On Thu, 08 May 2008 09:27:45 -0700, <dave.walters@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Stephen, there is no evidence to sup****t your statement. You view:
> "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"
> ... is a-historical and never was a position of the workers movement.
Nor was its opposite--that workers should be free to emigrate wherever
they wish--ever a position of the workers movement. I think it ahistorical
to apply traditional socialist positions to cir***stances that were never
contemplated, i.e., where the laboring m***** unequivocally oppose the
pace of immigration. Without claiming that this describes labor's position
today, unlike the past, it is no longer a bare hypothetical.
As to whether the Mexican workers are the most militant, I have met many
with no interest whatsoever in the U.S. labor movement. They see
themselves as Mexican, and if they have any political
consciousness--usually not--it is vested in Mexican affairs. If you could
get them to speak openly, you would learn that they see California as
stolen from Mexico, and see themselves as the vanguard of its reconquest.
I wouldn't put it this way to a broader audience, as the critique too
readily panders to U.S. patriotism, but the outlook of the Mexicon
immigrants must be *****sed objectively, in developing a revolutionary
perspective.
> So how do you justifiy it now and why is the situation different for
> workers leaving one region, one city, one country now as in the past
> that you justifiy your abandoning an internationalist position?
It expresses an aspect of the right of the receiving nation to
self-determination. Hence, it doesn't apply within a nation. I agree with
the *logic* of a much-detested icl position, where it held that
immigration could undermine the self-determination of an imperialist
country. It restricted the application to small imperialist countries,
such as Belgium, and subsequently the icl backed off, without renouncing,
this position, so unpopular on the left that even the Landyites got in on
the smears. I agree with the logic, but not the limited scope of
application, which I see it as much broader than the icl imagined for the
coming period. Surely the Albanian emigration has compromised Greek
self-determination. Has Mexican immigration compromised the right to
self-determination, as applied to American workers in the S.W? My position
doesn't reach that question (yet). But I maintain it is for the workers to
decide, and that they might well decide that Mexican immigration threatens
their right of national self-determination.
> The fact that the higher level of class consciousness among immigrant
> workers in the US attests to the contrary position you state.
> Secondly, and more im****tantly, it was never the position in the lat
> 150 years or longer of any section of the workers movement that
> workers should "eschew emigration". It's just not there. The reason
> workers emigrate is to avoid absolute impoverishment in the immediate
> sense. Impover****ment brought on by globalizing capitalisms chase for
> profits and control.
As I have said, but I think you have ignored in previous posts, neither
this position NOR yours is orthodox. The revolutionary workers movement
has never called for limits on immigration NOR has it called for "Open
Borders." To avoid this obvious unorthodoxy, you now carp about the
rhetor, while raising no principled arguments against the Open-Borders
position. I don't think you changed your position, per John Holmes, but
only your jargon.
> You ought to rethink this.
Perhaps you should rethink--or at least consider for the first time, since
it is yet hypothetical--whether you think class conscious immigrants would
enter a country, when the workers unequivocally express their
unwillingness to receive the immigrants. They are forced to by conditions
of want? Would you afford this excuse to a scab? Then why to immigration
against the express sentiments of the laboring m*****?
--
srd
|
