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Title: Stolen Anarchy Author: TwinRabbit Date: October 25, 2019 Language: en Topics: indigenous, indigenous sovereignty, indigenous anarchy, decolonial feminism, decolonization, 1800s, 1700s, 1600s, anti-colonization, Marxism, Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, Friedrich Engels, anthropology, William Godwin, Haudenosaunee, Iroquois, Lenape, Breadtube, transcript Source: Transcripted on 2-25-2022 from https://youtube.com/watch?v=qBFvxkvpi2w Notes: Text primarily from YouTube video transcript. Images mainly screenshots from video. Original Description: A Seneca, Quaker, & cosplaying lawyer who sparked revolution, and why Breadtube should care. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TwoRabbit ][patreon.com/TwoRabbit]] Twitter: [[https://twitter.com/RabbitThoughts Texts Recommended: âKayanerenkĂł:wa: The Great Law of Peaceâ by Kayanesenh Paul Williams â1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbusâ by Charles Mann âColumbus and Other Cannibalsâ by Jack Forbes âAnarchism in Latin Americaâ edited by Carlos Rama & Ăngel Cappelletti Written, Edited, Directed, & Produced by Twin Rabbit Music Through Various YouTube Audio Library Artists
[Trelane] âYou must excuse my whimsical way of fetching you here, but
when I saw you passing by I simply could not resist!â
[]
[Rabbit] As weâre all aware, working within the algorithm can require a
bit of misdirection, but my title isnât strictly a lie either.
Ideas donât come from singular geniuses. They come from groups of people
deciding that something has merit. Which means ideas as big as Marxism,
or Communism, or Anarchy didnât just miraculously appear. They were
inspired by and perpetuated by groups.
The thing is... All too often Credit is being given for that work, which
was far from original, and in it happening very specific groups are
being left out of the story entirely. I aim, in my own small way, to
attempt to correct that.
Please join me on my journey.
[]
Lewis Henry Morgan was a fanboi. Really, he was the fanboi. He was such
a fanboi, he created his own Members Only Club so that other people who
fanboyed as hard as he did, could dress up as their favorite characters
and periodically march down the street chanting in a made-up language.
Morgan loved cosplay. He wrote books about the characters he liked the
most, he and his friends would get together regularly in meatspace... It
was the whole cliche. These days none of it sounds particularly
remarkable, but it stands out a little more when I say: Lewis was a
fanboi, in 1841. And the club that he was a part of was âThe Order of
the Iroquoisâ.
A backstory... The first one. Brace yourself, this partâs completely
silly in the way only a true fandom club can be.
[rockabilly music starts] [] Morganâs grandfather, Thomas, had
originally purchased land from the Cayuga Tribe, one of the members of
the Iroquois Confederacy (which is where Lewis got the name for his
club). Granddad then built a school, he rather uncreatively named Cayuga
Academy, which Lewis and his father Jedediah both attended for free.
Jedediah invented a plough that worked better in the local soil, and
grandpa helped finance a foundry to make parts. The plough business was
so successful they eventually built a factory, and dad moved to the city
to become a businessman, and joined the local Masonic Lodge in Aurora
New York. [] Louis then used dadâs money to attend University, and the
lodge gave Lewisâs dad the business connections to hook Lewis up with a
local law firm. When he graduated, Lewis tried to find work as a lawyer,
but the economy was in a slump so he used his allowance to do things
like create âthe Knickerbockerâ. Which was basically a newspaper where
he and his University friends could publish their short stories. [] They
eventually formed a secret society called âThe Gordian knotâ, which met
on the second floor of his dadâs Masonic Lodge. The club was boys only,
and it was mostly about reading poetry in Latin and Greek. So, they
didnât get a lot of new members. After a year that gave up,
âcut-the-knotâ, and reformed as the âOrder of the Iroquoisâ. [] Natives
were becoming fashionable for the literary set because of frontier
fiction authors like James Fenimore Cooper. Their membership went up, so
they renamed accordingly as âThe Grand Order of the Iroquoisâ. With
enough people, They settled on a series of initiation rites, (because
they were meeting in a Masonic Lodge, and they were a secret society so
of course they needed initiation rites) and renamed a final time as âThe
New Confederacy of the Iroquoisâ.
[music ends]
Morgan so enjoyed the initiation part, He even called it âindianationâ,
which he pretentiously described as, âthe process where a new member
transformed themselves into the very spirit of the Iroquois!â I told you
it was a fandom trope. Itâs kind of exactly like a bunch of bored white
guys dressing up like samurai, calling themselves âThe New Shogunateâ,
and holding meetings once a month at the Waffle House down the street.
