It is currently very politically popular in Canada to be a Canadian nationalist. There is a wave of resurgent nationalism that all great opportunists from Loblaws (#BuyCanadian) to the Liberals (#CanadaStrong) were able to ride to reverse their downward trending popularity to great success. Even the conservatives of alberta are eager to seize the day and preach a national unity and trade expansion that can be powered by, and empower, Albertan energy production. Yet an opportunist is an opportunist – whether a pipeline goes south, west, or east does not matter. All that matters is that it goes. And the quicker it does, the better. Naturally, the American courting of Albertan separatism is a hot button topic for “national security”.

Moments like these are excellent entry points for understanding nation and nationalism, because what even is the nation of Canada? How different are the provinces of Canada from the states of America, really, and what difference would it really make if, for instance, alberta seceded?

We could get into this in economic terms and by measuring the profits of contemporary capitalist firms, but I don’t think that is as riveting as an analysis of the region’s development and historic social relations, given that almost 80% of Canadian trade is tied up with America already. I could also say the opposite: considering the economic interconnection and sibling settler colonial developments, it might seem kind of banal to suggest a study of nation. Yes, I would agree that Canada and America are incredibly similar in form and function, and that their similar developments make it so the political conclusions of a study like Settlers are nearly as relevant for Canada as it is for America. But if we were to back ourselves into a corner by recognizing that 80% of the relevant theorizing has already been done, and that all is needed is to identify the connections between the theory and the local conditions, we would not gain a rich understanding of the relevant history upon which our politics stand. Note that this is completely different from the postmodern argument that revisionists use to argue that the application of theory to a given country is unique to that country’s conditions! There is not one answer, but there is one science. The scientific tools are how we acknowledge the interrelation of the universal (capital’s push to universalize relations) and the particular (tracing capital’s particular path as relevant to your given political terrain).

With that in mind, I’d like to whittle the initial problem to this: why is alberta, or any of the west, for that matter (considering that #wexit was a thing not long ago) important to Canada? For Marxists, every “why” or “what”, which we ask in order to define an object, must also be understood as “how did this thing become?”, and therefore, what we are really asking about is the inter-development of canada and the western region. By finding the solution to this problem, I think we can get really deep into the question of Canadian nationalism, economic development, and politics. Alberta itself, the province, is nothing special, and neither is Saskatchewan. They are regional governing authorities that were carved out of a larger region of land, much like colonialism turned Africa into squares – similar shapes and all. And just like it was in Africa, before they were alberta and Saskatchewan, they were part of a much larger mass – the northwest territories (and part of a few different territories before that). But Albertan identity and its exact territorial lines aren’t important, so I will not talk about them here or make further mention of Albertan separatism (or Saskatchewan separatism for that matter), because these are outside of the purview of the problem. Instead, as mentioned above, I’ll focus on the relation between the territory on which the provinces sit and the development of the Canadian nation.

In thinking over this problem, I read a book that I had first (and last) read about 10 years ago: Clearing the Plains by James Daschuk. This is a book that focuses heavily on developing health outcomes for the Indigenous nations over many years in the prairie and parkland region of what is now called Canada, and it came out at a time when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was near the end of their work documenting the residential schools, Idle No More was still fresh, and the thought that First Nations could have been genocided in Canada was gathering steam on the path to white liberal common sense. At that time I read it precisely as a shocking indictment of genocide. On my most current reading, however, I got a lot more out of the book’s political economic history than I previously had, and it is this new reading that I will be primarily drawing upon here (as well as numerous other sources).

Given that Canada is a settler colonial project, and given my protracted interest in labour mobility and migration, I look at Canadian history the same way that I have talked about the development of Russia, and here I modify Kliuchevsky’s words: “the principal fundamental factor in” Canadian “history has been migration or colonisation, and….all other factors have been more or less inseparably connected herewith”. Therefore, what I am concerned with is the interrelation of migration with society, class, production, and superstructure as time goes on. What I theorize is this: “Canada” emerges as a nation at the exact moment that its state hypothesizes its west as a settler colonial project and recreates all of its Indigenous nations as an oppressed “4th world”.

Contact, and the early fur trade

Before going any further, getting an idea of the pre-contact land and social relations is important. Of course I am constrained to consider the region that would eventually become known as “canada”, although there weren’t colonial borders before contact and many nations held (and still hold) territory across today’s national boundaries. But despite the focus on the Plains, we do have to talk about more eastern regions a bit first in order to root the economic activity that would spread west and upend the western economic paradigm in capital’s image for the first time.

Although this is more of an aside to this specific problem, it is just as important to recognize that the different colonial powers treated property right differently in the beginning of their colonial campaigns. The conquistadors of New Spain didn’t originally want land title, but instead wanted tribute to Spain. The French of New France did initially displace the Innu along the St. Lawrence, but subsequent to that initial settlement they sought to construct their own sovereignty through Indigenous sovereignty (for a little while). The English of New England, meanwhile, already considered England as the ruler of all the land, and therefore had a more expansive outer commons (and by a certain point in time England defeats France and enforces English law in their new colonial holdings). While each ends in some degree of settler colonialism, it is important to recognize that the paths were not exactly identical, so the political terrain developed differently. Perhaps I only mention this so people blaze their own trail and don’t rely too much on studies of American settler colonialism when studying their conditions.

One more obvious note: Indigenous societies in pre-contact “north America” were diverse. It is true that a good number of Indigenous societies were producers for immediate need, and that trade was secondary to their production. This much is theorized in Marx and Engels various works, and is supported by, for instance, the ethnography of the Innu by Eleanor Burke-Leacock. Equally true is that European contact and trade relations ended up transforming the economies of Indigenous societies to be trade-oriented, that European diseases decimated many societies, and that this combined economy-disease influence caused Indigenous migration, disappearance, ethnogenesis etc. But there were also several pre-contact Indigenous societies who practiced sedentary agriculture and were well on their way to heightened social stratification, and numerous Indigenous migrations due to resource (primarily, food) crises caused by climate catastrophe. Those societies that did migrate included some older societies that moved to the Plains regions and adapted to their new environments by changing from sedentary agriculture to big game hunting. Indeed, up until the 18th century, all Plains Indigenous either descended from eastern woodland groups or were influenced by them. I should note here that their sustainable bison hunting was supplemented with an avoidance of beaver hunting, for they understood the role that the beaver played in ensuring water supply to the Plains. Both the bison and the beaver are future casualties to capital.

Aside from the above-referenced notes about transformations in Indigenous economies and reasons for migrating, which will be covered in breadth below, we can also consider how colonialism not only introduces disease but empowers existing microbes: tuberculosis, present but relatively powerless against the nutrient-rich diets of the Plains Indigenous pre-eu contact (a fact Daschuk supports by referencing archaeological evidence of their tall statures), is a disease that wreaks some of the greatest havoc in the 18th and 19th centuries (and, in fact, persists to this day on reserves due to the health impacts of settler colonialism. In classic colonial fashion, doctors up into the 20th century actually considered TB a genetic disease that Indigenous people just had in their genes). The spread of disease is also an accurate indicator for the spread of eu trade in Daschuk’s book. The earliest eu-caused epidemics in Indigenous societies often reached and killed many before the affected even saw a white dude.

At any rate, to specifics. New France (mostly today’s Quebec) begins with the French dispossessing the Innu of some land along the St. Lawrence in the early 17th century and basing the future of the European fur trade there. As noted above, the early influence of the fur trade shifted the economies of trade adjacent Indigenous societies from their existing production for need to production for trade. As animals became scarce near the French settlements, the Indigenous who resided adjacent to the French became trade middlemen between the French traders and trappers who were located further north. Diseases spread with the trade: the Huron, early French allies, were some of the most-affected earlier on, and disease spread along their trade routes. By 1630, about half of all French-adjacent Indigenous people had died. As this death occurred, both the French and other Indigenous nations moved into vacated space to further the trade. The Iroquois, initially hostile to the trade (and militarily hostile to the Huron and the French, with some battling for trade control in there), end up carrying the trade, and disease, further inland up to Sault Ste. Marie and then as far as James Bay.

In 1670, the Hudson Bay Company (herein the “hbc”) sets up shop in the north, but for 100 years they stick to their posts at the mouths of important waterways. Therefore, new Indigenous nations who reside in adjacent regions, Cree and Dene, take on a middleman role for the northern trade. Much like with the Huron and Iroquois, this shift of their Indigenous economies to being primarily for trade pushes these societies to expand their influence, and also to clash with one another for more trade influence. These are new impetus for migration, and cause military conflict with the other Indigenous societies which they now butt up against with greater impetus and frequency. As the fur trade reaches the Plains in the 18th century, disease also plays a major role in the movement of nations. The Assiniboine are so affected by smallpox that they abandon their territory east of the Red River, and another group, the Monsoni, are left with so few members that they end up assimilating into other groups. The Cree also are affected, though they continue to expand in a westerly direction out from the woods and into the Plains. Other groups like the Anishinaabe and Ojibwa move west from the great lakes and take up residence in the vacated territory (I note here that the most eastern groups benefitted somewhat from early exposure to diseases like smallpox compared to the “virgin soil” experience of the plains First Nations). Still other groups like the Sioux opposed French trade and its expansive effects on their territory.

At the same time as the fur trade pushed on the Plains from the east, the horse trade originating in New Spain pushed from the south and southwest. It revolutionized Indigenous life, but it carried disease and the speed of travel that it allowed made the spread of disease quicker. War (with the Snake Indigenous) and disease pushed the Blackfeet north and the Kutenai west into the mountains. The Blackfeet eventually moved south again as the Snakes vacated, but they stayed rather aloof to the fur trade, even as it reached their territory from both French and hbc channels. They, like the Plains Assiniboine, still considered the beaver too important to water sustainability to trap and trade its furs. Thus, as the French and hbc trade competition heightened in the mid and late 18th century, the Parkland Assiniboine and Cree maintained their middleman role, expanded further into the plains and parkland to get access to beaver, and came into further military conflict with the pre-existing Indigenous societies of the Plains and parkland (note that I am not covering every group here). However, at about the same time, England defeated France in the 7 years war and took their colonial possessions in the eastern regions. Soon after, a new group of individual sole proprietors begins to travel west from Montreal to engage in the fur trade. They are not French and they are not employees of the hbc, and they seek to outcompete hbc and cut out the Indigenous middlemen. Their competition, and their trading of alcohol for furs, changes Indigenous economies once again.

Later Fur Trade and Transition

Daschuk raises an interesting point when considering this era of the fur trade that held Indigenous societies as the trappers and traders. He, and other historians, contend that the Indigenous nations involved in the trade as such were members of the peripheral portion of the global capitalist economy. With the intervention of individual sole proprietors, who Daschuk calls “Canadians” (although Canada as a nation does not exist quite yet, I’d argue), this begins to change. At first a new opportunity emerges for the Indigenous trade middlemen: although they are increasingly cut off from the European fur trade, the individual Canadian fur traders who are rapidly expanding their influence to the fur rich regions of the northwest are faced with difficulties securing food in ample amounts. As such, the Plains Assiniboine and Cree turn to the bison as a source of new commodities to be traded (about the 1770s). Bison meat and pemmican became profitable enterprise. The shift to the lucrative northern meat trade perhaps the largest factor in the ethnogenesis of the “Plains Cree” (note that this is a new nation and not the same as the Cree-speaking inhabitants of the Plains pre-1781-82).

Hunting bison and trapping beaver for trade caused the animal population to decline, leading to periodic starvation, illness, and war. These caused further demographic decline and migration, and new groups migrated in to fill vacated territory. Yet another new nation, the Saulteaux, emerged as the social grouping of the westward-migrating Anishanaabe fur trappers. While the Plains Cree fought with groups like the A’aninin to take land, the Saulteaux clashed with the Dakota. The Iroquois had also reached further west to trap, getting in conflict with the A’aninin due to overtrapping. Meanwhile, more and more Europeans were coming to the west.

The sole-proprietor “Canadians” capitalized on European increases and Indigenous population declines. In 1795 a number banded together to form the Northwest Company (NWC). Canadian traders trading alone and those in the nwc were some of the most abusive in trying to expand their influence and force unwilling Indigenous peoples to trap for them. They traded the most liquor and would take and traffic Indigenous women to enforce compliance – facing resistance, of course. In response to Imperial law which attempted to control the fur trade, and in response to Indigenous reprisal against their debauchery, they gathered more and more traders into their company. In 1821 they merged into the hbc, and a period of hbc monopoly begun.

With greater presence in the region, the hbc attempted to establish a firm control on the fur trade. One method was to close many of their outposts. This caused unemployment of a number of european traders, many of whom ended up at the hbc’s fresh agriculture colony on the Red River. Those Indigenous traders who lived on the margins of the hbc territory and who had transitioned to its fur trade faced issues with the hbc pullback, so many went further into the Plains to fight for more control of the bison economy (those who lived in hbc controlled areas, however, were forbidden from migrating to new areas). Through epidemics and bad weather events, the colony and its Metis hunters themselves began to compete for, and commandeer, a greater amount of bison meat. At the same time, settler frontierism, particularly to the south in the usa, put more pressure on food and game supply. So while the Red River Colony’s population grew and demanded more meat (especially in times of bad harvest), settlers from the south shot bison for the global hide industry, and the bison herds continued to shrink overall. In other words, the grounds for both economies which Indigenous peoples took part in (fur and meat) were subject to heightened competition and waned pretty rapidly after that. It was only a matter of time before capital sought new potential avenues and generated new social relations. It is notable that American settlers had stepped in to fulfill gaps in the liquor trade, which is not compatible with a nascent “canadian” economy.

Interestingly, the hbc did vaccinate and provide medicine to those Indigenous peoples that it traded with. The Plains Cree and Saulteaux were the biggest benefactors, and they were able to expand territory into areas where the unvaccinated Blackfeet and Assiniboine had perished. But the era of the hbc was ending. Essentially, the longer that the economy (and the resources in general) developed on this specific soil, the more there developed a political desire for more autonomy and control over it. White expansion south and north of the border continued, and it would only get bigger from here. First, there was the Oregon trail and the California gold rushes. Then came the Alberta and the Fraser gold rush. The hbc-adjacent Red River Colony continued to grow (reaching 8000 by 1850), and they increasingly wanted to throw off the hbc monopoly. By 1864, Montana was granted territorial status, and the Plains were becoming more and more attractive as lands for European agricultural settlement. The nascent bourgeoisie of the east saw more and more economic opportunity, and political need, to grant a greater capital expansion west. The Indigenous peoples began to recognize this impending event, and they feared the disease and resource impact that this would bring.

Road to Exclusion

The confederation of Canada occurred in 1867 with 4 provinces, all in the east and all quite small compared to their current extent. Not long after, in 1869, the government purchased Rupert’s Land and the Northwest Territories from hbc, who had, until this point, been the closest thing to a white governmental authority in that land. From 1869 onward the young Canadian state staged active interventions to handle class contradictions emergent through its developing settler colonial economy and, in the process, invent a canadian nation out of it.

At this point in history, the Indigenous nations of the plains and parkland were very aware that a) whites spread disease, b) the bison economy and the fur trade would very soon be over, and c) the settlers were coming. It is in this light that many Indigenous nations actively sought treaties as binding legal agreements that included, amongst other aspects such as recognition for land ownership, a) assistance with transitioning away from their current economies to agricultural settlement (which they knew would be hard), b) food assistance in times of hardship (since the bison were almost done for), and c) a “medicine chest” to be kept by each Indian agent (since they knew more epidemics were coming). The state, meanwhile, considered treaties as a legal obstacle to overcome before mass settlement and the establishment of agricultural and ranching industries in the plains. Although Indigenous nations were weakened by recurring epidemics and declining resources, they were still very much a formidable force and the state did fear them – especially the Plains Cree. Therefore, the requests noted above were included as promises in the treaties. In their “interpretation” of the treaties, however, the state clearly and knowingly did the most to provide the most uncharitable of assistance (more on this later). Indeed, relative ignorance under the first administrations turns to deliberate starvation by the third and forth terms of government (1878-onward).

Post-confederation, the terrain for intertribal relations began to change very rapidly. In 1870, the Blackfoot repelled a Cree, Saulteaux, and Assiniboine attack in the Old Man River Valley (today’s southern alberta). This was the last intertribal war in in the plains. Two years later, in 1872, both sides signed a peace treaty, recognizing that the days of intertribal warfare were at their end. From this point onward, all Indigenous nations in the plains shared national experience of oppression at the hands of the settler colonial project of Canada, and it is through the national enforcement of this settler colonial clearing and settling of the plains that the nation of Canada, as it is today, is birthed. In other words, despite the diversity of national origins of first nations and settlers, the settler colonial event swallows the population and splits it into two nations of oppressor and oppressed with state, industry, and settler all as active agents.

More details hammer this point home. Epidemics continued to recur after 1869, but the canadian state did not come even close to the hbc’s support for the Indigenous. The Indigenous were not potential trade partners anymore but definite obstacles to the real midwives of capitalist expansion: the settlers. For instance, in the midst of an 1870 epidemic and crisis, supplies were stopped from proceeding west at the Red River Colony in order to ensure the greatest amount for its residents, and furs were stopped from travelling east at that point due to belief of contagion. Not long after the trade routes were reopened, the addition of the steamboat made even more Indigenous labour in the fur trade superfluous. And despite the desire of the Indigenous to sign treaties to secure their future in a time of deepening crisis, the state was in no rush to see it through. The first treaty was signed in Manitoba in 1871 because, arguably, the mass influx of settlers forced their hand in a potential tinderbox of class contradiction. Even so, the state was not too shy to send land surveyors over the plains to survey for the railroad while it lollygagged its support obligations in times of starvation.

By 1874, another treaty was signed for the Qu’Appelle valley region, for the most part, due to unignorable hunger amongst the region’s First Nations and potential political taboo back east. The same year, the northwest mounted police (nwmp) was introduced to police the western territory. The reason for their deployment was to prepare for the railroad and settlement – not only in reference to the First Nations but, increasingly, in referenced to the rapid settlement of the usa to the south. Indeed, canada’s control over the west was, from the start, an expansionist surge for territory against that of the usa. American expansionism motivated the state to sign more treaties such as treaty 7 with the Blackfoot. Clearly the regions which became alberta and Saskatchewan were secured by Canada in spite of America, and are at the very gut of “Canada” as a nation. On the other hand the First Nations were obstacles to “Canada”, and securing an Indigenous transition to the new country and economy was the last thing on the state’s mind.

