I thought about it but I couldn't think of a proper answer.
I guess it would make the most sense to let the colonized decide what to do with the colonizers, since they are the victims.
And what would happen with the people that were brought in as slaves by the colonizers?
I hope someone smarter than me can explain 🙏🥺
Well, I'm no expert on decolonization and can only speak for the US, so while I can't give a full layout of what will be needed, there are a few things I can almost (70-80% certainty) guarantee will be needed in the US.
The US will need to dissolve completely. By that I mean:
- The flag completely replaced. Each stripe represents stolen land (the thirteen colonies). Each star is also stolen land (each state).
- The state borders completely redrawn to better reflect the historical lands held by indigenous peoples. This must be decided by indigenous peoples and not whites or anyone else. If colonized peoples decide it to be so, this may mean regions within the US become completely separate and sovereign nations. Also, since many historical lands spread across Canada and Mexico, the borders of those areas may need redrawing once liberation is achieved, though I am neither Canadian nor Mexican and have essentially no authoritative knowledge on how that might happen.
- The newly formed government(s) must include and be agreed upon by native peoples.
- Economic reparations to colonized peoples is a must, and can be financed by assets seized from the bourgeoisie during revolution. This must also include formal apologies and recognition of the sins of colonizers in history texts, courses, and within new documentation for the newly established government(s).
I realize there is likely more, but I am not knowledgeable enough to speak beyond this so far, and I may be wrong on even the points I addressed (so please correct me if you find error, I won't be offended). If comrades have more to add, do so please!
As for other things I've learned from talking with indigenous and colonized people, I can also add:
- Contrary to rightist fearmongering, "land back" doesn't mean the deportation of whites back to Europe. That is largely a narrative driven by right wingers to instill fear into whites that they might lose their homes and livelihood or whatever if land back were achieved. However, I haven't met any indigenous communist who seriously thought displacing millions of people was a good idea. Instead, whites will need to get used to "not being on top" of others, will need to get used to not getting special treatment when dealing with government and the authorities, with education, with employment, and everything else they get preference in.
- This also (mostly) applies to the non-indigenous victims of colonization, blacks won't be deported or displaced, and in fact will achieve further liberation through the dissolution and replacement of white supremacist institutions like (everything basically) the prison system, the policing system, education system, etc.
There is certainly more to it, but again, I am not a final authority on this. These are just a few points I personally have a good deal of confidence (maybe 70-80% confidence) in. Comrades, if I am wrong about something, please let me know, and definitely add more to this incomplete list.
Well first of all the indigenous nations as cultural and political entities still exist and still claim territory stolen by the settlers. The majority of settler owned land will be taken back into indigenous sovereignty. Many nations including the Americans and Black people will want to use the same resources. They can share through agreements reached in decolonial states. In my prediction, these states will be confederations between the peoples that inhabit and use the lands and resources in question. Equality of nations rather than equality of individuals will necessarily be the lower stage of Decolonization where individual equality will be gained towards the higher stages as the decolonial states wither away. Africans in the Americas are nations born into world through their struggle against slavery and colonization, but we must be careful reactionary ideas such as a Black Belt state as there are indigenous nations who claim and live in that region still.
Any system where Americans exercise political supremacy over colonized groups will necessarily reproduce settler Colonial relations. There will be no reforming the American annexationist system, only the the de-fanging of their previous annexations and thus their access to further annexations and Imperialism.
Africans in the Americas are nations born into world through their struggle against slavery and colonization, but we must be careful reactionary ideas such as a Black Belt state as there are indigenous nations who claim and live in that region still.
This is actually a shockingly good point to raise. As much as I still staunchly believe the only way for New Afrikans to ever put our history of being colonized behind us in such a means that it will be impossible to ever reproduce is the establishment of a state of our own, governed by us and for us; the matter of indigenous land claims is still a very salient one to bring up, and something that'd need more hashing out after the dissolution of the Empire proper.
I am very much in favor of decolonization but this is pure idealism and a recipe for disastrous defeat. If this is really the political platform that indigenous revolutionaries intend to adopt then there is a major risk that the settler colonists will simply decide it is safer to complete the genocide of indigenous people to the last person, as such a plan will be perceived as an existential threat. There is very little chance that the settler majority will allow itself to be turned into second class citizens in what they view as their own land. The fact that it is in fact stolen land may give indigenous people the moral high ground but it does not change the reality of which group has the numbers and the power to dominate it.
