Spicy question maybe, but I’m interested in your takes.
Personally, I think there’s some major issues with at least the terminology of the 2 phase model of lower/higher stage communism or socialism/communism as the terms are used in classical theory. Specifically the ‘lower stage’ or ‘socialism’ term is problematic.
In the age of revision and after the success of counterrevolution it has become clear that there is in fact a transitional phase leading up to the classical transitional phase. Societies did not jump from developed capitalism to socialism immediately and even the states that arguably did were forced to roll back some of the core tenets of ‘socialism’ as it is described in Marx, Engels and Lenin. Namely no private ownership of the means of production and no exploitation of man by man.
To ultras this just means countries following this path aren’t socialist. So then China isn’t, Cuba isn’t, no country still is really and those of us claiming they are then have to be revisionists. And to be fair, if you’re dogmatic you can make that point going from the source material. China itself recognizes this inconsistency, thus not seeing itself at the stage of socialism. Yet it’s a socialist state. But then what do we actually mean by ‘socialism’ when we use the term like this? Just a dictatorship of the proletariat? Any country in the process of building socialism?
That question comes up all the time and confuses the fuck out of people, because the term is either not applied consistently or as it’s defined is lacking. I think discourse in the communist movement and about AES would profit immensely if we had a more consistent definition or usage of the term or a better defined concept of what that transition to socialism is and how we should call it.
I agree with you about what is to be done. But I haven’t heard of “Decolonial Marxism” as a body of theory. I am going to research it, but do you have any preferred sources?
It’s a retronym, Marxist theorists in this space never unified the theories and applications of ML utilized by Fanon, Rodney, Lushaba, Wynter, etc., under a specific title. However, the revolutions in Cuba, Vietnam, and China have been Decolonial in nature and should be studied in the way they took special attention to the society of the colonized masses when constructing Socialism that would go on to challenge and defeat Colonial rule.
The basis is the refusal to start history at the time of colonization, or from the reference point of the colonizers. The context of the settler states needs to start before the settlers arrived, how they arrived and came to dominate, and understand the protracted resistance against the settlers. When understanding the structure of a particular colonization, which is really how national resources are processed and consumed, we can see the relationship between the colonizer class and the colonized.
When I say Decolonization is a reorientation of ML I mean that ML was developed to explain the need for the proletariats of Imperial nations to understand the development of Imperialism in relation to class struggle. The American MLs know they need revolutionary defeatism but they do not understand what they need to defeat and where. The struggle for gender is one of deconstructing Colonialism, the struggle for race is one of deconstructing Colonialism, the struggle for the environment is one of deconstructing Colonialism. The struggle for class is one of deconstructing Colonialism. Decolonial Marxism is Scientific Socialism that builds a society that supplants the Colonial order.
This is the language I struggle with when dealing with MLism. Is it possible to use class as the type of thing we refer to when we say colonizer and colonized? Is colonizer a class? How does that work with proletariat and bourgeoisie? Do the classes interpermeate or are they distinct?
Colonizer refers to anyone involved in the entire process of expropriation of the resources of another nation, this is a national distinction, not a racial one. Colonized, or indigenous in the settler form, refers to those who’s national property in land, resources, and labor is expropriated by a colonizing nation. The American nation owns, is hegemonic over, or exercises sovereignty over, the lands of Turtle Island. The nations that rely on those resources are being pushed off of them while the resources are expropriated for the entire Settler economy, the “free gifts of nature”. So colonizer vs colonized or settler vs indigenous relates to the definite relations between national (social) groups. Colonizers have exploitative positions in consumption of expropriated resources from the colonized groups in land and labor. As in when you have super exploited national groups within a country, it means that the colonial proletariat is exchanging less labor for the same returns in the distribution of resources in the economy. The state, superstructure turned back into material, allocates expropriated resources/property/consumption for members of the colonial nation, as if it were a bourgeoisie as a whole. So why isn’t the class differences within the colonial nation the primary contradiction (or the primary class contradiction, i.e. peasant vs prole) in a settler society? Because even if the settler proletariat defeated the settler bourgeoisie, it would still maintain national differences in the means of production and ownership of yet to be utilized resources. The settlers would have to voluntarily give up their position of expropriation over the other nations, that would have to be maintained by the decolonial state apparatus, the end of American supremacy.
Yes, distinct in the way of definite social relations to production, but like the bottom of the bougies and the top of the labor, the consumption by individuals varies beyond national bounds depending on the relationship to property within each nation. Colonialism once it has subjugated competing nations converts the structure of those nations into a model that provides the most expropriated resources with the least effort, in the case of the US the Americans can either totally expropriate territory from the indigenous, taking from bougie and prole alike, or in a neo-Colonial form where the indigenous bourgeoisie allows super exploitation of their proletariat and resources by a higher power in exchange for a share of the proceeds and reinforced rule by the colonizers. This form remains dominant as indigenous territory is used for meat, lumber, oil, and mineral production (especially Uranium), while indigenous workers rarely get those jobs from the American bourgeoisie as it is reserved for the American workers. Essentially any resources claimed by the colonial bourgeoisie are also claimed by colonial proletariat, this is the fuel of reactionary nationalism within the colonial nations.
Theres literally a book by Walter Rodney of that name (it focuses on Africa). For Turtle Island (US) specific books check out Custer Died for Your Sins, Fresh Banana Leaves, we do this til they free us, the rediscovery of America, playing Indian, the red deal, the prison writings of Leonard peltier, and more.
Thank you!