Immigration

[Scrounger]

I'm a bit curious about immigration in todays society. I've noticed that most socialists and left-leaning people in general tend to favour unregulated immigration.

Is it not in the interest of the burgeoise to increase the pool of workers during high employment to increase the competition and dump wages, or even better, if they're able to employ people off the record? And what about poor immigrants who come to the country having to settle down in cheap ghettos, unable to find a job and are forced to rely on the system for money. Their kids grow up in bad environments and attend bad schools, resulting in them making bad decisions and commiting crimes separated from the rest of society.

I'm mainly refering to Sweden and other countries with similiar situations. I am aware that this is a nightmare example, but it does happen and in my opinion the fact that the problem even exists is horrible.

If the solution isn't to decrease the amount of immigrants or allow certain benefits (such as entry-level jobs, which seems to anger a lot of people.), what is to be done? How would one fully integrate people from vastly different cultures who are unable to settle down anywhere else than poor suburban areas, and should the immigration continue while there's still unemployed people within the country?

NOTE: I have yet to form an opinion on rhia auvjwxr, which is exactly why I'm asking. I am not a nationalist and I do not discriminate people based on ethnicity (or anything else for that matter.) Please don't ban me. Thx.

[Blake's Baby]

Do you mean unregulated immigration under capitalism? Or unregulated immigration under socialism?

I don't 'believe in unregulated immigration under capitalsim', because I don't believe in anything under capitalism. I believe capitalism should be destroyed.

I also believe the proletariat is an oppressed class that exists worldwide and must unite worldwide to overthrow - yup - international capitalism.

There's a big ruck in the UK at the moment about how Britain can't cap top management bonuses because 'we live in an international world' ie managers can go to other countries (we can't have all our managers going to America you know) and can come from other countries (we need to attract the best managers from other countries). Capital can move internationally, management can move internationally, why the fuck shouldn't workers be able to move internationally? If someone wants to come here and work - good, I hope they like it more than where they left. Why should I condemn them to stay somewhere shit, if they want to come here? That makes no sense at all.

[Franz Fanonipants]

capitalists use regulated and unregulated immigration policies to divide the working class.

as it is though i would enjoy seeing the US/Mexico border die a swift death but thats personal conviction

[Arlekino]

Well simple is that people don't leave country and own family just for nothing, I left my country and my disable mother (she died few years ago), thanks for destroying Soviet Union no jobs no free education no free health care, yes but is past now we can't go on about Soviet union destruction.
I meet new friend she is from Spain she came to England because there is no jobs available in Spain. She blaming English rich people and she sad everything only for English and Germans they are wealthy. Another problem she left lover which she have long serious relationship with boyfriend, which sometimes he visiting her in England but flight fares is going up so probably he would not afford to travel often to visit her. is plenty other immigrants comming with sad stories. Yes for capitalist point view perfect to exploit us, perfect to write in right wing papers oh East Europeans,or Asians or Blacks. We are good fun for right wingers they can bully us or make nasty jokes about us and we shut up doing dirty jobs and we get pay less and work harder.
So that why I hate capitalism and discrimination.
Another point of view Blacks or Asians would not come to western countries if Western rich elite leave land alone let them live in peace.
I hope is that make sense.

[socialistjustin]

I agree that the working class should be allowed to migrate. The USA trade policy in Mexico has contributed to immigration to America. There have been articles that state that NAFTA has brought about the immigration because of the corn prices and such.

Further, they aren't a drain on society and contribute to the local economies. There was a study by the CBO that said that the impact of illegal immigration on social services is modest when compared to the gaxes they pay and such. Most studies seem to point to this view.

Basically the shit that the right puts out about immigration is mythical at best.

[Scrounger]

Thanks for the replies so far.

Note that I am speaking about immigration in todays society, not under socialism. Hopefully borders will be erased and no one will have to leave their homes one day, but that is something for the future.

Currently I fail to see how immigration does anything else but serve the purpose of the burgeoise - yet free immigration seems to be closely related to socialism. Is it solely because of the "humane" idea behind it?

[Die Rote Fahne]

Do you mean unregulated immigration under capitalism? Or unregulated immigration under socialism?

I don't 'believe in unregulated immigration under capitalsim', because I don't believe in anything under capitalism. I believe capitalism should be destroyed.

The issue with your statement lacks any consideration for the living conditions of the working class

"Minimum wage, health and safety standards, universal healthcare? Fuck that, I hate capitalism! Let it run rampant cause I don't care!"

Reforms are necessary to improve the standard of living, and they are a good thing. They are not our end goal, as we know the system cannot be fixed, but must and will be overthrown. However, to disregard them is pretty anti-worker in my opinion.

Now, in terms on immigration, of course we support free and open immigration under socialism and communism. We should also support it under capitalism, as we support universal healthcare, living wages, etc.

[Blake's Baby]

Solely? Possibly not. Importantly? Yes.

It's not up to capitalists to tell us where we can and can't live. Fuck them with an explosive pineapple, pardon my French. Why shouldn't workers under capitalism have the right to a better life somewhere else if they can get it? What possible justification is there for restricting people's movements? Would you claim people shouldn't be able to move from one city to another? One street to another? Nation-states are a bourgeois construct and should be destroyed not reinforced.

[Arlekino]

I hate to admit, if we stop migrating to other countries and start fight in own countries against capitalism would be better option or not, as more we migrate more easier to exploit us.

[S.Artesian]

Request to Global Mod: Can we merge this thread with the similar one in politics, at

http://www.revleft.com/vb/no-borders-free-t163840/index.html ?

[Scrounger]

Now, in terms on immigration, of course we support free and open immigration under socialism and communism. We should also support it under capitalism, as we support universal healthcare, living wages, etc.

I understand. But my impression is that currently immigration does nothing but to add to the pool of unemployed workers, expand ghettos and segregation. Undermining things such as universal healthcare and wages. I'm mainly thinking of poor refugees from wartorn countries such as Afghanistan and Somalia. There's no way you can integrate them into a vastly different society with a vastly different culture by putting them in a ghetto and feeding them state support.

It makes people unhappy with the situation on both sides and the blame falls on the socialists. Just look at how large the Swedishdemocrats have grown the last few years for instance.

[Scrounger]

Request to Global Mod: Can we merge this thread with the similar one in politics, at
?

My question is different as it refers to the stance of socialists on immigration under todays society, not under socialism.

[S.Artesian]

l don't think so-- more than half the discussion has been around present laws, treatment of immigrants and the impact of immigration.

[Tomhet]

I don't 'believe in unregulated immigration under capitalsim',

why not?

[Jimmie Higgins]

My question is different as it refers to the stance of socialists on immigration under todays society, not under socialism.

I think we need to call for no immigration restrictions and equal rights for all laborers regardless of race, nationality, or immigration status.

In the US immigration restrictions do little to actually stop migration and are not intended to. The kernel of truth in what you are saying is that the ruling class does want immigration sometimes - during WWII they didn't want immigrant labor in the US and they deported people. Now it's not that they need labor or even a surplus labor pool - they already have that - they want workers who have no labor rights or protections and so they use immigration restrictions to achieve this as well as cause workers to compete to the bottom in wages and working rights. Immigration itself does nothing to harm native workers - the semi-legal status of a portion of workers, however, is a downward pressure on wages.

The answer is not to support these policies that hurt migrants as well as the native workforce, but to get rid of 2nd-class status for some workers. This will mean that migrants won't put up with sub-minimum wage and no job protections, they will organize with the rest of the workforce and a united working class is always stronger than one that is competing with itself.

[brigadista]

I can only talk about the UK and here there are also historical reasons for immigration. For example in the UK many people coming here are from former imperial colonies. UK in the 50s and 60s encouraged Caribbean people to come here[ usual cheap labour, exploitative capitalist reasons], in fact at one point London transport were advertising for bus drivers in kingston Jamaica.

Ex colonial people also had British passports but no surprise when they came to the uk they found that legally the gov had changed the status of colonial british passports.

I am also aware that in France many of the population are of ex colonial origins eg: algerian , malian, cameroonian.

Unfortunately many people in this country are not aware of the history of their country [because of the context in which history is taught in school amongst other things ] therefore imperialism is at the root of why people have come to the UK and instead of freely moving between their countries of origins they have had to stay in the UK due to border controls and immigration policies.

Immigration is not always of benefit to immigrants - separation from their close family members and it can take many years for them to be reunited with their children or parents.

Make no mistake for the stupid politicians immigration policy is a cheap vote catcher and a lazy and easy way for them to try to divide the working class - the majority of immigrants are working class and historically many have been very actively involved in labour struggles in the UK example the Indian workers association.

pleased to say in my home town we are very integrated however, divide and rule still going strong ..

[∞]

No. If they want a real free market take it. Don't leave out the elements of capitalism that are good for the working class (moving labor to other countries). Thats what is, they get paid more, they're going to go there. Its fair and anyone in favor of strengthening border control is nothing but a quasi-fascist who deep down inside would prefer 3rd position economics. Opening borders will help capitalism run it's course.

Also the Mexican immigrants are some of the hardest-working proletarian I've ever seen. They are the most revolutionary proletariat.

[Kotze]

Is it not in the interest of the burgeoise to increase the pool of workers during high employment to increase the competition and dump wages, or even better, if they're able to employ people off the record?It is.

But let's take the bird's-eye view: The workers who come to the country you live in likely have been workers before immigration, so the pool of workers goes up in one location and down in another. Does the bourgeoisie gain from that, globally speaking? Even from a nationalist viewpoint the existence of people elsewhere in the world doesn't start to matter only when they become immigrants, since products and machinery to produce products and investments and pollution cross national boundaries all the time.

[Sputnik_1]

Under capitalism everything is shite for working class people. It's shite when you immigrate and are a minority often discriminated and treated even worse than average worker, it's shite to stay where you are and slowly die of hunger, without a job, without any help etc.
I laso immigrated from Poland - my dad was unemployed and my mum with her nurse wage couldn't even pay us food, not talking about bills, clothes and shit like that. Living on constant and increasing debts wasn't a great option either so we left for Italy (my dad works in England right now tho, couldn't find a job in Italy either). After I've finished high school, even if now at least we didn't have to constantly worry about if we gonna eat today or less, I knew that i could never afford University. I left for Scotland then, where I get funding for my education, even if that's the money I'll eventually will have to pay back (when I start working full time).
So yeah, even if this system sucks and it should be destroyed in first place, I'm not even sure if I would finish high school if i never decided to immigrate.

[dodger]

"pleased to say in my home town we are very integrated however, divide and rule still going strong .."
Yes Brigadista..that is the picture in my home town too. Largely left to themselves people have just got on with it, the business of living together. Starting out not always in the best areas for school or housing. They just got on with life because they had to. It's a shame if all this real history is lost--to young people--as you point out the schools have another agenda these days. I spent my working life in London in Hotels-Clothing-Tube and lived in Irish, W Indian neighbourhoods, I always felt at home. I moved out to Buckinghamshire the first person to greet me with a cuppa was a Morrocan lady who I have enjoyed 30yrs of friendship with. Watched her daughters go to uni . Hard work and sacrifice are my memories of most, that I came into contact, and a joy in life, family. Many on the transport returned home, others like Swallows GO HOME IN THE WINTER AND RETURN IN THE SPRING. Sometimes just to watch the Cricket. What a great way to enjoy a well earned retirement. Many are lucky enough to get invites. One vital ingredient mustn't be overlooked...F O O D...joy...not easy to be anti-Semitic with a salt beef bagel in your chops at 3.0am in SPITALFIELDS or harbour spite to blacks with a curry goat in pitta dripping down yer shirt at a party. Sugar Cane Brandy another way to oil the wheels ,though sometimes not a good aid to memory. Yes bad news always travels faster than good news--peoples history needs to be preserved, more importantly it needs to reach young people so they don't make such a hash of things, like wot we done.

[Paul Cockshott]

I understand. But my impression is that currently immigration does nothing but to add to the pool of unemployed workers, expand ghettos and segregation. Undermining things such as universal healthcare and wages. I'm mainly thinking of poor refugees from wartorn countries such as Afghanistan and Somalia. There's no way you can integrate them into a vastly different society with a vastly different culture by putting them in a ghetto and feeding them state support.

It makes people unhappy with the situation on both sides and the blame falls on the socialists. Just look at how large the Swedishdemocrats have grown the last few years for instance.

You are raising an important issue here since it is certainly a basis for the growth of right parties.

On purely economic grounds it is pretty certain that the free movement of labour and capital benefits the propertied classes more than the working classes.

The free movement of capital out of countries allows firms to shift production from countries with good wages and working conditions to those with poor wages and working conditions. This has been a key underlying factor in the weakening of the European Working Classes in the last 30 years.

The free movement of labour has two deletrious effects:

1. As you said it undermines wage rates in the countries that are the destinations of immigration since it increases competition for work, allows the easy spread of non unionised shops etc.

2. Within the countries that the migrants leave it tends to depoliticise the most energetic and active young workers by encouraging them to seek a personal solution in emigration rather than a collective solution through political action.

If you go back 100 years to when the countries of Europe were net exporters of labour, the desire to allow a discontented proletariat to emigrate to colonies was a major drive for the colonial expansion of the European Powers.

Migration was a means of buying social stability.

However there is another cultural side to it. The formation of a multinational workforce in Europe today produces two opposed effects. On the one hand it potentially undermines national barriers and loyalty to the exisiting nation states. On the other hand it generates a reaction within the native working class who see the nation state as a potential defender of their interests against wage dilution.

This creates a complex of contradictory cultural and ideological interests which cross cut with the simple economic interests of the class.

[black magick hustla]

bkahbkahblah

who cares about a nation's economy, long live mass immigration

[rednordman]

Immigration right now is imo one of the largest problems the left have to face at the moment and sadly i think its going to become much more of one too.

Lets face it, we are all in favour of freedom of movement and freedom to work where we like, and virtually all posters on this thread have given great positive reasons and examples for it.

The real problem is the general working classes of the said nations. The are simply bigoted and ignorant. Its simple definition but its the sad sad truth. The worst thing about that is the fact that they show absolutely no compassion either. For most of the reasons people have given on this thread defending the immigrants, the average response that you are going to get nowadays is a very self absorbed "I dont care, why should I?" or even worse but even more common "why dont these benefit cheats just go and get there own houses in order".

Basically its a great example of no matter how many positives there are about immigration it always comes of with a negative image.

I do believe that the real reason for this is because we have never been in those sorts of situations before, so we do not know how shit it is. How would your average Brit appreciate going to Poland where they cannot speak the language and be made to work every hour under the sun or else face deportation?

The OP also asks a very good question that highlights to who exploitation side by the capitalists? is this something we should just ignore and brush under the carpet because we support the right for people of all nationalities to work where they want? I think not.

The fact is that immigration its self is and always has been one of the most vicious forms of capitalist exploitation. This is simply because it takes advantage of individuals and groups of people (regardless of nationality), solely because they are in a very bad situation back in there homelands, simple as. All this compassion shown by western governments is just a smokescreen to increase labour pools and competition within markets. All this anti-immigration is perfect for these governments because it takes the ownes away from them, just as many of you have already mentioned.

Going back to my first point, its going to get very hard for us tackle the question, because no matter how good our answers are, people are so ignorant and cold, they are just not going to want to hear us. How to deal with this i have no idea, because pubic opinion is that bad right now.

[dodger]

rednordman....you at least have not ignored the problem or tried to brush it under the carpet. I don't agree with every single word you uttered but I congratulate you for a truthful if somehow bleak view of how things stand in Britain. I shall be returning soon. I will see for myself. So how is it some here would wish to see 1,000's more added to unemployment? 80% of new private sector jobs going to EASTERN EUROPEANS. The ADAM SMITH Institute were fulsome in praise for it's effect in lowering wages. Yes you witnessed peoples hearts hardening. We should raise the issue at every opportunity and not be silenced. With record youth unemployment few families will be unaffected. 20% and rising. Black youth have to contend with 50%. It is a national disgrace. It requires a robust working class response. Ignorant and cold? I don't think they have the blinkers on, I really don't. We must regain sovereignty and have a serious debate on what level of immigration suits us, as a people, as a class.. Then you might see a few more happy bunnies around the place. The EU state of which we are all citizens is the author of our plight there laws have kicked every working class family in the country. As they have done in Greece Spain....everywhere. Soon they will be banging the war drums. Time to leave before that happens. All these issues are being raised now in the Trade union movement. Overcoming any obstacles , add your voice...all views on how to overcome this crises must be examined. Unelected commissioners in Brussels have had their day.-

Do you seriously believe 80% of the British people are wrong in their misgivings about mass immigration? Well do you? I have never sensed such hostility, such unity on the subject ....black white or yellow or whatever....fair warms the cockle of my stony cold heart.

[Vanguard1917]

All things considered, opposition to all of the capitalist state's anti-immigration laws is the only correct socialist position, for a few key reasons.

If you support anti-immimgration laws

1. you support freedom for the bourgeois state to dictate to workers where they can and cannot live and seek out work, and you oppose the right of workers to be free to decide for themselves to whom they sell or not sell their labour power;

2. you accept that the 'indigenous' working class ought to have a privileged status in the domestic labour market. You wouldn't oppose workers from Leeds emigrating to London in search of work, but you oppose workers from Lithuania or Libya doing the same;

3. you support a set of laws, essentially a product of 20th century imperialism, which perpetuate a nationalist outlook within the working class. The free movement of labour challenges and undermines national barriers (as Paul Cockshott points out above) and has the potential to create better grounds for international solidarity of workers. By supporting anti-immigration laws, and thus prison camps and deportations, you take sides with the capitalist state in its attempts to, in effect, keep workers of different countries separate and divided.

[rednordman]

So how is it some here would wish to see 1,000's more added to unemployment? 90% of new private sector jobs going to EASTERN EUROPEANS. Ignorant and cold? I don't think they have the blinkers on, I really don't. I never said they had blinkers on. That's whats so bad about it all. Alot of the time they are actually very apt in there view of things...take this example for instance. I work in a warehouse where approx 100% of the agency is from Eastern Europe (heck the agency is Slovakian and even recruits only over there as far as I know). One day I was looking at this assignment that one of the agency staff had done and he turned out to be English. I showed this assignment to a manager and she was very perplexed as she couldn't believe how any agency was from anywhere else than Eastern Europe. She really was confused.

Dont get me wrong, to see this with my own eyes really makes me die inside, BUT with ever increasing unemployment among the general population and especially youth (who have had our own tax money spent on there education and such) how can you not expect people to get very angry about it? The problem is, in the UK, because its just the way it is, If you gave a really great honest argument blaming the real culprits (capitalists and EU that supports them) people may conceive the argument but forget all about it after five or so minutes.:(

[rednordman]

All things considered, opposition to all of the capitalist state's anti-immigration laws is the only correct socialist position, for a few key reasons.

