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was repealed.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