RE: [A-List] The national question

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Michael wrote:

Jim's points about the opportunities for movement building presented by the
contradictions inherent in the apparatus of bourgeois rule reminds me of
problems I have with the SSP's apparent isolationism in its struggle for a
Scottish socialist republic, and the simplistic rejection of "Europe" as
merely another instrument of bourgeois domination. This, in my view, is to
miss a crucial opportunity for alliance-building within the UK and Europe
more generally. As I tried to point out in posting the article on railway
financing in the context of an infrastructural and fiscal crisis

http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2003w38/msg00037.htm

 It is why I consider the Scottish struggle part of a much wider canvas on
which the very future of the world is at stake. It makes no sense to treat
that struggle in isolation, and no amount of lip service and obeisance to
"internationalism" will disguise the objective fact that this is exactly
what a refusal to acknowledge the wider British and European dimensions of
the struggle accomplishes. At the very least it is bad tactics, since it
deprives the struggle of key weapons against its primary adversary, i.e.,
the British state. But strategically it is disastrous because it is almost
certain to fail thanks to its wholly unrealistic envisioning of the arena of
struggle.


Response Jim C: I think Michael is exactly right on this and this is exactly
what we are doing among Blackfoot. Although many of us are considered
"traditionals" (here to be traditional is to be among the most radical
because traditional Blackfoot Ways are decidedly anti-capitalist to the core
and anti-capitalist state), we see our struggle not only as part of a wider
struggle among all First Nations against genocide, oppression, loss of
national sovereignty and loss of rights to independence and
self-determination (that is why we work with many different First Nations
and have formal relations with them) but also part of an even wider struggle
against all forms, sources, forces and forms of oppression (which is why we
have relations with other oppressed nations and groups such as with
Palestinians as we consider ourselves like the Palestinians of the Americas
and elsewhere where there are Indigenous Peoples and we consider the
Palestinians like "Palestindians"). In fact, and I can only speak here for
Blackfoot, we are involved with many diverse struggles and activists not
directly concerned with Indigenous issues/struggles far more than many of
those non-Indigenous activists are working with us on Indigenous issues.

And since our bands of the Blackfoot are found on both sides of the U.S.
Canada border, we struggle against both the U.S. and Canadian states
simultaneously and certainly would not ally with one against the other;
however we do recognize that the Canadian system is more of a
sub-imperialist center and system of transmission linkages for U.S.
imperialism--much like Israel and other sub-imperialist centers and
linkages--than a fully developed and independent imperialist power/system in
its own right.

Jim C