Re: [A-List] Imagine

[Omahkohkiaayo_ipoyi <omahkohkiaayo@xxxxxxxxx>]

What is needed is a fight for a revolutionary policy from within the
Anglo American proletariat towards the plight of the Indian Nations,
because they have  always resisted and fought and still fight in the face
of superhuman odds.
 
I do not advocate self determination and bourgeois democracy, but Freedom
  
Now and class politics. 
  
Melvin P. 


Response Jim C:

Actually Melvin, we are on the same page and have been all along. I too
belive that class is and always has been the fundamental basis or most
fundamental forms of oppression and then within classes and strata, forms
of oppression on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual
orientation, "disability", age etc are present and very real. As I noted, I
will never see some of these Indian Aristocrats with big ofices, trucks,
houses etc on the Rez as fundamentally more oppressed than say a typical
Ghettoized African American male or poor Appalachean White but are probably
"more oppressed" and limited than typical White Aristocrat types.

Further, I have never and will never advocate for a capitalist Blackfoot
Nation. If you read the Blackfoot Constitution I wrote and that has been
circulated for grassroots approval (unlike the US Constitution drafted by
and for Propertied White Males) not only does it not speak of Capitalism as
the dominant mode of production of a Blackfoot Nation, what it calls for in
terms of decision making, control of resources, protections of individuals
including from the vicissitudes of the economy, requires Socialism is not
compatible with Capitalism. 

Now on the national question, I go back to the classics on the fundamental
difference between bourgeois nationalism (reactionary) versus potentially
progressive nationalism as an organizing/consciousness raising/survival
enhancing force and process for the most oppressed literally on the verge
of total extinction and/or total forcible assimilation. In fact, in Indian
Country I often encounter resistance from some Indigenous Peoples when I
say that Native Liberation is not about having an "equal opportunity" to
become an oppressor and when I advocate linking up with other groups of
oppressed Peoples (we have our own racism, homophobia, sexism, misogyny,
xenophobia etc to deal with) and when I advocate dealing with--and
perceiving--some Indian capitalists no differently than the other kinds.

But before we can talk of linking up with anyone on any basis, at least at
this stage, we have to just survive to fight another day; and to survive,
we need to organize and be able to talk with each other--in our
language--and, we can offer assistance to other struggles partly by showing
our reality, where one can see capitalism truly unvarnished, naked and for
what it really is and is about--genocidal with no fluff-n-puff, just raw
and naked exploitation and genocide. In fact, I have found that some
progressives, who consider themselves "social democrats" and advocates of
highly regulated capitalism, but who are sensitive to our issues about
genocide, when encountering our issues and realities, are also forced to
take a fresh look at captalism itself and the inexorable links between
capitalism and imperialism and genocide.

In Indian Country I talk Marx, Lenin and Mao all the time but sometimes
without labels or sourcing but just focusing on the core constructs and
their potential applicability to our own realities. I also talk about some
of the more "Eurocentric"-based constructs and how they may have to be
modified and/or not apply to our reality and how we have to stand on the
shoulders of "the classics" and make our own innovations and contributions
based on our own histories and realities and imperatives of survival.

Jim C.


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