If you support anti-immimgration laws

1. you support freedom for the bourgeois state to dictate to workers where they can and cannot live and seek out work, and you oppose the right of workers to be free to decide for themselves to whom they sell or not sell their labour power;

2. you accept that the 'indigenous' working class ought to have a privileged status in the domestic labour market. You wouldn't oppose workers from Leeds emigrating to London in search of work, but you oppose workers from Lithuania or Libya doing the same;

3. you support a set of laws, essentially a product of 20th century imperialism, which perpetuate a nationalist outlook within the working class. The free movement of labour challenges and undermines national barriers (as Paul Cockshott points out above) and has the potential to create better grounds for international solidarity of workers. By supporting anti-immigration laws, and thus prison camps and deportations, you take sides with the capitalist state in its attempts to, in effect, keep workers of different countries separate and divided. For starters, i certainly do NOT support any of the anti-immigration laws:). But one problem i have with your 1st point is that the Bourgeois state already has all of it anyway. One your 2nd point, i would love a world where you didn't have to travel/move away to work, and 3rd point: Some of the eastern european immigrants are happy to take work abroad who are even more nationalist than the British workers and some even known Nazis. Strangely enough I know similar of the Asian workers too. WTF is that all about?

[S.Artesian]

But the point is-- do "we" agitate, organize against unrestricted immigration? Do "we" demand deportation of "illegals"? Do we oppose the bourgeois state when it arrests and imprisons those who "illegally" enter and work? Do we defend those arrested and imprisoned and insist that "an injury to one is an injury to all."

Those are the real issues in the here and now. Do we support actions against immigrants, or do we oppose all attempt to make immigrants responsible for the acts, the actions that are those of capitalism?

[Paul Cockshott]

We obviously do none of those things, but it may be worth taking a leaf out of Marx's book more specifically from his draft of the programme of the French Workers party which calls for it to be illegal for employers to employ foreign workers at less than the wages of French workers.

[Jimmie Higgins]

We obviously do none of those things, but it may be worth taking a leaf out of Marx's book more specifically from his draft of the programme of the French Workers party which calls for it to be illegal for employers to employ foreign workers at less than the wages of French workers.

I don't know the content or intention of that was, but I'd agree with the demand that non-native workers get paid the same as native ones. If that was Marx's intent, then I totally agree with that.

In the California farm-worker's movement, the UFW actually protested against the hiring of immigrants because of the wage disparity. They obviously weren't being driven by racist ideas since it was mostly native-born Latinos and Filipinos vs. immigrant Latinos and Filipinos, but it was short-sighted and protectionist to push that solution to union wages being undercut by the bosses when they hired Braceros. It would have been a harder fight to get rid of the 2nd class status of some workers and I don't think that a non-radical, though militant at the time, union would go that route -- but it would have made it harder for companies to get away with the wide-spread the scapegoating and extra-exploitation of undocumented workers that is now commonplace in agriculture.

[S.Artesian]

We obviously do none of those things, but it may be worth taking a leaf out of Marx's book more specifically from his draft of the programme of the French Workers party which calls for it to be illegal for employers to employ foreign workers at less than the wages of French workers.


I think we need to do way more than that. I think we have to oppose deportation policies; workplace raids; the very notion that anyone can be considered an "illegal" simply based on his/her place of birth.

Look at the practicality of "demanding" that, for example, legislation be enacted that says French capitalists can't employ foreign labor at less than wages of French workers:

1. Clearly, this says nothing about the legality or illegality of immigration. The French capitalist has to pay the "prevailing wage"? And the "foreign worker" can still be classified as illegal. So the worker still has no protections.

2. How is such a law going to be enforced without raising nationalist, jingoist sentiment? Clearly labor bureaucrats are going to use the law to bring actions against employers, and the stigma will be shifted again to the foreign workers themselves.

3. Enforcement will require an increase in police powers of the bourgeois state. If such a law were passed would we then expect socialist representatives to the national assembly to vote for funding of the enforcement provisions of the law? I think Marx's declaration "not a farthing for this government" takes precedence of the suggestion written in his notebook.

4. How does such a demand, or law, account for the lower wage sectors of the economy? It's not like immigrant agricultural workers are going to be paid less than itinerant, indigent workers recruited to agricultural labor. The situation is that the lower wage sectors offer easier access to employment, in many instances are the only sectors available in certain areas, and in many areas are the fastest growing sectors, while the higher wage areas are in a constant process of reducing their employment ranks.

5. What about the 30% [and larger] portion of the "total wage" that is made up of social benefits-- access to healthcare, education, unemploymetn benefits, social security payments etc.etc?


The point of this is that we cannot afford to allow a distinction, a separation of legal status based on immigration. We need to integrate immigrant labor in the class struggle; we need to integrate the class struggle into protection of the most vulnerable, exploited sectors of labor.

[Blake's Baby]

why not?

Simply because I don't believe it's up to us to tell capitalists how to operate, we should be working to destroy capitalism not make it run more smoothly. I don't support restrictions on movement, I just don't care if immigration is sanctioned by the state or not. People ahold be able to go wherever they like; fuck the capitalists state in both its protectionist or 'liberal' forms.

[dodger]

Simply because I don't believe it's up to us to tell capitalists how to operate, we should be working to destroy capitalism not make it run more smoothly. I don't support restrictions on movement, I just don't care if immigration is sanctioned by the state or not. People ahold be able to go wherever they like; fuck the capitalists state in both its protectionist or 'liberal' forms.

Blake I admire your plain speaking. You could not give a toss about the issue. When do you think it might be opportune to start taking responsibility? When should we all go forth and make our lives better? Defend gains made? Leaving matters to others is rarely satisfactory. Some who maybe live in gated communities have the luxury of going where they please. The rest of us make do with being constrained by, old circumstance. We don't want to be ambulance chasers...when we could be challenging what capitalists want. Ever cheaper sources of labour and other commodities. AFTA or EU or NAFTA...good for any workers you know? Winners and Losers...a shrug of the shoulders?

[S.Artesian]

Blake I admire your plain speaking. You could not give a toss about the issue. When do you think it might be opportune to start taking responsibility? When should we all go forth and make our lives better? Defend gains made? Leaving matters to others is rarely satisfactory. Some who maybe live in gated communities have the luxury of going where they please. The rest of us make do with being constrained by, old circumstance. We don't want to be ambulance chasers...when we could be challenging what capitalists want. Ever cheaper sources of labour and other commodities. AFTA or EU or NAFTA...good for any workers you know? Winners and Losers...a shrug of the shoulders?

You insist on accusing those of disagreeing with you of being advocates of the EU, advocates of AFTA, NAFTA, WTO, living in gated communities, and other such horseshit.

You give a toss about the "issues"? Then try responding to the issues put to Cockshott and his "borrowing" a page from Marx's book? Cut the crap.

And you might also provide some references for your claim that 90% of the new jobs in the UK go to Eastern Europeans. Would love to see that data.

I don't live in a gated community, support the EU, NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO etc etc but I sure do think you are full of shit.

[tir1944]

They obviously weren't being driven by racist ideas since it was mostly native-born Latinos and Filipinos vs. immigrant Latinos and Filipinos
Obviously!?
So Filipinos can't be racist towards "Latinos" and Filipinos but Whites or Blacks can?

[Die Neue Zeit]

We obviously do none of those things, but it may be worth taking a leaf out of Marx's book more specifically from his draft of the programme of the French Workers party which calls for it to be illegal for employers to employ foreign workers at less than the wages of French workers.

There should be a matching the transnational mobility of labour with the establishment of a transnationally entrenched bill of workers’ political and economic rights, and with the realization of a globalized and upward equal standard of living for equal work based on real purchasing power parity, thus allowing real freedom of movement through instant legalization and open borders, and thereby precluding the extreme exploitation of immigrants.

This goes against both protectionist sentiments re. illegal immigrants and also the rather petit-bourgeois calls here for mere unregulated immigration.


I think we need to call for no immigration restrictions and equal rights for all laborers regardless of race, nationality, or immigration status.

[...]

The answer is not to support these policies that hurt migrants as well as the native workforce, but to get rid of 2nd-class status for some workers. This will mean that migrants won't put up with sub-minimum wage and no job protections, they will organize with the rest of the workforce and a united working class is always stronger than one that is competing with itself.

Why have you limited your call for "equal rights for all laborers" to national politics?


Clearly labor bureaucrats are going to use the law to bring actions against employers, and the stigma will be shifted again to the foreign workers themselves.

[...]

How does such a demand, or law, account for the lower wage sectors of the economy? It's not like immigrant agricultural workers are going to be paid less than itinerant, indigent workers recruited to agricultural labor. The situation is that the lower wage sectors offer easier access to employment, in many instances are the only sectors available in certain areas, and in many areas are the fastest growing sectors, while the higher wage areas are in a constant process of reducing their employment ranks.

You don't have an immediate, intermediate, threshold, or directional alternative.


What about the 30% [and larger] portion of the "total wage" that is made up of social benefits-- access to healthcare, education, unemployment benefits, social security payments etc.etc?

Again, it's part of the transnationally entrenched bill of workers’ political and economic rights I mentioned. BTW, it was comrade Miles who suggested this, while I merely combined it with real purchasing power parity.


The point of this is that we cannot afford to allow a distinction, a separation of legal status based on immigration. We need to integrate immigrant labor in the class struggle; we need to integrate the class struggle into protection of the most vulnerable, exploited sectors of labor.

I agree, but you have sided with petit-bourgeois romanticism here.

[Blake's Baby]

Blake I admire your plain speaking. You could not give a toss about the issue...

Funny, I thought I could. I thought I said that I didn't support restrictions on movement. You can take this as 'I very much care about anybody trying to restrict the movement of working people under any circumstances' with the proviso that 'even if capitalism allowed unrestricted movement (which it never does) it is still capitalism and should therefore be destroyed'.

[Yazman]

who cares about a nation's economy, long live mass immigration

This is the sort of thing that should be a neg-rep, not an actual post in the Learning forum. It's not productive, it's a one-liner (not allowed) and it's borderline spam.

Please don't do it again. This is a warning.

[∞]

We should promote internationalism among the working class.

[∞]

This is the sort of thing that should be a neg-rep, not an actual post in the Learning forum. It's not productive, it's a one-liner (not allowed) and it's borderline spam.

Please don't do it again. This is a warning.

Not really. He has a point. The nation's capitalist economy is always fucked from a Marxist perspective. So who cares? The workingmen have no country and we want to integrate Mexican proletarian with white ones.

To me letting immigrants in to compete for wage is capitalism.
But trying to keep them out to "protect" the US working class is fascism.

[Paul Cockshott]

Look at the practicality of "demanding" that, for example, legislation be enacted that says French capitalists can't employ foreign labor at less than wages of French workers:

1. Clearly, this says nothing about the legality or illegality of immigration. The French capitalist has to pay the "prevailing wage"? And the "foreign worker" can still be classified as illegal. So the worker still has no protections.

2. How is such a law going to be enforced without raising nationalist, jingoist sentiment? Clearly labor bureaucrats are going to use the law to bring actions against employers, and the stigma will be shifted again to the foreign workers themselves.

3. Enforcement will require an increase in police powers of the bourgeois state. If such a law were passed would we then expect socialist representatives to the national assembly to vote for funding of the enforcement provisions of the law? I think Marx's declaration "not a farthing for this government" takes precedence of the suggestion written in his notebook.

.

I think you misunderstand the status of the demand. It was not just something in a notebook. It was the official programme of the French Workers Party jointly drafted by Guesde and Marx. The relevant section is:

1. Repos d'un jour par semaine ou interdiction légale pour les employeurs de faire travailler plus de six jours sur sept. Réduction légale de la journée de travail à huit heures pour les adultes. Interdiction du travail des enfants dans les ateliers privés au-dessous de quatorze ans, et de quatorze à dix-huit ans, réduction de la journée de travail à six heures.

2. Surveillance protectrice des apprentis par les corporations ouvrières.

3. Minimum légal des salaires déterminé, chaque année, d'après le prix local des denrées, par une commission de statistique ouvrière.

4. Interdiction légale aux patrons d'employer les ouvriers étrangers à un salaire inférieur à celui des ouvriers français.

5. Égalité de salaire à travail égal pour les travailleurs des deux sexes.

Source (Le programme du parti ouvrier français, dirigé par J.Guesde.
Marx participera étroitement à son élaboration.)

[S.Artesian]

I think you misunderstand the status of the demand. It was not just something in a notebook. It was the official programme of the French Workers Party jointly drafted by Guesde and Marx. The relevant section is:


4. translates to:


4. Legal prohibition of employers to employ foreign workers at lower wages than French workers.

Like I said, this doesn't address the issue of the legality of the immigrant's status. It does not address the fact that employers have made careers, and millions, ignoring, obstructing, and violating protective legislation.

Sweatshop owners violate health and safety laws everyday. Why would we think that such a demand for the prevailing wage would a) deter such behavior by the bourgeoisie b) blunt the attacks on immigrant workers c) combat chauvinism d) protect immigrant workers e) make class solidarity the primary issue for workers rather than legal status?

[Paul Cockshott]

4. translates to:


4. Legal prohibition of employers to employ foreign workers at lower wages than French workers.

Like I said, this doesn't address the issue of the legality of the immigrant's status. It does not address the fact that employers have made careers, and millions, ignoring, obstructing, and violating protective legislation.

Sweatshop owners violate health and safety laws everyday. Why would we think that such a demand for the prevailing wage would a) deter such behavior by the bourgeoisie b) blunt the attacks on immigrant workers c) combat chauvinism d) protect immigrant workers e) make class solidarity the primary issue for workers rather than legal status?

Yes they will attempt to evade such laws. People always attempt to evade laws, paedophiles attempt to avoid the laws on child abuse, but that is not an argument for getting rid of minimum wage laws or child protection laws.

The French Worker's party demand makes the employers the people who are prosecuted not the immigrant workers.

I dont know enough about citizenship laws in France in the 3rd Republic to know if there was any law relating to work permits for foreigners. Certainly in the UK there were no such laws at the time.

[S.Artesian]

Yes they will attempt to evade such laws. People always attempt to evade laws, paedophiles attempt to avoid the laws on child abuse, but that is not an argument for getting rid of minimum wage laws or child protection laws.

The French Worker's party demand makes the employers the people who are prosecuted not the immigrant workers.

I dont know enough about citizenship laws in France in the 3rd Republic to know if there was any law relating to work permits for foreigners. Certainly in the UK there were no such laws at the time.

But I never said "get rid of" any labor protections. I just said advocating such protections to be enforced by the bourgeois state is neither a revolutionary program, a transition to class-for-itself activity, and does not address the importance of emphasizing the class solidarity over legal status.

That's what you refuse to engage.

[Paul Cockshott]

But I never said "get rid of" any labor protections. I just said advocating such protections to be enforced by the bourgeois state is neither a revolutionary program, a transition to class-for-itself activity, and does not address the importance of emphasizing the class solidarity over legal status.

That's what you refuse to engage.

Depends what you think the objective of a party programme is.
If the aim is to win support of the mass of the working class for the workers party, then what Marx wrote makes sense.

As I recall it Marx was supportive of demands that the bourgeois state get involved in things like limiting the working day.

My interpretaion of this has been that such political demands were seen as an essential part of the constitution of the proletariat as a class and thus as a political party.

[S.Artesian]

Depends what you think the objective of a party programme is.
If the aim is to win support of the mass of the working class for the workers party, then what Marx wrote makes sense.

As I recall it Marx was supportive of demands that the bourgeois state get involved in things like limiting the working day.

My interpretaion of this has been that such political demands were seen as an essential part of the constitution of the proletariat as a class and thus as a political party.


And of course, as per usual, you do not engage with the substantive issue-- should workers allow the bourgeois state to determine the legality of the presence of workers within borders, and in the workplace?

If not, then what would be a programmatic proposal to express that class solidarity and class opposition?

If you think, Marxists should best avoid that issue.. then all you are doing is ceding the battle to the chauvinists.

Remember, the question in the OP was open borders, unrestricted immigration. That translates into the legal status of migrant workers. So yea or nay, Paul? Opposition to any discrimination regarding the legal status of immigrant vs. "native" workers?

[Die Neue Zeit]

As Paul said before, your proposal doesn't really promote class solidarity, let alone one across borders or something stronger than all this.

He promoted union-based control over immigration, which I'm surprised hasn't been posted in this thread yet.

[dodger]

Around 80 per cent of new jobs in the private sector have gone to migrants from Eastern Europe “keeping wages down”, as the Adam Smith Institute noted approvingly

from The Rotten State of Britain: Who Is Causing the Crisis and How to Solve It , Eamonn Butler

Adam Smith institute....creaming their pants over free movement of Labour and more besides.........oso radical.....

http://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=adam%20smith&source=web&cd=4&sqi=2&ved=0CEYQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adamsmith.org%2F&ei=bOrZTq-gGYisrAfHu_yuDA&usg=AFQjCNGAHBy7C4Mh-zqq3iKpUDhdqlYpFQ

Alex Gordan Rmt President ..........

http://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=80%25%20jobs%20eastern%20european&source=web&cd=46&ved=0CEkQFjAFOCg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectrezine.org%2F%25E2%2580% 2598social-europe%25E2%2580%2599-con&ei=M-fZTq32I8_NrQeRl93rCw&usg=AFQjCNE2sFbsNUbVIQFyiyU9aeqroRUcnQ

Migration Watch
http://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=migration%20watch%20petition&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.migrationwatchuk.org%2F&ei=COvZToDHJciqrAeauISgDg&usg=AFQjCNF3X2QgUW36GJzz2i9V_GJJZVM2Wg

We’re in a deep hole so let’s dig it deeper! These attacks will be wrapped up in empty words: freedom; individual choice; deregulation – cutting red tape; human rights; tightening our belts not theirs; they are only following (EU) orders; mass migration is good for us because it makes Britain competitive. Ageing population(not ageing capitalism)
There is a long and well established Tory–Liberal tradition of gerrymandering elections, redrawing borders and splintering nations as practised from Ireland to India and now their own backyard. We are not cannon fodder for capital or ultra leftists. We can see through your agenda.....the consequences....for the British Working Class. I had this crazy notion that looking out for the working class was a left-wing position, so why then do so many left-wingers support policies that attack and undermine the British working class for the benefit of capitalist employers?

The NO Borders Marx

'But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free trade. Karl Marx, On the Question of Free Trade (1848)'


Anti Immigration Marx .....

against the 'chinese rabble' being imported to undercut wages and the irish immigration to England “the right to work on the mainland.”

March/april to Meyer and Vogt 1870, Marx pointed the finger.... English capital “exploited the Irish poverty to keep down the working class in England by forced immigration of poor Irishmen.”


"..Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labour market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class..."

The above is stark and clear.....below the part that is more oft quoted......

"..And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland..."

Do we just sit and watch? Become ambulance chasers out in the deserts or trucks where people die from asphyxiation. Rhetorical assertions like 'there are no borders' whilst not meant as low humour, certainly lends itself. As we know it is an old problem best to seek a remedy. EU HAS G4 ALREADY. Consequences surely not far away. Do you support G4,secret supranational trade deals, those in India , UK and further afield?

[Paul Cockshott]

to the straight question: are completely open borders in the working class interest? No.

[RED DAVE]

to the straight question: are completely open borders in the working class interest? No.Racism and social chauvenism. Exactly what I would expect from you on this issue.

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

As Paul said before, your proposal doesn't really promote class solidarity, let alone one across borders or something stronger than all this.So you and Paul say.


He promoted union-based control over immigration, which I'm surprised hasn't been posted in this thread yet.Union controlled racism. I love it!

RED DAVE

[Paul Cockshott]

well if you just want to throw insults I might as well call you an accomplice of new labour third way neo liberalism, but perhaps you can explain why you think completely open borders help the working class?

