The book by J. Sakai, not the type of person, hence the capitalization. There are people who say it’s too divisive.
I think there’s value in the book. The author made extensive research to develop it. However, the main thesis of the book is really awful. It essentializes white people as irreparably racist, and it conveys a defeatist message altogether, implying there’s nothing to be done to fight it, and that white people cannot be allies. It places the determination of race above class when it comes to white people.
The thing is, the majority of Statesians are white. If you declare that white people cannot be allies and that they are intrinsically enemies, you are neglecting 61% of the population of the US. There are some critiques of this work which makes this point more clear, take a look:
https://comraderene.wordpress.com/2020/05/21/settlers-by-j-sakai-un-marxist-trash/
https://erich-arbor.medium.com/the-anti-marxist-elitism-of-j-sakais-settlers-409ff2d496ee
https://thecharnelhouse.org/2017/05/15/dont-bother-reading-settlers-by-j-sakai/I think those who defend this work to be of utmost value to the US radical left should address those critiques. I personally think the Settlers thesis is very beneficial to the bourgeoisie who wishes that the working class never unite and fight racism together. In the words of the late Fred Hampton,
We don’t think you fight fire with fire best; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity.
Settlers is probably the one book I hear the most different things about, where I will read 5 articles/writings on it and all 5 people come away with a different thesis. At this point I think I need to accept reading Lenin isn’t enough and just read settlers because there seems to be 2 general groups, one saying Settlers is 100% necessary and calls for uniting of settler and colonized proles and another group who says Settlers was pushed by the CIA to keep the working class divided along race lines and not uniting around class.
Tbh, the problem is just that white people are little kids who can’t handle criticism. Sakai ends his book by saying:
The thesis we have advanced about the settleristic and non-proletarian nature of the U.S. oppressor nation is a historic truth, and thereby a key to leading the concrete struggles of today. Self-reliance and building mass institutions and movements of a specific national character, under the leadership of a communist party, are absolute necessities for the oppressed. Without these there can be no national liberation. This thesis is not “anti-white” or “racialist” or “narrow nationalism.” Rather, it is the advocates of oppressor nation hegemony over all struggles of the masses that are promoting the narrowest of nationalisms — that of the U.S. settler nation. When we say that the principal characteristic of imperialism is parasitism, we are also saying that the principal characteristic of settler trade unionism is parasitism, and that the principal characteristic of settler radicalism is parasitism.
Every nation and people has its own contribution to make to the world revolution. This is true for all of us, and obviously for Euro-Amerikans as well. But this is another discussion, one that can only really take place in the context of breaking up the U.S. Empire and ending the U.S. oppressor nation.
He EXPLICITLY states that his goal is using historical materialism to understand the failure of American communism, but readers don’t like what history says about them and close their ears. This is why I personally don’t have faith in them. But Sakai’s thesis is not mine. He wants people to break the colonial state, and to do that you’re going to need white people to become disillusioned and see it for what it is.
If you think that that disillusionment is anti-white, then you’re basically admitting that white people and imperialism cannot be separated, and that you have to advocate keeping colonialism alive to avoid hurting their feelings.
Random side point, but look at all our anti-imperialist works: nearly all of them depict the struggles against colonialism. Settler’s is unique, because it shows the other side: it holds a mirror up to the culture and history of the colonizer nation: what are his institutions, what is his history, how has he acted and treated people.
In movies like star wars, the anti-imperialist struggle is told through the eyes of colonized, while the colonizers are depicted as mindless automatons ala storm troopers, and soulless military leaders and and killers like vader. I imagine if george lucas had even one storyline focus on the lifestyles of the empire’s citizens or aristocracy, or dealt with the more complicated treatment of them being real people and not simply brainless drones, it would’ve touched too close to home and offended euro-amerikkkans, when depicting the Vietnam vs USA metaphor.
Love star wars obviously, but I can’t think of a single work of fiction that deals with the other side of settler-colonialism, and the benefits it brings to the colonizer’s lifestyles.
