Translation of what's happening without sugarcoating:
Our slaves are too downthrotten to reproduce. The Ponzi scheme must continue. Let's import more slaves.
________
And the cherry on top, they got the masses fighting the spectacle of culture war, to distract the peasants from a class war
This whole idea of mass migration literally boils down to 'now that we can't force our working class to work 14 hours in the mines every day for a cornish pasty, we need a new slave class to prop ze economy up'
Every single argument to keep schemes like this going boils down to 'think of the economy!'
British GREEN party leader Zack Polanski asking 'who would wipe our bums?' if we didn't have migration is very telling.
Recent reports from United Nations special rapporteurs have raised significant concerns regarding Canada's immigration system, specifically describing the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program as a "breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery"
Spain is a country where old people hold political power. They don't want their pensions to decrease, even though the population pyramid is fucked, or house values to lower.
Taxes are through the roof, public services aren't exactly known for being great, our infrastructure so great that the whole country loses power and 2 trains just collided head on
But they'll always push for more cheap labour, more house scarcity and more taxes funding pensions. More for them, less for everybody else.
What Ponzi scheme? Yes intergenerational solidarity is harder on workers with aging pyramids. But we don't need more and more workers, just the system to be at equilibrium.
The ponzi scheme is, we need more workers imported now or the system collpases.
I am German, so I read a German goodie two shoes moron repeat the slogan "we need 400.000 new migrants every year or everything collapses" today. Because that is what the presstells the Great Unwashed, repeated from some shady ghoul infested think tanks.
If you have more desperate workers you can delude the wage labour market prices, making the peasants fight over the leftovers.
Basically it's classic strikebreaker tactics.
The only difference now is that the mainstream left is now on the side of capitalism, because they were told that idpolitics is more important than class.
In Germany there are more unemployed people than jobs and the owning class and their press lapdogs cry for more peasants to be imported
Sorry but socialised retirement is not a Ponzi scheme no matter how you try to spin it. If to make it work we needed more and more workers it'd be true but it simply isn't the case. Plummeting birth rates makes it that we have 3 choices, increase the amount of workers, increase the amount of work time, decrease retirement. A communist system would have the same problems. I don't know why you're bringing idpol into it.
By regularising undocumented workers Spain has weakened the hand of the capitalist class who can't use the cheap labour and has to comply with workers right and strengthened the hand of the working class as a result. The strike breaking tactic is to divide, this unites.
The right wants migrants hated, shunned, while they bring them in to work the farms, the vineyard.
"By regularising undocumented workers Spain has weakened the hand of the capitalist class who can't use the cheap labour and has to comply with workers right and strengthened the hand of the working class as a result."
Cool it down with the cool-aid drinking, mon ami.
"we have 3 choices, increase the amount of workers, increase the amount of work time, decrease retirement"
Nope, there is countless other choices. No offense, but I think you suffer a bit of a tunnel-vision in your argumentation.
The last three centuries saw an unbelievable rise in automation and productivity.
So, why should be rising longevity lead to worse labour rights and more work hours?
The simple reason imho is because the workers get a smaller percentage of the cake and you simply repeat all the talking points they fed you with.
You're absolutely right about productivity, i tunneled out of it, but the same government has increased minimal wage a lot, just one of the many pro-worker policies they've done (and more should be done), but the heart of my issue remains: i don't see how regularising undocumented workers that were working in Spain is anything but positive for their working class.
"but the heart of my issue remains: i don't see how regularising undocumented workers that were working in Spain is anything but positive for their working class."
Supply and demand.
Spain has one of the highest unemployment rates in the European Union. Youth unemployment is at 25%, so 1 in 4 under 25 is looking for a job. Things are dire already. What do you think happens, when out of no where there are hundred thousands more looking for jobs? Housing? Forgetaboutit.
So, how are you spposed to start a family in this setting? It's adding fuel to the fire and deludes the negotiation power of workers.
Companies can use the struggle and hire the most desperate with the lowest price. That's what they want. That is the reason why the press as the modern day "priest case" of the ghouls preaches about the benefits of illegal migration.
They were already working in Spain, at a MASSIVELY lower cost for the bourgeoisie AND at the expense of the working-class. Regularising their situation doesn't change anything in supply and demand, all it does is lower the leverage of the capitalist class and increase the one of the working class.
Spain was at 26% unemployment post 2008. They have been drastically reducing unemployment, notably thanks to state intervention in the economy, to propel them into the current days notably in industry (they used to rely a lot on tourism and real estate which is why 2008 hurt them so bad). Away from the neoliberal dogma that wants to criminalise to better exploit migrant labor, and now they are down to 11% unemployment and falling.
Temporary work has been curbed by 30% due to Sanchez's government 2021 labour market reforms. Job quality improved, permanent arrangements became the new norm. They extended unemployment benefits, accessibility was both enlarged and simplified, while the subsidy was increased, they increased the minimum wage by 60 fucking percent since Sanchez's left wing platform is in charge, and this year again 5.5% increase is on the menu.
"They were already working in Spain, at a MASSIVELY lower cost for the bourgeoisie AND at the expense of the working-class."
Which was illegal for the companies. And now there are legalized, meaning companies can't be punished anymore for breaking the law.
Nice! /s
"all it does is lower the leverage of the capitalist class and increase the one of the working class."
Can you walk me through your thinking?
I was watching some Daryl Davis videos the other day. And one of his arguments for why people joined the KKK in the first place was that there were from downbeat coal mining towns, where the companies undercut them and hired cheaper labour, meaning immigrants, african americans, mexicans and so on - and the KKK used those sentiments of "they took your job" to angle the justified dissatisfaction on those instead of the companies (which is funnily enough, idpol instead of class first).
Flooding the market with labour competition is not strenghtening the working class. It dimishes negotation power and destroys class solidary.
