I was very pleased to see Jake from Minnesota’s recent letter in response to the first article in the labor aristocracy series.1 It offers some good opportunities to clarify my position on issues related to this strata as it exists in the settler colonies, as my series does not really focus on the national and racial questions it poses there. I think it’s also important to clarify that my views are not representative of any particular group — there is not a Cosmonaut “line” on this issue, and I think the reception of my article among its more frequent contributors would best be described as cautiously supportive. This is probably because, depending on one’s interpretation, the aristocracy of labor does indeed pose difficult theoretical problems for the recent resurgence of revolutionary social democracy, as Jake has perceptively identified. These issues will be explored in more detail in part 3 of the series. For now I’ll respond to some points of the letter in more detail.
First, I do not consider the labor aristocracy and the working class of settler colonies to be synonymous, although there are strong historical reasons why settler colonies have had relatively large labor aristocracies. In colonies where cheap indigenous labour was plentiful the matter was quite simple, and settlers became the managers and specialists of the colony, completely safe from labor competition from the underclass. In colonies where indigenous populations were largely killed or dispossessed, abundant stolen land allowed recently arrived settler proletarians to instead secure a position as respectable smallholders. In doing so, this created major shortages of labor in many settler colonies, and the remaining capitalists had to pay very high wages, which effectively had to compete with the profit income made possible by smallholding. As I showed in the article (and perhaps this led to the confusion), such colonies’ wages were the highest on earth through the 19th and 20th centuries. However even as these opportunities for class mobility were presented to settler populations, there were countertrends — land speculation was rife, and in many colonies finance capital acted to buy up settler holdings into huge trusts. “What is stolen once is stolen again” said Judith Wright in her novel Cry for the Dead, which described this process in Queensland. The class structure of these settler colonies gradually came to resemble that of Europe as land was bought up, and the “rural safety-valve” on settler class antagonisms was shut off. Hereafter the main legacy of settler colonialism was the high wages for the settler nationality that continued to be sustained via craft union practices, strict migration controls, and racial segregation between sectors. In other words, the aristocratic consciousness of many settler workers began to depend less on their access to stolen land, and more on the way their unions and political life was organized. This is important, as seeing the settler colonies as diverse, developing class structures allows us to see that there are many potential Marxist programmatic responses to settler-colonialism.
In a country like Jake’s example of Algeria, or in Zimbabwe, the settlers were outnumbered by large indigenous workforces, who were exploited rather than subjected to as complete a genocide as elsewhere. Such settlers developed a ‘thin’ class structure, rather than the kind of self-sufficient total social formation we might call a nation. There was barely a settler working class to speak of, and it constituted specialists, straw bosses, and other kinds of managerial and circulatory labor. Without a subservient racial underclass there was simply no way for such a society to sustain itself. As Jake notes “the Pied-Noirs went back to France to the benefit of all involved.” In Zimbabwe expropriation was undertaken on a class basis, whereafter most settlers left voluntarily. This is what I see as the correct programmatic position in such situations: the whole settler nationality has reactionary interests and should be excised through the removal of its property. There is in fact no difference between this position and the standard Marxist position that the bourgeoisie ought to be expropriated — this expropriation just so happens to fall along national lines as well.
I agree with Jake that it is obvious that this is not applicable to the United States, where there is a very large settler-descended working class that, while certainly very privileged, shares a basic economic life with many members of the Black, indigenous, and migrant nationalities. I don’t actually think anyone seriously proposes to send US settlers back to Europe; insofar as I have seen this discussed seriously it has been about the hypothetical right of indigenous peoples to decide such questions, rather than whether this is a good programme to pursue, and as the letter notes there is not much appetite for this kind of retribution.2 The best work of the US left has always been in united action either led by oppressed nationalities, or across all nationalities, to eliminate the sectional interests fostered by violently uneven labor competition.
