As a person who would certainly be dead without modern medicine, I always find it off-putting when people decry scientific thinking and technology as "defying the natural order of all things," as if I was fated to die and my continued existence is merely some aberration.
I've got cystic fibrosis so anprims get the wall, but I don't think Amerindian skepticism about Western science and medicine is off base. Given that native peoples in the United States have been forcibly sterilized, experimented on for the sake of science with live-virus vaccines that often have blowback, condescended to and called "savages" by racial science and phrenology etc etc it'd be ridiculous not to look at modern medicine with a skeptical eye. As I explain in my other comment here, the primary contention is with the idea that modern medicine is "progress" when that very modern medicine has been weaponized against native peoples of the United States and therefore has not resulted in "progress" for them in the slightest.
Western scientific thinking and modern medicine are neither the whole of scientific and medicinal practice nor incompatible with indigenous/traditional practice. We don't need to abandon scientific advancements that we've already made, but we definitely need to rethink how we conceive of "progress" or we descend into scientism which is just colonialism with a "rational" face on it. Exploitation and culture erasure is not a prerequisite for medicine.
We, who? Because I have no desire to mistake moving away from systems of life that give each human greater capacity to seek and achieve joy and towards bizarre forms of unnecessary spirtualism for the sake of tradition for a good thing.
If you think capitalist modernity is a system of life that gives each human greater capacity to seek and achieve joy then I have a bridge to sell you. The relative improvements in quality of life seen in the imperial core were built on the blood of indigenous peoples. The entire "developing" world is daily exploited and ravaged to support this QOL. Calling our world "progress" makes sense for some groups, especially if you're in a settler colony, but it is downright insulting to label our world as "progress" to an Amerindian. Rethinking what "progress" means is evaluating what that idea is and how to call modernity "progress" is to whitewash the genocide and slavery that world is built on.
It's not a superstition when they literally killed your family. Being skeptical of Western definitions of progress doesn't mean anarchoprimitvism.
I agree with you, but I'm trying to explain that it's not ridiculous for native peoples to link the two and be suspicious. It's not reactionary to watch your people die and say "hey all the stuff that helped to kill my people is bad." I'm not trying to throw out science, I just want to contextualize.
I guess we disagree on the nature of reactionary then, which is fair enough.
I don't think anybody here is about throwing out modern science; without modern science I would have been dead by the age of 12, so I'm not even close to advocating for that. I'm just trying to give context for why it's not a totally ridiculous argument for native peoples to make, based on their history with "modern science." Science is progress for some but not for all. There is nothing "in the abstract" or devoid of historical and social context. "Modern science" allowed Europeans to steamroll over native peoples and did not bring them any modicum of "progress." Therefore, it's a natural consequence that many will be skeptical of any accounts of "progressive" science making life better for everybody. Even Marx in his later years began to doubt his own "progress" narrative about the necessity of capitalist development and "science" for communism—see Karl Marx and the Iroquois. I agree that there is tremendous potential to re-purpose a lot of the "progress" we've seen under capitalism for the benefit of all the world's peoples, but right now that's not the case, and this "progress" has only resulted in increasing levels of misery for some.
Until my city's science museum releases the stolen, desecrated remains of some local Indogenous people, I fully understand why none of them are willing to trust western science and medicine.
Jesus christ he's not saying medicine and science bad, holy fuck way to dunk on him with your medical conditions.
"Science has become the new European religion for both capitalists and Marxists; they are truly inseparable; they are part and parcel of the same culture. So, in both theory and practice, Marxism demands that non-European peoples give up their values, their traditions, their cultural existence altogether. We will all be industrialized science addicts in a Marxist society."
"Distilled to its basic terms, European faith--including the new faith in science--equals a belief that man is God."
"All European tradition, Marxism included, has conspired to defy the natural order of all things."
Can confirm. I am a scientist, and I feel like a god on occasion. I highly recommend it.
I've just finished a microbiology project and man do I feel godlike now, DNA is mine to manipulate mwa ha ha ha
Thanks for posting this, a really fascinating article. I think the tension between indigenous peoples (and to extent the black radical tradition) and Marxism is the Western conception of "progress." Marxism, as Russell Means points out, is built upon the Western intellectual tradition which accepts the idea that "progress" and all that that entails is something desirable, good, and in a lot of ways inevitable. "A better world is possible" is an inherently progressive statement. Marxism seeks to improve on an already existing system. Remember, Marx always said that capitalism was necessary for communism to exist. Socialism, communism, etc are all later "stages" of economic development, or progress.
From the view of native peoples, capitalism itself should have never been allowed to exist, for colonialism and capitalism have been truly disastrous for Amerindians. They watched their entire world get murdered by Europeans. So for them to accept that capitalism is a necessary stage that we must build upon and move beyond is, understandably, a bridge too far. Likewise, there's the contention that history is "progressive." For Amerindians, quite frankly, it's not. If anything, their history is regressive—their entire civilization was basically swept off the earth, and all the environments they grew up with destroyed and distorted by the invisible hand of the market. To claim that the arc of the world bends towards progress to an Amerindian is tantamount to laughing in their face. So when they encounter a philosophy like Marxism, which claims that it will "progress" the world, they are rightfully skeptical. This is not an unbridgeable gap, but as a white Marxist in the United States, I don't think I'm going to be the one to do it.
I feel that the connection between Marxism and a return to what we would consider spiritualism is something that isn't really discussed that often outside liberation theology.
He has a point about Marxism being a continuation of the mathematical, ordered, capitalist mindset. It is. It's something born in response to that system, so it has to describe itself in those terms. Capitalism had stripped the natural world of its wonder and enchantment in favor of currency.
I think this essay does a good job of bringing his ideas in with Marxist thought.
And when the catastrophe is over, we American Indian peoples will still be here to inhabit the hemisphere. **I don’t care if it’s only a handful living high in the Andes. **
Yeah that is not how global heating works, or pandemics which have hit first peoples very hard worldwide, and I think the first people's being wiped out in the process would care, so 40 years later I think he's been proven wrong.
Also Marxism is Alien but Anarchism isn't?
I'm referring here to the so-called theories of Marxism and anarchism and "leftism" in general. I don't believe these theories can be separated from the rest of the of the European intellectual tradition. It's really just the same old song.
China is the only remaining ML superpower, are they also part of the 'European intellectual tradition'?
'Some of us will survive in the hills' is just anarchist wishful thinking, if thats the best place to survive they will be taken over by organized states. You can't fight organization with desorganization.
I look to China and I see the same thing. I look to Vietnam and I see Marxists imposing an industrial order and rooting out the indigenous tribal mountain people.
I see China exploding nuclear bombs, developing uranium reactors, and preparing a space program in order to colonize and exploit the planets the same as the Europeans colonized and exploited this hemisphere. It's the same old song, but maybe with a faster tempo this time.
I swear I mean this in good faith (and I'd hope other interactions we've had would vouch for that): Why was industrialization and urbanization good? Or maybe, what is the measure for goodness that you're applying in this analysis?
Not sure why you're getting downvoted for literally just quoting the article
So disorganization couldn't stand against organization after all.
The very idea of "superpowers" is an artifact of the European intellectual tradition, so yes.
Yeah that does nothing to rebutt the material fact they are one.
I wasn't trying to rebut anything, I was confirming that they are part of the European intellectual tradition.
Lmao mfw when China is part of the European intellectual tradition.
TIL that Mao never read Marx and synthesized the ideas he advanced. :thinkin-lenin:
China has thousands of years of culture and tradition, ML now coexists with them, after a period of strife, just as it would with Lakota or other first people's beliefs
That does not rebut the idea that Chinese ML is part of the European intellectual tradition. The use of "coexists" also definitely gives it an air of ideological imperialism/colonialism, that ML is the only correct path for development of a society. Seems awful "we must civilize the savages" to me.
This views Marxism as a step by step guide "This is how to do revolution bitch" rather than a rich dialectical framework that is dependent on the interpretations of its practitioners and applications to the unique material conditions that they exist in
ML is the political organization and economic of the state but the thousands of years of Chinese cultures also remain. The use of Coexists means that, they both exist at the same time.
I was responding to "Also Marxism is Alien but Anarchism isn’t?", not doing analysis. To your point, though, "useful" is a matter of cultural context (as are "truth" and "morality"), and I think that's a significant point of the article. There is tension between Marxist analysis and indigenous analysis precisely because the former is couched in the language and memes of Eurocapitalism.
None of the pandemics and genocides have hit first peoples until now.
False. Pandemics have been periodically hitting first peoples since first contact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoliztli_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_Syndrome
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/420.html
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/645.html
As the world has been made smaller by modernity and destruction of nature, this will only increase.
Native peoples in villages across the U.S., including the territories of Hawai‘i and Alaska, sustain staggering death rates. Some communities lose almost all of their residents.
In November at the Iñupiat village of Brevig Mission, Alaska, 72 of the 80 Iñupiat residents die of Spanish Influenza in five days
At Ketchikan, 74 cases of polio are reported to the Alaska Department of Health. The Tsimshian tribe located 15 miles south of Ketchikan is also affected, in communities such as Metlakatla, Alaska. Tribal leaders say that polio vaccine did not reach the community soon enough.
There is a lot to consider on and reflect. And I agree with some parts. I definitely see where he is coming from. Some of his analysis is lacking, I mean Murray Bookchin and other eco-socialists have sprouted as the challenge of Climate Change and the pollution and destruction of land in the industrialized world has turned out to be an issue whether the country was Capitalist or Socialist.
I'd think we need to assimilate this criticism and find ways to include and improve our scientific socialism, in a way that advances not just the toiling "European-minded" masses, but everyone else. In a way, they feel comfortable. For example, one of the things that made me really happy reading about the October Revolution was how they immediately recognized all these ethnic minorities, and their self-determination. It sucks that they ended up settling the "National Question" the wrong way, and hopefully we'd learn from that.
