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The book by J. Sakai, not the type of person, hence the capitalization. There are people who say it's too divisive.

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[-] felipeforte@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Wonderful summary of the book, comrade. While I disagree with some excerpts of the book, such as when Sakai affirms there is no "white proletariat" in the US (sometimes he even affirms there is no proletariat at all), I still think that everyone should read it. But not only read it, but read criticisms of it, analyze them as well, and through this dialectic movement form their own perspective on it. I believe it's still a valuable book which offers many insights into the white supremacist nature of the US and its historical causes.

[-] CountryBreakfast@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 years ago

While I disagree with some excerpts of the book, such as when Sakai affirms there is no “white proletariat” in the US (sometimes he even affirms there is no proletariat at all), I still think that everyone should read it.

This is what detractors say but it is never substantiated as a criticism. By what natural law of capital is it so ubiquitous that a revolutionary proletarian class must exist among colonizers? This criticism usually amounts to disappointment or frustration that the processes of class formation in Amerika differ from that of Western Europe. Settlers is not a description of the moral quality of white people but rather the material process of class formation in settler colonial Amerika and its consequences for labor organizations and for colonized peoples. I read the book and I have yet to see any successful criticism of the book among its mkst common criticisms, I have, frankly, only seen strawmen and white fragility.

[-] felipeforte@lemmygrad.ml -1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

This is what detractors say but it is never substantiated as a criticism. By what natural law of capital is it so ubiquitous that a revolutionary proletarian class must exist among colonizers?

Where did this "revolutionary" come from? You are putting words in my comments where it does not exist. Interesting how you complain about strawmen and begin your comment with one. I am not a "detractor" of J. Sakai's work, I mentioned several times that there's value in it, but a critical reading is definitely essential. So that I can "substantiate" my criticism, here is an excerpt from the very first chapter :

When we point out that Amerika was the most completely bourgeois nation in world history, we mean a four-fold reality: 1. Amerika had no feudal or communal past, but was constructed from the ground up according to the nightmare vision of the bourgeoisie. 2. Amerika began its national life as an oppressor nation, as a colonizer of oppressed peoples. 3. Amerika not only has a capitalist ruling class, but all classes and strata of Euro-Amerikans are bourgeoisified, with a preoccupation for petty privileges and property ownership the normal guiding star of the white masses. 4. Amerika is so decadent that it has no proletariat of its own, but must exist parasitically on the colonial proletariat of oppressed nations and national minorities.

"most completely bourgeois nation", "bourgeoisified", "Amerika (...) has no proletariat of its own". Sakai uses Marxist terms, but how they are used are completely meaningless. What "bourgeoisify" means? How come Amerika has no proletariat of its own? The country is still an industrial powerhouse, it's a producer of commodities as well, therefore it has proletarians producing these commodities. Even slaves to that point, which consists of 60% of the prison population which are obliged to work for several corporations of different economic sectors.

I am making a reasonable critique of this work from a Marxist standpoint. If you can only see "strawmen" and "white fragility", I'm sorry, you are possibly projecting a white fragility or white guilt onto others, because I'm not even white by your standards. For all intents and purposes, I am disgusted by white people in United States. I've seen the shit white women (karens) in this awful country do, it's frankly terrifying. But I am a Marxist, I understand that these people were not at all born this way, they are conditioned by their environment, by white supremacist bourgeois ideology, and that treating them and the ideology that affects them as one and the same is the purest sample of race essentialism.

Under the Nazi Germany, the most vile racist chauvinism was promoted as state ideology, and genocidal rapist campaigns of terror were promoted throughout the whole Europe. Yet, Stalin in 1942, in the midst of an war, said:

It would be ridiculous to see in the Hitlerite clique the German people or the German state. Historical experience proves that Hitlers come and go, but the German people, the German state, remains. The strength of the Red Army resides in the fact that it doesn’t nurture, nor could it nurture, any hatred toward other people, and therefore couldn’t even nurture hatred for the German people; it is educated in the spirit of the equality of all peoples and all races, in the spirit of respect for the rights of other peoples.

Nowhere a Marxist would declare a whole people, and even, the majority of the Statesian people as irredeemable to the point they would claim it is useless to work with them. The white people of the US are captured by bourgeois white supremacist ideology, and instead of self-defeating themselves, all revolutionaries should devise strategies and enhance their agitation and propaganda to fight against this ideology, an effort led by the oppressed ethnic groups. Fighting white supremacy does not mean fighting Statesian white people.

[-] TheConquestOfBed@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I agree in that I think bourgeoisification is a bad term to use when Labor Aristocracy is a perfectly good term for the same idea. But I think some context is needed:

  • America has 20 million millionaires.
  • 50% of Retiring Americans have at least $100,000 in savings, and depend heavily on investments to supplement their income.
  • 16% of millenials have at least $100,000 in savings.
  • 25% of Americans make over $100,000 per year, which puts them in the class of people who can enjoy owning a boat, buy a "second property", or pay off their debts in a few years without too much hassle. The system is working well enough for these people.

Obviously there is a huge rift between these people and the 60% with less than $1000 in savings. I'm not going to deny that they're exploited, as I've said before. But they're essentially fighting the 30-40% with savings and financial planning. The top half of the country lives vastly different lives from the bottom half. It doesn't know what a food bank is and thinks most people using food stamps are exploiting taxpayers. They think they should pay for their own healthcare so they don't have to share it with the dirty poors. They think home ownership is just a matter of personal effort. And they fight tooth and nail to pay less taxes than the bottom 50%. They think they owe nothing to society and society owes nothing to them, and the richest among them propagandize the bottom 50% into believing all the same things.

I think Engels was correct in saying that speculation and investment banking need to completely collapse before most Americans are willing to look at the situation honestly. Until then, PoC seem to be the most likely to understand how bad the situation is, and I've seen them dunk on white libs. Downwardly mobile white people come at a close second place, but it seems like only a small percentage are capable of self-crit. Most seem to prefer the air of superiority their party ideology gives them.

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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2022
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