82
J. Sakai in 1983 (thelemmy.club)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/thedeprogram@lemmygrad.ml
35 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 16 points 4 days ago (9 children)

So were the striking miners at the Battle of Blair Mountain not proletarian?

What Marx saw in this class fluidity was the ultimate privilege of settler society — the privilege of having no proletariat at all. He later pointed out: “Hence the relatively high standard of wages in the United States. Capital may there try its utmost. It cannot prevent the labor market from being continuously emptied by the continuous conversion of wages laborers into independent, self-sustaining peasants. The position of wages laborer is for a very large part of the American people but a probational state, which they are sure to leave within a shorter or longer term.”(31) And Marx was writing not about a momentary or temporary phase, but about basic conditions that were true for well over two centuries in Amerika.

Who exactly are these "independent, self-sustaining peasants" in today's US? A small percentage of large farm owners?

I'm sorry but when I read stats like that over 50% don't own a home (either are a dependent living with someone who does or are renting), or that somewhere around the same number are living paycheck to paycheck and could easily get taken out by surprise medical costs because of the predatory healthcare system, or that the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world and a lot of homelessness, I feel like laughing at an analysis that paints USians as somehow not proletarian. Not out of rudeness or intent to mock, but because the disparity between what the analysis is implying and the real lived experiences people are having is absurd.

That the settler aspect has a negative impact on the revolutionary potential of the US, I'd fully agree on. Where I tend to take issue is talking about the people there in a way that makes them sound more privileged than they actually are, for one, and tends to erase the broader strata of it, for another. Surely you cannot tell me a black revolutionary in prison is the same as a white landowner descended from settlers who came over generations ago and who lays a bogus claim to some land that was never theirs to begin with. Or that a white person who is homeless and struggling to survive, whose privilege in life amounts to probably not getting shot at by cops, lives a decadent, parasitic life. Or even that a white working class person working a dead-end minimum wage job to make ends meet and hoping they can retire someday is going to transition into an independent, self-sustaining peasant any day now.

I'm sure these analyses made some sense within the time period they were made, but part of marxism, as a science, is observing further as time goes on and, if needed, reevaluating a view of what is occurring. Mao didn't go around talking to the peasantry to learn the conditions because Marx hadn't written an analysis on the Chinese peasantry from afar yet. At a certain point, we have to dig into the nitty gritty of it and take note of it in detail. Theory is a a paradigm-changing difference for the big picture stuff, but it does not replace digging into what is occurring right now. One of the things theory does do is it helps us engage with what is observably happening within a dialectical materialist paradigm.

I just find it... I don't know, disappointing? More than anything. The extent to which this complex strata of class and caste, theoretical economic mobility held back by realities of actual economic mobility, incredible exploitation on the one hand and incredible poverty on the other hand, gets reduced to "they're privileged settlers." Never mind that the US has had, like many parts of the world, organized interest in communism which was subsequently violently repressed and liberalized by the imperial power. It is one of the most violent powers in history, with no excuse for it, and not once in its history has that spawned from unity of class interests. There has always been disparity, going back to when there was chattel slavery and after that, use of cheap migrant labor (which holds true to this day).

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] 8 points 4 days ago (8 children)

    So were the striking miners at the Battle of Blair Mountain not proletarian?

    I don't think Sakai would consider the white miners to be proletarian (as opposed to bourgeoisie proletariat) in the framework he develops in this text. I believe he is making the distinction between euro-amerikan workers as bourgeoisie proletariat and other proletariat groups to draw attention to the structural advantage they had from the start, and how their privilege has been maintained in general. IIRC part of his thesis is that the white american worker has an unspoken agreement to be an obedient servant of capital in exchange for a place of privilege in the world. This exists separate from the actions of individuals or even large groups of individuals such as those at Blair Mountain.

