Re: [Marxism] The case against “The case against open borders” | SocialistWorker.org

2018-11-28 Thread Michael Meeropol via Marxism
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I'm actually arguing from the tendency for wages to equalize at equal skill
levels --- If there are open borders, then the international working class
will move to higher wage (and higher SOCIAL wage) countries --- putting
downward pressure on both ---

Without a socialist (=workers') government to force capitalists to pay good
wages to all, a social democratic government will be constantly facing a
fight to keep capitalists from undercutting current wages by hiring the
newest immigrants ---

Will the population receiving the benefits of the social democratic
"welfare state" permit immediate entry into the group of recipients?

It is not LOGICALLY impossible -- it just would probably take as MUCH
political mobilization as an outright seizure of power from the capitalists
---

Think of how slavery ended -- not with solidarity between non-slaveholding
Souhern whites and slaves but with a military conquest by the North
followed by (in some states over a decade of) occupation by the union army
to prevent ex Confederates from creating a system that was almost as bad as
slavery --- AND THAT EFFORT was ultimately defeated.   (by 1877 it had been
defeated politically ---the short-lived trans-racial alliance of poor
farmers under the Populist Party pre-1896 was also defeated --- leading to
almost 60 years of Jim Crow -- which was also defeated not by a white-black
alliance in the South but by federal law enforced by federal troops ---)

In effect, I am arguing that OUR SIDE has a rough road ahead making the
pro-solidarity argument in favor of open borders ---

(by the way -- before the Labor Aristocracy argument you have Marx's
writings that British workers needed to fight in solidarity with immigrant
Irish workers -- RESISTING the tendency to oppose Irish immigration into
Britain because the Irish would work for lower wages --- he famously stated
in a letter to Engels (don't know the cite, sorry) that Britain not only
had a Bourgeois Landowning class and a Bourgoisie proper but was developing
a Bougeois working class --- "For a country that exploits the whole world,
this is not surprising."  (or something like that).

it is not surprising that the period in which the US working class made its
most significant gains vis a vis capital was between the Depession and the
1970s --- during which time as a result of draconian immigration laws
adopted in the 1920s (as well as World War II and the depression) --- the
percentage of the population that was immigrant fell dramatically --- only
to begin rising after the immigration reform of 1965.

Yes -- we must "storm heaven's gate" but we have to really work hard to
make the solidarity case ---


On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 1:03 PM A.R. G  wrote:

> > the social democratic model of high real wages and a strong
> "social wage" created by some version of the welfare state (more generous
> in Europe than in the US for sure) is unfortunately inconsistent with an
> open borders reality
>
> Hi,
>
> Can you send some literature on this? I am assuming you are referring to
> Lenin's idea about the labor aristocracy? On what empirical grounds do we
> judge that social democracy is inconsistent with "open borders"?
>
> Amith R. Gupta
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 8:02 AM Michael Meeropol via Marxism <
> marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
>
>>   POSTING RULES & NOTES  
>> #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
>> #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
>> #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
>> *
>>
>> Though I am mostly persuaded by comrade Chacon's arguments against the
>> Nagle article (which I haven't read) I do believe that we on the left face
>> a conundrum --- the social democratic model of high real wages and a
>> strong
>> "social wage" created by some version of the welfare state (more generous
>> in Europe than in the US for sure) is unfortunately inconsistent with an
>> open borders reality ---
>>
>> Obviously, the solution to the "push" that leads people to risk (and lose)
>> their lives fleeing North Africa, Middle East wars, Central Ameican death
>> squads and criminal gangs needs to be removed by massive revolutionary
>> changes in the global South  the US and Europe can do a lot to
>> ameliorate the situation --- (the US mostly does more harm than good, of
>> course).
>>
>> But until real wages in the world become equal with a "race to the top"
>> rather than a race to the bottom there will be a tension between open
>> borders and (global north) working class incomes 
>>
>> 

Re: [Marxism] The case against “The case against open borders” | SocialistWorker.org

2018-11-28 Thread Fred Murphy via Marxism
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Chacón affirms and concretizes bedrock principles of internationalism and
solidarity.

