Hexbear’s latest struggle session is in: should Latin America be considered western or not? I decided to write up some thoughts about it.
The discussion on comrade’s @autismdragon 's post centered around a comrade from Palestine living in Honduras (or born in Honduras with Palestinian ascent) and others from neighboring countries claiming that Honduras (and other neighboring countries) is a western country, as it is populated by christian protestants, speaks a romance language, and has been subject to continuous economical, cultural, and imperialist influence by the United States. Others have pointed out that western should be understood in its most exclusive sense as pertaining only to western europe & the USA, and that racist white people in such countries would never consider a latin american person to be western and therefore it must be true they are not western.
I think this argument fails to capture the way the concept of “western” has been utilized in Latin American countries to further the position of certain groups. So while I do agree that there are fundamental differences between Latin America and Europe or the US (the basis on which I believe they should be understood to be described below), adopting the most radical exclusionary concept of westerness does not allow us to understand the totality of social relations in Latin America, which are very much infused with notions of westerness and white supremacy.
To make an analogy with phenomena within “western in the strict sense” places, it is known that US WASPs did not consider italians or poles or sometimes even germans to be white. Or we can imagine an italian who moves to Sweden and is not reeeealy considered white, over there. Does that mean only the most exclusionary concept of whiteness is true?
Or, rather, should one look into it as a fundamentally relational concept with changing significates? That same italian from the example above can move into Africa or South America and be very much considered white: Brazil for example welcomed several italian migrants during the 19th/20th century as part of a state policy of whitening society. A polish descendant in the US, some generations removed, might very well be considered a white westerner. And our european comrades such as @egon would not BELIEVE what passes for white on, say, northeastern Brazil.
The fact is that such concepts of western institutions and thought, and whiteness, are woven into societies born out of colonization and used even by the mestizo descendants of the colonizers of yesterday. I’m perfectly aware that several argentinian people who consider themselves very white would not be considered white by a racist northern european (or even a mildly progressive one). That does not change the fact that their white and european heritage has a material effect on their social relations within argentinian society.
The fact is also that whiteness and westerness exist insofar as certain parts of latin american society hold the power of defining non-whiteness within their own societies (by e.g. murdering a black or indigenous person). This might be the alchemy of racism in Latin America: nobody is white yet it is clear and defined who is black.
I think disregarding such mechanisms as delusions of a comprador elite, as has been proposed by one of our comrades in the thread, does not allow us to capture the issue in its totality. It also leaves out that although latin american countries generally do not have a nationalistic bourgeoisie as combative as, say, Osama Bin Laden or some russian capitalists, it is also not completely devoid of a certain degree of autonomy and interests that clash with those of imperial/external capital. An internal bourgeoisie, if we go by Poulantzian concepts.
I also think that telling our latin american comrades to shed the concept of westerness because a northern european would not consider a latin american western, while having interesting rethorical effect and shock value, is not as necessary as some comrades in the thread made it out to be. Rather, an european who reminds our latin american comrades that they are very much not western and “to be honest we don’t even consider the czechians western” is merely exercising once again the power to define who is or isn’t [ingroup] that is characteristic of whiteness and westerness. Again, possible rethorical effect but to me it does not seem to further our comprehension of material reality, merely recreating its mechanisms with inverted signifiers.
What would then be a more interesting way of looking into it?
I’m by no means an expert but I also wanted to end this effort post with a more propositional tone. So here is what I think to be more useful to us in a marxist forum.
It is true that Latin America has several cultural ties to the west-in-its-strictest-meaning (e.g. romance languages, christianism); that it has institutional ties to the west-in-its-strictest-meaning (e.g. a lot of state building in Brazil happened when the Portuguese king was in exile following defeat to Napoleon, to the point where some liberal scholars will consider ours a Portuguese-state-in-exile); and that it might as well share some customs (e.g. santa claus dresses in heavy red clothes while christmas is in summer goddamnit) or ideologies (with a seemingly unending propensity to import the latest fads in european economic science). On the other hand, a proper marxist understanding should stress that material conditions are central to the social phenomena observed. A shared cultural heritage (which exists and accounts for comrade’s @CatrachoPalestino considering Honduras western) does not supersede the class relations of indigenous displacement and genocide, black slavery, superexploitation, and having part of our surplus value directed to the central capitalist countries. It is those relations that should be seen as the defining features of our material reality rather that a cultural heritage - which does not exclude looking into how such cultural heritage might be utilized to very material effects.
