this mostly applies to the U.S. but also most of the western world:

As Marxists we know that most policy is driven by what capital allows or within the increasingly narrow range of acceptable discourse it allows within bourgeois dictatorship

Obviously it's not a conspiracy of ten guys in a secret room but a general consensus that develops from a chaotic web-like oligarchy of money peddlers, influencers, lackeys, billionaire puppetmasters, etc

But this really, really hurts Capital. they need the influx of cheap labor or face the real threat of forced degrowth. and we know every international-community-1 international-community-2 including russia-cool is trying to make it harder for people to be childless but short of forcing people to procreate at gunpoint..

  • so why allow this to become a bipartisan consensus (U.S.) instead of say throwing some scraps of social democratic programs?

  • or in Europe's case allowing these parties to come to power instead of reversing some neoliberal austerity?

Is this a case of anti-immigration just being easier to do vs. building resiliency into the system? i mean it's always easier to write laws crimializing stuff and throwing cops at a problem i suppose

Or something else?

  • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    The west has a really powerful petite bourgeois class, they're the main drivers of anti-immigration sentiment since large scale immigration can in fact hurt the middle class by reducing completion for labor. Middle class ideology is so engrained into the American psyche that some members of the haute bourgeois like to larp as plucky small business kulaks and so go along with the anti-immigrant thing for cultural reasons. Also most of the haute bourgeoise have international investments so domestic production doesn't matter that much to them.

    • miz [any, any]
      ·
      2 months ago

      can intact hurt the middle class but reducing

      sorry but I got lost here, I think maybe autocorrect struck twice and overwhelmed my parser. could you clarify