Back to our story:
Now, picture this, a fanboy... browsing through some fanfic at a
comic-con, and while heâs standing there an actual real-life Klingon
walks up and asks him where the bathroom is. Or an otaku, about to buy
the latest issue of his absolute favorite manga, and Goku asks him where
the âYuri on Iceâ coloring books are.
It should come as no surprise then, that the heart of the founder of the
Order of the Iroquois, would sing with delight if he ever got the chance
to share his meatspace with the object of his obsession.
Exactly this happened to Morgan when, while shopping in a bookstore in
the 1840s, he accidentally ran into Eli Parker. See Eli Parker was an
actual Iroquois, and he was a member of the Seneca Tribe. By the time he
met Morgan, Parkerâs dad was already a famous Seneca orator and
diplomat, and Eli had begun studying US law at a New York law firm.
Back story number two: [light hip-hop music starts] [] Unlike Morgan,
Parker did not come from rich parents or go into law because he was
bored. He put himself through school, after starting his working life as
a stable-cleaner. Although he studied law for the standard three years,
he was doing it to help his tribe negotiate treaties in US courts. He
would never actually be officially admitted to the Bar, because Natives
wouldnât be legal citizens for another 75 years.
Despite that fact, Parker demonstrated his abilities so well, he was
eventually appointed as primary secretary to General Ulysses S. Grant
during the Civil War, ultimately rose to the rank of brevet Brigadier
General, and was the author of the surrender of Appomattox. After Grant
was elected president Parker was appointed the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs. [] Youâll note though photos from the period place Parker front
and center, images which were in the popular press, do their best to
make him look like a waiter who accidentally walked into the shot. To
continue: [] Now remember, Morgan had done all of that âGrand Fiddle
Fart of the Most Majestic Made-up Tribeâ stuff before he and Parker ever
met. What this meant was Parker was fluent in English and Seneca, and
was therefore a perfect access point for Morgan to fanboi full-time. To
fanboi professionally, as it were. Which he absolutely did.
By the time Morgan died, in 1881, heâd published half a dozen texts on:
The kinship system of the Iroquois... The architecture of the
Iroquois... The ceremonies of the Iroquois...
For all that Morgan has been given such illustrious titles as: âThe
Father of Kinship Studiesâ, and âThe Father of American Anthropologyâ.
His work was so often quoted they started using US native tribes to name
various kinship systems. A method which only died out in the last few
decades. His work was so pervasive, I can remember seeing his book:
âSystems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Familyâ on an
undergrad recommended reading list, even though it was published in
1871. [] Worst of all, he did what Edward Burnett Tylor had done back in
England, and decided Darwinâs writings on species evolution was a
synonym for species improvement. If species improve over time, so the
argument goes, societies must improve over time, too. They both combined
that with the Industrial Revolution and created the Comprehensive Social
Evolution Model. [] Itâs also called Unilineal Evolution Theory,
outlined by Morgan in his seminal text: Ancient Society: or, Researches
in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to
Civilization, published in 1877. Pay special attention to that sequence:
savagery to barbarism to civilization, itâll come up again.
Their argument goes like this: Humans go from trying to stab each other
randomly with sticks, to organizing a specific group of people who stab
each other with sticks, to inventing guns and taking over the people who
still fight with sticks. Find a society anywhere in the world and you
can figure out which part of the Universal Timeline of Progress theyâre
on by how theyâre organized, and whether theyâd make a good setting for
your steampunk short story.
At one stroke Tyler and Morgan had created two racist tropes that would
influence countless European writers from Jung to Byron, and Kipling to
Tolkien: First, the myth of the Noble Savage who doesnât understand
property. [wood flute music begins] Whose freedom from the constraints
of civilized society make him both childlike, but also more in touch
with his natural surroundings. And second: The myth of the bucolic and
peaceful prehistory, which you can study if you find the right primitive
group of people.
This was perpetuated by groups like the Romantics back in Europe who
were writing fiction that... pretended to be critical of the aristocracy
and technology. While lounging in expensive houses. Authors like:
Voltaire, or Diderot, or John Keats, loved the idea of what became known
as, âBefore the Fallâ narratives. So much so thereâs a word for it in
literary studies: âprelapsarianâ. [] They actually had to invent a word
for the trope itâs so popular. [] In fact Diderot was so in love with
the idea that brown Natives worked as a stand-in for the Garden of Eden,
he wrote an entire book questioning the French Enlightenment by
comparing it to Tahiti, based on some notes from an explorer named
Bougainville whoâd published in 1771. Since Bougainville had called his
book âVoyages of Bougainvilleâ, Diderot called his âSupplement to the
Voyages of Bougainvilleâ. Very clever...
