Many self described leftists especially settlers will never be comfortable putting their lives on the line because they could always live a comfortable life if they so choose
Nah, part of educating is getting through to people on the fact that this can’t last as it is and it’s never going to fundamentally improve unless the colonial, imperial, and capitalist structure of power is dismantled. According to the most recent information I can find, something like 78% of USians are living paycheck to paycheck
describes a financial scenario in which an individual or family’s income barely covers essential living expenses like housing, utilities, groceries and transportation. One missed paycheck would put someone living paycheck to paycheck in a difficult spot.
And that’s not going to get better with the way things are being run. I don’t know where in the capitalist fantasy you get the idea US people can live a comfortable life if they choose just because they’re settlers. They can live a more comfortable life relative to other, more exploited groups, generally speaking, sure. The system does not guarantee them comfort, nor want to. Very few are guaranteed any kind of comfort in a system such as this.
I don’t know where in the capitalist fantasy you get the idea US people can live a comfortable life if they choose just because they’re settlers.
The oppurtunities settlers have do amount to a sizable level of comfort even for people living paycheck to paycheck. Packed grocery stores, tech products, every expanding media sphere, often a family member to fall back on, legal and plentiful drugs, favor from legal systems including exemption from the commonality of police brutality, the relative attainability of the “American dream”, and the fact that we’ve never been subject to America’s imperial violence. Hell this phenomena has been observed in much worse conditions by the likes of Fanon, and I doubt you’ve never been told to read Settlers.
Maybe you and I have different meanings of the word “comfort” in use here.
Packed grocery stores
Which requires money to buy from and the prices keep going up.
tech products
Unless you mean convenience increases like washing machines, I don’t know what you have in mind here and again, people have to be able to afford it.
every expanding media sphere
Which oozes dehumanizing imperialist propaganda into them.
often a family member to fall back on
“Often”, you have numbers to back that up? And that’s not even getting into how this has to do with comfort, we are just talking about not being completely destitute at this point.
legal and plentiful drugs
* in some states and again, you need to be able to afford them.
favor from legal systems including exemption from the commonality of police brutality
Not being specifically targeted for terror by cops based on the racialized group you belong to isn’t a comfort. It’s better living conditions than what marginalized groups face, for sure. It doesn’t mean US cops are a good and healthy institution for everybody else. They’re still neglectful, if not abusive, overall.
the relative attainability of the “American dream”
It isn’t attainable. It is, at its best, akin to a lotto draw.
and the fact that we’ve never been subject to America’s imperial violence
Directly as a targeted group, correct. Indirectly, absolutely. That stuff is not contained into a bubble. And those who challenge it do face violence for sure.
Ultimately, there is suffering that isn’t very visible to the “settler” in the US. That doesn’t mean they’re comfortable as a whole. It does mean that when considering how to deal with people who fit in that group, it’s important to make sure they come to see and understand what has been invisible to them. That’s part of what happened in 2020, I think. Some still refused to see it for what it is, but there were those who understood and were radicalized to some degree by it, myself being one of them.
As far as I can tell, insisting that the average USian has a comfortable life is just feeding into imperialist/capitalist propaganda. I understand the importance of analyzing people’s conditions and understanding how those conditions will bias their actions, but in this case, it’s coming across to me more like “you don’t know how good you have it” from a pseudo-socialist lens.
American settlers are simply a seperate class, a way of life entirely predicated on their parasitical relationship with the rest of the world on the stolen land and labor in which they rest. Yes we are all oppressed by capitalism even the burgeoise, that doesn’t mean the ways in which they are oppressed are equal to that of the child that knows nothing but hunger and war, and the key here is understanding that that kid goes hungry so Americans can have a constant feed of new phones and cheap bananas, and in America the black man is overpoliced so they can be paid dirt and taken out when they become a problem and the natives are on reserves so they can be forgot about.
I would really suggest reading Settlers, Gerald Horne, and everything by Fanon, this has always been the way the US has been. The entire project was built on creating an in group (white ppl) to help manage the hyper exploitation of the out group (black slaves/indigenous, and in the age of imperialism the global south). It’s why people are afraid of immigrants, it’s why we have “leftists” that care more about losing out on treats like starbucks rather than stopping global imperialism, it’s why attempts to head communist movements by white people always fail. Our “left” wants different things, our class conciousness is different. If we want groceries to go back to a more reasonable price, we are asking for greater exploitation of those we exploit to get them.
I’m well aware the exploitation is not equal and that the plunder of imperialism is tied, in some part, to what people have in the US. I feel like I need to circle back here. My disagreement with you was originally based on you saying the following:
Many self described leftists especially settlers will never be comfortable putting their lives on the line because they could always live a comfortable life if they so choose
Which is, at best, stretching the meaning of comfort a hell of a lot and ends up sounding like any issues people have who don’t belong to the most exploited groups are just “first world problem” inconveniences, rather than “real suffering.”