Jake also mentions South Africa and Palestine, which fall somewhere between the two other examples on the spectrum of settler-colonial experiences, though Israel is closer to the US in many respects.3 I think that the letter mischaracterizes (in good faith) the position of both the EFF and the Palestinian groups. In both cases there is a certain understandable bitterness that comes with decades of oppression (not to mention a developed sense of irony), which leads to such slogans as “shoot the Boer,” but this should not be mistaken for an actual political programme. The EFF programme is clear that the issue is minority ownership of the means of production, and does not deny the democratic rights of whites.4 In the case of the Palestinian resistance even Hamas and the leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad have expressed support for the right of Jews to live in Palestine.5 I don’t know if the attitudes of present day Palestinians are actually more hardline than they were before, or whether more are just on Twitter now. Settler imaginations are wont to run wild about what might happen if the shoe was on the other foot, but here too I think the appetite for collective punishment is limited. In both countries’ cases, a revolutionary situation might well lead to a number of settler workers siding against their own nation, but this would depend on the balance of forces and the class character of the revolutionary organizations.
But I’m skirting around the substance of the letter by being pernickety. This is the important part:
That’s the rub, though, are we programmatically bound to dramatic acts of redistribution or are we democratically bound to a constituency that might reject such actions out of hand? Is it possible to form a democratic majority around these ideas? Would a constitutional convention and constituent assembly produce the results we’re looking for?
If revolutionaries are programmatically bound to the decisions of nonrevolutionaries, then a terrible strategic error has been committed. Majority support is necessary to revolutions not as a matter of highest principle but because it will simply falter without at least tepid support from a wide range of social forces, including labor aristocrats and turncoats from the petty bourgeoisie. The enthusiastic core of the revolution would certainly be a minority, organized around a professional combat organization of the class. This organization must have as free and democratic an internal life as possible for everyone who agrees with its programme,6 but it would not be for democracy between those who would maintain and destroy workers’ power. It would be for democracy wherever possible, even between classes, but the defense of the workers’ state is the higher programmatic priority. We would not win the initial battles of a revolution only to hold a referendum on whether it should continue.
If the majority refuses to grant autonomy or aid to those who need it, then this is indeed a major issue, and this kind of question is what post-revolutionary political life in a workers’ state would probably revolve around. The conscious element would need to launch a sustained political attack against this kind of thinking, and an economic attack against the source of whatever sectional interests led to the prominence of such ideas. Revolutionaries would actively shape rather than passively reflect the majority’s will.7 Historical experience suggests it is possible for workers’ states to overcome a great many of these issues through a conscious programme of affirmative action, deliberately unprofitable trade, and regional redistribution at the expense of the centre.8
These few sentences alone deserve a longer response, but I’ll leave the rest until after part three is out.
Comradely,
Amal Samaha
- In some respects it is not really a response to my series, so much as a comment on the potential contradiction between anti-imperialism and social democracy in general, but I’ll take the opportunity to respond regardless.
- Such a view is sometimes attributed to the oft-caricatured J. Sakai of Settlers infamy. But he did not actually think communists should write off the US settler labour aristocracy (which he defined by its race), rather his point was that it should be engaged with, even if it did not have the potential of leading a revolution, as it might still form part of a broader alliance. See his response to the question “Would you say that organizing within the present-day white working class is hopeless?” https://kersplebedeb.com/posts/raceburn/.
- The Israeli working class is rather large due to historic efforts to exclude Palestinian labour. All of these workers certainly receive benefits, but not all (especially Sepharadim, Mizrahim and Ethiopians) receive them to such a degree that it would affect a change in class relations. The absence of Jewish solidarity with Palestinians (which is at best restricted to tepid electoral alliances) is better explained though the promise of class mobility made possible by the settlements, and the incredible strength of zionist ideology. In this respect Israel is much like the US in an earlier phase of development, with its own West and Manifest Destiny.
- See the EFF manifesto: https://effonline.org/2021-lgemanifesto/.
- The Hamas 2017 charter is available here: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full; An interview with Ramadan Shallah explores the PIJ’s attitude towards Jews: https://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/file/index/docid/505376/filename/Ramadan_Shallah.pdf.
- Such an organization would certainly have a left and right wing on various issues, but programmatic unity precludes the possibility of something like a right social democratic faction representing aristocratic sectional interests.
- Through agitation and the gradual elimination of class positions. It is certainly unwise to go beyond the bounds of this will at any given moment, but it can change with time.
- The Soviet experience involved a long battle with Great Russian chauvinism, but not without considerable successes. See generally: Terry Martin’s Affirmative Action Empire (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); and Francine Hirsch’s Empire of Nations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).