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Addendum

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So after I pos­ted this a couple days ago it was picked up by Anti-Fas­cist News, which linked to it along with the sole re­mark that it was “in­ter­est­ing.” This led some fans of Set­tlers to then launch a cam­paign against me per­son­ally, re­fer­ring to me as “a sac­ri­fi­cial pig to be made an ex­ample of” (a Mar­rano, per­haps?) and ap­plaud­ing the fact that I’d been doxxed in the past as a “com­mie Jew” by Storm­front neo-Nazis. One per­son even threatened to send people to my door, all be­cause I cri­ti­cized a book she likes. Joshua Mou­fawad-Paul of the blog M-L-M May­hem, whose meta-re­view I linked and whose name I un­for­tu­nately mis­spelled, also re­spon­ded to the post.

Now the per­son who threatened to send people after me is de­mand­ing a re­trac­tion and an apo­logy, fol­lowed by “mon­et­ary re­par­a­tions will be made to the mul­tiple Black and in­di­gen­ous people who have had to de­fend their his­tory from the de­valu­ation of a White per­son for their labor.” You can’t make this shit up; it’s way too elab­or­ate and de­ranged. Rather than en­gage with a small group of ded­ic­ated and ob­vi­ously dis­turbed trolls, however, I’d prefer to sub­stan­ti­ate some of the cri­ti­cisms made in my open­ing tirade. Ad­mit­tedly, most of this con­sisted in me sum­mar­iz­ing en­gage­ments with Set­tlers un­der­taken by oth­er Marx­ists, with very little in the way of ori­gin­al com­ment­ary. Hope­fully this ad­dendum will give some sense of what it is I ob­ject to in the book.

To provide just one ex­ample of Sakai’s shoddy his­tor­ic­al re­search, he writes on page 53 of Set­tlers: “The pro-im­per­i­al­ist labor ar­is­to­cracy — which in 1914 Len­in es­tim­ated at roughly 20% of the Ger­man work­ing class — were the lead­ers of the Ger­man trade-uni­ons, the ‘so­cial­ist’ party, etc.” Un­sur­pris­ingly, no men­tion is made of what text Len­in sup­posedly made this es­tim­a­tion in (much less a cita­tion). I have scoured through all of Len­in’s writ­ings and have yet to find any­where he claims twenty per­cent of the Ger­man work­ing class be­longed to the “labor ar­is­to­cracy.” Neither in 1914 nor in any oth­er year.

Fur­ther, it’s very frus­trat­ing that Sakai nowhere ex­plains what his cri­ter­ia are for someone be­long­ing to the “labor ar­is­to­cracy.” In­stead he just cites US Labor Bur­eau stat­ist­ics, but then fol­lows it by par­en­thet­ic­ally claim­ing that “60% of this sec­tion is labor ar­is­to­cracy.” As if that were a cat­egory the Labor Bur­eau would ever use. On the fol­low­ing page he just baldly as­serts that “the set­tler labor ar­is­to­cracy is con­sid­er­ably lar­ger than its hard core, per­haps com­pris­ing as much as 50% of all male Euro-Amerik­ans.” Be­cause Sakai provides no in­form­a­tion for how he ar­rives at this fig­ure, there is no way of as­sess­ing its ac­cur­acy.

The “labor ar­is­to­cracy” thes­is first ad­vanced by En­gels dur­ing the 1890s and then ex­pan­ded upon by Len­in between 1905 and 1922 has already been chal­lenged con­vin­cingly by writers such as Charles Post and or­gan­iz­a­tions like the In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mun­ist Cur­rent as first “a myth” and then “a so­ci­olo­gic­al the­ory to di­vide the work­ing class.” Even grant­ing some an­ec­dot­al valid­ity to the ob­ser­va­tion that there’s an elite strat­um of skilled laborers — who, to use Len­in’s meta­phor, “fight for the scraps that fall off the im­per­i­al­ist ta­ble” — there’s no em­pir­ic­al ground­ing of the thes­is. Mostly it’s just a post-hoc ra­tion­al­iz­a­tion of work­ing class re­form­ism and de­feat.