But Bougainville, like Diderot, was French. Unsurprisingly British poets
like Coleridge preferred referencing British explorers. So men like
George Shelvocke or Philibert Commerson. [] Um, can I just mention, I
didnât add that earring? Itâs in the original portrait. I just made it a
little more colorful. This guy was a pirate, he... he just happened to
be getting paid by the British government. I just want to mention that.
And, of course, a huge inspiration for these narratives was the
inimitable Captain James. Backstory number three: [] In itself using
Cook as a source is at least a little funny. He may have cut a
commanding figure setting off, but Cook was ultimately killed by the
supposed âprimitive Hawaiiansâ who had previously aided him. This is
probably because he and his men shot at them, and caused a riot after
the Hawaiians decided resupplying Cook for a third time was too many
times.
To this day the only actual town celebrating Captain Cook is on Big
Island, which isnât where he first landed. Thatâs at the other end of
the island chain. No, the town Captain Cook is where he was killed. [] I
say itâs funny because frankly itâs a really useful visual even now for
understanding both the disconnect between the two massively different
narratives, but specifically the reaction that most Indigenous
populations had for the appropriation of their cultures as nothing more
than fashion accessories to advance some Europeans career. A whole town,
named for the day they killed an explorer, for trying to use them to his
own ends by a group of people then remembered by other Europeans as
naive innocence who didnât understand that they were being taken
advantage of. [] [flute music ends]
Okie-dokie before moving away from the so called explorer stories
completely, there are also the writings of William Penn to consider. He
was not an explorer necessarily, he somewhat accidentally became the
governor of one of the original British colonies on the northern
continent of the Americas. Handily, itâs not hard to figure out which
one because it was named, Pennsylvania. [] Pennsylvania was founded on
lands in part claimed by the Lenni Lenape tribe (also known as the
Delaware). But, unlike a lot of other governors, Penn was a member of
the Society of Friends, more commonly called Quakers. And his religion
was founded on ideas of human equality, and shared grace through the
Holy Spirit. So unlike the Puritans to the north, or the plantation
owners to the South, he wanted a committed relationship with the tribe.
[] As such he negotiated a treaty with several local chiefs, which was
recorded by the tribe in the form of wampum belts. A little explanation:
wampum belts are beaded belts which serve as legal documents to tribes
throughout the region and were often created to commemorate specific
agreements or regulations. If you notice here: [] Thereâs a portrait of
the historic meeting of Penn and the Chiefs at the Shackamaxon Elm. That
tree appears in dozens of representations of the event, including
Benjamin West on the left and N. Courrier on the right. Itâs considered
so historic that when the tree died in the 1800s a monument was erected
where it had been, and now thereâs even a city park. Specific details to
notice here on the wampum belt are the two blue diagonal lines at the
edge indicate the borders of the treaty document, which means that third
oddly spaced and broken line in the middle thatâs the tree. [] Itâs also
worth noticing that in both portraits the Quakers are wearing the
traditional black âBig Frigging Hat.â This feature did not go unnoticed
by the makers of the wampum belt either.
Anyway, the Quakers had as an article of faith a practice of refusing to
swear oaths to God in court, they felt it was a form of taking the
Lordâs name in vain. They also didnât technically recognize titles. They
would recognize that someone was respected within their community, but
they did not personally bow before kings. So Penn very intentionally
negotiated with several chiefs rather than just one. An act that the
Natives took as a sign of respect of their diversity.
So, for all involved, the handshake, and the record of the handshake,
was the binding document. But a wampum belt isnât a contract in British
courts. This is where poet and satirist Voltaire comes in. Backstory
number five: [classical music begins] [] Voltaire hated the Roman
Catholic Church and most members of the aristocracy who didnât buy his
books or pay his bar bills. So he celebrated the Society of Friends, not
out of respect necessarily but as a towering monument to how the
aristocracy and the church were useless. Specifically, in âThe Religion
of the Quakersâ he described the Shackamaxon Treaty as: [bad French
accent]
â...This is the only treaty between those people and the Christians that
was not ratified by an oath, and that was never infringedâ.
[normal accent returns]
At other places, he applauds the Quakers for looking non-threatening, So
the natives stay and talk, [worse French accent] â instead of flying off
into the woodsâ. He emphasizes how wonderful it was that they âflocked
in crowds to see Penn to offer themselves as his vassalsâ. [normal
accent, finally]
This is noteworthy for several reasons.
