Re: [Marxism] EU Elections: further decay of Social-democrats, surprise sucess of Cohn-Bendit, failure of victim attitude

["johnaimani" <johnaimani@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Regarding Immigrants and Elections

 

To whatever extent that the recent elections in Europe may have been colored by 
anti-immigrant sentiment amongst members of the working class, to that extent 
we have been bamboozled.  To that extent the flimflamery, the smoke and 
mirrored legerdemain, of the ruling class' callous use of racialism and 
nationalism has again pulled the legs out from under working class 
consciousness and this, just so, at a most crucial time in history.  At time 
when, for all to see, capitalism lies nakedly exposed, patriotism welcomes 
racialism in its provision of refuge for these scoundrels.  The so-called 
'Left' has failed in the electoral arena because it dares not to name the 
number of the beast, dares not to say that the emperor has no clothes, dare not 
put forward the proposition that capitalism as an economic system has no 
rational economic basis for its existence and the consequent continuance of the 
woes and misbehaviours it is wreaking upon this planet and its population.  

 

To those out of jobs, or afraid for their jobs, the logic is simple but 
fallacious:  Say there are 12,000,000 immigrants and there is unemployment 
equal to the same.  "If THEY are gone, then there will be jobs" or so the story 
goes.  This is 21st century Luddism[1] with migrants replacing the then newly 
invented machinery as target in the casting of blame for the loss of jobs.  And 
while this line of thinking may be of psychological comfort, while presenting a 
clear and present extreme danger, to a working class on the precipice, it is 
clearly a ploy offered by the ruling class, as much a necessity for their 
continued rule as the trillions in fictitious capital created and injected into 
a system where real purchasing power (i.e. embodied labor) has been sapped and 
drained due to the impelling 'logic' of capitalist competition and 
accumulation.  

 

It is not that there are too many workers for too few jobs.  It is that there 
are too few jobs for too many workers.  The productivity of human labor, a 
productivity appropriated by capital as its own so much so that it seems to be 
a product of itself and not that of the workers, makes it possible to meet the 
effective (read: economically significant) demand of the marketplace with fewer 
and fewer workers in a shorter period of time.  This is not a bad thing but a 
good thing.  Save under a system geared towards profit and not the satisfaction 
of human demand, human needs and wants.

 

JB Say's Law[2] proposes that supply creates its own demand.  The proposition 
is veritable a 'field of dreams' where "If you build it, they will come."  
Marx' law of value proposes the opposite:  "If they come, they will build it."  
Demand, if unfettered by the 'logic' of capitalism can indeed create its own 
supply.  Human labor is, at once, the source of supply through its work as well 
as the fount of demand with its needs.  Should those 12,000,000 vanish also 
goes with them the purchasing power commanded by them.  Should those 12,000,000 
vanish also goes with them the jobs necessary to meet that demand.  Economics 
is not a zero sum game even under capitalism.

 

Workers don't take jobs, workers make jobs.

 

JAI 


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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

 

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say%27s_Law

 
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