[S.Artesian]

to the straight question: are completely open borders in the working class interest? No.

Bullshit. That's not the question. The question is do you support the expulsion of workers based on the bourgeoisie's determination of "legal/illegal" immigrant status?

This may be a difficult concept for you to grasp, but nothing the bourgeoisie do is in the "working class interest" provided of course you have some notion of a working class outside your particular set of parochial boundaries-- farm, village, town, city, country, commonwealth, currency union, etc etc etc.

The question is do you support the restriction of immigration of workers and the expulsion of those who "transgress" upon that restriction?

How about integration of workers of different races? Is that in the workers' "interests"? How about the movement of internal migrants [an issue certain "anti-open borders" partisans think is identical to that of immigration]?

The actual movement of peoples has absolutely nothing to do with causing the economic distress of the working class in the "host" countries.

So let's ask this this, straight up:

Do you think the movement of immigrant workers causes, is responsible, for the economic contraction of capitalism, and the attacks on living standards?

That's the real content behind this issue.

To the unartful dodger:

You use Marx in a way that all chauvinists, closet reactionaries like to use the words of a revolutionist against the actual meaning of his work:



"..And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland..."Marx is not here, nor does he anywhere, propose the restriction upon immigration, or the expulsion of the immigrants. He is attacking the chauvinism of the "native" English proletariat that allows itself to be used as a tool by the English capitalists and aristocrats. The actions and attitude Marx opposes are exactly the actions and attitudes you, with your petty little shopkeepers, private property mentality, advocate. You are a real Englishman.

[Paul Cockshott]

no, I am in favour of organised working class control of the labour market. The policy of the UK state, tory rehtoric to the contrary is to flood the labour markeet with unorganised immigrant labour to drive down wages and working conditions.

[RED DAVE]

no, I am in favour of organised working class control of the labour market.So am I. That called socialism (although we couldn't call it a "labor market"). It's great that we're in solidarity, Paul. :D


The policy of the UK state, tory rehtoric to the contrary is to flood the labour markeet with unorganised immigrant labour to drive down wages and working conditions.But since we don't have socialism, your response to capitalist class war is to have the working class engage in racist exclusion and do the dirty work of the capitalists in a different way.

What makes you any different from the right-wing, racist socialists and labor leaders in the USA who called for exclusion of the Chinese on the grounds that they would destroy the gains of labor?


The notion of "yellow peril" manifested itself in government policy with the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which was prompted by the fear that the mass immigration of Asians threatened white wages, standards of living and indeed, Western civilization itself. Gompers [president of the AFL] contributed to the yellow peril fears of the era claiming, in reference to the Chinese Exclusion Act, "…the superior whites had to exclude the inferior Asiatics, by law, or, if necessary, by force of arms."http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Samuel_Gompers#cite_note-4

RED DAVE

[brigadista]

dodger - migration watch is not reliable source

http://fullfact.org/blog/migrationwatch_need_to_show_their_working-2359

[Paul Cockshott]

no, I am in favour of organised working class control of the labour market. The policy of the UK state, tory rehtoric to the contrary is to flood the labour markeet with unorganised immigrant labour to drive down wages and working conditions.

[S.Artesian]

no, I am in favour of organised working class control of the labour market. The policy of the UK state, tory rehtoric to the contrary is to flood the labour markeet with unorganised immigrant labour to drive down wages and working conditions.


What is "organized working class control of the labour market"? That sounds to me like "market socialism"-- an oxymoron. How can there be organized working class control of a labour market, when the entire basis of a "labour market" is capital and capitalism.

Do you think union hiring halls, where bureaucracies control "shape ups" for available work represents organized working class control of the labor market"?

It seems to me Paul, that even when you're pretending to answer a straight question, you are really hedging your answers, obscuring the questions by giving an answer that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual functioning of capitalism, and the real needs of class struggle.

[RED DAVE]

well if you just want to throw insults I might as well call you an accomplice of new labour third way neo liberalismBut I'm not. And you are endorsing racism.


but perhaps you can explain why you think completely open borders help the working class?As many have pointed out, the freedom of migration is a fundamental freedom of the working class. It's restriction is one way that capital tries to control labor. The fact is that the capitalists can use immigration policy, open or closed, to their benefit. The working class should have nothing to do with this shit.
(It is one of the telling aspects of stalinism that international immigration and internal immigration was highly restricted.)

The workers have no fatherland!

RED DAVE

[Vanguard1917]

no, I am in favour of organised working class control of the labour market.

For you, what does that mean in practice? Union bureaucrats agreeing deals with the capitalist state for stronger border controls, more border police, more arrests of immigrants, more deportations? That sounds like good socialist policy, does it?

What you're effectively calling for is 'first-world jobs for first-world workers' and 'Polish jobs for Polish workers'. Like Red Dave and S.Artesian have pointed out, you want the re-adoption of some of the most narrow-minded, chauvinist and reactionary labour-aristocracy policies of the previous two centuries.

[S.Artesian]

Before we go too far astray, let's go back to the OP and answer those points specifically:



Is it not in the interest of the burgeoise to increase the pool of workers during high employment to increase the competition and dump wages, or even better, if they're able to employ people off the record? Of course when the economy is expanding, reproducing itself on a larger scale, the bourgeoisie increase the pool of laborers. This doesn't always, or necessarily lead to lowering wages. The attack on US workers after 1973-74 and after 1979 had nothing to do with supplies of immigrant labor. The slight increase in wages in the US 1993-2000 was not reversed by the large inflows of immigrant labor into the US during that period.

And as a matter of fact, in many parts of the US--particularly the Midwest, where there was a very strong mix of small and some middle industry in rural communities [i.e. food processing, meat packing], immigrants were brought in only after the "host workers" were defeated in strikes, asset liquidations, leverage buy outs, bankruptcies, downsizing. The immigrant laborers had nothing to do with that.


And what about poor immigrants who come to the country having to settle down in cheap ghettos, unable to find a job and are forced to rely on the system for money. Their kids grow up in bad environments and attend bad schools, resulting in them making bad decisions and commiting crimes separated from the rest of society.
What's the difference between that and extremely poor, discriminated against sections of the host working class-- i.e. African-Americans in the US? Pretty much none, so little difference in fact that these same specious arguments about "relying on the system for money" were heard throughout the US during the internal migration of black laborers to the industrial centers of the North.

The same non-arguments were made when the Irish emigrated to the US; when the Italians arrived; when central and eastern European Jews emigrated; and on the West Coast of the US, the "host" working class [white] was organized specifically around expelling Asian immigrants who were "sources of disease," criminals, "poor moral fiber" "unchristian"-- it's the same old same old, and it's always bullshit.



If the solution isn't to decrease the amount of immigrants or allow certain benefits (such as entry-level jobs, which seems to anger a lot of people.), what is to be done? It isn't. No more than racial discrimination is a solution. What is a solution? Class solidarity, class struggle, defending immigrants from attacks by government and non-government forces-- blocking workplace raids like the ones Obama has vastly increased.


How would one fully integrate people from vastly different cultures who are unable to settle down anywhere else than poor suburban areas, and should the immigration continue while there's still unemployed people within the country?
We don't have to "integrate" people from vastly different cultures into one indistinct homogenous blur. We have to protect our class brothers and sisters from our class enemies-- the government, the racists, the quasi-fascist militias, etc.

Reducing immigration will do absolutely NOTHING to increase employment. The actual movement of migrants since 2008 proves that as reverse migration, with many more being expelled, or returning to their original countries being the norm. And how's that working out for the "host" working classes? Rolling in dough, are they? Everybody's got a job? Not hardly.

The obligation, the urgenocy is to oppose anything that provides any comfort, any equivocation is the rejection of chauvinism. That chauvinism, as Marx correctly points out, is an obstacle to class solidarity, to "class-for-itself" action.

[JamesH]

no, I am in favour of organised working class control of the labour market. The policy of the UK state, tory rehtoric to the contrary is to flood the labour markeet with unorganised immigrant labour to drive down wages and working conditions.

I think that's a good idea. However, shouldn't it also come along with a plan such that everyone can share in gains in working conditions and wages, without tightening the borders?

[RED DAVE]

no, I am in favour of organised working class control of the labour market. The policy of the UK state, tory rehtoric to the contrary is to flood the labour markeet with unorganised immigrant labour to drive down wages and working conditions.
I think that's a good idea.Actually, Comrade, as has been demonstrated by S.Artesian and others, it's a terrible idea. It puts the working class in the position of policing capitalist, racist policies.


However, shouldn't it also come along with a plan such that everyone can share in gains in working conditions and wages, without tightening the borders?Comrade, please, read what you are writing.

What you are saying, agreeing with Cockshott, is:

(1) The "organised working class" should control, that is plan and, immigration policy in a capitalist economy. This means that the working class gets to do the dirty work of the capitalists.

(2) As to "a plan such that everyone can share in gains in working conditions and wages, without tightening the borders," that's only possible under socialism. And the fight for socialism is never furthered when one part of the working is benefiting against another part.

RED DAVE

[rednordman]

(1) The "organised working class" should control, that is plan and, immigration policy in a capitalist economy. This means that the working class gets to do the dirty work of the capitalists.
RED DAVEHold on a minute. We would all agree with you if we had all just had a revolution. There is nothing wrong with what you say, but the problem is..we are absolutely nowhere near revolution yet. Its so far from it, that you risk alienating an increasingly reactionary public (yet its not their fault that they are going that way). That's what I was getting at.

What is going to ignite the fire in the leftwing beacon of the public? Because right now its almost diminished, despite capitalism falling apart before our eyes. And that really upsets me to say, too.:(

[Die Neue Zeit]

The NO Borders Marx

'But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free trade. Karl Marx, On the Question of Free Trade (1848)'

But here Marx was clearly referring to the free trade in consumer goods and services. Nothing was said about labour mobility or capital mobility, the latter being the key assumption of Ricardo and other political economists in arguing about comparative advantage.


So you and Paul say.

Read my own specific solution: http://www.revleft.com/vb/immigration-t164992/index.html?p=2311116

I've reiterated it below in case you (and S.Artesian) don't get it.


to the straight question: are completely open borders in the working class interest? No.

They are, comrade, only if there exist both a transnationally entrenched bill of workers’ political and economic rights, on the one hand, and the realization of a globalized and upward equal standard of living for equal work based on real purchasing power parity, on the other (italicized for Red Dave's comprehension).

With the latter, there's no extreme exploitation of immigrants. I believe it's Marx's LTV re. core exploitation still being there and while tackling head-on the information and power asymmetries described by Ricardians (exploitation at distribution), Bichler, Nitzan, etc.


no, I am in favour of organised working class control of the labour market. The policy of the UK state, tory rehtoric to the contrary is to flood the labour markeet with unorganised immigrant labour to drive down wages and working conditions.

I'm sure this is compatible with the Fully Socialized Labour Market proposal we discussed months ago (paraphrased below for other posters):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/supply-side-political-t152098/index.html - "Big Government" should be the sole de jure employer, hiring all workers directly (with of course the ability to refuse jobs with things like unsafe working conditions) and contracting out all labour services to the private sector and to state enterprises and the rest of the public sector


I think that's a good idea. However, shouldn't it also come along with a plan such that everyone can share in gains in working conditions and wages, without tightening the borders?

Comrade, I stated two additional policy planks above.

[rednordman]

Gentlemen and Ladies. I just want to point that everyone in this argument is not against immigration. pragmatism is the only issue. and that is all.

[∞]

If you are favor of tighter border control then realize you are in favor of class division.
You are supporting the idea that proletarian in Mexico for whatever reason deserve to work in worse conditions, whereas the US proletarian deserve minimum wage jobs that said Mexicans might perform for a lower pay.

This however doesn't create a unified proletarian with the same conditions and the same understandings, it creates a division between the two.

"The workingmen have no country,"-Let capitalism run it's course without fascistic border policy.

[Paul Cockshott]

I think that's a good idea. However, shouldn't it also come along with a plan such that everyone can share in gains in working conditions and wages, without tightening the borders?

It does not need border controls. The key point is that we should advance political objectives whose implementation depends on working class organisations.
The demands in the French Workers Party programme are in part aimed at being measures that the working class organisations enforce.
If you look at the following demands:


Protective supervision of apprentices by the workers' organizations;
Legal minimum wage, determined each year according to the local price of food, by a workers' statistical commission;
Legal prohibition of bosses employing foreign workers at a wage less than that of French workers;
The first two are clearly aimed at enabling the working class organisations to enforce the measures.
The last one on legal prohibition of bosses employing foreign workers at lower wages could be imposed the same way.
If one wanted to elaborate this demand you would say that

1. Trades unions should have the right to bring private prosecutions against employers in these cases and in the event of winning the case should be awarded all costs involved in the prosecution.

2. That it is the employers that are targeted not the foreign workers. The employers should be liable to prosecution for employing non union foreign labour at below union rates

The unions should in these case aim to recruit the foreign workers and get them employed at union rates.
It is ludicrous of Red Dave and others to make out that this is racism or victimisation of foreign workers, on the contrary the foreign workers would benefit from union protection and higher wage rates.

But another key issue is that the left attempts to moralise at the workers when they worry about immigration driving downs wages and tells them that they are bigotted. The famous example was Gordon Brown's inadvertently recorded comments in the last election. This just drives people into the arms of the Tories. By posing the problem the way Marx did, you recognise that workers fears of being undercut are not imoral or racialist but perfectly rational. But the key point is that it exposes the Tories as hypocrites.
The Tories would run a mile rather than see business men prosecuted for super exploiting foreign workers.

[Paul Cockshott]

If you are favor of tighter border control then realize you are in favor of class division.
You are supporting the idea that proletarian in Mexico for whatever reason deserve to work in worse conditions, whereas the US proletarian deserve minimum wage jobs that said Mexicans might perform for a lower pay.

This however doesn't create a unified proletarian with the same conditions and the same understandings, it creates a division between the two.

"The workingmen have no country,"-Let capitalism run it's course without fascistic border policy.

If you want to obtain common minimum wages then you need to argue for the political union of Mexico and US with common taxes and common pension and social security rights.

[∞]

If you want to obtain common minimum wages then you need to argue for the political union of Mexico and US with common taxes and common pension and social security rights.

Thats fine. But I am not against below minimum wage illegal labor. It provides a better opportunity for better workers.

[Die Neue Zeit]

If you want to obtain common minimum wages then you need to argue for the political union of Mexico and US with common taxes and common pension and social security rights.

Paul, my proposal doesn't require going that far. All it needs is a supranational organization like the WTO, IMF, World Bank, ICC, etc. but a labour one that can enforce the global bill of workers' political and economic rights and maintain globalized and upward equal standard of living for equal work based on real purchasing power parity.

However, on one angle your suggestion here doesn't go far enough. Why only "common minimum wages" when there's unequal pay for equal work in higher-paid jobs?

[Paul Cockshott]

What is "organized working class control of the labour market"?
Trades Unionism

[black magick hustla]

Hold on a minute. We would all agree with you if we had all just had a revolution. There is nothing wrong with what you say, but the problem is..we are absolutely nowhere near revolution yet. Its so far from it, that you risk alienating an increasingly reactionary public (yet its not their fault that they are going that way). That's what I was getting at.

What is going to ignite the fire in the leftwing beacon of the public? Because right now its almost diminished, despite capitalism falling apart before our eyes. And that really upsets me to say, too.:(

"revolution" is not about PR work. its not about advertising your ideas because they make sense. nobody really is convinced by what "makes sense", not you, not me, not most people. people are convinced by immediate neccessity and are plunged into action by forces greater than themselves. it doesn't help to "dilute" the line. how many leftists have been talking about making themselves more amicable and approachable by ahving a softer line? was eurocommunism a concrete gain at all?

we oppose the terrorists in the state who make the life of immigrants miserable, with their migras and thugs who terrorize our friends and brothers in their neighborhoods. the line of immigration today is almost as important as the line on WWI was, its a litmus test of internationalism and those who are for tighter border control today are class enemies and traitors.

[RED DAVE]

What is "organized working class control of the labour market"?
Trades UnionismWhich goes to show that you understand neither the labor market nor trade unionism.

Are seriously trying to perpetrate the notion that unions control the labor market? If this were so, the unions would control the price of labor power. If you have ever worked at a unionized job, you should know that this is not so. At best, union have an influence on the labor market, but to say that they control the labor market is a social democratic fantasy.

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

Gentlemen and Ladies. I just want to point that everyone in this argument is not against immigration. pragmatism is the only issue. and that is all.


Not everyone. Just dodger and a few others. Others equivocate and think Marx's program from 150 years ago, complete with apprentices, is an answer., Others think immigration leads to "poor choices" "criminal behavior" and the rest of that ignorant horseshit.



Thats fine. But I am not against below minimum wage illegal labor. It provides a better opportunity for better workers.

???? You're not "against" below minimum wage illegal labor, because it provides an opportunity for "better workers"? Milton Friedman would be happy to agree with you. What does it provide for all the workers? For the workers as a CLASS?




we oppose the terrorists in the state who make the life of immigrants miserable, with their migras and thugs who terrorize our friends and brothers in their neighborhoods. the line of immigration today is almost as important as the line on WWI was, its a litmus test of internationalism and those who are for tighter border control today are class enemies and traitors.

Word. And a standing ovation to comrade black magick hustla.

And since dodger, and others, are so found of stating how those who oppose the anti-immigrant chauvinism [which is nothing other than an attack on workers], are actually supporting the "dreams" of fascists, the EU [and why not the Trilateral Commission,l the Council on Foreign Relations, and the international Jewish banking conspiracy?] etc. here's one for dodger, and those others:

Their positions on immigration, on trying to "preserve" the "premier" status of the host workers reminds me of those corporatist cities in England prior to and during the 17th century revolution, who in order to preserve their control of production, the power of their guilds, guild masters, lords etc agitated against the mobility and the migration of workers from city to city or countryside to city, claiming such freedom of movement could only bring crime, devastation, decay to society. Of course, during the revolution, these corporatist cities and their guilds, apprentices and all, supported the Royalists.

Word on that too.

[∞]

???? You're not "against" below minimum wage illegal labor, because it provides an opportunity for "better workers"? Milton Friedman would be happy to agree with you. What does it provide for all the workers? For the workers as a CLASS?

Sorry, I think you misunderstood me. What I mean by that is that I support that as opposed to dividing up the working class by nationality. I would rather have both proletariats competing for a wage rather one have an advantage just because he/she happened to be born in the USA.

I believe minimum wage should exist for these people. But people willing to work below it is something I am not for nor against. It is just a feature of a capitalist society.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Which goes to show that you understand neither the labor market nor trade unionism.

Are seriously trying to perpetrate the notion that unions control the labor market? If this were so, the unions would control the price of labor power. If you have ever worked at a unionized job, you should know that this is not so. At best, union have an influence on the labor market, but to say that they control the labor market is a social democratic fantasy.

Cockshott's demand for unions' control over immigration, without the spectre of border controls, raises the necessity of universal unionization of one form or another, something which you haven't considered.

[RED DAVE]

Cockshott's demand for unions' control over immigration raises the necessity of universal unionization of one form or another, something which you haven't considered.That's right, I haven't considered it, and neither has any Leftist from Marx on down, since the only point in time when that will happen and when unions control the labor market will be under socialism.

