Re: [Marxism] immigration (response to K)

[Barney Katz <taxi4marx@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Calvin Broadbent <calvinbroadbent@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> You supported (and probably still support, having
> not listened to the
> criticisms of the reactionary nature of your tirades
> against the 'Islamist'
> Iraqi rebels) the occupation of Iraq by imperialist
> USUK murderers,
> plunderers, and starvers. You supported a small
> flunky labor aristocracy in
> Iraq that acquiesces in the occupation of their
> country. Do you now support
> the Iraqi constitution? Do you then wish an Ireland
> or Yugoslavia in Iraq?
>
> You suggest that 'Practical ways need to be found to
> help workers and their
> allies to organise against the bosses, and to create
> a shift in the balance
> of class forces in favour of workers', whilst
> opposing immigration as an
> abstacle to such. Perhaps you might have some
> success in getting Western
> workers behind an anti-immigration program. You
> might wish to set up (or
> join) a political party that advocates protecting
> British/American/European
> jobs for British/American/European people. You might
> propound the view that
> 'charity begins at home'. You might intone that
> immigrants are 'scabs' here
> to steal Western jobs, lower the western standard of
> living, and generally
> put the kibosh on the wave of Western proletarian
> militancy you are, no
> doubt, witnessing. Maybe you can take out an ad in
> one of the popular
> newspapers (but your anti-immigrant position might
> be too radical for those
> heralds of cosmopolitanism). While you're at it, why
> don't you include
> opposition to Islamic insurgents in your party
> manifesto or advertisement?
>
> I hear the BNP or the American Nazi Party are taking
> applications. If not,
> try the Labour Party or the Democrats, or any other
> capitalist political
> formation.
>
>


Some of the most constructive work being done in Iraq
is by the Oil Workers' Union, who number about 50,000.
They are at the forefront of trying to prevent the
privatisation of Iraqi resources, trying to overturn
Hussein's anti-union laws (which the US is keeping on
the books), demanding the immediate removal of foreign
troops, opposing the Islamist filth, and demanding a
democratic, secular and socialist Iraq. I support them
and their demands because they are on the spot and
doing it - they didn't succumb, and no one else has
come up to the mark. If their organisation becomes
bureaucratically deformed, as the struggle progresses,
and turns to shit then, well, it wouldn't be the first
time something like that happened. In the meantime
they have my support because I am a socialist and
therefore I'm always in solidarity with workers who
are trying to do socialism, even if it doesn't fit my
idea of what socialism should be like.

On membership of the Labor Party: What's wrong with
being in a mass social democratic party and fighting
for such things as greater party democracy (rank and
file control of the party, not control by party
administrators and parliamentarians), or making left
motions at branch meetings that make their way to the
policy committees to remind the party spivs that there
are still socialists in the ranks?

I suppose an alternative might be to join an
ultra-left sect, where members are privy to all the
secrets of the universe via the party line, and talk
to no one but other sectarians. Least of all do they
engage in the ordinary shit of trying to live as well
as keep a socialist vision and practice alive in the
real world of ordinary workers.

The political credo I try to live by - imperfectly, of
course - is the application of Marx's eleventh thesis
on Feuerbach. That's what Marxism is all about. All
else is pompous windbagging.

BK


                
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