On Thu, 08 May 2008 13:16:45 -0700, <dave.walters@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On May 8, 12:05 pm, "Stephen R. Diamond" <srdiam...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> wrote:
>>
>> 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.
Different question. Immigration is fundamentally a national question. It
isn't just about the favorability of conditions of labor power's sale.
Greater opposition to immigration, based on a sense of cultural threat,
may exist despite a lesser numerical preponderance or even economic
effect.
>
>> 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.
I think our observations may pertain to different chronological sections
of Mexican immigrants. As vngelis said, some of the immigrants bear the
same relation****p to newer immigrants as native workers bear to
immigrants.
Once an immigrant is ensconced in a real job--as opposed to inflating the
industrial reserve army's ranks--I think the correct position must defend
the workers as if they were native. Their conscious then will follow their
social position.
But let's go back to why we're discussing relative militancy, about which
I suspect you are correct. You said this challenged my appraisal that the
least class conscious workers emigrate. So this information doesn't bear
on our question. The correct analysis compares the consciousness of the
emigrating *Mexican* workers, not the Americans.
>
> 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'
Well, is your position revisionist or not? You're the archivist. I have to
think about this artificially-constructed-borders argument, but it seems
that probably everything follows from this, that is form your apparent
revisionism on this subject. I'll look into the Armenian business.
srd
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
>
--
srd
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