The first: Voltaire conveniently leaves out the part where, in nearly
every other colony, theyâd experienced several violent battles with
local Natives and come off the worse for it. The Wopping War, The Peach
Tree War, and The Pequot War... They had all ended less than twenty
years before. And the Anglo-Powatan Wars ended with Charles II having to
concede to the Natives. The French & Iroquois Wars were still going and
wouldnât even be over for another 30 years. Where he got, âFlying off
into zee woodsâ, is anyoneâs guess. [] But more to the point, secondly,
Voltaire also forgot to mention that he couldnât possibly have seen
âVast crowds of Natives offerings themselvesâ because he hadnât been
born yet. But nevermind, he said it was ânever swornâ, so thatâs how
itâs been remembered right through to now, with his romantic notion of
âTaming the Savagesâ dragged right along behind.
Returning to Penn though, knowing the wars, the violence, the sometimes
outright hatred, that existed between the Europeans and the Natives,
Penn chose instead to live with the Lenape and learn their language to
demonstrate trust. Far from Voltaireâs absurd ideas about appearing
benevolent, Penn respectfully engaged with the tribe and their
government. He even wrote several documents about the organization of
their society and how complicated and regimented the process of engaging
with their elders counsel could be.
One letter is important here. Itâs dated the 28^(th) of July 1683. Itâs
a letter to his friend Robert Spencer who was in France from 1640 to
1702 who also happened to be the Earl of Sunderland in England
[letter read in an absolutely terrible vaguely British accent]
âFor the People [the Indians]; they are Savages to us, in their Persons,
and furniture; all here is rude; but they have great shape, strength,
agility; and in Council (for they (tho in a kind of Community, among
themselves) observe property and Government) they speak seldom, enter
spaces of silence, short elegant, fervent, the old sit in a half-moon
upon the ground, the middle-aged in a like figure at a little distance
behind them, and the young in the same manner behind them.
None speak but the aged, they have consulted the rest before; thus in
selling me their land they ordered themselves; I must say, yet obscurity
considered, wanting tradition, example and instruction, they are an
extraordinary people.â
[Normal accent returns, thankfully]
By the way, I donât mean to suggest that Penn was flawless, he was a
terrible Anthropologist by todayâs standards, and he thought the reason
that Natives existed was they were a Lost Tribe of Israel mentioned in
the Old Testament. He was, however, a fair humanitarian who took the
Lenape and other indigenous populations on their own terms, rather than
manipulating them into a handy shorthand for ignorant and childlike
proto-humans.
Tellingly, he doesnât say they have no government, he specifically says
itâs âobscureâ, the very opposite of the fantasy easily interpreted and
primitive that other Europeans would claim in order to flatter
themselves.
Which means, by the time he was writing, (only barely a century after
Europeans figured out there was a continent full of people nearby) the
âNoble Savageâ image of Natives was already floating around in Europe
for Penn to be pushing up against. Pacific Islanders, and the northern
North American tribes, were pretty famous, but as I say, famous as much
as a proxy for quasi-nostalgic poetic license back in Europe, as famous
for who they really were.
Why should anyone care about William Penn... Voltaire... Coleridge...
Diderot... or Morgan?
Well besides their possibly helping out a pub quiz, seemingly, not much.
Except when it comes to the friends of all those people. Even though
Lewis Henry Morgan put Eli Parker in the credit for his first text
âLeague of the HoDeNoSauNee or Iroquoisâ, in 1851, it didnât really
help, because there was no co-author credit and he never really credited
Parker again.
However, Morgan got a co-author credit when someone else wrote a book
about him. Specifically, Frederick Engels gave him part of the title in
his magnum opus: âThe Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the
Stateâ was subtitled âin the light of the researches of Lewis Henry
Morganâ. [] In fact Engels gave over whole sections to praise how
important and/or brilliant Morgan was. In Chapter One, âPrehistoric
Stages of Cultureâ, He says: [Reading in a disturbingly bad attempt at a
German accent] [] âThe gens of the American Indians served him further
as a means of making the second decisive advance in the field of
investigation he had entered upon. He discovered the gens, organized
according to mother right, was the original form out of which developed
the later gens, organized according to father right, the gens as we find
it among the civilised peoples of antiquity.
The Greek and Roman gens, an enigma to all previous historians, was now
explained by the Indian gens, and thus a new basis was found for the
whole history of primitive society⊠Clearly, this opens a new era in the
treatment of the history of primitive society. The mother-right gens has
become the pivot around which this entire science turns...â
[accent ends] [] In this passage âgensâ was the original word for
kinship. Meaning Engles is arguing groups who trace their kinship
relative to women are less civilized than groups who trace their kinship
from men. Considering Engels is arguing as âmore advancedâ, a Europe
which had instituted Divine Rule and intercontinental chattel slave
trade, Iâll take my matriarchy if itâs all the same Fred. [] But he
wasnât done there. Because, of course, that isnât Engelsâ most famous
work. Arguably that title goes to his team up with Karl Marx for the
âCommunist Manifestoâ from 1848. Remember when I said Morgan had already
founded a fanboy fraternity and met a real-life native by then? Heâd
also started putting out notes and summaries of his research. So much
so, a collection of note books written by Engels in the 1840s, were
already mentioning this new information coming out of the Americas. []
In fact, Engels also happen to mention, in the foreword to the fourth
edition of âOrigin of the Familyâ, that Marx had planned to write his
own thoughts on Morganâs work using a materialism model, but had died
before he could get to it.
