Die Neue Zeit
6th August 2011, 17:42
I thought a particular subject within a larger discussion on something else merited its own discussion:
Immigration
Right populist movements take advantage of workers fears of their wages and jobs being undercut by foreign workers but direct this legitimate economic fear into a xenophobic form. The left should address the fear along the lines that Marx did in the Programme of the French Workers Party which he helped draft which demanded
Legal prohibition of bosses employing foreign workers at a wage less than that of French workers;
This turns the hostility against the employers rather than the foreign workers. We should probably strengthen the demand by saying that the issuing of work permits to foreign workers to be the responsibility of the TUC and local Trades Councils rather than the state, and that a prior condition for getting a work permit should be that the incoming worker joins the appropriate trades union.
I'm not sure the TUC should be entrusted with such an element of law, at least not until it has reformed itself in its members' interests. The TUC is, after all, by its leadership an unashamed defender of Capitalism.
I understand the reservations about the TUC but the key point is that immigration be under working class control via the unions in some way. A pre entry closed shop policy protects immigrant workers from excess exploitation
Comrade, I'm against your suggestion of closed-shop unionism at the end:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/closed-shops-union-t155203/index.html
Between closed shops, union shops, and agency shops as union security agreements, which form is the best?
It's just that a couple of months ago a comrade suggested that I look at agency shops as an alternative to my polemic against closed shops (likening the mentality behind them to anti-scab sentiments redirected towards anti-immigrant sentiments).
<Anti-immigrant sentiment>Only native-born such-and-such or persons naturalized by this point can work here! Immigrants are "scab" labour!</Sentiment>
<Closed shop>Only union members can work here! Everyone else is scab labour!</Closed shop>
I posted this thread because agency shops are like employee-paid parking or taxable benefits for employer-paid parking. Those who don't wish to participate in the labour disputes shouldn't do so, but benefits come at a cost.
Incoming workers should, however, pay agency fees equivalent to union dues if they don't join.
Don't agency fees do the same thing? My point is that immigration can be under working-class control via the unions through universal mandatory agency shop fees. Now, it's also possible that the same unions can control immigration by filtering out technically less qualified applicants, but that's another story.
Be it noted that this means if an Italian construction worker is a member of an Italian construction union, no English construction workers would have the right to demand he not be hired on the basis that he is not a member of an English union.
In the time of Karl Marx, when state immigration controls basically did not exist, the idea of union control over immigration and emigration made some sense, the First International did in fact think along those lines.
Nowadays, with the State as Leviathan and immigration and emigration control one of the biggest and most brutal and vicious functions of the State, and the unions quite weak, any proposition for "union control" simply means union auxiliaries for racist exploitation and, in the USA at least, outright murder. Especially since *all* unions these days, including "left wing" ones, are virulently infected with national chauvinism.
Union control over immigration and emigration would be a good plan for the Socialist United States of Europe of the future. Right now in the current situation, even raising it is probably a mistake.
You forget one aspect to worry about, as well, about closed-shop-controlled immigration. At best, it would reinvigorate craft unionism over more industry-based unionism, especially with the rhetoric of promoting the immigration of skilled workers.
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6263577133333272085&postID=3687300931991507718
As I oppose Immigration Controls under Capitalism I have no interest in whether that is done by the Capitalist State, or by Trades Unions acting disgracefully as stooges for that State in implementing its policies. The Closed Shop generally worked in the interests of the TU bureaucracy, and against the interests of rank and file members. At worst it could be a way of disciplining militants. At best, it encouraged cosy deals between the bureaucracy and management, and meant they did not have to go out to actually win workers support for the union.
The idea of union administered Immigration Controls, loike union administered any other Capitalist policy is typical of the kind of class-collaborationist policies that the Stalinists like Paul Cockshott have been advocating for the last 50 years or more. They are a continuation of the Popular front policies of the 1930's.
In reality, all these attempts at "Workers Control" within the context of a stable Capitalism have as Trotsky points out - Here, have always led to the kind of class collaboration that was seen with Mondism etc. It means the alliance and class collaboration of the union bureaucracy with the bosses against the workers.
