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 
including 
is trying to make it harder for people to be childless but short of forcing people to procreate at gunpoint..
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so why allow this to become a bipartisan consensus (U.S.) instead of say throwing some scraps of social democratic programs?
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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?
Climate change brings with it 100s of millions of climate refugees. We are already seeing some of this occur.
The destabilising effect of 100s of millions of refugees is beyond anything any state has ever survived before. It will cause collapses and revolutions. These revolutions will be won by socialists if fascists are not around to fight us.
The funding and development of fascism coincides directly with the bourgeoisie feeling a need to use ultra violence to suppress the left. That need is on the horizon and they feel it existentially.
Yeah it's this. The bourgeoisie are preparing for mass migration on a scale previously thought unimaginable. They're getting systems in place and priming the population to accept the mass extermination of refugees.
The bourgeoisie are preparing for mass migration on a scale previously thought unimaginable. They're getting systems in place and priming the population to accept the mass extermination of refugees.
This has been what I'm thinking for quite some time. And because the left doesn't exist in the imperialist nations, it's easier for them to do it.
From Matt Christman of the
podcast:And that's what these guys are, these guys that marched in Charlottesville, these are the people who are aware of the unspoken premise of this sort of zombie neoliberalism that we're living in, which is that we're coming to a point where there's gonna be ecological catastrophe, and that it's gonna require either massive redistribution of the ill-gotten gains of the first world, or genocide.
And these are the first people who have basically said, "Well if that's the choice, then I choose genocide", and they're getting everyone else ready, intellectually and emotionally, for why that's gonna be okay when it happens, why they're not really people. When we're putting all this money into more fucking walls and drones and bombs and guns to keep them away, so that we can watch them die with clear consciences, it's because we've been loaded with the ideology that these guys are now starting to express publicly.
On the other side of them, we have people who are saying in full fucking voice, "No, we have the resources to save everybody, to give everybody a decent and worthwhile existence, and that is what we want." And that is the fucking real difference between these two, and you can tell that to the next asshole who tells you that they're actually two sides of the same coin."
I remember this stream and watching it live and was like finally somebody said it. Finally somebody crystallized it. They are given the option and choose murder. And it won't happen overnight. You'll just wake up one day and you will find out the "yes, murder" people outnumber the "no, what the fuck, how did you already conclude murder is okay?" Like it got escalated while you were asleep. And these goofy people are the first to try. And they're stupid and they will fail. But they'll keep trying. It's bone chilling.
To be fair, Marxist theorists have been saying similar for quite some time. From Samir Amin's Eurocentrism:
The recognition of the role of colonialism in the unequal development of capitalism is not enough. For, despite this recognition, the dominant view is based on a refusal to accept the principle that the contradiction between the centers and the peripheries constitutes the fundamental contradiction of the modern world. Certainly, until 1914 the world system was built on the basis of a polarization between the centers and peripheries that was accepted de facto at the time. Since then, this polarization is no longer accepted as such. Socialist revolutions and the successful independence struggles in former colonies are proof of this change.
To the extent that modern media places the aspiration for a better fate than that which is reserved for them in the system within the reach of all peoples, frustration mounts each day, making this contrast the most explosive contradiction of our world. Those who stubbornly refuse to call into question the system that fosters this contrast and frustration are simply burying their heads in the sand. The world of "economists," who administer our societies as they go about the business of "managing the world economy," is part of this artificial world. For the problem is not one of management, but resides in the objective necessity for a reform of the world system; failing this, the only way out is through the worst barbarity, the genocide of entire peoples or a worldwide conflagration." I, therefore, charge Eurocentrism with an inability to see anything other than the lives of those who are comfortably installed in the modern world. Modern culture claims to be founded on humanist universalism. In fact, in its Eurocentric version, it negates any such universalism. Eurocentrism has brought with it the destruction of peoples and civilizations that have resisted its spread. In this sense, Nazism, far from being an aberration, always remains a latent possibility, for it is only the extreme formulation of the theses of Eurocentrism. If there ever were an impasse, it is that in which Eurocentrism encloses contemporary humanity.
That's such a great quote. I'd emphasize this part instead, though.
Modern culture claims to be founded on humanist universalism. In fact, in its Eurocentric version, it negates any such universalism. Eurocentrism has brought with it the destruction of peoples and civilizations that have resisted
We can apply this to modernity or the Islamic conquests or the crusades or fucking Rome or all these versions of people that tried to "enlighten" other people by stabbing them to death. This is all part of them trying to force the world to make sense. It's just death. You are trying to solve the equation of life and you found this "cheat code" called death. You can dress it up in all the pretty colors but thats really what's going on. That's the actual finality going on here. Living with other people who are different can be difficult. It can upset the balance. But I got a knife or a rock or whatever and I can make the problem go away
And that is the fundamental flaw. They don't want things to be "un pretty" but their solution is killing people which is the messiest thing. Moving a body takes so much work. Like even if you accept the premise of fascism they are doing it the wrong way. There is a mechanical rebuke of them that goes beyond the appeals to emotion that normally could be used to condemn them. They're doing bad things and they aren't doing them well.
The section of Eurocentrism referencing Christianity I talked about earlier
:
At its beginnings, Christianity avoided theocracy. Subsequently, it drifted towards theocracy and then moved away from it again.
At the time of its foundation, Christianity does not seem to break with Jewish tradition as far as the end of time is concerned. The declaration of the Last Judgment and the second coming of the Messiah certainly has eschatological dimensions, which were strongly emphasized in texts, such as the Apocalypse. Moreover, this is certainly the reason why there have been numerous messianic and millenarian movements in the history of Christianity.
Yet, because of the very nature of its message, Christianity is actually a radical break from Judaism. This break is fundamental since what is so dramatically expressed in the history of Christ is clear: the Kingdom of God is not on this earth and never will be. The reason the Son of God was defeated on the Earth and crucified is obviously because it was never the intention of God (the Father) to establish His Kingdom on this Earth, where justice and happiness would reign forever. But if God refuses to take on responsibility for setding human problems, it falls to human beings themselves to assume this responsibility. There is no longer an end of time and Christ does not proclaim it as coming, now or in the future. But, in this case, He is not the Messiah as announced by the Jews and they were right not to recognize Him as such. The message of Christ may, then, be interpreted as a summons to human beings to be the actors of their own history. If they act properly, that is, if they let themselves be inspired by the moral values which he enacted in his life and death, they will come closer to God in whose image they have been created. This is the interpretation that eventually prevailed and has given to modern Christianity its specific features based on a reading of the Gospels that enables us to imagine the future as the encounter between history as made by human beings and divine intervention. The very idea of the end of time, as brought about by an intervention from outside history, has vanished.
The break extends to the whole area that was until then under the sway of the holy law. Undoubtedly, Christ takes care to proclaim that he has not come to this earth to upset the Law (of the Jews). This is in accordance with his core message: he has not come to replace ancient laws by better ones. It is up to human beings to call these laws into question. Christ himself sets an example by attacking one of the harshest and most formal criminal laws, i.e., the stoning of adulterous wives. When he says "those who have never sinned should throw the first stone," he opens the door to debate. What if this law was not just, what if its only purpose was to hide the hypocrisy of the real sinners? In fact, Christians are going to give up Jewish laws and rituals: circumcision disappears and the rules of personal law are diversified, insofar as the expansion of Christianity outside of the Jewish world proper adapts itself to different laws and statutes. A Christian law, which anyway does not exist, is not substituted for the latter. Also, alimentary prohibitions lose their power.
On the level of dogma, Christianity behaves the same way. It does not break openly with Judaism, since it accepts the same sacred text: the Bible. But it adopts the Jewish Bible without discussion; it is neither reread nor corrected. By doing so, Christianity comes close to voiding its significance. Instead, it juxtaposes other sacred texts of its own making, the Gospels. Now, the morality proposed in the Gospels (love for fellow human beings, mercy, forgiveness, justice) is considerably different from that inspired by the Old Testament. Additionally, the Gospels do not offer anything precise enough to encourage any sort of positive legislation concerning personal status or criminal law. From this point of view, those texts contrast strongly with the Torah or the Koran. Legitimate power and God ("Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar") can no longer be confused. But this precept becomes untenable when, after three centuries of having persecuted Christianity, the ruling powers switch sides and become Christians. But even before, when Christians secretly founded churches to defend their faith and still later, when the Emperor himself became the armed protector of Christianity, a new law is worked out, a law which claims to be Christian, primarily on the level of personal rights. What is a Christian family? This concept had to be defined. It will take time, there will be setbacks, and a final agreement will never be reached. This is because earlier laws and customs, different from place to place, are accepted. Slowly, however, those new laws will be recognized as sacred: the Catholic canon laws, which are different for the Western and Eastern Catholic Churches, and the legal forms of the different Orthodox and Protestant Churches are the result of this slow process.
I found the chapters on the three Abrahamic religions to be very insightful. Marxism, metaphysics and religion surprisingly working well together. I think I've linked a copy of the full book somewhere else in this thread if you you want to read it.
