Nationalism worldwide:
Mar 2 2011 22:24
Mar 3 2011 19:00
The politics seem ok, but everything in there that's worth saying you will have seen put better elsewhere. Its some comments on how the capitalist state manages immigration for its various ends and the contradictions that causes.
Mar 4 2011 06:49
Steven. wrote:
What's the political perspective of that site?After reading this completely untrue statement in the first paragraph "British National Party is organizing strikes to ban the employment of East European EU-citizens" (they wish they could organise strikes! Or maybe actually they don't because they are usually against strikes) I didn't bother continuing.
Mar 4 2011 21:55
Steven:
Maybe the sentence should have said: “a British Nationalist Party endorses, promotes and supports strikes by workers who share its anti-immigrant and nationalist politics....”
By the way, if far-right parties do not show much success, this does not mean that workers do not think like the far right. It only means that, in their nationalism, workers reckon that the promotion of the state's domestic and international power is currently in better hands with the democratic parties.
Mar 6 2011 14:33
Tommy Ascaso:
Workers are exploited. That is all. They should be neither praised nor denigrated. What follows from their exploitation depends entirely on the conclusions they draw from it. If they draw false conclusions, it is better to tell them – even if they might take it as an “insult” – because a wrong understanding of their situation only hurts their cause.
What is wrong with workers demanding “British Jobs for British Workers“? First, they see jobs as something that exists for their benefit. That is wrong. A job is entirely set up by capitalists to make a profit. A worker gains nothing by working for profit, but only ruins his life in the process. Also, workers are completely powerless to create any jobs – that is entirely decided by the capitalists, depending on their profit calculations. Workers can't create jobs, but can only demonstrate their willingness to work for their masters. They call for their own exploitation. This undermines their bargaining position, and erodes the only reason they go to work in the first place: their paycheck.
Second, they see the state as something that exists for their benefit. This is delusional. They fight in the name of the nation. This consists not of asserting their own interests, but the interests of capital on British soil. Capitalism sets workers in competition. By demanding British jobs, workers say: “we will compete, we want competition at our expense, we will win the competition.” This can quickly get violent. It leads to hostility to other workers and competition. It is slave-like – let us serve your profits, not the others. We have a right to serve your profits! They become the useful idiots for national capital and the state. That's a stupidity for which they pay the cost.
Mar 6 2011 16:20
i think every poster here is critical of the 'British jobs...' slogan, but reducing the LOR wildcats to the slogan is massively simplistic to the point of distortion. I think even the SWP caught on there was more to it after initially going into knee-jerk anti-racist mode.
Mar 6 2011 17:41
RC wrote:
Steven:Maybe the sentence should have said: “a British Nationalist Party endorses, promotes and supports strikes by workers who share its anti-immigrant and nationalist politics....”
the sentence still implies that firstly the BNP supports strikes (which are generally doesn't), and it also implies that there are anti-immigrant strikes.
The initial sentence stated strikes against the employment of Eastern European workers - now this has never happened. As for the Lindsey strikes, as has been pointed out these were not even against the employment of Italians are such, but more about protecting the national agreement on pay and conditions which people thought was being undermined, and against job losses.
As for them supporting strikes by workers who share their views - strikes are quite rare in the UK. The biggest strikes are usually the national ones in the public sector, like the civil service, councils and Royal mail. Now, some of the participants in those strikes (a small minority) will probably share similar views on immigrants, but the BNP will definitely not support those strikes, as they are pro-working class.
Anyway, this isn't a hugely important discussion so I won't derail this thread any further.
Mar 7 2011 17:47
I disagree that nationalism isn't "hugely important“!
The posts here argue like lawyers for the honor of the LOR workers, quibbling about details (were the foreign workers East European or Italian?) or stretching things, like saying "British Jobs for British Workers“ was “ironic” or merely “the British sense of humor” (?). But the workers don't need a defense, they need understanding!
Let's stick to the real matter at hand. This was a strike that was called in response to the hiring of foreign workers and ended when "workers voted to accept a proposal from union leaders and companies that would see half of the jobs originally intended for the foreign subcontractors go instead to British workers“ (http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/02/05/uk.strike/index.html).
They strikers appealed to the state as the guarantor of their interest in wage labor, and demonstrated their willingness to serve the state which creates the distinction between citizens and foreigners in the first place.
If they adopted an alternative slogan – “fair access for local labor” – this is the same mistake, accepting competition in principle, with all its winners and losers, and insisting on their usefulness for capital. If the strikers' representatives used a more tolerant language in public, this is because they acknowledged the interests of the state and capital in the usefulness of foreign workers – and not because they dropped their suspicion of them. All the reasons for the conflict of interests that led to the hostility towards foreign workers are still there and are unexplained.
