The imperialism of ‘imperialism’ (subordinating ‘settler colonialism’, or how to misunderstand dialectics): John Bellamy Foster, ‘Imperialism and White Settler Colonialism in Marxist Theory’, Monthly Review, 76, 9, 2025, pp. 1-21 | settler colonial studies blog

The imperialism of ‘imperialism’ (subordinating ‘settler colonialism’, or how to misunderstand dialectics): John Bellamy Foster, ‘Imperialism and White Settler Colonialism in Marxist Theory’, Monthly Review, 76, 9, 2025, pp. 1-21

23Mar25

Excerpt: The concept of settler colonialism has always been a key element in the Marxist theory of imperialism, the meaning of which has gradually evolved over a century and a half. Today the reemergence of powerful Indigenous movements in the struggles over cultural survival, the earth, sovereignty, and recognition, plus the resistance to the genocide inflicted by the Israeli state on the Palestinian people in the occupied territories, have brought the notion of settler colonialism to the fore of the global debate. In these circumstances, a recovery and reconstruction of the Marxist understanding of the relation between imperialism and settler colonialism is a crucial step in aiding Indigenous movements and the world revolt against imperialism. Such a recovery and reconstruction of Marxist analyses in this area is all the more important since a new paradigm of settler colonial studies, pioneered in Australia by such distinguished intellectual figures as Patrick Wolfe and Lorenzo Veracini, has emerged over the last quarter-century. This now constitutes a distinct field globally—one that, in its current dominant form in the academy, is focused on a pure “logic of elimination.” In this way, settler colonialism as an analytical category based on autonomous collectives of settlers is divorced from colonialism more generally, and from imperialism, exploitation, and class. Settler colonialism, in this sense, is often said to be an overriding planetary force in and of itself. In Veracini’s words, “It was a settler colonial power that became a global hegemon.… The many American occupations” around the world are “settler colonial” occupations. We are now told that not just the “pure” or ideal-typical settler colonies of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel can be seen as such, as originally conceived by Wolfe, but also the “whole of Africa,” plus much of Asia and Latin America, have been “shaped” to a considerable extent by the “logic of elimination,” as opposed to exploitation. Rather than seeing settler colonialism as an integral part of the development of the imperialist world system, it has become, in some accounts, its own complete explanation.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed