I have two important questions for Zig Forums.
1. Has the white working class(read: actual proles and not small business owners without a degree) in America become too reactionary to salvage for socialism? Have they gone full lumpen?
2. Is there a Marxist interpretation of why the children of bourgies and those of "high education" join and dominate organizations like the D.S.A. and other American socialist organizations as opposed to actual working class people?
The white working class in America is a lot like the working class of Israel or working class Protestants in Belfast, settler colonialism means they have more to lose than their chains, thus aren't properly "proletarian"
Ebic
The stereotyped reactionary blue collar worker is a small fraction of the working class. The working class largely works retail and service industry jobs. The majority of the working class is checked out, apathetic and apolitical. Unions getting kneecapped and made entirely powerless is probably the biggest reason the working class doesn’t join leftist organizations. They aren’t exposed to leftist politics through the workplace anymore because at will employment and “right to work” has made it impossible to organize on the job. Workers are too tired and beaten down to seek out leftist politics in their free time. Get rid of legislation that kills union organizing and I’m sure you’d see an uptick in leftist organizing outside of academic circles.
I have yet to see a refutation of Settlers
Settlers is retarded.
There you go. All the refutation it deserves.
t. White leftoid
there is no white proletariat how many times do we have go over this if you're white and not rich buy guns and prepare for Nazi masturbation fantasy the kikes are whipping the poc into a frenzied blood lust that will make the Haitian revolution look like a diversity seminar
I don't know what world you're living in but it sounds based af cracka
Leftism in america is socdem at best except a handful of irrelevant other groups, so over course boojie kids want to join.
I'm like 9 beers in, wdhmbt?
god i can't wait to see you fags lose another world war
yes except this time it will be in literal self defense
A lot of it is education, the poor tend to be much less educated than the rich, both formally in a school and informally at home. The lack of education tends to make them easy targets for porky propaganda and idpol.
who hurt you sweaty?
just be nice to black people and they'll be nice to you it's not hard unless you are literally autistic
maybe black people are the autistic ones
did you ever think of that. they're certainly not very nice as a rule.
Whoever came up with the idea of tying education funding to property taxes should be tortured and executed.
The core of the argument of Settlers is that the US had a high agrarian population and higher than average wages than other European countries therefore making its proletariat reactionary.
But, wait, weren't most European countries which Sakai lionizes in the book peasant majority until the late 19th-early/mid 20th century?It isn't a well-known fact but it is a fact nonetheless that Brazil of all countries had a higher median wage than Italy and Spain–which is why South American actually attracted millions of European immigrants in the late 19th century.
If we applied settlers framework to Latin America then we would be forced to conclude that even much of South America is just hopelessly reactionary. A more succinct and coherent explanation would be that the New World in general experienced a labor shortage in the 19th century which led to higher than average wages in those places where slavery/feudal labor-systems were abolished or inapplicable.
Going by Sakai's reasoning since European workers earned far better wages than those available in Asia in the 18th-19th centuries we would also be forced to conclude that they were a hopeless labor aristocracy. In Sakai's pseudo-Marxist understanding higher living standards cannot be the result of natural historical development, technology, or class struggle but solely through colonialist pillage. What could Sakai's frame of reference tell us about the fact that Europeans were already the richest people in the early modern age even before capitalism itself became super-charged during the "Great Divergence"? Not much.
What would Sakai have to tell us about the fact that wherever Europeans settled en masse they also improved the economies of the regions they settled? Not much except maybe, in accordance with the eternal laws of fairness and justice, that it shouldn't have happened.
Sakai's argument seems to be that the US white proletariat is a lost cause because there was no Paris Commune in the US. But the Paris Commune was also a historical specific event that wasn't recreated anywhere prior to 1917. The US proletariat did play a key-role in the second American revolution (known as the Civil War) that destroyed the slave-system.
With the exception of the counter-revolutionary violence in Germany and France–the US labor wars were far bloodier than comparable uproars in Europe. Only in the US did the government bomb striking workers from the air during a guerrilla war of laborers that killed hundreds. The term "redneck" itself stems from the West Virginia miners who wore red bandanas to signify their class loyalty.
Of course, Adolphe Reed BTFOs this stuff far more eloquently than I ever could. Give him a read:
nonsite.org
bennorton.com
People who throw away white proles as "reactionary" ignore that most poor white proles, as much as poor non-white proles, don't vote(about 50%), historically can't or don't vote(Jim Crow Southern states often had a peak turnout of 25% and before Jim Crow the state governments were a coalition of poor white and poor black populists)and an even larger chunk aren't even registered or legally allowed to vote. There's also great evidence to suggest among these non-voters, the vast majority(75%+) favor restoring union rights, and most of these non-voters are white and low-income.
They don't, the poor among the white working class are underrepresented at the polls by huge margins while the rest of the "white working class voters" are small business owners, low ranking managers, police, etc. Professions that have high turnout and are lumpen bootlickers to the core.
People also play ignorant to the fact that prole whites have shown revolutionary potential before.
Also the 1919 Seattle strike, where (virtually all-white) workers took over the city in an attempt to establish socialism.
Or even Richard Ojeda, who's twitter feed consists of him calling out people as "capitalists" got 45% of the vote in deep-red Trumpian country.
Fucking love Adolphe Reed.
Settlers is a leftoid take
That aside, isn't calling them inherently reactionary deterministic to begin with and anti-Marxist?
Yes
Saw this on stupidpol the other day. Fucking love it when a radlib complains about not being able to call him a nigger, legit makes me kek my brains out.
This. Ultimately it depends on how you define "working class." American reactionaries have a tendency to describe all working white men as workers even if they are petit bourg.
You're right, user, he's pretty great.
The trick to survive as a white man in that scenario – like in the ghetto – is to be the craziest motherfucker in the room. Through that, you will gain respect from the black masses as they take out their much-needed and justified revenge on whitey.
Fucking hell. That's somehow far more aggravating than actually being called an uncle tom. It's like a white person who doesn't even have the decency to call you a nigger and instead just calls you the "n-word"
The amount of mental gymnastics required to reach that point is incredible. One minute it's a white guy criticising white guys for not listening to the concerns of black people, the next minute after hearing he's black being like "fucking uppity n-words"
How do people get to this point, it's really pathetic
Come on now.
White people who made less than median income (
Great post.
I’d also like to add that 35-40% of adults are favorable to socialism while only 25% of regular voters are.
Reactionary lumpen historically are much more easily motivated to get out and vote and seemingly dominate the electorate on the part of white proles.
You don't need to refute the theory to see that telling the majority of proles they have no place in the revolution unless they give up the land their ancestors have lived on for generations is only going to make them hate you.