Avakian on Jefferson: A Critical Reading Part 1
Posted by Mike E on October 26, 2008
Jefferson examined and judged
This is the first of a three-part series written for Kasama.
by Pavel Andreyev
The Revolutionary Communist Party describes Bob Avakian’s latest essay, Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy, as an “unsparing critique of the history…of American society” and is promoting it with the same urgency it devoted to the author’s Away With All Gods! earlier this year. According to the RCP, it
“…needs to get out broadly into many streams of political and academic life: campuses, high schools, progressive movements, the legal community and intellectuals, and among the oppressed people in this country, opening up debate about the real nature of this system and the need for communist revolution.” [1]
Having “engaged” Away With All Gods! six months ago, I’d like to respond to this seriously as well. [2] What follows is a contribution to a critique, addressing approximately the first quarter of the work (dealing with Jefferson, his life and thought) rather than a review of the entirety. [3] I’ll raise some questions about how we should relate to historical facts, the issue of “progress” or “directionality” in history, and the evaluation of individuals in historical periods far removed from us. In AWAG! Avakian remarks provocatively that if Jesus were alive today we wouldn’t and shouldn’t like him very much (mainly because he accepted slavery). [4] Similarly he would like us to dislike Thomas Jefferson, whom he depicts as a cynical, demagogic, slave-owning oppressor. But his depiction of the individual (whatever its own merits) is less the issue than the use of this depiction to broadly characterize and explain over two centuries of “Jeffersonian democracy.”
Engaging Bob Avakian Again
It seems to me there are two problems with Avakian’s approach. It involves, as we will see, both a one-dimensional portrayal of Jefferson and a crude distortion of the historical record. And it involves a departure from historical materialism that isn’t at all helpful as we try to understand such issues as democracy (or what’s represented as such) in today’s world. A materialist understanding of the particularity of historical moments helps us to better understand the particularity of our own time.
But if you reduce history to a timeless morality tale — pounding home how bad people started this country on a bad basis and so (regardless of the historical process since) we have to “rupture with” those people and that historical heritage — you’re really precluding such understanding. We need to examine historical phenomena in their process of development, in their specificity, in their true contradictoriness — not project a kind of “original sin” factor into a country’s history and demand a redemptive, shunning process (as opposed to analysis) as the means to overcoming oppression.
Avakian’s “Scientific” Analysis of Jefferson’s Historical Role: A “Fitting Representative” of Slave-owners
Avakian begins with an anecdote about how he was once told (way back in 1979) by an African-American journalist that he was “awfully brave” for criticizing the U.S. system the way he did. She added, “You know, they kill people for saying what you’re saying.” This comment, according to Avakian, gets “right to the essence of ‘American democracy.’” It is “the essence” of U.S. democracy to kill people [like himself] for criticizing it.[5] Although Avakian surrounds American democracy with quotation marks, implying that it’s not really a democracy, he implies that from its historical inception the principle aspect of the U.S. political system has been the murderous intolerance of critical challenge.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Avakian suggests, represents this vicious essence. Noting that Jefferson is widely admired among progressive people as “the personification” of a “radical and popular democracy” that was never realized, he declares instead that “to put this in… blunt, and scientific—terms, Jefferson stands as a personification and a concentration of many of the illusions of people in the middle strata in particular, and more specifically many in the intelligentsia, who have not ruptured with, and in fact stubbornly cleave to, a bourgeois-democratic view of the world.”
Avakian mocks the old Communist Party USA for upholding Jefferson, and the American Revolution of 1776-1783, as progressive in their time. [6] He warns:
“You cannot get rid of this system if you proceed on the basis of upholding and extolling one of the main representatives of that very system, someone who is indeed emblematic of what that system is all about… You cannot change all this while at the same time clinging to the ideas and ideals that characterize this system and dominate this society—ideas and ideals of which Thomas Jefferson is, in fact, a fitting representative.”
The RCP chair seems to reject the possibility that one can uphold an historical figure for roles he or she played in a given period; that one can distinguish between principal and secondary aspects of historical figures’ roles; and that systems “represented” by such figures themselves can evolve from the revolutionary to the reactionary.
But how does upholding Jefferson as a bourgeois revolutionary during a period of rising capitalism, or even critically accepting some of his ideas, prevent us from getting rid of the vicious system under which we live today?
This question merits some discussion, but Avakian seems disinclined to examine it seriously. Rather, he rejects any positive evaluation of Jefferson as a matter of “clinging to” the ideas underpinning the slave system. One is again reminded of how he demands that Christians either literally believe the Bible (including its acceptance of slavery) or not, with no options in between! [7]
Avakian wants to fix the terms of discussion: either/or. Either you understand that Jefferson represented (indeed personified) the slave system, and is thus a figure to repudiate, or you “cling to” old CP-style patriotic opportunism.
This is a highly simplistic approach to history.
It’s not the same type of simplistic approach one finds in Stalin’s writings, which posit a near-universal series of “inevitable” stages corresponding to modes of production and imply that individuals should be evaluated as “progressive” or “reactionary” depending upon how they relate to the interests of the “rising” class. [8] (Bourgeois revolutions are progressive; the American Revolution was a bourgeois revolution and Jefferson a bourgeois revolutionary; thus, Jefferson was progressive.)
Avakian has appropriately rejected that crude model. [9]
But he posits something equally crude but less accurate: slavery is horrible; Jefferson owned slaves; hence Jefferson was, in the main, reactionary and deserving of the sharp exposure the self-described scientist Avakian can provide.
Far from the complex figure depicted in biographies by historians, morally torn by the issue of slavery and publicly and privately urging its abolition, Jefferson was in Avakian’s portrayal “one of the main representatives” of the slave-owning class enthusiastically promoting the slave system.
An Undialectical View of the American (Bourgeois) Revolution
Avakian of course recognizes that Jefferson and the other “founding fathers” were bourgeois revolutionaries; he declares that “Jefferson, and his political philosophy, stand in a real sense as an emblem of what is in fact bourgeois democracy—and in reality bourgeois dictatorship—in the history of the United States of America.” [10] He doesn’t however acknowledge the positive side of this in world-historical perspective.
Marxist scholars have generally:
(1) viewed the American Revolution as a progressive phenomenon, with profound implications for anti-colonial movements in Latin America and bourgeois revolutionary movements in Europe, especially France;
(2) seen it as “incomplete” in that its rhetoric of equality was irreconcilable with the realities of slavery and other forms of oppression (compatible with capitalism but not integral to it); and
(3) regarded it as a “work in progress” providing a structural framework for broader democratization, particularly in the form of the expanding franchise. [11]
Some basic facts seem beyond dispute. The revolution freed the Northern merchants from the burdens of British governance and allowed for the rapid development of industry. It produced a constitution by 1787 that gave the electorate (a majority of adult white males) greater participation in decision-making than existed in any other major country. This served the interest of the ruling class(es) at the time. [12]
Thus Lenin, in a letter to American workers in 1918, described the American Revolution as “one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars.”[13] In 1951 the Communist Party historian Herbert Aptheker noted that as a “fundamentally colonial” revolution it lacked the “profoundly transforming quality” of the English and French revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and “its thorough-going nature was limited …by its compromising with and then acceptance of the pre-feudal form which did characterize American colonial society — namely chattel slavery — something to be undone in a future revolution [the Civil War].” [14]
One detects some historicism here in Aptheker’s approach — the idea that bourgeois revolutions are good virtually by definition, representing “progress” in relation to prior “feudalism” and paving the way for subsequent socialist revolutions.
There are problems with that concept, and with any conception of history that posits a necessary sequence of stages and places the human subject at the mercy of “inevitability.” That is not Marxism.
As Marx and Engels point out:
“History does nothing, it ‘possesses no immense wealth,’ it ‘wages no battles.’ It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; ‘history’ is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims.” [15]
Marx did not posit an inevitable sequence of modes of production, each more liberating than the former, inexorably culminating with classless society. He explicitly denied that his “historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe” in Capital constituted “an historico-philosophic theory of the marche générale [general path] imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself, in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labor, the most complete development of man.”16
There are no iron laws of history.
The American Revolution didn’t have to happen the way that it did, and it certainly didn’t produce “the most complete development of man” possible at the time.
Still, Marxists (I think correctly) posit a general directionality in history, acknowledging the prospect of setbacks. [17] And Marxists have properly categorized the American Revolution along with the English Revolution (1640-1660) and the French Revolution of 1789 as one of the key bourgeois revolutions in world history, sweeping away absolute monarchies, hereditary aristocracies and structural barriers to the accumulation of capital by merchant classes.
Breaking with “Jeffersonian Democracy” and Breaking with Historical Facts
Avakian doesn’t see the American Revolution as a step forward towards “the complete development” of humanity but as a big fraud.
He seeks to expose it as such through his talks/transcripts — apparently designed for audiences he thinks will encounter a “scientific” analysis of U.S. history for the first time. Much as he demands a break with religion, Avakian demands a break with “Jeffersonian democracy” as the premise for revolutionary consciousness.
Why should we “rupture with” this icon of “American democracy”?
Here is Avakian’s main thesis: not only was he was a slave-owner but,
“Jefferson consistently acted in the interests of the aristocratic large landowning and slaveholding class in the southern United States, in opposition to the interests of small farmers—and, of course, this was also in opposition to the interests of that group of individuals who most glaringly did not have independence economically, or in any other way: the slaves, who did not actually count as individuals in the eyes of the slaveholders” [emphasis added].
