Decolonization/anti-imperialism and socialism both relate to the struggles of conquered peoples. Both the colonized/imperialized and wage slaves represent the results of conflicts over cultural dominance (over people and geographic advantages). Victors in these conflicts may become colonizers/imperialists and capitalists.
Colonized people are those who have had their culture challenged by colonies of a more powerful culture– the colonists– that imposes its own ways on them. Often they live in communities of their own, under the authority of the colonizing force. Imperialized people have become politically controlled by the colonizing culture, the empire. These are systems of colonialism and imperialism.
Working class people are those who, while considered a part of the dominant culture, are not full beneficiaries of that culture’s privileges. They don’t own much property or have much economic or political say. Their productive life is controlled by capitalists, in the system of capitalism.
These situations– colonialism/imperialism and capitalism– are often treated similarly by socialists, particularly those of the New Left, put together under the label of “oppression.” But let’s analyze what is happening here.
Decolonization/anti-imperialism wants for conquered people to be unconquered. It often calls for the sovereignty of the colonized and refraint from use of force or pressure by the colonizers.
Socialism desires for conquered people to be fully assimilated and enfranchised into the conquering culture as full stakeholders in the economy of the conquerors.
Are socialism and decolonization or anti-imperialism the same? Certainly not. Decolonization and anti-imperialism have to do with intercultural, intersocietal conflicts. But socialism deals with intrasocietal conflicts. One is cultural or memetic, the other biological or genetic. These differ in important ways. Cultural or memetic characteristics are those relating to language, social systems, and technology, while biological or genetic characteristics relate to one’s capacity to wield these things, along with matters such as fecundity and immunity that are unrelated to culture.
Those who oppose imperialism and colonialism have not satisfactorily answered this question: What led one force to conquer another? Answers to this question may include “chance” and “luck,” or even “free will,” words that make any necessitarian cringe. There is no such thing. It’s as simple as that. Others recognize that motives have the power to bestow superhuman abilities, as by blaming racism, ethnocentricity, or some other idea; as if motives give one the power to conquer others. Apparently before imperialism, the world was blessed with the emotional self-restraint of the otherwise superhuman. But when hatred came into the world, it brought with it muscle and might that never before existed. Or so plays out the mythology behind sensibility. Beneath this mythology is underlain the implicit assumption that the colonized are genetically inferior, and so, unable to match them by way of personal growth, rely upon the goodwill of otherworldly, individual oppressors.
But the model of human societal evolution that stands with the most integrity– ecological-evolutionary theory– suggests that human societies evolve according to various manners of natural selection. Those that can better take care of a population can wield that population against its enemies. Of particular importance to the theory is that societies select against one another, and that this is primarily driven by cultural rather than genetic factors. Intersocietal and intercultural selection play major roles in evolutionarily refining the quality of societies over time. We cannot evolve without cultural conflict, because new cultures naturally come into territorial conflicts with older, established ones.
What is different about capitalism is that assimilated participants of all classes share in the same macroculture, as by speaking the same language and holding many of the same values and sentiments in common. Claims to industrial dominance have much more to do with individual capacity than do claims to cultural dominance. The capitalist believes themself to be more capable on a personal or familial level, whereas the imperialist relies on cultural supremacy. But if there is a racial or genetically-ethnic component of superiority, this could, unlike cultural supremacy, be industrially demonstrated without the use of force (intercultural conflict occurs under the laws of the jungle, whereas intracultural conflict occurs under the laws of the culture).
The establishment of dominance of one society over another, as occurs under colonialism or imperialism, is an example of cultural dominance. But the maintenance of dominance of one individual or family over another, as in capitalism, is an example of a claim to genetic superiority. If this claim cannot be defended without violence, it is illegitimate. Is this the case?