We are talking about immigration under capitalism, and under capitalism Cockshott's notion of labor controlling immigration is racist and chauvenist.

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

these peopleAre you using a term like that to talk about members of the working class?

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

Sorry, I think you misunderstood me. What I mean by that is that I support that as opposed to dividing up the working class by nationality. I would rather have both proletariats competing for a wage rather one have an advantage just because he/she happened to be born in the USA.

I believe minimum wage should exist for these people. But people willing to work below it is something I am not for nor against. It is just a feature of a capitalist society.

Still isn't clear to me. I'm not against people period. But nobody works for sub-minimum wage because he or she is "willing" to do that. Rather, economic circumstances compel some to agree to work for less than a minimum.

I'm for changing those circumstance, and you don't do that by declaring a section of the working class "illegal;" or suggesting "borders should be tightened," "immigration leads to criminal behavior," "immigration lowers the living standards of the 'native' workers," "British jobs for British workers" [excluding the Irish, as always], or citing some bullshit from something called the "Adam Smith Institute" that says 80% of all new jobs are going to immigrants.

Adam Smith Institute? What's next? A review of Chile's Economic Miracle under Pinochet from the Milton Friedman Institute?

[∞]

Still isn't clear to me. I'm not against people period. But nobody works for sub-minimum wage because he or she is "willing" to do that. Rather, economic circumstances compel some to agree to work for less than a minimum.

I'm for changing those circumstance, and you don't do that by declaring a section of the working class "illegal;" or suggesting "borders should be tightened," "immigration leads to criminal behavior," "immigration lowers the living standards of the 'native' workers," "British jobs for British workers" [excluding the Irish, as always], or citing some bullshit from something called the "Adam Smith Institute" that says 80% of all new jobs are going to immigrants.

Adam Smith Institute? What's next? A review of Chile's Economic Miracle under Pinochet from the Milton Friedman Institute?

Yes. I don't want them to be illegal. But if I was choosing between them working below minimum wage or being deported I'd side with he former. However, if they're legal then I guess they should be paid minimum wage.


Are you using a term like that to talk about members of the working class?

RED DAVE

Why? Are they not people?

∞

[black magick hustla]

Their positions on immigration, on trying to "preserve" the "premier" status of the host workers reminds me of those corporatist cities in England prior to and during the 17th century revolution, who in order to preserve their control of production, the power of their guilds, guild masters, lords etc agitated against the mobility and the migration of workers from city to city or countryside to city, claiming such freedom of movement could only bring crime, devastation, decay to society. Of course, during the revolution, these corporatist cities and their guilds, apprentices and all, supported the Royalists.

Word on that too.

tbere are much more historic analogies too. its the same social democratic snakes emerging from under the grass. In the same way the traitors of WWI used "workerist" rhetoric, its the same people here making the same excuse, saying that its "unpopular" among workers, and saying it is "economically unfeasable" and using trade unionist populism to justify the chauvinism. The laughable part is that while in WWI, these people had a sort of future, those who talk like that today have corpses in their mouths, because social democracy its in its deathbed

[S.Artesian]

Yes. I don't want them to be illegal. But if I was choosing between them working below minimum wage or being deported I'd side with he former. However, if they're legal then I guess they should be paid minimum wage.

You can't separate the two. The reason the workers can be so super-exploited is because they are classified as illegal.

Our response must be, nobody is illegal simply because they are here.

[Die Neue Zeit]

That's right, I haven't considered it, and neither has any Leftist from Marx on down, since the only point in time when that will happen and when unions control the labor market will be under socialism.

We are talking about immigration under capitalism, and under capitalism Cockshott's notion of labor controlling immigration is racist and chauvenist.

RED DAVE

A Fully Socialized Labour Market is hardly an oxymoron.

[∞]

A Fully Socialized Labour Market is hardly an oxymoron.

How can something be hardly an oxymoron? What does that even mean?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Go back to Post #65 in its entirety: http://www.revleft.com/vb/immigration-t164992/index.html?p=2314199

[RED DAVE]

A Fully Socialized Labour Market is hardly an oxymoron.A fully socialized labor market is, in fact, an oxymoron.

(1) A capitalist labor market can't be a fully socialized economic system. (2) A fully socialized economic system is, ahem, socialism, and will not have a labor market.

And so, for Cockshott to premise his solution to the immigration problem to be be labor control of immigration under a fully socialized economy is to premise the solution upon nothing at all. This means that he has refied capitalist racism and chauvenism.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

You obviously haven't heard of Oskar Lange before. I don't agree with his market socialism, but I don't blame you.

[RED DAVE]

You obviously haven't heard of Oskar Lange before. I don't agree with his market socialism, but I don't blame you.(1) I have heard of Oskar Lange.

(2) I don't believe in market socialism – it's state capitalism.

(3) What does this have to do with Cockshott's bizarre notion that the working class can/should agitate for, control of the labor market under capitalism?

(4) How does this make Cockshott's notion in (3) anything but an introduction of racism and chauvenism into the working class?

RED DAVE

[Paul Cockshott]

When trades unions are weak they dont control the labour market, where they are strong they exert a lot of control. Control is never absolute. I was a trades unionist in British industry back in the 70s when we had a lot of control.

[Paul Cockshott]

(3) What does this have to do with Cockshott's bizarre notion that the working class can/should agitate for, control of the labor market under capitalism?



RED DAVE

This has historically been a key objective of the labour movement and one in which it has repeatedly run into criticism for violating individual's right to work.

This is the accusation thrown at any militant picket line when it attempts to prevent blacklegs going into a plant.

But more generally, from the establishment of closed shops to the demand that Labour governments follow policies of full employment, the labour and trades union movement has attempted to improve the conditions of workers by restricting the supply of labour relative to the demand for it.

[Ocean Seal]

who cares about a nation's economy, long live mass immigration
I wish that I could fully agree with this post. What I don't agree with is long live mass immigration. Mass immigration is a result of displaced workers through imperialism and often being an immigrant to the first world is hard and filled with challenges, prejudices, and legal issues. I'm not agreeing with anyone who says "the immigrants are hurting the economy," but simply that we shouldn't just glorify this, because it is in fact quite a difficult life for many immigrants.

[Die Neue Zeit]

This has historically been a key objective of the labour movement and one in which it has repeatedly run into criticism for violating individual's right to work.

This is the accusation thrown at any militant picket line when it attempts to prevent blacklegs going into a plant.

But more generally, from the establishment of closed shops to the demand that Labour governments follow policies of full employment, the labour and trades union movement has attempted to improve the conditions of workers by restricting the supply of labour relative to the demand for it.

What about having something like a universal agency shop instead of closed shops everywhere?

http://revleft.com/vb/closed-shops-union-t155203/index.html

1) The universal agency shop (can also be an independent government agency acting in good faith) can do all the regular private-sector (and possibly even public-sector) collective bargaining representation and also "control" (in the regulatory and supervisory sense) employer use of immigrant labour.

2) The universal agency shop can also establish union-style membership.

3) All employed workers must pay agency fees, with no ifs, buts, or ands. This would be way moreso under a Fully Socialized Labour Market, and also under one with Minsky's ELR. They can also opt to be union-style members of the universal agency shop.

4) It is the workers who become union-style members of the universal agency shop who manage the affairs of the latter, including the "control" of employer use of immigrant labour.

[RED DAVE]

When trades unions are weak they dont control the labour market, where they are strong they exert a lot of control.Unions never control the labor market. They may influence the labor market or struggle within it, but you, in your fantasies about immigration, from which we have wandered far afield, are positing a situation where, basically, the working class, under capitalism, controls that aspect of the labor market.

This can only be a situation where the bourgeoisie, for purposes of its own, temporarily cedes control. All the routine oppression of capitalism, including racism and chauvenism, would remain in place, and the working class would appear to be administering this shit.


Control is never absolute. I was a trades unionist in British industry back in the 70s when we had a lot of control.A masterful statement of Marxist precision: "we had a lot of control."

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

Control is never absolute. I was a trades unionist in British industry back in the 70s when we had a lot of control. Apparently, not enough, right? Apparently not so much that when push came to shove, you were able too defeat the push that shoved you right out that "control" you thought you had.

You think those days are coming back? Nostalgia is the best you can do?

Guess what? You had "that control" because it suited the bourgeoisie. You got your asses kicked because allowing you that control no longer suited the bourgeoisie, given the tasks that capitalism faced.

Brilliant. You had a lot of control; until you didn't. You might want to think about what happened between those two conditions.

"We had a lot of control" Sounds like something that belongs on a tombstone.

[RED DAVE]

What about having something like a universal agency shop instead of closed shops everywhere?

http://revleft.com/vb/closed-shops-union-t155203/index.htmlBecause the closed shop represents the worker's demand that they have a right to impose conditions as long as management does.


1) The universal agency shop (can also be an independent government agency acting in good faith)So you want unions integrated into the bourgeois state.


can do all the regular private-sector (and possibly even public-sector) collective bargaining representation and also "control" (in the regulatory and supervisory sense) employer use of immigrant labour.Social democratic fantasy, with racism on top.


2) The universal agency shop can also establish union-style membership.Whatever that means.


3) All employed workers must pay agency fees, with no ifs, buts, or ands. This would be way moreso under a Fully Socialized Labour Market, and also under one with Minsky's ELR. They can also opt to be union-style members of the universal agency shop.Now you are just throwing out one idea after another without rhyme or reason, as they run through your mind.


4) It is the workers who become union-style members of the universal agency shop who manage the affairs of the latter, including the "control" of employer use of immigrant labour.Social democratic fantasy land.

Immigration and chauvinism against foreign workers is a key arena in the class struggle. It will never cease as long as capitalism exists. To posit an agency within capitalism where the workers control immigration is to palce the workers at the service of capitalist racism and chauvinism and have them do the dirty work of the bosses (which union bureaucrats have tendency to do anyway).

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

Because the closed shop represents the worker's demand that they have a right to impose conditions as long as management does.

Guess what? So does the agency shop!


So you want unions integrated into the bourgeois state.

It's more complicated than what you've asserted:

Private-Sector Collective Bargaining Representation as a Free Legal Service (http://www.revleft.com/vb/private-sector-collective-t124045/index.html)
On Trade Unions (http://www.revleft.com/vb/trade-unions-t116838/index.html)

As comrade Rakunin said in the latter, "This would make the yellow unions obsolete as unions while the 'red' ones would be the only remaining unions."


Whatever that means.

Now you are just throwing out one idea after another without rhyme or reason, as they run through your mind.

Why don't you actually read the material more slowly to understand the discourse of public policymaking better? The admin comrade Pastradamus explained things in his post in the second link, too.

[RED DAVE]

the discourse of public policymakingWhat the fuck is that other than some social democratic gobbledy-gook?

RED DAVE

[Paul Cockshott]

I wish that I could fully agree with this post. What I don't agree with is long live mass immigration. Mass immigration is a result of displaced workers through imperialism and often being an immigrant to the first world is hard and filled with challenges, prejudices, and legal issues. I'm not agreeing with anyone who says "the immigrants are hurting the economy," but simply that we shouldn't just glorify this, because it is in fact quite a difficult life for many immigrants.

The role of imperialism here can be overstated. People emigrate when there is the hope of work at better conditions than in their home country.
There was mass migration from Europe to America, Australia, New Zealand in the last century because wages and living conditions there were better than in Europe. There is mass migration from Poland to Scotland now, because conditions here are better than in Poland. But in neither of these cases is it a matter of people being displaced by imperialism.

[Paul Cockshott]

A masterful statement of Marxist precision: "we had a lot of control."

Well if you want to see an in depth analysis of it read the work of the Marxist Economist Andrew Glyn, in particular "British capitalism, workers and the profits squeeze" (1972) which documents the effect on capitalism in Britain of the control that a well organised labour movement exercised over the labour market.


Unions never control the labor market. They may influence the labor market or struggle within it, but you, in your fantasies about immigration, from which we have wandered far afield, are positing a situation where, basically, the working class, under capitalism, controls that aspect of the labor market.

This can only be a situation where the bourgeoisie, for purposes of its own, temporarily cedes control.





Guess what? You had "that control" because it suited the bourgeoisie. You got your asses kicked because allowing you that control no longer suited the bourgeoisie, given the tasks that capitalism faced.

This is naive conspiracy theory stuff on the part of both of you. Artesian is writing from a country that has never had a serious labour movement by European standards, but Dave should know better.

The labour movement is more than the trades union movement. The constitution of the proletariat as a class requires the formation of workers political parties. The American labour movement never made that transition, but the European labour movements did, and created political parties that challenged the political economy of capital with the political economy of labour.
The economic power of labour in the 60s and 70s was as a consequence of political victories in the 40s and 60s and 70s.

The idea that the bourgeoisie liked what labour governments did in running a policy of full employment, socialising medicine, and nationalising large sectors of the economy is a complete fantasy. They had no option because the Labour movement won majorities in elections. They had to put up with this growth in working class social power.

It was only when, in the late 70s that the labour movement no longer had an agreed policy on how to restructure the economy in the face of this working class economic power, that the right was able to win the ideological battle and win a majority for a government pledged to roll back the advances won by labour.

But what made that possible was that they won the battle for public support and the labour movement lost it.

But if you think that a left party could win elections today if one of its key election planks was to remove all border controls and allow unlimited immigration, then you are living in cloud cuckoo land. A party that pledged that would loose a significant part of its working class support to right wing parties, and for very good reason. Such policies of completely open borders would reduce domestic wage levels towards those in India and China.

Stand on such a platform and you will get nowhere electorally.

The programme of the French Workers Party, that I drew attention to, was the programme of a workers party that was going out to actually seriously contest elections. A such it addressed a real fear of French workers, but did so in a way that directed those fears not at foreign workers but at the employers.

In the USA illegal status may be the principle issue associated with immigration now. In the UK that is not the main issue. By far the majority of immigrant workers are here legally.

[S.Artesian]

This is naive conspiracy theory stuff on the part of both of you. Artesian is writing from a country that has never had a serious labour movement by European standards, but Dave should know better.


Ummhh.....just so you know, Dave is writing from the same country I am.

But besides that.....you know usually the rhetorical trick-bag of leftist wind-bags is that of "more revolutionary than thou." Cockshott's spin is the old "more reformist than thou" trick.

Yes, he has his "political economy of labor"-- whatever that is. I think it's ministering capitalism on behalf of the capitalists but getting a bigger share for some of the non-capitalists.

Like I said, words on a tombstone: "Here lies the 'political economy of labor.' We once had a lot of power."

Here's the question Paul-- the question that dodger has answered and you should too.

Are you in favor of restricting immigration so that British jobs will be preserved for British workers?

Take your time, call a friend, somebody who probably had lots of power 40 years ago.

[Die Neue Zeit]

This is naive conspiracy theory stuff on the part of both of you. Artesian is writing from a country that has never had a serious labour movement by European standards, but Dave should know better.

The labour movement is more than the trades union movement. The constitution of the proletariat as a class requires the formation of workers political parties. The American labour movement never made that transition, but the European labour movements did, and created political parties that challenged the political economy of capital with the political economy of labour.

Just to be more technical, in Germany and Russia there's also a difference between a mere labour movement and a worker/worker-class movement. The UK tred-iunion movement, while perhaps evolving into a labour movement, never got past that point towards becoming a worker-class movement. Even the French working class, despite Proudhonist leftovers and petit-bourgeois Radical romanticism, had une Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière that was more class-militant and more class-integrated.

As noted by the likes of Vernon Lidtke and Lars Lih, this last step involves much more than setting up a mere "parliamentary party" like what British Labour was and is.


The constitution of the proletariat as a class requires the formation of workers political parties.

Indeed, comrade, except that these two posters don't exactly hold pro-party viewpoints, instead settling for flimsy "parties in the broad sense" that tend to be reducible to council fetishes.

[RED DAVE]

Indeed, comrade, except that these two posters [S.Artesian and RED DAVE] don't exactly hold pro-party viewpoints, instead settling for flimsy "parties in the broad sense" that tend to be reducible to council fetishes.I have no idea what you are talking about. Whatever it is, it certainly does not refer to my views. At best you are engaged in fuzzy thinking and self-delusion. At worst, you are lying. Given the ponderous, self-centered nature of your thinking, it's hard to tell the difference.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

Does "power emanating from the workplace" ring a bell? That's part of the council fetishes I'm criticizing.

[RED DAVE]

Does "power emanating from the workplace" ring a bell? That's part of the council fetishes I'm criticizing.I'm going to reply to this once; then if you want to continue this, start a new thread as it's a derail.

"Power emanating from the workplace" is the essence of socialism. It is you, with your obsessions about bureaucracy, who have a fetish.

"Nuff said. See you about this in a thread on the meaning of socialism or something of the sort.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

Ummhh.....just so you know, Dave is writing from the same country I am.

But besides that.....you know usually the rhetorical trick-bag of leftist wind-bags is that of "more revolutionary than thou." Cockshott's spin is the old "more reformist than thou" trick.

Yes, he has his "political economy of labor"-- whatever that is. I think it's ministering capitalism on behalf of the capitalists but getting a bigger share for some of the non-capitalists.

Like I said, words on a tombstone: "Here lies the 'political economy of labor.' We once had a lot of power."

How do you propose that workers "this side of revolution," "here and now," etc. extract major concessions from the bourgeoisie? Because tred-iunion struggles ain't gonna go far these days, if it ever did.

[Paul Cockshott]

Ummhh.....just so you know, Dave is writing from the same country I am.
Ok I though he was from the SWP here. Fair enough then, neither of you has any experience of the working class having any social or political power.




Yes, he has his "political economy of labor"-- whatever that is. I think it's ministering capitalism on behalf of the capitalists but getting a bigger share for some of the non-capitalists.


I get the phrase from Marx's inaugural address to the International Working Men's Association:

After a 30 years’ struggle, fought with almost admirable perseverance, the English working classes, improving a momentaneous split between the landlords and money lords, succeeded in carrying the Ten Hours’ Bill. The immense physical, moral, and intellectual benefits hence accruing to the factory operatives, half-yearly chronicled in the reports of the inspectors of factories, are now acknowledged on all sides. Most of the continental governments had to accept the English Factory Act in more or less modified forms, and the English Parliament itself is every year compelled to enlarge its sphere of action. But besides its practical import, there was something else to exalt the marvelous success of this workingmen’s measure. Through their most notorious organs of science, such as Dr. Ure, Professor Senior, and other sages of that stamp, the middle class had predicted, and to their heart’s content proved, that any legal restriction of the hours of labor must sound the death knell of British industry, which, vampirelike, could but live by sucking blood, and children’s blood, too. In olden times, child murder was a mysterious rite of the religion of Moloch, but it was practiced on some very solemn occassions only, once a year perhaps, and then Moloch had no exclusive bias for the children of the poor. This struggle about the legal restriction of the hours of labor raged the more fiercely since, apart from frightened avarice, it told indeed upon the great contest between the blind rule of the supply and demand laws which form the political economy of the middle class, and social production controlled by social foresight, which forms the political economy of the working class. Hence the Ten Hours’ Bill was not only a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class.
But there was in store a still greater victory of the political economy of labor over the political economy of property. We speak of the co-operative movement, especially the co-operative factories raised by the unassisted efforts of a few bold “hands”. The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated. By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labor need not be monopolized as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the laboring man himself; and that, like slave labor, like serf labor, hired labor is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labor plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart. In England, the seeds of the co-operative system were sown by Robert Owen; the workingmen’s experiments tried on the Continent were, in fact, the practical upshot of the theories, not invented, but loudly proclaimed, in 1848.






Are you in favor of restricting immigration so that British jobs will be preserved for British workers?

I am not in favour of only British workers being able to do jobs here.
Workers from throughout the Union have the right to work here.
That was a policy deliberately introduced by New Labour to hold wages down.
But I am in favour of employers being stopped from using foreign labour to undercut wages and conditions here. Any foreign agency workers or other workers taken on must be employed under the same wages and conditions as unionised British workers, and those foreign workers should also join the Unions here.

[RED DAVE]

How do you propose that workers "this side of revolution," "here and now," etc. extract major concessions from the bourgeoisie? Because tred-iunion struggles ain't gonna go far these days.I don't propose that "here and now" any formation put forth by workers is going " extract major concessions from the bourgeoisie." It is not a period when this can be accomplished.

Do you have a way of doing this? Care to share?

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

Ok I though he was from the SWP here.Then you have obviously never read any of my posts detailing my active work in Occupy Wall Street. If I were in the British SWP, it would be a long commute to meetings.


Fair enough then, neither of you has any experience of the working class having any social or political power.You are even dumber than I thought you were (a) if you think the US working class has never had any social or political power. And (b) you don't understand social and power in working class terms.


I am not in favour of only British workers being able to do jobs here.But are you in favor of unrestricted immigration?


Workers from throughout the Union have the right to work here.Fuck the Union. Are you in favor of unrestricted immigration?


That was a policy deliberately introduced by New Labour to hold wages down.Fuck New Labor. Are you in favor of unrestricted immigration?


But I am in favour of employers being stopped from using foreign labour to undercut wages and conditions here. Any foreign agency workers or other workers taken on must be employed under the same wages and conditions as unionised British workers, and those foreign workers should also join the Unions here.Fuck all that bullshit. Are you in favor of unrestricted immigration?

RED DAVE

[Paul Cockshott]

Fuck all that bullshit. Are you in favor of unrestricted immigration?


I have told you clearly no I am not. Unrestricted immigration serves capital rather than labour, and any party standing on that platform would gain few working class votes.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Cockshott
Fair enough then, neither of you has any experience of the working class having any social or political power..
You are even dumber than I thought you were (a) if you think the US working class has never had any social or political power. And (b) you don't understand social and power in working class terms

Well perhaps you are older than I thought as well, if you personally remember Debs.

[S.Artesian]

I have told you clearly no I am not. Unrestricted immigration serves capital rather than labour, and any party standing on that platform would gain few working class votes.

1. Please provide references where immigration has caused a decline in the living standards of the working class as a whole.

2. A party, in California in the 1870s and 1880s and on and on, opposing the jingoism, the chauvinism, the racism, the attacks on Asian workers; opposing the calls for expelling Asian workers would have gained very few working class votes. As a matter of fact, any party with courage enough to do that would have been attacked and physically suppressed.

A party calling for complete equality of African-Americans, complete integration of school, transport, medical facilities in the US anytime after 1873 would have, and in fact did, received very few working class votes?

So what?

[Paul Cockshott]

1. Please provide references where immigration has caused a decline in the living standards of the working class as a whole.

http://www.jvi.org/fileadmin/jvi_files/Warsaw_Conference/Papers_and_Presentations/Borjas_paper.pdf

[S.Artesian]

http://www.jvi.org/fileadmin/jvi_files/Warsaw_Conference/Papers_and_Presentations/Borjas_paper.pdf


You should be ashamed of yourself, Cockshott. This paper, from 2006, is so shot through logical fallacies, improper conclusions, and incipient racism that it's not worth pissing on. I read this paper several years ago and thought, "well, the minutemen will surely be circulating this." I did not think that a so-called "leftist" or socialist would be doing the racist militia's work for them.

Of course I didn't know you then... heard of you, didn't know you. Wish I didn't now.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Again, I'm sure that what Cockshott is saying is that the working class should collectively regulate its own immigration and emigration, as opposed to the bourgeois-capitalist state.


I don't propose that "here and now" any formation put forth by workers is going " extract major concessions from the bourgeoisie." It is not a period when this can be accomplished.

Do you have a way of doing this? Care to share?

If people don't think big now, then all they'll get even in the best scenario are a bunch of patched, not-so-well-thought-or-discussed policies, and then when these don't work there'll be a backlash. Again, read my proposal linking "rising equal pay for equal work" with "real purchasing power parity" and with freedom of movement.


2. A party, in California in the 1870s and 1880s and on and on, opposing the jingoism, the chauvinism, the racism, the attacks on Asian workers; opposing the calls for expelling Asian workers would have gained very few working class votes. As a matter of fact, any party with courage enough to do that would have been attacked and physically suppressed.

A party calling for complete equality of African-Americans, complete integration of school, transport, medical facilities in the US anytime after 1873 would have, and in fact did, received very few working class votes?

So what?

Those are two different scenarios. The first scenario is what happens when you have closed-shop fetishes extended to the level of society as a whole. To anti-immigrant workers, immigrants are like replacement workers crossing picket lines (a.k.a. scabs). The African-American community was indigenous enough by the end of the Civil War.

[JamesH]

You should be ashamed of yourself, Cockshott. This paper, from 2006, is so shot through logical fallacies, improper conclusions, and incipient racism that it's not worth pissing on. I read this paper several years ago and thought, "well, the minutemen will surely be circulating this." I did not think that a so-called "leftist" or socialist would be doing the racist militia's work for them.

Of course I didn't know you then... heard of you, didn't know you. Wish I didn't now.


That's not a response, it's ad hominem invective. He cited a scholarly source (apparently the "racist militias" have infiltrated Harvard) from a trained economist. Borjas may be wrong, but you need to demonstrate the logical fallacies and improper conclusions the paper is supposedly rife with.

What is the hysteria on this post? Paul has argued that immigration should be indirectly restricted by prosecuting employers who hire non-union labor below the union rate. That's it. No "keep Britain white," no border controls. Simply that unrestricted immigration depresses wages. What that is so self-evidently absurd is not at all obvious to me. Look at how many H-1B visas the US issues, despite the fact that there is no shortage of American technical workers to do those jobs. H-1B immigrants come to do work at significantly lower wages than their US counterparts; how does this not adversely affect the US labor market or drive down wages?

And he's being treated like a disciple of Enoch Powell. If the American left displays this kind of impatience and debating style with the American people, it's no wonder that most are deaf to them.

[workersadvocate]

Which brings us to an interesting question: how to actually fight scabbing while consistently standing for proletarian internationalism and against all oppression. Too many times, it seems like we workers have to choose one or the other. Proletarian solidarity goes both ways across the divides, so what is to be done if workers go on strike but the cappies use elements of the more oppressed to scab? This is when you find out the priorities of our leaderships. Reformists and reactionaries flunk the test every time.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Look at how many H-1B visas the US issues, despite the fact that there is no shortage of American technical workers to do those jobs. H-1B immigrants come to do work at significantly lower wages than their US counterparts; how does this not adversely affect the US labor market or drive down wages?

Whoa! It's actually legal for US employers to pay H-1B visa-holders less in wages than everyone else?

[RED DAVE]

Fuck all that bullshit. Are you in favor of unrestricted immigration?
I have told you clearly no I am not.That's racism.


Unrestricted immigration serves capital rather than labourThat's right. The liberation of labor from the restrictions of capitalism serves capital.


and any party standing on that platform would gain few working class votes.I am not interested in winning an election. I'm interested in winning a world through revolution. The Manifesto didn't say:

Working Men of All Countries Unite (Except to Keep Your Comrades Away From Your Borders)!


Fair enough then, neither of you has any experience of the working class having any social or political power.
You are even dumber than I thought you were (a) if you think the US working class has never had any social or political power. And (b) you don't understand social and power in working class terms.
Well perhaps you are older than I thought as well, if you personally remember Debs.No, I don't personally remember Debs. But I have personally met comrades who knew him. And I have met comrades who sat in at GM in Flint and comrades were in the general strikes at Minneapolis and Oakland. I helped organize the working class contingents to the March on Washington in '63, and I knew sisters and brothers who brought the whole US Postal System to a dead stop in a wildcat strike in 1970.

So I think I know a little about working class power. But I never before met someone who called themself a lefty who was for a restriction on immigration. You, Cockshott, are something new in my experience.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm interested in winning a world through revolution. The Manifesto didn't say:

Working Men of All Countries Unite (Except to Keep Your Comrades Away From Your Borders)!

Oh, but:

Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation...

And my modern take being:

Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the [Pan-Nation], must constitute itself the [Pan-Nation]... (http://www.revleft.com/vb/bankruptcy-internationalismi-t144285/index.html)

[RED DAVE]

Oh, but:

Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation...And until then, the last thing that it should be doingg is aiding the ruling class in tis racism and chauvenism.

The only demand for the working class is unrestricted immigration.


And my modern take being:

Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the [Pan-Nation], must constitute itself the [Pan-Nation]... (http://www.revleft.com/vb/bankruptcy-internationalismi-t144285/index.html)When I finish watching some paint dry, I might read it, unless I decide first to count the hairs on my cat's tail. ETA: Seriously, I just read your link, and it's an unabashed retreat from proletarian internationalism.

By the way, have you been to any occupations lately? Joined any occupation committees? Organized a union at your work place?

RED DAVE

[Commissar Rykov]

By Marx's beard what fucking century am I in? If I didn't know better I would swear I was hearing some Yellow Socialist nonsense about the sanctity of National Borders and keeping the uncouth out of our national makeup. Surely not here on Revleft I told myself but alas poor Yorick you are not welcome here.

Seriously though how can anyone and I mean anyone justify arguing along a Nationalist line over artificial borders that keeping the Working Class separated and powerless in their own countries is a good idea? Surely we are not being so Western Chauvinistic as to suggest that Workers from elsewhere pose a danger to the native Working Class? Surely the only real danger of unrestricted immigration is the very fact that it would be a boon to Workers' Power and not a detriment.

[Paul Cockshott]

It is not a question in Europe of national borders, these are already open, and I favour the most rapid weakening of the nation states and the refocussing of politics from the nation state to class parties organised at the union level

[Paul Cockshott]

Dave, as an advocate of completely unrestricted immigration can you explain why you think it is to the economic benefit of the working class?

[antagonist-one]

The knee-jerk, alarmist replies by the American comrades have not been based on any systematic reflection on what principles are at stake.

As socialists we do not want to polarize the working classes along ethnic or national conflicts. Hence all of us reject policies aimed at discriminating and separating people on that basis in order to "defend national borders" et al. That is a reactionary policy informed by racist ideology. On that we all agree.

As socialists we do not want to weaken collective working class bargaining power vis-a-vis the capitalist class. Here the basic principles of the classical labour movement seem to be lost among the American comrades. If there is an unrestricted increase in the supply of workers in the capitalist labour market – irrespective of nationality! – then the collective bargaining power weakens. Conversely, when labour is scarce relative to capital, the power of organized labour grows.

In most industrialized economies the increase in labour supply no longer comes from population growth but from net immigration within and across borders defined by states. Hence the only way to mitigate effect on collective bargaining power is to establish working-class policies that prevent this net inflow of workers to be used by employers as a cheaper source of labour power. This can be done by unionizing the new workers and legally restricting the employers from hiring them at lower wages than the established level. This is already a struggle in the European trade union movement.

Hence the answer to the question:


Are you in favor of unrestricted immigration?
is clearly no in a capitalist labour market if it weakens collective bargaining power of the working-class. If that happens you get the opposite effect, workers begin to polarize in conflicts along ethnic and national divisions. Hence such a policy would reproduce the very racism that it claims to attack. This is happening in Europe as we speak.

[Paul Cockshott]

Artesian it is clear you dont like the conclusions of the paper, but what do you think its methodological flaws are.
Its conclusions seem exactly what one would expect from the marxian theory of surplus pupulation

[S.Artesian]

That's not a response, it's ad hominem invective. He cited a scholarly source (apparently the "racist militias" have infiltrated Harvard) from a trained economist. Borjas may be wrong, but you need to demonstrate the logical fallacies and improper conclusions the paper is supposedly rife with.

Racism has long been a staple of element of US scholarly endeavors, including the endeavors of 'scholars' at US Ivy League Schools. Take some time an read Chase's The Legacy of Malthus.

As for being a "scholarly source," christ on a crutch, Milton Friedman was a "scholarly source," the Chicago boys are a "scholarly source."

You accuse me of ad hominem and then turn around and cite a purely artificial, and meaningless, attribute of "scholarly" as providing some "authority" to Borja. So if you can stop being a hypocrite for a moment-- tell us, what do you agree with in Borjas' paper?

Do you agree with his argument that, in essence, correlation is causation, because that is his only argument. And that's a fallacy.


What is the hysteria on this post? Paul has argued that immigration should be indirectly restricted by prosecuting employers who hire non-union labor below the union rate. That's it. No "keep Britain white," no border controls. Simply that unrestricted immigration depresses wages. What that is so self-evidently absurd is not at all obvious to me. Look at how many H-1B visas the US issues, despite the fact that there is no shortage of American technical workers to do those jobs. H-1B immigrants come to do work at significantly lower wages than their US counterparts; how does this not adversely affect the US labor market or drive down wages?


There's no hysteria, here, except for your frantic attempts to obscure what in fact Paul has said. He said that residents of the Union have a right to work in Britain. I assume he means European Union. Not to put too fine a point on it--- the overwhelming number of those residents is white.

So let's ask: how about residents of Africa, Asia, Latin America? Do they have that right?



And he's being treated like a disciple of Enoch Powell. If the American left displays this kind of impatience and debating style with the American people, it's no wonder that most are deaf to them.

Not so deaf that hundreds of thousands didn't turn out to protect immigrant laborers in 2006, essentially shutting down LA and Chicago.

Apparently not so deaf that the immigrant workers at Stella D'Oro or the Republic Windows factory couldn't hear what the issues were.

[OHumanista]

By Marx's beard what fucking century am I in? If I didn't know better I would swear I was hearing some Yellow Socialist nonsense about the sanctity of National Borders and keeping the uncouth out of our national makeup. Surely not here on Revleft I told myself but alas poor Yorick you are not welcome here.

Seriously though how can anyone and I mean anyone justify arguing along a Nationalist line over artificial borders that keeping the Working Class separated and powerless in their own countries is a good idea? Surely we are not being so Western Chauvinistic as to suggest that Workers from elsewhere pose a danger to the native Working Class? Surely the only real danger of unrestricted immigration is the very fact that it would be a boon to Workers' Power and not a detriment.

And here I was wondering exactly the same. And also wondering how would would I economically destroy the portuguese working class when I move there to live with together with my girlfriend. (and yes I have the money to sustain myself and I am going there to live with her and study in a university not "steal" jobs):rolleyes:

[El Chuncho]

The main people against immigration in the UK are the Tories, the fake-left New Labourites, the BNP and UKIP - that pretty much tells me that immigration should be supported even if I did not fully formulate ideas regarding it already.

Immigration is not a problem because most immigrants move to countries that they want to be part of (for whatever reason) and do not flock in large numbers enough to overcrowd the country and cause too much problems with housing. Maybe immigrants shouldn't be allowed to enter without some checks, however, they should not be subject to the amount of hardship they receive at the moment...and especially not the prices of VISAs.

My partner is not from the UK and she doesn't live here at the moment so we both have to save up and work very hard just to be together. We are not married but if we were the situation would still be the same. It would still be the same even if we had children together. I find a country where couples cannot be together just because they are from different countries to be heartless and cruel. A fine example of a capitalist mess.

And, anyway, if the country gets too crowded we shouldn't stop immigration, we should just deport and or execute Neo-NAZIs instead! ;)

[S.Artesian]

Artesian it is clear you dont like the conclusions of the paper, but what do you think its methodological flaws are.
Its conclusions seem exactly what one would expect from the marxian theory of surplus pupulation


1. "Correlation is causation"-- that is his argument

2. see 1 above. In typical bourgeois, or political economist fashion, he ignores that actual social conditions that create the decline in wages and instead assumes the correspondence between 2 facts of a process means one has caused the other.

3. see 2 above. Borjas ignores completely the fact that wages for US workers began their decline before the large influx of workers from Mexico and central America. He ignores recessions. He ignores the effect of recessions on the immigrant laborers. He ignores the fact that a certain periods workers' wages did NOT decline right in the very midst of this "unrestricted immigration"-- for example the 1993-2000 period-- or again, the 2005-2007 period leading to the crash. He ignores the social attacks on the living standards of the working class, the rollback of government support programs for the poorest sector of the working class, the reversal of affirmative action, the asset stripping and asset liquidation conducted by the bourgeoisie over 30 years, the attacks on unions, the decertification of unions, the bankruptcies to void labor contracts etc etc etc. Did those actions cause a decline in wages? Were immigrant laborers the cause for any of those actions?

4. In fact, Borjas operates in the fashion of political economists that Marx described so well-- as never asking the question as to what conditions compel labor to present itself as an article for exchange with a wage.

5. Mere technical point. US does not now, and did not have a policy of "unrestricted immigration." It has restricted immigration.

6. Mr. scholarly Borjas makes a distinction between the pre-1965 immigration policy which basically restricted immigration to white people from Canada, Europe, etc. and the post 1965 policy, which of course is a period of immigration of darker-skinned, and much poorer people. And he clearly believes that policy turn is what has caused the decline in wages. I don't know about you, but to me that absolutely is the staple of "scholarly racism."

7. What Borjas doesn't do, being the bourgeois economist, is investigate what has precipitated the migration of poorer people to the US-- what specific actions in Mexico, Central and Latin America-- were involved and how that fit in with the US bourgeoisie's general attack on the living standards of the working class, which attack was not pre-figured by immigration, or based on the bourgeoisie "conspiring" to flood the US immigrants to attack labor.

8. Borjas does not account for the changes in labor productivity, the "overproduction of the means of production" that in fact drive this entire process-- expelling labor from production; increasing the tendency for the rate of profit to decline, and requiring more casual, "precarious," temporary, unprotected labor to offset that tendency.

9. In short, Borjas and his scholarly partisans make the immigrants the cause, rather than capital.

10. To which one can only reply, and at the same time sum up the entire issue of this thread-- "Which side are you on?"

[RED DAVE]

It is not a question in Europe of national borders, these are already open, and I favour the most rapid weakening of the nation states and the refocussing of politics from the nation state to class parties organised at the union levelSure you do.

And you also favor restrictions on immigration. This is racism and chauvinism. Why don't you "immigrate" over to OI? The border is open. :D

RED DAVE

[workersadvocate]

Surplus population?
What is meant by that, and how is it related to Marxism?

Question for all on this thread: how do you define the current period and what are your perspectives?
Reformism and reaction tend to take hold among those with "Bad Period" perspectives.
Next thing they say is the working class is too weak and too stupid, so we have to work with bourgeois and petty bourgeois progressives (whatever that means). The predominate petty bourgeois composition of the left starts shining brilliantly throughout the politics. Tea baggers on the one hand, middle class liberals and their bureaucrats and 'progressive' petty bourgeois leftists on the other, all trying to keep the working class 'in our place', divided, and used as pawns in their interests rather than our class interests.
That's why we workers are kept at each others throats. That's why these supposed leaders and saviors don't organize us and mobilize us except when they want votes or want us to help screw over some other sections of our class. That's why these key issues are always framed so that all the 'realistic' options mean that the working class as a class loses.
What often gives our false saviors away, though, is their individualist personalist point of view on everything, often then justified whatever is good for themselves under this system through moralism.

Middle class leftists love to talk about immigrants and the oppressed, but where are they being organized and mobilized and united in action with the working class as a whole to abolish and replace this system? And where do they assert any substantial criticisms and calls to united working class action against exploiters and victimizers from immigrant and oppressed backgrounds?
What about organizing unorganized workers in workplaces owned primarily by bourgeois and petty bourgeois exploiters from oppressed groups too? That would be a boon to workers' power, but we'll never see it while the middle class leftists are in charge...they're more concerned with not offend fellow petty bourgeois from oppressed backgrounds and having maximum access to a diversity of exotic foods, entertainment and company, just like the bourgeois jet-set 'somebodies' of this system do. Fuck all bourgeois and the petty bourgeois...none are progressive anymore, so long as they remain loyal (or loyal opposition) to this system and try to maintain their class relationships with the proletariat, so we must cast away all remaining illusions about them. Fuck their coordinating class...these aren't friends of our class, they don't work for us, they don't stand above the class struggle like they pretend, and to hell with their 'objective' moralist preachings of "do as I say not as I do".

We workers of the world don't need these fake friends and leaders anymore. In fact, we need to independently organize our class as as class for itself across the divides to exercise our power--based on our own decision and permission--defending all of our class and using all our collective might to a olish exploitative and oppressive society forever. We will be resisted every step of the way, so we must use our own class power to crush and discourage any and all resistance to the organized and united proletariat establishing itself as the ruling class through workers' republic. Only exploiters and victimizers will be foreign to a workers' republic. The proletariat is an international class, and so also will be our union of workers' republics born and establishing hegemony over all society through proletarian revolution. No one will get us there but ourselves as a class. That's what it will take to rid society of racism, chauvinism, sexism, and all kinds of social oppressions. Educate, agitate, organize for that, and nothing less, for we workers have no stake in this system but instead have a world to win and nothing to lose but our chains. What happens henceforth depends on what we the working class does. To hell with shitty defeatist perspectives--our enemies are but a house of cards if we unite for our class interests and bring our collective might to bear for our revolution and our better world.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Surplus population?
What is meant by that, and how is it related to Marxism?

I'm sure the comrade meant surplus labour, though I think he shouldn't use that Malthusian-leaning term.

[RED DAVE]

Surplus ... world.So do you support restrictions on immigration or not?

RED DAVE

[workersadvocate]

So do you support restrictions on immigration or not?

RED DAVE

Whom would the workers' republic allow in, on what conditions, and what would be expected of the newcomers?
When workers seize power in one country, should the rest of the class conscious workers if the world living in lands where our revolution has yet to succeed decide "hey why stay here and do this hard dangerous class struggle stuff when I could escape to the workers' state already established?" See the problem? We need international revolution, not "socialism in one country" while leaving our fellow proletarians who aren't yet at revolutionary class consciousness behind.
They can come to workers' states temporarily, but they still have a responsibility to our international class to overthrow "their own" ruling class, establish a workers state, and join their new workers' state into an international union of workers' republics. So, their priority must be education, training, networking, learning how to effectively utilize the revolutionary solidarity support our international class will provide. The revolution must be extended, so of course they must return as prepared as possible, and remain thoroughly accountable to the international proletariat in the accomplishment of their tasks.
This is how I believe workers' revolution can sweep all of the Americas. Liberal bullshit will not emancipate our class. The middle class could care less, and their left wing face will jump in front of any real effort to make proletarian revolutions throughout this hemisphere, by deceit and dividing, playing the "peace police", attempting to bribe and sway the worse off to come to America or Canada instead, and of course complaining that workers who support such an international revolutionary strategy are just racist dogs. These liberals will cry if a genuine independent proletariat seizes Mexico City establishes a workers' republic, expropriates the bourgeoisie and presses to link their revolution with workers in America and Canada. Democrats would scramble to be the furst ones to call for war against the workers revolution and to incarcerate or assassinate any "terrorist" supporters in the USA. And who would they go after first? Immigrants from Latin America, of course, since the bourgeois and petty bourgeois are only pretending ti be friends of immigrants so long as the toe the line and serve these exploiters.

So of course we defend all of our class from the exploiting and oppressing classes, including "their own" (e.g. ,Mexican bourgeois and petty bourgeois and their coordinator class and gangsters are our class enemies too, not "progressive" political partners).
That defense must come organizing all workers for class struggle, class defense, and class power.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Does internationalism escape some of you?

In this I've read arguments that the trade unions are the basis of the labour movement and that immigrants can possibly hinder the labour movement.

Both came without explanation.

[S.Artesian]

Its conclusions seem exactly what one would expect from the marxian theory of surplus pupulation


Here is [part of] what Marx says about "surplus population:"


Accumulation itself, however, and the concentration of capital that goes with it, is a material means of increasing productiveness. Now, this growth of the means of production includes the growth of the working population, the creation of a working population, which corresponds to the surplus-capital, or even exceeds its general requirements, thus leading to an over-population of workers. A momentary excess of surplus-capital over the working population it has commandeered, would have a two-fold effect. It could, on the one hand, by raising wages, mitigate the adverse conditions which decimate the offspring of the labourers and would make marriages easier among them, so as gradually to increase the population. On the other hand, by applying methods which yield relative surplus-value (introduction and improvement of machinery) it would produce a far more rapid, artificial, relative over-population, which in its turn, would be a breeding-ground for a really swift propagation of the population, since under capitalist production misery produces population. It therefore follows of itself from the nature of the capitalist process of accumulation, which is but one facet of the capitalist production process, that the increased mass of means of production that is to be converted into capital always finds a correspondingly increased, even excessive, exploitable worker population. As the process of production and accumulation advances therefore, the mass of available and appropriated surplus labour, and hence the absolute mass of profit appropriated by the social capital, must grow. Along with the volume, however, the same laws of production and accumulation increase also the value of the constant capital in a mounting progression more rapidly than that of the variable part of capital, invested as it is in living labour. Hence, the same laws produce for the social capital a growing absolute mass of profit, and a falling rate of profit.The careful reader will note that for Marx there is no such thing as a "surplus population" in an of itself. When there is a "surplus" it is surplus only to the, and only due to the, conditions of the reproduction of capital.

Get that? There is no surplus population. There is capital and what it can and needs to do to reproduce itself which at one and the same time produces antagonistic forces in the service of accumulation.

The careful reader will note that nowhere in any of his writings about relative surplus or over- population, does Marx advocate the working class restrict births, oppose copulation, endorse the Catholic Church's opposition to birth control, demand trade unions take over the production, distribution of condoms and verify their use.

Perhaps I can clarify this issue for all those entranced by the trade union policy of "administering" immigration controls on "behalf of the workers" under capitalism.

When we are talking about immigration, what are we essentially talking about? We are talking about labor, and not just any labor, but labor organized as a commodity. We are talking about the importation of a commodity.

Now academics and official in and out of governments have long covered themselves with glory showing how imports hurt the "native" working class. Trade union bureaucrats, jingoists, chauvinists, nationalists, petty-bourgeoisie of all kinds, big bourgeoisie of all kinds always strike the "national" pose when their revenues and profit are threatened by imports.

So when, in the US, GM and Chrysler and Ford and the UAW demand tariffs, increased restrictions, quotas on imports of autos from Japan do we as Marxists jump on the national bandwagon and denounce imports from Japan? Do we support tariffs and quotas? Do we demand that the trade unions be allowed to administer tariffs and quotas?

Some might-- maybe dodger, maybe Cockshott-- thinks that's a way to gain standing with the working class-- but Marxists don't. The problem isn't with imports. It's with capitalism. The solution isn't in restricting imports. It's in the working class opposing every scheme of its "host" bourgeoisie, opposing capital, in opposing the national chauvinism that seeks to march workers everywhere into conflict and battle with each other.

Immigrant labor is the import of a commodity. Nothing more. We oppose the national chauvinism that says "immigrants are lowering the wages of all. reduce the immigrants and "our" wages will be restored." No, they won't. The same anti-working class action, aided abetted administered even by those "trade union" officials and advocates, used to expel, exploit, attack the immigrant laborers, will be, in fact is being turned against all workers.

The quotas used against Japanese auto imports did nothing to stay the hand of the bourgeoisie in assaulting the wages, benefits, numbers, and conditons of employment of "host" US auto-workers.

The problem of reduced living standards, declining wages is not a problem caused by immigrant laborers. It is the result of capitalism attacking the living standards in order to aggrandize more wealth for itself.

[brigadista]

if you are worried about EU workers in the UK there is a simple solution - support them to organise!!!!

[Commissar Rykov]

if you are worried about EU workers in the UK there is a simple solution - support them to organise!!!!
Yeah but that gets rid of your ability to whine like a bigot about different ethnic groups while still claiming to be part of the Revolutionary Left. I mean that like requires effort...man.;)

[brigadista]

ok lets look at what really happened in 2009.....


A Very British Strike?
The Engineering Construction Workers’ Strike
Class struggle or xenophobic strike? Gregor Gall looks at the outbreak of wildcat strikes in the engineering construction industry.

The engineering construction workers’ strike has been the most significant instance of workers’ resistance to the recession and its effects so far. Its significance is not just to be found in that it was a strike taking place in a recession – when conventional wisdom suggest workers do not strike because of their weakened labour market position. Rather, its significance is to also be found in the militant and successful collective action which took place and the dynamics of this which were driven primarily by the grassroots. It threw up critical issues of workers’ collective leverage, how labour markets operate, xenophobia, neo-liberalism and state regulation of labour.

Origins and Background

Redundancy notices were issued in late 2008 at Lindsey oil refinery for Shaws’ workforce after Shaws lost part of a Total contract at the site. Just before Christmas holiday, Shaws’ shop stewards were informed this work had been contracted to IREM, an Italian non-union company. Stewards explained to members that IREM would employ its own core (non-union) Portuguese and Italian workforce so the redundant workers would not be re-employed on the contract. This precipitated meetings with IREM to press the case for re-employment. Stewards were also told that IREM would pay the national rate for the job but this was met with suspicion.

Meanwhile, the National Shop Stewards Forum for construction met in early January to discuss Staythorpe power station where Alstom was refusing to hire local labour and relying upon non-union Polish and Spanish workers instead. It was decided that all ‘Blue Book’ sites covered by the National Agreement for the Engineering Construction Industry (NAECI) should send delegations down to Staythorpe to ramp up the protests against Alstom. And, since last October, Unite – under pressure from stewards – had organised demonstrations at Staythorpe for the employment of local labour

Then, on Wednesday 28 January 2009, Shaws’ workers were told by their stewards that IREM had definitely stated it would not employ local labour. Between 800-1000 workers met and voted unanimously to take immediate unofficial strike action. In this meeting, calls for striking were met by the stewards’ committee recommending to workers to stay within the national disputes procedure. But when workers voted for a strike anyway, the entire shop stewards’ committee (on advice from Unite officials) resigned to distance the union from unlawful action. The following day over 1,000 construction workers from Lindsey, Conoco and Easington sites descended to the refinery’s gate to picket and protest. This was the spark that ignited the unofficial walkouts of construction workers across the length and breadth of Britain, amounting to over twenty groups of workers and involving up to 6,500 workers for a week.

On Monday 2 February, the Lindsey strike committee put the following proposals to the strikers to be adopted as their demands (which they were): no victimisation of workers taking solidarity action; all workers in Britain to be covered by the NAECI agreement; union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available; government and employer investment in proper training/apprenticeships for new generation of construction workers - fight for a future for young people; all migrant labour to be unionised; union assistance for immigrant workers - including interpreters - and access to union advice to promote active integrated union members; and build links with construction unions on the continent.

Dynamics of Revolt

The internal dynamics of the revolt were complex and intriguing. The dispute was driven by stewards and activists in terms of the Lindsey strike and how it spread. Yet, it seemed that the two unions involved (GMB, and Unite in particular) were giving support to it, publicly representing the strikers and negotiating on their behalf despite the strikes being unofficial and unlawful. What happened was that the strikers were pushing in an industrial direction while the unions were pushing in a political direction in a way that played to their respective strengths and objectives. However, while there was compatibility with this, there was also friction over means and ends.

In the absence of threats of injunctions (and thus the options of compliance or defiance) and lawful dismissal of strikers (for unofficial action) because the employers knew this would inflame the situation, the unions worked with the strikers – as opposed to strenuously and seriously calling on them to go back to work – even though they distanced themselves from it in other ways (for example, by repudiation).

Sympathy walkouts and the congregations of protestors and strikers were coordinated by grassroots activists through mobile phone, email and the web, and the Bearfacts website. Given the degree of support flying pickets did not seem necessary given the technologies deployed. Mass meetings at sites took place with show-of-hand votes on what course of action to take.

The reason why these means of organisation have been so effective was because of i) the prior and heavy unionisation of these workers, ii) the inter-site network of shop stewards as an authentic and organic voice of members, iii) the intermingling of these workers through working together on different projects, thus helping to create a common shared sense of interests and grievances, and iv) the traditions of unofficial action in the industry. For example, the Financial Times (6 February 2009) reported that the amount of strike action in 2007-8 in the sector accounted for one day per worker (with there being around 22,000 workers in the sector).Also of note was that many unemployed construction workers took part in the protests, indicating that the gap between being unemployed or working or not is not a great one given the nature of the projects and employment in the industry.

The unions began to recommend returns to work by the sympathy strikers after the first two or three days but these were often rejected because the Staythorpe workers were still out. The argument of the unions concerned returning to work and balloting on official action as well as raising money to support the Lindsey strikers. The reasoning behind this seemed to be that the strikers had made their point, the Lindsey strikers were in meaningful negotiations, and, with the head of steam built up, the unions could take over and use this to push the political agenda.

In the media, the unions made it clear that the action was not official and that they could not support it. That aside, they did not condemn it. But more than that, they as national unions were one of the main voices of the striking workers and their urging of returns to work were not particularly vehement. Practically, the two unions at their national officer levels were amongst the negotiators in talks aimed at resolving the Lindsey dispute as well as the political dispute over exclusive use of non-domiciled labour and the Posted Workers’ Directive.

While one would expect national officers to be less involved on the ground, it was noticeable how involved regional officers were. Some reports suggest that there were meetings between union officers and stewards on constructions sites and that information about the strikes was spread between the sites via official channels, effectively encouraging solidarity action (although there seemed to be little coordination between Unite and the GMB).

However, there were significant tensions at Lindsey between the striker and the national unions over the way to resolve the dispute and on what basis. For example, in the first meeting between Total and the strike committee, the employers kept looking at their watches. When asked why the meeting was being cut short, they said they had a meeting to go to with Unite officials and ACAS in S****horpe. This was news to the strike committee and they immediately organised to go up to the Hotel with other strikers and demanded to be let into the negotiations. Another report recounted: ‘The strike committee only found out through the management that two national officials from Unite and the GMB were in talks with ACAS in S****horpe. Fifty strikers set out for S****horpe, where the officials were ensconced in a hotel with ACAS. When the strikers got there they were blocked from the hotel by police. Only by smuggling a note past the police did the strikers get the national officials to come out and talk to them. As a result the strike committee forced their way to the table to ensure that no deals are done behind their backs.’

Responses and Outcomes

Politicians of mainstream parties (Tories, Liberals, SNP) by Friday 30 January repeated the lines like ‘strikes are not the best way to sort this out’, ‘you’ve made your point now so get back to work’ and ‘this will start to damage the economy’. None outlined just how the strikers could continue to exert pressure without striking. Only Labour called the strikes ‘indefensible’, ‘xenophobic’ and mounted an attack on them (although some ministers commented the strikers had legitimate concerns). The pressure the strike created led the government to instruct ACAS to investigate the claims of wage undercutting and to mediate in the Lindsey dispute as well as an investigation into the sector’s productivity.

Total was involved in the talks despite the issue being with IREM. Initially, it refused to negotiate with the strikers until they had returned to work. However, it conceded and cajoled IREM into offering a third of the 198 disputed jobs to local workers. This was rejected leading to a new offer of 102 jobs available for local workers of any nationality but primarily for the soon-to-be redundant Shaws workers, with no redundancies of the Italian workers and with all workers paid on NAECI rates. Two further aspects of the agreement were that stewards can check that the jobs filled by the Italian and Portuguese workers are on the same conditions as the local workers covered by the NAECI agreement, and that unionised workers will work alongside the IREM workers in order that further verification of NAECI rates being paid.

Politically, a case was being built - and support gathered for it – for the government to revisit and revise its extremely neo-liberal 1999 interpretation of the Posted Workers Directive into national regulations. These stipulated that terms and conditions should not be below the legal minimum as per the minimum wage and the like rather than not be below the collectively bargained industry rates. It is this revision – to the collectively bargained industry rates – to the British regulations which seems more likely to be achieved rather the revising of the EU directive itself or the European Court of Justice rulings which mean that it is unlawful to prevent a company using the Directive to undercut union rates.

Xenophobia?

From the placards on the pickets and demonstrations, the one demand that stood out most clearly above all other was ‘British jobs for British workers’1 . Indeed, at the outset of the strike it seemed to be the only demand from the workers, and due to the continued usage of these initial images by the media seemed to transcend more than just the first few days of the strike.

Did this mean that some sections of the left (like the Socialist Workers’ Party) were right to say this was tantamount to a racist strike, the strike was playing with fire and that the wrong target of Italian and Portuguese workers had been chosen (rather than the correct target of the employers)? Or was the rest of the left correct to say this was a strike for the right to work and was a strike against employers, neo-liberalism and recession?

The original dispute at Lindsey concerned IREM’s practice of exclusively using Italian and Portuguese workers. In other words, IREM was bringing in new workers who were permanently employed by it to do the work. They were not permitting any other workers, whether British or non-British in the local labour market, to be eligible to apply for this work. So this was not a strike against the use of foreign workers per se. It was a strike against the exclusive use of certain workers at the expense of others workers in the local labour, or British, labour market. The strikers were not calling for the expulsion, repatriation or sacking of ‘foreign’ workers. And given the expanded nature of the labour market in Britain in recent years, it was not just British-born and British self-identified workers that were ineligible for the work but all other skilled workers already domiciled in Britain, whether Polish, Portuguese, British or Irish.i. The mistake by some on the left in the unions to criticise or oppose the strikes was down to their mesmerisation with the slogan ‘British jobs for British workers’.

Of course, this in and of itself is not conclusive proof as words and actions can diverge for a number of other reasons. The demand of ‘British jobs for British workers’ (and its other imitations) owes much to the attempt to make political capital out of the phraseology of the promise coined by Gordon Brown in 2007. The strikers did so in order to try to exert some leverage over the government by taking up its phrase and trying to put pressure on them to deliver upon it. After spending billions of pounds of public money bailing out reckless bankers and indemnifying them against their losses, the strikers were seeking to make the point that they too demanded government protection.

So using the slogan was a tool of tactical leverage at the level of a single and simple slogan but which hid a much more complex phenomenon. The fuller demand that could not easily be encapsulated in a slogan and which would not fit onto a placard or banner, as alluded to above, concerned the right of workers in Britain – whether ‘British’ or not – to be eligible to apply for vacant work on construction sites in Britain (as opposed to demand the right to get the jobs). The strike by some 600 workers at Langage Power Station, which included hundreds of Polish workers, again indicated that at base the strikes were about a demand for the right to work for workers who are domiciled in Britain.

Finally, and in recognition of the attraction of the BNP and the ability of the media to portray the strike as racist and xenophobic, some of the slogans began to change from Monday 2 February to demands for the right to work for local workers and workers in Britain. Thus, Bearfacts posters changed from ‘British jobs for British workers’ to ‘Fair Access for Local Labour’ where local meant existing workers in the local labour markets and was not a cipher for ‘British’ or white ‘British’ workers.

But just as telling as any of these factors was that understanding how the strike began explains why the few placards of ‘British jobs for British workers’ came to such prominence and threw many media and commentators off the scent of the actual demands. The resignation by the stewards on Wednesday 28 January led to a vacuum amongst the workers in terms of leadership of the strike and it was not for a two or three days that the unofficial strike committee was established and began to exert itself. Consequently, there were then almost no Unite banner and placards initially because of the unofficial, unlawful nature of the strike to which the stewards had acted to distance themselves. It was into this initial vacuum-cum-leaderless strike that some workers downloaded posters from the Bearfacts website to use on the demonstrations and pickets. It was not until the Lindsey strike committee asserted itself and its demands that the openly displayed demands changed.

Now, of course, none of this is not to suggest that there was no racism or xenophobia involved. There was inevitably some amongst the workers at Lindsey because these workers are a reflection of workers (and people in Britain in) in general who, in turn, reflect some of the dominant views that exist in society. The same can be said for the wider numbers of strikers and those out of work construction workers that became protesters. Again, in the subsequent demonstrations at the Staythorpe power plant in Newark, there has been some evidence of the ‘British jobs for British workers’ re-emerging and in a racist way.

But where much more evidence of this was seen was amongst those people who left comments on newspaper websites and the like and who were not directly involved in the dispute as well as the attempts by the BNP through their specially created website, British Wildcats, to encourage and support the ‘little Englander’ attitudes. So, although wide of the mark about the wildcat strikes, but given the subsequent nature of the media coverage, it is to be welcomed that the SWP organised a petition signed by some 1,600 union activists and leaders to warn of the danger of the ‘British job for British workers’ slogan as a whole.

Conclusion: difficult next steps

Having highlighted and created a political sensitivity to the issue as well as achieving a good compromise at Lindsey, the next difficult steps facing the activists and national unions is not just to maintain the pressure and profile but make genuine advance in achieving union objectives.

The history of building up heads of steam only for them to dissipate is an age old problem. If we recall the Gate Gourmet dispute of 2005, the ability of the union movement to secure a change in the employment law that restricted secondary action was unsuccessful when the Trade Union Freedom Bill was rejected on several occasions in Parliament as a result of the Labour government’s opposition.

Since the strike revolt ended, weekly demonstrations have continued at Staythorpe and Isle of Grain sites and there have been lobbies of Parliament, meetings of sponsored MPs in different union parliamentary groups and so on. Indeed, on one occasion, some 60 workers at Staythorpe walked out to join the demonstration despite being threatened with dismissal and were joined by 250 workers from Easington, East Yorkshire who struck for the day to join the protest. Of greater significance is that grassroots pressure is building for an industry-wide one day national strike and march on Parliament to stop employers from exclusively using foreign workers to undermine the Blue Book, and the GMB stated it is prepared to sanction an official strike ballot to that end if its shop stewards decided that was an appropriate course of action. The Lindsey strike committee has called for the settlement it won to become the model for other sites covered by the NAECI.

So momentum has been maintained and may step up a gear or two. But the problem remains that the target of this pressure is a considerable distance away from it and thus any leverage or power over them from construction sites is diffuse. The Parliamentary Labour Party and Labour government as well as the European Commission and European Court of Justice are unaccountable to these workers in any direct sense.

For the required changes to be made, the struggle needs to be generalised amongst all unions and progressive social forces. In other words, there needs to be a broad leftwing alliance against neo-liberalism which can mobilise the numbers of people in Britain that we’ve seen mobilised in recent years in Ireland, France and the Netherlands when their populaces voted against the EU treaty. Thus, the strikers and their unions need to make common cause with other progressive forces that oppose the other results of the EU’s neo-liberalism. And if they seek to change the EU position and the court verdicts another necessary component of this alliance has to be action with their brothers and sisters on the continent for the mathematics of the EU means one country cannot change things on its own.

All this means Britain is going to have to see sustained and escalating demonstrations, protests, strikes and shutdowns of the like not seen since the poll tax and before. British workers will have to shed their conservatism as a labour movement and act more like their continental cousins who are schooled in direct, mass action.

http://www.redflag.org.uk/frontline/mar09/lindsaystrike.html

[Paul Cockshott]

There's no hysteria, here, except for your frantic attempts to obscure what in fact Paul has said. He said that residents of the Union have a right to work in Britain. I assume he means European Union. Not to put too fine a point on it--- the overwhelming number of those residents is white.

So let's ask: how about residents of Africa, Asia, Latin America? Do they have that right?



Clearly they dont unless the countries join the Union.


You are right that Marx says that the replacement of humans by machinery can create a temporary surplus population, but this is part of a cyclical process in which accumulation accelerates and slackens in response to wage rates. When wages rise, accumulation slackens to the point at which there is insufficient new capital being accumulated at a rising organic composition to employ the current working population. Unemployment rises, and the competition between workers induced by unemployment then depresses wages.

This basic cyclical mechanism is born out by looking at detailed figures for the 19th century business cycles. I give graphs for the 1880s cycle in this paper
http://glasgow.academia.edu/paulcockshott/Papers/1120785/Is_the_theory_of_a_falling_profit_valid
which show that Marx's basic argument is correct.

The key point in the context of the current argument is that Marx assumes that pressure from competition in the labour market created by a reserve army of labour will push down wages, and Philips demonstrated using the empirical data for Britain from the 19th century right down to the 1950s was that just as Marx argued, high unemployment depresses wage rates.

Artesian is correct to point out that the surplus population is always relative to the rate of accumulation of capital, and can only be understood in terms of the dynamics of the capitalist economy. But according to Marx, without a constantly growing labour force capital accumulation runs up against insuperable obstacles. If the work force does not grow, two factors depress the profit rate:

1. A stagnant mass of profit is spread over a larger capital stock ( change in the value composition of capital )
2. Workers are able to bid up wage rates because of the lack of competition.

This engenders a profit squeeze from two directions.

In the medium term the rate of profit is constrained by the rate of growth of the proletariat, the net rate of profit rapidly tends to the limit
r' = (t+g)/(1-u)

where t is the technical change rate, g is the rate of growth of the working population, and u is the share of unproductive consumption out of profits.

This formula, as the paper I refer to above shows, predicts the actual rate of profit in capitalist countries about 3 years ahead.

This indicates that there are two basic ways that the bourgeoisie can get out of a crisis of falling profitability

1. Increase the rate of growth of the workforce
2. Shift their expediture from accumulation to unproductive activities ( slows the rate of growth of capital stock)

If you look at the graphs I produce of the actual and predicted rates of profit for USA, Canada, France and Japan you can see that Japan, which has not allowed significant immigration has been unable to get out of its crisis of profitability in the way that capitalist countries that have allowed immigration were able to.

I have not myself tried breaking down the growth of the workforce in these countries into natural population growth and inward migration, but we do know that in all of these countries the natural rate of population growth is very low.

A key point of this analysis is that the ability to carry out net accumulation ceases once the population growth reaches zero. Immigration has thus been the lifeline that Western capitalism has depended on since the demographic transition that occured with the ready availability of contraception.

Given the low birthrate of developed capitalist countires, the more immigration there is, the higher the rate of profit.

[∞]

In the medium term the rate of profit is constrained by the rate of growth of the proletariat, the net rate of profit rapidly tends to the limit
r' = (t+g)/(1-u)

where t is the technical change rate, g is the rate of growth of the working population, and u is the share of unproductive consumption out of profits.

This formula, as the paper I refer to above shows, predicts the actual rate of profit in capitalist countries about 3 years ahead.

This indicates that there are two basic ways that the bourgeoisie can get out of a crisis of falling profitability

1. Increase the rate of growth of the workforce
2. Shift their expediture from accumulation to unproductive activities ( slows the rate of growth of capital stock)

If you look at the graphs I produce of the actual and predicted rates of profit for USA, Canada, France and Japan you can see that Japan, which has not allowed significant immigration has been unable to get out of its crisis of profitability in the way that capitalist countries that have allowed immigration were able to.

I have not myself tried breaking down the growth of the workforce in these countries into natural population growth and inward migration, but we do know that in all of these countries the natural rate of population growth is very low.

A key point of this analysis is that the ability to carry out net accumulation ceases once the population growth reaches zero. Immigration has thus been the lifeline that Western capitalism has depended on since the demographic transition that occured with the ready availability of contraception.

Given the low birthrate of developed capitalist countires, the more immigration there is, the higher the rate of profit.

This is non-applicable over-theoretical gibberish that'd make an Austrian sound sane.
You assume the rate of growth raises tangent, without factoring in at least a million factors that would make your formulas completely out of touch with reality.

EDIT:If socialists want to side with the utmost reactionary strata of the bourgeoisie then I am the most hardcore capitalist to ever exist. Those who want to move from one place to another will not have to succumb to nationalistic border policies, regardless of what economic system exists in said place.

EDIT 2:The economy of Mexico is much more capitalist than even America, so you're in favor of letting Mexican proletariat feel the full force of completely unregulated capitalism in a country with minimum social-services. The very thought that this is allowed on Revleft makes me vomit in my mouth.

[S.Artesian]

The careful reader will note that, after I respond to his query asking my objections to Borjas' "scholarly" exposition, Cockshott deals with none of that. After I point out the more than technical differences between Marx's theory of relative surplus population and Cockshott's own version, he deals with none of that.

The careful reader will note that Cockshott has nothing to say about the issue of immigrant labor as the importation of labor as a commodity, with the anti-immigration sentiment stirred up by capitalism's conflicts being nothing but the "variable" equivalent of protectionism, tariffs, trade wars etc.

Instead we are directed to his paper dealing with the 1880s business cycle.

Don't even think I have to say anymore... but I will.

Cockshott has now shifted the argument, or has attempted to shift the argument from "immigration hurts the "host" working class" to "immigration is essential as a countervailing tendency to that of the rate of profit to fall."

The latter may, or may not be, true and in either case has nothing to do with the former.

A careful reader might also perceive a contradiction between Cockshott's thesis and well... Borjas' since of course if lack of immigration causes the rate of profit to fall, or at least ton not recover, then how do we explain the fall after 1998-1999 in the US; the fall after 2006?

Moreover, under that scenario, it is the lack of immigration that hurts the working class since as was evident during the Reagan/Thatcher era, and as is evident in the last 4.5 years, the decline in the rate of profit is what triggers the bourgeoisie to redouble their attacks on the working class.

Careful readers noting other pseudo-Marxist illogic in Cockshott's contortions, please pile on. The borders are open.

[∞]

Reagan/Thatcher

Don't forget NAFTA between PRI and Clinton.

[RED DAVE]

And so, without the elegance of S.Artesian or ∞ (http://www.revleft.com/vb/member.php?u=28130), let me say that we are left with Cockshott's and DNZ's racist positions on immigration.

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

Don't forget NAFTA between PRI and Clinton.

Cannot forget that; a program of dispossession and destruction inflicted on the poor, and the rural producers of Mexico.

Leading, IMO, to the hideous drug war waged at the behest of the United States.

[Die Neue Zeit]

It does not need border controls. The key point is that we should advance political objectives whose implementation depends on working class organisations.
The demands in the French Workers Party programme are in part aimed at being measures that the working class organisations enforce.
If you look at the following demands:

The first two are clearly aimed at enabling the working class organisations to enforce the measures.
The last one on legal prohibition of bosses employing foreign workers at lower wages could be imposed the same way.
If one wanted to elaborate this demand you would say that

1. Trades unions should have the right to bring private prosecutions against employers in these cases and in the event of winning the case should be awarded all costs involved in the prosecution.

2. That it is the employers that are targeted not the foreign workers. The employers should be liable to prosecution for employing non union foreign labour at below union rates

The unions should in these case aim to recruit the foreign workers and get them employed at union rates.


The programme of the French Workers Party, that I drew attention to, was the programme of a workers party that was going out to actually seriously contest elections. A such it addressed a real fear of French workers, but did so in a way that directed those fears not at foreign workers but at the employers.

In the USA illegal status may be the principle issue associated with immigration now. In the UK that is not the main issue. By far the majority of immigrant workers are here legally.

Comrade, remember awhile back our discussion on Fully Socialized Labour Markets, the proposal that the state be the sole de jure employer of labour? I just thought of something that connects with what the French Workers Party called for.

I wrote that this would promote gender pay equity and put a practical end to wage theft such as back pay from small-business employers. Wouldn't a Fully Socialized Labour Market combined with a Universal Agency Shop be a more effective "this side of revolution" solution to the problem of hiring foreign labour at cheaper rates as well?

[Die Neue Zeit]

And so, without the elegance of S.Artesian or ∞ (http://www.revleft.com/vb/member.php?u=28130), let me say that we are left with Cockshott's and DNZ's racist positions on immigration.

Since when did I come in with a "racist" POV? :rolleyes:


And until then, the last thing that it should be doingg is aiding the ruling class in tis racism and chauvenism.

The only demand for the working class is unrestricted immigration.

When I finish watching some paint dry, I might read it, unless I decide first to count the hairs on my cat's tail. ETA: Seriously, I just read your link, and it's an unabashed retreat from proletarian internationalism.

You probably just read the title and little else. Although not explicitly posted there, I was referring to a Euroworkers movement uniting non-indigenous and indigenous workers across the eurozone but also giving them a pan-national civic "identity" past petty nationalisms.

[workersadvocate]

This is non-applicable over-theoretical gibberish that'd make an Austrian sound sane.
You assume the rate of growth raises tangent, without factoring in at least a million factors that would make your formulas completely out of touch with reality.

I honestly have no idea what Paul is saying, maybe after I read it over a few more times it will click.
His focus sounds like its all about winning bourgeois elections, because he seems to have a typical pessimism about the current period. After decades of retreat and being isolated, it becomes a stubborn reflex and degenerate habit in the radical Left. Too used to losing, they settle for something other than proletarian revolution, deem it "progressive enough", and then basically give up, often retreating into lifestylism in a middle class Left social scene (like the hippies).


EDIT:If socialists want to side with the utmost reactionary strata of the bourgeoisie then I am the most hardcore capitalist to ever exist. Those who want to move from one place to another will not have to succumb to nationalistic border policies, regardless of what economic system exists in said place.

Siding with any strata of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie today puts the lie to any claim to be attempting to advance socialism. So, based on that principle, how many so-called socialist or communist groups today are actually attempting to advance socialism? Finding a consistently proletarian and consistently revolutionary socialist group today is like finding a needle in a haystack. What are we at now---fifth internationals even---and yet still we have this problem throughout the Left in all the tendencies, and I think it's largely a class problem (bourgeois and petty bourgeois demographic, political, and organizational officialdom hegemony within the organized Left). That's why they can't seem to break fully with the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeois, why they refuse to fully betray their class, why they never seem to bother with actually independently organizing the working class (including the worse off and most oppressed layers), and why according to the Left it's never the right time for the working class to fight in ways that actually threaten the foundations of this system, nor seize power independently with our own collective proletarian might for our own interests through our own revolutionary organs of working class rule.

Instead, the focus is on emotionally feeling bad for the poor individuals. Please don't be heartless and shed a tear for these poor individuals who are screwed by the system and who are supposedly too weak and too ignorant to help themselves.

No, tears aren't what will resolve our problem as a class. Neither will guilt, nor will liberal charity. These are the positions of those who believe the proletariat surely cannot achieve revolutionary victory in the near future, or those who don't want such a revolutionary victory to occur in actuality.

We workers need our class organized to seize and exercise all power over society with our own independent mass might. We need workers' republics and an international workers' revolution. This can only come from our own independent active self-emancipation as a conscious international class-for-itself.
The only borders we should recognize are between those areas where already workers have self-liberated themselves and established themselves as the sole exclusive ruling class through a workers republic, and those areas where workers have currently yet to do so and thus our class enemies (AKA the real 'foreigners' of humanity) still rule society there. Our extended international workers' revolution is bent on abolishing those remaining borders and joining the workers' republics through worldwide union. How else does anybody think "unrestricted immigration for workers" would happen?



EDIT 2:The economy of Mexico is much more capitalist than even America, so you're in favor of letting Mexican proletariat feel the full force of completely unregulated capitalism in a country with minimum social-services. The very thought that this is allowed on Revleft makes me vomit in my mouth.
Blame the system and then blame the bullshit bourgeois and petty bourgeois Left in every country for doing nothing serious to resolve this problem.
The Mexican proletariat is not objectively too weak to overthrow capitalism and establish workers' rule, and especially not too weak if their revolution was joined and extended by the masses of the international proletariat throughout the Americas.
So what's holding it back? Boldly identify and resolve that, holding nothing back. That's the most caring thing we could do, and that's true proletarian internationalist solidarity.

If a workers' revolution succeeded in America or Canada first, wouldn't you expect the working class living there to stop at nothing to extend their revolution through Mexico, Central, South America, and the Caribbean?
Would you accept excuses about how hard that will be, or how tired workers already are? No, history shows that if we stop our revolution, we fail, and then comes consequences that will give us real reason to worry.

Readers of this thread may wonder why all this talk about workers' revolution matters, since the OP topic is about immigration. They've heard all these arguments and anecdotes about immigration, but how many times was it related to the need for proletarian revolution, workers' states, and extensive international working class organizing for the accomplishment of these?
Who dares criticize and offend the Left for its failing in this regard?
Who will resolve this?

Because until it is resolved, why should we workers genuinely believe the tears shed by the Left for poor immigrants, rather than feel that yet again we workers of the world are being played for fools by reformist aspiring politicians and petty bourgeois interests and the do-good charity "peace police"?
The best defense for immigrant workers, the only way we'll ever eradicate the reactionary terror brought upon them, is through the sort of international extensive class organizing and collective exercising in action of our independent class power that will send phony "progressives" into hysteria to find their cellphones and dial 911. We need the sort of international workers' revolution revolution that will make the regime in Mexico City wish Bush or Obama had sent an Iraq-style invasion force instead, and make the ruling class in America wish they were facing a "Red Dawn" conflict scenario instead.
Our class will be stronger, more resourceful, more thoroughgoing, more disciplined, and less merciful in our revolution than anything the bourgeois classes of this world have experienced before....we'll be the only ones left standing after this final conflict, and that's when we can transform this into our better world (without need of borders) :D

What's really preventing the Left from organizing all the unorganized workers for serious class struggle across borders and even in the more exploited and oppressed areas? Why the de facto hands-off approach, even by the radical Left? Because it would rub some of their "progressive" political partners the wrong way, and the inevitable countermeasures might not be limited to law enforcement and legal harassment, but likely include also the use of extra-legal Wild West down-and-dirty means (e.g., gangsters, mobsters, and reactionary thugs) to suppress and prevent further proletarian revolutionary activity from harming their own interests (especially in these 'no go zones' where many workers live and work, but where leftists rarely tread or go only as meek accomplices for 'progressive' reformist non-proletarian interests) How about abolishing those borders too! How about crushing those class enemies too!
Which side are you on?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I honestly have no idea what Paul is saying, maybe after I read it over a few more times it will click.
His focus sounds like its all about winning bourgeois elections, because he seems to have a typical pessimism about the current period. After decades of retreat and being isolated, it becomes a stubborn reflex and degenerate habit in the radical Left. Too used to losing, they settle for something other than proletarian revolution, deem it "progressive enough", and then basically give up, often retreating into lifestylism in a middle class Left social scene (like the hippies).