In other words, Jeffersonian democracy — even as currently conceptualized among the progressives Avakian wants to challenge — is rooted in the slave-owning class. How slavery relates logically and concretely (particularly after 1865) to the components of Jeffersonian democracy (republicanism, constitutional government, individual rights, the principle of representative democracy, separation of church and state, opposition to a standing army, doctrine of separation of powers, freedom of speech and press, etc. — some of which we might want to retain after a communist-led revolution) is never really spelled out. [18] Certainly Jefferson expressed a “bourgeois-democratic view of the world,” as Avakian states. But was the acceptance of slavery integral to that worldview? Or was it, as Aptheker suggests, a matter of “compromising…to be undone” in the Civil War? [19]
Avakian acknowledges that “you can find statements by Jefferson where he says that slavery is in fact a blight and that it will have negative consequences for some time to come.” (I will cite some of them below.) But he adds:
“There have also been misinterpretations of what Jefferson wrote about slavery. To take one important example, there are passages he wrote in drafts of the Declaration of Independence—some of which did not, but some of which did, make it into the final version of that Declaration—where the King of England and the British government were strongly condemned for supposedly imposing the slave trade on the United States. Now, there were, in fact, ways in which Jefferson and the slave-owning class in Virginia generally were opposed to aspects of the international slave trade, even while they themselves were involved in selling slaves to other states and to slaveowners in other territories. In this, the essential motivation of these Virginia slaveowners was that they didn’t want the price of a slave being driven down, since they themselves had become major sellers of slaves within America itself.”
In other words, any expression of anti-slavery sentiment was all window-dressing. But to what end? Jefferson’s historical legacy? (Obviously his words against slavery don’t protect him from the mighty pen of a Bob Avakian, two hundred years down the road!)
The following is the famous passage that Jefferson wrote for inclusion in the Declaration of Indpendence that was cut from the final adopted version:
“[The British king] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.”[20]
To suggest that Jefferson wrote this out of the desire to increase slave prices for Virginia landowners is a stretch. And Avakian does not, in fact, prove that Jefferson intended that passage to be interpreted any way other than literally.
In his Autobiography, Jefferson claimed that in 1769, as a 26 year old member of the Virginian colonial legislature, he had proposed “the permission of the emancipation of slaves.”[21] (Was this too a mere cynical ruse?) Avakian’s “one important example” pertaining to the Declaration draft is hardly damning.
His case rests on something else: the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 that doubled the size of the United States.
Next in Part 2: Misunderstanding the Louisiana Purchase
* * * * * *
FOOTNOTES
[1] http://rwor.org/a/146/letter_on_comm-jd-en.html
It should be noted that while the publication is promoted as a “major new work” the tapes constituting the almost unaltered text have actually been available online for two years.
[2] For my review of Away With All Gods! on the Kasama site.
[3] This is not intended primarily as a contribution to the discussion of bourgeois (“Jeffersonian”) and socialist democracy, which Mike Ely has called for on the Kasama site. That’s a worthy but separate project, particularly given the Nepalese comrades’ assertion that a multi-party democracy is the crucial political mechanism for staying on the socialist road or for avoiding capitalist restoration.
[4] Bob Avakian, Away With All Gods! (Chicago: Insight Press, 2008), pp. 18, 83
[5] Somehow one recalls Avakian’s statement “On the Occasion of the Death of Willie “Mobile” Shaw” in December 2005. Avakian said that Shaw, an African-American communist, had (at some unspecified point in the past) “said to me: ‘You are the only hope we have.’ I have kept those words in my heart, with a deep sense of responsibility to live up to them.” http://rwor.org/a/027/avakian-statement-willie-shaw.htm
[6]Avakian notes that the Communist Party, USA maintained “Jefferson Bookstores” outlets through the 1960s (and beyond).
[7] Avakian (2008), p. 34
[8] See Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938; Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1976)
[9] See Revolutionary Worker, no. 1178 (December 8, 2002)
[10] By the way, Avakian repeats this expression “in a real sense” seven times in this text, and “in an overall sense” four times. This repetitive, pompous manner of expression, and the inclusion of wholly unnecessary clauses adding padding to his material, is characteristic of his “body of work.”
[11] For a useful overview of the older Marxist scholarship see Herbert Aptheker, The American Revolution, 1763-1783 (New York: International Publishers, 1951), p. 19f. Howard Zinn suggests that the “Founding Fathers…kept things as they were” while using the Constitution “to build a broad base of support…” He even states that the Constitution was “perfectly designed to build popular backing for the new government…” See Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), pp. 99, 101. But I have not found any Marxist work arguing that the American Revolution represented some sort of social retrogression.
[12] Some would divide the bourgeoisie of the time into capitalists and slave-owners (with antagonistic interests), while others see the slave-owners themselves as capitalists of a sort.
[13] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), vol. 28, p. 62
[14] Aptheker (1951), p. 22
[15] Lloyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat, eds., Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), p. 385. This is from the 1844 work The Holy Family.
[16] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Correspondence (Moscow: Progress Publishers, n.d.), p. 377. This was written in 1877, when in response to crude simplifications and distortions of his theories Marx was obliged to occasionally aver “I am not a Marxist.”
[17] We are, as a species, interacting with our environment in such a way as to better understand it, ourselves, and ways to improve human existence. While “History” is not a wind-up device producing predictable results, stages or outcomes, the application of human reason does generally produce “progress,” even though anti-rational ideologies such as fascism have in modern times produced widespread disillusionment and despair.
redflags said
The best short description I’ve seen of the American Revolutionary War was that it was an English Civil War, in argument about how to divide the wealth of the new colonies they were looting. A sort of libertarian Rhodesia. The Jeffersonian values were something easy to dismiss, not just by Avakian, but the people who descended from those he enslaved.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s essay The Grid of History: Cowboys and Indians is worth including directly in this discussion. Perhaps many Marxists have traditionally shared the eurocentric and racist assumptions abut history… and who “has” history. Hegel long ago argued that Africa had no history, and far too often the internal dynamics of Europe that spilled out into the world with genocidal implications have been analyzed and gazed at from within that same European chauvinist myopia.
At the same time, and this is the trick, I remember a sharp discussion with a close friend who was raised in Brooklyn, a Palestinian refugee. She chided me for so causally dismissing Jefferson as a slave holder, and offered the value: she didn’t have to attend a mosque or a church, nor was she legally owned as an adult by her family. Nor was any confession of belief forced onto her. She spoke of her first encounter with the Declaration of Independence in middle school, and how mind-blowing and revolutionary these ideas were, what value they have. She mentioned Ho Chi Minh’s similar respect for liberty and the rights of self-determination. And while she was a socialist, she argued persuasively that if people did have liberty of conscience, then how could we even conceive of a socialism worth the name?
And that contradictory legacy, not just of Jefferson but of bourgeois right itself is what we are seeking to disentangle.
redflags said
A short excerpt from Dunbar-Ortiz’s essay:
Two paragraphs, rarely cited, from the Declaration of Independence raise thorny questions about Anglo-American imperialist roots in forming the breakaway United States of America. This was not simply the founding of a republic for propertied, mostly slave-owning, white males, but more importantly a settler-colonialist and imperialist-aggressor state.
He [King George] has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. [The treaty ending the French and Indian War made British settlement over the Allegheny/Appalachian line into Indian country illegal and ordered the return of those tens of thousand settlers who had already squatted there, demanding land rights.]
He [King George] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
Not only did founding father Thomas Jefferson pen those words, he was also the real architect of the genocide and confiscation of the land of settled indigenous peoples later termed the Jacksonian policy of Indian removal.
Reconciling empire and liberty was a historic obsession of U.S. political thinkers and historians, in the twenty-first century openly being debated once again. Thomas Jefferson had hailed the United States as an “empire for liberty.” Andrew Jackson coined the phrase, “extending the area of freedom” to describe the process in which slavery had been introduced into Texas in violation of governing Mexican laws, to be quickly followed by a slaveholder’s rebellion and U.S. annexation. The term “freedom” became a euphemism for the continental and worldwide expansion of the world’s leading slave power. The contradictions, particularly since the initial rationalization for U.S. independence was anti-empire, are multiple.
It is easy to date U.S. imperialism to Andrew Jackson, but he only carried out the original plan, initially as an army general who led three genocidal wars against the Muskogee in Georgia/Florida, then as the most popular president ever, and the organizer of the expulsion of all native peoples east of the Mississippi to the Oklahoma Territory.
Although white supremacy was the working rationalization and ideology of English theft of Native American lands, and especially the justification for African slavery, the independence bid by what became the United States of America is more problematic, in that democracy/equality and supremacy/dominance/empire do not make an easy fit. It was during the 1820s, the era of Jacksonian Democracy, that the unique U.S. origin myth was created, James Fenimore Cooper the initial scribe. James Fenimore Cooper’s re-invention of America in The Last of the Mohicans has become the official U.S. origin story. Herman Melville called Cooper “our national novelist,” and, of course, he was the great hero of Walt Whitman who sang the song of manhood and the American super-race through empire. As an enthusiastic supporter of the U.S. war against Mexico, 1846–1848, Whitman proposed the stationing of sixty thousand U.S. troops in Mexico in order to establish a regime change there, stating, “whose efficiency and permanency shall be guaranteed by the United States. This will bring out enterprise, open the way for manufacturers and commerce, into which the immense dead capital of the country will find its way.”11
Whitman’s sentiment (and he was the most beloved writer of his time, and still beloved by contemporary U.S. poets, particularly the Beats) followed the already established U.S. origin myth that had the frontier settlers replacing the native peoples, similar to the parallel Afrikaner origin myth in South Africa.
To the extent that African Americans, Native Americans, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and non-European immigrants are allowed (and are willing) to embrace and embody U.S. patriotism, they may be accepted as conversos, as the Spanish Inquisition termed those who professed Christianity despite their “unclean” blood. Yet in the end, only the Old Settlers are true Americans.