The working class is largely composed of people of color because they were previously colonialized. Light-skinned peoples of Caucasoid and Mongoloid phenotypes– such as the white Europeans and Chinese– rode their cultural dominance to positions of political power after an “expansion from the poles” brought them away from their natural cold environments, wherein proto-Caucasoid and proto-Mongloid may have shared common ancestry, perhaps sometime around the Younger Dryas. For whatever reason (perhaps climate change, pastoralism), the cultures associated with these polar phenotypes were found more “fit” by their environments, and they were favorably selected for dominance over the indigenous inhabitants (much as those inhabitants were selected over archaic humans such as Homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthal, Denisovans, etc.). The result is that the capitalist class is typically light-skinned. A more recent example of how colonization leads to class difference along racial lines is in Central and South America, wherein dark-skinned Amerinidians find themselves lower class, either in colonized villages or as assimilated workers in towns or cities, white Spaniards find themselves more prevalently in the upper class, and medium-skinned “mestizos,” whose ancestors were both Spaniard and Amerinidian, find themselves in the middle class. There are, of course, exceptions, and these exceptions demonstrate that class positions are not genetic, but cultural matters. In Europe, the “stacking” of dominant groups over others has been more ethnic than racial, but working class whites come largely from similarly lost, colonial-like conflicts, as well as some degree of the declasse. No matter the case, people from different races and ethnic groups can be assimilated into the same dominant culture.
This being so, claims to genetic superiority under capitalism– a system of monopoly privilege– are illegitimate while they are made under involuntary conditions, much as a race with unequal starting lines produces illegitimate results. While the highest law is God’s or Nature’s law– the decider of what is– and while intercultural conflict submits itself to the arbitration of God or Nature, who decides the victor, matters of the market find themselves within the confines of voluntary exchange, in true refraint from harm. Anything outside of voluntary exchange and civil society, then, must be considered beyond the purview of just, economic supremacy. As the capitalist depends on forces from outside the market to stake it, their claim to genetic superiority is false. Rather, the dominance of the capitalist stems from complete economic enfranchisement from within the dominant culture. So while cultural supremacy is just, as maintained by the Creator, genetic supremacy, as maintained by the created, is unfounded. As such, decolonization runs up against forces of natural selection, whereas socialism is assisted by these forces.
Decolonization runs up against forces of natural selection by desiring to reverse cultural supremacy from a position of cultural inferiority. But the inferior cannot win, only hinder. The result is degenerative toward the dominant culture that is actively trying to assimilate it, but without providing a viable alternative to that culture or its competitors (who’d also be happy to rule). The dominant culture must then either stop the degeneracy, through repression, or it must perish to its (also colonialist) competition.
Socialism, on the other hand, is favorable to natural selection, because it challenges unfounded genetic– racial or ethnic– supremacy. The result is the spreading widely of the ways of the dominant culture, which, with almost no exceptions, is able to be practiced by any racial or ethnic group, producing more of the benefits of the dominant culture. This makes the culture more successful.
While a dominant culture may be desirable overall, submissive cultures may nonetheless contain value of their own. Once assimilated, useful aspects of a conquered culture are typically diffused by previously lower members or are appropriated by participants in the dominant culture. This ensures that the majority of useful innovations are kept around for future enjoyment.
Colonized peoples have the choice between acting out of envy or out of emulation, both described by Aristotle. Envy is the pain from another’s joy, whereas emulation, suggests Aristotle, is the pain in oneself from not having the same joy.
Decolonization and anti-imperialism are together the path of envy. Whether directly, or on another’s behalf, this path points the finger at others’ successes, trying to bring them down. It blames the colonizer for the woes of the colonized, unsatisfactorily answering how things came to be as they are, what forces gave way to the dominance, citing instead supernatural forces of “chance” and lack of emotional sensibility.
Socialism may appear envious, and indeed in the hands of Marxists it is, and certainly it has aesthetic similarities to anti-colonialism when pitched as “anti-capitalism,” but despite the surface similarities and Marxist infiltration, socialism has its home more in emulation, particularly as it relates to socialism in the form of mutualism, otherwise called “Freemasonry for workers,” by Pierre Charnier. Karl Marx criticized the middle class (“petit bourgeois”) goals of the mutualists, themselves coming from the lower class. Mutualism was, to a certain degree, an emulation of the Enlightenment successes of the middle class. The goal behind early socialism was to make of every person a capitalist, such that capitalism, dependent upon a class of non-owners, no longer persisted. It was about raising up, not taking down (except where necessary to raise up).
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