is so much evidence of infected goods being deliberately held and used for trade with Indians, of conscious awareness of diseases to which Indians were not resistant etc. By the way, anything on the issue of the Blackfeet National Bank, the IRS and the U.S. Government. I will resend the original post to remind people of the many ways--including through "commerce", "law", the "tax code" etc that genocide can still go on under new banners and facades. Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Response: Even granted that Indians did not historically have a concept of private ownership of land or institutions of private property governing establishing basis of legitimacy of ownership of land, capitalist society does and from the standpoint of the core criteria and values for establishing legitimate ownership, Indians "owned" the land on they clearly and provably occupied and improved as much as any homesteaders granted title on the basis of occupancy and improvement. The point is that the robbing of territory, displacement of Indians and genocide idicted Capitalisms own private property institutions and legal criteria for establishing "ownership". On the basis of what has been done to Indians, presumably anyone with a bigger gun and who is more ruthless can effectively take over, hold, maintain and make nominal improvements of someone else's territory and call it "land" and then call it "privately owned" land and generic private property. The contradictions between the professed and de jure core values, institutions and ideals of capitalism versus the real or de facto practices, institutions, ideals and power relations--as manifested throughout the whole history of the U.S.--leads to pseudo palliatives like the BIA and reservations otherwise the whole basis of the system --private property is what it is historically based on and how it is ususally acquired: theft-- lies naked and exposed. Jim Craven > > Heartfield: > >The Native Americans were slaughtered, not robbed. Property rights are > >alien to native American culture. > > > > The American Indians did not have a concept of land ownership like Donald > Trump's, but they certainly did have a concept of territoriality. > Heartfield is aware of this, I'm sure, since he has been anxious to remind > us of the intermittent wars between various tribes, who fought over hunting > grounds typically. > > Both the American government and the tribes understood the territorial > rights of the Indians, since the evidence of such an agreement can be found > in the myriad of treaties that they hammered out and which the whites > betrayed over and over again. Heartfield hates these treaties as much as > the capitalist class did and finds all sorts of "Marxist" reasons to throw > them into a bonfire and piss on them while they burn. But they were based > on law and were not at all "fictional." The Supreme Court of the United > States and state supreme courts are called upon to adjudicate them > constantly. All these cases involve land claims made by Indians on the > basis of various treaties. Like them or not, they are real, not fictional. > > In 1851 the Cheyennes, Arapahos, Sioux, Crows and other tribes met at Fort > Laramie with US officials and hammered out an agreement that would allow > roads and military posts across their territory. The treaty did not > relinquish any rights or claims to the land and guaranteed the Indians > hunting and fishing rights. > > In the following decade gold was discovered and miners flooded into the > territory. Little Raven, an Arapaho chief, told them that they could keep > all the gold they found since the Indians had no use for it, but he also > reminded them that the land belonged to the Indians. > > Unfortunately the Indians' generosity did not assuage the greed of the > American capitalist class. The treaty of 1851 was subverted through a > provocation by the capitalist government. A single rancher's cow was > slaughtered by a Minneconjou Sioux and the rancher demanded compensation > all out of proportion to the value of the cow. When the tribe resisted > payment, the cavalry attacked. The ensuing wars had nothing to do with > revenge, but desire for material gain. The Indians stood in the way of > maximum exploitation of the land. Specifically, buffalo-hunting and > cattle-ranching were mutually exclusive "means of production." The > territoriality of the Indian tribes had to be overcome through force and > violence. It was an act of theft. General George Cook, the most renowned of > the campaigners against the Indian, said, "Greed and avarice on the part of > the whites--in other words, the almighty dollar, is at the bottom of all > our Indian troubles." > > A new treaty was signed during the Civil War which would permit the > railroad to be built through Indian territory. This treaty was violated, > just as the 1851 treaty was violated. Northern troops launched an > unprovoked attack on a Sand Creek, Colorado encampment and slaughtered 300 > sleeping Cheyennes. The troops returned to Denver with the Indian scalps. > > This raid provoked a general conflagration on the Plains territories. With > the end of the Civil War, the US ruling class was now able to concentrate > its fire on the Indians who were an impediment to the untrammeled > capitalist growth that Heartfield is so in love with. Black Kettle, the > chief of the Cheyennes, tried v
Re: Marx on Native Americans