TellNoLies said
Thank you Pavel, first for reading Avakian so I don’t have to, and second, for your thoughtful critiques. Avakian has a good head for identifying important questions and there is a compelling logic to revisting the question of the foundations of American democracy at this particular moment in history. Unfortunately he is a victim of his own self-regard which makes him too dismissive of the important work of others on which any serious analysis must be built.
The HBO mini-series on John Adams (which I probably wouldn’t have watched if it hadn’t filled the same time-slot as The Wire), had some fascinating stuff about the question of slavery in the American Revolution. There is a great scene in which Franklin, Adams and Jefferson are arguing over the language in Jeffersons’s draft condemning the slave trade. It is Franklin who persuades Adams that while Jefferson’s analysis is correct that its inclusion would sabotage the unity of the colonies neccesary to defeat the British. This of course was a real question tha poses in perhaps the sharpest way the sorts of compromises that are imposed on revolutionary processes. Of course we can see this particular compromise in terms of the prolongation of slavery and white supremacy in the United States, but its also worth asking in what ways, by making the success of the American Revolution possible (if we accept Franklin’s analysis of the actual configuration of forces) did this compromise open the door to the French and thus the Haitian Revolution. The exclusion of the anti-slavery section of Jefferson’s draft might thus be seen, as a sort of Brest-Litovsk moment in the world revolutionary wave of the late 18th/early 19th centuries.
There is a lot more to be found in the mini-series. The portrayal of the the representatives of the southern colonies to the Continental Congress as largely loathesome aristocrats with no democratic sensibility whatsoever stands in contrast to the portrayals not only of Jefferson, but of Washington who comes off as a much more interesting figure than I ever realized.
There is a larger question involved in how we understand Jefferson, and that is the question of how class interests do and don’t shape the ideological outlook of individuals. One of the things that I got from the mini-series was both how Jefferson conflicted outlook was a revolt against his own class interests AND how powerful an objective force those interests were anyway. A key point here is that Jefferson was NOT a member of the bourgeoisie, but nonetheless became something of what Gramsci would call an “organic intellectual” of that class and helped articulate a revolutionary discourse that would, however belatedly, contribute to the eventual overthrow of slavery.
Pavel said
Thanks for your comments, RedFlags.
The relationship of Jefferson to Native Americans is not really treated in Avakian’s essay and so is mentioned only marginally in (an upcoming section of) my critique. But since RedFlags raises the issue, quoting Dunbar-Ortiz (whom I very much respect), I’ll give my own humble opinion.
I think there’s no doubt that Jefferson favored a policy of assimilating Native Americans. “In truth,” he wrote, “the ultimate point of rest and happiness for them is to let our settlements and theirs meet and blend together, to intermix, and become one people.” Mainly this was to occur in two ways. He wanted the “Indians” to make a transition to European-style agriculture, mostly to make available to whites (through purchase) hunting and fishing lands but also because he genuinely felt that western-style settlements represented a “higher stage” of culture.
Thus as president in 1801 he told a delegation of Indians: “We shall, with great pleasure, see your people become disposed to cultivate the earth, to raise herds of useful animals and to spin and weave, for their food and clothing. These resources are certain; they will never disappoint you: while those of hunting may fail, and expose your women and children to the miseries of hunger and cold. We will with pleasure furnish you with implements for the most necessary arts, and with persons who may instruct you how to make use of them.”
I don’t mean to suggest he was filled with good will; he wrote privately about how desirable it would be to get Indians integrated into the white economy so that they’d become indebted and be forced to cede more of their lands to whites.
The other means of assimilation was education. Ideally Jefferson wanted Native Americans to be educated English-speaking citizens, in what was probably the most literate society in the world at the time. One can see him as a man of the Enlightenment in that intention, or as a culturally insensitive proponent of cultural annihilation–although I doubt that he was advocating the extinction of Native American languages, in which he actually had a deep scientific interest. (Did you know, by the way, that Jefferson in the 1780s on the basis of linguistic studies theorized that Native Americans had originated in Asia and crossed over the Bering Straits into Alaska?
Jefferson felt that Indians resisting assimilation should be removed beyond the Mississippi, and the Louisiana Purchase paves the way for that and for the forcible “Indian removal” that gets underway in earnest from 1830. So the historical record is a bit complicated.
I just submit for discussion whether all this makes him an “architect of genocide.”
Pavel said
I should clarify my next-to-last paragraph. Jefferson sought to encourage Indians unwilling to assimilate to relocate west of the Mississippi. The state lacked the strength to undertake the “Indian removal” that occurred later, and indeed pursued a policy of (as R. Douglas Hurt summarizes):
1) keeping the peace by protecting both whites and Indians from each other;
2) using trading posts to create debts the Indians could settle by selling their lands;
3) using agents to prevent Indian alliances with Britain, France, and Spain and to gain land cessions;
4) exchanging lands east of the Mississippi River for lands west of the river and removing the Indians to the Louisiana Territory; and
5) securing Indian lands as the price for peace whenever hostilities occurred.
redflags said
Pavel: I just submit for discussion whether all this makes him an “architect of genocide.”
I think it’s the textbook definition. Robbed of language, robbed of culture, robbed of lands and coherence as peoples.
While Marx understood colonialism to an important degree, and the horrors of primitive accumulation, Marxists have long had dubious positions on indigenous peoples and the progress of imperialism. Lenin made a great break, Mao made it real.
If we look at “our” history as one of progress within the conceptions of European history, we will be lost in the world. Dunbar-Ortiz deserves great credit for her plain-spoken argument on this point. Look today to the rise of chauvinist (and workerist!) neo-fascism in Europe. The ban on Islamic attire in France, the grotesque Orientalism of smug, self-righteous Dutch liberals, the Berlesconi pogroms against the Roma… All too often this takes place under the rubric of progressive, liberal, imperial capitalism.
The harder question is understanding the living link between the progressive liberal notions of a Jefferson, and the underlying system of slavery that pre-conditioned it. Let’s look today at people who will vote for Obama. This ain’t ancient history!
Keith said
What’s the difference between Avakian and Jefferson? The latter led a revolution.
Rowland Keshena said
I myself used to be completely critical of Jefferson in a one-way fashion, however since then my views on him have changed significantly (though it has not been a complete 180).
The main factor in my changing views on Jefferson was the book “Michael Hardt Present: Thomas Jefferson – The Declaration of Independence”, part of Verso Books’ “Revolutions” series. The title is a little misleading as the book is actually and anthology of Jefferson’s writings, both public documents like the declaration of independence, and personal correspondences with others.
In his introduction to the texts of the anthology, “Thomas Jefferson, Or, The Transition of Democracy” Hardt does a couple of things that I feel are quite important(it should also be noted that he seems to be writing primarily for a Leninist audience): first he differentiates the real vision of democracy held my Jefferson, in which everyone is involved somehow in the running of the state, and hence because power is literally in the hands of every single person they would violently resist attempts by anyone person or group to seize absolute power. To quote Hardt on this, “Jefferson’s idea…is to divide each country into wards of such a size that every citizen can participate in political deliberations actively and in person. These little republics should have full autonomy to decide all local issues, controlling issues of justice, police, public welfare, and so forth. Furthermore, Jefferson proposes that the wards send delegates to compose the next highest body of government, the county, which in turn would send delegates to the state level, which, finally, would send delegates to the national government. It is striking how strongly this schema resembles the institutions established by the Paris Commune some fifty years later. Marx himself admires in the Commune exactly the elements that Jefferson proposes in the ward schema: active participation, local autonomy, and a pyramid of delegation. Both Marx and Jefferson see participatory government as an antidote to the dominant, undemocratic form of parliamentary representation.” Secondly, he emphasises Jefferson’s ideas on the need for constant revolution/rebellion and its combination for a constant renewal of the constitutional process (he feels that every new generation should rewrite the constitution, so so-much for framer’s intent I guess). Both his model of democracy, plus his emphasis on periodic rebellion and constitutional renewal stand in stark contrast to the current model of bourgeoisie “democracy” the dominates the United States. Thirdly he emphasises Jefferson’s commitment to popular education when it comes to educating a people emerging from feudalism in the ways of true participatory democracy. I will not bother to try an explain it fully here, as Hardt does a much better job, save to say that Jefferson felt that the actual process of revolutionary participatory democracy was the way in which to educate the people in the ins and outs of democracy, a learn by doing model. He justifies this by use of a spiral system where by the democracy that is the goal is always a more perfect vision than that which is currently employed, and the goal will eventually be reached by the people actively taking part in and learning the democratic process.
Hardt also does not make the mistake of blindly idolizing Jefferson though, saying “finally, one should always keep in mind, even while appreciating what Jefferson had to offer the revolutionary tradition, the reactionary elements of his political thought and practice.” To aid the reader in this he includes as part of the anthology, a section of Jefferson’s writings on race, regarding black slaves and American Indians. This portion of the texts help the reader to grasp not only those views of Jefferson that were racist, but also his racist actions, both as a slaveholder (yes Hardt does include the drafts of the DoI, including the portions on the elimination of slavery), and as one of the primary architects of the destruction of Indian cultures and the separation of Indians from their traditional lands.
All in all it is a fascinating read and it goes a long in way in refuting the overly narrow point-of-view offered up by Avakian and his ilk. I highly recommend to revolutionaries of all stripes.
redflags said
I think of my experience pouring wine for the upper class here in New York, as a waiter for many years. I’d listen to their liberal conversations, about how enlightened they were and how backwards everyone else is supposed to be. And I’d think: I am serving you. This is your Friday night. And this is mine, working for tips.
