Re: Lenin on immigration and Taylorism

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

V.I. Lenin wrote:

> "There can be no doubt that dire poverty alone compels people to abandon
> their native land, and that the capitalists exploit the immigrant workers
> in the most shameless manner. But only reactionaries can shut their eyes to
> the progressive significance of this modern migration of nations.
> Emancipation from the yoke of capital is impossible without the further
> development of capitalism, and without the class struggle that is based on
> it. And it is into this struggle that capitalism is drawing the masses of
> the working people of the whole world, breaking down the musty, fusty
> habits of local life, breaking down national barriers and prejudices,
> uniting workers from all countries in huge factories and mines in America,
> Germany, and so America heads the list of countries which import workers."

A position not all that different from Hardt & Negri in Empire -
ironically enough, given their hostility to Lenin and most Leninists'
hostility to them. As they say on p. 43 of Empire, a book that
celebrates the spontaneous migrations of the multitude throughout:

> [W]e insist on asserting that the construction of Empire is a step
> forward in order to do away with any nostalgia for the power
> structures that preceded it and refuse any political strategy that
> involves returning to that old arrangement, such as trying to
> resurrect the nation-state to protect against global capital. We
> claim that Empire is better in the same way that Marx insists that
> capitalism is better than the forms of society and modes of
> production that came before it. Marx's view is grounded on a healthy
> and lucid disgust for the parochial and rigid hierarchies that
> preceded capitalist society as well as on a recognition that the
> potential for liberation is increased in the new situation.

Doug