We can apply this to modernity or the Islamic conquests or the crusades or fucking Rome or all these versions of people that tried to "enlighten" other people by stabbing them to death.
This is actually addressed in the earlier chapters of the book in which Amin analyses the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity from a Marxist perspective. How these religions deal with concepts such as modernity, universalism and the question of time. The analysis of Christianity and how that became the dominant religion in Europe at the dawn of "modernity" is very interesting, and one I hadn't heard before. I'll try find it now.
That sounds super interesting and if you can find a pdf I'd really appreciate it. There is a lot of stuff written about holy wars that is either too permissive or too condemnatory. Like you get all these pop history books that are either too forgiving or they do the "new atheist" shit that just is another way of trying not to understand the thing you are condemning. Marxist history is the only one worth pursuing. Edit: especially when it comes to things like holy wars
I just posted the section in another reply. It's not really about the holy wars, but about Christianity as a whole and how it breaks from Judaism in key areas.
I don't even listen to the podcast, I was only made aware of this quote because a South African journalist I follow on Twitter reposted it and appears to be a fan of the podcast.
But yes, a lot of his rants and quotes are very good.
Matt's coming out with a book on the Spanish Civil War, if you're interested in more serious content from him specifically. He also did a really good podcast series on American history, as told through the lense of each presidency.
Hell of Presidents was soooo good imo
Hell on Earth was good too but my relative lack of familiarity and the sheer scale and number of historical figures made it tough for me to keep straight
It creates a sort of form of domestic Imperialism, Capital supports anti-immigration so they can domestically hyper-exploit immigrants via threat of calling ICE and kicking them out or killing them, all while maintaining Capital and development of Capital domestically, so it can't be seized. It's monstrously cruel and is an example of just how well-organized Capitalism evolves to become over time, independent of anyone's individual will, ironically paving the way for its own erasure.
Its also just another way to create a division in the working class. The more divided the working class is the longer it takes for it to organize against the capitalists that are exploiting them all.
Exactly. It's generally useful to maintain this reign of terror, it divides the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat into sections, hence the importance for intersectionality for any self-respecting Leftist serious about organizing.
Even worse they make us fight each other and propaganda it like it’s the other people in our class or the poor classes fault for their shortcomings and for creating this 1% profit oriented society.
The Superstructure will always form itself around the Base, they reinforce each other in spirals.
Show
It’s recreating the environment of the 19th century British factory but because it gets tied up in the immigration/culture war aspect everyone overlooks the regressive exploitation.
You know how it's constantly pointed out that the border policy both parties want to enact doesn't actually work? I think that's an essential part of the calculation.
The people writing these policies know that the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants come here legally, and overstay their visa. That loophole in the American system is left untouched intentionally, because it's a great source of undocumented workers.
The people writing these policies know that almost all of the fentanyl is coming across the border in the hands of US citizens. But they're not actually committed to stopping it - fent serves the same role that crack did in the 80s, it's just not as explicitly racialized.
In the EU, most of the countries with most of the power don't mind so much if Poland, Spain, and Italy are all doing crimes against humanity at their borders, because frankly they consider the Polish, Spanish and Italians to be their labor underclass. Europe has the most experience out of anyone in making their imperial periphery look like it's part of their imperial core, with the northern and western parts of Europe generally benefitting the most from exploiting the southern and eastern parts of it.
They're definitely trying to explicitly racialize it, both Dems and repubs, but yeah you're 💯 on this
Others have given good answers (The reserve army of labour) but may I give another one. They're fantasically, transcendentally stupid and they've got nothing left but cruelty.
They are running out of productive forces to centralise, have rotted innovation from within, and have gone all in on AI as their last hope. They've not so much drunk the kool aid as injected a kool aid producing gene directly into their cells. It's their last gasp as China's natural productive capacity outpaces them.
If you really believe in AI, you believe that most labour will be replaced. But, you can't have labour be replaced since it causes a crisis of consumption and there's only so many ivory backscratchers you can own. So you need a minimal UBI to maintain capital flows in the medium term (using it as guillotine insurance has only occured to a few in DMT fueled fever nightmares). Additionally you need to fuck over China by outproducing them and maintaining the living standards of the upper middle classes in the imperial core.
On the other hand, UBI costs money and you like money and your shareholders are literally legally obliging you to give them all the money in the universe. So you have the contradiction of
a) Needing to prevent a crisis of domestic consumption
b) Fucking over the third world with over-production to screw China
c) No tax, only spend.
d) If everythings a robot we don't need third world slaves anymore!