Better an enlightened ruler than a despot. Better still to be free.
redflags said
Pavel, I also can’t help but think about the policy you cite in regard to Jefferson and the indigenous, and Israel’s policy today towards Arabs. And then think again about the liberal Zionists in Tel Aviv cafes…
Eddy said
This is only one sentence in the essay, but it describes a very important point in the critique of capital.
It may (or may not, I haven’t counted) be an accurate assessment of the views of many ‘marxist scholars’, but I think it is seriously mistaken to describe the slave system as being ‘not integral’ to capitalism, and especially to ‘American’ capital.
Slave labor – specifically by African peoples – created tremendous value that was expropriated through plantation systems, as well as through handicraft and small-scale industrial production systems, throughout the Western Hemisphere. And the value created through these forms fed and financed all of the other sectors of the new capitalist economies, directly and indirectly.
Marx, for example, speaks to the importance of slavery in his discussions of the ‘primitive accumulation’ of capital: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment of the aboriginal population, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.” (Capital Vol. 1, Chapter XXXI “Genesis of the industrial capitalist”)
The specificities of capital formation in the USA show that the value created by African slaves produced several generations of money-capital (in addition to exchange-value in cotton, tobacco, iron, etc) which in turn was re-vitalized through other sectors (as Marx notes, industrial capital, but also international trade and banking).
The kernel of truth required of any critique of Jefferson’s political theory is that he was one of the (perhaps most active) architects of the three-fifths section of the US Constitution, which guaranteed the southern states control of the Federal government for the first eighty years of the republic.
The non-Marxist Leonard Richards points out that in the sixty-two year period between Washington’s election and 1850 (the year of the so-called ‘historic compromise’ on the extension of the slave system into new territories), slaveholders held the presidency for fifty of those years. The only presidents re-elected were slaveholders, for most of that time the House speakship was held by slaveowners, and eighteen of thirty-one Supreme Court justices were slaveholders. (Richards, The Slave Power, LSU Press, 2000) All of that – as well as his own election over John Adams – was ensured by Jefferson’s three-fifths provision.
BobH said
I read Dunbar-Ortiz’s essay, and I think in some aspects she’s as one-sided as Avakian in judging the past through the eyes of the present. I’m thinking of her treatment of Muslim Spain and the Christian (re)conquest. For example, I found her choice of phrasing striking:
“the Castilian conquest of the Iberian Peninsula” vs. “In the eighth century, Muslims came to power in all but the northern fringe of the Iberian Peninsula and ruled for centuries”. Or consider “Before Christian aggression and eventual expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula,..” So, was Castile not part of the Iberian peninsula?
While it is beyond dispute that Moorish Spain was the most culturally advanced part of Europe at that time, and a model for religious tolerance, she downplays that this was the result a bloody conquest, also an act of aggression. Is she arguing that Iberian peasants were better off under Muslim rule than Christian rule, because the Muslim rulers were more civilized? By this argument, the Roman conquest of Gaul and Brittania represented progress, whereas the revolt of someone like Bodicea was reactionary. How should we judge resistance to Roman conquest and civilization, as progressive or reactionary?
Frankly, aside from the level of culture and tolerance, I don’t see much difference between the armed imposition of Islam and Catholicism. Christianity was probably more brutal, but the virtual disappearance of Christianity, Zoroastrianism, etc. in the east suggests there were real limits to tolerance.
I think her description of the Spanish reconquest and crusades is much too one sided, especially when she sums up with “We see here the beginnings of the “thousand year Reich” of settler capitalism/colonialism, and its characteristic tug of war over the hearts and minds of the majority of the settlers”. The origins of the Crusades where more complex than a kind of proto-imperialism. The sack of Constantinople by Crusaders certainly helped the Muslim cause more than the Christian cause.
Not to distract overly from the Jefferson discussion, it’s just that I think Dunbar-Ortiz, like Avakian, is using a rather narrow ideological model of history to justify conclusions about history. Just as Avakian cherry picks his view of Jefferson as a model of the “original sin” of bourgeois democracy past and present, I think Dunbar-Ortiz is carefully selecting episodes of Catholic/Christian history to find the point of origin of a racialized, Christian colonialist capitalism that couldn’t have developed any other way. That strikes me as a simplistic inversion Eurocentric views of history — useful for exposing Eurocentric myths, but no so useful for understanding actual historical development of European capitalism.
RW Harvey said
All societies — from the earliest tribal bands to the fiefdoms to the first bourgeois democracies to the various communist states — are first and foremost vehicles for the protection, self-preservation, and expansion of the people within that particular social configuration (all propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding) To this end they place themselves at the center of their own creation stories and bind their members together with a variety of myths that serve to assuage doubts, mobilize the population for defense (including expansion in the form of defending one’s group), and in general create a zealous sense of specialness or uniqueness. Therefore, the basic premise of “Us versus Them” is part and parcel of the collective group psychology, with various material factors (environment, means of production and relations to these means, external/internal threats, etc.) setting the context for how this will paly itself out.
In this sense it is the myth of Jefferson and the Founding Generation (as Naomi Wolf calls them in an effort to make peace with and soften their patriarchal image as the Founding Fathers) that is so conservative. Notice that in the aftermath of 9/11, in response to the ruling class clampdown on civil liberties, and the current economic crisis, the mainstream progressive imagination can only look backwards to the likes of Jefferson and FDR. These are the organizing mythologies (not in the sense of being make-believe, but myth in the sense of being a transcendent reality and bedrock of our belief as to what is possible in relation to each other and the world) that continue to provide the quicksand-like drag on any kind of vision of a communist-inspired future. These myths tell us that for better or worse, the Founding Fathers have left us with the pinnacle of human achievement, the best possible system under the sun, and our job as citizens is to critique it towards perfection (read: elect Obama this time) while making peace with the various pendulum swings capitalism will inevitably offer up because, after all, it does not (and never will) get any better than this.
Avakian’s ahistorical dogmatism regarding Jefferson and the American revolution misses the complexity of that period. Contrary to Avakian, this first installment sees to be saying that socialism will be built upon the positive remnants of bourgeois democracy (freedom of speech, representative democracy, etc.). Is this a correct reading? If so, what does that all mean for the DoP, for the role of the Party once in power, for all the questions Kasama has been discussing? My hope is tha the next installments and the forthcoming discussion on democracy begin to link these questions up because the creation of a new socialist myth is at stake.
TellNoLies said
People who are interested in either or both the reconquest of Spain and the American revolution should check out Ronald Sanders’ “Lost Tribes and Promised Lands: The Origins of American Racism.” In addition to illuminating the issues we are discussing here in ways more satisfactory than either Avakian or Dunbar-Ortiz its just a fascinating look into a lot of weird and overlooked history (like Vasco Da Gama’s encounter with Spanish-speaking Jews in India).
On the queston of Avakian vs. Dunbar-Ortiz I hope everybody is familiar with the tragi-comic account of their encounter in “Outlaw Woman.” If you haven’t, let me just say that it offers testimony to early evidence of Avakian’s tone-deafness on matters religious and the disastrous consequences thereof. She has a laser eye for his hubris. BobH may have a point about her particular analysis on the question we are discussing here, but she is a hell of a lot more fun to read than Avakian.
Mike E said
I read Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s account — and i found it almost cartoonish (i.e. unreal) in its depiction of Avakian. In fact, she was not just someone meeting him in an encounter but was a participant of the early Revolutionary Union (the organization that became the RCP) who left over political line questions (including the issue of evaluating Cuba).
Avakian’s discussion of these relationships (in his autobiography “From Ike to Mao”) at least has the advantage of sketching more clearly the political issues involved in her departure from Maoist ranks (and not relying as she does on some questionable personal sketches).
celticfire said
To be fair, I don’t believe Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz considers herself (to my knowledge) a Maoist. She has however played what I think are important roles of educating revolutionaries of their own chauvinism and white supremacy, and she can be hard to swallow in her painful honesty. Her outline of Avakian, I think, is absolutely correct.
nando said
You don’t think she was a maoist? Based on what? You say “to my knowledge”…. and you have detailed knowledge about her political affiliations forty years ago?
You think her cartoonish diss of Avakian is “absolutely correct”? based on what? Your personal experience with Avakian? Your knowledge of what he was like in the 60s? Or your dislike for him now?
Pavel said
to Redflags (in response to post #6 above):
I should maybe hold off replying until my entire critique is posted, since I do touch on some relevant issues of historical causality and attribution of proliferating historical phenomena to personalities. But I keep thinking about this proposition that Jefferson is the “architect of genocide.”
It’s not entirely clear to me that you embrace it, although you praise Dunbar-Ortiz. Plainly you believe that the catastrophe that befell Native Americans fits “the textbook definition” of genocide, and I’d like to first comment on that and then on Jefferson in relation to it.
I’m not sure what “the” textbook definition of genocide is, and I think this is a bit of a contested zone, actually. I like to err on the side of limiting the term to deliberate efforts to annihilate a gene-pool. Sometimes the term’s used for dramatic effect in a way that undercuts its analytical utility.
Anyway this is my sense of the chronology. Almost immediately after 1492 a demographic catastrophe struck the population of North America. A population of perhaps 100 million shrank to a small fraction of that in a short period of time as a result of the spread of diseases brought by Europeans. This was plainly not a matter of conscious intent any more than the spread of the bubonic plague to Europe from India, killing 1/3 the European population in the 14th century, was a matter of conscious intent.
