Sweet, existential horrors beyond my wildest imagination!

  • NomadicWarMachine [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    So one thing I liked a lot about this video is in their discussion of English colonization of the Americas they didn't fall into the trap many leftists do of fetishizing American Indian culture. They were pretty frank about the way the economy of the East Coast and Appalachia ingenious people functioned, that it was a complex system of "tributes" where chiefs would expect gifts of food, either from less powerful chiefs or chiefs of equal power looking to avoid war. This clearly was a hierarchical system that surly had it's own injustices and conflicts, but they rightly say it was a sophisticated and sustainable system of both agriculture and natural stewardship.

    I think too often leftists fall into a bit of a subtle primitivism where we assume ingenious cultures had some kind of nascent genius to them that allowed them to avoid the contradictions that arise in western systems of economy, which isn't really true, American Indian modes of production likely all had their own contradictions, but none of that is ever and excuse for settler colonialism.