A minority cannot rule over a majority for any extended period of time and even to attempt it requires massive violence of the likes we saw in apartheid South Africa and which we are seeing today in the Zionist entity. It is why the Zionists are attempting to demographically engineer a settler majority in the stolen land. And it is a fact that indigenous people in the US are a very small minority, in fact without the allyship of other colonized nations trapped inside the US prisonhouse of nations, such as the black and latino populations, they stand almost no chance of taking even the smallest chunk of land away from the settler state due to their numbers being so small. They will simply be brutally crushed.
Any viable strategies will have to involve allyship with a portion of the settler proletariat, possibly to arrive at a model similar to that of the USSR and the Russian Federation, with national republics on specific territories where the minority nations hold a majority. This will involve population transfers, there is no other way around it if you don't want minority nations to be politically dominated by the settler majority inside these new political entities, a state of affairs which you rightly point out carries the risk of a reproduction of colonial dominance relations.
Whether or not the US as it exists today will be dissolved and experience secessions by then does not change this logic, because there is no contiguous territory in the continental US that both lacks a settler majority and is capable of supporting an independent state. In whatever states secede from the US settlers will still be a majority and the revolutionary strategy will still require involving at least a portion of them, which is only possible if enough of them perceive the revolutionary project as being also in their interest. You don't win people over by promising them that they will be politically disempowered if you win.
Instead of fantasizing about the impossible turning back of the historical clock to pre-colonial times, which, while it may feel morally righteous is not realistic as it does not take into account the material realities of the world as it exists today, i would instead start thinking more practically about how the inevitable war against the settler state will be organized. What will the political leadership structures of the revolution look like, where will the manpower, the material and the logistical support come from, how will the population that supports the revolution be fed, how will the blockades and the bombings be withstood?
California has over 10x the population of Nevada. Should California be entitled to 10x the land of Nevadans? No, it's nonsense. The population of a people is dependent on the resources which they have access to. Americans are not entitled to their annexations, most of which is reserved for future exploitation while they suck the rest of the world dry.
Well yes, actually they probably should be. More people require more land. What entitles any group to land if not necessity? Why should a minority be allowed to claim for itself a majority of the land and resources? And more importantly, how? What is going to prevent the larger population from just taking what they perceive as their "fair share" (regardless whether this perception is true) of the land by force? Indigenous people were defeated before and their numbers were much greater and the material, organizational and technological advantages of the settler state was not as great back then as it is now.
The scales are even more tilted today, there is no reason to expect anything but a repeat of the previous result unless a different strategy is adopted, namely of appealing to a significant enough portion of the settler proletariat to recognize that the settler colonial state model no longer serves their best interest. The decline of capitalism is too advanced and the free lunch they got through robbing the indigenous population and expanding into their land is no longer sufficient. You described the brutal and genocidal methods that the settlers have used to beat the indigenous population into submission in the past, what do you think they would do today and how do you plan to guard against being starved out, having your crops burned, your waters poisoned and your land made uninhabitable? Because there are enough of them who would rather make sure no one can use that land if they can't have it.
It is also a very unwise thing to do to keep insisting that the settler majority is still able to benefit the same as before from maintaining the settler-colonial relations. You are in effect making the argument that their interest is best served by holding on to all of the land since that enables their system to continue. I believe this is not the case, i believe the colonized peoples have a chance to succeed today where they did not succeed in the past precisely because the conditions are such that capitalism can no longer be sustained through the same methods as before. Because it is becoming the best interest of more and more of the settler proletariat to ally with the colonized nations and to overthrow the existing socio-economic and political order. If this was not the case as you seem to imply, i would struggle to see any hope of success. People will not go against their material interests for the sake of moral righteousness.
We really don't care. Anything short of land back is genocide so we are going to fight against the reaction. The Americans are not ready to feel the frontiers again and the frontiers are ready to fight back. The US military collapses if the Black, Latino, and indigenous soldiers mutiny. I've pointed out that Americans occupy less than 25% of the lower 48. Winnable odds, much more winnable than any existing attempts of radicalizing the white workers. This country runs on us.
If population means share of land then we might as well give a fifth of the world to China.