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >The law that ceded tens of thousands of >acreage to the Seminoles in 1938 I see. As Marcel Marien said of the Belgian Resistance, native land rights came 'after the war'. I don't really see how a law passed in 1938 changes the fact that Indian treaties afforded no protection against the slaughter of the latter half of the nineteenth century. >was passed by a left-wing Congress that >reflected enormous yearnings for social justice in the US in the general >population. This is, to say the least, a generous interpretation of the New Deal. Paul Mattick argues that the New Deal was the product of a peculiarly low level of class consciousness, that it involved the militarisation of labour - he could have added the destruction of truck farming that disposessed a million Southern Blacks (Economics, Politics and the Age of Inflation, Merlin, 1980). Rather than looking at the ostensible reason for the passing of land to the Seminole, this land transfer should be understood in terms of the Roosevelt administration's more general land policy, under which many tracts of undeveloped land were given away, as in Washington state, for example, to sustain the monopoly of land. >There were sharp lawyers like William Kunstler who fought for >such Indian claims in the courts protected by treaties or law throughout >the 1970s. Again, the key to the revitalisation of land claims in the seventies is to be found in the times themselves, not in any innate character of Indian land claims. These were the vessel through which a quite new kind of struggle was being fought, effectively the beginning of identity politics in the US. Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Again it is difficult to talk sense into Louis when accusations like FBI membership collusion with genocide and other emotionalism is in the air, but here goes. In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >The American Indians did not have a concept of land ownership like Donald >Trump's, but they certainly did have a concept of territoriality. >Heartfield is aware of this, I'm sure, since he has been anxious to remind >us of the intermittent wars between various tribes, who fought over hunting >grounds typically. Not quite. Territoriality is a long way from property. The wars amongst native Americans were not *over* anything. As kinship groups they were irresolutely hostile. It is just ahistorical to read capitalist competition back into these societies. > >Both the American government and the tribes understood the territorial >rights of the Indians, since the evidence of such an agreement can be found >in the myriad of treaties that they hammered out and which the whites >betrayed over and over again. This is just surreal. Louyis should ask why the US govt. like the British govt. before it recognised native American land rights. Was this some love of justice on their part? In all other respects native Americans were denied the basic civil liberties of US citizens. So why should the US courts suddenly reverse their position and embrace native Americans as legal subjects? Only the most naive would be taken in by this charade. The so-called treaties (in fact unilateral impositions by the more powerful force) only negotiated the retreat of the Indian tribes. Their terms were onerous. The 'property' that they granted was not property in any sense enjoyed by US citizens. It was not theirs to dispose. On the contrary. These treaties weere ghettoes, as their degeneration into 'reservations' for the management of native Americans by 'Indian Agents', like Custer, who were appointed to 'manage' this property on their behalf. It is difficult to imagine a more fictitious land title than that granted to native American tribes. That much is forcefully demonstrated by the ease with which these treaties were unilaterally overturned by the US govt. The sense in which the US govt. >understood the territorial >rights of the Indians Is explained by Louis himself >The treaty of 1851 was subverted through a >provocation by the capitalist government. >This treaty was violated, >just as the 1851 treaty was violated. >the US Cavalry >attacked at dawn, slaughtering 150 poorly armed Indians. The architect of >this "victory" was Indian agent under the treaties > George Custer. >Heartfield hates these treaties as much as >the capitalist class did and finds all sorts of "Marxist" reasons to throw >them into a bonfire and piss on them while they burn. Again, I neither hate nor love the treaties. They are there, and they ought to be understood. > But they were based >on law and were not at all "fictional." Touching faith in the law. >The Supreme Court of the United >States and state supreme courts are called upon to adjudicate them >constantly. All power to the Supreme Court >All these cases involve land claims made by Indians on the >basis of various treaties. Like them or not, neither - like has nothing to do with it >they are real, not fictional. And yet, strangely, afforded native Americans no protection whatsoever against the invasion of these lands and the slaughter of their inhabitants. Native American land rights proved about as 'real' as the rights of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. As to the honouring of these treaties today, what role exactly does land ownership play in socialism? -- James Heartfield
