To put it as plainly as possible, if the proponents of the U.S. settler-colonialism theory are correct, then there is no basis whatsoever upon which to build a multinational working class communist party in this country. Indeed, such a view sees the “settler working class” as instruments of colonialism, hostile to the interests of the colonized people, rather than viewing all working and oppressed people as natural allies in the struggle against imperialism, our mutual oppressor.
A shame, a sad sad shame. For anyone that’s read settlers, or knows about the history of labor zionism, or prioritizes any kind of indigenous voice in their praxis, this is really bad. No peace for settlers! Settlers cannot lead the revolution! I hope we see an end to any respect given to this “settler colonialism is over” politic soon.
Are there a lot of reactionary white people? Yes. Are there a lot of reactionary Americans in general, yes. That being said, I don’t think it’s really realistic to think that all Americans aren’t capable of organizing for revolution. America is a settler colony, this is true, but it’s already established and it’s inhabitants don’t stand as much to lose as the settlers in Israel if Israel collapsed tomorrow. I don’t think the average American has as much affinity to the Idea of being “American” as much as the average Israeli settler does to being an “Israeli”.
America is also heavily populated with those who were the descendents of enslaved people and those who were themselves the victims of US imperialism, whether indigenous or immigrant. While there is the US government and a dangerous faction of US white nationalists, the people themselves are a whole lot more complex than the Israeli populace. Time will tell when more things come to a head here, but there’s more reason to be optimistic about the American working class than other countries in the Global North.
It definitely is more complicated, but it isn’t impossible to analyze. In Israel we see a microcosm of some of these dynamics with Arab Israelis that get treated very different from native Palestinians, many non-Jewish settlers of many different kinds as well. In America we definitely have many different races of settlers now but you we can still analyze how it works through an individual’s proximity to whiteness. Clarence Thomas may be the descendant of a slave but he is a settler, but most black people are in hyper exploited positions that make them not. Most Asian people in America are here by choice through capitalist relations beneficial to them (emphasis on most) and a rich Taiwanese person or a Japanese person has a proximity to whiteness many don’t. Many Iraqi people here are victims of US imperialism, but there are those that are predominately well off and fit better into white supremacy (Chaldeans) that are certainly settlers.
In all these cases there is the question of goodies gained through imperialist plundering and the relative access to them, as well as the ability to benefit from white supremacy and the exploitation on those not allowed within it. It’s complicated and as the contradictions sharpen and imperialism can buy off less and less people we’ll possibly see the definition of white constrict and more revolutionary circumstances arise so I can see the relative optimism. So far the effective method of continuing the project has been expanding who fits into “white”/settlerism, but if Trump is any indication our ruling class doesn’t want to see this at least at the moment.
Yeah, not impossible to analyze for sure. But also, the analysis like you pointed out is a lot more complex. But ultimately, people in the US are subjected to a lot of the harsher effects of capitalism than elsewhere in the Global North. There’s no right to healthcare, insane educational debt, waning home ownership and childbirth, little worker protections or benefits, mass shootings and executions by police just about every day, and we’re all seeing our money being stolen in order to sponsor a genocidal apartheid state. There are a lot of things encouraging Americans to become class conscious, which can ultimately lead them to an awareness of their own settlerism if they follow that consciousness with theory.
Whereas in Israel, the populace is pretty overwhelmingly racist and genocidal and that doesn’t look like it will change anytime soon. If ever.
It’s not necessarily that they can’t organize, I just think they’ve been trying to lead parties when the only really successful attempt at an ML communist party in America has been from the Black Panther Party and that’s for good reason. I see what EFF has been doing in South Africa to move on from some of the failures of the SACP which feel very similar to those of the CPUSA and I think it ought to be learned from. There are quite a few white people in the EFF as well, it’s just that they aren’t the majority in the org.
Successful seems really arbitrary here. CPUSA Pre-fuckery times was majority a white party, and yet it was virtually one of the few meaningful political bodies for black people at the time. We’re talking about becoming organized to reversing death convictions for Black men who were accused of raping a white girl, formation of the first sharecropper unions, being a cornerstone for agitating for the new deal, etc. No one race was leading over another, and they were all working in common.
Not necessarily true, and the new deal was really a big moment for continuing the American project over anything else. The support of FDR was the real death knell for the party. I really like the CPUSA history as covered in Settlers for this reason, those chapters do a great job explaining this.
The CPUSA initially being majority white isn’t true?
“The party’s work among the Negro masses has been negligible. It was in the main a white working-class movement and the masses of Negroes were not yet drawn to it in any large numbers.”
William Z Foster himself
The actual hunting and persecution of communists seems like a much bigger reason for the decline of the CPUSA, than the New Deal itself passing. The CPUSA didn’t advocate for the New Deal because they thought Capitalism was so great and needed to be preserved but because there are times where reforms should be fought for. Membership peaked in the mid 40’s because of their pushing for it.
I more so mean that this was before a lot of the “white” people were truly white. The new deal solidified Irish/Scottish whiteness and brought up their condition to the rest of white people. Also, many of the organizing done for black people among the CPUSA was largely inaffective and was directly criticized by BPP on many occasions. If supporting black people is the metric, this is a legit criticism to be had.
I also think communist persecution is an over emphasized point considering very few euro-american communists were persecuted in anyway close to even the average black person. Settlers also covers this point, and regardless of why the CPUSA advocated for the new deal it was still a bad move as it allowed the American project to continue ushering in likely more than a century of darkness
There were already anti-lynching laws aimed at protecting Italian immigrants as early as the 1800’s. It’s also irrelevant if they did “see themselves as white” when at the end of the day, Jim Crow was at full wing and well…CPUSA was primarily white in the early 1900’s.
Care to cite specifics? I don’t find it particularly useful to talk in such generalities. I highly doubt the BPP would describe anti-lynching, Black union work, and theories of Black self determination as “ineffective”.
And it’s not a Olympics of Persecution. This is an entirely irrelevant point when people like Debbs were being prosecuted, The palmer raids happened, the espionage act, etc. Also communist persecution and the persecution of black people aren’t really two separate circles.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/sep/12b.htm
Read lenin on reformism. It’s very short sighted to reduce the continuation of the American project to the New Deal being passed.
I would suggest “Armed Struggle? Panthers and Communists” the new Gerald Horne book for a good history on their relationship. I found this nice Substack article that goes over some points it makes, the failure to see american fascism, expulsion of Harry Haywood, removal of black belt nationalism from the program, etc… While some panthers appreciate the work of sympathetic whites many didn’t want white people in or around the org at all. Quotations of criticisms of the CPUSA are in the book, genuine apology I can’t give a quote here as I lended the book.
I also brought up the persecution point because it absolves the CPUSA from having internal problems, even if it was very real and did strip them of the organization they did have they had a very big problem with being unable to recognize settler colonialism and its effects. I see Browder is also another scapegoat for the ineffectiveness of the CPUSA, without analysis on why his open revisionism was so accepted amongst cadre. In my mind, the CPUSA supporting the bourgeois class that was offering them an out during a time hard particularly hard for white people instead of striking when the bourgeois was weak was the ultimate culmination of this. Again I would really suggest reading this chapter in Settlers for the analysis, I think Lenin’s thoughts on reformism are very useful but in the context of the American project I think this analysis is more relevant and important.