A celebration of mass murder (Columbus Day)

[OriginalGumby]

http://socialistworker.org/2009/10/1...of-mass-murder

Dahr Jamail, author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Jason Coppola, director of the documentary Justify My War, document the real history of Christopher Columbus and the conquest of the "New World."

[Vanguard1917]

The article puts forward a disappointingly one-sided analysis -- and it ends up welcoming ahistoricism of the most crude kind, comparing the colonisers to the Nazis. There is no Marxist analysis in the article.

It's definitely true that the European discovery of the Americas went hand in hand with human degradation and mass human slaughter. We should indeed recognise, explain and expose this when putting forward our materialist analysis of the historical facts.

But such a materialist analysis of history also means that we need to recognise that the European discovery of America was also a monumental and epoch-making event in human history, without which there could not have been the creation of a genuinely global world economy -- thus no end to feudalism, no modern capitalist society, no international proletariat, and no possibility of an international movement of workers for socialism.

Marxists should not have an idealised view of historical developments; they should seek to appreciate the contradictions inherent within epoch-making historical changes.

[Pawn Power]

But such a materialist analysis of history also means that we need to recognise that the European discovery of America was also a monumental and epoch-making event in human history, without which there could not have been the creation of a genuinely global world economy -- thus no end to feudalism, no modern capitalist society, no international proletariat, and no possibility of an international movement of workers for socialism.

And then, you would have never been born.

What a bizarre statement. How could you possibly know what history would look like with an alternative development, say the African 'discovery' of the Americas?

[Vanguard1917]

How could you possibly know what history would look like with an alternative development, say the African 'discovery' of the Americas?

A good example of what i was referring to as a non-materialist, idealised concepteption of history. We shouldn't be in the business of 'what if' scenarios, but should study actual historical occurances and the underlying material dynamics which drove them. In this case, we know that the European discovery of America played a pivotal role in the birth of the revolutionary capitalist era, with all that that gave way to (the international working class, socialism, etc.).

[Vanguard1917]

Incidentally, Marx and Engels saw the European discovery of America as a decisive development in the destruction of feudalism and the revolutionary development of society:

'The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

[...]

'Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.'

(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...festo/ch01.htm)

[Pawn Power]

A good example of what i was referring to as a non-materialist, idealised concepteption of history. We shouldn't be in the business of 'what if' scenarios, but should study actual historical occurances and the underlying material dynamics which drove them. In this case, we know that the European discovery of America played a pivotal role in the birth of the revolutionary capitalist era, with all that that gave way to (the international working class, socialism, etc.).

But that isn't what i was talking about.

The fact that the Americas were 'discovered' by Europeans and that they then proceeded to slaughter most of the people who lived here, does not necessarily mean (even in a materialist sense) that this exact progression of events was necessary for the current outcome, in general terms.

On a side note, doesn't vanguard seem to relish a bit too much in the europeans developments as an imperialist power? kinda creepy.

[Pawn Power]

Incidentally, Marx and Engels saw the European discovery of America as a decisive development in the destruction of feudalism and the revolutionary development of society:

'The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

[...]

'Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.'

(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...festo/ch01.htm)

good for them.

[Vanguard1917]

But that isn't what i was talking about.

The fact that the Americas were 'discovered' by Europeans and that they then proceeded to slaughter most of the people who lived here, does not necessarily mean (even in a materialist sense) that this exact progression of events was necessary for the current outcome, in general terms

What other progression of events would you have preferred? Because that's what we're essentially discussing here, isn't it?: your preferences on how history should have proceeded, rather than the way that it did proceed. Hence the 'what if' scenario you put forward earlier: what would have happened if the discovery had been made by Africans rather than Europeans?

On a side note, doesn't vanguard seem to relish a bit too much in the europeans developments as an imperialist power? kinda creepy.

You don't have to be a supporter of colonialism (the stage of imperialism came later) to see that there was a progressive side to the European the discovery of America.

good for them.

Indeed.

[Invader Zim]

Many of the unflattering documents have been known for the last century or more, but nobody paid much attention to them until recently. The fact that Columbus brought slavery, enormous exploitation or devastating diseases to the Americas used to be seen as a minor detail--if it was recognized at all--in light of his role as the great bringer of white man's civilization to the benighted idolatrous American continent. But to historians today this information is very important. It changes our whole view of the enterprise.

Eh? What do they mean 'ignored' until recently? Work noting the brutal treatment of native peoples during the conquest of the Americas (and after) has been noted by historians for years. J. H. Elliott, for example, has been writing about the Spanish conquest of the Americas since the 1960s. Though admittedly I've only read his 2005 book Empires of the Atlantic World, but Columbus is not left undiscussed.

[Invader Zim]

But that isn't what i was talking about.

The fact that the Americas were 'discovered' by Europeans and that they then proceeded to slaughter most of the people who lived here, does not necessarily mean (even in a materialist sense) that this exact progression of events was necessary for the current outcome, in general terms.

On a side note, doesn't vanguard seem to relish a bit too much in the europeans developments as an imperialist power? kinda creepy.

'Slaughter most of the people who lived there'? Slaughter implies intention, which is of course a hell of a stretch of the facts. The vast majority of those native people who died fell victim to the various diseases brought over by the Europeans, to which the indigenous peoples had no defence or immunity to. So what were common illnesses to the sailors, soldiers and explorers who went to the new world transformed into fatal pandemics to indigenous population. I've read accounts, particularly in the North, of deliberate attempts to spread small-pox, through sending blankets which had been used in the treatment of infected Europeans, as a crude form of biological warfare. But naturally these events were hardly common, and the diseases doubtless spread rapidly without the morbid aid of the invading European migrants.

Of course this is not to dismiss the widespread atrocities committed by European migrants, but to suggest that European migrants deliberately exterminated the majority of the indigenous population strikes me as a polemical fantasy as opposed to actual history, which is gruesome enough without exaggerating.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Of course this is not to dismiss the widespread atrocities committed by European migrants, but to suggest that European migrants deliberately exterminated the majority of the indigenous population strikes me as a polemical fantasy as opposed to actual history, which is gruesome enough without exaggerating.

While slaughter may not have been their intentions, while each individual farmer or plantation owner may not have written in their day planner: "Tuesday: kill off the native population", settlement needed the land to be cleared for farming and trade and railroads and so on and in order to do that the people using that potential farmland, mill-site, port and so on had to be either integrated into those plans (like Spain turning populations into slaves or the French turing native populations into trade partners) or moved out of the way (killed or relocated).

So while there have been a lot of different kinds of relationships between colonizers and the native populations in the Americas (outright slaughter, conversion and forced integration, relocation, and so on) the cause of it in the US and Mexico and most of Latin America has been to clear the land and accumulate wealth and that is very deliberate.

It would be like saying the US wasn't deliberately trying to kill people in Afghanistan... well sometimes they are deliberately out to kill some people to send a message, other times the kill people unintentionally at a checkpoint or during a raid. The point is that the project they are trying to accomplish requires subjugation of the population of the area they want to control and this leads to slaughter weather it is deliberate or not.

[OriginalGumby]

I know Native Americans that protest on columbus day by claiming it for themselves as Indigenous People's Day speaking the truth about what columbus means to them. columbus day is to Native Americans what the Nakba is to Palestinians. This day marked the beginning of a long process of genocide and ethnic cleansing of the American continent including what is now the United States. I don't know what country you are from Vanguard but in the US where I live this historical fact is not common knowledge. It is obscured behind nationalistic nostalgia about the "era of exploration and discovery" and it is celebrated for being that! I think that this article is thoroughly Marxist in it explanation of the real life columbus and the imperialist myth still supported and widely believed today. The article also put this perpetuation of this myth in a context of a country that exists as a result of expropriation and colony building. Ultimately the celebration of columbus is a celebration of imperialism and Marxists are right to point this out in all its insidious details.

It was an ongoing policy of forced expulsion, betrayal, manipulation, brutality, and genocidal physical and cultural eradication of indigenous peoples that made the country of the US possible. It was state policy as it is in israel and turning it into an unintentional process that removed indigenous people from this entire continent is an absurdity.

What I do not understand is how marxism can be distorted such that we are not able to understand history and correctly identify with the oppressed. Socialists are nothing if not the memory of the working class but also all oppressed people. Vanguard would you have us appreciate the historical significance of colonialism in Africa and elsewhere by dogmatically appreciating the great part that brutal exploitation contributed to the development of capitalism in Europe or would you recognize that yes capitalism is developing this way and yes it is a precondition for socialism but STILL you are unequivocally on the side of the oppressed fighting for self determination and survival against the colonizers and the imperialists. Do you take the side of the exploited within capitalism against the capitalists? Why not with the oppressed and exploited against the pre-capitalist ruling classes?