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Heartfield: >And yet, strangely, afforded native Americans no protection whatsoever >against the invasion of these lands and the slaughter of their >inhabitants. Native American land rights proved about as 'real' as the >rights of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is baloney. Native American land rights are protected by law. The Nazi government acted above the law. The law that ceded tens of thousands of acreage to the Seminoles in 1938 was passed by a left-wing Congress that reflected enormous yearnings for social justice in the US in the general population. There were sharp lawyers like William Kunstler who fought for such Indian claims in the courts protected by treaties or law throughout the 1970s. In 1943 nobody could take the German government to court for violating Jewish property rights. In the 1970s the radical movement petitioned, rallied, marched and sat-in for Indian land claims. By the 1940s the radical movement had been already been exterminated in Germany. Heartfield's historical analogies are the product of ignorance and fanatacism, a deadly combination. The reason that Heartfield wants to lump the Indians with the Jews is that he is anxious to portray their struggle as futile. Since 60 percent of all energy reserves are on Indian reservations today--particularly on the Hopi lands which are rich in coal--it is urgent that Indian self-determination be undermined to make way for capitalist exploitation of the land. Pressures from right-wing ideologues like Rush Limbaugh and their "Marxist" cousins in Great Britain is intense. I plan to deal with the energy question at some length in a couple of weeks. It is vital to understanding the struggle of Native American peoples today. Louis Proyect
Re: Marx on Native Americans
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes > What we differ on is the substantial question of social >justice. You side with the land thieves, I side with the victims. You confuse questions of history with questions of policy. I'm not taking sides with anyone in history because it has already happened and cannot be reversed. History for me is first a question of the truth, not of striking moral poses. I want to understand how things change, you want to kid yourself that nothing ever changes. > >(quoting Marx) >>How, then, to heal the anti-capitalist cancer of the colonies? ... Let >>the Government put upon virgin soil an artificial price, independent of >>the law of supply and demand, a price tht compels the immigrant to work >>for a long time for wages before he can earn enough to buy land and turn >>himself into an independent peasant.' p721-2. L&W ed. > >Virgin soil? Yes, I've heard this before. What was Zionism after all: Hmmm. So now Marx is a Zionist. I've heard that one before. > A >people without land looking for a land without people. It doesn't matter if >Marx used the term "virgin soil." This does not make it right, for god's >sake. Right does not come into it. It happened. It cannot be undone. Unless of course your appeal to God almighty is less rhetorical than I think. >It was a barbaric misrepresentation of American civilization. The >Native Americans were living here minding their own business and colonial >settlers stole their land. Like Ricardo who thought that the cavemen consulted the stock exchange before exchanging fish and furs, you have native Americans doing business and owning land - but you cannot steal what was never owned. Strip away the property fetish if you want to understand what happened. The Native Americans were slaughtered, not robbed. Property rights are alien to native American culture. >And you apologize for this by quoting the more >unfortunate aspects of Marx and Engels. I'm not apologising for anything. Nor were Marx and Engels, who you finally appreciate shared none of your moralistic fervour, but preferred a scientific understanding of history, without the hystrionics. >The most blood-stained settler state in the world is the >USA and the Seminoles et al, and African-Americans deserve restitution. It >is really not an issue that can solved in the state of Florida by itself. >It has to be settled on a national and global level. > No Seminole has asked for the state of Florida to >be returned, by the way. Then it was a bit premature of you to offer it to them. >These questions are popping up everywhere in the world today. The NY Times >reported that Mugabe is threatening to finally expropriate the rich white >settlers and give the land to the land-based Zimbabweans. The whites >complain about the injustice that is about to be done to them. Poor dears, >where will they go. Israelis have from the day of the birth of their >nation constructed a wagon-circling ideology directed at the Palestinians >who want to "drive them into the sea." Settler states have accounts to pay >and that's that. Quite different questions altogether. In Zimbabwe land-ownership and the displacement of blacks is a social condition of their exploitation at the hands of white farmers today. There property in land is the instrument of exploiting black labour in the here and now, not an historical question. In Israel, the principle motor of the Zionist occupation is political: the subordination of the Arab people as a whole. Opposition to Israel is a question of the self determination of the Palestinian people. Within Palestine the land question is more traditional in the sense that Israel has become dependent on Palestinian workers - but even there the principle motives for settlement are political control, rather than economic exploitation. Needless to say, the United States in no sense resembles a settler state like Zimbabwe or Israel, since native Americans do not constitute the exploited class in the US. No matter to Louis, for whom understanding the specificity of distinctive historical periods is just a distraction from the true lesson of history: nothing ever changes. -- James Heartfield
