for context i originally sent this in a reply to this list of suggested readings for Marxism,. Alaskaball suggested i post it by itself as well so its more noticeable.
Interesting looking books (tho I have a bit of a vendetta against the prominence of young (and often unpublished/unfinished/wrong!) marx over old marx so im mildly annoyed by the lack of Capital), I'd like to add some more that touch on similar themes (and also stuff that is (to me at least) glaringly absent from this article written by a white settler in Treaty 7 territory (saying this as a white settler in Treaty 6 territory)). This isn't meant to be insulting or attacking Jacobson, afaik she does good work and I've heard good things about Alberta Advantage; it is simply me pointing out some theory that needs to be better known in order to get a better analysis of Capitalism towards the goal of ending it, along with (settler) colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism, ableism and every other form of oppression.
18th Brumaire isn't as problem riddled as the German Ideology articles (bc it is a work Marx was actually satisfied with and published), but I still think Capital is better to read (my autism and love of Marx will not allow me to leave this unsaid). Read Harvey's companion with it (he is good at Making the notoriously difficult first three chapters somewhat less horrible by bringing concrete stuff into the abstractions marx is setting up). But seriously read Capital. Marx worked for 30+ years on the damned thing and half his kids died in poverty during the research and then it went basically unnoticed and no one frigging read it its very sad. Marx worked very hard to make it as direct and complete as a work he could, and many of his theoretical positions there are different from earlier ones in large ways (especially bc Capital is the book he spent 2 decades painstakingly researching, 18th brumaire is before most of that.)
Also in addition (srsly read Capital it’s an amazing book absolutely god tier literally the greatest thing i’ve ever read) to Capital, if one is interesting in seeing how Marx analysed 'current events' a better source imo would be his Newspaper articles. Some of the ones in the Rheinisch Zeitung have theoretical importance, but the most interesting ones imo are his New York Tribune correspondence. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware there isn't actually a good compilation (the one I do know of is from the 70s and doesn't include some of the important later articles (like the ones where marx becomes increasingly anti-imperialism) from what I've heard) of particularly insightful articles, and Marx wrote a lot of them. Earlier ones have more issues than later ones, but the New York Tribune articles are where you will find him doing the most theorising wrt race, imperialism, colonialism, contemporary politics and the like.
One example of earlier ones having issues is the 1853 article about India where Marx argues (in spite of all the attrocities and brutalities he documents) that British Imperialism in India is a progressive force (in the sense that Marx both views history as linear and he believes moving from India's former mode of production to capitalism is good because of this). By 1857(iirc, could be off by a year or two) Marx argues essentially the opposite point; Capitalism has been a regressive force in India, destroying their productive forces. In Capital, he transforms this point into the basis for the theory of the development of underdevelopment in imperialized states. All the articles (as well as almost everything else Marx and Engels wrote) can be found in the MECW which can be found on libgen (all 50 volumes are there afaik). Newspaper articles (and some other stuff) are volumes 12-23.
Moving on from my need to proselytise Capital (read it plz), I think another good book that deals with the labour process that often goes untalked about is “More Work for Mother” by Ruth Cowan. Cowan basically writes Capital but for domestic/household/reproductive labour. She has done what Marx did with Capital (I think i remember Marx being mentioned by her in the book, its also immensely obvious just from her method of analysis and the abstractions she uses that she is very, very familiar with Marx.) to the labour that Marx failed to properly analyse in Capital (if you want a work on how Marx failed to analyse reproductive/’woman’s’ labour, “Revolution Begins at Home” by Silvia Federici in Musto’s (ed.) Marx’s Capital After 150 Years goes into it very well, basically Marx uncritically accepted bourgeois economists externalization of reproductive labour and generally exclusion of women from the analysis of Capital.)
The main thesis of the book is that, contrary to general knowledge, the mechanization of household labour has not seen women have more leisure time. In the case of middle and upper class women, each increase in the mechinization of household labour came at the same time as industrial production created the massive need for labour. Because industrial jobs became available, it became harder to find servants (people preferred industrial jobs where they got to go home at the end of the day) price of domestic labour increases. The very upper classes could continue to afford servants. For middle class women, this period of industrialising the household saw them ‘proletarianise’ as their household income was often insufficient to pay servants at the higher value of labour power (domestic) and men and children who formerly worked in the house saw their household duties commodified (i.e. externalised) and children’s offloaded on the mother. The house became a space of leisure for even lower class men and children, continued to be one of work for their wives and mothers (and daughters after a certain age).