    Sakai starts chapter 5 by clarifying that this classification isn't a condemnation:

    ... Communists have never believed that the working class was some "holy," religious object that must be enshrined away from scientific investigation... The political consciousness and material class role of the masses of any given nation cannot be assumed from historic generalizations, but must be discovered by social investigation and scientific analysis.

    Sakai is certainly critical of the euro-american settlers. I don't think the distinction is intended to say they (we?) are hopeless. I strongly agree that there are barriers to achieving class consciousness in colonized north america that are unique, and that can be better understood through the lens Sakai applies.

    I took a super quick ctrl-f through the pdf and while the author doesn't specifically mention Blair Mountain by name, he does discuss UMW and activities in Appalachia.

    Selected excerpts:

    In the UMW we can examine tactical unity over a 90-year period in a major industry. The fundamental reality was that Afrikan miners and Euro-Amerikan miners had tactical unity, but different strategic interests.

    ...

    While UMW welcomed Afrikan workers as unpaid organizers and militants, when a mining community in the North became organized very often the Afrikan "union brothers" were told to get out. At the 1921 UMW Pittsburgh District Convention an experienced Afrikan delegate, recalling how he and hundreds of other Afrikan miners had taken up rifles to join the union's "Armed Marches" in West Virginia, complained bitterly:

    Those colored men from the state of West Virginia put their shoulders to the shoulders of white brothers, and our newspapers tell us that they have sacrificed their lives for this great movement.

    I think it looks very embarrassing when a man would sacrifice his life for this movement, and after the victory is won then his brother would say: 'We need you no longer.' A livelihood belongs to every man and when you deprive me of it... you have almost committed murder to the whole entire race.

    I believe this is referring to Blair Mountain, which occurred shortly before this meeting.

    The author goes on to explain the mechanism by which the privileged position of the euro-amerikan was weaponized to break that unity:

    In doing this [driving out the Afrikan worker] the imperialists were merely carrying out their general policy on colonial labor, restricting its role in strategic industries and reserving the best jobs for Euro-Amerikans in order to ensure the loyalty of settler society. When most coal mining jobs were brutal hand-loading of the coal while working in two foot high tunnels, there were many jobs for Afrikan labor. But as unionization and mechanization raised the wages and improved the work, it became "too good" for Afrikans, and the companies and the UMW started pushing Afrikans out.

    Who exactly are these “independent, self-sustaining peasants” in today’s US? A small percentage of large farm owners?

    I hope in reading the above it is clear that the author isn't suggesting that the specific privileges the euro-amerikans enjoyed in early colonization have remained materially unchanged. The book explores how it has changed over time, culminating in point 4 of the image in the OP.

    Slightly off topic, but I read this article recently and I think a lot of the themes are shared: https://mronline.org/2026/10/08/gill-imperialism-then-and-now/ I wonder if, when presented this way, it's easier to understand what Sakai is trying to say.

    How can wages be suppressed and the market grow at once? There is a paralysing contradiction between profits, the suppression of wages, and the need for a consuming class. This is what generates, time and again, problems of overaccumulation, overproduction, and what the Patnaiks call a threat to the value of money.

    This contradiction is historically resolved through imperialism–not as the highest stage, but as the very foundation of capitalism. The capital-labour relation would never have consolidated without an imperialist base. What enables workers to be both exploited and to function as consumers is the ability to draw in cheap inputs from the colonies and the imperialist peripheries. In addition to capital and labour, there are categories of labour and resources outside the core that can be appropriated without accounting for their reproductive conditions. Prices are imposed on peasants in the colonies because they have lost sovereignty–what the Patnaiks call a “price-taking” category of labour. This is not workers and trade unions bargaining for wages; it is the imposition of prices through the denial of sovereignty.

    This isn't explicitly stated but when I read this I thought about how workers in america resist solidarity with because it requires them to acknowledge that their comparative place of privilege only exists because of imperialism and that it is on the backs of colonized people. Achieving worker solidarity that overthrows imperialism means giving up that place of privilege. I'm not going to pretend that isn't scary to me, comrade. But I have to strive for it.