I think Humanization of the de-humanized is part of liberation; we can't proceed successfully without it.
Hasn't that project of expanding Marxism been undergoing for, like, sixty years now? I mean isn't that pretty explicitly what Fanon did?
ITT: White people dismissing the perspective of indigenous people as anprim bullshit.
In the article, Means says:
A lopsided emphasis on humans by humans--the Europeans' arrogance of acting as though they were beyond the nature of all related things--can only result in a total disharmony and a readjustment which cuts arrogant humans down to size, gives them a taste of that reality beyond their grasp or control and restores the harmony. There is no need for a revolutionary theory to bring this about; it's beyond human control.
and later:
Mother Earth has been abused, the powers have been abused, and this cannot go on forever. No theory can alter that simple fact. Mother Earth will retaliate, the whole environment will retaliate, and the abusers will be eliminated. Things come full circle, back to where they started. That's revolution. And that's a prophecy of my people, of the Hopi people and of other correct peoples.
So to answer that question, it's not defeatist per se. It's utopian.
I'm not well versed in the anthropology of China for example so i can't really address that part but the main point of the article imo - and it makes sense if you read up about indigenous struggle in the americas - is that authoritarian Marxism is incompatible with their cultural heritage as it looks at nature as a resource the same way capitalism does.
No it doesn't. This is such a genuinely moronic and reductive thing to say.
Looking at all the tankies drooling over industrialization right in this thread, looking at China's activities in Africa i don't think it's reductive at all.
Is there any part of this article in particular you care to defend? Because as far as I can tell, it is definitely anprim, and definitely has a lot of bullshit in it.
I want to add that I am not saying there is nothing of value in the piece. There is historical information of value because it is very common for proponents of a political system to downplay or ignore negative aspects of that system.
What I am saying is that we are in a leftist (largely Marxist) space, and discussing an anti-industrial, anti-intellectual, and utopian set of ideas. So what attitude do you expect to see other than dismissal?
I mean i expected nothing less from internet ML's than outright disrespect for other people's autonomy.
So you think the Wet'suwet'en are fighting for their private property? What about Standing Rock? The defacement of Mt. Rushmore was merely an infraction on others' private property? Don't be ridiculous.
well it reminds me of the sub's struggle sessions whenever intersectional/racial issues got posted so yay for making this place as similar to it as possible
oh right, I forgot that American Indians don't have material conditions
This is a really good article with an excellent perspective to think about. There's a lot to look at through the lens of colonialism and its effect on indigenous peoples, and also the need for an examination of how tradition and spiritualism can come into conflict with modern discussions of Marxism.
Humans are the weakest of all creatures, so weak that other creatures are willing to give up their flesh that we may live.
We pray our thanks to the deer, our relations, for allowing us their flesh to eat
"Willing" "Allow." You'd think someone who prides himself on his connection to nature would understand that any creature you kill and eat is in spite of its desire to stay alive, not because of its desire to die to feed you.
This post brought to you by the vegan gang
A good read.
While I can agree with much of what he says, I disagree with his ideology, at least as a totalising one.
My litmus test is the meteor test. Could a given society survive a giant meteor?
A more extreme version is whether it can prevent the Earth from being incinerated by the sun in three billion years.
If not, back to the drawing board.
I do see a role for Lakota though.
American Indians are still in touch with these realities--the prophecies, the traditions of our ancestors. We learn from the elders, from nature, from the powers. And when the catastrophe is over, we American Indian peoples will still be here to inhabit the hemisphere. I don't care if it's only a handful living high in the Andes. American Indian people will survive; harmony will be reestablished. That's revolution.
They’re a very good back up option for humanity if the current ‘European’ project fails.
I mean, I have no frame of reference for the state of mind of a colonised person, but “maybe a few of us will survive in the hills“ isn’t very inspirational as a revolutionary battle cry
"Maybe the Euros will get it right this time" isn't exactly very comforting, either.
Who says humans need to exist indefinitely? That desire to cheat death and for yourself, your culture or your species to live on forever might just be that European mindset he's talking about
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for scientific progress, I was just saying that I don't think the author's primary concern is necessarily us outliving the Sun or the heat death of the Universe or whatever
That's not the point he's making. What is inherently good about humanity that would suggest there's merit to preserving it? The European attitude would be progress is an inherent good for progresses sake, but many other cultures have different conceptions - that death is just something that will happen, and that it is not tragic more than it's the natural state of the universe.
It is good to be comfortable with the inevitability of one's own death, but I draw the line at anything that would impair our ability to keep death at bay. Death is inevitable. Death from influenza or pancreatic cancer is not. These are surmountable challenges, and to do so is unequivocally good.
I take issue with spiritualism as an ideological outlook precisely because it has a strong tendency to say that something is good because it is natural.
