Re: Native American land rights

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Perelman:
>
>I will ignore my own advice and raise an issue about the Cato Institute.
>For those outside of the U.S. it is a fightful libertarian "think
>tank/ideological factory".  I did not mind at all when the Greens made
>common cause with Cato to fight government subsidies for big business.
>Nor did I mind that the Global Warming activists joined with the insurance
>lobby.

This paragraph needs to be fleshed out or else it falls into the trap that
the LM libertarians have set. It lumps all greens together which is like
lumping all socialsts together. Would we say that the socialists made
common cause with the US war-machine in Vietnam? Yes, Albert Shanker and
Bayard Rustin did support the war, but the Trotskyists and the CPUSA did
not. All social movements have class divisions and as socialists or
progressives, we have to strengthen the more grass-roots or "proletarian"
tendencies.

In the green movement, there are "mainstream" groups which function within
the ruling-class establishment and there are "alternative" groups which
challenge it. For example, the Environmental Defense Fund supports
pollution credits and was a cheerleader for NAFTA. It has a budget of $25.4
million and a staff of 160. The CEO has a $262,000 salary. It was George
Bush's favorite environmental group.

"Project Underground" is an example of an alternative group. It stands up
for human rights being threatened by mining and oil companies. When a
mainstream green group, the World Wildlife Fund, was giving an award to
Shell Oil, this Berkeley-based group was exposing the ties of the oil
company to Nigerian death-squads. So when you talk about "green" groups
without making distinctions, Michael, you are only helping to confusing
things.

It is a matter of record that LM is politically opposed to groups like
"Project Underground" and "Survival International". This opposition was at
one point connected ideologically to a extremely vulgar version of Marxian
"productivism". They no longer claim any ties to Marxism at all. The
group's head guy told the British Guardian newspaper that he was no Marxist
at all, just a libertarian. I am not sect-bashing when I attack this group.
The Spartacist League, with all its warts, is oriented to the
working-class. LM is oriented to the bourgeoisie. Bashing LM is no
different than bashing the Cato Institute. If you want me to be more polite
to capitalist ideologues, then I certainly will. I have lots of respect for
you even when I disagree with you.

And, Michael, what in the world is a "global warming activist". Global
Warming is a phenomenon that was first noticed by a NASA scientist by the
name of James Hansen. He brought it to the attention of government
officials, other scientists and the bourgeois media. When the evidence
became unmistakable that such a phenomenon was real, governments convened
through the auspices of the United Nations a decision-making body that
could mitigate the effects of global warming. The decisions that they
reached are a band-aid and do not attack capitalist property relations
which are the root of global warming.

There were no activists at Kyoto, to my knowledge unless you consider
Albert Gore an activist. Now it is a fact that activists in the Rainforest
Action Network (RAN) have taken the Kyoto conference as an opportunity to
campaign for protection of the rainforests. But RAN has not consulted with
insurance companies. Perhaps Michael has better information than I do, but
right now I can't figure out what he's talking about.

>
>I do not think that the program, as it was described served any good
>purpose, but if it did, working to expose contradictions within capitalism
>seems worthwhile.

Their TV show exposed contradictions within the capitalist system as much
as a visit to the Cato or Hudson web sites does. Go visit them and see for
yourself. Find all references to the environment and you will find the same
exact thing that is found on the channel 4 documentary.

>
>Now to a few unrelated questions:
>
>1. Can we speak of native americans or indigenous people as a whole?

It depends on what you mean as "a whole". The key element to people like
us, I suppose, is their relationship to the means of production. I am aware
of attempts of some historians like Simon Schama to categorize the Incas as
a class society which exploited "lower" tribal formations. This is part of
a reactionary attempt to justify what the Europeans did to *all* Indians,
including the Incas. Schama says that genocide and slavery preceded the
Europeans, so why make a fuss.

>
>2. Capitalist culture is very seductive.  Almost every incident of contact
>subtly lures people to give up their ways.  The only exception I know
>occured when some islanders gave Captain Cook back his metal axes because
>they did not know how to make the tools themselves.  What fraction of
>Native Americans are willing to reject the casinos?  Maybe we have already
>destroyed so many indigeneous cultures that they have already incorated
>the worst of what the West has to offer.  Wasn't Russell Means running for
>the libertarian presidential nomination?
>

Perhaps Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart  at Wounded Knee" is a hoax, but the
answer he gives to the question of the "seductiveness" of capitalist
society is that it had almost none to peoples like the Apache and the
Sioux. That is why the wars against them had a genocidal aspect, as did the
wars against the Irish and Scottish clans. Russell Means is one Indian who
has mutated toward the right. Considering the number of leftists who have
made a similar mutation since the 1960s (Ronald Radosh, Frank Furedi,
Eugene Genovese, etc.), I'd say that the Indians are much less of a
spawning-ground for reaction than the university system.


>3. Rights are difficult to define.  "We" usually can find a leader who is
>willing to collaborate.  How do we define rights?  Whose rights.  Wasn't
>the Native American Movement rife with factions?  I think that I recall
>that one split involved Ward Churchill.

Yes, the American Indian Movement was rife with factions, just like the
Black Panther Party and the group that gave me the boot, the SWP.
Interestingly enough, the FBI had Cointelpro's going against all three.
Ward Churchill has written a book on Cointelpro that is probably worth
looking at. Factionalism is unfortunate but it does not allow us to wash
our hands of Indian or Black liberation, nor of socialism.

>
>4. Indigeneous people often have wonderful technology, superior to our own
>in terms of the biological potential of their land.
>

Well, a breath of fresh air in an otherwise carping and depressing post.
Yes, Michael, this is true. The only way humanity can survive is through
agriculture that repudiates the industrial model currently in place. Much
study will have to be made of the techniques of indigenous peoples unless
we exterminate them before it's too late. We can always go to the Museum of
Natural History but I'm afraid that would be inadequate to the task.

>5. Despoiling people of their livelihood, as with the oil drilling in
>Ecuador or Nigeria is despicable.  What are/should we be doing to punish
>the culprits.

We should be making a united front with groups who are involved in such
struggles, not denouncing them because they violate the strictures of
Marx's deeply flawed Herald Tribune articles on India. That would be a good
start.

>
>
>6. We are fouling our own nest to the point that we are threatening to
>exterminate ourselves.  How can we prattle about our superior technology?
>Or do we believe that nuclear power will solve all of our ills?
>

It would be good to recognize that "we" encapsulates huge class
differences. The problem with the libertarianism of the LM variety and the
mainstream green groups who are their dialectical opposite is that class
differences are elided. David Athanasiou's "Divided Planet" draws the class
line as does O'Connors "Capitalism, Nature and Society" and
Silverstein-Cockburn's "Counterpunch". Marxism and the "alternative" green
groups have to began interacting with each other or else the ruling class
and its allies will exploit the differences.

Louis Proyect