Unfortunately, workers once again responded to their bad situation with bad answers; and complaints about “unfair pay for a fair days work!” only reconfirm the ideology of wage labor as a fair compensation. It would be better to tell them the truth – wages enable the capitalists to make a profit from paid labor, and because of that the cost of labor is constantly under scrutiny. Employers take advantage of every bad situation of their workers to lower their wages, increase pressure during work, hire and fire, and so on – the reason for this treatment has nothing to do with foreign workers, but with the economic rationality of the capitalists. This logic applies to every division in the labor force: why do street sweepers get less pay than pilots? Because the wage is a cost for capital and therefore it has to be minimized if possible (easier done with sweepers than with pilots). So any difference among the workers (legal status, sex, “race”, education) serves as an argument to lower the wage.
In short, it would be much better to fight the cause (the logic of exploitation) and not the effect (different wages for foreign workers).
Mar 7 2011 20:06
RC, where are you? If it isn't the U.K., perhaps it's disingenuous writing from afar. An article written by your group attacked the student/teacher actions in California last year, but got all the facts wrong (as though all the sources were from the spectacular news media). Are your articles written from Germany?
RC wrote:
In short, it would be much better to fight the cause (the logic of exploitation) and not the effect (different wages for foreign workers).
Please give some examples of how you do this in practice.
RC wrote:
It would be better to tell them the truth...They become the useful idiots for national capital and the state. That's a stupidity for which they pay the cost.
And I have a question: do you -- or does the author of the original piece -- work? I'm being entirely sincere. Your responses refer to workers in the 3rd person plural (i.e. they/their/them) and it seems like there's a distance between you and the working class. Otherwise, why would you refer to workers in a way that doesn't include yourself? If you're not writing in your native language, please excuse the question -- but try to be aware that most of us here on libcom don't externalize the working class as some distant "other." We are workers and find common class interests whether our sisters and brothers are native, immigrant, skilled, or unskilled. "They" don't make mistakes, but we often do foolish things -- and our class suffers. This lack of class consciousness affects you too, doesn't it?
Mar 7 2011 19:52
RC, you don't know what you're talking about. But nevermind, just keep following the class struggle via CNN.
Mar 7 2011 21:16
Is there anything wrong in the arguments I presented? Is a statement true or false depending on whether it is made by a person with a job, lives in Britain, or eschews the “spectacular” media to get his information straight from decent working class blogs like www.bearfacts.co.uk?
Unfortunately, there is a huge distance between the perspectives on Ruthless Criticism and the working class. We are communists. The working class isn't. They see capitalism as an opportunity for them. That's why they hold demonstrations with slogans like “defend public education” – they see the education system as something set up to benefit them. So we tell them otherwise and try to convince them with well-reasoned arguments, because there are only good reasons to break with a system that works at their expense. That's our practice.
I would turn the question around: what do you all say to workers who think that “their” jobs are being taken away by immigrants – whether Italians, Turks, Mexicans or whatever? Love thy class brothers and sisters? Sorry, but the workers really don't think the way that most libcommers do.
Mar 8 2011 00:00
RC wrote:
Sorry, but the workers really don't think the way that most libcommers do.
RC, in the above statement you're referring to German workers, right? Because many libcommers are workers and we influence -- and are influenced by -- those we work with. Or are you making the preposterous claim that you know what workers "really think" everywhere across the globe?
It makes it seem like you believe that all workers think alike. Sounds like you've never done much listening. Or you spend too much time telling "them" of their myriad mistakes and how stupid "they" are. Don't you think you come off -- at times -- sounding like "their" boss? Or a priest?
Also, haven't you ever met -- or worked with -- and organic self-educated worker militant? At my jobs I've fought the boss together with more than a few of these working class intellectuals; these comrades are not nearly as rare as you make it seem. And their confidence and class consciousness will put many a self-defined "communist' to shame.
As for the education struggles in California in 2010, if you listen only to mainstream accounts all you will get is the conservative "infiltrationist" Lambertists Trotskyite position with their reformist transitional demand-type slogans (i.e. "defend public education"). And they're seasoned media hacks; they saturate the spectacular media with their cautious message and that ends up defining the perceived reality -- including yours -- of the movement.
The meetings I attended had lots of insurrectionary anarchist-types clamoring for occupations sans demands, class struggle-types trying to foment a general strike by mere proclamation, communists pushing to include a contemporary critique of political economy, and others with all kinds of activist approaches and partial demands (including the aforementioned "defend public education"). Many of the, mostly non-white, kids would have liked nothing better than to have a go at the cops and to trash their campuses.