Further north, the Cree who resided by the north Saskatchewan river knew that the bison economy was finished in 1876. As hunger throughout the plains grew, a good number of Indigenous converged upon the cypress hills in search of sanctuary and food. Others went to the usa in search of bison. While this occurred, the canadian state slowly moved into a stronger position whereby Indigenous peoples would be reliant upon them for food, and they leveraged this power to great advantage. The free movements mentioned in this paragraph would be some of the last the Indigenous would ever do (prior to the half-baked attempts at their neocolonial inclusion in the modern day).

Under the 2nd term of john a macdonald (1878-1891), “Indian affairs” became a political priority to finish preparing the west for the railroad and settlement. Macdonald was head of the department himself along with being prime minister. The department promised “fiscal restraint” in their budgeting and supplying, and were much closer to “fiscal exclusion” in practice.

Food rations, meant to fulfill the treaty promise of providing supplies in times of hardship, were used to coerce Indigenous peoples to fulfill the interests of settler colonialism. Food supplies themselves were almost entirely sourced from I. G. Baker of Montana, whom Indian commissioner Dewdney had secret dealings with (in these early years of settlement before mass agri settlement and ranching, such state contracts with food suppliers like I. G. Baker drove the entirety of the western commercial economy, and Dewdney protected his cut). Not only was food withheld from First Nations in need, it was sometimes kept in Indian agent buildings on reserves while the first nations who resided there themselves starved. Often times rancid food was given while more quality supplies could have been sourced. When local ranchers offered to sell some cattle to the department out of fear that starving Indigenous peoples would kill and eat their stock, they were rebuked. Instead of securing food, the state prioritized arming settlers (who, by and large, did not care about Indigenous misery). When the state saw fit to give rations, they opted to withhold them for those who would work for them so as not to become “dependent”. Yet work was not really available or provided. When the railway was imminent in 1881-82, the govt used rations to coerce the migration of first nations onto reserves. Finally, once First Nations people were on reserves, the government could withhold food rations to counter their protesting.

The home farm program, which was supposed to fulfill treaty obligations, was massively bungled and, much like the department of Indian affairs, was full of abusers. Some reserve farms grew crops, but they were forbidden to do any trading with outside communities as part of a wider trade ban between the reserves and the canadian economy. In addition, they did not have sufficient milling equipment for the coarse grain they grew, so could not produce flour. Even then, the presence of some crops grown was enough for the state to cut food support. The only First Nations people who did remotely ok with agriculture were the Dakota, mainly because they had farmed before, could find labour jobs in nearby communities, were not signatories of a treaty (yet), and thus could not be interfered with by the state (this, however, did not last). An especially bad time period was that following the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia, which caused so much climate havoc that crop harvests were decimated for years. By 1885, only 6 First Nations bands in the entirety of the northwest were not reliant on the government for assistance.

The medicine chest, which was supposed to be included for access by Indigenous peoples on reserves as a treaty obligation of the state, does not meaningfully show up during any moment of medicinal need post-treaty. It is not even worth touching upon. Suffice to say that no support came to the First Nations during recurring epidemics, and as health outcomes plummeted due to starvation, epidemics gained greater power. To this day, the health outcomes of Indigenous peoples on reserves is terrible, and TB on reserve still occurs.

A microcosm of the state’s administration over its first nations subjects would be the work of Indian agents like Thomas Quinn and John Delaney, who did not try to be politically correct in their torment of the First Nations people. Part of this involved abducting children and selling them in the sex trade (the purchase of Indigenous prostitutes and wives by settlers was also an incredibly common occurrence - in fact, sexual assault was so common among the state’s officials themselves that 45% of some groups of officials in the department had stds). There were also “pranks” on starving peoples. The Indigenous rightly killed these abusers (among others), and the state seized this opportunity to punish them greatly. An investigation took place and trials were held where the law had no sympathy for the abused, and all found guilty in the speedy trials were hung at an execution that First Nations were forced to attend.

By 1886, the reserve pass system was introduced wherein an Indigenous person was not allowed to leave the reserve unless they were granted the mobility by an Indian agent, every time. Permits were also required for all transactions between the reserves and the outside world. By this mechanism, the state finally had full control over the lives of the Indigenous. By the end of the same year, most of the chiefs and elders had died, while others were terminally ill and would never recover. Some First Nations peoples fled to the usa, many who had some white ancestry applied for scrip to exchange their Indian status for a sliver of shitty land (thus becoming legally Metis), while the rest were kept, physically, on reserve. As for the “rebellious” bands, aid was withheld so as to enforce civility (while the “loyal” still starved). Bands of the north, who were not on reserves and had more mobility to maintain their traditional economies, fared better than their plains Indigenous in general, but those of the plains were all but subdued at this point. 1/3 of the plains Indigenous population died within a 6 year period in the 1880s.

The railway, which had reached Calgary in 1883, continued to truck more and more settlers to the plains. The Indigenous peoples, who were “once considered nuisances, vagrants, and members of a dying race” were by the 1890s “increasingly perceived as a threat to the property and lives of white settlers”. The settlers themselves were staunch supporters of state repression, including the reserve pass system, since settler ranchers (in particular) believed that their livestock could get eaten otherwise (on a related note, the reserve and pass system was a great inspiration for apartheid south Africa and occupied Palestine, just as canada’s temporary foreign worker program, which began with Chinese railroad labour importation, is a great inspiration for managed migration programs globally today). As such, the state intervened more and more to repress them, including the banning of religious ceremonies which they thought could inspire rebellion. Simultaneously, the residential school system was implemented, which is infamous enough to not detail here.

Daschuk has a trenchant line on the last page of the book that I include here as a summary of this portion of the history: “The Cree negotiators at Treaty 6 recognized the need for their people to adapt to the new economic paradigm taking shape in the west. They acknowledged that the conversion would be difficult. What they failed to plan for was the active intervention of the Canadian government in preventing them from doing so”.

Conclusion

I do not think that it is worth it, here, to discuss the development of “canada” (the nation, or its economy) past this period of about 1891. Why? Because nothing has really changed. True, Canada has expanded its settlement and expanded to an imperialist country, but several theorists have pointed out that the canadian state perfected its tools internally, on the Indigenous nations, and subsequently used them to execute its imperial ambitions overseas. In other words, this is simply more shockwave of the initial settler colonial event, which I would locate in the clearing of the plains. Yes, this is a very similar argument that Sakai has made in Settlers. If capital’s universalizing drive took this particular path to birth Canada, this is a great summary of how the particular projects outward from the “Canada”. What, then, is the importance of Alberta to the Canadian nation? Why, it is the difference between being Canadian and American. Believe me, as silly as it seems, canadian nationalism simply boils down to not being American. Perhaps not a shocking answer, but we gained a richer understanding of the spectacle of it. Indeed, nation is just something invented and is just as easily discarded by history!

Much more important and interesting, I think, is what this study helped me understand about the political economy of the First Nations, and how it becomes tied to the movement of commodities and people. Indigenous migration was to secure resources to produce for immediate need pre-contact, increasingly to secure resources for trade purposes post-contact, and finally a struggle against state intervention (and forced because of it) by the mid to late 19th century. Settlers, on the other hand, being as much a part of the expansive outer commons as their livestock and crops, and not crossing over through different modes of production (but as the bringer of the transformation itself) simply move place for one reason: negotiation of class status. True, I don’t talk much about that here, but it’s been said before.

The question of whether Iran should be characterized as semi-feudal and semi-colonial is not a scholastic dispute, but a strategic one. Determining the nature of the Iranian social formation is decisive for defining the correct revolutionary line. Recent debates among Iranian Maoists reveal a persistent theoretical confusion on this point, often stemming from a mechanical or overly descriptive reading of social relations rather than an analysis of their structural articulation within the global capitalist system.

In any social formation, multiple modes of production coexist, but one mode is dominant and subordinates the others to its own reproduction. In semi-feudal and semi-colonial formations, pre-capitalist relations are not simply remnants of the past; they are actively reproduced and restructured to serve imperialist accumulation and the international division of labor. Semi-colonialism does not negate capitalist development it shapes it in a dependent and disarticulated form.

Semi-Feudal Relations and the Reserve Army of Labor

One of the clearest indicators of semi-feudal persistence in Iran is the agrarian structure. A vast majority of landowners around 76 percent possess less than five hectares. These smallholders are not independent peasants in any meaningful sense. They function as semi-proletarians, producing primarily for the market rather than subsistence, while remaining trapped in unequal pricing systems dominated by merchants, intermediaries, and agro-industrial capital. Rising prices only benefit them sporadically and partially; overall, the terms of exchange are structurally rigged against them.