And the Americans still benefit from settler colonialism. I pointed out Alaskan drilling and the hydro-electric battery being built on Yakama land against the tribe's wishes. Homesteading ended in the 70s and the American landlord class is made of those settlers who got free land. Americans as a people do not need or intend to live on a vast majority of the lands they own, we are taking them back.
You are in effect making the argument that their interest is best served by holding on to all of the land since that enables their system to continue.
If this was the case then what the hell would we all be doing on anti-Imperialism forums? The Americans do benefit from colonialism and imperialism. The contradictions with their Bourgeoisie are being hidden through the consumption granted by the empire. Even if the systems of oppression benefit settlers, they don't have any freedom to meet human needs. If they are content with finishing our genocide rather than working towards internationalism then let them be consumed by history.
To me that all sounds a bit too much like wishful thinking. I fear you are underestimating the strength of the settler nation and their determination to violently defend their gains. Then again, as someone who has never even been to the US i won't pretend that i know the local conditions better than those who actually live there. Maybe my analysis as an outside observer is wrong and maybe your strategy is the correct one. All i can say is good luck and i hope you succeed, that would be of great help to our struggles here on the other side of the world where the primary obstacle to our own revolutionary liberation is still the stranglehold of US imperialism.
I've explained before that US Imperialism around the world can't exist without US Imperialism within its own borders. We can't fight US imperialism from the outside.
You literally do not understand that the American nation "owns" 98% of the land but occupies around a quarter of it. This land is owned only for the purpose of extraction which allows Americans to live far beyond their means. This territory, the majority of territory in the US and Canada, will be taken from them. If you'd study the land question in the US you'd understand what we're talking about. This is a matter of state and sovereignty, the Americans aren't entitled to their own sovereign state, only a decolonial one. There is no point in time to return to. The conservative, reactionary position is settler sovereignty over the lands.
There is no idealism or moralism except the white guilt and entitlement, to land they don't even use, felt by settlers. The Americans are already genocidal, and we know that they will seek a final solution to their Indian and Black problem. There are tens of millions of us colonized, and there will be tens of millions of white comrades to fight with us.
Every revolution is a fight for survival. Ours has been constant.
the American nation “owns” 98% of the land but occupies around a quarter of it
I had no idea it was that low. I'm not Amerikan and don't know the details of the situation, but this sounds like a promising approach for decolonization. Has there been success in seizing/recovering those territories?
The military occupies these territories, and has since they were taken through the Indian Wars, which lasted into the late 1890s. Armed occupations of rivers in Washington State, the Wounded Knee site, and physical occupations of the DAPL and KXL pipelines and Alcatraz occurred in the 1900s and 2000s. The plains and plateau tribes put up the biggest and longest fight against the US and British through extended guerrilla campaigns because they could live off the land, especially the buffalo. The US army (consolidated after the civil war) and states sponsored settler civilians to exterminate the buffalo, killing tens of millions and driving them to near extinction where they remain today. This ended the Sioux Nation's contest with the Americans. For the Yakama in the inland PNW, if there were more than 2 Yakama males together in a group it was considered a war party and soldiers and settlers were encouraged to lynch them.
It's actually less than that. A quarter includes agriculture, where a fifth of it is sold to our colonies over seas:
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Less than 6% of US land is considered developed. Let's also look at how they "developed" that land:
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De-colonization is not just about people, it's about our non-human neighbors as well. If I may share a tweet of mine: https://twitter.com/probablykaffe/status/1662860482360020992?t=-px_6GplvTFzoPrXTOH9zQ&s=19
There's a level of American Exceptionism that occurs in the decolonial reaction. This myth that the Americans seriously control the vast territories within their border. They really live far beyond their means and bringing them back to balance is really the only goal we can have. Half of Americans live in single family suburbs. This is unacceptable land use and they will consolidate their space.
This sounds like it should be a very prominent point for any Amerikan communist organization. Do you know of a good source for updates on the progress of decolonial efforts?
Decolonized Buffalo is an educational working group and probably the most radical. There are extant groups of Panthers and AIM. We are really in the educational phase of needing to radicalize our families and communities. Getting CPUSA and PSL to recognize the primary contradiction. The water seems to be heating up though. There are in the ML sense spontaneous protests against the colonial conditions, but there isn't an organization that really guides these moments yet.