By 1950 the middle class housewife was thus generally the only domestic ‘servant’ remaining, and the lower class housewife saw herself become the sole worker in reproductive labour. The amount of time spent on housework by the average middle class housewife remained around 60 hours, and the standards of cleanliness for their house remained about the same because of increased productivity per unit time granted by the addition of dead labour to living labour. Lower class housewives in the imperial core saw the largest improvements in living standards. While their workweek also remained about 60 hours, their ability to afford the machinery as a result of imperialism saw them also increase in productivity per unit time, allowing them to maintain what had formerly been an exclusively middle class standard of cleanliness. Wives who also had to work generally do/did this housework in addition to their work outside the house, the double shift. Biggest issue with the book is bc it ignores the role of imperialism and doesn’t critically examine metabolic rifts, if it’s read uncritically one comes away thinking that machine labour in the households is a net positive.
Moving from the historical aspect of domestic labour, Christine Delphy’s Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression is excellent. Where Cowan’s book is ch10, 15 and part 8 of Capital, Delphy’s work resembles the more abstract parts more. The largest point (the book consists of several essays) analyses marriage as a “domestic mode of production.” It examines the marriage contract, not in the legal sense but in the economic and social sense; how is domestic production organized, where is value produced and how is it distributed; what is the relationship between divorce and marriage, examined on a social rather than individual level; how does divorce play into things. I don’t remember the exact arguments of the book well enough to summarise them in detail, but the general point that it shows is that the basis of marriage is the exploitation of female labour (both for the man, and also to produce children). She shows this by beginning with an examination of the rural areas of France, because the domestic labour is more present there, and therefore more obvious. Once she’s established her theoretical apparatus in the glaringly obvious exploitation of the rural areas, she moves onto examining the more subtle exploitations in the city. My only real issue with this book is it presents its theory of how this oppression originated as an absolute truth, but that is more pedantic than a serious issue with the book.
Two important ecosocialist/ecological marxist works. Foster’s Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature and Saito’s Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. They tread the same ground on the most important (imo the rly crucial sections are the parts dealing with Marx’s understanding of Liebig and soil science, the resulting concept of metabolic rift) parts. Foster’s book was written earlier and it’s more readable imo (less academic jargon). It also has some very interesting philosophical sections on Marx’s reading of Epicurus, as well as a close examination of Darwinian evolution in relation to materialism, teleology and Marx’s thought. However it is very polemical, to the point of misrepresenting Marx (positively tho, Foster’s issue is he doesn’t wanna admit Marx could have bad takes sometimes) to make its points seem stronger. Saito’s has an absolutely excruciating (imo) first half that details extensively Marx’s theories of alienation from nature, mostly in the 1844 manuscripts. The next quarter looks at Liebig and metabolic rift; (simplified) the idea that if the balance of inputs and outputs in nature (Liebig and Marx looked at this specifically wrt soil, but you can use the framework to criticise and understand a shit ton of stuff) is disrupted, e.g. by taking more than is returned to the soil (e.g. agriculture following urban-rural divide) or by pumping more carbon into the atmosphere than the global processes can store in a given period of time. The final part is evil, titled “Marx’s Ecology After Capital.” While the title may lead you to think the chapter will examine how Marx’s ecological thought progressed after Capital, it is more of a plea for funding to finish MEGA2 so can examine Marx’s ecological thought after Capital, but Saito does a good job showing how Marx’s studies continued to his death in this part, and the description of how Marx researched is useful to build better research habits oneself.
Moving onto the main reason I wanted to write this (to recommend indigenous sovereignty, liberation, resurgent, anti-colonialist theory), Patricia Monture-Angus and Patricia McGuire’s First Voices: An Aboriginal Women’s Reader has some truly amazing essays regarding indigenous sovereignty, feminism, two-spiritedness and (settler)colonialism. I highly, highly recommend it as a bit of an introduction into some of the key aspects of indigenous liberation and sovereignty politics. Monture-Angus belongs to the Mohawk nation, McGuire is a Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek woman. Other contributors come from across Turtle Island (well the part occupied by Canada anyway) so it gives one a bit of an idea of the similarities and differences within as well as the richness of indigenous political and philosophical thought.
I think this site is dominated by yanks so I’m gonna also suggest “An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States” by Kyle Mays, who is Black and Saginaw Chippewa. This book details the history of the United States, from the position and standpoint of Black and Indigenous peoples. It’s very good and quite readable imo. Lots of evidence and arguments to attack right wing history.
Kayanerenkó:wa (the Great Law of Peace) by Katanesenh Williams (Onondaga Wolf Clan, married into Mohawk Turtle Clan) is an(other) amazing work of Haudenosaunee political theory. He examines several versions of the Kayanerenkó:wa, the constitution of the Six Nations, very closely to make explicit what he sees as the important messages of it. This is very much an abstract work, but I’ve found it very illustrative of some of the key concepts in Haudenosaunee theory, as well as some connections and uses for it in other areas (for example, many of the structures of the Grand Council are absolutely amazing and brilliant at preventing issues of infighting, sectarianism, campism, arrogance, and many other things.) Overall imo this is one of the most insightful texts I’ve read; the ideas and methods of achieving sound mind, discussion, consultation, conflict resolution. Plus it’s nice to learn about a society that Europe tried (and failed) to exterminate.