    If you can start in agreement with the above (which it sounds like you do?) I think it's easier to see Sakai's connection to the position of privilege settler proletariats have in comparison to colonized workers outside of the US. I think adding in recognition that the labour of enslaved Afrikans was critical to the establishment of the US as a imperial power is natural.

    I hope it's not seen as dismissive that I don't address the rest of your specific points because I believe you have misunderstood Sakai's thesis. It's been a few years since I read it as a whole and I'm honestly running on fumes so I think I did a disservice to the text. I believe a lot of the specific things you bring up are addressed in the text in shockingly similar language but I'm going to struggle to find them right now.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 3 days ago (5 children)

    So were the striking miners at the Battle of Blair Mountain not proletarian

    I think Sakai is trying to make the point that, on average, those striking miners in the USA can't be relied on to view themselves as part of the proletariat.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    Which is wrong because even the very workers at Blair Mountain viewed themselves as proletarians heavily steeped in socialist thought.

    Socialist movements require active repression by the state and mass propaganda efforts. Things the state would not need concern itself with if there was no possibility of workers possessing or gaining a class consciousness.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    What I believe the author was trying to address in this framing was how the Black workers were pushed out later by (in his words) the company and the union.

    I shared this except upstream in this thread but I'll use it again:

    When most coal mining jobs were brutal hand-loading of the coal while working in two foot high tunnels, there were many jobs for Afrikan labor. But as unionization and mechanization raised the wages and improved the work, it became “too good” for Afrikans, and the companies and the UMW started pushing Afrikans out.

    I really like the way D61 put it but I wonder if we shift it a little bit to be more specific that they could not be relied upon to have solidarity with their racialized union siblings.

    It isn't relevant if they viewed themselves as proletariat, the union (and by extension the union members) allowed this to happen.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 child)

    What I believe the author was trying to address in this framing was how the Black workers were pushed out later by (in his words) the company and the union.

    That's fair! But I still think that framing a bit of a misnomer, as the workings of a capitalist entity, in this instance mining companies, is pinned on the workers as a failure of solidarity. Of course the capitalist sees value in delineating and forcing the separation of racial classes. Same with the unions, as the leadership became reactionary and saw material worth in excluding the Black workers; despite the solidarity that the workers themselves exhibited across racial lines.

    I really like the way D61 put it but I wonder if we shift it a little bit to be more specific that they could not be relied upon to have solidarity with their racialized union siblings.

    To this point, I'm not sure that the history of the proletarian movements truly supports that notion. Even returning to the Antebellum South, slaves and early "white" proles found such solidarity that slave states scampered to institute a myriad of laws prohibiting any contact. A reaction betraying capital's need to artificially reinforce racial lines. While a more modern example in comparison to Blair Mountain, the Young Patriots, descendants of the same mining workers, also readily found solidarity with the Black Panther and larger socialist movement.

    This feels a problem where neither side attempts earnest cross-racial solidarity, so each side writes off the other as a lost cause or rival. Ultimately playing into the hands of capital. How can one expect instant solidarity if no connection is maintained?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago

    But I still think that framing a bit of a misnomer, as the workings of a capitalist entity, in this instance mining companies, is pinned on the workers as a failure of solidarity.

    (Small disclaimer: I don't think it's fair to draw conclusions based on these exerpts alone. I don't have the capacity to expand on my general understanding of the text with specific examples, as much as I'd love the excuse to deep dive again. )

    I'm struggling to see where you are coming from. It's possible that I am simply unaware of actions the workers took to protect the jobs of the Black workers. I didn't do any sort of investigation before presenting this response.

