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Revisiting this speech - which really shook me early into my political development - and just trying to reconcile what he says here with the fact he was a member of the American libertarian party. https://www.filmsforaction.org/news/revolution-and-american-indians-marxism-is-as-alien-to-my-culture-as-capitalism/
My assessment here is that it's just right-wing anti-intellectualism dressed up in cultural essentialism but I think that's an overly simplistic view of what's going on here. The positioning of Euro 'secularization' against ndn spirituality is interesting but obscurantist imo
This passage in particular absolutely makes me want to scream.
He's also making an interesting albeit very incorrect argument about capacity utilization and efficiency: capitalists at least are limited by the logic of profits, Marxists are only focused on efficiency and will extract indefinitely forever.
Of course this argument is wrong: reality tells us that the capitalist drive is towards infinite expansion of production in search of profits - this isn't really the limiting factor Means claims it is. A communist economy would be democratic and for meeting direct needs...
which means production would only expand to meet the needs of the population, which doesn't necessarily need to expand indefinitely - again, history shows us that as people become better off, they have less children. We'd possibly achieve an equilibrium with our environment.
This is probably the trickiest argument for me in the speech and one that I've heard repeated a number of times.
The first aspect that sticks out to me is the claim that to be proletarianized is to be Europeanized. He uses proletarian in a sense so narrow it's absurd. But that's
The first aspect that sticks out to me is the claim that to be proletarianized is to be Europeanized. He uses proletarian in a sense so narrow it's absurd. But that's
not really the problem. I have to ask the question: what class relations did Means think were in place among ndns? And would those relations also themselves not be a result of colonization? How does right-wing libertarianism perform better in this sense?
And as @Gloriosa1982 noted earlier, the gripes about 'precapitalist' and 'primitive' labels bare a striking resemblance to post-modernist rejections of grand narratives (although Indigenous philosophical traditions also reject this, time is circular)
But to go back to the argument about proletarianization:
He isn't completely wrong - social relations including class are what produce consciousness and culture. Changing social relations will necessarily change culture, and this has always been the case.
He isn't completely wrong - social relations including class are what produce consciousness and culture. Changing social relations will necessarily change culture, and this has always been the case.
But I don't think Marxists necessarily desire cosmopolitanism that wipes out all cultural difference. If that were the case, the goals of the GPCR would have been to completely eradicate all culture rather than break with harmful elements of culture.
It was a push towards proletarianizing culture, sure - but it's not like all of Chinese culture disappeared or as though current Chinese culture is any less Chinese than it was beforehand.
So yes, proletarian revolution would produce a change in ndn cultures, but it wouldn't wipe them out. And transition towards communism - a stateless, classless society - probably gives cultures a better chance of survival than liberal ideologies that tend towards fascism.
And even then - red capitalism is not liberation. Whether your landlord or boss is Canadian or Anishinaabe, they can still evict you, they can still revoke your access to your means of providing for yourself.
And while the idea that nations can just go back to pre-contact/pre-colonial modes of production/life is nice, I don't see how that could be practiced in a world of states.
Here's more essentialism, a warning that nature will destroy European society, and straight up anti-intellectualism disguised as resistance.
He clarifies the positions I was deriding as essentialist, but this raises more questions - how did he square the remarks about "apples" with his membership/support of the libertarian party.
But shortly before the above, he says this which also confuses me:
In more familiar terms, European society will collapse under its own contradictions and that's fine - it's inevitable, the natural order will win out, (some of) his people will survive.
In more familiar terms, European society will collapse under its own contradictions and that's fine - it's inevitable, the natural order will win out, (some of) his people will survive.
And if he's consistent in his definition of "his people" as being those outside of industrial society. So all we need to do is struggle for survival and some of us will survive and everything else will collapse and that's the more desirable revolution.
Brings to mind the idea that "it's easier to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism", which is very interesting to me. In trying to break with "European" mindsets he simply re-articulates bourgeois ideology with ndn characteristics.
Maybe I am getting caught in some traps he describes in European thinking - overemphasizing the importance of humans in the grand scheme of things, assuming it's desirable that humanity continues. That's not a line of thinking that would be particularly useful in helping people.
And honestly also re-creates European ideology with ndn characteristics - I think the idea that religion is the opiate of the masses applies here. Don't worry about overthrowing current conditions, we will saved!
Here's the conclusion of the speech:
All-in-all, despite explicitly saying he rejects essentialism, he implicitly upholds it and propagates it in this speech. Rhetorically he manages to call ndn people living non-traditional lives, revolutionaries, and intellectuals white...
and implicitly threatens damnation against them.
Not to copjacket Means, but this rhetoric absolutely smacks of COINTELPRO. I'm not too up on the history of AIM, but given this speech I wouldn't be surprised if he were working for the feds.
Not to copjacket Means, but this rhetoric absolutely smacks of COINTELPRO. I'm not too up on the history of AIM, but given this speech I wouldn't be surprised if he were working for the feds.
Anyways, that's all the thoughts I have on this for now. If you've read this whole thing, thanks for your time.
PS @devinzshaw shared this article with me. Which I think lends a lot of credence to my suggestion of COINTELPRO involvement.
If anyone knows more about this please share with me! https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-12-28-mn-29578-story.html
If anyone knows more about this please share with me! https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-12-28-mn-29578-story.html
I'm gonna keep going for a bit here:
So we have a rhetorical linkage between Indigeneity and anti-Marxism/communism. We have a man who went to fight the Sandinistas, again with that linkage. But it's also not a full embrace of capitalism.
So we have a rhetorical linkage between Indigeneity and anti-Marxism/communism. We have a man who went to fight the Sandinistas, again with that linkage. But it's also not a full embrace of capitalism.
I think the thrust of this then is channeling Indigenous resistance into a kind of distant alignment with the interests of imperialism and capitalism. It obscures the actual relations at play and reincorporates indigenous resistance into bourgeois hegemony albeit with a red face
Just read the RCP-USA's response to Means, and while my criticism is somewhat similar to theirs, Jesus fucking Christ. The chauvinism and audacity of those nerds. The condescension. That is NOT how you navigate these issues as a Marxist.
