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Thursday, March 10, 2016

The Rich Lie, the Poor Die

Britain's oldest socialist party (SPGB) has always thrown open their platform to debate with opponents however distasteful their views. Over the decades we have challenged the British Union of Fascists, the National Front and the British National Party on the platform.

The idea that immigrants can only have a negative effect on wages and living standards is a common one. Nigel Harris in ‘The New Untouchables’ quotes research that argues that ‘modern econometrics cannot find a single shred of evidence that immigrants have an adverse impact on the earnings and job opportunities of natives of the United States’. And he gives the example of the Los Angeles economy which expanded in the 1970s, largely as the result of increased demand caused by legal and illegal immigration.

Likewise the increase in immigration in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s did not lead to increased unemployment – rather the massive explosion in unemployment levels in the 1970s and beyond was caused by the boom-bust cycle of the capitalist system itself. Secondly, immigrants and refugees are not a drain on the social security system – in fact, as Harris shows, they contribute far more to the ‘system’ than they receive in return. Whether you look at Caribbean immigrants who came to Britain in the 1960s, few of which drew retirement pensions, or whether you take Mexican migrants to California, where a 1980 study found that less than 5 percent received any assistance from welfare services, and in all sectors, except education, they paid far more than they received – a net balance sheet shows that the ‘host’ nation gains far more than it gives in return.

Furthermore, migration has another very favourable benefit for the ruling class in the ‘host’ country – namely that they don’t have to contribute to the cost of raising and educating the immigrant worker.

It is the system of capitalist production that produces unemployment, homelessness, destitution and crumbling health services, – not workers, be they ’indigenous’ or foreign. The bosses hope to keep the worst-off sections of workers fighting with each other over shrinking pieces of a small pie instead of uniting to fight for a decent life for all.

The rationale of immigration control is that such chauvinist legislation is founded on the nation state and the feverish competition in which that nation state is engaged. It splits and divides workers from their main objectives, and, in the long run, weakens their strength all over the world. It cannot be contemplated by a world socialist. The only possible attitude of progressive workers, is opposition to immigration control. We have to reject all laws that divide the working class into legals and illegals. It is the height of treachery to our class and we would do well to remember that the working class stretches far beyond Britain’s borders. It is blatant racism, and opportunism to opt for a policy of blaming the immigrant for all British workers’ woes, even if this will strike a chord with the basest instincts of many workers.

War and poverty existed before capitalism but the forms they take are different. They were previously as likely to be waged by the ruling class themselves, participating in dynastic conquest and getting arrows in their eye, or rewarded with kingdoms.

The means of eliminating poverty did not exist then, so famine and shortages will have a bearing upon the precarious state of the largely peasant population, but they would have had their own parcels of land or commons, upon which they could subsist. Capitalism was an advance upon this, as it made possible the vast production capacity upon which we can presently draw, but it is stifled within its potential by private, corporate and state ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, with its market system dictating production for profit for the benefit of the new aristocracy, the capitalist class. This is also further exacerbated by the need for waged-slavery, to keep the wealth being produced by the productive underclass, from whom all wealth springs, they can only gain access to a waged ration of the social product in order to keep them showing up for employment. Therefore exploitation takes place at the point of production. Poverty inevitable as a consequence. This is further exacerbated by the intense competition between rival capitalists over market share, leading to alternating booms and busts of the business cycle. Leads to lay-offs with the capitalist taking the spoils and the worker subsisting upon whatever hand-outs, he has won during the boom times from capitalist government. Thus poverty, absolute and relative, is entrenched within the capitalist system in the enrichment and service of the economic parasite capitalist class, whose watchword is Accumulate, accumulate!.

However, war in capitalism, is 'business by other means', a consequence of capitalist competition, and arises out of competition between rival capitalist entities organised in nations, trade blocs, spheres of geo-political interest in the battle for , raw materials, securing of trade routes and economic and politically dominant privilege to further, all those ends.  The nature of war has changed in this regards. The last two world wars evidence of this decadence of capitalism, with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the 'good guys', for the sake of science.

War and poverty are 'essential' features of capitalism. Socialism is a post-capitalist system which has still to be brought into being.

Wee Matt

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