No White Proletariat

[28350]

What are some responses (either positive or negative) to J. Sakai's Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat, and the claim that there is no white proletariat in the US?

[blake 3:17]

I think the conclusion is wrong, but the book does have some valuable historical stuff on racism within the trade union movement.

[Vendetta]

I would give that claim a condescending look.

[28350]

I think the conclusion is wrong, but the book does have some valuable historical stuff on racism within the trade union movement.

I have the same view. I think white proletarians have an elevated status, but not one that fundamentally changes their relation to the means of production.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

What are some responses (either positive or negative) to J. Sakai's Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat

http://water.epa.gov/type/watersheds/outreach/images/trash.gif

[lines]

Claiming there is no white proletariat is a good way to convince the white proletariat to join the tea party crowd.:(

[syndicat]

the thesis (also put forth by MIM and other extremist Maoist 3rd worldist types) that the American working class shares in exploitation of third world nations has been refuted (e.g. by Charlie Post in his essay on the labor aristocracy thesis).

when he says the only way forward is for each racialized ethnic group to pursue a separatist agenda, that is a counsel of despair...or it's a recipe for race war. breaking up the working class that way, and tying each ethic/racial group to its elite, means there couldn't possibly be a revolutionary challenge to US capitalism. Sometimes these extremist Maoist types talk about the 3rd world rising up and invading or destroying the U.S.

[28350]

http://www.angelfire.com/ga/sweetgeorgiapeach/images1/TrashCanC.gif
I value your input but it seems whatever site you got the image from (angelfire, perhaps?) has disabled hotlinking.
EDIT: nvm, I was able to find the link with my magic powers (of reading the source code). If anyone else can't see it, it's a picture of a garbage can:
http://www.angelfire.com/ga/sweetgeorgiapeach/images1/TrashCanC.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/view-source:http://www.angelfire.com/ga/sweetgeorgiapeach/images1/TrashCanC.gif)

the thesis (also put forth by MIM and other extremist Maoist 3rd worldist types) that the American working class shares in exploitation of third world nations has been refuted (e.g. by Charlie Post in his essay on the labor aristocracy thesis).

when he says the only way forward is for each racialized ethnic group to pursue a separatist agenda, that is a counsel of despair...or it's a recipe for race war. breaking up the working class that way, and tying each ethic/racial group to its elite, means there couldn't possibly be a revolutionary challenge to US capitalism. Sometimes these extremist Maoist types talk about the 3rd world rising up and invading or destroying the U.S.
I think you misunderstood me. I'm not asking if there's an American proletariat. I'm asking about the claim that there's no white American proletariat.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I don't know how the author justifies their claims, but the notion that there are no white wage labourers in the U.S. is objectively false.

[lines]

The brazen racism towards white people by many people in the left is motivating much of the white working class in America to become white nationalists. I really think that we as leftists have a responsibility to make it so that people of all races do not feel excluded from the left wing cause.

I am a leftist and to me being leftist is about the class struggle. Unfortunately in America the left-wing cause has been used as a vehicle for bashing white males. It would be very foolish of us to alienate white people from our ranks.

[StalinFanboy]

MTWism has nothing to do with communism fa real

[syndicat]

I think you misunderstood me. I'm not asking if there's an American proletariat. I'm asking about the claim that there's no white American proletariat.

that's not the question you posed in the OP. you asked for responses to the book. his conclusion favoring racial separatism follows from his assumptions.

in any event, it's simply false there is no white working class in the U.S. in fact a majority of the working class in the U.S. is white...tho their proportion is declining. moreover, a majority of the poor in the USA are white.

the "proletariat" are those who satisfy these conditions:

1. the social arrangement is such that they are forced to seek out jobs from employers, and must submit to the domination of the managerial regimes of those employers.

2. they do not dominate other workers or participate in management of them, that is, they are not a part of the class of managers and high-end professionals who control and manage workers.

