[Marxism] Re: From Marxmail home

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>     Thank you for a good website.  I'm a marxist-leninist without a
> vanguard party here in the U$A (Chicago.)
>     It's important that you have written on Marxism and Native
> Americans.  How many Natives were slaughtered by
> the settlers?  15 million, 6 million, or what?  This is a massive # that
> does indeed need to be equated with what the Nazis did.
>     If a workers' state came into being tomorrow in the U$A, what could
> be offered for Native Americans?  A seperate state in a few states or
> what?  What are the comparisons/contrasts with Indians vs. settlers in
> U$A and palestinians vs. israelis in israel/palestine?
>
>     Drew from Chicago

Well, the question of whether there was a genocide or not is highly
politicized. For example, if you look at the article by by Guenter Lewy
titled " Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?" on the History
News Network (http://hnn.us/articles/7302.html), you will note 2 things.
First, there is a tendency to downplay the number of Indians that were here
before the Europeans came and the number of them that were killed. The
numbers of Indians before the conquest range from 1.2 million to 12
million. The number that remained is less controversial since there were
census takers around 1900 when the number of survivors was 250,000.

Lewy also argues that there was not really a genocide since most Indians
died of infectious diseases rather than bullets or bayonet. He makes sure
to point out the problems with Ward Churchill's account of the Mandan
smallpox outbreak. It is an important question to theorize properly. It
involves questions of morality--not just politics. Since the Europeans
understood that smallpox was contagious (remember that Lord Amherst gave
Indians infected blankets) and since they observed them dying in vast
numbers and since they proceeded with their colonization apace, how can you
not understand the ensuing deaths as anything other than an act of
inhumanity. The loophole for people like Lewy is that the colonizers did
not have murder in their hearts and minds, but only the dream of great
civilization. Guess what. The same was true pretty much of the Turks and
the Nazis.

I should add that Lewy's article appeared originally in Commentary, the
neo-Conservative magazine edited by Norman Podhoretz. Lewy is also the
author of the pro-war "America in Vietnam", and "The Cause that Failed:
Communism in American Political Life". So you can see that this question of
genocide against the Indian draws some highly politicized elements on the
denial side. What is disconcerting, of course, is the eagerness of some
"left" professors to get involved on the wrong side. I attribute this to
racism, of course.

On the question of what should be the policy of American socialists. Since
I myself am very pro-Indian and have been influenced by the Peruvian
Marxist Mariategui, who tried to synthesize Marxism and indigenism, my
recommendations would come down very strongly on the reparations side. I
favor overturning all the treaties of the late 1800s that were extracted at
the point of a bayonet and acknowledging the legitimacy of land claims. I
also would support a mammoth effort to help indigenous peoples preserve
their language and culture. It is interesting, btw, that all these genocide
deniers like Lewy never address the question of forced assimilation, which
the United Nations defines as a key element of genocide. On this there is
no loophole.




Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org


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