Edit 2 - this is a vent/rant. Just ignore it. Or maybe I’ll delete it. Sorry.
I’m sorry. Y’all are too much sometimes. You need to give up one of those identities if you wanna be included.
Edit - I feel y’all aren’t getting my point. I didn’t mean this in a “bait” way. Straight white men have the most “reactionary” tendencies among all working people by far. They’re the most reluctant to socialism and get easily swayed by the bourgeoisie on “idpol” grounds. And yes this does effect other proles to an extent (such as gay white men being slightly more conservative than other LGBTQ people on average or white feminists being more TERF than bipoc feminists on average) but straight white men are the backbone of all reactionary movements in the West, with others forming a small minority. The entire debate about “class reductionism” vs “idpol” is a thing literally just because straight white men refuse to understand the importance of other identities. Like, look at MAGACommunism. It’s literally 99% white dudes.
Settlers argues that the class system in the United States is built upon the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans and that the white working class in the United States constitutes a privileged labor aristocracy that lacks proletarian consciousness. Arguing that the white working class possesses a petit-bourgeois and reformist consciousness, the book posits that the colonized peoples of the United States constitutes the proletariat.
O.O
Many leftist groups are critical of the book. The Monthly Review describes the book as “preposterous on its face” and “an insult to those whites who have suffered the grossest exploitation and still do.” The Communist Party USA says the book “reveals the author’s bias against working-class unity and plays into the hands of the ruling class”
O.O
…It is okay to think positively of this book here, lol? Given the response this thread got, I don’t think it is appreciated.
It’s good to read even if you don’t end up agreeing with it. It presents a Maoist -adjacent viewpoint that used to be much more prevalent in US left circles from the 1960s - late 80s but isn’t much reptesented in the current DSA/demsoc-dominated landscape.
My personal take is that Settlers’ analysis is generally correct, with the caveat that the boundaries of “whiteness” have expanded quite a bit since Sakai wrote it. My criticisms would be that Sakai’s writing is prone to being overly moralistic, and he indulges quite a bit in his personal dislike of white workers - he even admits as much in one edition’s forward.
…It is okay to think positively of this book here, lol? Given the response this thread got, I don’t think it is appreciated.
It’s controversial even amongst leftists. It’s an interesting analysis that provides an answer to why revolution seems to be betrayed by the white working class but people often draw the wrong conclusions from it.
However, from what I’ve read the analysis doesn’t really hold up when taken outside of it’s own internal logic. Or in essence, it’s a good explanation, but if you use its theory to form conclusions outside of the book you’ll often get inaccuracies.
Sakai is mostly right but Western leftists find themselves paralyzed as a result of it, as they think it means e you’ll never get whites on board with the revolution and there are still too many of them that you can just ignore them.
What it really means is our work is just harder and it’s a better use of time to organize with marginalized groups than to keep going after some romanticized blue collar white working class.
