Settler colonialism and socialist politics – a contribution to the debate

by David Camfield
originally published in rs21

The recent series of articles on the rs21 website about settler colonialism (see note at end) raises important questions for socialists, especially for those of us in countries such as the US, the Canadian state, Australia, and New Zealand. My aim in this contribution is to pose these questions as clearly as possible and briefly suggest how supporters of socialism from below should approach them.

The first question is this: Is a distinctive form of oppression created when a colonizing society establishes settlers on a permanent basis in a colonized territory, dispossessing the Indigenous inhabitants?

I think there is overwhelming historical evidence that this has happened in many parts of the world, with the establishment of Israel and Chinese rule over the Uyghurs in Xinjiang being some of the most recent cases. This is settler colonialism, distinct from the franchise colonialism of, for example, British rule in India. As Sai Englert puts it, in such situations:

Settlers settle. They (aim to) make colonised lands their permanent home and in the process enter into continuous and sustained conflict with the Indigenous populations, whom they (attempt to) dispossess, exploit and/or eliminate.[1]

What does settler colonialism mean today?

The second question is more controversial among socialists: Does settler colonialism still exist in capitalist societies that have changed enormously since settler colonialism was established? Many socialists agree that Israel today is settler colonial, but what about the US, the Canadian state, Australia, and New Zealand?

Steve Leigh argues that these

…are capitalist societies with capital accumulation based on the exploitation of the multi-racial/multi-ethnic/multi-gendered working class. Capital accumulation now comes from extracting surplus value from the working class, not primarily from continued land theft from the Indigenous.

This description is accurate but it does not change the fact that capitalism in these societies is still mediated by settler colonialism, as well as by racial, gender, and other forms of oppression. The conditions in which capital accumulation and the rest of social life happens still include the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. In spite of talk about reconciliation and despite limited legal reforms, the state continues to deprive Indigenous nations of almost all the lands in which they lived before the arrival of European colonisers. It also still denies them the authority to govern themselves. The way settler colonialism is organised has changed, in large part due to the struggles of Indigenous peoples themselves. The composition of the non-Indigenous populations has changed enormously due to immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. But none of this has made settler colonialism evaporate.

For example, in the Canadian state, where I live, governments and many corporations and other institutions apologise for past wrongs, talk about reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, and acknowledge them culturally. But the most the state is willing to concede is ‘limited recognition of Indigenous rights and Indigenous participation in decision-making.’ This falls far short of creating an equal relationship between Indigenous nations and the nation that dominates within the state, as well as the Quebec nation (which oppresses Indigenous peoples but is subordinate to the dominant nation). Creating truly equal relationships would require unmaking Indigenous dispossession, on which this society was founded.

Political implications

​The third question is where I think most of the fuel for the debate comes from: What are the political implications of the continued existence of settler colonialism?
Socialists who deny that certain societies are settler colonial today worry, as Jordan Humphreys puts it, about ‘writing off the revolutionary potential of the non-Indigenous working class’ in them. I don’t think settler colonialism negates that potential, and it’s a mistake to deny that settler colonialism still exists out of fear of what the political implications might be.

One implication we need to grapple with is that in some societies today settler colonialism confers advantages (privilege) on workers who are both accepted as members of the dominant nation(s) and at the same time exploited and oppressed by capitalism and various other forms of oppression interwoven with it. Although the specifics are different, this resembles the way members of the working class who belong to other dominant groups (such as white people, cis men, and to a lesser degree cis women) are given certain advantages. From the perspective of socialism from below, settler colonial privilege is contradictory for the working class (as are all advantages conferred on layers of the working class that belong to dominant groups). It gives members of the dominant nation material and psychological advantages relative to Indigenous people. However, it encourages them to support an abominable social order that harms them. It’s also corrosive for working-class power. This makes it poison bait for the working class.

The scale of the advantages – what those people who receive them would have to give up if settler colonialism were to be uprooted — isn’t the same in each case. It varies, and it changes over time. That’s why it needs be analysed concretely. The advantages conferred by settler colonialism on Jewish Israeli workers in Israel today are much greater than those given to non-Indigenous workers in the Canadian state.[2] But these do exist. To give one example, new immigrants in the city I live in sometimes feel encouraged to punch down at First Nations people because doing that makes some citizens more likely to treat them as ‘real Canadians’, which can help in the competition for jobs and housing.

Settler colonial privilege is a reality that has the effect of encouraging workers of the dominant nation to endorse and defend settler colonialism. It’s one reason that we can expect Indigenous people will lead struggles against settler colonialism, just as we expect trans people to lead struggles against their oppression, people who experience racism to lead the fight against racial oppression, and so on.

This doesn’t mean that non-Indigenous workers can’t be won to the struggle against settler colonialism. Doing that tends to be easier when the self-organised movements and struggles of Indigenous people are stronger, and also when there are more united efforts by non-Indigenous and Indigenous people around wages, working conditions, or other issues. But such united fights that don’t target settler colonial social arrangements are different from united struggles against colonialism.[3]

Fortunately, Indigenous opposition to settler colonialism is having a radicalising effect on some non-Indigenous people in the four societies on which I’m focussing here. All socialists should celebrate, support, and learn from it. Non-Indigenous socialists should build political relationships with Indigenous anti-colonial fighters. Over time, this could make non-Indigenous socialists better opponents of settler colonialism and persuade more Indigenous radicals to take socialism seriously.

How it ends

This brings us to the question of what would it take to end settler colonialism? The answer to this is not the same in every settler colonial society. In my view, the situation in historic Palestine today is quite different from the US, the Canadian state, Australia, and New Zealand, with very important consequences for socialist strategy.[4] In those four countries it is very unlikely that settler colonialism could be uprooted except as part of a transition towards socialism launched by the working class, non-Indigenous and Indigenous together, in which an autonomous Indigenous movement plays a very active role. In these societies capitalism and settler colonialism are deeply interwoven. Indigenous people are numerically small minorities of the population and therefore have limited social power. An Indigenous movement would be essential to ensure that the process of moving towards socialism was liberatory for Indigenous people. Although the size and social power of the Indigenous (Black) working class made it possible to dismantle settler colonialism in South Africa without breaking with capitalism, this is highly unlikely in these societies, although reforms that weaken colonial oppression can be won within capitalism.
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Finally, Marxists shouldn’t write in blanket terms about ‘settler colonial theory’. There are many problems with non-Marxist theories of settler colonialism.[5] But Marxists should integrate the insights found in them into a better historical materialist understanding of settler colonialism that can inform struggles for liberation. There is some similarity here with how Marxists should relate to feminism. Anti-feminist Marxism has done a lot of damage, acting as a set of blinkers that keep socialists from learning from feminism in order to develop better feminist Marxist theory and practice. An ‘anti-settler colonial theory’ Marxism is a barrier to learning from radical Indigenous thinkers and some other thinkers who oppose settler colonialism as such. Denying that settler colonialism exists today outside Palestine is a mistake with bad consequences for socialist politics. Such a Marxism will repel anti-colonial radicals with whom socialists should be in dialogue.[6]

David Canfield runs the website Prairie Red and the podcast Victor’s Children, and is a member of the editorial board of Midnight Sun and a member of Tempest.

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This debate began with a two-part interview with Sai Englert, which can be found here and here . Australian socialist Jordan Humphreys then wrote a reply, which Sai Englert responded to here. American socialist Steve Leigh then continued the debate with a further review of Sai Englert’s book.

[1] Sai Englert, Settler Colonialism: An Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 2022), pp. 5-6

[2] I touch on these in my ‘Colonialism and the Working Class in Canada’: https://www.prairiered.ca/archive/colonialism-and-the-working-class-in-canada

[3] A point made clearly by Sai Englert’s reply to Humphreys: ‘Debate – A Response on Settler Colonialism’:  https://www.rs21.org.uk/2024/05/12/debate-a-response-on-settler-colonialism/

[4] Settler colonialism also exists in many Latin American societies, where Indigenous peoples often make up much larger proportions of countries’ populations than they do in the states I am focussing on here. Charlie Post and I have addressed the case of Israel in ‘What Would It Take to Win in Palestine?’: https://tempestmag.org/2024/01/what-would-it-take-to-win-in-palestine/

[5] Many of these are identified in Jack Davies, ‘The World Turned Outside In: Settler Colonial Studies and Political Economy’: https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/article/the-world-turned-outside-in/
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[6] I encourage readers to listen to episode 42 of the podcast Victor’s Children: ‘Settler Colonialism, Capitalism, and Indigenous Liberation: An Indigenous Marxist View’: https://soundcloud.com/user-737267994/episode-42-settler-colonialism-capitalism-and-indigenous-liberation-an-indigenous-marxist-view