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With the global rise of awareness of Israel’s settler-colonial policy and history regarding the continual genocide of the indigenous Palestinians, an opportunity has arisen for the Communist Party USA to re-evaluate its line on settler colonialism domestically. Is our Party program properly addressing the Indigenous national question here in America or is there a Eurocentric and chauvinistic point of view? 

Friend of the Party and historian, Gerald Horne, has brilliantly laid out the historical materialist analysis of how the United States of America was created through a reactionary bourgeois revolution, propelled by fear of indigenous and African resistance. The creation of the “White identity” or “Whiteness” was a process of forming mass class collaboration between classes of Europeans and their descendants in the face of this existential threat to the colonial dynamic. 

Understanding this material reality helps inform us why there has been, and continues to be, white-class collaboration in the face of racial injustice, police brutality, imperialistic policies, etc. According to a recent CBS/YouGov poll, 76% of white evangelicals will be voting for Trump, an outright fascist whose policies have only hurt the working and oppressed classes. In the 2022 midterms, the majority of white people, European descendants, voted for Republicans. This is clear evidence that the settler classes still collaborate at the expense of the settler working class itself and, more so, other oppressed groups and classes. 

As a result, the U.S. has developed into a hegemonic imperial power built on and continued to be supported by, the genocide of indigenous nations. Since the federally recognized indigenous nations are still considered “wards” of the “guardian” U.S. settler-colonial power— see Cherokee v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1, (1831)— it is undeniable there is still a system of continuous apartheid, genocide, and settler colonialism in the United States. 

Vladimir Lenin said, 

“The socialists cannot reach their great aim without fighting against every form of national oppression. They must…demand that the [socialists] of the oppressing countries (of the so-called ‘great’ nations in particular) should recognize and defend the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination…the right to political separation. A socialist of a great nation or a nation possessing colonies who does not defend this right is a chauvinist.”  

If we conclude that the settler colonial dynamics and contradictions were at the inception of this country and have been central to the process of labor exploitation and resource extrapolation, then we must deal with these contradictions if we are ever to have real social change. Ignoring these material conditions will lead to distorted strategies and tactics and will only hurt the cause of worker and national liberation. 

Since we are dealing with similar settler colonial contradictions as other settler colonies have— Occupied Palestine, apartheid South Africa, French colonial Algeria, etc— we should look at how their respective national liberation movements engaged with native and settler progressive forces. Where can we build alliances between the settler working class and Indigenous nations to build our national liberation movement here? What tactics can be successful, and which might stand in the way of indigenous sovereignty and the abolition of capitalism and colonialism? Work must immediately begin with indigenous organizers, organizations, and nations as we settler Marxists often forget that many have created existing dual power structures and have hundreds of years of collective experience struggling against U.S. capitalism and colonialism. I propose the National Convention discuss and implement an Indigenous Commission in the Party which is key to this work. 

Marxism is not dogmatic, and its methodology of analysis can not be artificially transposed on another time, location, and material conditions. We cannot repeat the same chauvinistic and dogmatic mistakes of the Second International. We are living on stolen land and working with stolen resources. This is not Western Europe of the 1800s, these are occupied indigenous lands in 2024. The recent memory of Standing Rock still lingers in the minds of many young socialists today. 

The struggle for environmental justice is directly linked to the struggle for decolonization— let alone the struggles against capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism. As the essay “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” by Professors E. Tuck and K.W. Yang states, “When metaphor invades decolonization, it kills the very possibility of decolonization; it recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future. Decolonize (a verb) and decolonization (a noun) cannot easily be grafted onto pre-existing discourses/frameworks, even if they are critical, even if they are anti-racist, even if they are justice frameworks.” Decolonization–the action–is predicated on the land, resources, means of production, and political power returning to indigenous collective control—the restoration of their complete sovereignty. 

It will be a revolutionary process of not only eliminating settler colonial contradictions but ultimately the base that supports the modern capitalist and imperialist system in the US. The same systems that are driving humanity to an existential ecological disaster. The alliance between Indigenous nations and the settler working class can shorten the class and national struggles. When past Marxists extended the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat to the peasantry and all oppressed people, it should be applied to our material conditions by the alliance mentioned above of indigenous nations, workers, and oppressed people in the US. 

We should be wary of creating a chauvinistic, socialist U.S.A. that continues the national oppression of native people and nations, here and abroad. A review of the Party Program and its sections on national oppression and the national question is required to achieve liberation from capitalism and colonialism. The program incorrectly states Hawaii is no longer a colony but, “was a colony of the U.S. for many decades.” It also states that the “genocide of Native people must be recognized and acknowledged by honoring treaties and tribal sovereignty…” However, as mentioned above, treaties and federal law conflict with indigenous sovereignty. These are contradictions between our program and the material conditions that can be easily remedied. 

Re-educating the Party on colonial history, decolonial theory, and black and indigenous radical thought is key to combating chauvinistic tendencies and Eurocentric thought. Abolishing capitalism without addressing colonial contradictions is potentially a dangerous and counterrevolutionary road to lead the working class down. The Communist Party of the United States of America needs to become the first communist organization to adopt the correct analysis and positions toward decolonial liberation. The first revolutionary party to adopt the correct analysis will be the party of the future. We must be willing to stand in solidarity with the indigenous and oppressed nations of the world.