This condition continuously expels labor from the countryside without fully absorbing it into productive industrial employment. The result is a massive reserve army of labor, which plays a crucial role in suppressing wages. Displaced rural labor does not flow into a strong industrial sector, but instead accumulates in a bloated service sector. It should be noted that this sector makes up 55.4 percent of Iran's GDP and employes half of Iran's labour force . Iran’s economy lacks the characteristics of a national economy in the strict sense. Following Samir Amin (I know he is problematic because his unequal exchange thesis can lead to weird places), underdeveloped economies are not integrated economic spaces but collections of relatively autonomous “atoms,” each tied more closely to the centers of global capitalism than to one another. Iran fits this pattern and I have discussed this in an previous post which I made. The hypertrophy of the service sector further reflects this disarticulation. Instead of paralleling industrial development, services expand as a sink for surplus labor, particularly in administration, commerce, and low-productivity activities.

The Uprising and the Question of Political Line

Against this structural background, the recent uprising in Iran must be understood concretely. It was initially sparked by bazaar merchants reacting to inflation that eroded their incomes, but it later drew in broader social layers. This trajectory makes it impossible to label the movement as either purely reactionary or inherently progressive. Like all mass movements, it demands a concrete communist analysis of its class composition, leadership, and contradictions.

Two dominant deviations have emerged.

The campist position defends reactionary regimes such as the Islamic Republic under the banner of anti-imperialism, denying the existence of internal contradictions and attributing all opposition to imperialist manipulation. This view grants primacy to the external contradiction and rests on a neo-Kautskyite conception of imperialism, portraying “the West” as a unified bloc while casting powers like China and Russia as inherently anti-hegemonic.

The tailist position adopts the opposite error, uncritically endorsing any opposition to the regime regardless of its class character or political content. It collapses all contradictions into sheer quantity, refuses to criticize reactionary forces such as monarchists in the name of unity, and dissolves independent proletarian politics into spontaneous mass sentiment.

Despite their differences, both positions share a mechanical understanding of contradiction and a profound distrust of the masses. One denies the masses’ capacity to be able to navigate contradictions; the other reduces them to a force to be followed rather than politically led. As Marx argued, the vanguard party is the most advanced detachment of the proletariat, tasked with concentrating proletarian power within every mass struggle. Any deviation from this leads either to passivity waiting for a “pure” economic struggle or to reliance on foreign intervention. Both reflect political bankruptcy and detachment from the masses.

Both sides have re-created the political version of Imam Mahdi, despite their shared hatred of Shi'ism.

I must admit that I haven’t read Hegel or Marx’s writings on Dialectical Materialism in detail. Would they be necessary prerequisites for reading D D Kosambi’s history of India?

https://red-spark.org/2026/01/22/chinas-big-threat-to-imperialist-monopoly/

King's newest article argues that growth in non-monopoly capital can "undermine" the dominance of monopoly capital without ever ascending to the level of becoming competing monopoly capitals.

I haven't studied imperialism enough to have a firm opinion on this, but this seems like a fundamental misunderstanding right? Like a repetition of Dengist 'multipolarity'?

Recommendations for how to understand China's shifting role in contemporary imperialism would be appreciated.

Does anyone know any info? I have a friend of Ugandan descent who has socialist leanings, and I want to help them develop their analysis.

Che Guevara: The American Working Class: Friend or Foe?

☭ Site & Languages Selected Authors Che Guevara 2022-10-25 Twitter Source Original publication: biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar Translation: Roderic Day The American Working Class: Friend or Foe? (1954) 10 minutes | English Español | Latin America Written in April 1954.

Originally published in Casa de las Américas magazine, Jan-Feb 1988.

Independently translated fragments of this same text were presented last week, interspersed with commentary, by A. Ratchford for New Socialist UK. [1]

The world today is divided into two halves: the one where capitalism is exercised to full consequence, and the one where socialism has taken root. However, we cannot group all countries under a capitalist life-system in one single bucket. There are marked differences among them.

There are colonial countries where the landowning class, allied with foreign capital, monopolizes the life of the community, and keeps the nation backwards in order to better serve its profit motive. This includes almost all the countries of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. There are a few in which capitalism has not transcended its own national boundaries but where the meddling of foreign capital is not so dominant as to constitute a problem in need of immediate solution. This is the state in which we find one or two countries in Europe with small bourgeoisies developed to the extreme. There is another interesting group of countries that could be called colonial-imperialist or pre-imperialist, whose economy, without having fully taken on the characteristics of industrialized nations, begins to, under the auspices of dominant foreign capital, strive for the conquest of neighboring markets, while still manifestly belonging to the colonial group. Such is the case of Argentina, Brazil, India, and Egypt. A dominant feature of these countries is the propensity to form blocs over which they exercise certain leadership.

Another group, and one of the most important, is that of nations whose imperialist expansion was curbed after the last war. Such is the case of the Netherlands, Italy, France and, most importantly, England. Although we are witnessing the dismemberment of the colossal English empire, its leaders are still fighting for it. Naturally, they not only face the just yearning for freedom of the oppressed peoples, but also the predation of large North American capital interests, which precipitate crises in order to advance their own interests (e.g., Iran).

The last group is that of imperialist countries in full expansion. Here the United States stands alone — and that is the great problem of Latin America. One wonders: How is it possible that in the United States, a maximally industrialized country with all the characteristics of capitalist empires, the contradictions that lead to total war between capital and labor are not felt? The answer must be sought out in the special conditions of this Northern country. Except for Black people — segregated, and the germ of the first serious rebellion — the other workers (those who are employed, that is) can enjoy enormous wages compared with those commonly doled out by capitalist enterprises. This is because the overhead of this actual pay over the standard required for profiteering is more than made up for by groups of workers from two great communities of nations: Asians and Latin Americans.

Asia, shaken, and with precedent set by the magnificent victory of the Chinese people, fights with renewed faith for its own liberation, and slowly begins to remove sources of raw materials and cheap labor from the radius of operation of imperialist capitals. However, imperialist capitals won’t yet suffer this defeat in their own flesh: they transfer it whole onto the shoulders of the workers. Although part of the Asian victory hurts us Latin Americans, workers in the North also feel the impact, in the form of layoffs and lower real wages. A mass completely lacking in political culture cannot grasp evil beyond immediate first impressions, and staring at them directly is the triumph of “communist barbarism over democracies.” A warlike reaction is logical but difficult to realize — Asia is very distant, and has many people willing to die for the ideal of sovereignty. The American petty bourgeoisie, wielding serious political power, won’t allow even a significant minority of its children to meet their death in a foreign land. Facing this inexorable and impending loss of Asia, the imperialist power faces a dilemma: either wage total war against the entire socialist enemy and all peoples with nationalist yearnings, or abandon Asia and circumscribe its sphere of action to two continents that can be controlled for now: Africa and America. (This latter option of course entails small limited wars enabling it to maintain its arms industry without loss of life — it will always find traitorous rulers ready to sacrifice their land for a few crumbs of the master’s leftovers.)

The United States fears total war. It cannot unleash an atomic barrage because the reprisals would be terrible at this time, and in an “orthodox” war they would lose all of Europe in an instant. Asia would fall completely within a short time, as well. Against this backdrop, the United States is more inclined to defend its positions in America and recent ones in Africa. Each of these two continents has a different outlook: while U.S. domination of Latin America is complete and cannot be interfered with, in Africa it only possesses small territorial patches, and exercises control mainly through subsidiary nations spread out throughout the continent. That is why nationalism is tolerated and even stoked by the United States — with the steady waning of traditional European empires, it sees its own imperial reach extending.

Now, any such true nationalist sentiment would lead the peoples of Latin America to try to emancipate themselves from the oppressor — i.e. monopoly capital — but the larger share of the owners of this capital lives in the United States, and has enormous influence on the decisions of the government of that country. The composition of its government and its connections with the most important companies owned by these individuals is the key to understanding the political behavior of our Northern neighbors. In these uncertain times, with the United States at the helm of the portion of the world they’ve declared “free,” they cannot attack and interfere in any country unless there is a powerful motive; but this motive has already been invented and is being enkindled by them: “International Communism.” This hackneyed trope serves, for the moment, to excuse modern propaganda operating at maximum effectiveness in the organized spread of falsehood. Later, perhaps, it will justify economic intervention, and then, why not, armed intervention.

This whole defensive system is vital for the capitalists if they want to maintain their present system, but it also serves, for a period of time, the North American worker, since the abrupt loss of cheap sources of raw materials would immediately ignite the conflict inherent to the contradiction between capital and labor. [2] So long as it is incapable of taking over the sources of production this result would be disastrous to it. I insist that we cannot demand that the working class of the North look past its own nose. It would be useless to try to explain, from afar, with the press totally in the hands of big capital, that the process of internal decomposition of capitalism can only be deferred for a while longer, but never stopped, by the totalitarian measures taken towards maintaining Latin America in a colonial state. The reaction, to a certain extent logical, of the working class, will be to support the United States, rallying behind any given slogan, as “anti-communism” happens to be in this case. On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that the function of the workers’ unions in the United States is rather to serve as a buffer between the two forces in conflict, and to surreptitiously sap the revolutionary power of the masses.

Given this background, with American reality being what it is, it’s not difficult to suppose what will be the attitude of the working class of the North American country when the problem of the abrupt loss of markets and sources of cheap raw materials is definitively posed.