Char­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally, moreover, Sakai neg­lects to men­tion that op­pressed pop­u­la­tions in the New World have just as of­ten been at each oth­er’s throats — e.g., the “Buf­falo Sol­diers,” all-black vo­lun­teer cav­alry units which served with dis­tinc­tion in mas­sac­ring Plains In­di­ans for nearly a quarter-cen­tury. Sev­er­al cen­tur­ies earli­er in what today is Mex­ico, the ma­nu­mit­ted Afric­an slave Juan Gar­rido be­came a highly suc­cess­ful Span­ish con­quista­dor. He also helped con­quer Pu­erto Rico, Cuba, Guada­lupe, Domin­ica, and Flor­ida. Or the Cher­o­kee lead­er Stand Watie, a slave-driv­ing plant­a­tion own­er who fought on the side of the Con­fed­er­acy dur­ing the Civil War and rose to the rank of bri­gadier gen­er­al. Watie was the last South­ern gen­er­al to stop fight­ing. Jews owned some of the ships in the Dutch and Eng­lish transat­lantic slave trade. Treach­er­ous at­ti­tudes and be­ha­vi­ors to­ward oth­er ex­ploited and op­pressed groups was hardly lim­ited to the white work­ing class.

Need­less to say, as a side note, I do not in any way deny the hor­rors en­dured by black and in­di­gen­ous people in Canada, the US, and else­where throughout the world. For a far bet­ter ac­count of ra­cism and white su­prem­acy check out Theodore W. Al­len’s The In­ven­tion of the White Race (1994), Bar­bara and Kar­en Fields’ Race­craft: The Soul of In­equal­ity in Amer­ic­an Life (2012), or Loren Gold­ner’s ma­gis­teri­al es­say on “Race and the En­light­en­ment” from Race Trait­or (1997).

Open­ing tirade

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J. Sakai’s 1983 screed Set­tlers: The Myth­o­logy of the White Pro­let­ari­at has been mak­ing the rounds again lately. Pre­sum­ably be­cause it of­fers a readymade ex­plan­a­tion for why the so-called “white work­ing class” voted for Trump en bloc, a premise which is it­self de­bat­able. Rhizzo­ne.net, an on­line mes­sage board where shit-tier Maoist Third Worldists and oth­er ran­dom nerds can meet and mingle, spear­headed the ini­ti­at­ive to re­launch Read­Set­tlers.org amidst the 2016 US Pres­id­en­tial elec­tion. You can fol­low the #read­set­tlers hasht­ag on Twit­ter, and there’s even been a tumblr ded­ic­ated to the in­junc­tion.

Un­for­tu­nately, the “ana­lys­is” offered in Set­tlers is tenden­tious garbage. Few Marx­ists have had the pa­tience, however, to read through the book in or­der to of­fer a point-by-point re­but­tal. This isn’t so much due to its style, which fam­ously flouts aca­dem­ic con­ven­tions and es­chews ac­cep­ted dis­curs­ive norms. I’m all for shit­ting on MLA writ­ing stand­ards, to say noth­ing of the stil­ted jar­gon of ad­juncts and pro­fess­ors. But if you’re go­ing to make de­tailed stat­ist­ic­al claims about the per­cent­age of white col­on­ists in­volved in vari­ous lines of work dur­ing the sev­en­teenth cen­tury, I ex­pect a foot­note ex­plain­ing the meth­od­o­logy used (how data was col­lec­ted and sor­ted, what “class” means in this con­text, etc.).

Of the vari­ous at­tempts to of­fer a Marx­ist reply to some of the out­rageous claims Sakai makes, Doug En­aa Greene’s “Race and Class in the United States: J. Sakai and the Polit­ics of Re­volu­tion” is doubt­less the most ex­haust­ive. He ex­plains that “Sakai denies the ex­ist­ence of a mul­tina­tion­al pro­let­ari­at, since white work­ers are sup­posedly just op­press­ors… What Sakai ad­vances is just ut­ter false­hood.” Greene ac­know­ledges that

Marx­ists need a ma­ter­i­al­ist his­tory and ana­lys­is of US so­ci­ety, its ex­ist­ing class re­la­tions, the role of race and na­tion­al op­pres­sion and to identi­fy those agents of re­volu­tion­ary change. But Sakai’s Set­tlers does not provide that un­der­stand­ing. The work is marred by gross meth­od­o­lo­gic­al and fac­tu­al er­rors and the polit­ic­al con­clu­sion leads one to see white work­ers in the US as one hope­lessly “re­ac­tion­ary mass.” For Sakai, there is no strategy for unity; rather di­vi­sion of the work­ing class is seen as a per­man­ent fea­ture.

