Premises
In a little over two-hundred years industrial capitalism's death-machine has inflicted a toxic holocaust upon the totality of earthly relations. Capitalism's attempt to reshape the planet to suit its accumulation demands has meant the wholesale clearing of continents for cultivation, resulting in endless 'meadows,' extensive deforestation, soil erosion, and desertification; the loss of biodiversity and therefore ecosystem integrity through the extinction of thousands of species for quick profits; the massive die-off of tens of hundreds of fish species through the damming of lakes, rivers and streams for irrigation and electricity production; the global collapse of fish stocks in the oceans through industrial trawlers; the conversion of agricultural plains into deserts or salt ponds through over irrigation and over harvesting, and; the forced eviction and subsequent resettlement of whole populations from the countryside into cities.
In unison with treating the landbase primarily as a tap for resource extraction, capital also views the landbase secondarily as a place for the mass dumping of industrial chemicals and wastes originating from commodity production, a practice that has made vast swabs of the planet non-viable or extremely inhospitable for life. Corporations freely and willingly dump industrial pollutants from the extraction and manufacturing processes into the surrounding environment: PCBs, dioxin, uranium tailings, mercury, and arsenic are only a few of the common pollutants found in environmental testing. Today in the United States mothers milk is contaminated by dioxin's and PCBs and asthma and cancer rates are at historic highs due to industrial capitalism's toxification of land, air, water, animals, food, and people. Globally, the planetary ecosystem is in a state of decay, along with the aforementioned ecological catastrophes global warming, global dimming, depletion of the ozone layer, coral reef die-off, and melting of the polar ice caps compound the ecological crisis and threaten to annihilate the ecological flows that form the preconditions for life.
The current configuration of everyday life cannot continue: it is socially and ecologically destructive to all life forms. It systematically degrades all life to the profane commodity-form and eradicates the conditions for autonomy and self-determination. The gospels of industrial consumption advocated by both capitalist and socialist orthodoxies are premised upon colonialism: “repression at home and conquest abroad.” No longer can we look to the models of our industrialized elders to solve the problems of industrialism: the aim is not to perfect industrial capitalism but to smash it.
The ecological crisis is not an environmental crisis but a social crisis, and its root cause is the socio-natural relation that consists of both intra-human relations and human-nonhuman relations – which are political, cultural, spiritual, and economic in form. The ecological crisis cannot be abstracted from the human organization of socio-natural relations and therefore cannot be solved in a technocratic or individualistic paradigm which emphasizes a “technical fix” to the problems of growth or the restructuring of industrial capitalism through changes in personal behavior, e.g. recycling, replacing plastic bags with cloth and regular light-bulbs with halogen (which contain mercury!), energy efficient appliances, alternative fuel automobiles, carbon offsets, downscaling, or energy substitution (e.g. solar for coal). All these proposed solutions to the ecological crisis reproduce the social framework and material relations that manufactured the ecological crisis – the abstraction of humanity from nature, the assumption that humans are at the top of the food chain, thatt the earth exists for humans, and that humans are to dominate nature, that there is no alternative to capitalism or economic growth, and that technology provides the path to the promised land. Rather than seeing the ecological crisis as a social and political crisis of humanity's relationship to the landbase capitalism's and mainstream environmentalism's focus is on maintaining industrial society, development, and civilization at all costs.
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The ecological crisis, popularized amongst social critics, theorists, activists, and scientists almost a half a century ago has only magnified in scale and severity. The problem is not just capital, the state. or the mainstream environmental movement, but the structure of everyday life. Radical steps must be taken to prevent a “hard crash” and realign lifeways within ecological flows and rhythms. The sooner the better. It is vital to restructure not merely the social world but the socio-natural relations that constitute the foundation for that social world. Such a restructuring means a turn away from a lot of the components of contemporary life that have brought the world to the brink of implosion: capitalism, patriarchy, christianity, the enlightenment's mechanistic conceptions of time and space, a competitive ethos united with a spirit of acquisitiveness, the conflation of atomized individualism with liberty and autonomy, and a blind faith in technology and so-called historical progress. The rejection of these foundational components of everyday must coincide with an incorporation of worldviews and lifeways premised upon landbase subjectivities that emphasize the commons, egalitarianism, reciprocity, respect, harmony, and subsistence.