Oh and I think the intention of any comparison to the Nazi's was not to say that columbus or other colonizers were fascists or whatever. Instead the article pretty clearly compares the scale of fucked up historical events with how they are portrayed and understood.

from the article
Noam Chomsky holds a similar view. "We have [World War II] Holocaust museums all over the place about what the Germans did," Chomsky told Truthout. "Do we have one about what we did? I mean about slavery, about the Native American population?

This is to point out the hypocrisy of the US ruling class in talking about the horrible atrocities of others while sweeping its own under the rug.
The other one asks you to imagine a Germany that still celebrated that history. I would hope that any good radical would see this as similar to what columbus day is today. The article does not really make comparisons beyond that so I don't know what the big deal is and why it means there is no Marxist analysis.

Recognizing revolutionary historical change does not mean you support the destruction it wrecks. It does not preclude you from taking the side of the oppressed.

[Plagueround]

Of course this is not to dismiss the widespread atrocities committed by European migrants, but to suggest that European migrants deliberately exterminated the majority of the indigenous population strikes me as a polemical fantasy as opposed to actual history, which is gruesome enough without exaggerating.

While it is true that disease wiped out a majority of the native population, the ones that survived were met with white house ordered massacres of their towns and villages, executions with no trial, death marches, deliberate attempts to starve entire tribes by cutting off or burning their food supplies, reservationism, and the constant threat of an encroaching population that outnumbered them approximately 8 to 1 and viewed them as savages or animals. If a bunch of soldiers rounded up your entire family and neighbors, shot the men, raped the women and children, shot them too, then made trophies and bridal reigns out of the remains, I somehow doubt you would view this as lacking intent. And it's not as if these are isolated incidents I speak of, this was the common practice and accepted government policy at the time.

Far from "lacking intent", it's not as if these people were peacefully removed by a benevolent people concerned with the wellbeing of those who's homeland they wanted. Those that did manage to survive or who were "fortunate enough" to be living in a time when the government encouraged cultural annihilation or assimilation were met with concentration camp like conditions, were beaten or shot for participating in their tribal rituals or even speaking their tribe's language, forced to cut their hair and wear european clothing, and sit back as their children were sent to boarding schools where they were forced into similar assimilation and subjected to physical and sexual abuse, in some instances children were murdered by their instructors and later on found boarded up in floors or walls.

To this day they're still uncovering the full terror that native people were subjected to, and much of it may not ever be known because there isn't anyone left or an evidence to tell the full story. However, to take the known events and dismiss any critique of them because of their impact global progress or to attempt to differentiate the native american genocide from others because disease got there first is utterly infuriating. For some reason, I can't help but think of the people claiming the civil war was purely a states rights issue.

[Pawn Power]

What other progression of events would you have preferred? Because that's what we're essentially discussing here, isn't it?: your preferences on how history should have proceeded, rather than the way that it did proceed. Hence the 'what if' scenario you put forward earlier: what would have happened if the discovery had been made by Africans rather than Europeans?

Exactly what I am not talking about.

You don't have to be a supporter of colonialism (the stage of imperialism came later) to see that there was a progressive side to the European the discovery of America.

Progressive for who? Surly it wasn't very 'progressive' for the people already living in the Americas?

You know what I don't hear a lot (indeed, not at all) from my indigenous brothers and sisters saying here in the state; "you know what, that whole european conquest thing of the Americas was brutal and all, but, in the end, it was for the best."

Think about what you are saying here.

[Pawn Power]

'Slaughter most of the people who lived there'? Slaughter implies intention, which is of course a hell of a stretch of the facts. The vast majority of those native people who died fell victim to the various diseases brought over by the Europeans, to which the indigenous peoples had no defence or immunity to. So what were common illnesses to the sailors, soldiers and explorers who went to the new world transformed into fatal pandemics to indigenous population. I've read accounts, particularly in the North, of deliberate attempts to spread small-pox, through sending blankets which had been used in the treatment of infected Europeans, as a crude form of biological warfare. But naturally these events were hardly common, and the diseases doubtless spread rapidly without the morbid aid of the invading European migrants.

Of course this is not to dismiss the widespread atrocities committed by European migrants, but to suggest that European migrants deliberately exterminated the majority of the indigenous population strikes me as a polemical fantasy as opposed to actual history, which is gruesome enough without exaggerating.

The Founding Fathers of the US used words said the Indians needed to be "exterminated." I don't know how much more intentional the words must be for people to except the indigenous population was purposefully exterminated by europeans.

[Pawn Power]

If "exterminated" isn't clear enough, how about this.

