There’s 2 questions in this post, really.
-
I started reading J. Sakai’s Settlers the other day. I’m finding it very informative and enlightening so far. I’m about a quarter of the way through it. However I have read in various communist spaces online that its a very flawed work that smears William Z. Foster as a racist, that the author is a C.I.A. plant, that the author is a ultra/Maoist, etc. I haven’t studied the communist movement throughout American history too much so I honestly don’t know a lot about Foster but from what I gather from doing some Googling, he’s a pretty beloved figure. This is definitely a gap in my knowledge. Are any of these criticisms founded?
-
Is the 4th of July a reactionary holiday? I feel like I’m going bonkers because (against my better judgement) I’ve been going back and forth with someone arguing whether it is or isn’t. I don’t think any principled communist should be voluntarily celebrating the holiday for reasons that I consider obvious. The holiday is about celebrating America and being uncritically patriotic. The person I’m arguing with is stating that it’s not a reactionary holiday, that America gaining independence from England led to the collapse of the British empire (even though England still has several colonies right now as I’m typing this?), and that communist leaders such as Mao and Castro understood the revolutionary war to be a positive development. Which I don’t really disagree with, I don’t think England losing a colony is a bad thing. But saying “this was one domino out of hundreds that led to slightly more favorable conditions” is different than celebrating. What is the ML take on the 4th of July? Am I completely off base?
On question 2: you shouldn’t celebrate it, but for purposes of recruiting, avoid virtue-signaling. That is, if somebody you know invites you to a 4th of July party, a polite generic excuse is better than a twenty-minute exegesis on why the US is an illegitimate settler-colonialist state. A lot of people are recruitable, but it’s a slow process, and trying to do it on the most sacred American holiday never really works; it’s like trying to convince your friend in a toxic relationship to break up on her anniversary. Ultimately, most ordinary people become communists, not because they were convinced by the ideas of dialectical materialism, but because they see that the communists they do know are trustworthy and have their best interests at heart.
One thing you can do on the fourth of July is use the 1776 revolution as a jumping-off point to talk about British imperialism. I’ve done this on occasion. Start by agreeing with the person you’re talking with: “Yes, the British were quite bad. They were planning to strip-mine the colonies for resources. It’s good that the revolutionaries kicked them out.” Then talk about the structural problems of imperialism and how it keeps countries under-developed, but limit it to Britain, and don’t bring up Marxism yet. That can come later. You are planting a seed, not creating a tree.
Thanks for the reply. I agree, virtue signaling is pointless and turns people away. I haven’t engaged in that since my mid-teens…which are well behind me at this point. It seems like recruitment is a matter of having half-decent social skills.
It seems like recruitment is a matter of having half-decent social skills.
Not even that, so much, though of course it doesn’t hurt. Cheesy as it sounds, what people really need to see is that you care, that you’re genuinely interested in making things better. A lot of us, myself included, started from a place of personal anger and a desire to “stick it to the man;” that’s fine as far as it goes, but ultimately we have to be like Lei Feng and love the people. (Something which, I have to confess, I’m still quite bad at; there’s a reason why Lei Feng is a worldwide icon and I’m just a dude in the States typing in front of a computer).
- Main criticisms of “Settlers” are that not only it is outdated work being rapidly devaluated by the current happenings (and of the past ones too), and that it is undialectical and therefore unmarxist (nobody argue that USA as a absolute core of capitalism is the farthest gone and have most extreme conditions, but by no means it is exceptional as in exempt and immune to marxist analysis). There’s also more like sketchy details about the author itself, but i can’t really comment on that.
You might be interested in this:
https://comraderene.wordpress.com/2020/05/21/settlers-by-j-sakai-un-marxist-trash/
- Absolutely, in current form it is commemoration of genocide, land steal and imperialism.
USA independence not only did not caused collapse of British Empire, but strenghtened and reanimated it for the last century of its existence. American independence was progressive for a time, but only when compared with decaying european absolutism.
Thank you for your response.
I’ll read what you linked here shortly. I’ve found so far that Settlers has explained why white Americans are the way we are (I’m white), though I disagree with Sakai that there is no such thing as a white proletariat and that America is doomed to never see revolution. I may keep reading Settlers, just with a much more critical eye. Thanks again!
By all means, do read it, as long as you look at it critically, there is some good parts there.
Settlers is okay so long as you devote attention to other anticolonial revolutionaries and thinkers. The book isnt an end all be all.
Do you have any other works to recommend? I have a PDF of Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa downloaded that I plan to start on in the next week or so.
There is a shitload of audiobooks about colonialism and settler states if you look in the lemmygrad post about their position on PatSocs.
Thank you! I’ll check out that list.