Thank you, I've heard of Decolonized Buffalo but I never got around to listening to it. Hopefully there'll be increasing success as the empire declines
This is where international solidarity is required. The number of people colonized by Europeans is far far larger than the Europeans occupying the Americas. The indigenous nations of the Americas don't need to worry about being a minority when the majority of the world recognizes their sovereignty and understands that the super structural basis for that sovereignty is critical to their own. The settlers in the Americas will be dispossessed by a coalition of the global majority, not by the slowly recovering indigenous populations of Turtle Island.
That is a nice fantasy but i don't think there is any intention by anyone in the international community to get involved in internal US affairs. The US is a mess and most countries will probably prefer to just isolate the US so that it does as little damage as possible outside its own borders and let things inside play out to whatever conclusion. China's non-interventionist model is likely the one that will prevail on the international scene. A revolution that only succeeds because of outside interference is not a genuine revolution of the people and will not have long term staying power once the outside support dries up. It is up to the people inside the US to liberate themselves. Only if the revolutionary forces on the former territory of the US can establish themselves as legitimate state governments with stable borders will other countries start trading and offering material support to them.
The problem is that you're still operating on the false assumption that the settlers have a legitimate claim to be there. They do not. And the international community will trade with the black diaspora nation and the native nations and embargo the white settler nation. It's not that hard, we've been watching the US do it to minortarian bodies for decades. The tables will turn because it is in the interest of the global proletariat to turn those tables. It is actually against their interest to allow the white settlers to continue their settler state and they will see to it that the pressures exist to dismantle white sovereignty.
The fantasy is that white people on turtle island are going to be fine because they are strong, they are dominant, they are numerous, and they can sustain themselves. The reality is that white settlers will fold pretty much immediately under the weight of climate catastrophe coupled with dedollarization. And the global majority will be very clear that to alleviate the suffering they will need to abdicate their manifest destiny and deny the doctrine of discovery and establish the new super structure that disenfranchises them. If they don't, they'll suffer total collapse.
Phrases like "legitimate claim" sound like idealism to me. Where does a "legitimate claim" come from? Is it just God given? Or is it not more realistic to acknowledge that the claim belongs to those with the power to enforce it? If the power of the settler state wanes and the internal colonies amass enough power to overthrow it and take its land then that is what will be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the international community. I would be very glad for you to be correct about the brittleness and weakness of the settler state. But that is an optimism that i find hard to share.
I incline more toward the pessimistic view that it will be a hard struggle and one that can only be won through making hard compromises and forming strategies that do not rely on the assumption of receiving significant outside support. I would also not rely on climate catastrophes and economic crises to do your work for you. People have a surprising ability to adapt to almost anything. They are creative and will find solutions and ways of keeping the system going even in a very deteriorated state.
That is why the revolutionary strategy must be proactive instead of reactive. We cannot just wait for outside factors to make the bourgeois state collapse. We need to be actively organizing and increasing our preparation and militancy, create political structures that can be turned into military ones capable of seizing and holding power when the revolutionary situation presents itself.
"Might is right"
"They conquered you because they are better"
Look at the state of settler politics, reason enough to continue working for our own liberation. Your pessimism in us is really just your optimism for the settler masses who have yet to lift their boots from our necks.
"It's just mathematics" honestly shoots me up to 9 roentgen on a 5 roentgen meter. Fuck the math, I'd rather be liquidated than put the keys to my freedom in the hands of a settler.
Read Our History is the Future and Bordertowns by Nick Estes, one of the authors of Red Deal. He's not a Marxist (yet) but an expert in the history of the Oceti Sakowin (Sioux Nation) and the character and evolution of American settlements bordering indigenous reservations.
That’s the book covered in the most recent season of Marx Madness. The podcast is great if you want a more in depth and radical version, though it’s over 30 hours in total.
I highly suggest the Decolonized Buffalo, Red Nation, and Marx Madness podcasts.
I've had a scroll through and many of the answers seem to relate to the US, which doesn't show any evidence of undergoing decolonisation any time soon.
A better example is the Chilean constitution that was put to a referendum relatively recently, albeit unsuccessfully: its key features were recognition of Chile's plurinational status, with added rights for indigenous people and communities. Have a read about it here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Chilean_national_plebiscite
Bolivia has a plurinational system too, but I am not as familiar with it so can't vouch for it.
In any case, Latin America is where to look. From a brutal experience of colonisation and US/UK backed dictatorship to what is slowly becoming a recognition that justice needs to be done. They're way ahead of the west.
