The story is supposed to go something like this
Before socialism the State is a mineral that is supposed to be smashed
After socialism has done its work the State is a vegetable that will wither away on its own
Hitherto we’ve been a bunch of animals
History goes in a line
Take it day by day
It’s anyone’s guess whether tomorrow line goes up or line goes down
Some say it’s a science
Something that can get results
Back in the day
Linnaeus had a lineage of scientific racism
His Systema Naturae got remixed as history moved forward
First as a popular game of twenty questions and then as a television game show
To Linnaeus the history of all the hitherto existing world was the history of classes
A taxonomy that he made up himself
And this came with contradictions like his Animalia Paradoxa
He questioned whether these beasts colonizers claimed to have seen actually existed
Contradictions within classes and then contradictions between classes
Some that got resolved and left behind in new editions
Next comes a fairy tale settlers tell their kids about conquerors and grave robbers
Loosely based on history but highly fictionalized
Small world Dr. Jones says mister panama hat
Two small for two of us Indiana Jones replies
Panama hat says this is the second time I’ve had to reclaim my property from you
That belongs in a museum says Jones
So do you says panama hat
History keeps getting older
But sometimes to preserve is to destroy
Squabbling over fictionalized property of a real life conqueror
Jones was a made-up American archaeologist stealing artifacts for an American museum
Not a real life British archaeologist like those buffoons on the BBC game show
Playing animal vegetable mineral
Who were given a point despite not knowing whether a doll was pre or post columbian
Whether it was North or Central or South American
There’s always another crusade
Always more lost europeans
More fictional movies and reality TV to pass the time
From a certain point of view
After his Communist Manifesto and his exile
Marx made use of the British Museum Reading Room to write Capital
He wrote that colonialism constituted the dawn of the era of capitalist production
This was later remixed for a musical
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be sun
Clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow til there’s none
Marx ended Capital on a colonial cliffhanger
The last part of the book consists of the chapters on expropriation
Theft of land over there and over here
The violence of colonization is mentioned but not so much the resistance
In that particular part of his argument he wasn’t concerned with ongoing colonial conditions
In the so-called true colonies some workers owned the land they worked on
This was a contradiction that had to be and was being resolved one way or another
By the import of more workers
Or another round of expropriation of the workers from the land
Subsequently this has been cause for confusion or elucidation by other writers
From various points of view
Two years after Capital was published the Métis of Red River resisted but didn’t rebel
Blocking Canada from surveying and purchasing and invading land that had never been bought
Ten years after Capital lieutenant colonel Custer lost the Battle of the Greasy Grass
To Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors
Eighteen years after Capital what was left of the nêhiyaw-pwat beat the RCMP more than once
But couldn’t beat the army that followed
But people kept struggling anyway against a world of contradictions
History moves forward
Or in spirals that touch and expand upon past themes
When a blockade goes up
Or a John A. statue comes tumbling down
Canadians don’t call it heritage minutes
They open an investigation
And try to retrieve lost pride
Their real property
M.Gouldhawke (Métis-Cree)
April 19, 2021
