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?

  • polpotkin [none/use name]
    ·
    2 months ago

    For immigration, market shocks of cheap labor would hurt incumbents in the short term. Most well established companies already pay a premium for labor so cheap labor would only serve to increase competition, as it will take them time to replace their current staff with cheaper labor. The middle class also doesn't want their pay to decrease, but fail to see that would be generally better off. So most capital wants status-quo, which is a strict immigration policy with slow growth. Deportations seems more like a social filter over a particular demographic, we don't see highly skilled engineers get deported for example.