The third ism...

[Speaks for the people]

I recall when Russell Means once said of us, "the American Indian lives a 'third' ism", and this seemed a great time to expand on that some...

Of course at the time he was also comparing and contrasting with the to two horrific examples he had experience with, the US (private capitalism) & USSR (by then state capitalists), so naturally he saw our peoples historic lifeways and social-economic culture as being very different from either of those.

A long time he tried embracing US (right wing) libertarianism. This, ironically was not what he thought it to be, and really is just another (neo-feudal) form of capitalism. He even tried becoming their presidential nominee, only to loose at the time to Ron Paul. At that time I know he did find himself far from that third ism...

In the end he came to find himself being exploited by them, and especially by those who claimed to be his friends among them. This of course would come as no surprise to anyone here, but especially this realization happened for him near the end of his life, as he was trying to terminate the Lakota treaty with the US government.

The "Ron-Paulers" did come when he asked for their help with that then, but they only wanted to setup sweatshop row-houses and temporary infrastructure to house Amican Indian call center labor pools while the bargained labor cost for those living under the extreme conditions the US govt created for the reservations remained so very low. He finally was able to see them for what they were, vultures. Their concept of "freedom", that is, right-wing libertarianism, was only the freedom to selfishly exploit others, nothing more...

I remember around that time I had a lovely long discussion with Russell on the topic of education and culture. He was also trying to establish a Lakota immersion school. What I most remember about this discussion was his declaration that "Indians don't compete". This indeed is foundational to our social culture, and has always been. I was inspired by this and ended up writing an article from that topic.

What I had not spoken as much about before, and what is generally not well known, is that, near the end of his life, after being betrayed by these selfish libertarian "friends" from the past, he turned to the US communist league for collaboration on Lakota sovereignty. This was an interesting group that embraced Marx's ethnographic studies of the Haudenosaunee at the end of his life. Marx himself thought they might partially repudiate his earlier works, as an advanced form of gift economy, and people living in full social equality formed without need of a state to initially "impose" or otherwise "maintain" it.

Through a different path, people like Kropotkin later came to a similar conclusion by studying evolution and realizing cooperation was an advantageous trait, and, like Marx earlier, applying such ideas to social-economics scientifically. This is where I think most traditional early 20th century anarchists came from philosophically, rejecting the state over self organizing cooperation. This relates to our own past, as, like the Haudenosaunee, we often paired the idea of individual freedom with responsibility to others. The invader learned of our way of thinking of freedom, but choose instead to pair it with greed.

My own path was through forming a general theory of social empathy, and this too led to a rather similar place. While not exactly the same, there are some strong philosophical connections between our own historic lifeways and the ideals of what is now called "libertarian socialism", and hence where I think this "third ism" most truly lives.

[ckaihatsu]

The invader learned of our way of thinking of freedom, but choose instead to pair it with greed.


Not to apologize for the invaders / land speculators, but this culture-centric way of thinking is what yields the stilted kind of conclusion on display here -- that the Europeans were picking lifestyles out of a catalog, from a void, and decided on North America. Unfortunately, per this implied narrative, while they had *some* cultural common ground with the Native Americans, as on 'freedom', their white culture ultimately fails the moral oneupmanship test because they decided to choose the character quality of 'greed' instead of pressing-through to full social enlightenment.

Again, this isn't to excuse genocide, but we have to ask how much 'choice' or 'freedom' Europeans had at the time -- or that anyone has at any time -- and why many *wouldn't* follow the economic developments awaiting in the 'New World', especially by those that are younger.

There happens to be a thread going, on this topic:


Choice and capitalism

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=192850


So I mean to say that it wasn't 'greed' as much as it was the primitive accumulation of capital by competing European empires -- this historical material dynamic was in motion far before the influx of settlers, and before Columbus, even:





Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.




http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html





My own path was through forming a general theory of social empathy, and this too led to a rather similar place. While not exactly the same, there are some strong philosophical connections between our own historic lifeways and the ideals of what is now called "libertarian socialism", and hence where I think this "third ism" most truly lives.


With all due respect, not every encounter with 'outsiders' should be treated as a *cultural negotiation* -- no one's arguing for remorseless cultural assimilation, but we *all* are 'assimilated' into the overarching material economics of whatever historical era we happen to be living in, meaning capitalism, in general.

