It is fantastic as a revolutionary anti-racist, anti-imperialist history of the US Empire. I recommend it to virtually everyone on those grounds. However, his ideological basis is heavily informed by the widespread pessimism that followed the collapse of the US New Left anti-colonial struggles of internally oppressed nations (as Sakai characterizes). He embraces a brand of Third Worldism whose main practical application is to give up on revolutionary activity in the imperial core, since all workers are labor aristocrats who benefit more from imperialism than they are exploited by Capitalism.

While the degree of exploitation of workers in the imperial core is unquestionably lower, while White workers unquestionably benefit immensely from racism, we cannot accept defeat as a given.

The primary contradiction in the world is between Imperialist Nations and Colonized Nations. “Leftists” in the imperial core cannot wait for the comrades in the Global South to liberate themselves, we must be active strugglers for their liberation and our own. We must believe revolution is possible to hold any attitude other than ‘lie down and rot’.

Also watching white people squirm reading is really fun. A comrade’s conservative, racist sibling has possibly the only actual ‘SJW Marxist Professor’ in the US who is making the class read it. The comrade has been giving us updates on the growth of their sibling’s growing guilt and political conciousness.

Read Settlers!

Great book. I disagree with his conclusions (my take is there is a white working class especially with neoliberal proletarianization, but it’s extremely important to consider them as part of an oppressor nation) and it’s not dialectical, but it’s definitely worth reading. I wish someone re-did it today (for more recent data and Marxist analysis. I’m impressed by the scope of the book and I learned a lot from it. You should probably read more better done and specified books along with it though, like ‘the red deal,’ ‘fresh banana leaves,’ etc.