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Title: Stolen Anarchy Subtitle: Playing Indian & The Roots of Collectivism Date: October 25, 2019 Source: Transcripted on 2-25-2022 from [[https://youtube.com/watch?v=qBFvxkvpi2w][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][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 Authors: TwinRabbit Topics: indigenous, Marxism, 1800s, indigenous anarchy, William Godwin, anthropology, decolonization, indigenous sovereignty, Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, decolonial feminism, Friedrich Engels, Breadtube, anti-colonization, Iroquois, 1700s, 1600s, Haudenosaunee, Lenape, transcript Published: 2022-02-25 23:17:51Z
[Trelane] âYou must excuse my whimsical way of fetching you here, but when I saw you passing by I simply could not resist!â
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[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.
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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]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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]
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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They actually had to invent a word for the trope itâs so popular.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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[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.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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]
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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.
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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 28th 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]
<br>
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.
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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]
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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]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Now some like Marx and Engels stuck with social revolution, but others like US general and later 7th 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.
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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.
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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.
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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]
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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]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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[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]
<br>
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
<br>
[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.
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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.
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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]
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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]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.