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Heartfield: >The Native Americans were slaughtered, not robbed. Property rights are >alien to native American culture. > The American Indians did not have a concept of land ownership like Donald Trump's, but they certainly did have a concept of territoriality. Heartfield is aware of this, I'm sure, since he has been anxious to remind us of the intermittent wars between various tribes, who fought over hunting grounds typically. Both the American government and the tribes understood the territorial rights of the Indians, since the evidence of such an agreement can be found in the myriad of treaties that they hammered out and which the whites betrayed over and over again. Heartfield hates these treaties as much as the capitalist class did and finds all sorts of "Marxist" reasons to throw them into a bonfire and piss on them while they burn. But they were based on law and were not at all "fictional." The Supreme Court of the United States and state supreme courts are called upon to adjudicate them constantly. All these cases involve land claims made by Indians on the basis of various treaties. Like them or not, they are real, not fictional. In 1851 the Cheyennes, Arapahos, Sioux, Crows and other tribes met at Fort Laramie with US officials and hammered out an agreement that would allow roads and military posts across their territory. The treaty did not relinquish any rights or claims to the land and guaranteed the Indians hunting and fishing rights. In the following decade gold was discovered and miners flooded into the territory. Little Raven, an Arapaho chief, told them that they could keep all the gold they found since the Indians had no use for it, but he also reminded them that the land belonged to the Indians. Unfortunately the Indians' generosity did not assuage the greed of the American capitalist class. The treaty of 1851 was subverted through a provocation by the capitalist government. A single rancher's cow was slaughtered by a Minneconjou Sioux and the rancher demanded compensation all out of proportion to the value of the cow. When the tribe resisted payment, the cavalry attacked. The ensuing wars had nothing to do with revenge, but desire for material gain. The Indians stood in the way of maximum exploitation of the land. Specifically, buffalo-hunting and cattle-ranching were mutually exclusive "means of production." The territoriality of the Indian tribes had to be overcome through force and violence. It was an act of theft. General George Cook, the most renowned of the campaigners against the Indian, said, "Greed and avarice on the part of the whites--in other words, the almighty dollar, is at the bottom of all our Indian troubles." A new treaty was signed during the Civil War which would permit the railroad to be built through Indian territory. This treaty was violated, just as the 1851 treaty was violated. Northern troops launched an unprovoked attack on a Sand Creek, Colorado encampment and slaughtered 300 sleeping Cheyennes. The troops returned to Denver with the Indian scalps. This raid provoked a general conflagration on the Plains territories. With the end of the Civil War, the US ruling class was now able to concentrate its fire on the Indians who were an impediment to the untrammeled capitalist growth that Heartfield is so in love with. Black Kettle, the chief of the Cheyennes, tried vainly to accommodate to the armed might of the bourgeoisie, but they answered with sword and bullet. The Cheyennes were camped on the Washita River in the Autumn of 1868 when the US Cavalry attacked at dawn, slaughtering 150 poorly armed Indians. The architect of this "victory" was George Custer. One of the tribes in the great anti-Washington coalition was the Oglala Sioux, whose leader Red Cloud won a significant victory. He besieged forts that were built to protect gold mining and other commercial ventures in the northern Plains states and which the cavalry was forced to abandon. Red Cloud hammered out a treaty with the US government in 1868 in which Washington reserved the Black Hills in perpetuity for the Sioux. This agreement and American failure to live up to it is at the bottom of a struggle that defines the modern Indian struggle. Red Cloud's war, Sitting Bull's subsequent victory over the murdering scum George Custer at Little Big Horn, were factors in Indian power and self-determination. Arrayed against this are the lust for profits that collide with Indian rights. This clash explains the revolt at the Wounded Knee reservation in the early 1970s which will be the subject of my next post. This is not ancient history. Furthermore, I will make the case that the radical movement was correct in siding with the American Indian Movement and not the FBI, whose Heartfield's loyalties are with presumably. After all, the FBI was there to suppress a bunch of primitive, atavistic savages who stood in the way of "progress" and "civilization". How can you drain every last bit of mineral wealth from
Re: Marx on Native Americans
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes > Over here much more rigor is >necessary. and then >It is the genocidal exploitation of Native Americans and African >slaves that made US capitalism possible. I was unaware of the exploitation of Native Americans in the North. One might have thought that reservations and genocide made exploitation impossible, but perhaps in your scientific rigour you have discovered some new form of exploitation. >Surely your Oxford education can do better than this. Flattered as I am by the praise, I must admit I don't have an Oxford education. > >Meanwhile, there's nothing you wrote that I find worth commenting on except >one small item. You ask me how American landlords transformed themselves >into a bourgeoisie without a struggle?My suggestion is that you take a >look at Part 8 of Volume One of Capital, "The Secret of Primitive >Accumulation" for an answer. Might I suggest that you