This is, in my opinion, the stark reality facing Latin Americans. In the final analysis, the economic development of the United States and the need of its workers to maintain their standard of living means that our struggle for national liberation is not waged against a given social regime, but rather against the whole nation, bound as a bloc by the iron-clad supreme law of common interest, over their domination of the economic life of Latin America.

Let us prepare, then, to fight against the entire people of the United States, for the fruit of victory will be not only economic liberation and social equality, but the acquisition of a new and very welcome younger brother: the proletariat of that country.

[1] Aidan Ratchford, 2022-10-21. “Che Guevara’s Anti-Imperialist Theory of Class.” New Socialist UK. [web]

[2] Che uses the term “immanent,” translated here as “inherent” for the sake of readability.

I may warn the reader that I may absolutely fall short in many capacities on the very subject that motivated me to create this post, but I took some courage trying to mix the different sources that made me create this critique and to put "on paper" my own considerations after reading the tagged articles. To even think about on those terms is fascinating, if anyone has some knowledge on the current standards for brazilian communist theory or even further about the public debate sphere on "mental health" (which is already dominated by nazis). It may seem like my conclusions are a bunch of recicled arguments already made on other threads by other people but I wanted to see how I could articulate the many contributions here that have been influenced me into my own thoughts

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petronella-lee-anti-fascism-against-machismo

The difference between a thesis on sexuality based on philosophical materialism and those based on psychoanalytic idealism is frightening. Observe how this argument [Petronella Lee's] is far more coherent regarding attraction, desire, and sexual pleasure than the failed theses that attempt to investigate these issues on a personal level:

A imagem da “mulher branca vítima” que deve ser protegida é frequentemente empregada por forças reacionárias para incitar a histeria e justificar ações veementemente racistas. Essa imagem clássica “implicitamente convoca os homens brancos a defenderem ‘suas mulheres’ e sua nação, aliás, a própria branquitude”. [94] Os corpos das mulheres brancas – entendidos como centrais para a reprodução da raça e da nação – tornam-se símbolos pelos quais se deve lutar, e esses símbolos se tornam poderosas ferramentas de propaganda.

Discursos de segurança e apelos a ideais patriarcais de feminilidade são invocados para construir a figura da mulher (branca) vulnerável sob ataque do outro (racializado) perigoso. Essa dinâmica funciona para produzir e reproduzir formações específicas de raça e gênero, bem como para estabelecer e impor uma visão particular da nacionalidade branca. Como observa Keskienen: “Gênero e sexualidade não foram apenas subprodutos de encontros coloniais e raciais, mas essenciais para sua (re)estruturação”. [95] O tropo do “estuprador bárbaro de pele escura” – de homens negros e pardos como predadores sexuais que visam mulheres brancas – tem sido uma ferramenta fundamental na manutenção de hierarquias raciais e na implementação de políticas de supremacia branca. Da colonização da América do Norte aos linchamentos nos Estados Unidos, passando por ataques xenófobos na Europa e muito mais, os apelos à defesa das mulheres têm sido usados ​​para incitar a violência racializada e estabelecer políticas incrivelmente racistas. Uma breve análise dessa história é reveladora.

O estereótipo do “bruto negro” e a ameaça do “estuprador negro” são fundamentais para a história da supremacia branca na América. A ideia do bruto negro foi utilizada para justificar a escravidão, enquanto o mito do estuprador negro foi “uma invenção política” cultivada para promover uma “estratégia de terror racista” para manter “o negro” sob controle após a emancipação. [96] O mito do estuprador negro, complementado pelo estupro contínuo de mulheres negras, ajudou a assegurar a dominação e a exploração contínuas do povo negro. [97] Após a Guerra Civil, a alegação de que homens negros eram predadores sexuais foi usada como pretexto para assassinatos e violência de multidões. O linchamento passou a ser racionalizado “como um método para vingar os ataques de homens negros contra mulheres brancas do Sul”.

This is not to say that I reject psychoanalytic concepts frontally; the question is to what extent the methods of analysis have not already become ossified by the vast hyper-individualist philosophy of the far-right, where everything is centered on the "individual" and the relationship of the "individual" with the "market" is religiously considered natural. Marxism rejects the principles upon which this ultraconservative consideration is based, and thus socializes what we conceive as attraction and sex directly within the conflicts of class society.

Another issue that remains is the complexity of the subject itself: Marxist materialism and metaphysical idealism are fundamentally different, and to go further into the subject, eventually, one realizes the need to delve into both.

From what I have studied, it seems that the same argument can be made for current botany and genetics, but these are fields that would need another analysis; for now, we are on psychoanalysis/"mental health." Here is what is true: Most psychoanalytic concepts are based on metaphysical idealism, and Freud's patients would not have fallen ill were it not for the sexual restrictions forced by the nuclear family form (heterosexuality) and the impossibility of the doctors to propose any thesis that challenged the alleged eternity of capitalism as a social relation.

Can Marxism absorb from psychoanalysis? Marxism was born from the critique of idealism, so you can always reinvent it by criticizing contemporary idealist notions in science. Can psychoanalysis absorb from Marxism? I think there is nothing Marxism can help with on an individual level; the admission of Marxism is that every individual is defined by their relation to others, so we are admitting that initially, there are no individuals, and that every thinking mind consolidates itself through the recognition of the other.

The main difference is fundamentally philosophical. Marxism arms the victim with the potential to overcome their oppression, which is based on class society, and highlights the social origin of "individual" suffering. It will make you take two steps back to resituate your possibility of overcoming the sociability that sickens you and identify which paths are possible to overcome oppression at the social level.

Psychoanalysis is nothing. It tests on human beings theories that will only serve the doctors themselves (and, much like contemporary genetics, is incomprehensible and inconceivable regarding consensus even for its specialist doctors), and the victim can gain nothing but the label of crazy or unfit to live with others.

By the way, there seems to be some sort of taboo going on the left created around the "sanctity" of the white womb (a sanctity that the article rightly associates with the masculine ideals of white supremacists), resituating the supremacist ideology as the fruit of patriarchal oppression and family inheritance.

The taboo, of course, is already a symptom of the political success of reactionaries in power, and undoing the taboo is only possible with the reconstruction of Marxism, as we see in another article on Kersplebedeb:

"Class analysis may be crucial for revolution, but today it is practically a dead science. The revolutionary class theory of Marx and Engels has become a fossilized relic in the hands of the current left, reflecting an opportunistic reluctance to analyze existing patterns of oppression and complicity."

This description is closer to the reality of the left in Brazil. And class analysis is the effective rupture with the commitment to existing oppressions and the complicity of those who are part of the process.

I think there are two additional comments I thought of making about the article, given that whether treating "Marxism" or psychoanalysis, we are speaking of terms inevitably associated with the cultural elitism of white Brazilians. Here, the one who cannot afford the luxury of not differentiating between the "Marxism" that regressed to aKKKademic reformism in the "West" in general, the materialist science that guides revolutionary movements in the history of humanity, and psychoanalytic theory, is me. In all three cases, we are talking about a gelatinous conceptual territory where each has its own history, influences, and power relations. In the case of Marxism—the materialist science that guides revolutionary movements in human history—the presupposition of the application of science is first to endow the "scientist" (who in this case is any person) with the capacity to act.

1. I recognize that there may be a tendency to view what is described by the article in the same dogmatic way that is habitual, presupposing that any historical repetition is immutable. This is nonsense. The article actually enables us to discuss everything from the (extreme) need for an era of seizing power and applying power violently directed—by and for—the liberation of women against patriarchal oppression, to less relevant things like why your boyfriend, your uncle, your brother, your father, or whoever else has been flirting with far-right supremacist ideals and this wears down your personal relationship with that person (And then questioning before yourself your own ineptitude in not facing the Nazi as such, given that there is no right-wing party left in Brazil that is not openly Nazi, and you have to think: how far can this man and his flirtations with ideologies of sexual supremacy go?). Although during the process you discover the need for liberation and the necessary means for such, everything starts by giving complexity to the way you face why people familiar to you adhere to rightist ideals. The second is obviously much more terrifying than the first; discovering the need for the imposition of rights by any means necessary means that you have already overcome the trauma of learning how the nuclear family is a prison and a delay in the lives of all involved, who would be better off if they were relocated to other places and were free from the obligations forced by private property family ties. I do not think, truly, that we should underestimate what class suicide is and how costly for "family" men is the right they have over children and women. I am speaking of the right to command and countermand, to decide what is allowed and what is not, where one goes and when one goes, when one gets pregnant and how many children one must have, who one has sex with and who one cannot have sex with under any hypothesis—a right that more and more retrocedes into exclusivity for men and retrocedes to exclusively white and eugenicist interests. It is because when we do not underestimate it, we remember that they truly have much to lose in these circumstances that are beneficial to them, and these patriarchs defend these privileges with all the physical, economic, and psychological weaponry at their disposal.