RC, I asked the question about your own class position because while there's nothing wrong with your theory per se, you don't seem to know much at all about working class composition and where working class people's heads are at. This is all the more glaring since the media sites you refer to are skewed. Couldn't you simply contact comrades in Britain or California to confirm these things?
RC wrote:
I would turn the question around: what do you all say to workers who think that “their” jobs are being taken away by immigrants – whether Italians, Turks, Mexicans or whatever? Love thy class brothers and sisters?
Again, you must be writing from someplace terribly homogeneous. In California, where I live, the majority of the population is Spanish-speaking and everyone (except the very few remaining Native Americans) is an immigrant of some sort. And of course many are of the assimilated generation. So my co-workers are some of those immigrants. I think you have to go to the far suburbs to find the anti-immigrant racists you're referring to.
And most of the racial violence I've personally witnessed recently was either Black-on-Asian or White-on-Black. The former could be seen as xenophobia, but it's hardly the case that Asians are taking Black jobs since they tend to work in entirely different sectors and are only recently coming into contact based on changes in housing due to gentrification. In the latter, it's the residue of white supremacy under the anxiety of the current austerity attacks.
In one of my jobs (of 3), which is in the public sector, almost all of my co-workers are African American women. My job involves talking almost exclusively with working class immigrants. Many are Chinese, who began coming to the West Coast of the U.S. with the building of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s, so their treatment as immigrant is different than for groups of newcomers. It's similar for Latinos. The more recent newcomers come from places like Ethiopia and Eritrea. Also there's been a new wave coming from Southeast Asia and the Middle East, particularly Yemen.
RC, I don't get your question since most jobs in the U.S. being lost are public sector ones. And no one is "taking" the jobs that are being permanently eliminated. Hence the Wisconsin situation. And since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' recent study shows that most public sector workers are disproportionately Black women, a lot of the Tea Party attacks have an undertone of racism. Or just a rehash of the earlier attacks on Black welfare moms driving Cadillacs, in the current case it's Black moms with "Cadillac" health care benefits -- and the right-wing says this literally.
Where I live, deindustrialization was completed by the 1990s, so it's rare for people to think immigrants are taking any jobs. Most know that they do the shit work that native-borns won't do anyway. And the blame for lost jobs goes to China, but this doesn't result in attacks on Asians since it affects them too (an example is San Francisco and Los Angeles' garment industries which have workforces that are 90% Asian, but the job loses in the sector have gone to Asia -- in a cruel irony of globalized capital).
I talk about these things with co-workers everyday and we're conscious of the need to fight the austerity attacks on our sector. Because of these conversations, we know that our struggle will only be weakened by the divisions based on xenophobia, nativism, and racism.
RC, what do you say to workers where you live who buy into the delusion that their jobs are being taken by immigrants?
Mar 8 2011 06:24
RC wrote:
Unfortunately, there is a huge distance between the perspectives on Ruthless Criticism and the working class. We are communists. The working class isn't. They see capitalism as an opportunity for them. That's why they hold demonstrations with slogans like “defend public education” – they see the education system as something set up to benefit them. So we tell them otherwise and try to convince them with well-reasoned arguments, because there are only good reasons to break with a system that works at their expense. That's our practice.
This is nuts. So the working class are just opportunists and idiots who happily part take in their own exploitation? I'm guessing from your post above that communism is not the real living movement of the working class for its self emancipation (the real movement that abolishes the state of things), but is instead the 'reasoned arguments' of a tiny group of self anointed high priests?
Mar 8 2011 23:33
blackrainbow writes:
Quote:
So the working class are just opportunists and idiots who happily part take in their own exploitation?
No, the working class is forced into exploitation. They are certainly not happy about it, and have no reason to be happy, but this doesn't stop them from the pursuit of happiness. As I said before, what they make of their unhappy situation is up to them. Instead of criticizing capitalism and the role they play in it, they “make the best of things,” seek compensation in their private lives, at work or somewhere else. And instead of looking at the world as it really is, they hold a moral view of how it should be. That's why you hear over and over again: we demand justice! The system isn't working! The boss abused his power! Politicians don't do their job! etc etc etc.
Quote:
communism is not the real living movement of the working class for its self emancipation (the real movement that abolishes the state of things), but is instead the 'reasoned arguments' of a tiny group of self anointed high priests?
