What do you call this phenomenon? I think of the kulaks burning their harvest and I think of schools shutting down during desegregation in the US rather than integrate. Are there any other good examples? Why do people do this?
During the height of Western expansion (genocide of the indigenous), settlers were not of the professional-managerial cohort, did not find high-end work, etc. They were bought off with land and low-level work. You’re actually just describing the settler benefits I mentioned earlier, the way in which the primary class relation’s primary national contradiction (the oppression of the working class by the owner class creating a class with the potential to overthrow it) leads the owner class to build false consciousness through various policies. A temporary and partial stability with the same function as other forms of marginalization under capitalism.
For example, your examples center on apartheid systems, if an overclass and underclass of workers, with one as settlers. But the primary dynamic there does not require settlers, just an over-subclass. There are and were racialized, or otherwise othered economic under-subclasses serving that same function under other conditions. The underclass is more exploited, lower paid than the rest of the working class. The caste system of India is one example, with much of it predating capitalism and British imperialism there. Another is South Asian workers brought into Middle Eastern countries, including under slavery conditions. Or brought into South Korea, something relevantas otgero recent news threads. The features you have described are shared with other means of marginalization and their use by the ruling class under capitalism. Ask a Dalit abroad and they will tell you that caste discrimination is alive and well at their job outside Seoul. It is an internalization of a marginalization system maintained because it disrupts unity in working class action by short-circuiting class consciousness, of finding and maintaining an understanding of commonalities that oppose ruling class interests, and it takes on its own life within the bounds of bourgeois control.
Settlers colonialism does have additional aspects relative to other strategies of marginalization, but it still does not produce distinct classes. This is analogous to there being no real class distinction solely on the basis of “middle income” vs “upper middle income”, despite bourgeois economics calling both distinct classes. The meaning of working class is still the same: you survive by selling your labor for a wage. Subdivisions of this are just that. Though settlers are heterarchical, they bridge the class hierarchies.
Re: primary contradiction, yes we should identify this for an analysis. Globally, the primary contradiction remains imperialism, and this usually apples at the national level as well. The bourgeoisie stoke settlers but they pick everyone’s pocket simultaneously and reap their profits primarily through a financialization of the world economy, a neoliberalization of selling arms (etc) at inflated prices and enforcing the entire system at gunpoint - usually with financial weapons. Venezuela has suffered decades of sanctions without any significant military blockade, for example. Within Venezuela there are the legacies of Spanish colonial racism, if settler racism, particularly against the indigenous, but the primary contradiction there, the dictator of social relstions, is still imperialism.
This is even true of Israel, where the apartheid settler system is raging. The entire project can only be maintained by the Imperialist system, it requires a sponsor, it requires the ability to import labor to offset the loss of under-subclass workers, it functions to keep the entire Middle East in line with ruling class interests, disrupting the sovereignty of any neighboring country or people that would challenge the imoerial regime. Sometimes it does this on its own, sometimes it is just the USA wearing an Israeli mask. Israel is an honorary member of the imperial core and through its usefulness to empire has been able to consistently maintain that position. Disrupt the primary contradiction, move the dial to a synthesis that undermines imperialism, and you may see Israel fall within a decade. This is what we are all hoping and working for re: organizing in support of the resistance. It’s why we can find hope in the actions of Yemen, of the al-Aqsa brigades, of Hezbollah making “refugees” out of Northern Israeli settlers, of a China-Iran relationship that means constant supply, of a Saudi Arabia that is now pulled a bit away from Israel and the US, etc. The settler project is a subset of the imperial project, materially.
While US settlers were not of the professional-managerial cohort and did not find high-end work, they were awarded private property for exploitation and investment. That changed their class relation to the rest of the working class, generally propertyless and without investment. It was, in fact, in the class interests of settlers in the US to participate in genocide - and that’s exactly what they did. I do not think you’re giving the settler-colonial situation enough weight.