Which isnât surprising because the trope Morgan helped to invent was
precisely what Marx eventually called âPrimitive Communism.â Marx said
previously heâd proven âPrimitive Communismâ existed by working backward
from the more recent history of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism,
proving by induction that Primitive Communism must have existed
somewhere in prehistory.
With Morganâs work, they supposedly had scientific backing to confirm
their theory. Of course the fact Penn had proven them all wrong 50 years
before, and the fact Morganâs definition of progress hinged on the very
resource hoarding, and complex class hierarchies that Marx and Engels
were attacking, Marx and Engels handily ignored. Much as Voltaire and
Diderot had ignored the complexity of the societies they used as a
backdrop for throwing spitballs at the Pope 20 years before.
Iâd also like to note those familiar with more Nationalistic rhetoric,
should start noticing some themes and terminology, because Morganâs and
Marxâs work was also used to justify forcing primitive cultures to catch
up or even just remove them. Lest we bring everyone else down. [] Now
some like Marx and Engels stuck with social revolution, but others like
US general and later 7^(th) President Andrew Jackson started talking
about boarding schools, and removal policies, and biologists like
Herbert Spencer and Francis Galton (who happened to be Charles Darwinâs
cousin) started talking about breeding programs and what would
eventually be called Eugenics. This is the beginning of concepts like
Reservation Systems, concentration camps and âScientific Racismâ. []
Thatâs on the political and science side. On the social side poets like
Diderot and Coolridge, remember them using natives as a proxy for pure
but also for primitive? It meant more politically active but literary
leaning writers like Mary Wollstonecraft and her husband William Godwin
had a literary device, they could deploy to discuss ideas like:
challenging traditional marriage or celebrating egalitarianism. In fact
Godwin had grown up hearing about Non-European social structures because
he was friends with the second Earl of Sunderland, Lord Robert Spencer.
[] A previous Robert Spencer being the person William Penn was writing
his letters to back in 1683. Professionally, Godwin was close enough to
Lord Spencer, he wrote Lord Spencer a letter in 1790 to ask for a
recommendation to a position in the British Museum. Personally, while
his wife was writing âVindication of the Rights of Womanâ, Godwinâs âAn
Inquiry Concerning Political Justice, An Attack on Political
Institutions, and Things As They Areâ is reminiscent of Diderotâs
arguments. [] Godwin posits that a true, as he called it, âAnarchismâ
would be âfor a person to stand in perfect, rational harmony, with the
world around themâ. Itâs a very romantic argument, like an âenlightenedâ
savage, one might say, returning to âthe Gardenâ. For those who will
understand, Godwinâs analogy is precisely why he and Malthus are placed
in opposition to one another in political science classes.
Am I saying that in certain contexts, Marx, Engels, and Godwin should be
included in lists of more overt white supremacists like Galton? YES. And
Iâm not the only one saying it either. When they republished Engelsâ
original essay for âOrigin of the Familyâ, one century later, the
editors of âPopulation & Development Reviewâ, prefaced their December
1988 issue by saying,
[Reading in a refreshingly straightforward Midwestern US accent]
âOccasionally, an unmistakable tinge of what today would be labeled male
chauvinism appears. Also, perhaps more surprisingly, there is a strong
element of Social Darwinism, normally associated with conservative
thought and politics, in the argument presented [by Engels].â ~p707
[accent over] [] Diderot, Marx, Engels, Godwin, Wollstonecraft... Anyone
who knows the key foundational texts of philosophical and political
anarchy or communism can start ticking off names. right now. But wait,
thereâs more, and what the editors of âPopulation & Developmentâ called
a tinge of Social Darwinism, would become less âoccasionalâ.
First a bit of spot the name: [peppy calliope music plays] [] Marx, got
a big boost to his political and social career when he started with The
International Workmenâs Association. He was there at the IWA, the same
time as Mikhail Bakunin, and between the two they honed their
fundamental divide which was between a centralized Communist revolution,
favored by Marx, and a more communal revolution favored by Bakunin. []
Bakunin borrowed a word from Pierre Joseph Prudhon, who became famous
for coining the phrase âproperty is theftâ in 1840, and formed what many
would now call Anarcho-communism. Marx was close enough with these guys
he Recorded the arguments with Bakunin and said they were sometimes the
highlight of his day and would last well into the early hours of the
morning. [] Peter Kropotkin enters the picture on the Bakunin side,
opposing the Marx side, and things eventually got so hot Bakunin left
the IWA, and hooked up with groups like the Jura Foundation. If none of
those names sound familiar, thatâs fine. It suffices to say all of the
big names in early European Marxism, Communism, and Anarchism, knew each
other. They all were working from the same basic script. [] By the way,
guess who wrote the script guys like Bakunin and Kropotkin weâre using.
Hint: It was from the US, and it was based on a Native... But it wasnât
any actual Natives or anything any Native had actually said. []
Anarcho-communism starts producing feminist critiques of Marxism through
authors like Rosa Luxemburg. Those critiques eventually make her famous
enough in Anarchist and Communist circles, to earn her a biography, and
thanks to Dunayevskaya Raya, Luxembourg and her famous answer to Marxism
eventually gets brought to the US and Marxist-humanism becomes a thing.
[] Now, some of you may notice, wasnât that the US where the Quakers
were writing about humanist natives 400 years before? Thatâs an
irrelevant detail. [] Anyway, sticking with Dunayevskaya for a moment,
remember when I said Engels kept a notebook, of when he first hooked up
with Marx, and it mentioned Morganâs work? Dunayevskaya didnât stop at
mentioning the notes, she decided to actually read them. This was a
fairly bold step considering most casual readers donât even know they
existed. You can still see this to this day on the âInfluences on Karl
Marxâ page on Wikipedia. Notice, it barely mentions Morgan, and it
summarizes the notebooks simply as âobscureâ. [] According to
Dunayevskaya, far from being obscure and academic, theyâre integral to
understanding Engelsâ and Marxâs conceptual foundations. In her
biography of Luxembourg she cites those notes as, [rapid and
enthusiastic accent] âEpoch-making notebooks which rounded out Marxâs
lifeâs work profound writings which therefore have created a new vantage
point from which to view Marxâs ouvre as a totality!â
Scholar EB Thompson in, âThe Poverty of Theory and Other Essaysâ goes on
and points out that,
[somewhat southern US accent] âMarx and his increasing preoccupation in
his last years with anthropology was resuming the projects of his Paris
youthâ [] [peppy music and accents end]
Paris, where Lord of Sunderland was when Penn was writing to him,
[classical music begins] where Voltaire was celebrating Quakers and
mocking Natives for being forest dwellers, where Diderot was writing
obnoxious racist satires of Tahitian villagers not wearing underwear,
that Paris.
Plus, in those notes, we find Engels writing sympathetically of American
Shaker communities. Which he argued proved, [the terrible German accent
returns]
âCommunism is not only possible but has actually been already realizedâ.
[normal again]
The Shakers, who are an offshoot of the Quakers, who set up shop in the
supposed wilderness of New York, where the Iroquois live. Those Shakers.
And just in case thereâs any question of whoâs influencing who, from
what Engles scholars would eventually title âEconomic and Philosophical
Manuscriptsâ, page 142:
[The frighteningly bad German accent returns]
âMarx came to realize these primitive communities had incomparably
greater vitality than the Semitic, Greek, Roman and fortiori the modern
the modern capitalist societies. The the wealth of subjective human
sensuality, Iroquois society stood much higher than any of the societies
poisoned by the pestilential breath of civilization.â
[end accent]
Engels wrote those words in 1844. Before he wrote the âCommunist
Manifestoâ. Yeah...
So, this happened. And it kept happening, for roughly a centuryâs worth
of European, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Theory, Philosophy, and
Literature. This isnât just interesting speculation. Voltaire, Diderot,
Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mikhail Bakunin, all of these âoriginal voicesâ can be traced directly
back to Tahiti and the eastern coastal tribes of North America.
Oh, and when I said the social Darwinism would stop being subtext it
eventually just became text. Hereâs the thing, Eli Parker and the Lenape
didnât get credit from any of these authors. Not in the foundational
work, not a âthank youâ for allowing researchers access to their tribes
and histories and ceremonies.
Nada.
Morgan was eventually adopted by the Seneca because they thought his
interest in connecting with them was genuine. Yet, not only was there no
co-author credit by anyone, they were eventually used to represent
throwbacks to prehistory. Something Marx and Engels and Godwin and
Wollstonecraft and Kropotkin and Prudhon and Diderot had âevolvedâ past.
The Quakers were so completely ignored Engels gave credit to their
offshoot. Which arrived afterward, and into an environment already
negotiated peacefully, with the very people Engels and Marx claimed were
incapable of comprehending property ownership. If that werenât insulting
enough, Feminist critiques such as those advanced by Luxembourg ended up
being nonsensical. [] Allow me to clarify that last bit. The origin of
the Great Law of Peace was a man named Deganawida. He was known as the
Great Peacemaker, but he didnât work alone. He didnât speak all of the
necessary languages to the unite the tribes. So he also had a spokesman
named Hiawatha.