Anyone who throws around terms like 'libertarian socialism' and 'third -ism' should really also be describing their own interpretation of these ideas as well.

[John Nada]

I recall when Russell Means once said of us, "the American Indian lives a 'third' ism", and this seemed a great time to expand on that some...

Of course at the time he was also comparing and contrasting with the to two horrific examples he had experience with, the US (private capitalism) & USSR (by then state capitalists), so naturally he saw our peoples historic lifeways and social-economic culture as being very different from either of those.Russell Means was an AIM activist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Means

That so-called "third-ism" could've been primitive communism(though now under capitalism it's damn near third-world). Friedrick Engels describes it in Origins of The Family(though some of it is outdated, 19th century after all)
And a wonderful constitution it is, this gentile constitution, in all its childlike simplicity! No soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects, or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits - and everything takes its orderly course. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the whole of the community affected, by the gens or the tribe, or by the gentes among themselves; only as an extreme and exceptional measure is blood revenge threatened-and our capital punishment is nothing but blood revenge in a civilized form, with all the advantages and drawbacks of civilization. Although there were many more matters to be settled in common than today - the household is maintained by a number of families in common, and is communistic, the land belongs to the tribe, only the small gardens are allotted provisionally to the households - yet there is no need for even a trace of our complicated administrative apparatus with all its ramifications. The decisions are taken by those concerned, and in most cases everything has been already settled by the custom of centuries. There cannot be any poor or needy - the communal household and the gens know their responsibilities towards the old, the sick, and those disabled in war. All are equal and free - the women included. There is no place yet for slaves, nor, as a rule, for the subjugation of other tribes. When, about the year 1651, the Iroquois had conquered the Eries and the “Neutral Nation,” they offered to accept them into the confederacy on equal terms; it was only after the defeated tribes had refused that they were driven from their territory. And what men and women such a society breeds is proved by the admiration inspired in all white people who have come into contact with unspoiled Indians, by the personal dignity, uprightness, strength of character, and courage of these barbarians.

We have seen examples of this courage quite recently in Africa. The Zulus a few years ago and the Nubians a few months ago – both of them tribes in which gentile institutions have not yet died out – did what no European army can do. Armed only with lances and spears, without firearms, under a hail of bullets from the breech-loaders of the English infantry - acknowledged the best in the world at fighting in close order – they advanced right up to the bayonets and more than once threw the lines into disorder and even broke them, in spite of the enormous inequality of weapons and in spite of the fact that they have no military service and know nothing of drill. Their powers of endurance and performance are shown by the complaint of the English that a Kaffir travels farther and faster in twenty-four hours than a horse. His smallest muscle stands out hard and firm like whipcord, says an English painter.

That is what men and society were before the division into classes. And when we compare their position with that of the overwhelming majority of civilized men today, an enormous gulf separates the present-day proletarian and small peasant from the free member of the old gentile society. Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch03.htm Interestingly this was the first work of Engels that was translated into Russian.
A long time he tried embracing US (right wing) libertarianism. This, ironically was not what he thought it to be, and really is just another (neo-feudal) form of capitalism. He even tried becoming their presidential nominee, only to loose at the time to Ron Paul. At that time I know he did find himself far from that third ism...

In the end he came to find himself being exploited by them, and especially by those who claimed to be his friends among them. This of course would come as no surprise to anyone here, but especially this realization happened for him near the end of his life, as he was trying to terminate the Lakota treaty with the US government.

The "Ron-Paulers" did come when he asked for their help with that then, but they only wanted to setup sweatshop row-houses and temporary infrastructure to house Amican Indian call center labor pools while the bargained labor cost for those living under the extreme conditions the US govt created for the reservations remained so very low. He finally was able to see them for what they were, vultures. Their concept of "freedom", that is, right-wing libertarianism, was only the freedom to selfishly exploit others, nothing more...The Paulites don't give a fuck about the right to self-determination for oppressed nations. That "sovereignty" shit they're pushing now is a sham. Pre-capitalist Americas never were the "libertarian" ideal. Private property was something from Europe. All that capitalist shit wasn't in the Americas, but imposed by force.