By 1800 the newly formed United States had a population of about 4 million whites and 1 million blacks. The number of Native Americans within the borders claimed by the U.S. is not available but seems to have been a small fraction of this. Many adapted what had become the dominant culture. That is, the results of the demographic catastrophe were apparent, along with the uninterrupted emigration from Europe and white population increase. Within the new nation of settlers, many of whose families went back generations in North America, there were swathes of thinly populated land where Indians practiced their traditional life styles. The policy of the government was not (yet) to remove them by force or support white citizens in attempting to do so, but to encourage assimilation and/or to purchase the land. In other words, there was no genocide in the early years of the Republic.
As I understand it, what could most arguably be described as a “genocidal” policy dates from around 1830 and the policy of “Indian removal” which is officially employed from that time. It’s closely associated with Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the U.S.,
the vicious architect of the Cherokee relocation treaty (and others) implemented under his successor James van Buren (resulting in 4000 perishing in the “Trail of Tears”). From then on, the record is plainly one of what in the twentieth century would be termed ethnic cleansing, forced marches, concentration camps, crimes against humanity, etc. up through Wounded Knee (1890) and beyond.
Plainly the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory played an important role in all this, and Jefferson (while acquiring the whole territory, as it were, by chance rather than a considered plan) did contemplate early on the resettlement of unassimilated Indians beyond the Mississippi. But is there evidence that he advocated, or to action to encourage, forced removal? Or would have countenanced thousands dying in forced marches? I think the burden of proof is really with the accuser there.
You end your posting:
“The harder question” [meaning, presumably, than determining whether or not the Native American experience constitutes genocide] “ is understanding the living link between the progressive liberal notions of a Jefferson, and the underlying system of slavery that pre-conditioned it. Let’s look today at people who will vote for Obama. This ain’t ancient history!”
.I’m not sure I understand your meaning. Are you saying that there continues to be a link between the ideas of the man Jefferson himself, which you characterize as progressive and liberal, and the system of slavery that “pre-conditioned” those ideas? Or are you saying it’s hard to understand how today’s progressive liberals view Jefferson, regardless of the fact that his ideas are preconditioned by slavery, and suggesting that they’ll vote for Obama because (contra Avakian) they buy into “Jeffersonian democracy”? (I’m sorry, I just find the grammar of your sentence confusing.)
Rowland Keshena said
Pavel:
Prior to the emergence of the United States, while much of the Indian population was killed off by disease, much of the deaths were the intentional work of Europeans.
There was a wholesale slaughter of the Indian population in many places, such as those seen in the campaign of terror lead by De Soto through the American southeast, and the campaigns in Mexico and what could become Peru, and of course Colombus’ track record in Hispanola. Add to that there were also policies of essentially working the Indians to death under brutal slave conditions that had not already died as a result of European diseases or European hands.
As for the disease, there are many documented instances in which disease was intentionally spread among the Indians with the sole intention of exterminating them.
So the genocidal policies against Indians did not emerge without a well established bass in the previous 350 years before the 1830s.
I would go into more depth but I am quite tired at the moment and to to sleep, so I suggest, rather critically, that you check out Ward Churchill’s books “A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to Present” and “Since Predator Came.”
Rowland Keshena said
you should also check out “American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World” by David E. Stannard, and The American Indian Genocide Museum, which has a wealth of documents pertaining to the nature of pre-American colonial domination of the Western hemisphere
celticfire said
nando: clearly she doesn’t claim to be Maoist today (at least not publicly.)
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has been a sort of lightening rod in radical circles. She insists in following in practice, not just words actions that create a feminist atmosphere. I for one think this is not only acceptable, but necessary in any revolutionary organization that adheres to Womens Liberation in more then just words. From personal accounts I have heard of Avakian from the 60′s and (today) – this portrayal seems to add up in my mind of how Avakian works. I’ve never met Avakian and I’m specifically sure I would care to. She demonstrates: Avakian upheld chauvinist positions- and probably still does, the absurd security culture and paranoia that has defined the RCP, and finally the rigidity and lack of “a lot of elasticity.” Where did I get it wrong Nando? I’ve met a number of people who personally met with Avakian “back in the day,” and even ones who find some unity with his politics acknowledge his – what only can be described – as male chauvinist behavior.
Pavel said
Rowland—
Thanks for your comments/suggestions.
I was focusing on the early U.S. and the issue of Jefferson as “architect of genocide.” Spanish colonialists’ behavior in the southwest is a somewhat different issue. So too the undoubted wholesale slaughter in Mexico and Peru. I don’t think we’re debating the general nature of the “rosy dawn” of capitalist imperialism in the New World.
You write “there are many documented instances in which disease was intentionally spread among the Indians with the sole intention of exterminating them.” Are there on the eastern seaboard? Alan M. Kraut, Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes and the Immigrant Menace (JHU Press, 1995), p. 21 writes there is “some indication” that blankets infected with smallpox were deliberately sold to Indians by British settlers in the 18th century, but he footnotes Bernard Knollenberg, “General Amhert and Germ Warfare” in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review (now Journal of American History), vol. 41 (Dec. 1954), noting that no historian has been able to verify Knollenberg’s contention.
Apparently there’s correspondence between Lord Amherst, a British General during the French and Indian War, and Swiss mercenary (on the British side) Henry Bouquet about sending smallpox-infected blankets to Indians allied with the French. Bouquet hesitated, fearing his own men would get infected, counter-proposing using a “Spanish method” of sending infected dogs. But it’s not clear the plan was ever adopted.
You can say this is damning in that it shows whites considered using “germ warfare” against Indians, but there is a certain specificity here: a wartime goal, as opposed to a clear plan to annihilate Native Americans, some of whom of course like the Iroquois were aligned with the British and American colonists.
Ward Churchill has presented a case for the creation of a smallpox epidemic in 1837 among the Mandan of the Upper Missouri though the distribution by the U.S. Army of infected blankets. I’m not convinced Churchill’s interpretation squares with the facts; this article, while very hostile, raises some important questions about it. http://www.plagiary.org/smallpox-blankets.pdf
But the discussion is really meandering away from Avakian’s critique of Jeffersonian democracy.
TellNoLies said
Mike,
There are questions of line on paper and there are questions of line in practice. Dunbar-Ortiz may not have presented an account that emphasized the differences on paper because the ones that mattered most to her were the questions of line in practice. For folks who remained in the RU at the time, the substantive issue may have seemed to have been over Cuba while for Dunbar-Ortiz it was a culture she experienced as poisonous.
The incident that stood out in her account, and the reason I thought it of contemporary relevance, was Avakian’s refusal to take seriously her (correct) identification of a couple of infiltrators in RU who would later testify before the successor to HUAC. Dunbar-Ortiz’s ability to identify them as infiltrators was based on her knowledge of the particularities involved in their religious backgrounds. Avakian’s failure it seems was connected to a flattening out of those sorts of distinctions of the sort we still see in AWAG.
On an unrelated note, but of likely general interest, in my online meanderings I discovered the following trove of out of print 60s/movement books that some enterprising person has made available as PDFs including Kirkpatrick Sale’s “SDS” and much more:
http://www.sunrisedancer.com/radicalreader/
Mike E said
Pavel discussed the question of smallpox blankets.
I want to agree: Writing for Revolution newspaper on these matters I repeatedly investigated whether there was documented evidence of use of smallpox blankets. In particular, one draft article for Revolution said that small pox blankets had been used during the Trail of Tears (when Cherokees, Seminoles and Creeks were moved to Oklahoma under horrific conditions.) I was unable to uncover any documented evidence of the use of smallpox blankets (anywhere), other than the correspondence that pavel refers to (i.e. Lord Amherst, in a confrontation before the U.S. was formed).
Now, there are lots of stories circulating about the use of smallpox blankets — and it is quite possible that a number of them are true. But the evidence of deliberate biowarfare is very limited (not surprising since it is the kind of things that few people wold commit to paper!)
And, in addition, I don’t doubt that there were other incidents of their usage — including by settlers suffering from smallpox who just decided (on their own) to eliminate their Indian neighbors. And, of course, it IS known that European diseases (like small pox and measels and many others) wiped out huge sections of the Native populations (in waves of epidemics in the 16th century) often before the Natives themselves had ever met european explorers. The Mandan were met by early explorers (Lewis and Clark for example) as a vibrant culture and then were so devastated by disease that they virtually disappeared as a nation of people. Many other peoples were so decimated that their survivers died or merged with other tribes.
This discussion of smallpox blankets does relate to Avakian’s treatment of Jefferson in this sense:
Facts and evidence matter. It is not correct to invent or assume evidence (if it doesn’t exist). It is not correct to insist that Jefferson was fundamentally an advocate of the expansion of the slave system (and then to see his actions through that prism, even if the historical evidence suggests something else.)
We don’t want to “cut the toes to fit the shoes” but we want to “extract truth from facts.”
There is an instrumentalist method that wants to pursue certain political goals using our agitation, and is therefore willing to “shade” the evidence to fit those goals. Avakian wants to debunk the mythic stature of America’s “founding fathers” — fair enough — that is a valuable goal. But it is not ok, in the pursuit of that, to sketch a picture that is not factual. (And as Pavel demonstrates key factual arguments of Avakian’s work on Jefferson clash with the known facts.)
And the issue here is not just that Avakian claims to be a pathbreaking thinker (and yet much of his work displays a shabby dilletantism when examined critically). The issue is not just that his own supporters are trained in a “whateverist” appreciation of this work.
But the issue is also methodology — that Avakian (correctly) argues (in words) that truth matters — but then in practice repeatedly displays a VERY instrumentalist shaving of truth for his agitational arguments (and for the purposes of portraying himself and his political project).
This is an important methodological thing to fight through — Not mainly to debunk Avakian’s self-promotion, but because we communists have a serious work to do. We need to understand the world now as it actually is. And we need to excavatie the experience of communism so far (the good, the bad, and even the ugly).