A really excellent book looking at the relationships between Marxism and Indigenous thought is Marxism and Native Americans edited by Ward Churchill in 1980. It contains contributions from a lot of indigenous (mostly Oceti Sakowin iirc) intellectuals, most notably Vine Deloria Jr. (author of “God is Red,” “Custer Died for Your Sins” among many, many other books) and Russell Means (organizer/activist/leader in the American Indian Movement, later actor and overall weird politics guy). Many of the essays in this book often see very racist reactions from settlers reading them, bc none of the authors in here are trying to be nice or appeasing; they are pissed after a decade of racism and chauvanism and such from white ‘marxists’ and they are not hiding it. Imo the three best works in here are “The Same Old Song (A.K.A. “For America[n Indian Nations] to live, Europe must Die,” (Means), “Circling the Same Old Rock” (Deloria Jr.) and “Observations on Marxism and Lakota Tradition” (Black Elk) but all of them are very good works (with the exception of the RCP’s response to Means’ speech, which is used to demonstrate exactly the sorta racist views and idea’s they’re talking about. I’m gonna strongly caution anyone reading to read extremely carefully and slowly. Many of the authors are not writing in their first language, and often they use words to mean different things than our common sense interpretations, bc they are coming from theoretical and philosophical traditions very, very divorced from European thought. As Black Elk emphasises, Oceti Sakowin thought is deep and rich, it was the racism of euros trying to justify colonialism that labeled indigenous peoples 'primitive’ and ‘non-advanced’.
I’ll stop soon i promise (I dont have a problem i can stop reading whenever I want), but the next book is “Unsettled Expectations: Uncertainty, Land and Settler Decolonization” by Eva Mackey. She’s a white settler afaik. The focus of her book is explicitly not to examine indigenous nations and politics, but rather to turn the analytical tools of the oppressor on the oppressor themselves. It’s a critical analysis of the logics of justification which are used to excuse settler colonialism in Canada and the United States. This is following the arguments of oppressed/marginalised/activists that studying them and publishing a book/paper/etc harms them rather than helps, because it simply gives the state, corporations, etc more knowledge of them, which helps oppress them. Instead many activists and thinkers suggest people who wanna help the cause through study look more into the structures of oppression rather than collecting information on the oppressed and distributing it to universities and publishers, leaving access in the hands of the privileged. When Mackey does discuss indigenous theory her citations make me fairly confident that she has done her research, and she makes repeated references to discussions and such with some indigenous sovereignty organizers. The main point of this book is, starting with the framework of a “settler problem” rather than a “native problem,” to examine how/what settlers should do to help combat settler colonialism in alliance with indigenous nations without falling into typical settler racisms. Tuck and Yang’s “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” is also a good paper wrt this (and is cited several times in Unsettled Expectations).
To my knowledge, I haven’t read any concrete (in the sense of dealing with the question of land) political theory by authors in Treaty 7 territory. The only work I’ve read that I know is from that context is Leroy Little Bear’s (Kainai man) “Traditional Knowledge and Humanities: A Perspective by a Blackfoot,” but it was excellent so I’m going to (cautiously) recommend his other works. This paper deals with knowledge systems, ontology and epistemology, but based on the titles of his other works, he seems to have examined more concrete stuff too (both in terms of politics and in terms of science). Bc I mentioned Treaty I will briefly suggest some readings which delve into what exactly that means (though Mackey goes into it quite a bit) from an Indigenous perspective. I also won’t give details bc I was not able to find copies of these works online, so I’m unable to double check that I’m remembering everything correctly. Some suggestions on Treaty theory (mostly from Treaty 6, one from Occupied Oceti Sakowin homeland (minnesota)): Harold Cardinal’s “The Unjust Society,” Neal McLeod’s “Cree Narrative Memory: From Treaties to Contemporary Times” and “Rethinking Treaty Six in the Spirit of Mistahi Maskwa (Big Bear)” (second one is an article, can be found online, critique of colonialism in Treaty Six.), Stonechild and Waiser’s “Loyal ‘Till Death: Indians and the North-West Rebellion” and also Waziyatawin’s “What Does Justice Look Like: The Struggle For Liberation in the Dakota Homeland.”
Thank you for your contribution. I think your writings and analysis on both this and the one from a few days ago on Engels and his ideological journey through his life with Marx are both highly valuable in their contained knowledge and highly informative to the common reader.