Like­wise, Tyler Mcreary con­cludes in his re­view of the 1989 reed­i­tion of Set­tlers con­cludes that “Sakai em­ploys es­sen­tial­ist con­cepts throughout the text, un­will­ing to en­gage ideo­lo­gic­al com­plex­ity and con­tra­dic­tions… Des­pite Set­tlers’ vi­tal­ity, the crit­ic­al in­quiry it at­tempts is hobbled by cer­tain crit­ic­al lapses and overly strict con­cep­tu­al cat­egor­ies.” Se­basti­an Lamb sim­il­arly main­tains that “the ideas of Set­tlers are so flawed that they are ac­tu­ally an obstacle to de­vel­op­ing the kind of anti-ra­cist work­ing-class polit­ics needed today. Yet be­cause its ideas have some in­flu­ence among an­ti­cap­it­al­ists, they de­serve to be chal­lenged.”

Even many oth­er Maoists largely find the ar­gu­ments Sakai makes un­con­vin­cing. Not all, of course. Joshua Moufa­wad-Paul in his “meta-re­view” de­fends Set­tlers from the barbs dir­ec­ted at it by Lamb and Mcreary, and Mat­thijs Krul — who is quite open about his “con­sid­er­able sym­pathy and agree­ment with the Third-Worldist view­point” — nods ap­prov­ingly in Sakai’s dir­ec­tion on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. Kev­in “Rashid” John­son of the New Afrik­an Black Pan­ther Party of­fers a scath­ing cri­tique of Set­tlers, and by ex­ten­sion the en­tire school of thought in­spired by him, in a long post ded­ic­ated to the ques­tion of race and class:

Cent­ral to the cre­ation of the Maoist In­ter­na­tion­al Move­ment/“vul­gar labor ar­is­to­cracy” line was J. Sakai’s Set­tlers, an anti-Marx­ist ana­lys­is of race (which re­places race for class as the prin­cip­al form of op­pres­sion in America). Set­tlers cites epis­odes from the ex­tens­ive his­tory of “white” ra­cial op­pres­sion of people of col­or in Amer­ica and the re­l­at­ive priv­ileged status that “whites” at all so­cial-eco­nom­ic levels have en­joyed at the ex­pense of peoples of col­or, and which has al­lowed even work­ing class and poor whites to be­tray the in­terests of their coun­ter­parts of col­or. The main theme of Set­tlers is “white” ra­cial treach­ery, be­tray­al, bru­tal­ity and priv­ilege that claims to know no class dis­tinc­tion. The con­clu­sion be­ing that these factors com­bine to cre­ate a uni­form class of “white­ness” that has no pro­let­ari­an sec­tor. We con­trast Sakai’s nar­row work with the broad­er and ex­haust­ive works of Marx­ist pro­let­ari­an in­tel­lec­tu­al Theodore Al­len, par­tic­u­larly his two volume study The In­ven­tion of the White Race. Ap­ply­ing a polit­ic­al eco­nom­ic ana­lys­is he demon­strates that race and ra­cism were/are cre­ated and ma­nip­u­lated by the rul­ing class as a tool to di­vide the work­ing class against it­self, only to the be­ne­fit of the rul­ing class.

Sakai’s work is geared more to the in­cite­ment of vis­cer­al re­ac­tions to the hor­rors of the prac­tice of white su­prem­acy and driv­ing home the sub­ject­ive theme of in­her­ent treach­er­ous­ness of “whites.” This to the end of in­cit­ing people of col­or to look upon all “whites” as a col­lect­ive op­press­or class and to erase the class lines that ex­ist between and sep­ar­ate rul­ing class and work­ing class “whites.” Sakai’s non-ma­ter­i­al­ist study read­ily ap­peals to the af­fect­ive mind. Al­len’s work by con­trast ma­ter­i­ally ex­am­ines the meth­ods and his­tory be­hind the rul­ing class’s schemes that cre­ated race and ra­cism, and in­cited work­ers and oth­er strata against each oth­er in the name of ra­cial su­prem­acy and counter-ra­cial nar­rat­ives which have per­petu­ated on­go­ing ra­cial ali­en­a­tion, com­pet­i­tion, sub­or­din­a­tion and so on. This has served to sup­press and di­vert the col­lect­ive out­rage of the over­all op­pressed masses in­to chan­nels that have pro­tec­ted and ad­vanced the wealth, power and in­terests of the rul­ing class. Al­len also ex­am­ines how the concept of “white­ness” has been used and serves to blind “whites” to the suf­fer­ings im­posed by “white­ness” on ra­cial­ized “oth­ers” and he fur­ther demon­strates that ul­ti­mately “whites” do not be­ne­fit from ra­cism or the sense of ra­cial priv­ilege and en­ti­tle­ment. Al­len’s work is geared more to the ma­ter­i­al­ist mind that is in­ter­ested in un­der­stand­ing the ori­gins, roots, and pur­pose of race and ra­cism and how to counter its di­vis­ive and of­ten cata­stroph­ic im­pact on op­pressed peoples of all col­ors and es­pe­cially the pro­let­ari­at.

