This is why when right opportunist Marxists argue for limiting the Native land sovereignty movement by rhetorically asking “but what exactly will abolishing the United States look like,” or “but what exactly will full jurisdiction for the tribes look like,” they’re not engaging in the kind of materialist analysis they believe they are. They’re actually engaging in an idealist analysis. By ignoring the settler question, and by immediately claiming it’s futile to try to rectify land relations in the wake of colonialism, they’re assuming revolutionary theory on this continent doesn’t need any further innovation, and that history will vindicate their vision for a “USSA.” This isn’t dialectics, it’s dogmatism. Rejecting the idea of properly addressing the colonial contradiction because we don’t yet know precisely what this will look like upon completion is rejecting the core basis of dialectical materialism, which demands that we analyze contradictions in order to find their solutions.
If we were in pre-revolutionary Russia, these same people would be saying it’s pointless to talk of dismantling the Russian empire because we don’t yet have a perfect picture of what will replace the empire. There’s even a historical equivalent from then and there that we can identify: the Mensheviks, who Lenin described as “narrow-minded, selfish, case-hardened, covetous, and petty-bourgeoise ‘labour aristocracy’, imperialist-minded and imperialist-corrupted.” In other words, right opportunists, self-interested actors who sought to gain power by not challenging the existing cultural and social order. They purposely limited their own imaginations to rationalize not opposing the Russian empire, like how our own right opportunists purposely limit theirs to rationalize dismissing a decolonial analysis.
From a recent Ranier Shea post: