Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

more nearly fascistic. Bacon was the diseased mind of the
most reactionary faction of the planters, and in his ambitious
schemes the fact that a few more freemen or exslaves
had paper voting rights meant little. Far from
fighting to abolish slavery, the Rebellion actually hoped to
add to the number of slaves by Indian conquest.
And, finally, there was no "Black and White unity"
at all. Needing fighting bodies, Bacon at the very end
offered a deal to his opponents' slaves. He paid in the only
coin that was meaningful-a promise of freedom for them
if he won. Those Afrikans who signed up in his army
didn't love him, trust him, view him as their leader, or
anything of the kind. They were tactically exploiting a contradiction
in the oppressor ranks, maneuvering for their
freedom. It is interesting to note that those Indians who
did give themselves up to unity with the oppressors,
becoming the settlers' lackeys and allies, were not protected
by it, but were destroyed.
We can also see here the contradiction of
"democratic" reforms within the context of settler
capitalism. Much has been made of the reforms of
"Bacon's Assembly" (the June, 1676 session of the
Virginia Assembly, which was so named because of its
newly elected majority of Baconites and their sympathizers).
Always singled out for praise by Euro-
Arnerikan historians was "Act VII" of the Assembly,
which restored voting rights to property-less freemen. The
most eminent Euro-Amerikan radical labor historian,
Philip S. Foner, has written how:
"...the rebellion.. .gained a number of democratic
rights for the people. The statute preventing propertyless
freemen from electing members to the House of Burgesses
was repealed. Freeholders and freemen of every parish
gained the right to elect the vestries of the church. None of
these democratic reforms remained after the revolt was
crushed, yet their memories lived on. Bacon was truly the
'Torchbearer of the Revolution', and for generations after
any leader of the common people was called a
'Baconist'. "(8)
It is easy to see how contemptible these pseudo-
Marxist, white supremacist lies are. When we examine the
entire work of that legislature of planter reforms, we find
that the first three acts passed aN involved furthering the
genocidal war against the Indians. Act 111 legalized the settler
seizure of Indian lands, previously guaranteed by treaty,
"deserted" by Indians fleeing from Bacon's attacks.
How meaningful is a "democratic" extension of voting
rights amidst the savage expansion of a capitalist society
based on genocide and enslavement? Would voting rights
for white ranchers have been the "democratic" answer at
Wounded Knee? Or "free speech" for prison guards the
answer at Attica?
The truth is that Euro-Amerikans view these
bourgeois-democratic measures as historic gains because to
them they are. But not to us. The inner content, the essence
of these reforms was the consolidation of a new settler nation.
Part of this process was granting full citizenship in
the settler society to all strata and classes of Euro-
Amerikans; as such, these struggles were widespread in
Colonial Amerika, and far more important to settlers than
mere wage disputes.
The early English settlers of Virginia Colony, for
example, were forced to import German, Polish and
Armenian craftsmen to their invasion beachhead, in order
to produce the glass beads used in the fur trade (as well as
pitch used in shipbuilding, etc.). Since these "foreign"
craftsmen were not English, they were considered subjects
and not members of the Colony. So in 1619 thosc Curopean
artisans went on strike, quickly winning full citizenship
rights-"as free as any inhabitant there
whatsoever."(9)
Similar struggles took place throughout the Colonial
Era, in both North and South. In 1689 Leisler's
Rebellion (led by a German immigrant merchant) in New
York found the settler democrats ousting the British garrison
from Albany, and holding the state capital for
several years. The New York State Assembly has its origins
in the settler legislature granted by the Crown as a concession
after the revolt had been ended. The Roosevelt family
first got into settler politics as supporters of Leisler.(lO)
We need to see the dialectical unity of democracy
and oppression in developing settler Amerika. The winning
of citizenship rights by poorer settlers or non-Anglo-Saxon
Europeans is democratic in form. The enrollment of the
white masses into new, mass instruments of repression-such
as the formation of the infamous Slave Patrols
in Virginia in 1727-is obviously anti-democratic and reactionary.
Yet these opposites in form are, in their essence,
united as aspects of creating the new citizenry of Babylon.
This is why our relationship to "democratic" struggles
among the settlers has not been one of simple unity.
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