John Quincy Adams stated "that hapless race of native Americans, which we are exterminating with such merciless and perfidious cruelty… "

[Vanguard1917]

columbus day is to Native Americans what the Nakba is to Palestinians.

But the discovery of America and the Nakba represent two very different things. To conflate the two is deeply ahistorical. At best, all you will find is superficial similarities in attempts to compare capitalist expansionism in its revolutionary period and the imperialist reaction which the 20th century assaults on Palestine represented.

What I do not understand is how marxism can be distorted such that we are not able to understand history and correctly identify with the oppressed. Socialists are nothing if not the memory of the working class but also all oppressed people.

We should undertand and expose the fact that, from its very birth, capitalism went hand in hand with the degradation of human beings. But is that the same as saying that the the birth of capitalism was not a progressive phenomenon compared to what existed prior?

[black magick hustla]

i dont get all this rage about colombus day. every important "celebration" today is smeared with blood. i dont get what is useful about making value judgement of a man who lived in the 15th century who had no conceptual framework to even utter all this ideas of "tolerance" and "equality" we grow up today. it was an ugly affair, but honestly what is there to protest? yea he murdered a bunch of natives. natives also murdered each other. its called class society.

[Invader Zim]

the ones that survived were met with white house ordered massacres of their towns and villages, executions with no trial, death marches, deliberate attempts to starve entire tribes by cutting off or burning their food supplies, reservationism, and the constant threat of an encroaching population that outnumbered them approximately 8 to 1 and viewed them as savages or animals.

Your point strikes me as being anachronistic. We are, or should I say were, discussing Columbus Day, and Columbus was a product of the 15th century and the conquistadores such as Cortés the 16th. And it is in this century, and the beginning of the next, that the indigenous population suffers massive numerical decline. Within 160 years at least 80% of the native population had been wiped out by desease or at the hands of the European invaders. The vast majority being the former. The policies of the USA don't come into play until long after the vast majority of the damage had already been done. So what happened to the 'ones that survived' doesn't really impact upon the fact that Pawn Power's claim was false, and manifestly so.

If a bunch of soldiers rounded up your entire family and neighbors, shot the men, raped the women and children, shot them too, then made trophies and bridal reigns out of the remains, I somehow doubt you would view this as lacking intent.

As I said attrocities did occur, I didn't deny that and it isn't what I took issue with. My problem was with the contention that Europeans deliberately killed the majority of the indigenous population. That, manifestly, was not the case. You are making an argument to a point that nobody has made.

I don't know how much more intentional the words must be for people to except the indigenous population was purposefully exterminated by europeans.

Yet, while Adams lamented the treatment of the indigenous population, a in the 1830s the Souix were being offered vaccination against Small Pox, which was one of, if not the, most deadly desease of the day. To list a couple of examples of just how deadly the desease was, the 1837 smallpox epidemic halved the Hidatsa population and reduced the Mandan population from 1,600 to 125. Vaccinating a people against a desease that has done more to damage them than any single policy or collective group policies could ever hope to achieve seems counter productive to a desire, at the highest levels of government, to destroy that same population. That is not to say that there wasn't a policy of genocide, but the issue certainly isn't anywhere near as clear cut as you imagine.

But of course this is a complete change of tack, I took issue with your claim that the European mingrants deliberately destroyed the majority of the population. The policy of the US government centuries after the vast majority of the damage had already been done isn't relevent to that point.

[FreeFocus]

Thanks for posting this, the article was excellent, particularly this point:

Never has this process been as blatant and overt as in recent years when the time has come for America to legitimize the idea of global domination. A Department of Defense report titled Joint Vision 2020 calls for the U.S. military to be capable of "full spectrum dominance" of the entire planet. That means total domination and control of all land, sea, air, space and information.

That's a lot of control.


How might this become accepted as "Policy" and remain unquestioned by almost an entire population?


The one word key to that is: Myths. The explanation is that the myths the United States is built upon have paved the way for the perpetuation of all manner of violations.

In addition, this piece was brilliant, the author quoted Paul Woodward:

Historical revisionism and amnesia are critical for nation-building, opines Paul Woodward, the writer and author of the blog War In Context. He elaborates:

Every nation is subject to its own particular form of historical amnesia. Likewise, imperial powers have their own grandiose revisionist tendencies. Yet there is another form of historical denial particular to recently invented nations whose myth-making efforts are inextricably bound together with the process of the nation's birth...