I had a recollection that we’ve talked about something similar in the past. This is what I could find on it:
I don’t believe the settler population ought to be twiddling their thumbs, but they need to be led by the proletarian vanguard
This seems to be the crux of your problems with PSL (correct me if I’m misrepresenting you). That you believe it’s not doing that and therefore is a failure, fait accompli. It’s all a little too oversimplified for me, like we can summarize it all into neat little boxes and say what will come of it as a result. Certainly, don’t put your time into a party like that if you don’t think it’s going to advance the goals of the most exploited. But this phenomenon of online US “leftists” summing an entire party effort with a few vague posts and then saying it’s a dud, end of story, drives me up the wall. It feels like a bad game of telephone and is embarrassing for proper dissection of what is actually going on, on a granular level. Some of which I would expect will not be granular public knowledge for opsec reasons, but the least people can do is say less about things they don’t have detailed backing for and get used to the idea of not having all the answers. And that’s a criticism I take on myself as well.
I do somewhat mean that those in America experience very different problems with capitalism and that these “first world problems” have Americans seeking to change the system to one that benefits them, which usually entails pivoting further into fascism instead of abolishing the system as a whole. Our left doesn’t have the class conciousness that sees the emancipation from capitalism as our solution but rather sees their struggle as their “right to the American dream”, which was never sustainable or possible.
This is the crux of my argument: nearly every settler colonial state has had an attempted communist party, and each one has had deep issues that are due to the settler base of said party. It is not in their class conciousness to abolish their own privlidge. Maki, CPUSA, SACP, all struggle from the same problem of labor aristocracy class conciousness and are doing their own version of labor zionism. In South Africa it’s been shown the answer is in the EFF, and in Palestine Hamas/PFLP. We need our own decolonial communist party made up of those who’s class have a true interest in completely abolishing capitalism, and settlers/labor aristocracy wishing to fight the good fight subjegated to their leadership.
PSL is a far cry from this and has the same labor zionist problems that the CPUSA has, as said in their socialist reconstruction book they wish to subjegate native nations under “working class leadership” which has been called out countless times by many indigenous people, and by not listening they’re continually pushing away those that wish for true emancipation in favor of a very yt base that cannot tell this is an issue. If there was some sort of setup like DemCent that could produce change or a materialist base for revolutionary conciousness I wouldn’t be so quick as to discount the party as a whole, but as it is PSL is another DSA is another CPUSA; a labor zionist org that pushes out people trying to produce needed change now in favor of those attached to a neverending long-range politics that focuses more on the white working class than anything else.
Nah, part of educating is getting through to people on the fact that this can’t last as it is and it’s never going to fundamentally improve unless the colonial, imperial, and capitalist structure of power is dismantled. According to the most recent information I can find, something like 78% of USians are living paycheck to paycheck
And that’s not going to get better with the way things are being run. I don’t know where in the capitalist fantasy you get the idea US people can live a comfortable life if they choose just because they’re settlers. They can live a more comfortable life relative to other, more exploited groups, generally speaking, sure. The system does not guarantee them comfort, nor want to. Very few are guaranteed any kind of comfort in a system such as this.
The oppurtunities settlers have do amount to a sizable level of comfort even for people living paycheck to paycheck. Packed grocery stores, tech products, every expanding media sphere, often a family member to fall back on, legal and plentiful drugs, favor from legal systems including exemption from the commonality of police brutality, the relative attainability of the “American dream”, and the fact that we’ve never been subject to America’s imperial violence. Hell this phenomena has been observed in much worse conditions by the likes of Fanon, and I doubt you’ve never been told to read Settlers.
Maybe you and I have different meanings of the word “comfort” in use here.
Which requires money to buy from and the prices keep going up.
Unless you mean convenience increases like washing machines, I don’t know what you have in mind here and again, people have to be able to afford it.
Which oozes dehumanizing imperialist propaganda into them.
“Often”, you have numbers to back that up? And that’s not even getting into how this has to do with comfort, we are just talking about not being completely destitute at this point.
* in some states and again, you need to be able to afford them.
Not being specifically targeted for terror by cops based on the racialized group you belong to isn’t a comfort. It’s better living conditions than what marginalized groups face, for sure. It doesn’t mean US cops are a good and healthy institution for everybody else. They’re still neglectful, if not abusive, overall.
It isn’t attainable. It is, at its best, akin to a lotto draw.
Directly as a targeted group, correct. Indirectly, absolutely. That stuff is not contained into a bubble. And those who challenge it do face violence for sure.