read Marx on the American Civil War (collected works, vol 19) for a full appreciation of the conflict between the plantocracy and the Northern Capitalists, and that the most useful chapter of part eight of Capital volume one would be ch 23, The Modern Theory of Colonisation, in which Marx explains the importance of a monopoly of land (ie means of subsistence) to the maintenance of Capitalist social relations): Citing Wakefield's complaint about the lack of subservience amongst US workers: "The labourers most distinctly decline to allow the capitalist to abstain from the payment of the greater part of their labour. It avails him nothing, if he is so cunning as to import from Europe, with his own Capital, his own wage-workers. They soon 'cease ... to be labourers for hire; they ... become independent landowners, if not competitors with their former masters in the labour-market.' Think of the horror! [Then citing Merivale] 'In ancient civilised countries the labourr, though free, is by a law of Nature dependent on capitalists; in colonies this dependence must be created by artificial means.'" How, then, to heal the anti-capitalist cancer of the colonies? ... Let the Government put upon virgin soil an artificial price, independent of the law of supply and demand, a price tht compels the immigrant to work for a long time for wages before he can earn enough to buy land and turn himself into an independent peasant.' p721-2. L&W ed. Here Marx captures one point of the conflict that took place throughout the Westward expansion of the US, between capital and a free peasantry who evaded subservience by moving West. The authorities ran to keep up with this expansion, first trying to monopolise land, and then giving in to pressure to make it cheap. >Oh yeah, one other thing. I am in favor of giving Florida back to the >Seminoles. And that's just a start. This is the kind of childish political posturing that one expects of somebody who is not used to taking responsibility for their actions. Is this meant to be rhetorical, or serious? Do you intend to forcibly remove the current inhabitants? Or just remove their citizenship? In what sense are they responsible for the wrong done to the Seminoles? Is land ownership a part of your socialist programme? Why not start at home and hand over your apartment to the Algonquin? Such emotionalism leads to a wholly rhetorical radicalism whose grand gestures are in inverse proportion to its seriousness. -- James Heartfield
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Heartfield: >I was unaware of the exploitation of Native Americans in the North. One >might have thought that reservations and genocide made exploitation >impossible, but perhaps in your scientific rigour you have discovered >some new form of exploitation. I am referring to the general sense of exploitation, not the technical Marxist sense. For example, Israel exploited the Palestinian people when it stole their land. The word exploitation preceded Marx's use of the word. If you can find a better word to describe taking advantage of people, I'd be happy to use it. What we differ on is the substantial question of social justice. You side with the land thieves, I side with the victims. (quoting Marx) >How, then, to heal the anti-capitalist cancer of the colonies? ... Let >the Government put upon virgin soil an artificial price, independent of >the law of supply and demand, a price tht compels the immigrant to work >for a long time for wages before he can earn enough to buy land and turn >himself into an independent peasant.' p721-2. L&W ed. Virgin soil? Yes, I've heard this before. What was Zionism after all: A people without land looking for a land without people. It doesn't matter if Marx used the term "virgin soil." This does not make it right, for god's sake. It was a barbaric misrepresentation of American civilization. The Native Americans were living here minding their own business and colonial settlers stole their land. And you apologize for this by quoting the more unfortunate aspects of Marx and Engels. Engels said that the conquest of Algeria was an "important and fortunate fact for the progress of civilization." Does this excuse the French colonialism because Engels said it? Whoops, I forgot who I was talking to. I suppose in your eyes it does. > In >what sense are they responsible for the wrong done to the Seminoles? Is >land ownership a part of your socialist programme? Why not start at home >and hand over your apartment to the Algonquin? > These questions are popping up everywhere in the world today. The NY Times reported that Mugabe is threatening to finally expropriate the rich white settlers and give the land to the land-based Zimbabweans. The whites complain about the injustice that is about to be done to them. Poor dears, where will they go. Israelis have from the day of the birth of their nation constructed a wagon-circling ideology directed at the Palestinians who want to "drive them into the sea." Settler states have accounts to pay and that's that. The most blood-stained settler state in the world is the USA and the Seminoles et al, and African-Americans deserve restitution. It is really not an issue that can solved in the state of Florida by itself. It has to be settled on a national and global level. Socialism involves fair play. The Seminoles and other Indians have to be given top priority in their quest for justice. No Seminole has asked for the state of Florida to be returned, by the way. What they are asking for is respect for their land rights. Socialists should defend them today and in the future. This is from the Seminole Web Page and it should serve as a guideline for the sort of debt that is owed to