Re: Mass murder, jokes and immigration [WAS: Re: Massive Starvation

U.S. capitalist immigration control will always be racist, just like
the penal system is. To me, the racial composition of prisoner
populations is the greater affront to democratic norms. Maybe some
kind of program can reach these problems transitionally, but I haven't
seen any. They end up in the class of tasks, as opposed to demands,
per another discussion.

One way to characterize this difference of opinion--precisely if
perhaps superficially--is that we disagree about the point at which an
immigrant becomes or resumes his proletarian status. You say, as soon
as they get in. I say as soon as they become part of the work force,
defined in accordance with national norms. Being an unlicensed
subcontractor ("working" for one's unlicensed relatives) does not a
real proletarian make. It is a lumpenized existence. In another post
you questioned that immigrants were unskilled. Well, I don't think
they are unskilled by Mexican standards. (They aren't the poorest--
perhaps I said they were. If so, I internalized the message of the
Cliffite bleeding hearts.)

One more point about the way you underestimate economics as an
integrator of demands. "Good economics," you agree, dictates that
immigration lower the market position of workers. I try to picture the
attitude toward immigration you convey. The workers are enjoined to
unite with the immigrants, yet the workers are fully aware that the
immigrants' arrival does them economic detriment. Have you ever seen
an actual human being exhibit this attitude? The closest thing is when
an office worker must train her replacement, after which the former is
to be terminated. Yet she must act as though both are part of the
team. But gross hypocrisy can't be what you propose as the attitude
workers should take to immigrants.

Once the immigrants get real jobs, workers who would decry the
immigrants' numerousness have only themselves to blame, if unions
assumed no control over work-force composition.

srd


On May 13, 5:04=A0pm, John Holmes <jhol...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Tue, 13 May 2008, Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>
> > If you answered this question, I think it would enable me to
understand =
your
> > position. Why would you make a political issues of the wall? That is,
wh=
y
> > isn't just part and parcel of the effort to control immigration
_before_=
 the
> > border-crossing?
>
> For the obvious reasons. It is not a civilized method of immigration
> control, such as exists at the Canadian border, or at least I should
> say as it used to exist before 9/11.
>
> Hundreds and perhaps thousands of would-be immigrants over the border
> die of thirst in the desert in the process of attempting immigration,
> while being hounded by INS agents with guns and dogs whose methods
> often resemble those of the Gestapo.
>
> The Wall is explicitly modeled on the Berlin Wall, as its proponents
> have been known to state openly in unguarded moments. But whereas the
> Berlin Wall, for all its inhumanity, did serve a socially worthwhile
> purpose for a non-capitalist state, the Mexican Wall serves racist
> purposes for a thoroughly capitalist state, namely the United States
> of America.
>
> -jh-
>
>
>
>
>
> > --
> > srd- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -