LOV and border controls

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Michael,

Your reflective and personal piece raises
as many aspects as the ducks on Trout pond cause shafts of
light on the surface of the water.

The struggle to share meaning
on such complex questions is perhaps inevitably complex, and
may involve, as you imply, acceptance of the fact that people
come with very different biographies.

I am more than ready to see the marxist concept of exchange value
as a subset of a wider set of psychosocial value - all
socially valued interactions between human beings whether
in a monetised, commodity or non-commodity form, whether about
material or psychological use value.

However to try to anchor the debate back in unequal exchange and
border controls, I think I see why you might wish to use this
term rather than just immigration controls. There are many borders
and what I think I pick up from your post is that the power relations
are often surreptitiously unequal. Between exploiter and exloited
countries, two halves of a divided city, between the "insane" and the
"sane" (I deliberately use inverted commas).


Within one set of economic borders there is roughly one way of
producign a commodity which sets its exchange value. This may be
different within another set of borders. Distance and proximity to
the point of production and the point of sale may be another
relevant factor to that of borders.

I think these borders in economic terms are semi-permeable membranes,
in which certain things pass more readily than others in such a way
as to perpetuate a power imbalance. This is similar to what I was
trying to say about a "gradient", and a non-level playing field.

I do not wish to deny flagrant power politics where they exist, but
I think often the power imbalances are implicit and subtle, and
sometimes part of the very geometry of the game.

Marxism is not
fundamentally about demonology, but about the actual existing
processes that go on before our eyes, such as the uneven
accumulation of capital, which intesects with the politics of
oppressor and oppressed nations.

Regards,

Chris



     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---