Ultimately, there is suffering that isn’t very visible to the “settler” in the US. That doesn’t mean they’re comfortable as a whole. It does mean that when considering how to deal with people who fit in that group, it’s important to make sure they come to see and understand what has been invisible to them. That’s part of what happened in 2020, I think. Some still refused to see it for what it is, but there were those who understood and were radicalized to some degree by it, myself being one of them.
As far as I can tell, insisting that the average USian has a comfortable life is just feeding into imperialist/capitalist propaganda. I understand the importance of analyzing people’s conditions and understanding how those conditions will bias their actions, but in this case, it’s coming across to me more like “you don’t know how good you have it” from a pseudo-socialist lens.
Edit: wording
American settlers are simply a seperate class, a way of life entirely predicated on their parasitical relationship with the rest of the world on the stolen land and labor in which they rest. Yes we are all oppressed by capitalism even the burgeoise, that doesn’t mean the ways in which they are oppressed are equal to that of the child that knows nothing but hunger and war, and the key here is understanding that that kid goes hungry so Americans can have a constant feed of new phones and cheap bananas, and in America the black man is overpoliced so they can be paid dirt and taken out when they become a problem and the natives are on reserves so they can be forgot about.
I would really suggest reading Settlers, Gerald Horne, and everything by Fanon, this has always been the way the US has been. The entire project was built on creating an in group (white ppl) to help manage the hyper exploitation of the out group (black slaves/indigenous, and in the age of imperialism the global south). It’s why people are afraid of immigrants, it’s why we have “leftists” that care more about losing out on treats like starbucks rather than stopping global imperialism, it’s why attempts to head communist movements by white people always fail. Our “left” wants different things, our class conciousness is different. If we want groceries to go back to a more reasonable price, we are asking for greater exploitation of those we exploit to get them.
I’m well aware the exploitation is not equal and that the plunder of imperialism is tied, in some part, to what people have in the US. I feel like I need to circle back here. My disagreement with you was originally based on you saying the following:
Which is, at best, stretching the meaning of comfort a hell of a lot and ends up sounding like any issues people have who don’t belong to the most exploited groups are just “first world problem” inconveniences, rather than “real suffering.”
I had a recollection that we’ve talked about something similar in the past. This is what I could find on it:
source for context: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6154815/5451636
This seems to be the crux of your problems with PSL (correct me if I’m misrepresenting you). That you believe it’s not doing that and therefore is a failure, fait accompli. It’s all a little too oversimplified for me, like we can summarize it all into neat little boxes and say what will come of it as a result. Certainly, don’t put your time into a party like that if you don’t think it’s going to advance the goals of the most exploited. But this phenomenon of online US “leftists” summing an entire party effort with a few vague posts and then saying it’s a dud, end of story, drives me up the wall. It feels like a bad game of telephone and is embarrassing for proper dissection of what is actually going on, on a granular level. Some of which I would expect will not be granular public knowledge for opsec reasons, but the least people can do is say less about things they don’t have detailed backing for and get used to the idea of not having all the answers. And that’s a criticism I take on myself as well.
I do somewhat mean that those in America experience very different problems with capitalism and that these “first world problems” have Americans seeking to change the system to one that benefits them, which usually entails pivoting further into fascism instead of abolishing the system as a whole. Our left doesn’t have the class conciousness that sees the emancipation from capitalism as our solution but rather sees their struggle as their “right to the American dream”, which was never sustainable or possible.
This is the crux of my argument: nearly every settler colonial state has had an attempted communist party, and each one has had deep issues that are due to the settler base of said party. It is not in their class conciousness to abolish their own privlidge. Maki, CPUSA, SACP, all struggle from the same problem of labor aristocracy class conciousness and are doing their own version of labor zionism. In South Africa it’s been shown the answer is in the EFF, and in Palestine Hamas/PFLP. We need our own decolonial communist party made up of those who’s class have a true interest in completely abolishing capitalism, and settlers/labor aristocracy wishing to fight the good fight subjegated to their leadership.
PSL is a far cry from this and has the same labor zionist problems that the CPUSA has, as said in their socialist reconstruction book they wish to subjegate native nations under “working class leadership” which has been called out countless times by many indigenous people, and by not listening they’re continually pushing away those that wish for true emancipation in favor of a very yt base that cannot tell this is an issue. If there was some sort of setup like DemCent that could produce change or a materialist base for revolutionary conciousness I wouldn’t be so quick as to discount the party as a whole, but as it is PSL is another DSA is another CPUSA; a labor zionist org that pushes out people trying to produce needed change now in favor of those attached to a neverending long-range politics that focuses more on the white working class than anything else.