.
Addendum
.
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
.
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
.
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.
My 2001 quote, taken out of context from a private conversation, still does not indicate that race is not the driving force of my political ideology. On the contrary, my opposition to Jews isn’t based on class struggle, but precisely on race. -Billy Roper
https://theroperreportsite.wordpress.com/
don’t trust a review of a book that is unable to actually cite anything from the book
Of course communism is white supremacist
*very long wet farting sound*
“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.” amazingly insipid
At last a communist book that isn’t written by a white jew
tHE rHizzonE is the cool place to hang out. You can find most of the cool comrades there. In tHE rHizzonE you can just chill and do whatever and totally relax. “all reactionaries are paper tigers” is the tHE rHizzonE motto, for example, that’s how laid back it is there. Show up if you want to have a good time. Another good reason to show up is if you want to hang out with comrades.
You know what’s the worst thing? This is isn’t even a good review, probably is one of your most crappy posts until today, but thanks to these butthurt sheeps we are missing a real opportunity to discuss this subject on a more serious level.
For example, Moufawad-Paul (while ranting) indicated this:
«Come on: Wolfe’s opening tirade before he posts the Ignatiev article is trash. There is nothing even approaching an argument in it and he demonstrates his refusal to read and think. For example, he approvingly cites McCreary’s review and Lamb’s review. I criticized these, demonstrating how they both didn’t even read the material they criticized (they attributed claims to Settlers that were not in Settlers), in a review that Wolfe links to but: a) doesn’t even represent the arguments made in that review or bother responding to them; b) misrepresents the review (implying that I endorse Settlers 100%); c) gets my name wrong, implying that he can’t read or is just an asshole.»
which honestly sounds kind of on point, maybe(?). I don’t know, all these 1rst world problems sound kind of weird to me (a South American). What I’m trying to say is, ignore these rants, but maybe this is a good opportunity to write down a USA’s 18th Brumaire and explain all the difference between sub-classes, their material conditions, their interests and their developments these last 2 centuries. I don’t know, it’s early morning and probably I should stop following this show-bussinessy gossiping. Good luck with the cyber-lynching, it will fade in a week or two.
>>but maybe this is a good opportunity to write down a USA’s 18th Brumaire and explain all the difference between sub-classes, their material conditions, their interests and their developments these last 2 centuries.
its called “Settlers” by j. sakai
Actually, I’ve been reading a little (tiny) bit of the book yesterday. It’s interesting for say the least, but I can’t help but conclude -if all the data and analysis in the book is true- POC minorities in first world countries should be classified as a second ladder of the labour aristocracy, at least compared to -for example- copper miners in my country (you know, like the famous ones who got trapped in 2010), Mexican automotive industry, Salvadorean cane cutters, Sri Lankan tea harvesters, etc. In other words, the problem isn’t the ‘white proletariat’ but the totality of ‘waged workers from developed countries’.
That sounds counter-intuitive :/
>>In other words, the problem isn’t the ‘white proletariat’ but the totality of ‘waged workers from developed countries’.
Dont know if you read Spanish or if you know this work by the brasilian marxist Mauro Marini. If you do not know it, give it a go, it explains clearly this contradiction inside the international working class.
http://www.marini-escritos.unam.mx/024_dialectica_dependencia.html
And Ross: I think we would all benefit if you reviewed this work too.
The child who made your shoes wouldn’t need more than 20 minutes to have a complete understanding of the concept of a labor aristocracy, and yet like every other blood-gargling Trot imbecile you managed to read multiple books on the topic and remain totally dumbfounded through shear force of will.
That’s the sign of a great intellectual.
get a better thesis adviser, doughboy. as always, you wrote a ton and managed to say little, except that you consider yourself very well read.
if there’s no class “analysis” in settlers, there isn’t one in Marx’s manifesto either: Sakai uses virtually identical social relations to demonstrate why colonialism was so effective in driving landless workers from a europe in which they possessed decreasing social mobility to the “new world.” Sakai does not deny an international proletariat: he points out how consciously parts of it have used their marginal advantages to oppress other parts for their own benefit. this should definitely make us uncomfortable because it doesn’t permit us to take refuge in theories of false consciousness, of a victimized working class duped by their oppressors into kicking the next guy in line. sakai also does marxists the favor of pointing out a huge difference between african/indigenous labor and the white working classes: the relation of the latter to capital actually gave them a chance of becoming landowners, to say nothing of the ones who went to own slaves themselves. the white working classes have often acted in full awareness of what it had to gain by reproducing slavery and racism, respectively. oh. pardon me, let me write a fuck’n essay on “whiteness” you pedantic ninny. the point is that by downplaying white supremacy’s integral role in america’s history (with the help and often disturbing zeal of white working people) for a much nicer narrative about proletarian class struggle, you write a moving portrait missing the one thing that makes it history. is that a problematic claim because you know of several counter-examples? sure: everything is problematic if you spend enough time looking for cracks, and that might be make a difference if your line of work is writing provocative hot takes, but it changes very little.
go read some erik olin wright or bourdieu and then blog about it.
Tickled pink that it took in the neighborhood of 6 weeks from invoking a curse on the Rhizzone that Ross “Hot to Trots” Wolfe did in fact visit them with a haunting.
This shit sucks, go outside and stop fucking writing.
Ok, great, you’ll post comments, but do you accept any of this criticism, “comrade?”
Tbf most Rhizzone posters can’t handle it either but they’re nowhere near this out of touch.
Love the article, keep up the good work!
“a small group of dedicated and obviously disturbed trolls”
No, actually it is your entire actually-existing Left.
Good post. Third worldists are scum.
Good post. Third worldists are scum.
Pingback: Communist Reading List (Ultra-Left) – Eden Sauvage
in which a white supremacist gets called out! http://docdro.id/xuPYKF4
I can’t fucking believe someone tried to send a mob to your house for this. What a fucking mess. Can’t believe this person’s friends can’t see through her bullshit.