[PEN-L:768] Re: Re: Re: Controlling sea-lanes and Apaches

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

 But in the late
>nineteenth and early twentieth century the West was a haven
>of many progressive ideas, movements, and impulses, from
>the IWW to such things as women's rights, suffrage first
>being introduced in now ultra-conservative Wyoming, and the
>first woman representative in Congress (Jeannette Rankin,
>1916, even prior to passage of national suffrage) being
>from Montana, now home of...  (oh, but militias are cool
>with a progressive potential, right?).
>Barkley Rosser

Barkley is raising a very interesting question. Of course many of us know
about the American left in this period, from the IWW to Deleon's Socialist
Labor Party, a branch of the First International. What I plan to dig into
is the attitude they had toward indigenous peoples. I have a feeling it
might not be too good. Worden Mills, a leader of the SLP, wrote a book on
America's road to socialism that was heavily influenced by Engels' views.
Also, the new book titled "The Yankee International" deals with the
correspondence between Marx and socialist leaders in the US involved in
trade union matters. This correspondence is laced with racist attitudes
toward Chinese workers, who are considered a threat to the "American
working man". For his part, Marx invokes some of the Asiatic mode of
production crap to justify the racist exclusion of Asians from the unions.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)