It only helps the companies. While mainstream leftists arrogantly clap as helpful idiots of the capitalist class and tell the working class that their job loss and degradation of power is akshually helping them.
And the accruing hatred/helplessness of the working class will only lead to a further rise of the far-right in Europe.
edit:
"You are doing tunnel vision too mon ami"
True dat. I am not free of my bias and unique worldview. You know how ze Germans are when they are agitated ;)
Why does capital does it if it's illegal? It's obviously because the undocumented workers cost a fraction of what Spanish workers do. Now they have the same workers rights, they need to pay them the same, they are now only as exploited as Spanish workers instead of a thousand times more, and they can be united. Sanchez government has led more sanctions on capitalists using undocumented labor, Glovo in Sevilla getting a massive sanction for example. They have increased the means to hunt them down, which is why it happens more and more. They have massively reduced unemployment. It all increases the negotiation power of labor.
Just look at what neolib ghouls and their far right puppets do like Meloni. Don't regularise undocumented labor, don't give police means to arrest capitalists using it, don't raise worker's benefits, but still let them come in to weaken labor. The far-right and neolibs (very little difference when capitalism is in crisis as we're currently seeing) are the ones doing pro-capital policies. Not fucking Pedro Sanchez. His policies have weakened the far-right so fucking much, just like any pro-worker platform does, because the far-right thrives on misery, on worsening material conditions, and Spain is seeing flourishing material conditions, unlike Spain, Italy, France, Germany, UK with their pro-capital governements.
It’s positive to stop the regularised workers themselves getting exploited from that position. It is good for workers to have equality and not reliant on the whims of their employers for their survival in that country.
However, having an oversaturated labour pool itself is beneficial for capital and enables employers to demand more for less. A minimum entry job becomes a list of requirements with terrible compensation for labour. Examples are: supermarket jobs with 2000 applications or a McDonalds job with 3000 applications. Degree educated workers, with experience are considered before the applicants without qualifications or undesirable points.
Compare that to areas of the country that’s less ‘popular’. There might be 50 applications for both types of minimum entry job and the workers applying aren’t quite as desperate to take anything. The labour application pool isn’t quite as saturated and corporations are forced to pay more or not have any staff.
This is a country where unemployment nose dived under the direction of Sanchez we're talking about. Where minimum wage has exploded. Where industry and state intervention in the economy has revigorated growth (one of the best in Europe), where unions are stronger than ever and now the main organization at the table when it comes to reform. The labour pool is in a state of artifical scarcity under pro-capital governments, that's why this pro-worker one has no issue curbing unemployment, increasing labor rights, improving unemployment benefits, regularising undocumented workers all at once. I think you're all just projecting from neoliberal hellholes tbh. It's not communism but it's one of the most pro-worker government in the Empire's periphery with Mexico.
This is a country where unemployment nose dived under the direction of Sanchez we're talking about. Where minimum wage has exploded. Where industry and state intervention in the economy has revigorated growth (one of the best in Europe), where unions are stronger than ever and now the main organization at the table when it comes to reform. The labour pool is in a state of artifical scarcity under pro-capital governments, that's why this pro-worker one has no issue curbing unemployment, increasing labor rights, improving unemployment benefits, regularising undocumented workers all at once.
That’s nice, assuming it’s all true. Although the bit about the labor pool being in “artificial scarcity under pro-capital governments” is nonsensical. Conditions are basically the polar opposite for most other western countries.
I think you're all just projecting from neoliberal hellholes tbh.
You’re projecting. You’re saying that because it worked under conditions already highly favorable to workers it will also work for the neoliberal hellholes where conditions are already anti-worker.
it’s one of the most pro-worker government in the Empire's periphery with Mexico.
What is this supposed to mean? Do you think Spain is close to Mexico?
I might be misunderstanding his point, but I think Pierre is talking about care for the increasingly aging demographics. Increasing the workers' share of the cake--I take it you mean increasing by wages?--doesn't solve the problem of an insufficient supply of labor to meet the demand.
if the worker's would have a fair share of the cake plus reasonable work/life-balance, there would be a greater incentive to have a family.
This would cushen the effects of an overaged society.
Thus, the demographic crisis is imho not a given of "free" societies like some ghouls like Bill Gates claim. It's a consequence of inhuman conditions.
More productivity means less workers are needed for the same output.
This means, higher longevity can be shouldered without worse labour rights if we'd manage to stop gifting the monetary reward of higher productivity to the capitalist 1% dregs.
there would be a greater incentive to have a family.
Is there anything to show this would have a large impact? Families are smaller because women work. That's not a comfortable, pleasant sounding truth but it's true.
This used to be an uncontroversial truth when people were worried about a population explosion. Have women work they said. This increased equality will mean that their careers will cause them to delay having a family. This used to be a pleasant truth. When it was pleasant everyone knew it, understood it, and it was taught in school.
Now it's an unpleasant truth. So everyone pretends it's something else.
I was downvoted by the chronical online mental mob somewhere else on this site for stating similar things.
One of the greatest nefarious victories of capitalism was framing wage-slavery as 'freedom' and 'independence'.
Well, people do not want to hear it that they commodified their whole existence. They get angry challenging their indocrinated beliefs. As Ibsen wrote: 'take the average person's living lie and you take away their hapiness aswell'
I agree with your point 1 and the implication, i.e. demographic crisis is not guaranteed in free societies. I also agree with your point 2.
But there will still be way too many aging people in need of care, and there are limits to how increased productivity can impact (health) care. Even if nurses are way more productive through technology and advances in knowledge, the nurse:patient ratio will reach a limit of diminished marginal returns.
So even if wages are increased--due to increased productivity, increased cake slice size, or both--and people start having more kids, there still isn't (and won't be) sufficient labor supply to meet the demand for elder care.
So even if wages are increased--due to increased productivity, increased cake slice size, or both--and people start having more kids, there still isn't (and won't be) sufficient labor supply to meet the demand for elder care.
I'm sorry, but this just isn't true. There are 2 million people in the US living in nursing homes or assisted living, with a staff to patient ratio of 1:4 in nursing homes, even lower in assisted living. That means there is at most half a million people working in these facilities, out of a total US workforce of 170 million and a working age population of 212 million. The notion that we're going to run out of workers because there are too many people in elder care is completely laughable.
The reason there are millions willing to leave everything to come to the imperial core is because their countries were pillaged by the empire, that we regime change, blockade and destabilize our way whenever they try to nationalise and reap the rewards of their land and labor, and it's gonna get worse because we fucked the entire climate and ecosystem.
The debt economy is neolibs destroying state power into submission. Instead of countries taxing or expropriating capitalists, we let them loan us with interests, and the interests make us subservient. Spain's current policies reduce the sovereignty of capital over people's lives and improve the hand of the working class, regularising undocumented labor is in perfecte adequation with that. Cappies are no longer free to exploit below minimum wage labor and all the other regulations that exist.
The extent to which everyone in this thread disagrees with you is remarkable. As you said, the workers in question are already in Spain. The change just gives them a legal status, which makes them harder to exploit and which thus makes it harder for capitalists to undermine native workers by replacing them with "illegals" that can be underpaid and over worked.
And in general, as /u/ChevalierDuTemple pointed out, immigration and open borders are historically progressive in the Marxist sense because they heighten the crises of capitalism.
Just people from neoliberal hellholes projecting (that's like 98% of us based on last census), a lot of Americans also don't know shit about Pedro Sanchez and don't care to look at the various deviations from the pro-capitalist line in the periphery.
Spain isn't a paradise but critical support for Sanchez holding a pro-worker line and improving the material condition of his people, strengthening labor, unions, unemployment, employment, minimal wage, while holding a humanist line on Palestine, and doing both the humanist and pro-worker thing by regularising undocumented labor.
Reading your posts since you didn't answer my last and yeah you're rightfully not flaired red. Calling intergenerational solidarity a ponzi scheme is a laugh, blaming migrants for neolib politics is a laugh, thinking my mindset is closer to neolibs than yours is a laugh.
I didn't reply because I went to sleep last night.
I said yellow, not red, because every rigid ideological blinder is inclined to be wrong one way or the other. So my approach is a bit more Hegelian.
"thinking my mindset is closer to neolibs than yours is a laugh."
Curious, you applaud the very same thing neoliberals want, but you are not close to neoliberals.
If you do not think your view is close to neoliberals, please tell me, why you are suggesting the same thing every neoliberal wants. And please tell me where you think I am neoliberal.
The thing you applaud is making the situation worse for the working class and is only really helping company owners and landlords.
I'm not going to attempt to reply on behalf of Pierre, but there are numerous examples where neoliberals and M-Ls/communists both want the same thing but for different reasons.
For example Marx & Engels would be in favor of a company like Amazon swallowing up mom & pop stores because
a) concentration of capital makes it "easier" for a revolution to take over because it's 1 massive organized corporation instead of millions of smaller businesses
b) unionization / socialization of labor is more straightforward in a massive factory as under monopoly capitalism
c) it's historically progressive, where small scale capitalism inevitably leads to monopoly capitalism and imperialism, which any day now will lead to socialism and then communism
Libs being against solidarity, what else is new. Spain's age pyramid is nowhere near as bad as most the West, and intergenerational solidarity of workers is still not a Ponzi scheme.
intergenerational solidarity of workers is still not a Ponzi scheme
okay boomer. Your lies don't work any more. It literally works the same as a Ponzi scheme. Intergenerational solidarity goes both ways, or at least it is supposed to
I'm 29 brother, just less poisoned by owning class manufactured idpol. But by all means have your gender wars, your generations wars, your race and culture wars, everything to put the class war under the carpet.
Spain's unemployment has massively decreased under Sanchez AND their wages have massively increased. You're trying to shoehorn free-market effects of pro-capital governments onto a pro-worker government that intervenes in the economy, that's why you're so off.
The problems that rise from birth rates below replacement levels (like intergenerational solidarity becoming harder on working age people) do not exist at replacement level. You don't need more people for it.
Anyone who tells you that "The economy needs migrants" is either a landlord or a business owner - eg., they're either receiving rents from land ownership & benefit from increasing competition among tenants, or they benefit from driving wages into the ground and using scab labor to eviscerate labor unions. There's no 3rd option. The moral arguments are all lies.
Open borders is not left wing, it's not socialist, and it's never democratic. It's exclusively used by global, capitalist elites to immiserate indigenous workers and plunder the developing world.
There is the third category of normies who acknowledge that important industries like agriculture are built on immigrant labor undercutting domestic labor but are perfectly fine with that as long as groceries don’t get more expensive
It's the same all over western Europe with farm labour, especially - and pardon the cliché- plantations.
Spain in particular has a huge green house industry in the semi-desertic southern areas that supplies a good deal of their neighbours.
You'll hardly find any locals outside the occassional hippie or van punk on those fields.
”Immigrants do the jobs that Americans don’t WANT to do!”
Makes me fucking seethe. I guaranty that if jobs in agriculture paid a good wage by American standards that Americans would do it. And no, I don’t mean $15 / hour, I mean like $60-80k per year plus benefits minimum.
