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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