As Sakai admits, he's a passionate non-academic so his argumentation doesn't meet 'academic' standards, but it's still really really helpful for popular education and popular understanding. It really helped me make sense of how Fordism and quasi-social democracy under the new deal were allowed to happen.

I'm still partway through the audiobook (I've just got the the part where they're discussing race tensions in the pacific region against Chinese immigrants).

I can't speak for what grand thematic conclusions it may or may not draw, but the historical vignettes of systemic racially motivated horror inflicted upon are worth it. It feels like a ceaseless horror show of dehumanizing violence with no justification for it except the human cost of attaining more and more capital.

If Sakai wants us to take home the lesson that there never has been a proper proletariat as that role always went to the literal chattel slaves and cheap immigrant labor, then I think that's a fair take, but I'd also like to see it contrasted with an opposing, but equally materialistic, dialectical and intersectional historical narrative. People's History of the USA is next on my list.

One thing that stayed with me was the CPUSA's revisionism of historical events, and even the first socialist labor movements, unions, and parties wanting to exclude Chinese immigrants from their midst.

Here's someone tearing into the book

https://thecharnelhouse.org/2017/05/15/dont-bother-reading-settlers-by-j-sakai/