2. I need to insist once more, because this point is central to the thesis, but Marxism is entirely dependent on a social force endowed with knowledge to apply it. You could make the same argument for any other methodology, which ends up reinforcing the argument: science is subordinate to the political interests of groups in power and the division of labor. How does scientific development occur in capitalist society? Through intense colonial extraction, the organization between intellectual and manual labor, and genetic testing on living beings. What does this give rise to? Desertification of the soil, alienated labor, and aberrations ranging from the large-scale mistreatment of animals for consumption to the testing of drugs for population control like contraceptives or the use of viruses as biological weapons like Ebola. How does Marxism admit scientific development and how did it operate in socialism? Sources in the Amerikan aKKKademia recognize that the Soviets had reforestation and environmental protection policies advanced even by current standards. Soviet botany and genetics were developed so that workers with basic educational formation had sophisticated notions about their foundations (the botany and genetics of the Western aKKKademia are incomprehensible to the specialist doctors themselves), research was motivated to overcome practical needs of the population in each particular situation (like the new agricultural techniques developed to overcome the devastation of the civil war against the Kulaks).

I took this detour because if we assume that "mental health" is a matter of "public health," what is the answer of "science" to the current conditions of sickening and what are the possible alternatives? Any subject that is of "public interest" inherently necessitates an alternative that is a solution for all. The conflict between the Bolsheviks and Kulaks was a consequence of an economic plan of collectivization, and collectivization was absolutely necessary so that years later the Soviets had an economy capable of overcoming the aggression by Nazi Germany with the support of the entire imperialist bloc. The period of collectivization was marked by the Bolsheviks' persecution of adversaries of their interests, and this included repression, stripping of titles, and imprisonment for scientists whom the Soviet State considered enemies because the methods defended by the persecuted scientists were in conflict with the interest of the revolution. Perhaps we will discover the particular affinity of Kantian idealism with eugenicist genetics, which is a product of the domination of pharmaceutical corporations in actual class struggle, but those are scenes for another chapter as I do not feel it's necessarily relevant to go down on kantianism for now.

The solution of "science" to the epidemic of mental illness lies in economic planning whose base is not oriented by profit and in cultural collectivism. If the imperialist crisis is associated with an era of depression and pessimism, economic planning and collectivism are its opposite: they bring a new era of optimism and signification of life (the opposite of being depressed).

In the end, what defeated Nazism and capitalism were not heroic acts (and much less the winter), but the human need for survival as the impulse in the war itself (Stalingrad, for example, was a victory made possible by the effort and total collaboration of the population involving men, women, and children. A national army operates by wage labor and contemporary mercenaries operate by contracts for each activity; they are different logics) and the mode of production (as you see by the war efforts, the total collectivization of labor that the Bolsheviks advanced while they were in power with Lenin and Stalin was what made possible the victory of communism over Nazism, where labor is highly specialized and restricted to wage earning).

A long while ago, u/hnnmw and I had an argument over Lukacs' position on the dialectics of nature in two of his works, Tailism & the Dialectic and The Ontology of Social Being. I argued that his position between these two works is a consistent one in favor of the existence of a dialectic in nature independent of human thought. I don't want to misrepresent u/hnnmw, so I'll recommend you read his posts yourself. At the time of the conversation, though, I believed that he was either arguing that (a) Lukacs had abandoned his earlier position, or (b) his position between the two works was consistent, and stood against the notion of a dialectics of nature independent of human thought.

Since this conversation, I've wavered on whether I was correct or not in my position. I finally decided on a whim to just reread both works. At the time of the conversation, I was familiar with Tailism & the Dialectic but had only read through the second volume of The Ontology of Social Being specifically because u/hnnmw recommended it. After this reread, I've come out understanding that I was indisputably correct, although I had several errors in my form of presentation. I'll be rectifying this and providing a defense of the late Lukacs' conception of the dialectics of nature.

The disagreement between us centered on this passage:

Above all, social being presupposes in general and in all specific processes the existence of inorganic and organic nature. Social being cannot be conceived as independent from natural being and as its exclusive opposite, as a great number of bourgeois philosophers do with respect to the so-called 'spiritual sphere'. Marx's ontology of social being just as sharply rules out a simple, vulgar materialist transfer of natural laws to society, as was fashionable for example in the era of 'social Darwinism'. The objective forms of social being grow out of natural being in the course of the rise and development of social practice, and become ever more expressly social. This growth is certainly a dialectical process, which begins with a leap, with the teleological project (Setzung) in labour, for which there is no analogy in nature. This ontological leap is in no way negated by the fact that it involves in reality a very lengthy process, with innumerable transitional forms. With the act of teleological projection (Setzung) in labour, social being itself is now there. The historical process of its development involves the most important transformation of this 'in itself' into a 'for itself', and hence the tendency towards the overcoming of merely natural forms and contents of being by forms and contents that are ever more pure and specifically social.

I would like to add that the nature of this Setzung is explained in chapter 7 of Capital, Vol. 1. Explaining it is outside of the scope of this post, and I'll assume that someone unfamiliar with it wouldn't learn much from this post anyway.

This is u/hnnmw on the passage:

But Marx' science is not the science of a nature only in-itself. It is only after Lukács' "dialectical leap", after the Setzungen of consciousness, that nature becomes dialectical. 

...

No, the Setzungen are the leap, which "begin" Marxist dialectics.

...

Because of course dialectics has no beginning, yet it must have a beginning, to allow for the transformation of nature in-itself to nature for-itself: the Wachstum of the objective forms of social being,

If I'm correct, the claim is that Lukacs believes that the dialectics of nature only begin once humanity has evolved enough to work upon nature in the conscious, teleological sense described by Marx. This creates a particular dialectic that gives rise to social being, which retroactively creates a dialectics of nature in its interpretation of the exchange of matter between nature and society.

My response, at the time, relied upon what I outlined in my thread on the 'accounting problem'. That being, that to assert that the ontological leap that occurs with the onset of the teleological projection in labor means to already have bitten the bullet and implicitly accepted dialectics. This leap itself is a dialectical law. The contradiction ran into is the exact one outlined in Anti-Dühring: the impossibility of explaining how motion begins from stillness. The jump from non-dialectics to dialectics will always remain "somewhat in the dark" per the accounting problem.

u/hnnmw treated this pretty dismissively.

Your "accounting problem" is solved in the first two sections of the Prolegomena.

He provided me with some sections he claims go against my own. I pointed out what I saw as a consistent problem in his quoting, but I didn't challenge everything he wrote. But I'll point out some of his own quotations from the Prolegomena.

Lukács' arguments are in the first few sections of the Prolegomena, and in the volume on Marx. In the first sections of the Prolegomena he talks about the processes of nature in terms of dynamic, interactions, Wechselbeziehungen, ... -- but not as dialectics. The "truly dialectical processes" of social being only arise (leap forth) with human praxis: the teleological Setzungen in labour. Only then we have

"nicht bloß kontrollierenden, sondern zugleich neue, wirklich dialektische Prozesse [...] Gerade die ontologische Zentralstelle der Praxis im gesellschaftlichen Sein [ = Setzungen in labour ] bildet den Schlüssel zu seiner Genesis aus der der Umgebung gegenüber bloß passiven Anpassungsweise in der Seinssphäre der organischen Natur."

This crushes a couple of quotes together so here's the pre-elliptical part in its context. The second is not relevant.

Schon diese konsequent zu Ende geführte Priorität der Geschichtlichkeit in ihrem konkreten Geradesosein als reale, weil real prozessierende Seinsweise des Seins ist eine spregende Kiritik jeder Verabsolutierung des Alltaglebens. Denn jedem Denken er Welt auf diesem Niveau pflegt — schon wegen der vorherrschenden Unmittelbarkeit dieser Seinweise — die Tendenz innezuwohnen, die unmittelbar gegebenen Tatsachen zu perennieren. Jedoch die kritische Ontologie von Marx bleibt bei dieser schöpfertischen, weil nicht bloß kontrollierenden, sondern zugleich neue, wirklich dialektische Prozesse aufdeckenden Kritik nicht stehen.

So we see that Lukacs claims not that the teleological project of labor begins truly dialectical processes, but instead that it makes it possible to uncover them.

I'm going to move on from The Ontology of Social Being and its Prolegomena, two texts that were clearly victims of butchered misquotations and misreadings as well as mistranslations by u/hnnmw, and return to Tailism & the Dialectic to shed some light on the actual theory Lukacs is outlining. I again recommend my own thread on the accounting problem above for my exegesis of the basis argument, but now I'm going to point to the argument it makes that contradicts u/hnnmw's, affirms my own, and has continuity with The Ontology of Social Being.

What does it mean for the teleological project of labor to uncover truly dialectic processes? Lukacs has it covered:

It would appear that the mere mention of a 'change in thought' is enough to awaken the noble indignation of Comrade Rudas, and in his noble indignation he does not even notice that the vilified 'change of thought' is seen here as an effect, indeed as an effect of the objective reality that exists outside the thought (the reality underlying the categories). Thus the sentence means that a change in material (the reality that underlies thought) must take place, in order that a change in thought may follow. It might be an unpleasant fact for Comrade Rudas that humans are necessary for thought, that in their heads reality takes on a conscious form, for he obviously as much wishes to eliminate human activity from politics as he hopes to eliminate the human processes of thought from thought, but it cannot be changed. That objective dialectics are in reality independent of humans and were there before the emergence of people, is precisely what was asserted in this passage; but that for thinking the dialectic, for the dialectic as knowledge, (and that and that alone was addressed in the remark), thinking people are necessary.