The national liberation struggle is different in different contexts: settler-colonialism, segregation/apartheid, caste, internal colonization of migrant labor (I’d also point to the use of undocumented labor as a similar dynamic in the US), these are all class structures which change the class dynamics by inducing different relations to the means of production.
While imperialism is the primary contradiction globally, settler-colonialism is one of the class structures it uses to stratify the world and encourage class collaboration between the special privileged classes and the transnational bourgeoisie. Obviously the struggle against settlers is not as relevant in other contexts, but in the settler-colonial context it is essential. The struggle against settler-colonialism is an anti-imperialist struggle, representing settler-consciousness as false consciousness is ignoring the very real material relations of the settler-colonial situation.
I had to split up my lengthy response, sorry.
While imperialism is the primary contradiction globally, settler-colonialism is one of the class structures it uses to stratify the world and encourage class collaboration between the special privileged classes and the transnational bourgeoisie.
No argument here aside from calling settlers a class!
Obviously the struggle against settlers is not as relevant in other contexts, but in the settler-colonial context it is essential. The struggle against settler-colonialism is an anti-imperialist struggle, representing settler-consciousness as false consciousness is ignoring the very real material relations of the settler-colonial situation.
I don’t see how it ignores it. I’ve been talking about the material rewards for settlers this whole time and I disagree with your conclusion that settlers are a class.
False consciousness through marginalization often comes in a form where there are real, direct material benefits and therefore interests for the high-status group(s). But their purpose, as maintained through the bourgeois actions that create and maintain these systems, is to prevent a class conscious understanding that could form the basis of working class solidarity and opposition to the ruling class. Usually something very simple, a divide-and-conquer strategy that is a simplistic reactionary step that is entrenched because it works.
Southern working class whites could see a real material benefit to the oppression of black people as well. They saw jobs and property options for themselves that could be denied to others. Whether they consistently received them did not change the accurate perception of a privileged status nor whether they would fight and die to continue the enslavement of black people. Overall, working class whites would have benefitted far more by shedding this false consciousness and working in solidarity to foment revolution against the ruling class, but they were short-circuited by both he immaterial and material bribing of white supremacy. Virtually every form of false consciousness through marginalization for the benefit of capital looks like this. I am unable to come up with exceptions off the top of my head. They all offer both material and immaterial reasons for the higher-status groups to maintain the system. That does not make them all classes despite how it modifies relationships to production, as it is working around the margins of the dominant system.
The Israeli working class is both working class and settler and colonial and imperialist, with the latter three buying them off and making them absolutely worthless as “allies” in any strugglr against the Zionist occupation. They still have a working class relation to production despite receiving the boons of their status, as most of those boons are not received through any direct relation to production, but via larger bourgeois apoaratuses, with the imperial machine as the dominant material force.
Many people make the mistake of thinking if people are working class, they will be the main engine of change in any given issue if only you can give them enough pamphlets or form enough international “relationships”, etc. I think the characterization of settlers is, in part, a reaction to this error in thinking, of correctly knowing that this simplistic understanding of class is false and absurd, and pointing to the settler projects as an example where this has always failed to materialize, and in fact often has the literal opposite, like settler trade unions fighting to maintain apartheid.
The understanding I would add to this is that there are material interests and forces that have massive impact. They emerge from the capitalist system, but they are not all directly class relations nor are they directly about a given group’s immediate relation to production. In the cases we are looking at, they are used to infuse some bourgeois character into a subset of the working class while still maintaining overall class relations. There is not a new major class called “settler” that has a distinct relation to production. They are made up of the spectrum of working class, petty bourgeois, higher bourgeois (etc) people (all can be settler). A subset of the lower classes is carved out on a basis other than class and pitted against the rest with material benefits while maintaining their fundamental class relations. This process is mediated by the ruling class itself for its own interests, namely the “divide and conquer” strategy. It is no surprise that this has been the most common strategy for disrupting Palestinian liberation at the level of Palestine itself (compradors, stoking infighting, killing off organizations, etc) and neighbouring countries. It’s their main tool for maintaining power.