them: Louis Proyect Survival In The Swamp The Seminoles began the 20th century where they had been left at the conclusion of the Seminole Wars - in abject poverty, hiding out in remote camps in the wet wilderness areas of South Florida. There, finally left at peace from U.S. government oppression, the last few Florida Indians managed to live off the land, maintaining minimal contact with the outside world. Hunting, trapping, fishing and trading with the white man at frontier outposts provided the Seminoles with their only significant economic enterprise of the era. By this time, development had reached the coastal rivers and plains of South Florida. Inland, a "drain-the-Everglades" mentality promoted by politicians and developers, forever altered the course of the "River of Grass." Even in the untamed wilderness of the Seminole, man's social and ecological pollution had dire effect. Poor crops, shrinking numbers of fish and game, droughts, serious hurricanes and other calamities once again heaped pressure on the Seminoles. The collapse of the frontier Seminole economy in the 1920s threatened the Florida Indians with assimilation and extinction. The wilderness no longer offered salvation; many lived as tenants on lands or farms where they worked or as spectacles in the many tiny tourist attractions sprouting up across tourist South Florida. By this time, however, the U.S. Congress had begun to take notice. By 1938, more than 80,000 acres of land had been set aside for the Seminoles in the Big Cypress, Hollywood and Brighton areas and the invitation to move in, to change from subsistence farming and hunting/trapping to an agriculture-based economy, was offered. Few Seminoles moved onto these Indian reservation lands, however, mistrusting the governme
Re: Marx on Native Americans
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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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
Re: Marx on Native Americans
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >Heartfield: >> >>In Particular Marx and Engels both considered native American society >>backward technologically and morally, as the blood-ties of kinship >>groups (gens) stifled individual personality. >> > >I think at this point we understand what Heartfield means by "individual >personality". It has little to do with Marxism, ' However impressive the people of this epoch appear to us, they are completely undifferentiated from one another; as Marx says, they are still attached to the navel string of the primitive community' Engels, 'Origin of the Family...' > With >respect to technological backwardness, this is a truism and hardly worth >commenting on. On the contrary, it was a discussion on this list, which Louis P contributed to at length. > With respect to morality, I am not aware of Marx dwelling >much on this question outside of the context of the need to establish >communism. A common misreading of Marx. Because he eschewed a fixed moral order, it does not follow that Marx has no moral goal - on the contrary, the goal is human development, of yes, free individuals (quite how Marxism got counterposed to freedom is a mystery to me). Where Marx's morality differs from say Kant, or the medieval church, is that his is open- ended. > Now one could read into Heartfield's selective quotations and >possibly conclude that if the Aztecs et al were bellicose, why wring one's >hands over the rape and pillage wrought by the Spanish invaders? Well, I presume you did not want me to reproduce the whole thing. But what is it that you mean here? That Marx did not write these things? That the Aztecs did not engage in human sacrifice? That the Iroquois did not engage in bloody wars against other native Americans? Or that evidence of these atrocities should be supressed? Do we want to understand native American society, or idealise it? As to the rape and pillage wrought by the Spanish invaders five hundred years ago, I must say it leaves me wholly indifferent. None of the perpetrators lives. It is at most of historical interest. 'Let the dead bury their dead' I say. On the other hand, the social inequality created in that historical transition is with us today, and that we can do something about. >I plan to offer my own reading of the history of the genocide against >Native Americans and subject the standard Marxist interpretation to a fresh >re-evaluation. My sources will be scholarly histories of today, not >selective quotes from Marx. I look forward to reading it. -- James Heartfield
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Heartfield: >This is a bit of a mess, because Louis is angry about something that >gets in the way of his thinking, but here goes: James, it not a bit of a mess. Your post is a complete mess. You should be aware that PEN-L is not the Spoons Lists. Over on the Spoons Lists you can feel free to make all the messes you want. Over here much more rigor is necessary. Don't you realize that all of the most important left-wing thinkers in the world are lurking here. Every serious journal in the world has at least one of the editors perusing PEN-L. Ernest Mandel was a frequent contributor until his untimely demise. I had a brutal debate with him just before his death about the role of relative surplus value in the delicatessen business in 1948. I wonder to this day if I didn't give him heart failure. Now you should stop making messes here and strive for lucidity, you bad boy. Your post was filled with raw emotion, bad grammar and misspelling. Surely your Oxford education can do better than this. Meanwhile, there's nothing you wrote that I find worth commenting on except one small item. You ask me how American landlords transformed themselves into a bourgeoisie without a struggle? My suggestion is that you take a look at Part 8 of Volume One of Capital, "The Secret of Primitive Accumulation" for an answer. There is one proviso, however. There was a struggle in the US which was as bloody as the one Marx described. The struggle took place not against Scottish and Irish village-based subsistence farming, but against Native Americans, and the Africans who were enchained and brought to the US to help in the accumulation of capital. It is the genocidal exploitation of Native Americans and African slaves that made US capitalism possible. Oh yeah, one other thing. I am in favor of giving Florida back to the Seminoles. And that's just a start. Louis Proyect
