[Marxism] Re: Immigration in the....

[Administrator Shannon <brian_shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> They have no real ties to the community and have no interest in
> going out on long and expensive strikes over gains that will in all
> probability be realized only over the long haul.   They are here to
> make a lot of money and then move on.   I guarantee you they will
> scab on every strike (I've seen it again and again), work double-
> breasted, and support the union only if they see some IMMEDIATE
> gain.  Other than that, forget it. That's difference between blacks
> migrating north to Detroit and permanently settling there and the
> situation with these Mexican immigrants

Godena claims that there is a distinction between migrating blacks
and new immigrants.

A little study would show him that the same argument was used against
black scabs before workers with conservative social views such as his
were forced by the successes of the civil rights movement to accept
African-Americans into their ranks.

Although the arguments then were more openly racist, the essence was
the same. The emphasis was on their being newcomers with no ties, the
way they accepted living together in crowded tenements (just like
Jews in Europe and the lower east side, by the way), willingness to
accept lower wages.

What Godena does is shift the fault line for racism or exclusion.
Today's exclusionist has to include African-Americans.

The working class is always changing. A policy that says that we will
accept as narrow a group as possible such as ourselves and our
children has been with society from at least the guilds on. Actually,
it existed in ancient Greece as well. The farmers and some artisans
could vote, but slaves and foreigners could not. Slaves, by and
large, were made up of people conquered, which meant that they were
inherently inferior.

Jefferson said that he respected the Indians, but that they were
unassimilable. We passed exclusion laws against the Japanese, saying
that they couldn't own property. Part of the basis for FDR's advocacy
of detention camps for the Japanese during WWII was that they, like
Jefferson's Indians, were also unassimilable. He didn't think that
they were inferior, just too different from us.

And on and on and on.

Brian Shannon
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