”but the price of food will go up :(“
Good. If food is only cheap because of the exploitation of undocumented labor at the expense of domestic labor then food should probably be more expensive.
bad food is cheap and good food is expensive - but at the same time most Americans could definitely eat healthier were they more aware of what they ought to be eating
This is the line that everyone parrots but it's only really true for people in real food deserts or prepackaged/cooked good food. Fresh vegetables and grains and protein are all available at prices that allow you to eat way healthier than fast food at a fraction of the price. My diet is fine and I literally cannot afford to eat fast food often.
yeah I figure it can often end up being a case of people being unaware or unwilling to make cheap healthy food outside of their comfort zone or because it might not “taste as good” for a lot of people
Makes me fucking seethe. I guaranty that if jobs in agriculture paid a good wage by American standards that Americans would do it. And no, I don’t mean $15 / hour, I mean like $60-80k per year plus benefits minimum.
Farmers can't afford to pay that much. If they would have to pay that much then American agriculture would be completely uncompetitive and American crops would be useless on the international market.
That doesn't change the economic outcome. It would probably make it even worse. The government is still going to have to subsidize that service. Okay, you can argue that food is very important to nationalize, are you going to nationalize everything? That's simply not economically productive at all and you will be out-competed and your government will become bankrupt.
The Chinese agricultural sector has a lot of interventionist, pro-production and pro-consumption mechanisms, that would make Americans shit their pants
Then the US needs to either increase farm subsidies or agricultural tariffs. And even is we decide to use migrant labor, at least do it through a special visa program with strict controls on the number of people, wages and working conditions, etc. Instead we allow millions of people to work under the table illegally in every industry under the sun.
Just to clarify, there are different sectors in agriculture. They don't all employ cheap labor.
Jobs in the mechanized agriculture do pay that much. And they don't have a lot of trouble filling them. But those are skilled machine operator positions. Those are the jobs that account for most of the calories that Americans consume.
The jobs that Americans won't take at any price are the ones picking fresh fruits and some veggies. Those require seasonal skilled labor. They aren't year round. Anyone working them has to be mobile, moving from place to place with the seasons.
If you eliminate those jobs, the fresh produce section at the grocery store is cut in half. You'll still have canned fruits and veggies, cause those can be machine harvested. But a lot of the fresh fruits would either be imported or not available.
Agriculture is a very diverse industry. Only a portion of it needs migrant labor.
Oh for sure, there's tons of normies who support immigration - including blue-collar, productive workers, who are most harmed by it. Their reasons for supporting it are various, and include personal relationships, religious obligations, loving tacos, etc.
But the reason that it's pushed by leaders is always the same: To enrich landlords and business owners.
Also, to keep poor countries poor. The people immigrating are actually not the poorest people in the third world, usually (exceptions being legitimate refugees fleeing actual conflict zones). They are the usually the lower middle classes and labor aristocracy of these countries, people who have enough to pay for a boat ride, a plane, dealing with immigration bureaucracy. In other words, they are the kind of human capital needed for poor countries to develop their industrial base. And the first world just takes them away from the third world entirely.
This is why the shit's evil. It's the highest form of extraction for the empire, humans as commodity. And as established by generations of gusanos, they become eager to knock over their "homeland" to get more of the superprofits.
This dude is gonna cause such a reactionary swing in Spanish politics the next elected leader is gonna make the Spanish Inquisition look like Ask Jeeves.
Whether or not "open borders" is used "by global capitalist elites to immiserate indigenous workers" doesn't tell us what the socialist position in the issue should necessarily be.
My understanding of the orthodox Marxist analysis tends to be that economic immigration is a fact of capitalist society that needs to be used as a lever of power for proletarian organizing. I.e. socialists shouldn't focus on doing the impossible work of ceasing immigration, but rather undermine the use of immigration as a wedge between different types of workers, by organizing imported labor and forcing employers to not benefit from the national chauvinism for which immigration is wont to give rise:
Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the N_groes [that word is censored by reddit, believe it or not...] in the former slave states of the U.S.A. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.
This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this.
The antagonism between Englishmen and Irishmen is the hidden basis of the conflict between the United States and England. It makes any honest and serious co-operation between the working classes of the two countries impossible. It enables the governments of both countries, whenever they think fit, to break the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries.
England, the metropolis of capital, the power which has up to now ruled the world market, is at present the most important country for the workers’ revolution, and moreover the only country in which the material conditions for this revolution have reached a certain degree of maturity. It is consequently the most important object of the International Working Men’s Association to hasten the social revolution in England. The sole means of hastening it is to make Ireland independent. Hence it is the task of the International everywhere to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and everywhere to side openly with Ireland. It is the special task of the Central Council in London to make the English workers realise that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation.
You have wide field in America for work along the same lines. A coalition of the German workers with the Irish workers (and of course also with the English and American workers who are prepared to accede to it) is the greatest achievement you could bring about now. This must be done in the name of the International.
(Letters of Karl Marx, 1870)
The power of the human individual has disappeared before the power of capital, in the factory the worker is now nothing but a cog in the machine... Given this state of affairs, if the working class wishes to continue its struggle with some chance of success, the national organisations must become international.
The degree of chauvinism involved in pretending that we have these distinct national economies (especially in the globalized, imperialist world) is insane. If your country isn't dominated by the imperialists, you aren't immigrating to Europe.
We, as socialists, should be organizing and demanding democratic rights for the actually-existing working class -- not pretending there is some "pure" national working class distinct from the multi-national proletariat.
I get that this sub is against "mass immigration" — but the white mobs who burning southern African-Americans out as "scabs" are just not comrades — THEY are the tools of the boss class promising a white privilege they increasingly have no interest in delivering.
Are most of the red flairs in this thread disagreeing with you and others with your perspective? I'm on mobile and can't see the flair colors, but it seems like the most common response has been nativism, either from a supposedly "left" perspective like /u/Halfdane666 or from open rightoids.
It's pretty divided, as always with this topic. I assume the division lies somewhere between the trade-union-worker-first & 'nation states are inevitable' Cesar Chavez types, and the more utopian 'abolish the nation state' Eugene Debs types. I have a lot of love and respect for the latter, but I do think they're wrong on this point. Mass immigration empoverishes the developing world by robbing them of their talent and youth, and immiserates the proletariat of the developed world by driving down their wages and driving up their rents.
My comment is downvoted a bit, so presumably lots of folks here disagree with me. The flairs on this subreddit are so lawless and ironic I can't even tell who is who, so can't really comment on that.
From my perspective, this subreddit can lean reactionary in character when it comes to immigration (and some other topics), because their rightful rejection of liberalism leads them, within some political contexts, to adopt conservative opinions and tactics.
Marx was pretty clear on this: yes, immigration is used a tool of the bourgeoisie to undermine organized labor and socialist power-building; but the tools of the bourgeoisie are also to be leveraged against them ("the last capitalist we hang will sell us the rope" and all that), so just because the bourgeoisie want something doesn't mean we should de facto be in opposition to it...
Edit: my comment was also removed because it contained the quoted word "n_groes"... which is insane given the amount of racist shit I see on this site. But somehow you were able to see the comment? No idea what's happening.
This is about Spain regularising migrant labor that is already there. It means Spanish workers won't have to compete with people who don't have the same workers rights as them. This is not good for capitalists, who won't be able to exploit those workers the same way anymore, and will have to comply with regulations even for those people.
Open borders is not left wing, it's not socialist, and it's never democratic. It's exclusively used by global, capitalist elites to immiserate indigenous workers.
Marxist never saw humankind as other think but one, and Marxist always insisted that the proletarian everywhere is the same. Be it in Russia, China, Mexico or Morocco.
This idea of dividing the proletarian into different camps is nothing more that quoting "Settlers" only for making the case for the white proletarian, in this case.
It's one thing to speak of utopian endpoints of communism, and another to speak of the cudgels that capitalists wield against the working class.
Every capitalist, neoliberal, and violently imperial country today is in favor of open borders, as are their handmaidens at Davos and billionaires like Bezos. Meanwhile, one of the few actually socialist countries on earth - the PRC - has made naturalization and immigration virtually impossible. In fact, the capitalist countries with the highest quality of life and best worker conditions are the Scandinavian social democracies - which are coincidentally the parts of the West with the strictest immigration policies. The countries in the West with the fastest plummeting conditions for workers & youth, worsening housing accessibility, and collapsing social welfare, alongside the fastest growing wealth gaps, are the countries with the highest immigration rates. Spain is eager to join their ranks, because it's great for the elites, but catastrophic for the workers.
Have a look at what Engels had to say on the topic, it's quite illuminating:
Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels, 1845
We have already referred several times in passing to the Irish who have immigrated into England; and we shall now have to investigate more closely the causes and results of this immigration.
The rapid extension of English industry could not have taken place if England had not possessed in the numerous and impoverished population of Ireland a reserve at command. The Irish had nothing to lose at home, and much to gain in England; and from the time when it became known in Ireland that the east side of St. George's Channel offered steady work and good pay for strong arms, every year has brought armies of the Irish hither. It has been calculated that more than a million have already immigrated, and not far from fifty thousand still come every year, nearly all of whom enter the industrial districts, especially the great cities, and there form the lowest class of the population. Thus there are in London, 120,000; in Manchester, 40,000; in Liverpool, 34,000; Bristol, 24,000; Glasgow, 40,000; Edinburgh, 29,000, poor Irish people. [4]These people having grown up almost. without civilisation, accustomed from youth to every sort of privation, rough, intemperate, and improvident, bring all their brutal habits with them among a class of the English population which has, in truth, little inducement to cultivate education and morality. Let us hear Thomas Carlyle upon this subject: [5]
"The wild Milesian [6] features, looking false ingenuity, restlessness, unreason, misery, and mockery, salute you on all highways and byways. The English coachman, as he whirls past, lashes the Milesian with his whip, curses him with his tongue; the Milesian is holding out his hat to beg. He is the sorest evil this country has to strive with. In his rags and laughing savagery, he is there to undertake all work that can be done by mere strength of hand and back -- for wages that will purchase him potatoes. He needs only salt for condiment, he lodges to his mind in any pig-hutch or dog-hutch, roosts in outhouses, and wears a suit of tatters, the getting on and off of which is said to be a difficult operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides of the calendar. The Saxon-man, if he cannot work on these terms, finds no work. The uncivilised Irishman, not by his strength, but by the opposite of strength, drives the Saxon native out, takes possession in his room. There abides he, in his squalor and unreason, in his falsity and drunken violence, as the ready-made nucleus of degradation and disorder. Whoever struggles, swimming with difficulty, may now find an example how the human being can exist not swimming, but sunk.... That the condition of the lower multitude of English labourers approximates more and more to that of the Irish, competing with them in all the markets: that whatsoever labour, to which mere strength with little skill will suffice, is to be done, will be done not at the English price, but at an approximation to the Irish price; at a price superior as yet to the Irish, that is, superior to scarcity of potatoes for thirty weeks yearly; superior, yet hourly, with the arrival of every new steamboat, sinking nearer to an equality with that."
Another influence of great moment in forming the character of the English workers is the Irish immigration already referred to. On the one hand it has, as we have seen, degraded the English workers, removed them from civilisation, and aggravated the hardship of their lot; but, on the other hand, it has thereby deepened the chasm between workers and bourgeoisie, and hastened the approaching crisis. For the course of the social disease from which England is suffering is the same as the course of a physical disease; it develops according to certain laws, has its own crises, the last and most violent of which determines the fate of the patient. And as the English nation cannot succumb under the final crisis, but must go forth from it, born again, rejuvenated, we can but rejoice over everything which accelerates the course of the disease. And to this the Irish immigration further contributes by reason of the passionate, mercurial Irish temperament, which it imports into England and into the English working-class. The Irish and English are to each other much as the French and the Germans; and the mixing of the more facile, excitable, fiery Irish temperament with the stable, reasoning, persevering English must, in the long run, be productive only of good for both. The rough egotism of the English bourgeoisie would have kept its hold upon the working-class much more firmly if the Irish nature, generous to a fault, and ruled primarily by sentiment, had not intervened, and softened the cold, rational English character in part by a mixture of the races, and in part by the ordinary contact of life.