Our answer is as Marx and the First International argued to build workers unity across borders. During the LOR dispute, the unions did the right thing, following the example of Marx, they contacted the Italian Trades Unions for support. We have to build effective European wide Trade Union organisation, and demand Europe wide, common Trade UNion rates of pay, benefits etc. It is also why we need a European, as opposed to nationally based Workers Parties, and to demand the establishment of a Federal Europe, with full legislative powers for the EU Parliament, so that these common policies can be fought for and introduced. Of course, we do so, in the context of arguing that our real goal here is a Socialist United States of Europe.
Within each state, our answer is not to support Immigration Controls, but to fight for the removal of all Immigration Controls so that all workers coming in to the country can do so legally, and immediately have full legal rights to join a Trade Union, and so on. We demand that all work done, whoever does it, be done at Trade Union rates of pay.
However, I come back to the points I have made repeatedly, and that Marx made. All of this Trade Union struggle can only ever be defensive. Capital will always have the whip hand to undermine wages and conditions with, or without immigration controls. That is why workers, if they want to address these problems have to take ownership of the means of production - here and now via Co-ops, ultimately by a Socialist Revolution.
I'd also point out in relation to your argument with Cockshott, that we have had a lot of experience of this kind of Trade Union control. It used to operate in the car industry, and was often reactionary. It meant jobs were kept within families, or close groups, and frequently meant black workers were excluded.
It would not matter if a worker was a member of an Italian or British Trade Union if we built European Trades Unions, and if we had common EU wide union rates. But, the point is, and this is what the FI argued rather than control over immigration and emigration, that the union should organise to insist that work done be at the appropriate rates applying within the particular country i.e. that they cannot be undermined. In fact, Immigration Controls are contrary to that, because they encourage illegal immigration, and the employment of non-unionised workers, particularly in the black economy.
If you look at what Marx writes in Capital on the opposition by the bosses to British Workers Emigration Societies, and so on, he is scathing. He recognised, that in the conditions of high unemployment in Britain at the time, workers Emigration to the US was a means of them escaping that, and also of reducing the supply of Labour available to British Capital. It was not the solution we would choose, but it was one we should not deny workers the right to choose. Moreover, can you imagine Marx, opposing the right of Irish workers and peasants to leave ireland, and come to Britain or go to the US etc. in order to avoid almost certain death during the Famine?
Immigration
Right populist movements take advantage of workers fears of their wages and jobs being undercut by foreign workers but direct this legitimate economic fear into a xenophobic form. The left should address the fear along the lines that Marx did in the Programme of the French Workers Party which he helped draft which demanded
Legal prohibition of bosses employing foreign workers at a wage less than that of French workers;
This turns the hostility against the employers rather than the foreign workers. We should probably strengthen the demand by saying that the issuing of work permits to foreign workers to be the responsibility of the TUC and local Trades Councils rather than the state, and that a prior condition for getting a work permit should be that the incoming worker joins the appropriate trades union.
I'm not sure the TUC should be entrusted with such an element of law, at least not until it has reformed itself in its members' interests. The TUC is, after all, by its leadership an unashamed defender of Capitalism.
I understand the reservations about the TUC but the key point is that immigration be under working class control via the unions in some way. A pre entry closed shop policy protects immigrant workers from excess exploitation
Comrade, I'm against your suggestion of closed-shop unionism at the end:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/closed-shops-union-t155203/index.html
Between closed shops, union shops, and agency shops as union security agreements, which form is the best?
It's just that a couple of months ago a comrade suggested that I look at agency shops as an alternative to my polemic against closed shops (likening the mentality behind them to anti-scab sentiments redirected towards anti-immigrant sentiments).
<Anti-immigrant sentiment>Only native-born such-and-such or persons naturalized by this point can work here! Immigrants are "scab" labour!</Sentiment>
<Closed shop>Only union members can work here! Everyone else is scab labour!</Closed shop>
I posted this thread because agency shops are like employee-paid parking or taxable benefits for employer-paid parking. Those who don't wish to participate in the labour disputes shouldn't do so, but benefits come at a cost.
Incoming workers should, however, pay agency fees equivalent to union dues if they don't join.
Don't agency fees do the same thing? My point is that immigration can be under working-class control via the unions through universal mandatory agency shop fees. Now, it's also possible that the same unions can control immigration by filtering out technically less qualified applicants, but that's another story.
