Re: Fijians

["Lou Paulsen" <wwchi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Ferguson <plf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

>You will actually search in vain to find any progressive politics among the
>Melanesian-Fijian communalists (ie I'm not talking about the general
>Melanesian-Fijian population, but about the communalist elements of it).


Well, to start off, I would argue with the concept of "progressive politics"
that you seem to be using.  Nothing is -essentially- progressive.  For us,
"progressive" is anything that can help the global struggle to advance.  You
seem to be using the word in a more narrow sense, that is, explicit
participation in the Marxist movement or something.  But I would argue that
resistance to colonialist domination, to racism, to economic and cultural
oppression, to attitudes of superiority, IS progressive, by default anyhow.
Even if it is being done by people in subsistence agriculture with the
leadership of traditional chiefs.  Of course it may have many
non-progressive characteristics, but that would be a secondary aspect.

(This does not apply if you believe that there is no oppression of
indigenous Fijians, but that's a different question.)

But even taking 'progressive' in a narrow sense to mean Marxist or socialist
or trade union activism or something: Phil, haven't you put the cart before
the horse?  We don't expect the indigenous Fijian community, which has
barely moved into capitalist property relations, to develop Marxism by
themselves, which is a theory for destroying capitalist property relations.

For that matter, Lenin argued that not even workers in capitalist society
would develop Marxism by themselves.  He argued that they didn't have time
or energy enough to do it, and that the best they would do merely "as
workers" would be to develop trade unionism.  He argued that Marxism would
originally have to be introduced among the workers by outside elements.  We
have all seen the kind of bad politics that workers can have when unaffected
by Marxist elements: racist, nationalistic, narrow, and locked within a
bourgeois mind-set.  Why would we expect indigenous Fijians to be superior?
They will learn the value of 'progressive' politics when we show them that
these politics are in their interest.

If leftists in the region would LIKE to see more "progressive" indigenous
Fijians, this is the time to line up with them and fight imperialist
pressure and explain that this is the sort of thing Marxists do, the sort of
people Marxists are.

But if leftists in the region condemn indigenous nationalism as inherently
reactionary, and dismiss indigenous Fijians as being a 'reactionary nation',
then what will they turn to by way of an ideology for defending themselves?
Religion of some kind?  But in that event the blame shouldn't be put on them
if they decide, from the examples being shown to them - and I'm thinking of
the leftists in our imperialist powers here, not of the FLP - that Marxists
are a two-faced lot of Eurocentrists who hate indigenes more than they hate
imperialism.  I don't say this would be a correct conclusion, but I say it
will be the inevitable conclusion if the only Marxists they see are those
people lined up with John Howard and Jacques Chirac to say that 'you had
better appoint the man we say should be your Prime Minister, or we will
suspend the Lomé accord as it applies to your sugar purchases and you will
all go hungry.'

>Despite not being a settler-colonial population, they're still more like
>the loyalists in Northern Ireland in many ways

I find this sentence completely mysterious.  My understanding was that the
loyalists had the edge in education, wealth, indeed that they are the
bourgeoisie, and the unionists were the poor, the workers, and even the more
agricultural sector.  The parallel completely escapes me.

>You will also find that people who identify with 'Melanesian socialism',
>like the leaders of the independence movement in what is now Vanuatu, have
>been among the staunchest critics of racial exclusivism and coups in Fiji
>and, like other Pacific Island nationalist forces, oppose indigenism.


I confess to knowing little about Vanuatu.  Actually 'nothing' is more
accurate than 'little'.  I am eager to find out more about it.  Is there a
website?


Lou Paulsen
Chicago