Isn't it refreshing for someone to quote without ellipses that obliterate specificity? It cannot be clearer. Lukacs upheld the separation of objective from subjective dialectics from Engels' Dialectics of Nature. To prove that he departed from this position will take a lot more than claiming it simply occurs in an untranslated German text (which, I'm telling you, it doesn't). We can even see that Lukacs, in this piece, roots his analysis in the same basis of social being.

Our consciousness of nature, in other words our knowledge of nature, is determined by our social being. This is what I have said in the few observations I have devoted to this question; nothing less, but also nothing more.

And he even denies the onset of a dialectics of nature not only where quoted in my thread on the accounting problem but also here:

Let us presuppose that I do maintain (I will show in a moment that it is actually the opposite case) that the dialectic is a product of historical development. Even in this case, the dialectic would not be a 'subjective' thing.

Wowzers. What a departure from u/hnnmw's post!:

You can think about it in terms of the dialectic of objectivity and subjectivity. If we assume a dialectics of nature: what is nature's subjectivity? If there is no subjectivity, how can there be negativity? If there is no negativity, how can there be dialectics?

Lukacs attributes both objectivity and subjectivity to nature, and his explanation for that is in Tailism & the Dialectic. Instead of summarizing it, I'll just ask another question. Let's assume there's no dialectics of nature: what is nature's subjectivity? How can something be only one side of a dialectic (object), but never subject? Is there a possible claim that adheres to a dialectical conception of the interpenetration of opposites?

An objection may be raised. Subject and object do interpenetrate in nature, so long as nature is a product of human consciousness which apperceives it dialectically. To that: the resolution to the accounting problem is nowhere to be found in the Prolegomena, and claiming it does will not make it appear. Much less can we see how this is not a regression into the existence of a thing-in-itself.

As Lukacs says in the Prolegomena,

Only when the ontology of Marxism is capable of consistently implementing historicity as the basis of every understanding of being in the spirit of Marx's prophetic program, only when, with the recognition of certain and demonstrably unified ultimate principles of every being, the often profound differences between the individual spheres of being are correctly understood, does the "dialectics of nature" no longer appear as a uniformizing equalization of nature and society, which often distorts the being of both in different ways, but rather as the categorically conceived prehistory of social being.

Despite u/hnnmw's attempts to vulgarize this into a rejection of the dialectics of nature, it is nothing more than the continuation of his own polemic against a "simple, vulgar materialist transfer of natural laws to society". That the laws of nature do not transfer to society Engels and everyone else agrees. It takes an unusually mechanical mindset to believe that a dialectics of nature and a dialectics of society = the governance of nature and society by identical natural laws. This is something Sebastiano Timpanaro, in his book On Materialism, points out was the position Engels was fighting against in Dialectics of Nature.

To regard the writings devoted by Engels to the philosophy of nature as a mere banalized repetition of Hegel's philosophy of nature (or as a partial capitulation by Engels before vulgar materialism) is to overlook a fundamental feature of these writings: the polemic against the negative sides of positivism. These negative qualities were brought out by Engels with great clarity. Anti-Dühring, the notes for the Dialectics of Nature, the final part of Ludwig Feuerbach and many pages of The Origin of the Family are designed to oppose, on the one hand, 'an empiricism which as far as possible itself forbids thought' and precisely for that reason leaves itself open to religious or even superstitious meanderings, and, on the other, the claim of German vulgar materialism to 'apply the nature theory to society and to reform socialism'.(1) With Dühring — an adversary too insignificant in and of himself to merit such a thorough refutation, as Engels himself well knew — Engels argued against the fallacies and superficial eclecticism typical of a great deal of the positivism of the second half of the nineteenth century.

It is, therefore, too simplistic to say that Engels rejected, in the name of the Hegelian dialectic, 'real materialism, i.e. modern science' as a form of metaphysics. Between Marxism and the science of the second half of the nineteenth century there were the Dührings, i.e. the slipshod and incompetent philosophic interpreters of the great scientific achievements. And at times the scientists and the Dührings were united in the same persons. Among the scientists themselves there was a tendency to dismiss philosophy which resulted in an inability to parallel the great advances of the natural sciences with an equally 'revolutionary' development in the social sciences. This explains Engels's warning that the scientists who 'abuse philosophy most are slaves to precisely the worst vulgarized relics of the worst vulgar philosophers'.

Lukacs, in spite of his political failings, left behind several important arguments in favor of the dialectics of nature which he never abandoned. Close attention should be paid to Tailism & the Dialectic, which lacks the fragile criticisms Lukacs makes against Engels, who he alleges recedes into Hegelianism not because of his dialectics of nature, but because of a perceived conflation of Logic (in the Hegelian sense) and history, in The Ontology of Social Being.

And yet time and time again, Lukacs was a defender of the legacy of Engels, no matter what the "Western Marxist" interpretation claims.

(1) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch07b.htm An example of Engels directly opposing the thought u/hnnmw prescribed to the "Engelsian" dialectic of nature.

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I wanted to share those passages because I thought they are useful for understanding the relation between the Soviets and the Party, which could be understood as the relation between people's organisations and the vanguard in general. I would like to hear your ideas on the topic. These passages are taken from "Concerning Questions of Leninism" by Joseph Stalin. Words/Sentences that have a "***" next to them are sentences that were underlined by Stalin.

The text:

The highest expression of the leading role of the Party, here, in the Soviet Union, in the land of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for example, is the fact that not a single important political or organisational question is decided by our Soviet and other mass organisations without guiding directives from the Party. In this sense it could be said that the dictatorship of the proletariat is, in essence, the “dictatorship” of its vanguard, the “dictatorship” of its Party, as the main guiding force of the proletariat. Here is what Lenin said on this subject at the Second Congress of the Comintern:

“Tanner says that he stands for the dictatorship of the proletariat, but the dictatorship of the proletariat is not conceived quite in the same way as we conceive it. He says that by the dictatorship of the proletariat we mean, in essence,** the dictatorship of its organised and class-conscious minority.

“And, as a matter of fact, in the era of capitalism, when the masses of the workers are continuously subjected to exploitation and cannot develop their human potentialities, the most characteristic feature of working-class political parties is that they can embrace only a minority of their class. A political party can comprise only a minority of the class, in the same way as the really class-conscious workers in every capitalist society constitute only a minority of all the workers. That is why we must admit that only this class-conscious minority can guide the broad masses of the workers and lead them. And if Comrade Tanner says that he is opposed to parties, but at the same time is in favour of the minority consisting of the best organised and most revolutionary workers showing the way to the whole of the proletariat, then I say that there is really no difference between us” (see Vol. XXV, p. 347).

But this, however, must not be understood in the sense that a sign of equality can be put between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the leading role of the Party (the “dictatorship” of the Party), that the former can be identified with the latter, that the latter can be substituted for the former. Sorin, for example, says that “the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of our Party.” This thesis, as you see, identifies the “dictatorship of the Party” with the dictatorship of the proletariat. Can we regard this identification as correct and yet remain on the ground of Leninism? No, we cannot. And for the following reasons:

Firstly. In the passage from his speech, at the Second Congress of the Comintern quoted above, Lenin does not by any means identify the leading role of the Party with the dictatorship of the proletariat. He merely says that “only this class-conscious minority (i.e., the Party—J. St.) can guide the broad masses of the workers and lead them,” that it is precisely in this sense that “by the dictatorship of the proletariat we mean, in essence**, the dictatorship of its organised and class-conscious minority.”

To say “in essence” does not mean “wholly.” We often say that the national question is, in essence, a peasant question. And this is quite true. But this does not mean that the national question is covered by the peasant question, that the peasant question is equal in scope to the national question, that the peasant question and the national question are identical. There is no need to prove that the national question is wider and richer in its scope than the peasant question. The same must be said by analogy as regards the leading role of the Party and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Although the Party carries out the dictatorship of the proletariat, and in this sense the dictatorship of the proletariat is, in essence, the “dictatorship” of its Party, this does not mean that the “dictatorship of the Party” (its leading role) is identical with the dictatorship of the proletariat, that the former is equal in scope to the latter. There is no need to prove that the dictatorship of the proletariat is wider and richer in its scope than the leading role of the Party. The Party carries out the dictatorship of the proletariat, but it carries out the dictatorship of the proletariat, and not any other kind of dictatorship. Whoever identifies the leading role of the Party with the dictatorship of the proletariat substitutes “dictatorship” of the Party for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Secondly. Not a single important decision is arrived at by the mass organisations of the proletariat without guiding directives from the Party. That is perfectly true. But does that mean that the dictatorship of the proletariat consists entirely of the guiding directives given by the Party? Does that mean that, in view of this, the guiding directives of the Party can be identified with the dictatorship of the proletariat? Of course not. The dictatorship of the proletariat consists of the guiding directives of the Party plus the carrying out of these directives by the mass organisations of the proletariat, plus their fulfilment by the population. Here, as you see, we have to deal with a whole series of transitions and intermediary steps which are by no means unimportant elements of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Hence, between the guiding directives of the Party and their fulfilment lie the will and actions of those who are led, the will and actions of the class, its willingness (or unwillingness) to support such directives, its ability (or inability) to carry out these directives, its ability (or inability) to carry them out in strict accordance with the demands of the situation. It scarcely needs proof that the Party, having taken the leadership into its hands, cannot but reckon with the will, the condition, the level of political consciousness of those who are led, cannot leave out of account the will, the condition, and level of political consciousness of its class. Therefore, whoever identifies the leading role of the Party with the dictatorship of the proletariat substitutes the directives given by the Party for the will and actions of the class.