Re: Marx on Native Americans
LM: In fact the French courts and the English Parliament ennobled Native American leaders as Chieftans or Chiefs of their tribes or clans on the model of the fictitious recognition of the land rights of the Scottish lairds. Like that artificial nobility, the Native American chiefs were received in the Court of the Sun King Louis IV, and throughout European high society. Louis Proyect: What is the source for this? This garbled clot of prose conceals much more than it reveals. Are you stating that the land rights of the Scottish lairds was "fictitious"? Or are you saying that the American Indian's claims were fictitious? Or both? Are you saying that the European aristocracy "ennobled" Indians in the same way that they ennobled themselves? Does this mean that the Duke of Kent would consider marrying the daughter of a Seneca chief just as soon as he would a Hapsburg Princess? Or was "ennobling" American Indians just a convenient fiction? 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. And what right-wing garbage pail did you pick this stinking 3 day old red herring from? 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? LM: On the opposite end of the equation, the Colonists had only one outlet for their aspiration to be free from European domination - to press the frontier Eastward. In 1676 Nathaniel Bacon led a revolt of black slaves and white indentured servants against the English governor, imprisoning him. Bacons rallying cry was an aggressive Indian policy, meaning an escape East - something which England had to send battalions across the Atlantic to prevent. The association of popular democracy and an aggressive Indian policy endured through the War of Independence, Jacksonism, right up to the closing of the frontier at the end of the nineteenth century. Louis Proyect: Again, with the absence of an American landed aristocracy, LM's history makes perfect sense. It is the same thing as writing about American history and omitting slavery. What's the absence of a social class here or there when you are trying to score propaganda points. 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." 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. 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. 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? Isn't it of interest to note that such an event took place? Doesn't the truth matter to you? 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. 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. By the way, my source on Bacon's Rebellion is Howard Zinn's "People's History of the US". What is your source, Heartfield? And what was the war of 1812 all about? Aren't you aware that Andrew Jackson was a land speculator, merchant, slave trader and the most aggressive enemy of the American Indians in early American history? The war of 1812 was not just a war of survival for the US against the Crown, it was also a war of expansion into Florida, Canada and into Indian territory. What ruling-class history books do you consult for your version of the war of 1812. Henry Steele Commager? Arthur Schlesinger? Furthermore, aren't you aware that not all Indians were in favor of war with Washington? The Creeks were
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Heartfield: > >In Particular Marx and Engels both considered native American society >backward technologically and morally, as the blood-ties of kinship >groups (gens) stifled individual personality. > I think at this point we understand what Heartfield means by "individual personality". It has little to do with Marxism, but the sort of libertarianism publicly embraced by his cult leader Frank Furedi. With respect to technological backwardness, this is a truism and hardly worth commenting on. With respect to morality, I am not aware of Marx dwelling much on this question outside of the context of the need to establish communism. Now one could read into Heartfield's selective quotations and possibly conclude that if the Aztecs et al were bellicose, why wring one's hands over the rape and pillage wrought by the Spanish invaders? This of course is the standard counter-attack of right-wingers in the face of the evidence of European genocide. It fits in perfectly with LM's overall pro-capitalist stance. I plan to offer my own reading of the history of the genocide against Native Americans and subject the standard Marxist interpretation to a fresh re-evaluation. My sources will be scholarly histories of today, not selective quotes from Marx. Speaking of citations, Heartfield, I demand that you furnish the bibliography for your hatchet job on Native Americans that you crossposted a while back. To refresh your memory, this was the piece that claimed that the Indians always sided with the French or the British. I plan to rub your nose in this lie, but I am interested to find out which right-wing source you picked this tidbit up