Exploitation of labor is only possible because of this relationship of subordination to dominating classes.

now, my estimate is that about 3/4 of the population are part of the working class by this definition.

even if you were to use the somewhat more restricted definition Michael Zweig uses in "The Working Class Majority" the working class is still over 60 percent of the population.

and a very large proportion (a majority actually) are purely of European ancestry (which I suppose we can take as the definition of "white").

so, objectively, yes, there is obviously a white working class.

such a person might be racist, but this doesn't make them to be part of a different class. class is about the power relations over social production, and in particular over the labor of those who do the work in social production.

also, treating solely the non-white as the working class becomes problematic because there are many white workers who do exactly the same jobs, have the same role in the economy, as workers of color.

[BlackMarx]

Here, let me post an excerpt from Socialistworker.org (ISO Online Newsletter). They wrote an interesting article that I think gives a good insight.


The question of white workers
Much of the controversy about Marxism and race is over whether Marxist theory appropriately comprehends the centrality of race in U.S. society and beyond. But what is really at the heart of the debate is the view of revolutionary Marxists that: one, white workers do not have a privileged status in this country; two, white workers can gain revolutionary consciousness; and three, therefore a multiracial and united working-class revolution is possible.
Marxists start with the premise that all workers under capitalism are oppressed, but some workers face further oppression because of additional discrimination like racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-immigrant ideas, religious oppression, etc. Thus, in the United States, white workers are oppressed, but not to the same degree as non-white workers.
Oppression is not just an ideological tool to divide groups of workers, but has real material consequences as well. Because of racism, for example, the median household income for white families as of 2006 was over $50,000 a year. For Blacks, it was just under $32,000. By every measure of the quality of life in the U.S., whites are on the top and Blacks are on the bottom.
Marxists do not deny that these differences exist, nor do we deny that oppression means the lives of some workers are actually worse than others. For Marxists, the question is the cause of the differences. Are the disparities the result of white workers benefiting directly from the oppression of Black workers? That is, do white workers make more on average because Black workers make less?
To accept this explanation means to ignore the biggest beneficiary in the disparity in wages--employers and bosses. That employers are able to use racism to justify paying Black workers less brings the wages of all workers down--the employers enjoy the difference.
This is not to deny that white workers receive some advantages in U.S. society because they are white in a racist society. If they did not get some advantage--and with it, the illusion that the system works for them--then racism would not be effective in dividing Black and white workers.
The distinctions and differences among workers function to create a distorted view of reality that turns the traits attributed to the oppressed into a kind of "common sense," which in turn deepens those divisions. African Americans are poorer, have worse housing, go to worse schools, have a shorter life span and generally live in worse conditions, which helps to perpetuate the image in the minds of white workers that African Americans are inferior.
But the problem with so-called "common sense" is that it is based on surface appearances and information, and does not reach deeper to give a systemic explanation for the disparities that exist in society. Instead, it creates what Frederick Engels was the first to call "false consciousness."
False consciousness is simply ruling-class ideology that is used to explain away or cover up material reality. The point is that white workers, to the extent that they accept white supremacy, contribute to capitalism's ability to exploit them more effectively. The purely "psychological" advantage obscures the very real material deficit that racist oppression helps reinforce.
Du Bois explained how "false consciousness" worked in the South and why a labor movement never developed there in the aftermath of slavery:

The race element was emphasized in order that property holders could get the support of the majority of white laborers and make it more possible to exploit Negro labor. But the race philosophy came as a new and terrible thing to make labor unity or labor class-consciousness impossible. So long as the Southern white laborers could be induced to prefer poverty to equality with the Negro, just so long was a labor movement in the South made impossible.
For Du Bois, racism wasn't metaphysical, nor did it exist autonomously from class. Its development is a result of one class' efforts to keep power away from another. Du Bois did come up with a famous formulation of poor whites gaining a "psychological wage"--as opposed to a material wage--from racism. But the psychological wage was to make the white worker feel superior because he wasn't Black, even though he would have nothing material to show for it.
This leads to the question: If it isn't in the interest of white workers to be racist, then why do they accept racist ideas? But the same question could be asked of any group of workers. Why do men accept sexist ideas? Why do Black workers accept racist anti-immigrant ideas? Why do many Black Caribbean and African immigrant workers think that Black Americans are lazy? Why do American workers of all races accept many racist ideas about Arabs and Muslims? If most people agree that it would be in the interest of any group of workers to be more united than divided, then why do workers accept reactionary ideas?