[light jazz music begins]
They are both known to be the bringers of the law. Anyone whoâs ever had
to read Longfellowâs âSong of Hiawathaâ in an English Lit class, itâs
that Hiawatha. These guys are well known.
The Law of Peace, along with the elder council traditions of the Lenape,
the Cherokee, the Powatans, the Creek... Really, most of the East Coast
tribes, were well known throughout the original 13 British colonies. It
was so well known it was part of the inspiration for what would become
the US Constitution.
Historian Charles L Mee jr. cites South Carolinaâs John Rutledge as an
example. Rutledge opened one committee meeting during the Second
Continental Congress by reading from a 1520 treaty, itself quoting the
great law.
[oddly southern US accent] [] âIt began, âWe the people, to form a
union, to establish peace, equality, and order...â
Rutledge commended the phrasing to his colleagues. And so, in some small
part, the preamble of the new constitution, was based on the law of the
land as it had been on the East Coast before the first white settlers
arrivedâ.
[back to normal] [] Unlike what Voltaire or Engels would have one
believe, it wasnât just a random assortment of traditions, it was a
series of codified laws and policies that governed how people could
behave toward one another. The wampum belt commemorating that Union is
now the flag of the League. The five positions represent the five
founding tribes. This is precisely like the Stars and Stripes of the US
flag, representing the members and the original colonies. [] []
Similarly, thatâs why Penn cites the Council as ânegotiatingâ for land
and property. The Lenape knew full well how Europeans understood
property rights, they just didnât agree with it. Which is why the
negotiations took so long. You were haggling with the entire town.
Which is why I say the idea the feminist critiques of Marxism that came
later, bordered on insulting. I was being intentional, itâs because of
the Great law of Peace. Its various rules, called âarticlesâ, are
numbered. I cite two key articles to make my point. The first is:
[read in a fairly direct, clipped accent]
§37: âThere shall be one war chief from each nation, and their duties
shall be to carry messages for their chiefs, and to take up arms in case
of emergency. They shall not participate in the proceedings of the
Council of the League but shall watch its progress and in case of an
erroneous action by a chief, they shall receive the complaints of the
people and convey the warnings of the women to him...â
The second is:
[read in the same clipped accent]
§44: âThe lineal descent of the people of the Five Nations shall run in
the female line. Women shall be considered the progenitors of the
Nation. They shall own the land and the soil. Men and women shall follow
the status of the mother.â
[accent ends]
So, representatives directly answerable to the people who cannot act
without the peopleâs direct permission. Leadership who is beholden to
the people collectively but more importantly to the women of their
Council specifically.
Notice, it doesnât say the advice of the women, it says the warnings of
the women. Penn didnât say the old and middle-aged men sit in a
half-moon. He said the old and the middle-aged. Article 44 does not say
âunless her husband objectsâ. It says women shall own the land. Period.
[] Now as an aside, the Seneca Falls Convention happened the same year
the communist manifesto was published in 1848. It occurred in, Seneca
Falls, New York. It was organized by suffragette luminaries like
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, where they spoke passionately
with abolitionists like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass in favor
of a womanâs right to vote.
Perhaps you see what I mean. As one scholar I read put it: an Iroquois
woman, attending that Convention, could be forgiven for finding it
mildly insulting to suggest that she should demote her to mere equality
with a man.
So with feminist and anarchist critiques of Marx the internal narrative
went full circle. Itâs a response to Morgan and Diderotâs intentional
misreading of real tribes, to create their pet theories. Itâs a debate
over fanfic. Satisfying to the purists, maybe, but bordering on
impenetrable for the casual audience. It becomes a redundant criticism.
A bad third-hand copy, of a secondhand story, cribbed from another guyâs
notes, without acknowledgement. [] Now, imagine being that Iroquoian
woman. Who isnât merely correcting the notes, but has to prove she
existed at all. Because a handful of European authors decided her
character was too hard to write.
The annoying point here isnât the amount of evidence necessary to
suggest that Communism and Socialism and Anarchism arenât an original
idea, itâs the amount of evidence necessary simply to demonstrate Europe
isnât the font of all wisdom and insight.
To put it bluntly, within Leftist discourse, informed by European
Anarchism and Communism, overall left-leaning progressiveism doesnât
have a race and gender problem that needs to be addressed before it gets
out of hand, European anarchism and communism is the problem.
Take two handfuls of sugar, mix them into a dough, bake it. Now take the
first handful of sugar back out. The bigotry isnât the icing, Itâs the
cake.
