it's because they haven't read it

:matt-jokerfied:

no seriously, on the recent chapo episode with brace they went on this 10 minute rant about the book and then every admitted they had never read it

good stuff

  • Spike [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I haven't read Settlers, but here's my attempt at figuring out what its about from posts that have said "read Settlers":

    Working class white people in the US are not the same as working class people of other races, especially those in third world countries. This is because white people benefit from the slavery, racism, and general destruction of other races and third world countries. Therefore it is almost futile trying to get white people to ally with a socialist movement since it will lead to them losing these privileges. It will also require white people having to acknowledge the reality that they have benefited from the subjugation of other countries and races. This is why socialist movements occur more often in third world countries while white people are more likely to turn towards fascism.

    Anyway what's with the conspiracy theory that J Sakai doesn't actually exist?

    • viva_la_juche [they/them, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It’s more an explanation to why white people keep falling for the carrot of petite bourgeois privilege and how they have historically sold out the poc in working class movements for that privilege than it is outright saying it’s futile for poc to organize with white Americans. That organization does require white Americans to take stock of that privilege and keep their eye on the prize of full liberation and not just jump ship for the first concession capital gives exclusively to them, which has historically been our stumbling block. being aware of and acknowledging that history and those conditions is the only way you’ll overcome them en masse. The problem is a lot of white leftists take that critique personally bc they don’t want to reckon with the implications of it.

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        It’s more an explanation to why white people keep falling for the carrot of petite bourgeois privilege and how they have historically sold out the poc in working class movements for that privilege than it is outright saying it’s futile for poc to organize with white Americans.

        While this paragraph is from a completely different book and deals with the contradiction of the first and third world, the message is the same as what you're saying here.

        To say that the theory of unequal exchange means that "'the workers at the center exploit those at the periphery" is meaningless, since only ownership of capital makes exploitation possible. (This also implies accepting a mechanistic relation between standard of living and political attitude, and so reducing the dialectic of the infrastructure and the superstructure to direct economistic determination.) To say, from a different standpoint, that it means that the bourgeoisie of the periphery is, like its proletariat, interested in shaking off the domination of the center, signifies that one has simply forgotten that this bourgeoisie has been formed from the outset in the wake of the bourgeoisie of the center.

    • Cherufe [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      As someone who hasnt read Settlers you nailed this one in the head

      • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Here's a post that is against it. Love to start a book critique by relitigating beef https://thecharnelhouse.org/2017/05/15/dont-bother-reading-settlers-by-j-sakai/

        • Slavic [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          very clear this guy is “not mad” and has not been corncobbed