On May 8, 12:05 pm, "Stephen R. Diamond" <srdiam...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> On Thu, 08 May 2008 09:27:45 -0700, <dave.walt...@[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.
I think I have answered this over and over again. Immigration to the
US in the early 20th Century was HIGHER then per-capita than it is
today and capitalism had already shrunk except for the first 2 years
of WWI. At no time was the working class every MORE composed on
foreign born workers than this period.
> 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.
Stephen, I don't htink you've been paying attention to what's going
on. Where are the union organizing drives going on? Who is
participating. Who shutdown the economy May 1, 2006? Mexican immigrant
workers today have the highest level of class consiousness in the US
today *as part of the US working class*. Most do pay attention to what
is happening in Mexico, that's is true, but more and more since they
*can't go back* without being stuck there, more and more at seeing as
living here as the main perspective for their lives. I talk and work
with immigrant workers all the time. Most would like to have stayed in
Mexico, but with no land, no work, etc they are forced to come here.
And they generally resent it, albeit they seem resigned to it.
As to who owns the US SW? Really...this is barely raised accept in the
very accurate "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us". I
actually reject any Mexican claims to US territory now because in fact
there were actually very FEW "Mexicans" living in this area west of
the Mississippi River in 1848 (15,000 is the high number I saw
once)...it was mostly Native American with the Mexicans playing the
role as settler-populations. However, this doesn't mean that a NEW
developing Chicano nationality didn't develop that had legitmate
demands for self-determination. I think this isn't a serious
perspective anymore as native born Mexicans have overwhelmed the
Chicano/Mexican-American population.
> > 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.
Call it 'revisionism' but I don't defend "Imperialist Self-
Determination", no in relation to oppressed nationalities within it's
artificially constructed borders. Anymore than Lenin would of "defend
Russia" against Armenians during the time of the Czars. I also don't
believe that because the nature of the Greek nationality has CHANGED
that it's somehow a violation of "self-determination". If you look at
the workforce in California today, you see a working-CLASS that is
simply multi-national and multi-lingual. That is the way it is. You
can spend time wi****ng for some socialist-realist (and white-centric)
view of the strong, male, white-worker in coveralls...but that's not
the US working class today at all.
> > 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.
I've answered this in another post. I think I've proved that Marxists
position are that from a starting point, workers have no country, even
when engaged in a fight for national liberation. While gains are made
almost exclusively on the national (capitalist) level our class is
international and we know that workers emigration to other countries
is for reasons that capitalism imposes, not because workers "want to
try living in Chicago for the hell of it".
> > 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*****?
I don't think workers have "unequivocally" expressed anything. I think
the majority of people in general want no more immigration. I don't
doubt that. I also think this the most un-class conscious segment of
the US working class and wholly unorganized (not that this sentiment
isn't also strong among union workers). I think you will find in US
history the SAME opposition by white industrial workers to the
"im****tation" of Black farmer workers to work in Defense plants in
WWII. I don't accept that "well, it's the same country so it's OK"
crap and so that past racism is bad, but the current hatred of
immigrant (meaning *exclusively brown skinned Spanish workers) is
"OK". It is really is motivated by the same forces that seek to divide
us: the capitalists.
When white workers, *members of the UAW* would walk out in MASSIVE
wild-cat strikes in reaction to the companies hiring Black workers,
the CP, SP and SWP members *stayed at their machines* to BREAK these
walk-outs which were totally reactionary and racist. White workers
wanted to enforce previous Jim Crow segregation customs or exclude
Blacks altogether.
For me there is no difference between the 1940-1942 "worker boycotts"
of Black workers and the generally jingoistic "Patriotic defense of
the US".
David
> srd
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