Read here for the rest of the article at Socialistworker. I would post the link but I don't have 25 post yet (gonna rack them u preal quick lol)



While there is white proletariat in the main sense, that yes there are white workers. The problem is a lot of them have accepted a bourgeoisie conscious and white supremacy is a functional illusion that has given a sense of reality of meritocracy and liberty through free markets to white proletariat (on the backs of disenfranchised minorities, of course). The problem for the Left in the US, particularly is the white Left has a very anemic, if not weak critique of racism because many white Left (white, liberals, progressives come from petit-bourgeoisie backgrounds, thus have more reformist politics for a problem that is fundamental and require radical, if not militant, solutions. I think if there is going to be struggle against Capitalism in the U.S, it has to be predominately a minority led movement because white supremacy is one of the main pillars of Capitalism; not that Capitalism couldn't have created other forms of supremacy if it came from say; Africa or Asia.

Minorities, especially the black community, have been the tip of the spear for leading democratic movements in the U.S that have benefited millions (Civil Rights Act). The problem is the Black Left has basically been wandering in the wilderness since Black Nationalist (Read: Black Capitalist) have co-opted the Black liberation movement and basically have defused the power that the white Left (who are now operating on their own terms without any strong ideological support from the black community) rested on. The black community needs to get radical again but its going to be hard with this Obama delusion and all the Poverty/Race pimps who care about their careers and not poor and working people (of all colors).

[Sixiang]

I don't know how the author justifies their claims, but the notion that there are no white wage labourers in the U.S. is objectively false.
This. I am of European descent and am a proletarian living in America. So are my parents and my parents before them.

[the last donut of the night]

it's like trying to start an organization that claims the earth is flat....oh wait

[blake 3:17]

I would give that claim a condescending look. OK. I first read the book nearly 20 years ago and have read it again since then. While very provocative and informative, I think it fails to deliver on outlining an effective political strategy.


Claiming there is no white proletariat is a good way to convince the white proletariat to join the tea party crowd.

Absolutely. And that means linking the struggles of people of colour with the class struggle, both within the official labour movement and outside in other community-worker organizations and movements. When I was in the Auto Workers union, I was very proud that our activist caucus (which was overwhelmingly White) took part in anti-racist and pro-immigrant actions. Symbolic actions of this kind don't end racism on their own, but they're a start. Certain types of militant unionism can actually go together with right wing politics. One of the most militant Auto Worker locals here had a leadership that was supportive of the Reform Party -- a populist rightwing alternative to the Progressive Conservatives.


the thesis (also put forth by MIM and other extremist Maoist 3rd worldist types) that the American working class shares in exploitation of third world nations has been refuted (e.g. by Charlie Post in his essay on the labor aristocracy thesis).

I think Post falls for economism on this front. Knowing him, I do know that he is completely commited to anti-racist and anti-imperialist politics.

The folks I know with best take on class stratification do come out of Maoist or post-Maoist tendencies.

[Reznov]

Racism and no White Proletariat in the U.S.?

You guys are living in the past!

Equal rights for all proletariats to suffer equally under capitalism!

[Reznov]

The brazen racism towards white people by many people in the left is motivating much of the white working class in America to become white nationalists. I really think that we as leftists have a responsibility to make it so that people of all races do not feel excluded from the left wing cause.

I am a leftist and to me being leftist is about the class struggle. Unfortunately in America the left-wing cause has been used as a vehicle for bashing white males. It would be very foolish of us to alienate white people from our ranks.

Very true. One argument many center-right leaning people I see are usually a result of what you just said.

Excellent post.

[Reznov]

This is actually correct in a way. Dividing workers based on whatever external factors has always been a capitalist/Stalinist strategy.


Could I ask what makes you say Stalinist?

[Pretty Flaco]

If you're going to argue that there is no white proletariat in the USA, if you apply the same type of logic to a larger scale than there is no proletariat in the first world. Being proletarian is determined by relation to labor.

[The American]

Didn't we handle this whole "color-of-your-skin-determines-your-socioeconomic-status" thing awhile ago?

[Red Bayonet]

The book was written by an Asian-American, who was the recipient of some rascist treatment by a few white workers, and decided to take it out on all white workers. The book, basically, is proof that any idiot can write a book, and find a publisher for it.