While US settlers were not of the professional-managerial cohort and did not find high-end work, they were awarded private property for exploitation and investment.
More specifically, as I’ve consistently mentioned, they were bought off with land. This has several qualities of various classes. There is a rentier quality to owning land, you can make money with no production, so not as private property. It can be used for production as well and this is what many settlers did, using the land to become farmers, ranchers, and small-time miners (though much of that was later acquired by bigger fish). Though owning private property does not fully determine one’s class relation, as we can stick a sole proprietor into that category as well as “yeomen farmers”, people who mostly work their own land for subsistence. Making and selling commodities oneself under capitalism is a petty bourgeois activity. Consuming your own product for subsistence can be seen either as a byproduct of this or as an older form of subsistence farming that would make you a special case under some forms of feudalism. Individual farms often had both characters, with a productive farm for market and a set of beds to feed oneself. And then there were settlers that took land and sold it, attempting to be speculators, more or less financial speculators operating at different levels.
Though this is the settlers that directly stole land. Western expansion also included workers who received different amounts of settler status treatment. The miners weren’t all owner proprietors! Nor the farmers. Workers were employed and were also bought off by the rising tide of buying people off with land. It was predominantly black and Chinese workers that built out the railroads but they received the treatment of the marginalized. Nevertheless they would frequently buttress the settler system, taking on essential roles for violent genocide in part because it meant better compensation. Were they still working class? Irish and German immigrants came in waves to become both settlers and workers, dying in mines for capitalists on one hand while enjoying the privileges of white settler culture on the other. Some of the most racist, anti-worker working class operatives were from these groups, white-ified for ruling class interests. Were they working class? They were certainly settlers.
It was, in fact, in the class interests of settlers in the US to participate in genocide - and that’s exactly what they did. I do not think you’re giving the settler-colonial situation enough.
I mean, I said basically that exact same thing in my previous comments, I just don’t use the term class interests because this is an example of false consciousness that is the usual bargain for marginalization under capitalism: a subset of the working class gets bought off with an increase if status, but will still not resolve the class conflict overall, not even within the group that is bought off, as capitalism will still dispossess them. Western expansion kicked this can down the road, as it created an external front for initial disposession by the small-fry settlers (built in genocide of the people already there). But the capitalists still encroached rapidly, stripping most those settlers of their newly-acquired petty bourgeois traits. This inevitable clawing back coincided (not coincidentally!) with the rise of labor organizing. But even with land owners as a small and decreasing minority in the west, settler culture remained and was combined with other means of creating marginalized and non-marginalized groups to serve ruling class interests. It is part of the same continuum.
The national liberation struggle is different in different contexts: settler-colonialism, segregation/apartheid, caste, internal colonization of migrant labor (I’d also point to the use of undocumented labor as a similar dynamic in the US), these are all class structures which change the class dynamics by inducing different relations to the means of production.
Basically every serious South Asian Marxist will tell you, at length, how caste is not simply a class relation. There is a danger in assigning too many social relations directly to class relations, as one can actually grab onto what seems like a primary relation to production when it is actually a secondary effect of a different, primary relation to production and a consequence specific to historical material development.
I do agree that every example you list is a real form of marginalization that is maintained by (and often created by) ruling class interests, I just disagree that they are simply classes on their own, let alone one’s primary class relation. I say this in part because, of course, every individual actually has the aspects of several classes, and so do various ways we can group people. This has always been the Marxist understanding of class. The working class will have bourgeois qualities, for example, and this is part of the core dialectical framing. Trade unions are frequently petty bourgeois as all hell, will be openly imperialist, racist, xenophobic, demonizing of the American working underclass you mention, etc. Even the trade unions made up entirely of the working class. Even if you kick out the “union bosses”, the contradictions remain in that working class organ of power.