Final notes: musical notes
I will not translate two song’s lyrics as of right now but I feel two songs are thematically relevant to our discussion which I will leave linked below because I like them. Mapping them out within western or non western musical traditions will be left as an exercise to the reader.
To make an analogy with phenomena within “western in the strict sense” places, it is known that US WASPs did not consider italians or poles or sometimes even germans to be white. Or we can imagine an italian who moves to Sweden and is not reeeealy considered white, over there. Does that mean only the most exclusionary concept of whiteness is true?
this isn’t really true, and it’s something leftists love to say for some reason. Italians, Irish, Jews, etc. are white, have always been considered white, to say otherwise is pretty silly.
being ‘white’ doesn’t mean you never face discrimination. white people can face discrimination too, like those examples you pointed out.
White is a class of people shorn from all social relations and existing in a state of pure liberalism. If a sufficiently British enough person were to be alive today they would not be recognized as white. I don’t know enough about that backwater island to know if there are still like little fishing villages where people are making eel jelly and nettle soup with their cousins. Those people would be the antagonists in a horror film. They wouldn’t be recognized as being part of the white world.
Gonna go ahead and disagree with you there. Whiteness is a social construct “oppresor club” and in America italians and irish were once not included in the definition. Theres an abundance of scolarship about this, such as “how the Irish became white”.
it’s just not true. historian Eric Foner says the same here. that entire scholarship is based on viewing ‘white’ as meaning ‘never facing discrimination’, which is silly.
Irish, Italian, Jews, whatever other group people say aren’t white had rights specifically because they were white. they could vote when black people couldn’t, miscegenation laws never applied to them and it did to black people. to say these groups weren’t white is really ridiculous and frankly just insulting to groups that faced discrimination specifically because they weren’t white.
They were disciminated against because they werent seen as entirly white by the people discriminating, regardless of laws being different for them
Whiteness is an opressor club. If youre being opressed by the people in the club, you arent entirly in the club, even if there are people lower on the totem pole than you.
I don’t think they have always been considered “white” exactly, but they are now for sure. Jewish people that’s like 80-90% true
I think of latam as having a western layer in the upper and more white classes that exploit a non-western majority.
I would like to hear what some of our news mega comrade’s opinions are on this. Like @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net’s, or @Awoo@hexbear.net’s and other Marxism-educated regulars there, because of the geopolitical focus of the news mega and how often things like the Western World, Global North, and Imperial Core are heavily discussed.
The way I’ve always thought of it is that “Western” is just an informal way of saying Imperial Core. That it’s all a matter of who is doing imperialism to whom, who is benefiting from imperialism and who is being exploited by it. That it’s not a matter of culture, language, etc., and is only a matter of race and racism because it’s racist reasoning and racist justification at the heart of imperialism.
I see “west” as a less valuable term than “imperial core” or “international community”. They sit outside of these things, as an exploited periphery. The euro-christian connections are significantly less important than their position in global capitalism. If any existing imperial core country were to suddenly find itself becoming an exploited periphery we would see similar movements of the left succeed in that country like we see succeed in south america.
We had an interesting thread the other day about social democrats of latin america vs social democrats, and it struck me that there is a fundamental difference between the socdems of latam and the socdems of the imperial core. The socdems of latam call themselves communists, promote communism, call themselves marxist-leninist, and so on. Lula celebrates putting a communist on the supreme court. Evo calls himself a marxist-leninist completely. These people are not ideological social-democrats. Their goal is not social-democracy. They are using it simply as a means, not as an end. Unlike the Bernies and euro social democrats, who are ideological social democrats who view social democracy as an end rather than a means towards transformational change. The exception here being Corbyn and the diem group, but their success has not occurred because they do not hold the same material conditions as the exploited periphery.