And far too much of the communist method so far has been to put a positive gloss on this past — such mythmaking which robs us of a clear-sighted view of these events, and it undermines our credibility when we debate in arenas where negative narratives have excavated the difficult episodes that communist histories often ignore. Avakian speaks against this mythmaking, and then inserts his own myths.
We need to “know the world to change the world.” And a movement on a self-imposed info-diet about the past doesn’t actually “know the world.”
TellNoLies said
A while back I attempted to confirm the smallpox blanket stories I had heard and ran into the same lack of evidence except for the Lord Amherst incident. Especially troubling, though, was the following systematic refutation of Ward Churchill’s claim that smallpox blankets were distributed among the Mandan:
http://www.plagiary.org/smallpox-blankets.pdf
What is most distressing here is the persuasive case that Churchill falsified data to support his argument. The damage done here is not only to the historical record but to Churchill’s credibility, but to that of the many (including myself) who rallied in his defense when he came under a clearly politically-motivated attack.
Mike E said
I would like to chime in on the raising of Dunbar-Ortiz’s anecdotal memories of “Avakian the person.”
Celticfire writes:
Yes, clearly Roxanne is not a Maoist today. But as discussed above, her account of the meeting with Avakian is (precisely) shaded and rewritten to jibe with her current views — and it leaves out the degree to which she was actually involved in the new communist movement that produced the Revolutionary Communist Party.
I think people are sometimes quick believe what they want to believe.
You have a view of Avakian, Roxanne’s snide and cartoonish description of Avakian meets your preconception, so you assume her description is accurate. If we don’t avoid that we will repeatedly fool ourselves about many things.
Second, I have a deep dislike of empty personal slams, and unverfiable anecdotal methods like this that smear a person in ways that can’t be verified.
We were not a fly in the room, and so can’t really tell whether Roxanne’s depiction of that meeting is true or false. But I do want to point out that ANY political leader or figure can be the subject of such “stories” at any time, by anyone. “Oh, I met xxxx, she was such an arrogant asshole.” or whatever.
It is a cheap and unreliable method — especially when it is discussed out of the context of political line — when it is part of the elevation of “process” over substance. And clearly, when two people are struggling over key questions of line, and are disagreeing, and are reaching a parting of ways, it is not hard to portray the other party as arrogant and incapable of listening.
If an anecdote illustrates a point (a point that is expounded using broader evidence and questions of line) then anecdotes can be valuable, but if a subjective anecdote the presented as THE EVIDENCE, then it is a matter of “he said, she said.” Any lie can be told backed by a shaded anecdote — about you, me, anyone in the room.
Iin fact, Roxanne Dunbar’s separation from the RU WAS over major matters political line (especially what stand to take vis a vis the Soviet Union — i.e. whether to see it as imperialist, especially as this question came to a head over Cuba). She doesn’t really dig into that much at all…. But the issue is line there — and on the key issues of that moment, the forces walking the pro-cuban road (especially Bruce Franklin and the forces that became the Venceremos organization) were (like their co-thinkers in the Weathermen and in the Cleaver BLA) walking on path that was not right, and was retreating from what needed to be done.
Third, I don’t think your assumptions of Avakian are justified. I have been careful over the last 18 months of polemics not to slide into detailed personal stories about Avakian. We have argued that “line not author is key” — and it is confusing to personalize things.
But, while avoiding my own detailed anecdotes, let me say that I have known Bob Avakian under a number of different situations since meeting him in 1971 (right after Dunbar separated from the Revolutionary Union). And, in a couple sentence, I would say I found him to be a remarkable listener, and someone I would describe as sensitive. He is incredibly quick and funny — a prankster who loves to share funny stories. (Anyone who assumes he is “rigid” either personally or politically is mistaken.)
I watch him as the wrenching line struggle with the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters was coming to a head in 1977, and he was remarkably, even painstakingly principled in his way of handling rising contradictions (not factionalizing, not starting whispering campaigns etc.)
And finally, I have to say, I walked away from almost every discussion with my mind blown — he is someone who brings new startling thoughts and conclusions, almost casually, into every exchange. I have thought about comments he made literally for years later.
So, that is my experience — despite the obvious political and ideological differences I have with Avakian’s present course. On one level i find the cheap anecdote distasteful in general — but I also find Roxanne’s treatment of Avakian shabby IN PARTICULAR. And i could easily tell a dozen anecdotes that blow that depiction away.
Perhaps we don’t agree with Avakian on many things, but let’s not become unprincipled or cheap. Or confuse our assumptions with facts.
Finally, there are a number of things in your comments that relate to political and ideological matters.
Well, yes, Avakian (and the RCP as a whole, and me when I was part of it) publicly upheld some wrong positions — including infamously on homosexuality. But I have to tell you, that in personal contact with Avakian no one would describe him as a male chauvinist — and lets not assume that his stand on homosexuality translated into crude anti-homosexual remarks in casual conversation. The movement of the 1960s emerged with quite a bit of machismo. The panthers, for example, were famous for portraying their movement as a fight for “manhood.” and the RU essentially came out of the Panthers in many ways. But I don’t think anyone can argue that Avakian himself had those kinds of crude views. I think he is sincere when he talks about how horrific he thought the Panther statements were at the 1969 SDS convention — and I say that because the movement (and then the Party) he led pretty systematically moved away from that 1960s machismo — except on the important question of gay people.
And, without trying to describe long ago conversations, I remember discussing with Avakian issues of male chauvinism and the relations of men-and-women — back when i was barely out of my teens — in which he listened carefully but also raised sharp points (and some criticism of my views) that I thought about for years.
Again, I’m arguing against casually extrapolating from your own assumptions — a method that will actually take you to false conclusions.
As for “absurd security culture” etc. I think that remark is misplaced. Roxanne is talking about meeting Avakian in 1970s. The panthers were literally dying at that point. The RU was infiltrated by informants who soon testified before Congress. Cointelpro was raging. It is wrong for you to assume that careful security precautions are inherently absurd and paranoid.
And i think it would be wrong to act TODAY as if careful security precautions are inherently absurd and paranoid.
There is around the RCP today a security culture that is divorced from security needs — it is part of how their info diet is justified, it is a way of self-aggrandisements, it assumes semi-permanent government targetting (in ways that are not substantiated by evidence). But… i think it is wrong to project this current political problem back forty years (!) and assume that the security guidelines of Avakian and the RU were (back then!) absurd.
In fact, i think the RU pioneered a serious communist approach that broke with the methods of the panthers (that laid them open to infiltration. It introduced “need to know,” and vetting during recruitment, and other basic principled that any serious political movement should consider.
So again, Celticfire, I realize that your comments here were quickly written and “off the cuff.” And I don’t want you to take my remarks personally — but i did want to share some observations that your comments provoked.
Mike E said
TNL writes:
You write as if Roxanne’s recollection is simply true. Here is my issue with this: Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t. Maybe he dismissed her, maybe he didn’t. Even if she DID present a case, SHE doesn’t even know what he thought of it later as he mulled it over in his mind.
To take his (alleged) indifference to the suspicious behavior of infiltrators and to connect it (now! forty years later) to “a flattening out of those sorts of distinctions” (in his recent book on religion) seems to be profoundly over-reaching. It is a method reading history backwards, from current criticisms — and finding evidence of them in various accounts (while disregarding evidence to the contrary).
And i repeat, if we apply this method, we will be able to create any narrative we want about anybody. And here is an example of “you can prove anything” using this method:
Celticfire thinks the RCP’s culture of security is “paranoia” — and so he sees evidence of that paranoia around security matters in Roxanne’s account. But using the same anecdote, TNL think the issue is “flattening of distinctions” so sees in Roxanne’s account a lack of attention to security matters. So the same story is proof that “security paranoia” has old roots, and also that there is indifference to security because of lack of attention to facts.
You can see my point: with this method you can “trace” back current problems as far as you want. And you can take remembered anecdotes as evidence. And you can prove anything — even two opposed theories from the same “evidence.”
I have sat in many meetings and went through many political confrontations over many years, and “remember” some of them in ways that have only become clearer with time. But it is the telling that has become clearer, not necessarily the memory (or the accuracy). In fact we often remember the telling, not the event.
It is also a method that grasps at straws to establish political continuity. And we need to break with the communist movement’s legacy of “reading back through history.” I.e. if Trotsky was wrong about “socialism in one country” — then the “roots” of that opportunist character can supposedly be found throughout his career — back to the differences of 1905, and 1912….. right? If Lin Biao was a bad element in 1971, he must always have been a bad element, right? And we can find anecdotal evidence of that (after the fact) from memories of thirty year old meetings with him, where he was a bad listener, right?
Now, there actually IS political continuity. The RCP has, for example, repeatedly hyped things using reductionist analysis and overestimation of necessary outcomes. There was a sense of impending revolution surrounding May Day 1980, there was an exaggeration of revolutionary possibilities later in the 1980s, there was a sense that the Christian Right would grab for theocratic fascism and might emerge as “the stage managers” of a proletarian revolution.
I think it is fair to sketch major matters of line — and find continuity.
I also think we should explore the RCP’s strategy for forming a vanguard: Avakian took the forces he could attract (coming out of the 1960s) and when that upsurge was clearly moving into ebb, sought to “consolidate” those forces into a cadre organization — and sought to “act like a vanguard” and (on that basis) become an actual vanguard with deep roots among the people, and actually lead a revolution (and then socialist transition). That method was based on a whole vision of how revolution happens, and how leadership emerges.
And I think we can look over the actual arc the RCP traced (over the following thirty years) and draw some valuable conclusions as we seek to regroup and retake the revolutionary road.