See also
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/11/07/from-what-shore-does-socialism-arrive/
:

“Today’s migration points to the multiple forms of exploitation and
dispossession that define the contemporary working class: from the
corporate land grabs, climate change, and state violence that make
subsistence farming impossible to the ways that the drug trade, finance,
and the “migration industry” are able to extract surplus independently of
the wage and, in the process, make life unliveable. Yet it also illustrates
the active capacity of the working class to pose new forms of resistance to
their subordination – or at least the conditions of their subordination –
within and in relation to the labor process.2 In other words, workers may
move to avoid specific working conditions, or to avoid being part of the
industrial reserve army that otherwise sets the conditions of exploitation
in a place like Honduras. In this sense, migration is autonomous because it
is something conceptually and logically prior to the emergence of the
state’s ever more extensive biopolitical and disciplinary border and labor
management techniques. These techniques don’t simply seek to stop migrant
flows, but actually use migrant flows to further segment and structure
labor markets along the migrant trail in the countries of origin,
reception, and those crossed along the way.”
“It is, after all according to Marx, the double freedom of
dispossession-cum-wage dependence which is the defining feature of the
working class and in this sense these individuals partaking in “the yearly
proletarian globe-hopping of seasonal workers by steamship, railroad and
automobile” or by “radical separation of airborne migration linked by years
of remittances and phone calls,” should hold a pride of place as the very
literal foot soldiers of the working class.4”
“The border and migration regimes of the capitalist state work not simply
to repel migrants or flex national sovereignty but to find new
opportunities for cheap labor, whether migrants are coming or going. The
point is that migrants are coming and going; their agency is the basis for
capital’s continually multiplying regimes of capture, and their movement is
thus part of a class struggle.”

On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 2:02 PM Michael Meeropol via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

> Though I am mostly persuaded by comrade Chacon's arguments against the
> Nagle article (which I haven't read) I do believe that we on the left face
> a conundrum ...

_
>
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Re: [Marxism] The case against “The case against open borders” | SocialistWorker.org

2018-11-28 Thread A.R. G via Marxism
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> the social democratic model of high real wages and a strong
"social wage" created by some version of the welfare state (more generous
in Europe than in the US for sure) is unfortunately inconsistent with an
open borders reality

Hi,

Can you send some literature on this? I am assuming you are referring to
Lenin's idea about the labor aristocracy? On what empirical grounds do we
judge that social democracy is inconsistent with "open borders"?

Amith R. Gupta


On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 8:02 AM Michael Meeropol via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

>   POSTING RULES & NOTES  
> #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
> #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
> *
>
> Though I am mostly persuaded by comrade Chacon's arguments against the
> Nagle article (which I haven't read) I do believe that we on the left face
> a conundrum --- the social democratic model of high real wages and a strong
> "social wage" created by some version of the welfare state (more generous
> in Europe than in the US for sure) is unfortunately inconsistent with an
> open borders reality ---
>
> Obviously, the solution to the "push" that leads people to risk (and lose)
> their lives fleeing North Africa, Middle East wars, Central Ameican death
> squads and criminal gangs needs to be removed by massive revolutionary
> changes in the global South  the US and Europe can do a lot to
> ameliorate the situation --- (the US mostly does more harm than good, of
> course).
>
> But until real wages in the world become equal with a "race to the top"
> rather than a race to the bottom there will be a tension between open
> borders and (global north) working class incomes 
>
> Pushing solidarity is important but there is no question that this reality
> makes it doubly harder ...
> _
> Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
> Set your options at:
> https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/amithrgupta%40gmail.com
>
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Re: [Marxism] The case against “The case against open borders” | SocialistWorker.org

2018-11-28 Thread Michael Meeropol via Marxism
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Though I am mostly persuaded by comrade Chacon's arguments against the
Nagle article (which I haven't read) I do believe that we on the left face
a conundrum --- the social democratic model of high real wages and a strong
"social wage" created by some version of the welfare state (more generous
in Europe than in the US for sure) is unfortunately inconsistent with an
open borders reality ---

Obviously, the solution to the "push" that leads people to risk (and lose)
their lives fleeing North Africa, Middle East wars, Central Ameican death
squads and criminal gangs needs to be removed by massive revolutionary
changes in the global South  the US and Europe can do a lot to
ameliorate the situation --- (the US mostly does more harm than good, of
course).

But until real wages in the world become equal with a "race to the top"
rather than a race to the bottom there will be a tension between open
borders and (global north) working class incomes 

Pushing solidarity is important but there is no question that this reality
makes it doubly harder ...
_
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