Hey all,
I’m currently developing a Marxist-Leninist analysis of settler colonialism, especially in light of the situation in Palestine, and am going to read Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat by J. Sakai for the first time. Before I do I was just curious what other comrades think of the book and its analysis? It seems a pretty controversial text among many online Marxist groups, to whatever extent that matters, but as an Indigenous communist I feel having a clear and principled stance on the settler question is important for all serious communists. I’m not sure if I’ll agree with Sakai specifically, but since I generally agree with the opinions of y’all, I was curious as to your thoughts on the book.
This Haywood piece, while I find much lacking, tackles the root of MLism applied to Turtle Island. The USA is a settler state and the bastion of Imperialism, outside of fleeing and fighting on the side of 3rd workers, there isn’t much Communists here can do besides fight the US from inside. There are specific on continent forces that uphold global Imperialism and allow the US to behave the way it does, and indigenous people are at the fore-front of contesting US, Canadian, and Mexican monopoly extraction that fuels empire. So even from a tactical standpoint, Communists are failing the climate and the victims of imperialism by ignoring contests at home and not supporting indigenous nations. Africans in the US like natives are subject to genocide, and have a historical orientation against the settler state. Like Haywood says an African contest in the western continents will shred America to pieces, giving our comrades around the world a chance to breathe, build up, and assist us in defeating empire. The CPUSA failed to vanguard the 50s and 60s and the root of this is revisionism that started in the early 50s. By tailing the Liberal Assimilationists on the Negro Question the CPUSA had in actuality supported the slow genocide of African cultures for the safety of Imperialism, since then where have we found ourselves? Mass institutionalization of Africans, mass sterilization, mass homelessness, mass displacement, and our leaders murdered, just as Haywood predicted. The counter revolution against Africans during the second Red Scare ushered in the uni-polar world, we must see that the failures of socalled vanguards here had global consequences.