In­cid­ent­ally, Sakai him­self no longer seems to think the cent­ral thes­is of Set­tlers holds with re­spect to the con­tem­por­ary US, a fact which ought to com­plic­ate mat­ters for those who in­voke his au­thor­ity to prove the in­cor­ri­gib­il­ity of the white work­ing class. “Mod­ern Pan-Is­lam­ic fas­cism [is] press­ing home its war on a glob­al bat­tle­field,” wrote Sakai shortly after the 9/11 at­tacks. “The small but grow­ing white fas­cist bands here in the US picked up on this im­me­di­ately; they had polit­ic­al brethren in the Muslim world. Polit­ics is thick­er than blood. ‘Any­one who’s will­ing to drive a plane in­to a build­ing to kill Jews is al­right by me,’ said Billy Rop­er of the Na­tion­al Al­li­ance, the largest white fas­cist group here. Like is drawn to like: not race and not re­li­gion but class polit­ics.”

My open­ing tirade thus draws to a close. Without any fur­ther ado, then, I leave you with Noel Ig­natiev’s brief but in­cis­ive 1985 re­view of Sakai’s Set­tlers. I don’t agree with all that Ig­natiev has writ­ten in the past, but much of it is quite good — in­clud­ing this re­view. And like Sakai he writes in a dir­ect man­ner without pre­tense or con­des­cen­sion.

Re­view of Set­tlers, by J. Sakai

Noel Ig­natiev
Spring 1985
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Ac­cord­ing to J. Sakai’s Set­tlers: The Myth­o­logy of the White Pro­let­ari­at (1983), “the en­tire set­tler eco­nomy was raised up on a found­a­tion of slave labor, slave products, and the slave trade.”

Of course it was, and as Set­tlers points out, the fish­er­man, the for­est­er, the clerk, the cooper and the farm­er were “de­pend­ent” on the sys­tem of slave labor; so was the child who ten­ded a loom thir­teen hours a day in a cot­ton-mill. Not only that, the slave was “de­pend­ent” on the mill work­er and the fish­er­man.

Ever since the di­vi­sion of labor, hu­man be­ings have de­pended on oth­ers for the things they need to live. In mod­ern so­ci­ety all laborers “de­pend” on the ex­ploit­a­tion of oth­ers. To at­tempt to give this tru­ism a pro­founder sig­ni­fic­ance is to em­brace the world view of the bour­geois­ie, which holds that its mode of reg­u­lat­ing the so­cial di­vi­sion of labor through the mar­ket is nat­ur­al.

(As an aside, why lim­it the cat­egory of “set­tler” to those from Europe? People from Africa were im­por­ted to the west­ern hemi­sphere to pro­duce sur­plus-value, which was sub­sequently trans­formed in­to cap­it­al. Were they “set­tlers” too? And what about Mex­ic­ans and In­di­ans already here, and Chinese im­por­ted later? They also pro­duced wealth used to dom­in­ate oth­ers.)

Stand­ard bour­geois eco­nom­ics teaches that a job is prop­erty. Set­tlers shares that view, as well as the out­look of the white work­er who thinks that a ra­cial mono­poly of the “bet­ter” jobs is worth de­fend­ing. Who could be more sub­or­din­ated to cap­it­al, more blinded to pro­let­ari­an class in­terests?

No sec­tor of white so­ci­ety has thus far sep­ar­ated it­self cat­egor­ic­ally from the in­famy. Per­haps none ever will. The priv­ileges of the white skin have done their pois­on­ous work. As many people have poin­ted out, class is not a list­ing of in­di­vidu­als by oc­cu­pa­tion but a pro­cess whereby some people come to see they have com­mon in­terests, and that these in­terests in­clude the build­ing of a new so­ci­ety. Only events will de­term­ine wheth­er any sec­tor of European-Amer­ic­ans will take their stand with the glob­al pro­let­ari­at.

For European-Amer­ic­ans who think that re­volu­tion is ne­ces­sary, what bet­ter use could there be of their time, in­tel­li­gence, and en­ergy than the ef­fort to crack open white so­ci­ety? To do that, they need a the­ory that will point out the fis­sures in it, not deny their ex­ist­ence.