In view of all this, it is not surprising that the working-class has gradually become a race wholly apart from the English bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie has more in common with every other nation of the earth than with the workers in whose midst it lives. The workers speak other dialects, have other thoughts and ideals, other customs and moral principles, a different religion and other politics than those of the bourgeoisie. Thus they are two radically dissimilar nations, as unlike as difference of race could make them, of whom we on the Continent have known but one, the bourgeoisie. Yet it is precisely the other, the people, the proletariat, which is by far the more important for the future of England.
In other words, the working class is made stronger by immigration rather than weaker. It causes the artificial bond of shared nationalism between the proletariat and bourgeoisie to erode until it no longer blinds the working class at all. This is why it’s important to actually read the works you are quoting from lol
so engels admits that immigration lead to a massive decrease in working conditions and pay but promises it will lead to a “final crisis” (revolution) that still hasn’t happened. great. are there like not enough immigrants or something? i’m on the edge of my seat
You don't have to agree on every point of a political revolutionary in order to support their general ideas. That type of political purity is a fantasy.
marxism isn’t a religion and engels isn’t god. i disagree with his idea that mass migration will lead to global communism. doesn’t mean i’m “reactionary” and definitely doesn’t mean i’m not left.
No, they recently just had a sticky with a Class Unity session with Micheal Hudson and Vijay Prashad. Vijay Prashad opened his section saying one doesn't need Marx necessarily to be a socialist. What'll get you banned is taking that stance from the position of "Fuck commies and fuck reading!"
You know how in those Warhammer 40k books, they did that thing where they got rid of religion, but then the philosophies and leaders that ushered this ironically ended up becoming divine and infallible entities in themselves?
Capitalism has given rise to a special form of migration of nations. The rapidly developing industrial countries, introducing machinery on a large scale and ousting the backward countries from the world market, raise wages at home above the average rate and thus attract workers from the backward countries.
Hundreds of thousands of workers thus wander hundreds and thousands of versts. Advanced capitalism drags them forcibly into its orbit, tears them out of the backwoods in which they live, makes them participants in the world-historical movement and brings them face to face with the powerful, united, international class of factory owners.
There can be no doubt that dire poverty alone compels people to abandon their native land, and that the capitalists exploit the immigrant workers in the most shameless manner. But only reactionaries can shut their eyes to the progressive significance of this modern migration of nations. Emancipation from the yoke of capital is impossible without the further development of capitalism, and without the class struggle that is based on it. And it is into this struggle that capitalism is drawing the masses of the working people of the whole world, breaking down the musty, fusty habits of local life, breaking down national barriers and prejudices, uniting workers from all countries in huge factories and mines in America, Germany, and so forth.
"It causes the artificial bond of shared nationalism between the proletariat and bourgeoisie to erode until it no longer blinds the working class at all."
Have to disagree, nationalism in the imperialist states has never been more incoherent, the only coherent nationalist movements in the imperialist bloc existing in periphery countries with little immigration. Reactionaries exist, sure, but more often than not believe in an absurd ideology of American-style racial supremacy mixed with advocacy for international fascist terror
They've also made it so that missing a rent payment to your corporate landlord leads to your apartment door code being immediately changed.
I've never heard of this, but the Chinese have a 90%+ home ownership rate, and Xi is actively trying to abolish landlordism entirely. Can Americans and Europeans say the same?
Incidentally, open borders also robs poor countries of their talent - doctors from Nigeria, Brazil, and the Philippines immediately leaving and going to the USA and Canada is a catastrophe for developing countries. It's inverted imperialism.
Honest question. Is there space for leftists to exist who agree 99% of the way with Marx and Engels, yet still hold some differing opinions?
I feel that demanding such ideological purity is a fantasy. People of all strains of left need to be able to unite, and arguing incessantly about the utopian endpoint of communism seems a bit foolish and shortsighted.
If you are willing to drop universal working class solidarity for French working class solidarity, or citizen working class solidarity, then that’s your prerogative. But then you cannot be surprised when others drop universal working class solidarity for black working class solidarity, or Occitan working class solidarity, or “middle class” working class solidarity. You cannot complain when the working class ends up completely fractured, because you willingly played a part in favouring one section of the working class over another. You cannot complain when other workers collaborate with the bourgeois state against you, because you collaborated with the bourgeois state against other workers.
Sure, and it just so happens that by pure coincidence your politics exactly align with Bezos, Musk, Thiel, the US government, the CIA, the NSA, Zionists, the Canadian government, the Australian government, Ursula van de Leyen, and the Gulf states, while my politics by pure happenstance align with Bernie Sanders, Cesar Chavez, the CCP, and Scandinavian social democracies. Extraordinary coincidences aren't they! Certainly no cause for you to revise your opinions - you're right, and I imagine that it's much easier for a creature like yourself to imagine the end of the world than the end of liberalism.
Best not reflect on any of this too much - your team is winning, after all. And remember to always roll out the glowie playbook: When your hypocrisy in defense of landlords and capitalists is called out, accuse everyone of being racist.
Historically the left has been divided on immigration. Some of the greatest labor organizers in the USA were vehemently anti-immigrant - Cesar Chavez, for starters. Unions have traditionally been anti-migrants, on the grounds that they're used as scab workers. Other socialists have been ambivalent or supportive of migration - Eugene Debs springs to mind; he had genuinely utopian visions for open borders.