The only thing that makes me different is that I know some things about capitalism that they don't. Sorry if you think that sounds arrogant, but its true and I want to tell them what I know. Then there might be enough of us that we can oppose capitalism with something more than arguments. That's why a communist needs to argue and stand up against the stupidity that bourgeois society produces in spades – especially among the workers, who ultimately are the ones who reproduce it. Then there might be such a thing as communism. This idea that communism already exists in “the real living movement of the working class” – that's opportunism: “Communism is happening all on its own and you just need to jump on board with the side that's going to win!” Its a recipe for conformism, not "abolishing the state of things.".
Mar 8 2011 23:44
Communism is not the real movement that abolishes the present conditions. We call communism a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality must adjust itself.
Mar 9 2011 06:44
Joseph Kay wrote:
Communism is not the real movement that abolishes the present conditions. We call communism a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality must adjust itself.
Careful JK, for those unfamiliar with your perspective, that this quote is deadpan sarcasm is not immediately apparent.
(though perhaps you meant it to be a wind-up)
Mar 9 2011 08:09
prec@riat wrote:
Joseph Kay wrote:
Communism is not the real movement that abolishes the present conditions. We call communism a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality must adjust itself.Careful JK, for those unfamiliar with your perspective, that this quote is deadpan sarcasm is not immediately apparent.
(though perhaps you meant it to be a wind-up)
Here's the full quotation of the paragraph (at the end of part 1 and just before foot notes) being discussed from The German Ideology by Karl Marx:
Quote:
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence
Mar 9 2011 21:54
GegenStandpunkt will change the statement that the “British National Party is organizing strikes to ban the employment of East European EU-citizens.” Yes, it is a mistake. Unfortunately, the article at hand, which is about nationalism and what the states are calculating, was never discussed. So even if the critique of the British labor movement is wrong, which we can admit, the article is about something entirely different. It is trying to criticize and explain nationalism in the current crisis.
There was also no intention to “attack” the working class. There seems to be a misunderstanding here between a critique and an attack. Hopefully, some may find my remarks about exploitation helpful.
Hieronymus: Is there anything you can contribute without talking about yourself?
Mar 9 2011 22:08
prec@riat wrote:
Careful JK, for those unfamiliar with your perspective, that this quote is deadpan sarcasm is not immediately apparent.
This is true, sarcasm doesn't come over well on the Internet at the best of times. I probably should have used one of these fellas: 
Edit: and this isn't sarcasm!
Mar 10 2011 05:06
RC wrote:
Hieronymus: Is there anything you can contribute without talking about yourself?
This is a textbook example of participating in a discussion in bad faith. Especially because you stated:
RC wrote:
I would turn the question around: what do you all say to workers who think that “their” jobs are being taken away by immigrants – whether Italians, Turks, Mexicans or whatever? Love thy class brothers and sisters?
Let's be honest: you didn't ask this as a sincere question that you expected me to answer, but rather as a rhetorical device to put words on my mouth in order to indirectly make your point.
You turned the question around and I went for the bait and answered in good faith, based specifically on what I "say to workers." Rather than engaging in a dialog and responding to the substance of what I said about discussions with my co-workers about immigrants, you assert that it's simply me talking about myself. That's an attempt to censor, instead of furthering our interaction. So what is your practice; what do you "say to workers"? Please answer with some examples from your experience (otherwise all this seems like some abstract academic exercise).
Mar 11 2011 02:23
Hieronymous:
The question was aimed at the political substance – not who you say it to, where you live, how many jobs you have, or anything else about you or me. Karl Marx wasn't wrong because he never worked a single job in his life, and it doesn't make you right because you have three.
We try to explain how the state and the exploitation relations it sets up inevitably put workers into conflict with each other – instead of trying to deal in a constructive way with the consequences of that competition. You say you are ok with our theory, but we are not in agreement. For example:
Quote:
Where I live, deindustrialization was completed by the 1990s, so it's rare for people to think immigrants are taking any jobs. Most know that they do the shit work that native-borns won't do anyway.
Yes, this is what people in the multicultural Bay Area “know.” But this liberal sympathy for the role of the immigrant is no good – approving of people for being cheap. Immigrants even praise themselves for this – we are so hardworking and ask for so little! As if this is something about them! But why do they do the shit work? Do Mexicans have special hands that are good for washing dishes? Do they like tarring roofs? No, they do it because they are so desperate. And this “conventional wisdom” is not true either. To say that Americans “won't do” these jobs assumes that America isn't cruel enough to force Americans to do them. But of course America is cruel enough. And of course Americans would do them.
(A minor point: high-tech firms in the Bay Area hire H-1B workers – skilled foreign workers who have to apply for the “privilege” of enriching America's wealth. So labor market competition by no means ends with the last factory; nor are these workers immune from the public's suspicion that they are taking jobs that “rightfully” belong to Americans.)