But, I am resistant to overblowing half-remembered and tendentious anecdotes — and treating them as “evidence” of a whole way of thinking. there may be truth to Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz’s recollections. It may be true that the RU got warning about these infiltrators and “just couldn’t hear the criticisms” — certainly there has been ongoing problems of listening and hearing.
this is not intended as a summation of Roxanne, whose work speaks for itself. It is a question of method. I am suspicious of a political culture that “believes” nasty stories about individuals we have political conflict with — because it is expedient, useful, or because it jibes with how some of us “assume” they must have been.
celticfire said
Mike,
I appreciate the way you brought this up.
I admit fully that subjective personal experiences can’t replace a thoughtful summation of line. And yes, I have a perception of Avakian (who I’ve never met), and I’ve met people who have met with him who say things that correlate to my initial perception – guilty.
I don’t usually like to drag out old quotes from the five heads (especially this head) but, Uncle Joe said that it was a “big illusion” that one can stuggle out a line and that be the only determining factor: that in fact how a line was implemented could be equally important as the line itself. The point I’m trying to illustrate is that struggling out a correct line on Cuba, or the class nature of the Soviet Union is (and was) extremely important. But, for example, claiming to adhere to the liberation of women and the end of patriarchy, all while enforcing for decades a damaging practice and line on homosexuality – may kind of miss “combining the general with the particular” as Mao said. Is it possible Avakian was right about the Soviet Union, while being wrong on homosexuality, and reversely, Ortiz being wrong on the Soviet Union, while being right about the RU/RCP’s internal practices? I think that is probably not only possible, but probably the truth.
A revolutionary friend of mine once pointed out that it is usually men doing theoritical work and women doing organizational work, and again drawing from my subjective experience, this is true. How did the RU/RCP address this? What attempts at self-criticism and rectification were made? What internal mechanisms were in place to hold sexist/chauvinistic behavior in check?
These are really important questions we can throw to the back burner and say “well get to those questions later.” I suspect that Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz felt she didn’t to listen any further, and she was probably correct. TellNoLies pointed out that there is correct lines on paper and correct lines in practice.
My intentions are not to personally slam anyone because it would fruitless, but rather to raise a bigger question: how is a “principle leader” held accountable to line in practice? What if a “principle leader” demonstrates male chauvinist, oppressive behavior? HOW is that handled? This is one of those “particular” questions, Mike. There is something UNACCOUNTABLE in discrediting all personal experiences because they aren’t line questions and it seems like a cheap veil for excusing patriarchal behavior.
Also, I don’t believe that security precautions are “inherently absurd and paranoid” but only responding to a real threat in one decade, and responding to ALL threats over many years in the same way, is in fact absurd and paranoid and makes communits seem like crazed consipiracy theorists…ask anyone that ever wondered why Avakian spent so many years abroad. Revolution comes with real and percieved dangers. Distuinguishing them can mean the forward development or stagnation for an organization.
Mike you say you’re “arguing against casually extrapolating from your own assumptions” – fair enough. I have no direct knowledge of Avakian. But sometimes assumptions are correct.
One of the problems I see with how the RU developed into the RCP is that it kind of already decided how the “core” would be. So a group of people with some experiences during those high-tide of oppression you describe Mike begin cement into the mentality of the cadre and supporters. 2008 is not 1972. Is new, younger leadership able to develop and struggle with the older ones? The RCP hates these kind of questions because, they believe (honestly, I think) that revealing such information could be a security risk. It could be. But that isn’t an excuse not address the questions raised.
TellNoLies said
Mike,
I appreciate your general point about the dangers in these sorts of anecdotal stories (having been the victim of a few myself), and the ways they can degrade political discourse. But I also think Celticfire has an important point. Critiques of line (on paper or in practice) take many forms. A lot of how people talk about ideas is by telling stories. In fact most people have a very hard time talking at the level of abstraction that is the norm on this site. And many people (like Dunbar-Ortiz) who are quite capable of such discussion consciously choose to use stories instead because it makes their ideas more accessible. The stories people tell therefore make up a lot of the raw material we have to work with in assessing different forces and phenomena. When we exclude it from consideration we tend to exclude the voices of most participants in the struggle from our discussions and privilege the experiences of those who are most comfortable with a certain abstract level of theoretical discourse (disproportionately university educated dudes). I’m not saying we should just capitulate to this state of affairs. One of our tasks is precisely to train people to engage in that sort of theoretical discourse because it is, whether they like it or not, a neccesary weapon in the struggle for a better world. I don’t think, however, that this is accomplished by simply excluding peoples stories from consideration, but rather by developing peoples abilities to critically assess such stories as evidence.
Mike E said
I agree with you TNL that it is possible to dig into important political matters using “stories.” RedFlags has a (typically) witty comment on this: “What some denounce as ‘anecdotes,’ the rest of us just call experience.”
I am not arguing that only one particular language or form of theoretical discourse is acceptable or real.
But I am concerned about (a) given credibility to a single unverified anecdote offered as evidence, (b) anectodes were the points are about the person/leader, not about the organization and its politics.
In this case, I’m also (obviously) reacting because I have my own repeated occasonal experiences with Avakian over 35 years — and i found the characterization Roxanne wanted to leave us with was a real cheap shot.
And I am reacting because Roxanne’s characterization seems to have credibility because it SEEMS to confirm what some people have already concluded.
A thought experiment: what if the quote we were discussion was someone saying “When I met Avakian it was life-changing, i suddenly saw how revolution was possible, and that I had find a way to contribute.” Won’t that have less credibility with some people — precisely because, unlike Roxanne’s anecdote, it runs against their assumptions?
I believe that such personal (ad hominem) methods don’t contribute to the discussion: you can smear people easily without being disproven, you train your audience to evaluate movements based on very personalized and perceptual characteristics.
Dont interpret this as a rigid argument for a particular KIND of speech or a particular kind of illustration: but I believe we should fight to keep our discussion on the high plane of line struggle — focusing on what will take us along the road to liberation and what will not.
TNL writes;
That is what i thought i was doing in my response to the Roxanne anecdote — I questions its overall value as evidence (based on contrary experience, and based on her focus on personal characteristic not key line questions that were in dispute.)
ShineThePath said
Mike, I am curious to know why you think Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s assessment on meeting Avakian is crude in description? I don’t know anything of these claims, but I respect Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz as a scholar; I am curious, is she flat out lying, exaggerating, etc?
Five Ridges said
Pavel,
To define genocide technically as the obliteration of a gene pool is shallow and sterile. Its usefulness as a concept in history is that in the context of the reality of massive and overwhelming reduction of populations, including indigenous peoples, in the course of imperialist conquest, plunder and expansion. The intentions of the imperialist and colonizer is hardly a relevant issue in the question of genocide. What is of import is the actual reality and practice of the destruction of population. Giving importance to the consideration of the intent of the imperialists in the reality of genocide serves to absolve and mitigate the accountability and gravity of the harm done to the victims of genocide.
You also discuss the question of the role of smallpox epidemics in the decimation of indigenous populations in South and Central America in a vacuum, outside the physical and psychological hardship and damage inflicted by their subjugation by colonizers. I am reminded of the murder of 1.6 million combatants, but mostly civilians, in the Philippine-American War of 1899-1906. Many of the deaths were directly caused by cholera, but these were epidemics linked to the strategic hamletting, looting and burning of food stocks, killing of farm animals, and the overall psychological terror unleashed by the imperialist forces.
Psychological stress and damage alone caused by loss of independence of indigenous and victim populations have inevitably weakened their autoimmune systems and made them susceptible and vulnerable to the foreign diseases brought along by plunderers and foreign oppressors.
Mike E said
shine the path:
I wasn’t there at her meeting, and can’t comment on what happened. But (to repeat my point) she uses her discussion of that meeting to make a sweeping point — to make a characterization of a man and a movement — and i think it is that point which is onesided.
Mike E said
five ridges writes:
Can you really mean that?
On one hand, you have the unintentional spread of epidemics.
On the other hand, you have the conscious mass murder of people (or the order to kill children at the Sand Creek Massacre with the famous phrase “Nits make lice.” or General Sheridan’s 1869 “the only good indian is a dead indian.”)
Clearly death by disease are accelerated by warfare and massacre — i.e. the two interpenentrate. The “American Way of War” (i.e. Total war on populations) was initiated by the “Indian Wars” — but then was applied in other wars (Sherman against the Confederacy, U.S. colonial war in Philippines, U.S. invasion of Vietnam etc.) And in those cases, the deliberate disruption of civilian life, massacres, dispersal, mass bombing led to hunger, disease, and other horrors — all used as an instrument of war.
There intentionality is linked to the disease. (There were even reports of the U.S. dropping bubonic plague on Vietnam using infected rats — though I’m not sure that was fully documented.)
But i still think there is a big difference between epidemics and mass murder.
For example, any study of the Native people reveals that the most devastating waves of epidemic came long before colonialization — huge sections of the native peoples died of diseases like smallpox and measles long before the white explorers and settlers came close to them. whole peoples were decimated before the europeans actually arrived in their vicinity. In the case of the Aztecs, for example, a smallpox epidemic helped the victory of Cortez — it was not yet an illness caused by conquest (those came later).
Iris said
Where can this critique by Dunbar-Oritz be found? I’ve never heard of it.
Mike E said
We are discussing a short anecdotal accoount in her autobiography Outlaw Woman — that’s kind of the point… it is not really an articulated critique, though it buttresses and feeds into a set of verdicts without articulating a critique.
Again: My point was not to single out Roxanne (who deserve respect for other work), but to argue against taking her passing reference (and semi-cheap shot) as more than it is.
Iris said
Ah, I see. In Outlaw Woman.