In Honduras, after the US overthrew left-leaning President Manuel Zelaya, those right-"libertarians" pushed the US puppets to make "charter cities" called "zones for economic developement" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_for_Employment_and_Economic_Development_%28Ho nduras%29 . This basically brings back the encomiendas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda) when the Spanish settlers enslaved the indigenous people. They're fucking cumming themselves over this. More proof that they base their ideology on Euro-settler nationalism. So much for no government interference.
I remember around that time I had a lovely long discussion with Russell on the topic of education and culture. He was also trying to establish a Lakota immersion school. What I most remember about this discussion was his declaration that "Indians don't compete". This indeed is foundational to our social culture, and has always been. I was inspired by this and ended up writing an article from that topic.

What I had not spoken as much about before, and what is generally not well known, is that, near the end of his life, after being betrayed by these selfish libertarian "friends" from the past, he turned to the US communist league for collaboration on Lakota sovereignty. This was an interesting group that embraced Marx's ethnographic studies of the Haudenosaunee at the end of his life. Marx himself thought they might partially repudiate his earlier works, as an advanced form of gift economy, and people living in full social equality formed without need of a state to initially "impose" or otherwise "maintain" it.And those so-called friends still claim him as "their own". Typical of Wikipedia they make his early support for the "Libertarians" a big deal.

IIRC Marx later in life did take an interest in "Asiatic modes of production", and wrote that in Russia(which at the time still had communal property) shouldn't wait for capitalism to destroy that, but should save it for the revolution. And there was what Engels wrote about them earlier.
Through a different path, people like Kropotkin later came to a similar conclusion by studying evolution and realizing cooperation was an advantageous trait, and, like Marx earlier, applying such ideas to social-economics scientifically. This is where I think most traditional early 20th century anarchists came from philosophically, rejecting the state over self organizing cooperation. This relates to our own past, as, like the Haudenosaunee, we often paired the idea of individual freedom with responsibility to others. The invader learned of our way of thinking of freedom, but choose instead to pair it with greed.That greed was already there, and that freedom was for the rich. Although in Germany and later other European countries there was this weird orientalist(and racists) obsession with Native Americans around the 19th-early 20th century. Nevertheless the fact that the colonized peoples had a different kind of system seems to be noted often in leftist literature.
My own path was through forming a general theory of social empathy, and this too led to a rather similar place. While not exactly the same, there are some strong philosophical connections between our own historic lifeways and the ideals of what is now called "libertarian socialism", and hence where I think this "third ism" most truly lives.One of the things that led me to Marxism was reading about Mesoamerican peoples' culture when I was younger. I noticed that their concept of property wasn't the same as modern capitalism. It was communal. I then read about ejidos and the Mexican Revolution. Then about other progressive movement in Latin America.

I came to the conclusion capitalism isn't the only option, that there's a better way, communism.

[Speaks for the people]

In Honduras, after the US overthrew left-leaning President Manuel Zelaya, those right-"libertarians" pushed the US puppets to make "charter cities" called "zones for economic developement". This basically brings back the encomiendas when the Spanish settlers enslaved the indigenous people. They're fucking cumming themselves over this. More proof that they base their ideology on Euro-settler nationalism. So much for no government interference.And those so-called friends still claim him as "their own". Typical of Wikipedia they make his early support for the "Libertarians" a big deal.


In this sense "right-wing" US style libertarianism seems more like Feudalism 2.0 to me. One must recall that historic European feudalism also included contract-based societies, where individuals were often contract-bound to a baronial manor, not as a matter of choice but as a requirement for survival because others claimed ownership of the means of survival and what were once the commons by enclosure thru violence. This new feudalism is to me expressed in these "charter cities", where ownership itself also becomes a limited right only for a privileged few, and that too is a contradiction of capitalism.



I came to the conclusion capitalism isn't the only option, that there's a better way, communism.

In capitalism, from each according to what can be taken by any means, to each according to their existing wealth and greed...

I am perhaps much more anti-capitalist than "pro" a specific alternative or means of getting there. This is why I reject so called "reformed" capitalism or other compromised ideas; there is no such thing, just temporary short-term accommodations tolerated when needed to pacify. But the ultimate destination of the communist is the same as mine, a free and equal self managed society and the abolition of the wage, however we may get to there...