from. Finally, on the subject of the Ethnological Notebooks. I don't plan to delve into them until the new edition is available since it will be of much more use to scholars and activists than the old edition. This is email I received from the author and it is a pretty convincing case for having the patience to wait for the new edition: * Dear Louis Proyect, Thanks for your query. There are two main differences between this version of the Ethnological Notebooks and the original Krader edition: (a) this edition is entirely in English (you'll recall that Krader's book was a transcription, not a translation, and that more than half of the text was in German, French, etc.); and (b) with Krader's help, this edition is much more completely annotated, to ensure that readers follow the twists and turns of Marx's argument. With any luck this book will finally appear mid-to-late next year -- and I'll send you a notice when it does. Thanks again, take care, David Smith
Marx on Native Americans
MARX ON NATIVE AMERICANS >From the Ethnological notebooks Ed. Lawrence Krader, Van Gorcum, Assen, Netherlands, 1972 Marx's notes on Lewis Morgan's Ancient Society were principally concerned with family organisation and became the basis of Engels 'Origin of the family, private property and the state'. Marx and Engels were great fans of Morgan and were particularly interested in his account of the communal property enjoyed by the Iroquois. Like Morgan they took this as disproof of the economists' dogma that private property was a natural institution. Equally the different family forms were used by Engels against the dogmatic assertion that the monogamic family was a natural institution. Marx was also interested in Morgan's comparative identification of Iroquois social institutions with those of early Europe, in particular the gens. Marx agreed that Morgan had shown that communal property was not a peculiarity of Slav communities, but was a common institution in the prehistory all human societies. Marx's interest in the communal property relations of the Iroquois in no sense led him to idealise their existence. Marx adopted the general model of humanity's progressive advance adopted by Morgan and common in his time, with the proviso that this advance was by no means given or linear, only that men inherited the past achievements of their ancestors, and so were in a position to improve upon them. As he shows, 'progress' takes a bloody and repressive form for the subject classes in society. But for all his qualifications upon the Victorian's idea of linear progression, Marx shared their negative assessment of many aspects of native American society. In Particular Marx and Engels both considered native American society backward technologically and morally, as the blood-ties of kinship groups (gens) stifled individual personality. WARLIKE "Die Iroquois pursued a war of extermination gegen [against] their kindred tribes, the Eries, Neutral Nation, the Hurons u.d.[and the] Susquehannocks." P160 "Confederation of Iroquois u. [and] that of the Aztecs were the most remarkable for aggressive purposes." P163 "Precarious subsistence u. [and] incessant warfare repressed numbers in all the original tribes, inclus. the Village Indians." P165 Quoting Morgan 'Military. "their [the Iroquois] career was simply terrific. They were the scourge of God upon the aborigines of the continent."' P145 - CANNIBALISTIC "der savages, had finally organised gentile society u. Developed small tribes with villages here and there ... ihre rude energies and ruder arts chiefly devoted to subsistence; nocht nicht the village stockade (Pfahlwerk) for defence, no farinaceous food, still cannibalism." P128 "In dieser Form ward Cannibalism gefunden in d. Principal tribes der U.St., Mexico u. Central America. Erwerbung v. Farinaceous food Haptmittel to extricate mankind von this savage custom." "D. Aztecs. Wie d. Northern Indians, neither exchanged released prisoners; the stake their doom bei the Northern Indians unless saved by adoption. Unter d. Estern ... offered as a sacrifice to the principal god worshipped. Unter d. American aborigines erscheint organised priesthood erst im Middle Status of Barbarism [ie Aztecs] , connectioon mit der invention of idols u. human sacrifices as a means of acquiring authority over mankind." P189 (I think it is right to say that contemporary anthropology is more sceptical about reports of cannibalism than Marx.) MORALLY RESTICTIVE "Marriage hier founded not upon "sentiment", but upon convenience and necessity. D. Mothers arranged the marriages of their children. ... Prior to the marriage, presents to the gentile relations of the bride, partaking in the nature of purchasing gifts, became feature of these matrimonial transactions." P 116 "The ancient practice of blood revenge ... had its birthplace in the gens. Tribunals for the trial of criminals prescribing their punishment, came late into existence in gentile society. Unter d. Iroquois and other Indian tribes generally, the obligation to avenge the murder of a kinsman universally recognised." P147 "In some Indian tribes the youth was required to go out on the war-path and earn his second name by some act of personal bravery." P148 -- GOVERNMENT Excerpting Morgan: "All the members of an Iroquois gens personally free, bound to defend each other's freedom; equal in privileges u. Personal rights. Sachem u. Chiefs claiming no superiority; a brotherhood bound together by ties of kin. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, though never formulated were cardinal principles..." At this point Marx departs from Morgan, adding "Zur zeit der europaischen Entdeckg waren d. [At the time of the European discovery