When I see left-leaning theorists and commenters, lamenting how there
are so few minority voices, I suspect itâs because they donât realize
the very language being used is already alienating too many of us. Itâs
not a matter of phrasing, or throwing around the word âprivilegeâ, itâs
comprehensive, the very way the questions and answers are framed and
stated.
I want to say at this point my intention here isnât to invalidate
European socialism or communism or Anarchism or the discussions which
have grown up around them. [light blues music begins] Those who are
embedded within systems those arguments were responding to, still have
merit within those systems. [] Which is why I have no interest in
somehow âcorrectingâ those arguments, by injecting the original tribal
practices back in at this late date. They simply canât function as a
valid political response within existing government structures, which
are themselves mostly European derived. Such an argument would be a bit
like, trying to fix a tire while the car is still moving. Plus there
were plenty of tribes who followed other modes. Thereâs no âwinnerâ
here.
Instead, I wanted to demonstrate an aspect of cultural erasure that is
rarely if ever discussed in more left-leaning circles. Iâm not going to
speculate why, though I have my own theories, I only mean to show that
it occurred and it needs to be considered before moving forward. More
importantly, this isnât simply giving credit where itâs due. Iâm not
interested in claiming Natives should get the copyright to Karl Marx or
the US flag, US Constitution.
Any astute modern radical could easily argue the current issues are so
distant from their founders, that authorial intent is largely
irrelevant. That might even be true. But it presumes the Native side has
not also progressed, and that we are not also confronting those same
issues in our own way.
Weâre not museum exhibits, weâve moved on from who we were when Penn was
writing his letters four centuries ago. We didnât simply write those
concepts off as lost goods. Which means this isnât merely about the
past, it contributes directly to modern debate and discourse, erasure
and decolonization.
Just as an example, the Iroquois League and Lenape Council House have
centuries behind them. They withstood Wars, genocidal settlers,
expansionist empires, International slavers... Communist and Socialist
countries today are considered well-worn if they manage a few decades.
[] Itâs time the European school needs to give up its tradition of overt
erasure and get back to the real roots, to see how Native successes
maintain themselves for so long. One need look no further than to how
the Water Protectors, and Mauna Kea are discussed in the US; Versus how
Occupy Wall Street was discussed. [] It even works as a better critique
of Capitalism. The first thing any Capitalist throws out is how
successful they are. They fault Communism and Anarchism strictly on life
expectancy. And yet the Lenape and the Iroquois prove they need a better
argument. [] This is about raising the level of debate, not just a
gotcha for 4chan edgelords. But that also means you canât just pull a
Morgan. Indigenous populations are not a database to mine for
inspiration. Weâre peoples, with histories, cultures, and languages,
that are integral to our worldviews. Histories weâve maintained and
perpetuated despite overt efforts to the contrary. [] Talk with us, not
at us, definitely not over us. This isnât about retooling our
perspectives to more properly shoehorn them into existing European
notions. Itâs about genuine curiosity and honesty and self-reflection.
Now, if youâre looking for text recommendations
Iâll suggest a few here and put them in the summary.
Start with the âGreat Law of Peaceâ. Get your Communism and Socialism
Theory where it should be gotten, from the source. Itâs not a short
read, itâs not an overly long one either.
Following that I suggest a more accurate historic account of Native and
settler relations and realities. A good one would be â1491: New
Revelations of the Americas Before Columbusâ by Charles Mann.
Donât fall into the trap of allowing those works to justify some
newfound sense of righteousness, or worse white guilt. For those of us
whoâve been on this side for a while, we would consider these starter
texts. Coming at us with ânewfound informationâ, itâs going to look like
a try-hard.
Plus, guilt can far too easily turn to anger and zealotry. Absorb what
they have to say. Then when youâre ready two more texts: âColumbus and
Other Cannibalsâ by Jack Forbes for some deep history and some
worldview, and then âAnarchism in Latin Americaâ edited by Carlos Rama &
Ăngel Cappelletti for more recent history. [] Iâm keeping the list short
because I donât want to overwhelm anyone, itâs hard to truly shift oneâs
perspective.
Even harder when someoneâs already had to shift themselves once before,
away from the more common messages of American Exceptionalism or, in
fact, Western Exceptionalism, and the constant drone of subliminal
Manifest Destiny that even classical Marxism and Anarchism perpetuated.
Give yourself time, and be good to each other. If youâve enjoyed my
little paw print on the youtubes, please like my video and maybe even
subscribe to my channel. So youâre more likely to see my next update.
Also, if you really like this, check out my patreon listed below, and
toss a few dollars my way to request something youâd like to see
discussed. Most of all, I hope you have fun.