So a UBI (or more likely a bullshit jobs generator to make middle management tyrants happy) inside the core (for Pell grant recipients etc etc) and a air gapped populace outside being sold stuff they increasingly can't afford, kept in check by bombs.
Some might say, this is just Generalplan Ost with robots, to which I say "yeah, good thing AI is mostly bullshit huh?"
Frightened "illegitimate" yet still present and active labor forces can make less demands and work for less.
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.
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
Because the moment a union of "illegals" crops up they can come down on it with the full might of the military lol
They don't actually want to stop them from being here, that's the lie. They just want them unable to organize
The more precarious Capital can make their lives, the more they can be exploited.
All great answers. But there’s something people are missing, and it’s a trap created by modern neo-liberal economic thinking.
Humans are not perfectly rational entities. Capital is not an external alien force that is perfectly rational either (yet). It moves and is brought to life by human hands.
The ruling forces at the moment are losing their grip. They are desperate. Somethings ARE running away from them.
They are acting irrationally all the time. They are shooting themselves on the foot, over and over. This is one of those things imo.
Rhetoric is ramping up and sometimes the conservative movement catches the car. They caught the car on Roe v. Wade.
They might catch the car on this and that's terrifying as well. It would be one of the world's largest ethnic cleansing campaigns.
But they don't really mean it. They have never wanted to deport all immigrants, they have always wanted to keep them here and keep them individually deportable at will. That gives capitalists a much more exploitable workforce.
Because production inside the core is not really as important to capital as maintaining hegemony, and it sees multiculturalism as a threat to hegemony. Leaving production in the periphery where currencies are undervalued relative to the dollar, and the colonialist power structures allow for superexploitation wages is a more beneficial state of affairs for international, imperialist capital than allowing for those workers to make their way to the imperial core. They still have to allow it in a limited way (who's gonna mow their lawn?) but they have to keep a tight restriction on it because it threatens the current neoliberal order.
This is my personal belief, but maybe it aligns with reality. Consider where most of these people are coming from. They come from South America, a region that the US has a direct hand in destabilizing. The immigrants coming across the southern border are the product of that destabilization, and they bring with them the stories they have about their life before and why they needed to leave. These stories directly undermine the narrative presented by the state about these people. They need the population to be fearful of them, so they do not allow them to integrate into the community and, as a byproduct, share their stories with that community.
That sits alongside all the other reasons mentioned already. More power to deport immigrants means more leverage in the hands of those who utilize their labor. Those tools allow for a kind of shadow slavery. Illegal Immigrants exist in a kind of superposition of being criminals before being tried as criminals. By existing inside the borders of the state without proper documentation, you are automatically a criminal. The more you restrict immigration laws, the more you make it difficult to legally immigrate into the country, the more likely you are to drive up the actual number of illegals in the country, and force them into this contradiction.
You don't want the public to trust these people in any capacity because they might tell them the harrowing conditions under which they exist, and you might become sympathetic to their cause. So they are "othered" in the same way that minorities throughout history have been "othered" so they can be used as scapegoats for the failings of the state.
I think both parties want them here, just not legally. Even though we’ve “tightened”restrictions on who can legally come in, we have more people than ever crossing right now. My friend worked as a legal translator at the border for a few years during the presidential switch and was saying it’s a massive mess and the dems didn’t functionally change anything from when trump was in power.
My personal theory is that it looks great for unemployment numbers, making our economy look like it’s skating by when it’s on the brink of recession. We get to add hundreds of thousands of jobs without adding any people to the denominator making it look like the labor market is much stronger than it actually is. Also what other people said about having a sub-citizen population who are more willing to put up with shit so they aren’t deported.
It flows directly from a path of least resistance, the democratic wing of US capital is just as white supremacist and bigoted as their republican counterparts, but crucially less obsessive about it, largely because they have a more secular conception that originates from a New England style mode of capital management, republicans are still by and large southern aristocrats in their epistemology of capitalism
But both still have an instinct toward nativist policymaking, republicans because of their aristocratic obsession with blood and soil, and democrats because they believe it maintains the college educated racial hierarchy of professional asset managers
Without a left to point out the disgusting nature of both these ideologies, the river flows only one way and it's a toss up of which faction enforces their instincts, the democrats obviously being the more dangerous ones because of the soothing effect they have on the general public and activists, while Republican policy agitates more people toward real and effective opposition
It's easier to oppose a rotting syphilitic aristocrat, than a clean smart-talking corporate broad member, and this dynamic fools even capitalists who should know better