Pavel said
Five Ridges:
In an exchange beginning with Redflag’s citation of Dunbar-Ortiz’ reference to Jefferson as “architect of genocide” (post 2 above), I questioned that depiction. (I didn’t reject it outright, nor accept it but questioned it.) I noted (post 18) that
“I like to err on the side of limiting the term genocide to deliberate efforts to annihilate a gene-pool. Sometimes the term’s used for dramatic effect in a way that undercuts its analytical utility.” (
I didn’t give examples but had in mind such examples as the accusation that the Khmer Rouge committed genocide in Cambodia—against fellow Cambodians; that the conflict in Darfur constitutes genocide as charged by the US State Department; Russian charges that the Georgian attack on South Ossetia was an instance of genocide, etc.)
You find this “shallow and sterile” emphasizing the “usefulness” of the concept of genocide “in the context of the reality of massive and overwhelming reduction of populations, including indigenous peoples, in the course of imperialist conquest, plunder and expansion.”
I think “usefulness” is the key term here. Put another way, instrumentalism. It’s useful to deploy a term widely associated with the Holocaust, widely understood as a deliberate effort to annihilate a people using modern methods, with a demographic catastrophe occasioned by the physical arrival of Europeans in the New World and thereby represent the arrival itself as the agent of genocide.
You say: “The intentions of the imperialist and colonizer is hardly a relevant issue in the question of genocide.”
I disagree. Let’s draw an analogy. Matricide means “killing of one’s mother.” An intentional act. It differs from the death of one’s mother caused by her catching your desease, or being run over by a bus. Intentionality is important in assessing the actions of people and groups of people in history.
As for my “also discuss[ing] the question of the role of smallpox epidemics in the decimation of indigenous populations in South and Central America in a vacuum…” what post are you referring to?
redflags said
Genocide and extermination are different words, and many (if not most) genocides do not aim at the eradication of a gene pool in the crudest sense, but the eradication of a peoples – including language, social bonds, etc. This isn’t a definition I’m throwing up on the fly, but the working definition in international law.
Whether each and every white settler in America was driven by the peculiar 20th century genetic fascination isn’t the point. Nor is the “intention” of Jefferson key, if not unimportant.
British and European settlers set out to systematically break up, disperse and shatter the indigenous peoples who lived in this land. Forces among these settlers believed that they had democratic rights, based on property, and that the lands and resources of these people were now theirs. The people stood in the way, and to the extent they did they were eradicated. Not always with extermination, but more often through expulsions, dependency, chemical warfare (small pox and whiskey) and whatever means were necessary.
Forced christian schooling in the “white man’s customs” qualifies as genocide. What Israel is doing to the Palestinians is literally genocide. Not in a rhetorical sense, but in terms of removing them as a coherent people and polity. Whether they have social-democrats participating isn’t the point. They do, and liberals and otherwise do-gooders alongside the Likudniks and millennial fanatics.
Jefferson was not part of a social fabric where all the human beings who lived their were people. Only the whites were people, those with personhood. Everyone else was chattel or heathen. Democracy among the settler minority is what defines Jefferson and the Jeffersonian. There will always be a subordinate, de-humanized group in such bourgeois democratic systems. Where once enslaved Africans were the people who the laws did not apply to, now we have “illegal” immigrants who fill the same role and often do exactly the same jobs.
This is what Jeffersonian democracy looks like: liberty for the owners and slavery for the owned, or now, the rented.
Eddy said
Celticfire wrote:
I have no special insight into the thinking of national leaders of the old RU, but I think you are overlooking some important conditions in that assumption.
First, the period 1972-75 was not far removed from 1967-1970 which was a ‘high-tide of resistance’ (as per James Foreman’s pamphlet written for the BPP). Several mass movements were still in a process of development as distinct from repose (e.g. the women’s movement, the movement among veterans and GIs). It was not readily apparent in 1972, for example, that such a period of ‘repose’ would emerge by mid-decade.
Also important is the conscious framework with which the those diverse activists who ‘related to the RU’ comprehended the possibilities of building a new formation (an rcp with an explicit program). While the process undoubtedly followed one or more plans (e.g. expectations as defined), it was not simply ‘directed’ to a predicted conclusion. (And I am not referring here to just the truncated alliance of the RU, Black Workers Congress and Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization, but to the ‘alliance’ of activists from various social movements who coalesced into rcp).
Interestingly, that process is now petulantly dismissed by some as a period of ‘recruiting wildly and badly’. If that assessment is meant as a self-criticism, it reflects the subjective idealism of the ‘expector’. (who must think that he can ‘direct’ society in a fine-grained manner)
Mike E said
In light of RF’s point above, it is worth quoting the Declaration of Independence (which Jefferson drafted):
This highlights a little appreciated issue in the American Revolution — that the colonists were furious that the British crown constantly restrained them from waging war on the native peoples and taking more of their land. The British crown valued its stable alliances with various native peoples — because these alliances were key to containing the French colonial forces (in Canada and elsewhere), and were a major instrument in wars for expanding British “control” of North America.
The colonists (on the other hand) wanted to drive the Native peoples away from their settlements, and wanted to cross over the Appalachians (to kentucky and the Ohio valley) and take the land up to the Mississippi.
In other words, one of the main complaints of the American Revolution was that the settlers were constrained in their genocide and land-grabbing — and that they wanted to throw of the crown’s control in order to step up their aggressions against the Native Peoples. One of the consequences of the American Revolution is that settlers could follow Daniel Boone’s aggressive moves into the Ohio Valley — leading to the war of 1812 in which the U.S. Army (enter General Jackson) defeated the Native peoples between the Appalachians and the Mississippi (the Shawnee, Chocktaw and Creeks).
Since we are talking about intentions: this was quite intentional. And many of the “founding fathers” were deep in land speculation and in the military operations against native peoples. (Even Ben Franklin made his name, in part, in pacifist-Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania developing clever schemes for having that colony expand by force to the west at the expense of the indigenous people.)
It is not well known, but one of the major campaign of the American Revolution was the destruction of the Iroquis Confederacy in New York — as Washington sent his general Benedict Arnold to destroy the native towns throughout the finger lakes — in the dead of winter. It was raw genocide (of the kind later practiced by General Sheridan against the Plains peoples.) and it is tactfully written out of the official memories of this anti-British revolution.
If we see the American revolution as an internal European event — it emerges as a radical rupture with absolutist monarchies, and an assertion of a new kind of popular will (and individual rights.) But if we see it in the context of the Americas — it is a leap in the politics of genocide. and if we see it in terms of the world market (including the deadly trade and exploitation of kidnapped Africans) the Revolution has another sinister side (since the merchant interests of the north were deeply involved in transporting Africans, and in the profitable trade in the products of chattel slavery.)
Britain soon emerged as force for the abolition of slavery (in part to make new inroads in Africa as the “anti-slavery superpower.”) And the U.S. soon emerged as one of the world’s main centers of massive slave plantation production. (And, as others pointed out above, in many ways the slavocracy was the dominant ruling class in the American governing coalition — often overshadowing the northern merchants and bankers in political power.)
I have always seen an irony in the discussion of the American revolution as an “anti-colonial” event — since that revolution freed up the U.S. settlers to expand their settler state, and to start to fantasize about their OWN colonization (of Cuba, the larger Caribbean basin, and their bloody expansion from the “sea to shining sea.”)
I think Pavel is right that Jefferson was not (in 1776 or 1800) anticipating or championing the expansion of the plantation system — that plantation system blossomed later, in new ways, after jackson cleared Native people out of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama, and after the invention of the cotton gin made “King Cotton” highly profitable in new ways. It would be reading history backwards to assume that the slaveowner Jefferson was preparing and anticipating a new leap in the slavery system that only emerged after his days in power.
But I think that it is hard to separate ANY of the “founding fathers” from the genocidal view of Native People (and the self-serving sense that they had a right to all, as they were civilized men, and the Native people had a right to nothing, as they were “savages.”)
Five Ridges said
Mike and Pavel,
I did not mean that intentions of imperialists and colonizers do not have a bearing on their actions. And you’re correct that imperialists and colonizers have harbored and expressed their intent to commit mass murder on their target populations, including unarmed children and women. The experience of U.S. imperialism in Samar bears this out. According to “The Untold People’s History: Samar Philippines” by Santos and Lagos (2004), an American soldier described the “no-prisoner” policy of the “pacification” this way: “As we approached the town the word passed along the line that there would be no prisoners taken. It meant we would shoot everything that came into sight–men, women and children.”
My argument was primarily based on accounts of Philippine history. You may be right about the Native people in the U.S. but my past readings seem to show that unlike in Colombia and Peru, Spanish empire-building in Mexico and Chile had much to do with the spread of smallpox.
My point is that epidemics set off by imperialist conquests and operations, whether intentional or not, are no less than mass murders and acts of brutality, than the deliberate massacres in these campaigns.
Another point is that these deaths, intentional or not, happen in the context of the despicable conscious intent of the imperialists and plunderers to massively subjugate and suppress the oppressed peoples and countries.
All deaths that occur as a clear, direct result of this suppression are tantamount to murder, whether intentional or not. , and whether the death is slow as in cholera, or quick as by rifle fire.
Even the bourgeois legal definition of murder as put in Wikipedia, “requires either the intent to kill—a state of mind called malice—or malice aforethought, which may involve an unintentional killing, but with a willful disregard for life.” Imperialist repression and conquest has invariably been characterized by a willful disregard for life and human rights abuse with impunity, as an objective assessment of the record would show.
Undue stress on whether the murder is deliberate or not seems to me to resemble the current description by U.S. imperialist spin doctors of civilian deaths as “collateral damage”, which seems to attempt to mitigate the crime as the grounds that it was unintentional.