The whole brutality of democratic racism is to identify the results of competition – where people end up in the occupational hierarchy – with something about them. People look at Mexicans working in construction, Indians in software firms, Blacks in what you call “Black jobs” and say: they are in those jobs because of their nature. They are hard workers! They are so smart! They are lazy! In this way, the labor market – and the education system that prepares people for it – just becomes a nice big mechanism for sorting people into the jobs they were born to do.
You may dislike our agitation, but we criticize people's false ideas because they take this competition society for granted. That's what we pointed out in our leaflet to the student protesters – that it is hypocrisy to start protesting unfairness and inequality when the state says that only the wealthy can attend universities, but to not question that education is organized as a selection process that necessarily excludes those who don't perform. And if “non-white kids would have liked ... to trash their campuses” this is because they are the losers of the competition, and not because they challenge the principle of competition.
Quote:
we're conscious of the need to fight the austerity attacks on our sector … our struggle will only be weakened by the divisions based on xenophobia, nativism, and racism.
You might be a fan of the first person plural, but how is it "our" sector? And if you won't be divided by some criteria, why another? You have to decide.
Mar 12 2011 09:49
RC, I would say that we're talking past each other.
When I use "our sector," that's a synonym for the group of people I work side by side with. While we discuss the events in Egypt or Wisconsin, I'd like to use my words to break down all the divisions (sectoral and otherwise) within the class, but that would simply be magical thinking. But people who'd I'd assumed to be totally lacking in class awareness were remarkably sympathetic with the plight of public sector workers in Wisconsin and were quite informed about the commonalities with the situation at "our" own workplace (which is also in the public sector).
Another difference is that I don't think that it's possible to come from outside of the class to proselytize the workers into actions making them communists. That was the mistake of Lenin in What is to be done? in 1902 and his leftist followers have repeated his flawed formula for the ensuing 100 years.That's also the approach of religion -- the saints recruiting the sinners to the promise of everlasting life.
What I'm suggesting instead is to merely engage your fellow worker(s) sitting in the cubicle, office, or workplace next to yours (if it exists) and to find their level of class awareness (or even consciousness; you might even discover that they're communists with more experience in the class war than yourself). Any communist argument or critique would have to begin from there. Marxist pedagogist Lev Vygotsky called that the Zone of Proximal Development (for a fun read, check out Zones of Proletarian Development by Mastaneh Shah-Shuja); others call that type of socially interactive cognitive learning process "scaffolding." Unless you think that authoritarian styles of teaching, Freire's "banking model" used in most conventional schools, are effective you're not going to get the ear of anyone with insults or by calling them stupid or mistaken. Be as ruthless as you want, but most people will just receive it as abuse -- not unlike the treatment of their teacher, priest, or boss.
Especially if you get your facts wrong, as you did in the linked text in the opening post in the thread, and base your ruthless critiques on reactionary and erroneous sources like bearfacts.co.uk, CNN, or your daily newspaper.
EP Thompson wrote:
I would like to say that class as a historical category is the proper or mainstream Marxist usage. I think that I could show that this is Marx's own usage, in his more historical writings, but this is not the place to argue scriptural authority... However, it has become very clear in recent years that class as a static category has taken up occupation within very influential sector of Marxist thought as well. In vulgar economistic terms this is simply the twin to positivistic sociological theory. From a static model of capitalist productive relations there are derived the class that ought to correspond to this, and the consciousness that ought to correspond to the classes and their relative positions. In one common (usually Leninist) form this provides a ready justification for the politics of 'substitution": i.e. the 'vanguard' which knows better than the class itself what its true interests (and consciousness) ought to be. If 'it' does not happen to have that consciousness, then whatever it has is 'false consciousness'. In an alternative (very much more sophisticated) form -- for example, with Althusser -- we still have a profoundly static category; a category which finds its definitions only within a highly theorized static structural totality, which disallows the experiential historical process of class formation. Despite this theory's sophistication, the results are very similar to the vulgar economistic version. Both have a similar notion of 'false consciousness', or 'ideology' although Althusserian theory tend to have a larger theoretical arsenal to explain ideological domination and the mystification of consciousness.From EP Thompson's "Eighteenth-century English society: class struggle without class?" in Social History, Vol. 3, No. 2 (May, 1978), pp. 147-148
This pretty much sums up why I think coming to the class from the outside is substitutionist.
Can comment on articles and discussions
What's the political perspective of that site?
After reading this completely untrue statement in the first paragraph "British National Party is organizing strikes to ban the employment of East European EU-citizens" (they wish they could organise strikes! Or maybe actually they don't because they are usually against strikes) I didn't bother continuing.