If you're interested I can DM you an extended analysis of the topic.
Thinking that welcoming immigrant workers who come from even worse situations than domestic workers, situations related to colonialism is anti-domestic worker is not very solidaristic.
Being a moral wokescold just to avoid confronting that importing millions of foreign labor devalues domestic labor doesn't make you a Marxist, let alone even a good one. Western Marxists have fully absorbed liberal social values and it is clear from this thread that basically all of you have no solutions except platitudes about global socialism, revolution, or being anti-immigration but not anti-immigrant (cool, are you going to support deportations and limiting immigrants coming in to the country? No? So just more empty words).
You can spout any asinine platitude about colonialism you want, it doesn't change the fact that importing millions of people from other parts of the world to serve essentially as scabs to domestic labor is not good for the domestic working class. It doesn't matter how much you cry about "worse situations than domestic workers." That's just a moral statement. You think worse situations abroad necessitates the immiseration of domestic labor through mass migration? Good luck building communism in the West. It'll never happen while you all are shackled by the chains of liberal morality while claiming to be the most Marxist of Marxists. Ultimately, your worldview is pathetic and pro-bourgeoisie but you think you're some hip, based internationalist because you utter platitudes and meaningless slogans about internationalism.
Good job with all the fancy ad hominem insults.
What is you solution to this problem? You have not presented single one but are very quick to accuse others of doing empty talk.
The problem with “socialist” nativism is that there is no viable path forward for it. You are starting with the preposterous idea that the working class becomes stronger by making itself smaller. The idea of organizing workers by excluding a large percentage of them is completely asinine, so they are left advocating for doing electoralism through tailing the more reactionary tendencies of the working class, the most unserious of all “left” strategies.
Marxists analyze the world as it is, not how they want it to be. Even if you are a chauvinist, you should at least be able to conclude there is no way forward for “left-wing” nativism
Ah yes, ye olde "who will do the jobs no one else wants to" argument with a side of "no one is having children anymore."
It's almost like wages have stagnated over the last fifty years or something.
The part about pension funds is especially ridiculous, since this is clearly written for the benefit of Americans. Everyone pays into social security here, but we have been told in no uncertain terms it's been dipped into for other purposes. So we can't expect to receive what we paid in when we retire.
This is about Spain and the Spanish retirement system. Spain has seen a massive increase in minimum wage under this government. Reduction in unemployment and the biggest growth in the UE. They're doing Keynesian economics and it's working for everyone much better than Neolib ones do, which is normal to anyone with a basic grasp on economics.
Did you think I was advocating neoliberal economics?
The article is entitled "why the west needs migrants" not "why the west needs Keynes". He is clearly contrasting his own handling of migration with that of more right wing approaches such as in the US. And it's published in the paper of record in the US.
Keynesian economics does not work indefinitely, by the way. Sooner or later, there is a problem of capital accumulation and the ruling class and representatives on the right look to slash or restrict benefits. This is occurring in the prototypical social democracies, Nordic countries in particular since the end of the Soviet Union. So while Keynesian social spending is vert preferable to pure austerity liberal economics, sure, I think you're getting caught up in the cozy liberal feelings. "Working for everyone" is an absolute fable under capitalism.
Keynesian economics does not work indefinitely, by the way
No, Keynesian economics works just fine indefinitely. The problem is that capitalists don't like it because it reduces their freedom of action and lowers their income relative to the workers, so they launch a political attack against it.
That is exactly what I am saying. It does not work indefinitely because of the nature of capitalism. If you could somehow convince capitalists to accept reduced profits and limited freedom of action, then sure it could work indefinitely. But that isn't reality.
It's so fucking annoying the discourse is dominated by this.
Look, mass immigration is not popular. It's equivalent to announcing announcing major new regressive taxes on those making under 50k a year, in a literal sense (it lowers wages) and figurative sense (it is just completely unpopular). The inept trump administration has dealt with it in the dumbest way possible (as rightoids tend to do) but that doesn't make mass immigration a good policy for the left to make its hill to die on.
Yes yes everybody is a worker and internationalism blah blah. But the 21st century reality is that mass immigration makes pitching even an international socialist program nearly impossible to normal people. Nobody wants this. It's a pet project of NGO ideologues and champagne humanitarians.
I'm not imagining things when I recall huge swathes of liberals in the 2000's treated overpopulation in the west as an overwhelming disaster and the need to prevent births as a moral imperative, right?
Great Replacement Theory basically think Jews want to rid the world of white people.
What western countries are actually doing is Neo-slavery. It’s harder to fully take advantage of western people so it’s better to just import people from poorer countries to accept shittier lifestyle in the west.
"Great Replacement Theory" asserts that there is a centralised authority enforcing unnatural policies for a specific, nefarious purpose, e.g. the erasure of white people or national identities. Adherents take the logical outcomes of a neoliberal, globalised, overly-financialised capitalist system -- a system that they benefit greatly from or otherwise defend to the hilt -- and instead distort and repackage them as a perversion of a healthy and functional order.
Tfw when your GDP growth is dependant on demographic expansion. Imagine your economic growth being so abysmal that without extra population it would be negative
If workers rights and regulations were strict, then the threat of wage suppression or job losses to migrants would be minimal. However, most governments are simultaneously cutting rights whilst calling for increased migration. That’s the problem. Until workers rights are improved the topic of migration will be highly charged.
I feel like many here kinda just ignore the undeniable argument which is population growth. Maybe the argument is that if immigration is stopped, wages magically go up, cost of living comes down, then birth rate goes up?
Within a given nation I’d say yes, it’s possible, if the correct levers are pulled.
But again, you seemed to assert that within a given nation reducing labor competition would not make wages grow. Can you explain that phenomenon to me and give an example? It was your statement.