    But like, these workers literally shot someone for their right to unionize and 10 or so years later they just let their Black coworkers get pushed out like that? One might say, "maybe they didn't notice" and to that I'd respond probably not, because they also started excluding Black delegates literally a month after the Battle of Blair Mountain. I shared this elsewhere in the post:

    While UMW welcomed Afrikan workers as unpaid organizers and militants, when a mining community in the North became organized very often the Afrikan “union brothers” were told to get out. At the 1921 UMW Pittsburgh District Convention an experienced Afrikan delegate, recalling how he and hundreds of other Afrikan miners had taken up rifles to join the union’s “Armed Marches” in West Virginia, complained bitterly:

    Those colored men from the state of West Virginia put their shoulders to the shoulders of white brothers, and our newspapers tell us that they have sacrificed their lives for this great movement.

    I think it looks very embarrassing when a man would sacrifice his life for this movement, and after the victory is won then his brother would say: ‘We need you no longer.’ A livelihood belongs to every man and when you deprive me of it… you have almost committed murder to the whole entire race.

    I want to think my union today, as toothless as it is, would do something. I'm finding hard to believe that when the gains they made were so fresh, they couldn't do more.

    To this point, I'm not sure that the history of the proletarian movements truly supports that notion.

    I'm going to be real and say I'm not 100% sure I finished reading Black Reconstruction in America but I think W. E. B. Du Bois would say otherwise. I'm going to take the easy out and quote Wikipedia:

    Du Bois noted that the Southern working class, i.e. black freedmen and poor whites, were divided after the Civil War along the lines of race, and did not unite against the white propertied class, i.e. the former planters. He believed this failure enabled the white Democrats to regain control of state legislatures, pass Jim Crow laws, and disfranchise most blacks and many poor whites in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

    The rainbow coalition was a very encouraging show of solidarity. But it was unusual. I don't think Sakai is saying it's literally impossible, but that there is a hurdle.

    This feels a problem where neither side attempts earnest cross-racial solidarity, so each side writes off the other as a lost cause or rival. Ultimately playing into the hands of capital. How can one expect instant solidarity if no connection is maintained?

    There has got to be some social or cultural norms that we are reading differently. Not you as an individual but those in this thread who are saying "it's hopeless, give up."

    I don't know that I've witnessed a lack of solidarity between racialized and white leftists that came from the racialized folks side. People say all sorts of wild shit on line, but I've not seen it IRL. Where I am at, the current divide is citizens/ PR throwing temporary foreign workers under the bus.

    It's possible our individual experiences in the different places we live are playing a very strong role in influencing our interpretation.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    Thanks for taking the time to go through it. I don't see it as dismissive. You are definitely not obligated to go through each point I make. The further context gives me the impression that the primary issue here is not with Sakai's writings, but with the way some go about quoting them and using them to prop up what gets called "third worldism". The problem I have with this view (what I see of it through online) is not that it tries to analyze and take into account the nature of imperialism and settler-colonialism, and the impact that has (which is reasonable and important to do). The problem I have with it is the way in which I see it feeding into views revolving around fatalism, pessimism, and mechanistic inevitability.

    More specifically, as an example, I take issue with language like this:

    IIRC part of his thesis is that the white american worker has an unspoken agreement to be an obedient servant of capital in exchange for a place of privilege in the world. This exists separate from the actions of individuals or even large groups of individuals such as those at Blair Mountain.

    I don't know if it is yours in the end or Sakai's but it makes no difference to me the who. The issue I have here is language like "unspoken agreement". This suggests a kind of unconscious treaty between capital and worker at the intersection of racism and colonization, but I've seen no evidence to suggest it is so mechanistic and hidden under the surface. If anything, I'd argue that when this happens, it is a very conscious choice, born of systemic racism and colonial thought, and like in other forms of caste, the betrayal is (for lack of a more marxist way to put it) a little something like the prisoner's dilemma. In that, in a room full of very racist people, if they don't betray the "non-white" people and instead stand in solidarity with them, and few others also do this, this can now isolate them and put them in a worse position than before, while also failing to be enough to properly stand up for the people in the caste below them. Combine this with genuine belief that the people down in caste are "lesser" and they may believe they don't even deserve rights, which motivates them to act for immediate selfish gain at the cost solidarity.

