Re: On the Settler Question

Contrary to what I wrote below, the perspective focusing on the sending  
countries doesn't say necessarily that the rate of emigration predicts  
revolutionary op****tunity. The economic pressures for emigration roughly  
predicts it, but the actual rate of emigration responds also to a  
countervailing factor. If as I suggest an unwillingness to emigrate  
expresses class consciousness--not merely for the reason given--the actual
 
emigration rate is an inverted function of class consciousness. I could be
 
wrong, but it looks to me that today Albanians, for example, are pretty  
generally reactionary.

On Wed, 07 May 2008 16:37:07 -0700, Stephen R. Diamond  
<srdiamond@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> On Wed, 07 May 2008 16:10:40 -0700, nada <dwaltersMIA@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>> The Marxist and Trotskyist perspective
>> would be to organize on both sides of the border to address the social
>> crisis that PUSHES these workers out of their country. It's the only
>> internationalist perspective.
>
> I once advanced this position here, without your customary  
> e***enicalness. The thesis, to be exact, was that when immigration  
> became a threat to the receiving country, that meant social  
> contradictions were objectively centered in the countries emigrated  
> from. The response, I contended, required  more international  
> centralization, so that revolutionary resources could be ****fted  
> globally, in response to the globalist resources of imperialism.
>
> This is a distinct perspective from vngelis's, and I don't immediately  
> see a way of resolving which of the two, if either, is correct. Mine is 

> the more orthodox, which all else equal, counts in its favor, but all  
> else isn't equal. Lacking knowledge of the countries involved in  
> sufficient depth, I think this position entails that Mexico and Albania 

> should present revolutionary op****tunities, and 50% isn't' good enough.
>
> Vngelis's perspective and this one are in tension but not mutually  
> exclusive. In fact, they two positions are in broad consistency, because
 
> it is easier to argue for eliminating forced emigration if you start  
> from the premise that voluntary emigration is not an option meriting  
> consideration. For reasons of class solidarity, the labor movement in  
> the backward country should affirm as principle that its workers should 

> eschew emigration to countries where the laboring m***** don't want to  
> receive them.
>
> srd



-- 
srd