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

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On Tue, 13 May 2008, stephen wrote:

> 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.

There are some minimal negative democratic demands one can raise,=20
which hardly deserve calling "transitional."

Such as for example ending capital punishment.

And ending the drug war and freeing all drug offenders, and committers=20
of other victimless crimes like prostitution. This would radically=20
reduce the size of the American prison population and, quite likely,=20
even change its racial composition.

The old Black Panther demand of free all prisoners might not work=20
well. This was actually done by the Bolsheviks during the Russian=20
Revolution, all prison inmates were freed who promised (if they were=20
not political prisoners) to mend their ways under the influence of the=20
Revolution.

It worked poorly. Many petty criminals did indeed reform. But most of=20
the professional criminals (a) promised to become honest workers now=20
that they were no longer victims of Tsarist oppression (b) formed=20
pseudo-anarchist collectives and (c) set about preying on the=20
population under the Black Flag. And of course the anarchists welcomed=20
them into their ranks.

So then the Bolsheviks had to use force against the anarchists, and=20
usually the only way they could tell the sincere anarchists from the=20
criminals was that the sincere anarchists refused to surrender when=20
surrounded by a Cheka detachment and went down fighting, usually=20
blowing themselves up with their bombs.

So what would have been a better solution? Frankly I have no idea,=20
it's a problem.

>
> 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.)

Do not assume that Mexican standards are that far below American these=20
days. That is particularly true in the trucking industry. I have heard=20
it claimed that, due to the deunionization of trucking, American long=20
distance truck drivers, though paid better, actually have to drive=20
longer hours and sometimes have poorer condition trucks than their=20
Mexican equivalents.

>
> 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.

The history of the American labor movement classically has always been=20
that one group of immigrants after another would come in. At first,=20
the new group would be willing to take lower wages than the previous=20
population, and would be brought in by the capitalists to replace=20
them. So the two groups would be pitted against each other, and the=20
capitalists would win. Then a few years later, a new group comes in,=20
and the process starts all over again.

This began with the Irish in the 1830s and has continued ever since.

After a while, labor organizers would get wise, and find ways of=20
uniting the multiple ethnic groups against the employer. Sooner or=20
later they would succeed, which is why America even has successful=20
trade unions.

Now, we are at the stage in the cycle where the previous layers,=20
now more or less all joined together as "white Europeans" have become=20
more conservative, while the Latin immigrants in particular have=20
become pretty much the vanguard of the organized American working=20
class, due to the lumpenization of much of the black population in
America, who used to play that role before the de-industrialization of=20
America in the late 20th century. Black are still the most politically=20
radical population in a general sense, but they have been shoved more=20
and more out of the unions as private sector unionism dwindles.

-jh-

> > 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,
w=
hy
>>> 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 -
>
>
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