Be it noted that this means if an Italian construction worker is a member of an Italian construction union, no English construction workers would have the right to demand he not be hired on the basis that he is not a member of an English union.
In the time of Karl Marx, when state immigration controls basically did not exist, the idea of union control over immigration and emigration made some sense, the First International did in fact think along those lines.
Nowadays, with the State as Leviathan and immigration and emigration control one of the biggest and most brutal and vicious functions of the State, and the unions quite weak, any proposition for "union control" simply means union auxiliaries for racist exploitation and, in the USA at least, outright murder. Especially since *all* unions these days, including "left wing" ones, are virulently infected with national chauvinism.
Union control over immigration and emigration would be a good plan for the Socialist United States of Europe of the future. Right now in the current situation, even raising it is probably a mistake.
You forget one aspect to worry about, as well, about closed-shop-controlled immigration. At best, it would reinvigorate craft unionism over more industry-based unionism, especially with the rhetoric of promoting the immigration of skilled workers.
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6263577133333272085&postID=3687300931991507718
As I oppose Immigration Controls under Capitalism I have no interest in whether that is done by the Capitalist State, or by Trades Unions acting disgracefully as stooges for that State in implementing its policies. The Closed Shop generally worked in the interests of the TU bureaucracy, and against the interests of rank and file members. At worst it could be a way of disciplining militants. At best, it encouraged cosy deals between the bureaucracy and management, and meant they did not have to go out to actually win workers support for the union.
The idea of union administered Immigration Controls, loike union administered any other Capitalist policy is typical of the kind of class-collaborationist policies that the Stalinists like Paul Cockshott have been advocating for the last 50 years or more. They are a continuation of the Popular front policies of the 1930's.
In reality, all these attempts at "Workers Control" within the context of a stable Capitalism have as Trotsky points out - Here, have always led to the kind of class collaboration that was seen with Mondism etc. It means the alliance and class collaboration of the union bureaucracy with the bosses against the workers.
Our answer is as Marx and the First International argued to build workers unity across borders. During the LOR dispute, the unions did the right thing, following the example of Marx, they contacted the Italian Trades Unions for support. We have to build effective European wide Trade Union organisation, and demand Europe wide, common Trade UNion rates of pay, benefits etc. It is also why we need a European, as opposed to nationally based Workers Parties, and to demand the establishment of a Federal Europe, with full legislative powers for the EU Parliament, so that these common policies can be fought for and introduced. Of course, we do so, in the context of arguing that our real goal here is a Socialist United States of Europe.
Within each state, our answer is not to support Immigration Controls, but to fight for the removal of all Immigration Controls so that all workers coming in to the country can do so legally, and immediately have full legal rights to join a Trade Union, and so on. We demand that all work done, whoever does it, be done at Trade Union rates of pay.
However, I come back to the points I have made repeatedly, and that Marx made. All of this Trade Union struggle can only ever be defensive. Capital will always have the whip hand to undermine wages and conditions with, or without immigration controls. That is why workers, if they want to address these problems have to take ownership of the means of production - here and now via Co-ops, ultimately by a Socialist Revolution.
I'd also point out in relation to your argument with Cockshott, that we have had a lot of experience of this kind of Trade Union control. It used to operate in the car industry, and was often reactionary. It meant jobs were kept within families, or close groups, and frequently meant black workers were excluded.
It would not matter if a worker was a member of an Italian or British Trade Union if we built European Trades Unions, and if we had common EU wide union rates. But, the point is, and this is what the FI argued rather than control over immigration and emigration, that the union should organise to insist that work done be at the appropriate rates applying within the particular country i.e. that they cannot be undermined. In fact, Immigration Controls are contrary to that, because they encourage illegal immigration, and the employment of non-unionised workers, particularly in the black economy.
If you look at what Marx writes in Capital on the opposition by the bosses to British Workers Emigration Societies, and so on, he is scathing. He recognised, that in the conditions of high unemployment in Britain at the time, workers Emigration to the US was a means of them escaping that, and also of reducing the supply of Labour available to British Capital. It was not the solution we would choose, but it was one we should not deny workers the right to choose. Moreover, can you imagine Marx, opposing the right of Irish workers and peasants to leave ireland, and come to Britain or go to the US etc. in order to avoid almost certain death during the Famine?