[Marxism] Open borders
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * We do not control the borders. If employers want “illegals” to work for them, they will be allowed in. Our choice is how we will respond to the “illegals.” And all our experiences tell us we must embrace them and do what we can to improve their conditions. Only then will we take away the weapon of the desperate worker from the hands of the employers. In part, what brought me to this view was a folk singer more than 50 years ago. He sang Phil Ochs Bracero and he took a moment to explain that these workers would be allowed in to the US. until the harvest was over and then deported. Any support on our part for border security will be used as a whip against the undocumented workers. ken h _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Open borders
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * IMHO "Open Borders" is what is required for all imperialist countries, but not for other countries. I am writing in reply to Michael Meeropol. He wrote, "But until real wages in the world become equal with a "race to the top" rather than a race to the bottom there will be a tension between open borders and (global north) working class incomes "Pushing solidarity is important but there is no question that this reality makes it doubly harder ... " Open borders is the most basic democratic right, the right to move from one place to another. The fact that it contradicts the existence of nation states at a very fundamental level makes it what people used to call a "transitional demand", but in reality ALL programmatic issues that meet the needs of the working class and oppressed are transitional because achieving any one of them intensifies the crisis of the system in one way or another. Achieving a $15/hour minimum wage in the USA is a good example of what I mean. Opponents of the working class always latch on to these effects: raising wages will cause employers to lay off workers, opening the borders will result in competition for jobs and resources, etc, etc. To the extent that their arguments are true, a revolutionary and really socialist program must have answers at a higher level. At this point in history, our program cannot be achieved in the short run, so our answers can serve only to educate small numbers of people. By the same token, the programmatic points developed 50 or one hundred years ago also need to be revised. How can anyone talk about "nationalizing" an industry when all of the main industries operate internationally? Take the automobile industry as an example. Nationalize GM in the USA? What about Canada, China, Mexico and the other countries whre GM operates? Similarly, how can the global warming catastrophe be addressed within a single "nation state", even one like the USA? Toothless climate change treaties? Capitalism has truly gone beyond the limits of the "nation-state" but cannot do without it either. On the other hand, if we just march around with signs saying "world wide socialist revolution now!" we will be marching alone. James Cannon, despite all of his warts and nose hair, once wrote about agitation, propaganda and education. To this he should have added, development of theory. Today's left is atomized, but growing. Dominated by abject reformism, but searching for answers to problems that reformism cannot solve. There are grounds for hope, but not if we just adapt to the arguments against struggle. Anthony. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Open borders and the Manus Island 'detention' centre
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * *"Manus. A Nation’s shame. Lives held in limbo. Lives lived in fear & despair. It’s fucking disgraceful. Russell Crowe in one tweet sums it up. * "Six hundred asylum seekers who have been imprisoned on Manus Island for years are refusing to go to East Lorengau transit centre on the island. They say it is not safe as locals have threatened and attacked them. Detention on Nauru is the other hell-hole option the men are refusing. . ." full at: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/11/04/manus-island-its-a-f-disgraceful/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Open Borders discussion
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *There has been an interesting debate about open borders in the letters column of the British left-wing paper *Weekly Worker* in recent weeks. All the letters on the subject have been put together in the current issue. Below we are reprinting some extracts from some of the letters supporting workers’ right to free movement:* It has been asked what Marx would have done. We can easily answer by describing what the First International, of which he was a member, did. They organised! The International announced that “the emancipation of labour is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries” and that “Each member of the International Association, on removing his domicile from one country to another, will receive the fraternal support of the Associated Working Men”. Furthermore, “To counteract the intrigues of capitalists – always ready, in cases of strikes and lockouts, to misuse the foreign workman as a tool against the native workman – is one of the particular functions which our society has hitherto performed with success. It is one of the great purposes of the Association to make the workmen of different countries not only feel but act as brethren and comrades in the army of emancipation.” See: http://rdln.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/workers-rights-and-open-borders/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