Whereas older nations are, by and large, populated by people whose ancestral roots penetrated that land well before it took on the clear definition of a nation state, the majority of the people in an invented nation--such as the United States or Israel'--have ancestry that inevitably leads elsewhere. This exposes the ephemeral link between the peoples' history and the nation's history.


Add to that the fact that such nations came into being through grotesque acts of dispossession, and it is clear that a psychological drive to hold aloft an atemporal exceptionalism becomes an existential necessity. National security requires that the past be erased.

Now on to the bullshit comments some have made in this thread..

The article puts forward a disappointingly one-sided analysis -- and it ends up welcoming ahistoricism of the most crude kind, comparing the colonisers to the Nazis. There is no Marxist analysis in the article.

It's definitely true that the European discovery of the Americas went hand in hand with human degradation and mass human slaughter. We should indeed recognise, explain and expose this when putting forward our materialist analysis of the historical facts.

But such a materialist analysis of history also means that we need to recognise that the European discovery of America was also a monumental and epoch-making event in human history, without which there could not have been the creation of a genuinely global world economy -- thus no end to feudalism, no modern capitalist society, no international proletariat, and no possibility of an international movement of workers for socialism.

Marxists should not have an idealised view of historical developments; they should seek to appreciate the contradictions inherent within epoch-making historical changes.

There's no problem with the article being "one-sided," because it was a statement of facts and eliminated imperialist and racist propaganda. I don't object to things being "one-sided" when it's on the side of facts.


Yes, the Euro discovery of the Americas was a "monumental and epoch-making event in human history," because the bloodiest, ugliest 500 years in human history were ushered in, seeing the unparalleled destruction of entire peoples, regions, cultures, unparalleled death, and the development of murderous systems of oppression. Surely I do not applaud the development of the "modern capitalist society," which grinds billions of people under and removes any hope for a decent life. I strongly object to the notion that capitalism must precede any type of socialism. You may define socialism as a system in which workers have control, fine, fair enough. I don't see it as necessary that we needed to have bosses in between. Moreover, socialism is essentially a system in which all people are able to fully realize their potential. Socialism strengthens communities and is a system under which every person is equal. Humans worked together in groups for millennia without capitalists controlling our lives. We may have still had some type of hierarchy, which of course should have been combated, but there's nothing written in stone that says "capitalism must precede socialism," or, if you want to define socialism in the strict 19th-century European sense, there's nothing written in stone that says "capitalism must precede a socialist-like system."


Nonetheless, history happened and there's nothing that can be done to change it. We can acknowledge that, for Europeans and to a lesser extent Asians, economic development followed the feudalism to capitalism mold, and we say that socialism should be next. However, civilizations in Africa, the Americas, Australia, and Oceania didn't necessarily follow this mold. Few civilizations in the Americas followed feudalism and none followed capitalism. However, some did follow what I would consider socialism - not a perfect form of it, but everyone was provided for, and institutional barriers to self-realization and community-building didn't exist, like racism.


Capitalism is largely a Eurasian development that was forced on the rest of the world by European colonialism and imperialism. Even if Natives and Africans suffered under feudalism, feudalism was not capable of wiping entire cultures and peoples off the earth and forcing 15 million Africans across an ocean into a foreign land, losing their culture and identity, to toil under possibly the most degrading system of oppression devised in history.

But the discovery of America and the Nakba represent two very different things. To conflate the two is deeply ahistorical. At best, all you will find is superficial similarities in attempts to compare capitalist expansionism in its revolutionary period and the imperialist reaction which the 20th century assaults on Palestine represented.

We should undertand and expose the fact that, from its very birth, capitalism went hand in hand with the degradation of human beings. But is that the same as saying that the the birth of capitalism was not a progressive phenomenon compared to what existed prior?

See, this is the basic problem. You view capitalism as having a "revolutionary period," and that it was "revolutionary" for the entire world. Perhaps it had some revolutionary value in Europe, which had feudalism as its economic base. It was hardly revolutionary for peoples who already had forms of socialism or other economic systems.



Basically, you have a very parochial, Eurocentric view on politics and global development - not surprising given that the majority of our (leftist) thought comes from European analysis of European problems. Still, it's problematic because it is offensive and chauvinistic to watch you sit here and degrade the importance of, yes, mass murder and the devastating effects of European capitalist expansion into the Americas.



This shit pisses me off. Perhaps it makes you feel better inside by trying to play it down or write it off saying it represents an advancement for humanity. Hmm, that's funny, conquistadors, settlers, and these other fucks said the same exact thing.