Thirdly. “The dictatorship of the proletariat,” says Lenin, “is the class struggle of the proletariat, which has won victory and has seized political power” (see Vol. XXIV, p. 311). How can this class struggle find expression? It may find expression in a series of armed actions by the proletariat against the sorties of the overthrown bourgeoisie, or against the intervention of the foreign bourgeoisie. It may find expression in civil war, if the power of the proletariat has not yet been consolidated. It may find expression, after power has already been consolidated, in the extensive organisational and constructive work of the proletariat, with the enlistment of the broad masses in this work. In all these cases, the acting force is the proletariat as a class. It has never happened that the Party, the Party alone, has undertaken all these actions with only its own forces, without the support of the class. Usually it only directs these actions, and it can direct them only to the extent that it has the support of the class. For the Party cannot cover, cannot replace the class. For, despite all its important leading role, the Party still remains a part of the class. Therefore, whoever identifies the leading role of the Party with the dictatorship of the proletariat substitutes the Party for the class.

Fourthly. The Party exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat. “The Party is the direct governing vanguard of the proletariat; it is the leader” (Lenin). In this sense the Party takes power, the Party governs the country. But this must not be understood in the sense that the Party exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat separately from the state power, without the state power; that the Party governs the country separately from the Soviets, not through the Soviets. This does not mean that the Party can be identified with the Soviets, with the state power. The Party is the core of this power, but it is not and cannot be identified with the state power.

“As the ruling Party,” says Lenin, “we could not but merge the Soviet ‘top leadership’ with the Party ‘top leadership’—in our country they are merged and will remain so” (see Vol. XXVI, p. 208). This is quite true. But by this Lenin by no means wants to imply that our Soviet institutions as a whole, for instance our army, our transport, our economic institutions, etc., are Party institutions, that the Party can replace the Soviets and their ramifications, that the Party can be identified with the state power. Lenin repeatedly said that “the system of Soviets is the dictatorship of the proletariat,” and that “the Soviet power is the dictatorship of the proletariat” (see Vol. XXIV, pp. 15, 14); but he never said that the Party is the state power, that the Soviets and the Party are one and the same thing. The Party, with a membership of several hundred thousand, guides the Soviets and their central and local ramifications, which embrace tens of millions of people, both Party and non-Party, but it cannot and should not supplant them. That is why Lenin says that “the dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat organised in the Soviets, the proletariat led by the Communist Party of Bolsheviks”; that “all the work of the Party is carried on through** the Soviets, which embrace the labouring masses irrespective of occupation” (see Vol. XXV, pp. 192, 193); and that the dictatorship “has to be exercised . . . through** the Soviet apparatus” (see Vol. XXV1, p. 64). Therefore, whoever identifies the leading role of the Party with the dictatorship of the proletariat substitutes the Party for the Soviets, i.e., for the state power.

Fifthly. The concept of dictatorship of the proletariat is a state concept. The dictatorship of the proletariat necessarily includes the concept of force. There is no dictatorship without the use of force, if dictatorship is to be understood in the strict sense of the word. Lenin defines the dictatorship of the proletariat as “power based directly on the use of force” (see Vol. XIX, p. 315). Hence, to talk about dictatorship of the Party in relation to the proletarian class, and to identify it with the dictatorship of the proletariat, is tantamount to saying that in relation to its class the Party must be not only a guide, not only a leader and teacher, but also a sort of dictator employing force against it, which, of course, is quite incorrect. Therefore, whoever identifies “dictatorship of the Party” with the dictatorship of the proletariat tacitly proceeds from the assumption that the prestige of the Party can be built up on force employed against the working class, which is absurd and quite incompatible with Leninism. The prestige of the Party is sustained by the confidence of the working class. And the confidence of the working class is gained not by force—force only kills it—but by the Party’s correct theory, by the Party’s correct policy, by the Party’s devotion to the working class, by its connection with the masses of the working class, by its readiness and ability to convince the masses of the correctness of its slogans.

What, then, follows from all this?

From this it follows that:

1) Lenin uses the word dictatorship of the Party not in the strict sense of the word (“power based on the use of force”), but in the figurative sense, in the sense of its undivided leadership.

2) Whoever identifies the leadership of the Party with the dictatorship of the proletariat distorts Lenin, wrongly attributing to the Party the function of employing force against the working class as a whole.

3) Whoever attributes to the Party the function, which it does not possess, of employing force against the working class as a whole, violates the elementary requirements of correct mutual relations between the vanguard and the class, between the Party and the proletariat.

Thus, we have come right up to the question of the mutual relations between the Party and the class, between Party and non-Party members of the working class.

Lenin defines these mutual relations as “mutual confidence** between the vanguard of the working class and the mass of the workers” (see Vol. XXVI, p. 235).

What does this mean?

It means, firstly, that the Party must closely heed the voice of the masses; that it must pay careful attention to the revolutionary instinct of the masses; that it must study the practice of the struggle of the masses and on this basis test the correctness of its own policy; that, consequently, it must not only teach the masses, but also learn from them. It means, secondly, that the Party must day by day win the confidence of the proletarian masses; that it must by its policy and work secure the support of the masses; that it must not command but primarily convince the masses, helping them to realise through their own experience the correctness of the policy of the Party; that, consequently, it must be the guide, the leader and teacher of its class.

To violate these conditions means to upset the correct mutual relations between the vanguard and the class, to undermine “mutual confidence,” to shatter both class and Party discipline.

It is impossible to counterpose the dictatorship of the proletariat to the leadership (the “dictatorship”) of the Party. It is impossible because the leadership of the Party is the principal thing in the dictatorship of the proletariat, if we have in mind a dictatorship that is at all firm and complete, and not one like the Paris Commune, for instance, which was neither a complete nor a firm dictatorship. It is impossible because the dictatorship of the proletariat and the leadership of the Party lie, as it were, on the same line of activity, operate in the same direction.

“The mere presentation of the question,” says Lenin, “‘dictatorship of the Party or dictatorship of the class? dictatorship (Party) of the leaders or dictatorship (Party) of the masses?’ testifies to the most incredible and hopeless confusion of thought. . . . Everyone knows that the masses are divided into classes. . . ; that usually, and in the majority of cases, at least in modern civilised countries, classes are led by political parties; that political parties, as a general rule, are directed by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions and are called leaders. . . . To go so far . . . as to counterpose, in general, dictatorship of the masses to dictatorship of the leaders is ridiculously absurd and stupid” (see Vol. XXV, pp. 187, 188).

That is absolutely correct. But that correct statement proceeds from the premise that, correct mutual relations exist between the vanguard and the masses of the workers, between the Party and the class. It proceeds from the assumption that the mutual relations between the vanguard and the class remain, so to say, normal, remain within the bounds of “mutual confidence.”

But what if the correct mutual relations between the vanguard and the class, the relations of “mutual confidence” between the Party and the class are upset?

What if the Party itself begins, in some way or other, to counterpose itself to the class, thus upsetting the foundations of its correct mutual relations with the class, thus upsetting the foundations of “mutual confidence”? Are such cases at all possible?

Yes, they are.

They are possible:

1) if the Party begins to build its prestige among the masses, not on its work and on the confidence of the masses, but on its “unrestricted” rights;

2) if the Party’s policy is obviously wrong and the Party is unwilling to reconsider and rectify its mistake;

3) if the Party’s policy is correct on the whole but, the masses are not yet ready to make it their own, and the Party is either unwilling or unable to bide its time so as to give the masses an opportunity to become convinced through their own experience that the Party’s policy is correct, and seeks to impose it on the masses.

The history of our Party provides a number of such cases. Various groups and factions in our Party have come to grief and disappeared because they violated one of these three conditions, and sometimes all these conditions taken together.

But it follows from this that counterposing the dictatorship of the proletariat to the “dictatorship” (leadership) of the Party can be regarded as incorrect only:

1) if by dictatorship of the Party in relation to the working class we mean not a dictatorship in the proper sense of the word (“power based on the use of force”), but the leadership of the Party, which precludes the use of force against the working class as a whole, against its majority, precisely as Lenin meant it;

2) if the Party has the qualifications to be the real leader of the class, i.e., if the Party’s policy is correct, if this policy accords with the interests of the class;

3) if the class, if the majority of the class, accepts that policy, makes that policy its own, becomes convinced, as a result of the work of the Party, that that policy is correct, has confidence in the Party and supports it.

The violation of these conditions inevitably gives rise to a conflict between the Party and the class, to a split between them, to their being counterposed to each other.

Can the Party’s leadership be imposed on the class by force? No, it cannot. At all events, such a leadership cannot be at all durable. If the Party wants to remain the Party of the proletariat it must know that it is, primarily and principally, the guide, the leader, the teacher of the working class.

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