    However, this kind of pressure is much more of a reality in the country's past than it is now. Over time, through a combination of hard-won legal protections and cultural pushing, it has somewhat reversed, to where being the openly racist person can damage your career (though the reactionary pushback against being "woke" has damaged it since it has no grounding in a revolutionary vanguard).

    I'd further argue that it's not an agreement to be "an obedient servant of capital", rather it is an agreement to get a somewhat better life for themselves in the short-term, which in their minds is a victory over capital's hegemonic control of them. An "agreement to be an obedient servant of capital in exchange for a place of privilege in the world" seems more fitting for talking about US volunteer soldiers or cops.

    And lastly, regarding the point of "unspoken", it removes some of the agency from the process and in doing so, the responsibility.

    Further language like this concerns me as well:

    Achieving worker solidarity that overthrows imperialism means giving up that place of privilege. I’m not going to pretend that isn’t scary to me, comrade. But I have to strive for it.

    By framing the issue in this way, it starts sounding more like Christian ideas about sin and temptation, than a marxist analysis of material conditions; like there is this gravitational force drawing you toward bad behavior and you must exercise virtue to resist it, including making sacrifices, in order to overcome.

    I think "giving up that place of privilege" is something of a misunderstanding in the first place. I don't think black people not being shot at by cops would be any kind of loss of privilege for me as a white person; in fact, I'd feel safer knowing they aren't shooting at people in general, and I'd feel more at peace in a culture where "whiteness" is a thing of the past. I don't think the people living on Turtle Island need to go into destitution or something in order to cease being imperialist. The geography of it is plenty capable of being self-sustaining. The process of transition won't always be pretty, but that's the case for anywhere in the world that needs to transition to a different system. In a post-imperial world, the majority of bumpiness for Turtle Island would probably be owed to all the outsourcing of industry and the time it takes to build that back; but this could be supplemented in the interim with friendly trade deals that are based in fairness rather than predation.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago

    A lot of great thinking you have shared, which I don't think I can meaningfully add to, but I did want to respond to this:

    I don't think the people living on Turtle Island need to go into destitution or something in order to cease being imperialist.

    I didn't do a good job explaining what I meant there. I should also mention I wouldn't claim to be educated/informed enough to apply Marxist analysis with any accuracy or rigour to my daily life. I just happened to read and click with Settlers so I wanted to comment on this post.

    What's scary is the unknown more than anything. My life right now is privileged without a doubt. But it didn't start that way. I think the fact that I've somehow fluked my way from lumpenproletariat (*) to professional managerial class (I'm an engineer) makes me sympathetic to Sakais analysis. I was a teenager during the militarization of the 2000s and read Marx at the time but as I got older what really radicalized me to the need to end imperialism was really seeing how meritocracy is an insidious lie. I therefore went into reading this text already agreeing with the premise without knowing it.

    The unknown comes from not really being able to understand what parts of our lives will change. I don't think there will be scarcity or anything like that in the long term. Maybe it's useful to compare to the idea of Land back. It can be a scary thought for settlers but comes from not understanding the worldview of the indigenous communities and how fundamentally different the view of land "ownership" is. I still haven't wrapped my head around it fully, but it's something I'm working on better understanding so I understand decolonization in my local context.

    Additionally, I've managed to embarrass myself more than I want to admit with an unconscious paternalistic worldview. Some of my work gives me the opportunity to interact with engineers from parts of the world heavily impacted by imperialism. Think: areas still struggling to establish Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene infrastructure. They don't need western engineers for technical reasons, they need us to work to undo structural problems like the funneling of surplus back to the imperial core.

    (*) I have massive problems with the concept of the lumpenproletariat. I can accept it's a product of it's time and life experiences of those who developed and introduced it and has some use in describing the challenges of achieving class consciousness. It was a convenient word to capture my experience with disability, and the anti-intellectual worldview of the community I was born into. But I don't want to use it uncritically!

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent