Re: [Marxism] The case against “The case against open borders” | SocialistWorker.org
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. * 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
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. * 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 ... _ > _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The case against “The case against open borders” | SocialistWorker.org
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. * > 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 > _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The case against “The case against open borders” | SocialistWorker.org
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/archive%40mail-archive.com