Hey all,
I’m currently developing a Marxist-Leninist analysis of settler colonialism, especially in light of the situation in Palestine, and am going to read Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat by J. Sakai for the first time. Before I do I was just curious what other comrades think of the book and its analysis? It seems a pretty controversial text among many online Marxist groups, to whatever extent that matters, but as an Indigenous communist I feel having a clear and principled stance on the settler question is important for all serious communists. I’m not sure if I’ll agree with Sakai specifically, but since I generally agree with the opinions of y’all, I was curious as to your thoughts on the book.
It is fantastic as a revolutionary anti-racist, anti-imperialist history of the US Empire. I recommend it to virtually everyone on those grounds. However, his ideological basis is heavily informed by the widespread pessimism that followed the collapse of the US New Left anti-colonial struggles of internally oppressed nations (as Sakai characterizes). He embraces a brand of Third Worldism whose main practical application is to give up on revolutionary activity in the imperial core, since all workers are labor aristocrats who benefit more from imperialism than they are exploited by Capitalism.
While the degree of exploitation of workers in the imperial core is unquestionably lower, while White workers unquestionably benefit immensely from racism, we cannot accept defeat as a given.
The primary contradiction in the world is between Imperialist Nations and Colonized Nations. “Leftists” in the imperial core cannot wait for the comrades in the Global South to liberate themselves, we must be active strugglers for their liberation and our own. We must believe revolution is possible to hold any attitude other than ‘lie down and rot’.
Also watching white people squirm reading is really fun. A comrade’s conservative, racist sibling has possibly the only actual ‘SJW Marxist Professor’ in the US who is making the class read it. The comrade has been giving us updates on the growth of their sibling’s growing guilt and political conciousness.
Read Settlers!
The pessimism makes more sense given the context of the time it was written in. I’ve heard Gerald Horne’s Counterrevolution series described by some as a more contemporary analysis that succeeds Settlers.
I think the controversial rap the book gets is due more to its more dogmatic followers. Like a lot of maoists/third worldists, they have accurate observations but draw questionable conclusions from them.
It’s definitely a justifiable pessimism at the time, but that doesn’t make it correct or currently applicable.
According to you, maybe. From where I sit, the decade’s watchphrase has been “second, third, fourth, and fifth-through-tenth verses, same as the first”; where the first verse was the failure of Reconstruction. For 100+ years, settlers have done us the dirtiest(right behind to the damn-near-totally-extincted tribes of the Indigenous if I’m honest), and it doesn’t appear to be changing its intensity, just its manifestations. So… Why isn’t that pessimism applicable?
