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?
Because we have to believe in something if we are going to escape the climate crisis as a species. We are capable of success as the US empire crumbles and comrades wake up to decolonial thought. We all need to be involved in some kind of organizing, whether it be international solidarity or building dual power.
You’re not wrong for the need for some kind of belief; but I don’t apply mine to some rosy ideal that after all that’s been done, after 200 years of slavery and dehumanization, and then 200 more years of even more abuse, marginalization, and oppression (but legal under the constitution and bill of rights this time!), we’re somehow going to find a way to put all that behind us and skip merrily, arm-in-arm into the sunset. I apply my belief and optimism to the idea that one day, we’ll have a nation of our own, carved out of the guts of Amerika, hand in hand with our indigenous comrades. I have none for those who descended from this nation’s original settlers. My organizing is explicitly with the colonized.
I constantly watch the descendants fail to put their bodies on the same wheels and gears we’re forced to put our bodies on, day in and day out. I see them let Black bodies get slabbed out by pigs. I see them let Black children get stripped of their mothers and fathers, their parents condemned to carceral slavery, and those children mandated to a foster pipeline that will inevitably see them in the same prisons, likely abused into antisocial behavior-sets beforehand. I see them let Black would-be professionals get stripped of their inroads to the same successes that the whites are practically hand-gifted.
You’ll have to forgive me for not putting my faith in any of that; because I don’t see the settlers en masse adopting decolonial thought. The sheer vast weight of Amerikan cognitive dissonance will break at least (there was a much more harsh percentage here. Being charitable, we’ll say ‘half’) of them before they get there. I don’t see a society I want to be a part of in the settlers anymore, or that I’d want my family and community a part of; even if we assume the descendants were able to unlearn everything they’ve been taught.
Speaking as Latino person, that hope is one of the only things that keeps me alive. And in a slightly dark but bright side-ish way, we don’t need every settler to adopt decolonial thought. Just enough to have an army.
And even then, we won’t be the only army. We will have international allies (including victims of Amerikkan imperialism on this continent and abroad).
I totally agree, I just think it’s best to avoid pessimism. “Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will” and all that.
Very valid; I just had to explain the method behind what some would no doubt see as madness. You’ve tended to have a fairly level head on your shoulders as long as I’ve seen you post.
To me, pessimism is defeatist and essentialist. It seems to state that the current principle contradiction within settler society (anti-Blackness) is insurmountable. I agree, anti-Blackness is inherent to the US settler civilization but I have to believe that that civilization can be overcome in order for revolutionary work to be possible. It is not likely in the short-term, but to me you have to believe something is possible in order to struggle for it.