In terms of racism, I genuinely don’t know how important it truly is anymore. The imperial core doesn’t give a fuuuuuck about race when it benefits them. Venezuela is the subject of intense unbridled levels of hate for successfully being opposed to the imperial core. Argentina on the other hand is not. Racism is a tool, a means to an end for the bourgeoisie, the end they want is exploitation as a periphery country and they weaponise it or de-weaponise it as required. This holds true for the middle east and asia as well but does not hold true for africa making me think that they have a unique racial battle - no amount of being an exploited periphery country reduces the racism directed at them from the “west”. Where are the “good” african countries in the eyes of bourgeoise western society?
Some good responses in this thread, I think the point about “the west” being a synonym for “the imperial core” is good, and honduras is definitely not in the imperial core.
However I think another point is that “the west” doesn’t apply to even Spain, I mean not really. There is of course the racial component that someone touched on, where Italians, southern Europeans, are not considered white, but also in the development of our modern political landscape we’re not so concerned with Spain but more France and Britain, or maybe a triangle of western Germany, France and Britain. I believe Spain was in decline by like the 1600s? And so the main developments of modern liberal capitalism are occurring in France and Britain, and I think “the west” partly refers to these developments - this system perfected in the locus of France and Britain, and other important countries in that triangle, like Germany (esp western), and the Netherlands. Spain is peripheral, and is only “the west” because it’s not in the east. Spain, Portugal, Italy, all have important contributions to the development of capitalism (I think, I’m not super well-read on the history of capitalism), but really our modern political and economic landscape owes its existence to France and Britain. The US, as the successor of that system that they birthed, is similarly “the west.”
Of course there’s also a racial component to it - if Japan had picked this system up where Britain fell, would we still be referring to “the west?” Probably not - I mean geographically that makes no sense, I’m pretty sure Japan is closest to Britain going east from Britain - but also I think the US is trying to express some continuity with Protestant Northern Europe and portray themselves as the extension of such a cultural and ethnic tradition in America. But maybe there would be another term thought up because I do think an important part of “the west” is to refer not just to western Europe geographically or a racial/ethnic/religious continuity with mother Europe, but a certain political economic system that saw its triumph in France and Britain, and now the torch has been passed and it sees its highest development in the US.
just a thought
My definition of whiteness is simple: it’s whether you can pass as an Anglo. That’s pretty much it. What counts as “passing as an Anglo” heavily depends on time and place, but that’s what it really boils down to in the end. Anglos are definitionally white, and every other European ethnic group, even the French, the Danish, and the Dutch, are only white insofar as Anglos consider them close enough to be Anglo.
How else do you explain WWI when Anglos called Hitler’s ubermensch a bunch of yellow-skinned, slanty-eyed, buck-teeth, dog-eating Asiatic marauders? Or this infamous poster, which boils down to Anglos, in this case an Anglo American, calling Germans the n-word. It’s because there are levels of whiteness, and some ham sandwich gammon fuck is at the very top of the pyramid. And in the case of WWI, the ham sandwich gammon fuck decided that blue eyes blonde hair Germans are no longer white, so blue eyes blonde hair Germans stopped being white. And after WWI is over, the ham sandwich gammon fuck decided that blue eyes blonde hair Germans can be white again, so blue eyes blonde hair Germans became white again.
All that nonsense about blood quantum or religion or cultural affinity or language is bullshit. The real question is: does the ham sandwich consider you a fellow ham sandwich?
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Yes? Then you’re a fellow Anglo and the world belongs to you and me.
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Close enough? Then you’re white and the world is yours as well but us Anglos get first dibs.
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No? Then you’re a filthy nonwhite who can make T-shirts and shoes for us.
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Maybe? Then you’re conditionally white/white-with-an-asterisk who us Anglos will strategically employ for our gain before throwing you under the bus when you’ve outlived your usefulness.
