A thread on Indigenous nationhood. The problem arises when people can't hold multiple, simultaneous contradictions to be true. There is a contradiction between the capitalist and working classes, yes, but there is also a contradiction between settlers and Indigenous people.

For the latter not to be true, it would have to be impossible for us to make out any difference at all in how Indigenous and non-Indigenous people relate to the process of production.

However, we can very easily do so. In New Zealand, we can see that Māori both receive much lower wages than settler workers and are much more likely to be unemployed. In Marx's terms, we are underpaid for our labour-power and we are used to make up the relative surplus population

There is, in the most basic elements of materialist analysis, a contradiction between the interests of settler and Indigenous workers. The form of appearance of this contradiction can be perceived by anyone taking even a cursory glance at our living conditions.

Now this contradiction clearly exists, and is clearly material because it concerns not just cultural conflict (shoes off in the house) but a conflict over production (my people die young and hungry). But is it the primary contradiction, is the contradiction an antagonism?

To be a Marxist, we answer no. The contradiction between settlers and Indigenous people exists but this contradiction is a consequence of the antagonistic contradiction between bourgeoisie and proletariat imposed during colonisation.

Non-Marxists argue that the contradiction between settlers and Indigenous people is primary and we should try to demonstrate why socialism is the beginning of resolving it.

But the line some socialists take, denying the basic nationhood of Indigenous peoples and arguing that, due to colonisation, we have no distinct status in capitalist society and no contradiction exists between us and settlers, is nothing but imperial chauvinism.