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For the vast majority of life on the planet, neoliberalism (the social formation of capitalism from the late 1970s/early 1980s through today) has been an utter failure along social, political, economic, and ecological grounds. It has not increased the freedom, sovereignty, or wealth of the vast majority of citizens nor has it increased the health and integrity of the planetary ecosystem. The overall outcome of thirty years of neoliberal hegemony is increased national and global inequality, proletarianization, scarcity of access to water and food, low-intensity warfare, civil war and genocide, multinational corporate (MNC) control over the planet and ecological degradation. This degradation has increased to such a degree that a majority of the ecological cycles are in the state of decay, crisis, or collapse. Furthermore, what neoliberalism has been successful at is increasing the centralization of governance into the hands of non-democratic institutions. Principally, corporations, national governments, and supra-national political institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations (UN), and European Union (EU).
However, the most successful maneuver of Neoliberalism has been the massive transfer of ownership of land, water, air, seed, and genes into the hands of corporations. This round of new enclosures (also referred to as primitive accumulation or accumulation by dispossession) is a process that forms the foundation of capitalism's economic growth model since the 1970s. Enclosure became a key mechanism of social control through forcing all space and therefore all production into the circuits of accumulation; for the accumulation of capital, labor, commodities, and wealth presupposes the accumulation of space, first and foremost. Enclosure became the primary mechanism employed to integrate the entire planet into capitalist accumulation through the destruction of non-capital producing spaces and subjects.
Mainstream environmentalism – white middle class environmentalism – led by the Big Ten, is not a viable social movement nor does it address the root causes of the ecological crisis – industrialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and christianity. Its main focus is dominated by a preservationist camp that merely seeks ameliorative efforts to protect wilderness from the tendrils of capitalism. It is locked into a century and half old lens that is plagued by a dichotomy of nature and culture, humans and the environment, wilderness and civilization. This dichotomy manifests in the Big Ten's primary focus not on issues of social justice and equity nor on restructuring industrial society but on preservationism – protecting wide swaths of land from 'development' in their pristine wilderness state. Preservationist environmentalism is about preserving a pre-human contact wilderness that consisted of wildlife and not much else – enshrined in national parks, nature preserves, open space, and wild animal parks.
Mainstream environmentalism is incapable of forming a land ethic based on human stewardship and co-habitation. Furthermore, an environmental strategy premised on preservation works in combination with capitalism: they both demand the dispossession of land from indigenous people to maintain wilderness for preservation and to develop the land for capitalism. All the while, preservationist environmentalism continually avoids confronting capitalism about its anti-ecological growth demands, its production of an everyday life dominated by endless consumerism, and a relationship with the land premised upon human domination.
Moreover, when it is not confined to saving land from development mainstream environmentalism's adoption of “third wave” politics has its eco-consciousness confined to market-oriented solutions to the ecological crisis: solutions that rely on corporate volunteerism and self-regulation, tax based incentive schemes, technological innovation, and supply and demand programs, a la cap and trade that allow for the privatization and commodification of pollution and nature and their control by MNC's. The Big Ten's solution to the ecological crisis is essentially neoliberalism's solution: more 'free' markets, more corporate control, more private property, more growth. Both capital and Big Green argue that what created the problem can solve the problem. This line no longer holds.
As a result, the historic struggle between capitalism and the indigenous is waged at numerous levels: philosophical, spiritual, socio-cultural, political, economic, and ecological. It is a struggle of different ways of being, both socially and with the landbase. For this reason, the struggle over the path of globalization and therefore the future of the planet is a struggle between the commons and capitalist private property, subsistence and accumulation, use-value and exchange-value, bio/cultural-diversity and monocultures, autonomy and dependency, self-determination and sovereignty, the indigenous and euro-americans.