Not at all. That working-class comrade's political position involves rediscovery of radical democratic theory, not about winning bourgeois elections or even maintaining the mechanism of elections.

[Paul Cockshott]

This is non-applicable over-theoretical gibberish that'd make an Austrian sound sane.
You assume the rate of growth raises tangent, without factoring in at least a million factors that would make your formulas completely out of touch with reality.


If you think it is removed from reality check out this website that one of my students did that applies the formula to predicting profit rates in any of the main capitalist countries.

http://compbio.dcs.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/profits/index.cgi
Click on the appropriate country and it produces you a graph of the rate of profit predicted by the theory year on year against the actual rate.





EDIT 2:The economy of Mexico is much more capitalist than even America, so you're in favor of letting Mexican proletariat feel the full force of completely unregulated capitalism in a country with minimum social-services. The very thought that this is allowed on Revleft makes me vomit in my mouth.
Noit what I said was that it would make sense to argue for political union of Mexico Canada and the US under a constitution that allowed the imposition of uniform working time, social security and pension provisions.

[Paul Cockshott]

Artesian has taken me to task for not replying in more detail to his posting on the paper I put up. That is fair enough, I had limited time yesterday I will see if I can answer some of his questions.


1. "Correlation is causation"-- that is his argument

2. see 1 above. In typical bourgeois, or political economist fashion, he ignores that actual social conditions that create the decline in wages and instead assumes the correspondence between 2 facts of a process means one has caused the other.

Correlation is not of itself enough to establish causality, but when investigating things, if you have a theory about causation : in this case that competition in the labour market will drive down wages, then you expect that testing it will give results that do show a correlation.

The correlation could of course be due to other factors that are outside your investigation but in order to make this argument stick you have to suggest other measurable factors which could produce the effect.

If you say that as a tendancy immigration tends to depress wages, you are not saying that wages movements exactly mirror movements in immigration, but what you are saying is that immigration one factor affecting wages.
If you take a large enough sample this correlation will then show through.

If one were to start out from a marxist rather than an orthodox basis one would want to investigate the relationship between the rate of exploitation and the inflow of labour - he is not a marxist so he investigates just the wage level.

However the strongest point of his study is the plot showing how, when you look at sectors of the labour market, the movement of wages shows an inverse relationship to the number of immigrant workers moving into that sector.




3. see 2 above. Borjas ignores completely the fact that wages for US workers began their decline before the large influx of workers from Mexico and central America. He ignores recessions. He ignores the effect of recessions on the immigrant laborers. He ignores the fact that a certain periods workers' wages did NOT decline right in the very midst of this "unrestricted immigration"-- for example the 1993-2000 period-- or again, the 2005-2007 period leading to the crash. He ignores the social attacks on the living standards of the working class, the rollback of government support programs for the poorest sector of the working class, the reversal of affirmative action, the asset stripping and asset liquidation conducted by the bourgeoisie over 30 years, the attacks on unions, the decertification of unions, the bankruptcies to void labor contracts etc etc etc. Did those actions cause a decline in wages? Were immigrant laborers the cause for any of those actions?

I dont think he is claiming that immigration is the only factor affecting wage levels. You would never get a professional economist to make such a strong claim. He is just saying that it is one factor.






6. Mr. scholarly Borjas makes a distinction between the pre-1965 immigration policy which basically restricted immigration to white people from Canada, Europe, etc. and the post 1965 policy, which of course is a period of immigration of darker-skinned, and much poorer people. And he clearly believes that policy turn is what has caused the decline in wages. I don't know about you, but to me that absolutely is the staple of "scholarly racism."

I think his point is that there is now more immigrant competition with the manual working class. In the 50s he is saying that the inflow was mainly of professionally qualified people and as such competition would have affected the professional class.





8. Borjas does not account for the changes in labor productivity, the "overproduction of the means of production" that in fact drive this entire process-- expelling labor from production; increasing the tendency for the rate of profit to decline, and requiring more casual, "precarious," temporary, unprotected labor to offset that tendency.


I agree that a more detailed analysis should factor in rates of change of labour productivity.

I have never done empirical work on this question of immigration myself, but it is clearly worth investigating using the conceptual tools of marxist economics.

[S.Artesian]

I honestly have no idea what Paul is saying, maybe after I read it over a few more times it will click.

I honestly have no idea what you are saying, no matter how many times I read over what you write. It seems to me to be nothing but "boiler plate" 'we must make a revolution to solve this issue' argument. No shit, we must make a revolution to resolve this problem. Who would have guessed?




Instead, the focus is on emotionally feeling bad for the poor individuals. Please don't be heartless and shed a tear for these poor individuals who are screwed by the system and who are supposedly too weak and too ignorant to help themselves.


WTF are you talking about. Nobody is "shedding tears" over "poor individuals." Some here think anti-immigration activity, even under the guise of 'workers power' is a capitulation to capitalism and an attack on the working class. Some think immigration itself is an attack on the working class. So which side are you on?

[S.Artesian]

Artesian has taken me to task for not replying in more detail to his posting on the paper I put up. That is fair enough, I had limited time yesterday I will see if I can answer some of his questions.

Correlation is not of itself enough to establish causality, but when investigating things, if you have a theory about causation : in this case that competition in the labour market will drive down wages, then you expect that testing it will give results that do show a correlation.

The correlation could of course be due to other factors that are outside your investigation but in order to make this argument stick you have to suggest other measurable factors which could produce the effect. .

That's the whole point, Paul. We call those other factors capitalism, and class struggle. That's what the double-dip Volcker recession was, that is what the attacks on unions are, the roll-backs of affirmative action, the asset stripping, strategic bankruptcy, pension-robbing etc. are.


If you say that as a tendancy immigration tends to depress wages, you are not saying that wages movements exactly mirror movements in immigration, but what you are saying is that immigration one factor affecting wages.

No Paul, that's not what Borjas, nor you, said. You provided Borjas' paper in response to my query to show me where immigration caused harm to the working class. Caused. Determined.



If one were to start out from a marxist rather than an orthodox basis one would want to investigate the relationship between the rate of exploitation and the inflow of labour - he is not a marxist so he investigates just the wage level.


If one were a Marxist, one would investigate the changes in: profitability, the change in fixed asset accumulation, etc.-- one would investigate capital.



I dont think he is claiming that immigration is the only factor affecting wage levels. You would never get a professional economist to make such a strong claim. He is just saying that it is one factor.


"Oh, I'm not saying skin color is the only factor affecting intelligence, criminal behavior, disease, or children born out of wedlock. I would never, being a professional economist [meaning dissembler on behalf of the ruling class] make such a strong claim [especially as I want the government to fund my studies]. I'm just say it's one factor; that it correlates closely."

[Paul Cockshott]

.

That's the whole point, Paul. We call those other factors capitalism, and class struggle. That's what the double-dip Volcker recession was, that is what the attacks on unions are, the roll-backs of affirmative action, the asset stripping, strategic bankruptcy, pension-robbing etc. are.

To critique his correlation on this basis you would have to
a. have a measurable index of these effects
b. show that if you did a multi-factorial regression using these you would remove the explanatory power of immigration

Since the factors you mention affect the whole working population they dont undermine his results showing that sectors of the workforce with the most immigrants tended to have the biggest fall in wages.




No Paul, that's not what Borjas, nor you, said. You provided Borjas' paper in response to my query to show me where immigration caused harm to the working class. Caused. Determined.

He has produced evidence that it has harmed those sections of the working class who face the most competition from immigrant labour.





If one were a Marxist, one would investigate the changes in: profitability, the change in fixed asset accumulation, etc.-- one would investigate [I]capital.

For other purposes yes, but if you want to look at the harm done to the working class, the increase in the rate of exploitation is the main factor.

[S.Artesian]

Since the factors you mention affect the whole working population they dont undermine his results showing that sectors of the workforce with the most immigrants tended to have the biggest fall in wages.

Priceless. For everything else there is Mastercard. Sectors of the workforce with the most immigrants tend to have the biggest fall in wages. No shit? Really, who would have thunk that. Let's see, most of the recent immigrants to the US have come from Mexico and Central America. What caused them to come to the US? In El Salvador, civil war initiated by and on behalf of the corporate-version hacendados dispossessing rural producers from their lands as part of the huge expansion of cotton plantations. Followed of course by death squad actions against the now rural landless workers trying to organize to protect themselves.

Guatemala? Death squad activity, although this taking the official form of army led assaults on indigenous people.

Does Rios-Montt ring any bells?

Honduras-- see above.

Mexico? Pre-Nafta; first collapse of the Mexican economy in the mid-1980s precipitated by debt service obligations to advanced countries and the general world-wide economic slowdown; followed by changes in the land ownership law, essentially stripping pueblos and villages of the control of ejido lands. Make way for NAFTA!; followed by NAFTA, followed by a second collapse of the economy in 1994 with real wages declining by an estimated 50%.

Bolivia, Peru: see above, and made more acute by collapse of commodity prices for mining products, shutdown of mines etc. etc. With thanks to the IMF.

Brazil: see above regarding debt service in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, what's happening in the US? Double-dip recession. Massive asset liquidation through leverage buy outs; decertification of unions; breaking of strikes; union capitulation and direct action against workers [Hormel, anyone?], severe attacks on affirmative action, unemployment; increase in single parent households, with the single parent in most cases being women; single parent households headed by women becoming the fastest growing sector of poverty in the US.

Sounds to me, not being a professional economist, like a more or less general attack on the working class, with immigration being derivative of that general attack.

You want to do a multi-factor regression analysis on that? Knock yourself out.

In response to the question if African, Asian, Latin American workers have any "right" to jobs in Europe your response is "no" because "their" countries aren't "members of the union." Somebody must have said this before, but I'm pretty sure workers don't have a country, they have a class, their own class.

It's heartening, I'm sure, to the bourgeoisie to see your fidelity to the matters of bourgeois legality, to bourgeois "right" to jobs, to live as a matter of fact since poor people only emigrate because they have no other alternative, if they want to live.

And of course when Thatcher stripped citizenship and residency rights from former residents of colonies, the so-called "commonwealth"-- well then all those people have no rights to jobs, to live, either? Right?

Your fidelity to the principles of bourgeois legality, of bourgeois class struggle, on the side of, and on behalf of, the bourgeoisie, says all that needs to be said about your "Marxism."

[Paul Cockshott]

Obviously as socialists we are opposed to the nation state and to nationalist and racist ideology. However you have to recognise that there are real contradictions of interest on our side of the struggle.
The ability of right nationalist parties like the BNP here to win substantial working class support on an anti-immigrant platform is because there are real contradictions of economic interest between an already resident working class ( whatever their race ) and incomming workers who may drive down wages.
Telling working class people that they are just bigots for being worried about this as Brown did, just gives credence to the right.

For some time Red Action has been warning that the alarming growth of the Right in Europe is not attributable purely to their own efforts. On the contrary the fault lies with a multicultural ideology which has successfully supplanted ‘class’ in favour of ‘ethnic minority’ in the public mind. This has created the basis for the right to ‘return the serve’ by successfully campaigning for privileges for an ‘ethnic majority’.

It is imperative, Red Action has been arguing, for the Left to step outside the limits of this ‘minority versus majority’ logic, and set about reclaiming the initiative by displacing race with class, and thus shifting the burden of justification back on to the other side.

From a progressive perspective hard to argue with, you might have thought? But far from it. As if the political or social consequence were of no mind, ‘opposition to all immigration controls’ is to continue to be championed ‘as a bed-rock of Socialist Alliance policy’ we are told, on the basis that ‘where capital enjoys unrestricted freedom of movement it seems inescapable that labour must demand the same freedom’. Who this freedom is to be demanded of is not made clear? From capital? Which has just won for itself unrestricted freedom?

Further disregarding the current balance of forces, ‘economic migration’ is in future to be championed as a human right’, while the ‘welcoming’ of infinite numbers of ‘immigrants’ regardless of political or social repercussions is hailed as ‘a communist principle’.

Is it not odd that the upholding of a principle of communism is directly responsible for the rebirth of its political opposite? Or that Marx, who knew a thing or two, seems never to have heard of if? In fact, he was it appears, distinctly less evangelical on the subject of ‘economic migration’ than those who would claim to be his followers.

In 1866 for instance, he reported on the attempts to bring down wages in the tailoring industry in Scotland through the recruitment by master tailors, mostly 'big capitalists' of migrant labour from Germany. Writing on behalf of the Central Council of the International Working Men’s Association, Marx said:

“The purpose of this importation is the same as that of the importation of Indian coolies to Jamaica, namely the perpetuation of slavery. If the masters succeeded through the import of German labour, in nullifying the concessions they had already made, it would inevitably lead to repercussions in England.”

“No one would suffer more than the German Workers themselves, who constitute in Great Britain a larger number than the workers of all the other Continental nations. And the newly-imported workers being completely helpless in a strange land would soon sink to the level of pariah’s. Furthermore it is a point of honour with the German workers to prove to other countries that they like their brothers in France, Belgium and Switzerland know how to defend common interests of the class and will not become obedient mercenaries of capital in its struggle against labour.”

The efforts of the International in warning the Germans against migrating under such conditions was as Marx recorded “a great success”. A success not only in it’s own right, but with the practical benefits of the International on display, the English sections rushed to affiliate. What would have been the consequences for the Scottish, German and English workers, and the International itself had Marx, in response to a call for advice and support, mumbled something from the Manifesto about ‘internationalism’, and instructed them, as the LSA recommend “to move fast with cards and a welcome party” instead?

Currently, Labour is thinking about scrapping the 1971 Immigration Act in order to recruit skilled workers from India. The motivation is undoubtedly to drive down wages and conditions in the burgeoning computer industry. As things stand, even if the Left had leverage in India, it would not be exercised. As far as it goes all ‘obedient mercenaries of capital’ are deemed welcome. It is afterall their human right.

As the whole thing is a mess, it is entirely consistent Red Action and fellow travellers should be too deemed ‘pariah’ for saying so. But as hinted at, the current controversy and the previous debate are not unrelated. Back then, a staunch Leninist in danger of partially succumbing to the Red Action logic on some point or other, was publicly rebuked by a colleague who outlined his priorities as follows: “Of course, you realise comrade, that if Red Action are right, then we are wrong.” This time the equation is even more straightforward. Indeed it is perfectly simple. ‘Either we are right or the BNP are’. Your call ‘comrades’

Reproduced from RA vol 4, Issue 9, November/December '00

[S.Artesian]

Obviously as socialists we are opposed to the nation state and to nationalist and racist ideology. However you have to recognise that there are real contradictions of interest on our side of the struggle.
The ability of right nationalist parties like the BNP here to win substantial working class support on an anti-immigrant platform is because there are real contradictions of economic interest between an already resident working class ( whatever their race ) and incomming workers who may drive down wages.
Telling working class people that they are just bigots for being worried about this as Brown did, just gives credence to the right.Yes, Paul, there are real conflicts. And no Paul, we don't tell individual working class people that they are just bigots-- except when they do bigoted things.

For example, as I've said before, the labor movement in California was positively, absolutely, built on attacking Asian communities, Asian workers, demanding "white jobs for white people," boycotts against businesses employing Chinese or other Asian workers, assaults on Chinese workers and communities, and actions to halt immigration.

Do we tell those white workers that they're being bigoted, racist, and simply tools of capital? Well this is no longer the 1880s or 90s, but yeah we do, once we make sure we outnumber them, and have a safe exit plan-- at least that's my take as I'm too old to get my ass kicked anymore, and my running speed has declined although fear can still produce a good sprint.

You know this issue isn't confined to "immigration"-- it appears every time some new sector, element enters the labor force. Women faced and face it. African-Americans faced and face it.

In Detroit, certain UAW locals had operating KKK groups-- yeah really. So what do you say to those workers? "Uhh... there are real contradictions. Uhh.. yeah well, right if black workers are treated equally, they will be get X number of skilled positions and white workers won't"? Me? I'm kind of not talking to people as long as they wear bedsheets, I don't give a fuck what their union affiliation is.

Now those are extreme examples? Yes,.....and NO. Those are the staples of US labor history.

The reason the KKK or KKK-like organizations are able to make "progress" among white workers is not simply because there are "real" conflicts, but because of the different historical origins of the sectors of the class [white Northerners and Southerners vs. descendants of emancipated slaves] and because of the history of unions NOT forthrightly battling racism from the getgo and conceding to racial discrimination in and out of the work place.

I would say the ability of the BNP and BNP like organizations to make progress is because of the bankruptcy of trade-union policy, program, action-- a policy, program, action of "adjusting" capitalism, of accommodating capitalism; because of a trade union's inherent inability to mobilize the class as a whole as a class for itself, meaning-- for the protection of the most vulnerable members of the class and against the capitalist class that is always for-itself.

[RED DAVE]

And so, without the elegance of S.Artesian or ∞, let me say that we are left with Cockshott's and DNZ's racist positions on immigration.
Since when did I come in with a "racist" POV?When you supported restrictions on immigration. If you don't support restrictions, I apologize. If you do, why not "cross the border" into OI where we put racists.


And until then, the last thing that it should be doingg is aiding the ruling class in tis racism and chauvenism.

The only demand for the working class is unrestricted immigration.

When I finish watching some paint dry, I might read it, unless I decide first to count the hairs on my cat's tail. ETA: Seriously, I just read your link, and it's an unabashed retreat from proletarian internationalism.
You probably just read the title and little else.Are you calling me a liar, Comrade? Is that how low you're sinking?


Although not explicitly posted thereSo we're supposed not only to read your turgid links but also read your mind.


I was referring to a Euroworkers movement uniting non-indigenous and indigenous workers across the eurozone but also giving them a pan-national civic "identity" past petty nationalisms.Okay. And whatever that last phrase means.

So, one more time, do you support restrictions on immigration?

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

When you supported restrictions on immigration. If you don't support restrictions, I apologize. If you do, why not "cross the border" into OI where we put racists.

I'm for Fully Socialized Labour Markets and that other mouthful directional global policy of mine linking bills of rights with real purchasing power parity (both my "public policy discourse," what you dismissed as "gobbledy-gook"), definitely the former "this side of revolution" because labour laws against wage theft, discrimination against immigrant pay, etc. are ineffective.

[S.Artesian]

DNZ--1. Do you think "undocumented" "illegal" immigrants should be prevented, here and now, today in any advanced capitalist country from entering and seeking/finding employment.

2. do you think such undocumented immigrants apprehended in any advanced capitalist country should be subject to legal sanctions including imprisonment, deportation, etc.

As a matter of fact, let's ask everybody to answer those two questions.

My answers are 1. NO 2. NO