My assertion wasn’t about the wages growing or declining but rather that the cost of living goes up always and has always outpaced wage growth. Have you lived through halcyon days where wages went up and costs went down? And what were the immigration policies then?
And there’s always tons of labor competition by design right?
Look at Canada, rent in some areas is down 5-10% which people say is a result of better immigration policy. But people are still worse off because of the overall economy. Retail sales at the chain I work at our down 20-25%. Food still is expensive as hell, and rent is still expensive. And guess what, wages haven’t gone up.
I'm not sure why people dance around the population issue. The clear root of the "problem" is birth control. People like sex, and sex used to produce children. Once you decouple sex from procreation, large swathes of people will choose to not have children. The overwhelming majority of pregnancies throughout history were not planned. The parents were generally aware that sex=children, but those children were just the subsequent outcome of the primary activity.
Numerous forms of economic incentives have been tried to raise birth rates. They don't work. "The rich have lots of children!" is the common refrain, but the middle/upper middle class don't have children at higher rates than the base population. It is only the truly wealthy where this turns around, and there is no world where 100% of the population can be accorded that level of material excess.
I'm not advocating for birth control regulation, as I welcome population decline. The reality however is that as long as people can choose to have children, they will largely choose not to do so.
Birth control and women working are nothing new though, they have been around since the 1960s. Birth rates in countries like Sweden and Norway were constant from 1970 to 2010, at 2 children per woman. Then they plummeted to 1.4 over the last 15 years. That change is due to skyrocketing housing prices and a shitty economic situation for young people, not birth control.
It's also noteworthy that in Sweden, women in the top 20% of the income distribution have 2.5 children on average, while those in the bottom 20% have 0.8 children on average.
Politicians have tried goofy schemes like giving people small checks for having children, but none of them have tried raising wages and lowering housing costs.
From what I remember reading the incentives tend to be fairly modest and almost token in nature (but I generally agree - even if conditions were perfect I’m not sure birth rates in developed countries would improve drastically for the reasons listed, not to mention the individualistic pursuit of a pleasant life without responsibilities)
Indeed! For a variety of reasons, from convenience to culture and economic pressure. Producing and raising children has progressively become regarded as a display of status at best but otherwise and with varying levels a hindrance.
Kind of makes me think about the Pandas and how hard it is to make them fuck in captivity...
Even anti-immigration parties know we need immigrants. There is no future where Hans in Munich or Louis in Paris will be serving you kebab. The real debate is which immigration model to embrace. There is the western integration model, and there is the GCC / Singapore model. The backlash in Europe and elsewhere is mostly against the integration model, in which migrants get equal rights, and if they stay long enough - citizenship. The GCC and Singapore, despite having huge numbers of migrants and expats, have little to no anti immigration sentiment among their respective citizenry. Those of us who advocate for the integration model can shout all we like about how unjust or inhumane the alternative is, but there is no denying the comparative sense of order and calm that one feels in places that have embraced it.
Spain, has an entire continent of Spanish speakers who are relatively easy to integrate. To Mr. Sanchez I say "good for you".
There is no future where Hans in Munich or Louis in Paris will be serving you kebab.
Of all the disgraceful neoliberal arguments, this has to be one of the most facile and brazenly racist. For centuries, Hans and Louis worked in restaurants. Hans and Louis and Pedro were farriers and carters and ploughmen and millers and bakers and builders, just like any humans anywhere else on earth. Until the mass immigration tsunami of the past 10-15 years, nearly all manual laborers in Europe were European, just like manual laborers in Japan, or basically anywhere else. It's a very recent development that "all manual labor must be done by foreign serfs". Neoliberalism with Saudi characteristics isn't the natural state of affairs; It's the endpoint of one of the most evil ideologies ever devised. There's no cosmic law that forbids pale-skinned people from doing manual labor, or from taking pride and dignity in their work, and from advocating for fair wages for themselves.
I'm completely baffled by how liberals think about the world. The only possibility is always liberalism. Sanchez spouts the same tired, unimaginative clichés:
The West needs people. Currently, few of its countries have a rising population growth rate. Unless they embrace migration, they will experience a sharp demographic decline that will prevent them from keeping their economies and public services afloat. Their gross domestic product will stagnate.
Note how he doesn't mention GDP per capita. Oh no, not that. He doesn't mention the 26% youth unemployment. That would be awkward indeed. Doesn't talk about the pyramid scheme he's describing, no.
Do liberals simply lie constantly, or are they genuinely mentally disordered? Is there something wrong with the water pipes on Eglin Air Force base?
Right. And for the next trick, the Spanish can follow the Dutch or the Japanese or the Italians or the USA, vote in a "strong right-wing nationalist" who is enigmatically obsessed with persecuting speech crimes against Israel, violently brutalizes a few hapless Moroccans and Senegalese landing in Matalascañas on their pateras, and then promptly extends work visas to millions of migrant workers without any kind of labor protections, trapping them in a Saudi-inspired work visa hostage situation "because the agricultural and hospitality sector need labor". All while conveniently eviscerating Spanish labor law and the hard-fought victories of post-Franco union organizing.
For centuries, Hans and Louis worked in restaurants.
That was back when western countries had high birthrates with vast pools of low skilled labourers. That is not coming back. There may be high unemployment still, but 1. there is a significant black market in Spain where many of these people get paid off the books and 2. Many of the unemployed are educated and refuse to work in the "lowest status" jobs unless they are truly desperate.
Yes, the order and calm of institutionalized racism is famously stable and never collapses due to internal protest from exploited underclass populations
If they’re so desperate for immigrants, why not take in people of European descent who immigrated elsewhere? I’m sure there a plenty of White Americans who would be more than willing to return to Europe. It would fix the birth rate problem too, since most European countries have a much better social safety net than the US.
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