Capitalists & Communists
Let us perform the following thought experiment: If a Marxist revolution were to happen to tomorrow throughout the Western Hemisphere, would the dictatorship of the proletariat (the post-capitalist state apparatus) recognize the autonomy and sovereignty of First Nations and relinquish authority over the land we stand on to indigenous peoples?
The complicated response to this question is at the crux of the ideological tensions between Marxism and decolonization. For most of us, it is self-evident how capitalism rendered land as a commodity with an exchange value, and thus the expropriation and privatization of that land was the driving force for the near extermination of indigenous populations. What is not always self-evident is that Marxism views land in a similar way. While Marxism proposes popular ownership of land (in reality, another state apparatus), the ultimate value of land is in its use and the resources that can be extracted from it; the relationship between a human being and the land is mediated by the labor put into it.
In neither capitalist nor Marxist scenarios is stewardship over land the inherent right of First Nations. The emotional, spiritual, and familial relationship that indigenous people have with their own lands has absolutely no validity within the materialist ideologies of capitalism and Marxism. Despite the rhetoric of qualitative change and liberation that left-wing organizations promote, we cannot ignore the history of these organizations absorbing or co-opting indigenous struggles for their own ideological purposes, but rejecting the revindication of indigenous rights to land.
So can there be a reconciliation? Yes, according to indigenous scholar Glen Coulthard. In his book, “Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition,” Coulthard argues that:
“Within and between the fields of Indigenous studies and Marxist political economy, these debates have at times been hostile and polarizing. At its worst, this hostility has led to the premature rejection of Marx and Marxism by some Indigenous studies scholars on the one side, and to the belligerent, often ignorant, and sometimes racist dismissal of Indigenous peoples’ contributions to radical thought and politics by Marxists on the other. At their nondogmatic best, however, I believe that the conversations that continue to occur within and between these two diverse fields of critical inquiry (especially when placed in dialog with feminist, anarchist, queer, and postcolonial traditions) have the potential to shed much insight into the cycles of colonial domination and resistance that characterize the relationship between white settler and Indigenous peoples.
All if this is not to suggest, however, that Marx’s contributions are without flaw; nor is it meant to suggest that Marxism provides a ready-made tool for Indigenous peoples to uncritically appropriate in their struggles for land and freedom… rendering Marx’s theoretical frame relevant to a comprehensive understanding of settler-colonialism and Indigenous resistance requires that it be transformed in conversation with the critical thought and practices of Indigenous peoples themselves.”