Proyect's Iroquois

["dlawbailey" <dlawbailey@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

        Marx and Engels may have written about the Iroquois constitution but 
they
also wrote a bit about the industrial proletariat.  I've read the Iroquois
constitution (to the extent one can be said to have read a verbal document
that has been re-penned a few times) and it's not a democratic document at
all.  It's a treaty, an accord among hereditary political structures.  It's
a setting down of cultural norms and rituals.  It does not establish
property in common, but divides property explicitly.  It creates a political
class based on gender, physical capability and lineage, also explicitly.

        I'm sure the Iroquois constitution is a good thing and was an important
document for keeping peace in their culture.  I take nothing away from the
Iroquois.  I am a little confused, however, as to what relevance their way
of life has to the industrial proletariat except if one is an
anarcho-syndicalist looking to pattern co-op or commune structures based on
the idea of clan.

        I think the democratic and egalitarian values of many modern documents 
are
obviously far superior to the Iroquois constitution.

        Clearly the lesson of stone-age people is that human society can live 
as a
family if property relations are put aside (good news unless you happen to
have my family, but that's another question).  I take the lesson of the
secular fall of man to heart, as I've said.  What confuses me is what seems
to be a disproportionate focus on indigenous peoples' issues among the Left
and a well-meaning but romantic view of their cultures.  The politics of it
sort of mystify me in terms of the modern industrial proletariat.  Again, I
have nothing but admiration for native people.  What's more, they clearly
have gotten screwed more than any other people in history.  They deserve
significant, nation-building reparations.  That question, it seems to me, is
well within the scope of liberal-democratic society.  It's a question of
applying a just resolution to a wrong and working out a legal settlement.
Where's the political economy question?

        I'm not sure how, just to take an example, the politics of the Quinault
people of the Washington Olympic Peninsula impact on the industrial
proletariat.  We can't all be Quinaults and we can't all live like
Quinaults.  In fact, only Quinaults can.

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