J. Sakai: Difference between revisions

Despite using Marxist language throughout, ''Settlers'' is not in fact a Marxist book. The MLM Kevin Rashid Johnson puts it this way:<blockquote>''J. Sakai’s Settlers and anti-Marxist analysis of race (which replaces race for class as the principal form of oppression in Amerika). Settlers cites episodes from the extensive history of “white” racial oppression of people of color in Amerika 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.''

''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”.''<ref>https://rashidmod.com/?p=1125</ref></blockquote>

Sakai also distorts history and selectively quotes to make various white socialist figures look as bad as possible multiple times throughout the book. For instance, he says<blockquote>These Japanese laborers were subjected to the most vicious persecution and exploitation, with the bourgeois politicians and press stirring up mob terror against them constantly. Both the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs and the A.F.L. unions helped lead the anti-Asian campaign among the settler masses.<ref>https://readsettlers.org/ch6.html </ref></blockquote>"Socialist Party of Eugene Debs" seems to imply Debs was responsible for or involved with this chauvinism. Yet this was a policy pursued by the ''right wing'' of the Socialist Party and Eugene Deb always opposed it.<blockquote>Eugene Debs was outraged by the Party's debate on immigration. His views were published in the International Socialist Review shortly after the Congress- which, typically, he did not attend. Debs felt that the majority report represented a thorough capitulation to the AFL-"civic federation unionism." He called it "utterly unsocial istic, reactionary, and in truth outrageous," and warned, "If Socialism, international revolutionary Socialism, does not stand staunchly, unflinchingly, and uncompromisingly for the working class and for the oppressed masses of all lands, then it stands for none and its claim is a false pretense and its profession a delusion and a snare."<ref>https://www.jstor.org/stable/40401319 p. 11-12</ref></blockquote>

A notorious example of misquoting that's been pointed out for years<ref>https://lefty.pictures/post/view/16285</ref><ref>https://erich-arbor.medium.com/the-anti-marxist-elitism-of-j-sakais-settlers-409ff2d496ee</ref> is his attempt to portray William Z. Foster as some sort of white supremacist would-be lynch mob leader. <blockquote>In his 1920 history of the strike, Foster (the supposed "communist") repeated the lie that Afrikan workers had "lined up with the bosses."<ref>Not an actual Foster quote. </ref> In fact, Foster even said that in resolving the differences between Euro-Amerikan and Afrikan labor "The negro has the more difficult part" since the Afrikan worker was becoming "a professional strike-breaker." And militant white workers knew what they were supposed to do to a "professional strike-breaker.</blockquote><blockquote>Foster's '''lynch mob oratory''' was only restrained by the formality expected of a Euro-Amerikan "communist" leader. His white-supremacist message was identical to but more politely clothed than the crude rants of the Ku Klux Klan. He warned that the capitalists were grooming Afrikans as "as race of strike-breakers, with whom to hold the white workers in check; on much the same principle as the Czars used the Cossacks to keep in subjugation the balance of the Russian people." It's easy to see how Foster became such a popular leader among the settler workers.<ref>https://readsettlers.org/ch6.html</ref></blockquote>But let's read this quote, where Foster says that he's confident that black workers ''won't'' become dedicated strikebreakers, in full: <blockquote>They know little of the race problem in industry who declare that it can be settled merely by the unions opening their doors to the negroes. It is much more complex than that, and will require the best thought that conscientious whites '''and''' blacks can give it. '''The negro has the more difficult part to solve, in resisting the insidious efforts of unscrupulous white employers and misguided intellectuals of his own race to make a professional strike-breaker of him. But I am confident that he will win out and will take his place where he belongs in the industrial fight, side by side with the white worker.'''<ref>https://www.marxists.org/archive/foster/1920/great-steel-strike-its-lessons/ch11.htm</ref></blockquote>Now more Sakai:<blockquote>No longer was it just a question of some Afrikans not following the orders of the white labor. Now Foster was openly saying that the entire Afrikan "race" was the enemy. Could the imperialists have asked for more, than to have the leading "communist" trade-union leader help them whip up the oppressor nation masses to repress the Afrikan nation?