For over five-hundred years Native American's have been deemed expendable due to their 'natural' state of existence as wild savages who failed to 'use' the land. Both the landbase and their way of life was viewed as “open” to colonization – for colonization is both a cultural, political, economic, and ecological project. The history of the Native American post-contact is not a pretty one nor one that contemporary American's have come to terms with. Subsequently, it is generally a taboo topic in American society. No accurate history of the conquest and continuing slaughter of the indigenous is taught in the public education system and most American's celebrate Thanksgiving as part of a nationalist celebration marking the arrival upon a 'new' world that is only new if one is looking westward. In fact, the history of the indigenous post-contact is one of extreme and brutal violence, genocide, culturecide and ecocide by euro-americans. In the eyes of the settlers, miners, hunters and the state and Federal government there was no question as to whether the indigenous needed to go, the question was by what means: disease, war, massacre, or acculturation. The question was to either kill them outright or civilize them through “killing the indian to save the man.” There is no room for the indigenous within euro-american society. Until this is realized no transformative politics can commence.
The genocide, culturecide, and ecocide of the indigenous was rationalized and legitimated through recourse to religion, racial superiority, civilizing tendencies, notions of progress and development, private property, and Christianity's quest for dominion over the earth – all of which are encapsulated under “Manifest Destiny,” the foundation of American colonization.
For this reason, there is no critique of capitalism without a critique of colonialism and therefore no critique of capitalism without a critique of ecocide, culturecide and genocide; processes that have occurred over the last five-hundred years and not just in parts of the globe external to the United States. They are omnipresent in the third world within the north: Indian Country.
There must be a critique of the primitive accumulation of the indigenous within the occupied territory of the United States. There can be no critique of colonialism without a critique of the enclosure of turtle island and its conversion into a playground for the accumulation of capital.
The indigenous, the last “artifact” of the pre-history of capitalism, have resisted integration into the circuits of capitalist reproduction for over 500 years and currently display no willingness to succumb or halt that struggle today. The indigenous reject the death machine of neoliberalism – on both cultural, political, ecological, economic and spiritual grounds. Instead, they put forth the call “self-determination through control over our land.” For indigenous survival requires the survival of the landbase. The struggle is not for equality under colonialism. It is not a struggle for citizenship or sovereignty. It is a struggle against capitalism and the state. The indigenous struggle in the United States is the struggle for nationhood based on traditional indigenous values of “freedom, justice, and peace.”
What can be learned from the indigenous struggle is that for the domination of both humans and nature to be annihilated we must restructure social and ecological relations. In other words, the struggle for the health of the landbase is for the social and ecological liberation from capitalism, patriarchy, and christianity. At its root, the struggle is over the landbase, over the relationship that humans are going to have with the landbase. Will it be one that is premised upon domination and control or one based on balance, harmony and reciprocity?
The indigenous struggle of Native Americans is a struggle against the primitive accumulation of capital and all that that entails – dispossession, enclosure, enclosure, wage-labor, patriarchy, instrumental rationality, alienation and accumulation. The struggle against primitive accumulation is not just a social struggle but an ecological struggle, the latter part is often forgotten, ignored, or downplayed.
The indigenous struggle was not merely for autonomy and liberation from domination but for a relation to the landbase that was premised upon the commons and subsistence. It is a struggle for a way of life premised upon the principles of egalitarianism, reciprocity, and harmony with all life.
It is the unification of social and ecological that underscores the importance of the indigenous struggle against capitalism for ascertaining alternatives to industrial capitalist society. The struggle by the indigenous for the commons and subsistence is a struggle for cultural and biological diversity. Therefore, a struggle for a healthy environment, as their lifeway is dependent on it. It is not a struggle to separate people from the land or develop the land for a quick buck, but to preserve both people and the land forever.
Those who struggle for liberation must be with the indigenous and not against them. The goal is not to 'civilize' the indigenous. The goal is not to 'develop' the landbase. The struggle is to embrace attempts to unite social and ecological liberation from capitalism, which do not have to be invented from scratch, but can be found with the indigenous and their landbased subsistence lifeways. It is high time that those in the 'advanced' north so willing to jump on the global south bandwagon turn inward to aid the colonized within the 'first' world: those in indian country. There is no justification to ignore the indigenous within the core of capitalism in favor of those in the periphery. It is high time the left faced up to its historical marginalization of the indigenous within the occupied territory of the United States. The struggle is to reclaim the land for the indigenous based upon their own traditional principals. This requires the end of capitalism and the state and the reimposition of traditional indigenous values based on social and ecological justice; anything less is unacceptable.
The Rev is on the Rez.
