The Indian, the Metis and the Fur Trade Class, Sexism and Racism in the Transition from "Communism" to Capitalism

Ron G. Bourgeault The Indian, the Metis and the Fur Trade Class, Sexism and Racism in the Transition from "Communism" to Capitalism Native peoples' modern history has as its basis class exploitation and oppression. As a consequence of class exploitation, their struggle has been one against racism and national oppression.' Native peoples' social and material productivity, and their varied forms of labour, arise from their relationship to different forms of capital and to the resulting exploitation of their labour by capital. To understand the historical, political and economic existence of the native (including mixed-blood) people in North America, it is necessary to analyze them within the context of the political economy of mercantilism. It is within this system that the contradictions of race, class and nationalism have their antecedents and that the foundations were laid for the formation of Canada as a nation- state. The object of this paper is to argue that the fur trade of the Hud- son Bay basin, in what is now northern Canada, initially transformed Indian labour into that of a peasantry caught in the web of feudal relations of production. 2 The paper will also show the nature of Indian women's subjugation, a subjugation undertaken to establish the fur trade. Class, racial and sexist divisions came to be im- posed upon the indigenous Indian population through colonial relations based upon a particular form of exploitation. Just as mercantilism created class differences within the Indian population, so class and racial differences were created among the 4S Studies in Political Economy Europeans. These class differences were created by capital within the society from whence the Europeans were recruited, but within the context of the fur trade, they manifested themselves as racial differences. So long as merchants capital was dominant, there were always basic divisions between European wage labourers and Indians engaged in fur production. This followed from constantly maintaining Indian labour in fur production, while on the surface it appeared as a very distinct racial split. Resident within the fur trade territory were both the servant or working class and the officer or petty bourgeois managers, who by the turn of the nineteenth century were assuming an overt role as British colonial administrators. Ownership was maintained by the British merchant bourgeoisie in London. Over a period of two hundred years (1670 to 1870), racial differences in relation to class differences came to manifest themselves within the Europeans. The mass of the unskilled European labour that was recruited was French, together with some Scots from the Orkneys and the Islands. Among the Scots themselves, there were very distinct differences. Skilled labour came predominantly from the Highlands; the petty bourgeoisie came from the Lowlands. The merchant bourgeoisie remained predominantly English. Currently, Marxist analysis on natives in Canada as a whole, and the North in particular. is for the most part exceptionally lacking. Recently some debate and some general theories have been initiated by individuals who are attached to native organizations either as consultants or advisors and who might claim in some sense to be Marxist. 3 These theories of the nature and struggle of the native in the North do not recognize the history of class exploitation originat- ing in the first contacts with European capital and its different forms over the centuries. Nor do they recognize in the same way the basis of colonial relations emanating from the natives' relationships with different forms of capital. Presently, as a result, they are incapable of dealing with the crises that exist between the native and monopoly capitalism, especially given the increasing influx of natives into the cities and the labour market in the southern part of western Canada, and the rapid imperialization of the North. These theories deny that class even' exists as a basis of the oppression of native people. Rather, they see northern natives as having existed in the past in some sort of pluralistic relationship with the capitalist world, and contend that the contradictions that now exist, such as unemployment and colonialism, are only the result of the recent movement of monopoly capital and the Canadian state, on its behalf, into the North. They perceive the destruction of the "tra- 46 ---------------------------- ~~---~--~ Ron Bourgeault/lndians, Metis ditional" economy rather than a new stage in the long history of class transformations of native labour due to different forms of capital. Therefore, the strategy they espouse would preserve the native "way of life" and advocate that natives engage in de-coloniza- tion from the Canadian state through the use of aboriginal rights or land claims so as to achieve a negotiated co-adventure status with the national bourgeois state and imperialism. Those who advocate this are wrong. First, "traditional" society cannot be "preserved," just as any other traditional society under the same circumstances cannot be preserved, let alone return to some period in the past. Second, aboriginal rights through bourgeois nationalism is not the real issue; if anything, that strategy is going to create a form of neo- colonialism. The real issue is one of class - to do away with the sources of oppression, not to manage them. The native struggle must be seen and dealt with within the context of class and colonialism. Mercantilism The advent of British mercantilism into the Hudson Bay basin dur- ing the seventeenth century heralded the beginning of the class I national struggle of the native population within what is now the north of Canada. Here, mercantilism entailed the search for fur as a commodity for the European market. Since the accumulation of wealth or capital through the exchange of commodities was the economic driving force of the mercantilist, and since an alternate source of labour could not be introduced within the area, mercantile capitalism was compelled to transform the Indian population to produce the desired commodity. However, the resident Indian population was not a source of labour that was organized to produce that commodity directly for exchange. The northern Indian was operating within varied forms of the primitive communist mode of production, and as such the production of commodities for exchange was not a part of their economic activity. What shape did the transformation of the native population then take? Mercantilism as a system was the transitory stage between feudalism and the formation of capitalism. It had as its main char- acteristic the elementary accumulation of capital. The modern history of capital dates back to the feudal societies of the sixteenth century, with the rise of production for the market. In order for capital to develop and accumulate it was necessary for the circulation of commodities to take place on a world scale. The production and circulation of commodities and the creation of a world market drove the mercantile system to expand beyond Europe and engage 47 Studies in Political Economy other peoples around the world in various forms oflabour. The societies confronted by the Europeans existed, for the most part, as different forms of pre-capitalist formations. As contact was established, each society established barriers or engaged in forms of resis- tance to the penetration of capital. How a society either resisted or accommodated the capital penetration determined the level, extent and duration of the penetration." In some situations merchant capital actually preserved, consolidated and even reproduced pre- capitalist relations as a condition of its penetration.' Some societies completely rejected overtures to establish economic relationships, mainly because the relationships to be established were completely foreign to them. Such was the case with some primitive communist societies in which commodity production and exchange did not exist. It was, therefore, necessary for mercantile capital either to destroy or alter communal social units that prohibited or prevented their exploitation. S The accumulation of merchant capital and its imposition over other pre-capitalist modes of production did not require the creation of a capitalist mode of production within those societies." In Europe, in order for capital to grow, it required a free labour market. Merchant capital, outside of the capitalist mode of production in Europe, required only the production and circulation of commodities as the basic condition of its existence. In fact, merchant capital was quite compatible with different pre-capitalist modes of production, so long as it could gain control of the respective societies and either change, alter or introduce productive mechan- isms towards what was required. In the case of the fur trade in the northern part of North America, the primitive communism of the Indian was slowly undermined and destroyed. The relations of production that were created in the new society were essentially feudalistic. 7 The fur trade was feudalistic in the sense that the Indians as a pri- mary source of labour for mercantilism, were transformed from producers of goods and services entirely for collective use, into a peasant or serf labour force bound to particular trading posts, with the commanding officer (on behalf of the merchant capitalist) func- tioning as a feudal lord. The method was to appropriate surplus production through a form of tithe in recognition of European land ownership and colonial dominance. The Indians' class position in the production of fur came to be the basis of their economic exploitation and racial oppression and, as well, the basis of the colonialism and colonial relations that developed. Although existing within a form of feudal relations under merchants capital, the 48 Ron Bourgeault/lndians, Metis northern Indians were still formally within the emerging capitalist system as a whole because what they were producing was a commodity for the developing capitalist market.

Load more