>>2858653Did you forget when Marx wrote in the text Price, Value and Profit debunking the myth that if workers' wages increased the price of everything would increase? Have you forgotten that work is not something that is scarce and willingly delivered by “job-creating” capitalists? Unemployment is created in a capitalist society to maintain an industrial labor reserve for capitalists to better exploit workers. By increasing workers' wages, capitalists only have a lower rate of profit to extract from workers who will use this money to consume, encouraging production. When workers do not fight together for their collective interests, such as tolerating some workers being exploited in conditions similar to slavery and not being able to fight for their rights, this normalizes more precarious work for other workers with lower wages just by abandoning these other more exploited workers abandoned, which normalizes this type of more intensified exploitation in the market producing goods.
If you want to see the Marxist position on immigrants then I will give you quotes on why it is necessary to fight for the rights of all workers by force without exception in solidarity:
Let's begin with the text addressing the issue of Irish and English workers at the time because I perceive opportunists who distort this issue about Irish immigrants in Marx's time:
<I shall give you here only quite briefly the salient points.
<Ireland is the bulwark of the English landed aristocracy. The exploitation of that country is not only one of the main sources of their material wealth; it is their greatest moral strength. They, in fact, represent the domination over Ireland. Ireland is therefore the cardinal means by which the English aristocracy maintain their domination in England itself.
<If, on the other hand, the English army and police were to be withdrawn from Ireland tomorrow, you would at once have an agrarian revolution in Ireland. But the downfall of the English aristocracy in Ireland implies and has as a necessary consequence its downfall in England. And this would provide the preliminary condition for the proletarian revolution in England. The destruction of the English landed aristocracy in Ireland is an infinitely easier operation than in England herself, because in Ireland the land question has been up to now the exclusive form of the social question because it is a question of existence, of life and death, for the immense majority of the Irish people, and because it is at the same time inseparable from the national question. Quite apart from the fact that the Irish character is more passionate and revolutionary than that of the English.
<As for the English bourgeoisie, it has in the first place a common interest with the English aristocracy in turning Ireland into mere pasture land which provides the English market with meat and wool at the cheapest possible prices. It is likewise interested in reducing the Irish population by eviction and forcible emigration, to such a small number that English capital (capital invested in land leased for farming) can function there with “security”. It has the same interest in clearing the estates of Ireland as it had in the clearing of the agricultural districts of England and Scotland. The £6,000-10,000 absentee-landlord and other Irish revenues which at present flow annually to London have also to be taken into account.
<But the English bourgeoisie has also much more important interests in the present economy of Ireland. Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labour market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class.
<And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.
<This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this.
<But the evil does not stop here. It continues across the ocean. The antagonism between Englishmen and Irishmen is the hidden basis of the conflict between the United States and England. It makes any honest and serious co-operation between the working classes of the two countries impossible. It enables the governments of both countries, whenever they think fit, to break the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries.
<England, the metropolis of capital, the power which has up to now ruled the world market, is at present the most important country for the workers’ revolution, and moreover the only country in which the material conditions for this revolution have reached a certain degree of maturity. It is consequently the most important object of the International Working Men’s Association to hasten the social revolution in England. The sole means of hastening it is to make Ireland independent. Hence it is the task of the International everywhere to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and everywhere to side openly with Ireland. It is the special task of the Central Council in London to make the English workers realise that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation.
<These are roughly the main points of the circular letter, which thus at the same time give the raisons d’étre of the resolutions passed by the Central Council on the Irish amnesty.[…]
<We hit another bird with the same stone, we have forced the Irish leaders, journalists, etc., in Dublin to get into contact with us, which the General Council had been unable to achieve previously!
<You have wide field in America for work along the same lines. A coalition of the German workers with the Irish workers (and of course also with the English and American workers who are prepared to accede to it) is the greatest achievement you could bring about now. This must be done in the name of the International. The social significance of the Irish question must be made clear.
<Letters of Karl Marx 1870, Marx to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt In New Yorkhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htmRemembering that Marx and Engels favored uniting all workers of all nationalities, including immigrants, to fight together for the communist revolution and their shared class interests, separatism was not acceptable to them without some material conditions. Irish separatism was an acceptable alternative due to English chauvinism, which hindered the organization of the English and Irish proletariat. This prejudice stemmed from the intensified subjugation of Irish workers. If the alternative to a joint revolution in Britain is the continuation of this subjugation of the Irish, then Irish independence would be an option for a future socialist federation on more equal terms between the Irish and English.
I'll post the text where you can read "The Question of the General Council's Resolution on the Irish Amnesty" if you're interested in reading it, which explains this point:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/03/28.htmNow, to answer the question about immigration, I will first cite the general position that differentiates communists from other working-class parties in the manifesto:
<The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
<The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
<The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Chapter II. Proletarians and Communistshttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htmLet's look at practical examples of a political program in an election in a bourgeois democracy, with texts by Marx and Engels that fit what is written:
<(iv) Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on publicly owned land, in factories and workshops, with competition among the workers being abolished and with the factory owners, in so far as they still exist, being obliged to pay the same high wages as those paid by the state.
<(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until such time as private property has been completely abolished. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
<Frederick Engels, 1847, The Principles of Communismhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
<1. One rest day each week or legal ban on employers imposing work more than six days out of seven. - Legal reduction of the working day to eight hours for adults. - A ban on children under fourteen years working in private workshops; and, between fourteen and sixteen years, reduction of the working day from eight to six hours;<2. Protective supervision of apprentices by the workers' organizations;<3. Legal minimum wage, determined each year according to the local price of food, by a workers' statistical commission;<4. Legal prohibition of bosses employing foreign workers at a wage less than that of French workers;[…]
<7. Responsibility of society for the old and the disabled;<8. Prohibition of all interference by employers in the administration of workers' friendly societies, provident societies, etc., which are returned to the exclusive control of the workers;<9. Responsibility of the bosses in the matter of accidents, guaranteed by a security paid by the employer into the workers' funds, and in proportion to the number of workers employed and the danger that the industry presents;<10. Intervention by the workers in the special regulations of the various workshops; an end to the right usurped by the bosses to impose any penalty on their workers in the form of fines or withholding of wages (decree by the Commune of 27 April 1871);
<Karl Marx and Jules Guesde, 1880, The Programme of the Parti Ouvrierhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htmNow let's look at Lenin's quotes for those who pretend the Bolsheviks didn't have workers of various nationalities or refused to organize immigrant workers:
<We can demand popular election of officers, abolition of all military law, equal rights for foreign and native-born workers (a point particularly important for those imperialist states which, like Switzerland, are more and more blatantly exploiting larger numbers of foreign workers, while denying them all rights). Further, we can demand the right of every hundred, say, inhabitants of a given country to form voluntary military-training associations, with free election of instructors paid by the state, etc.
<Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1916, The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution: IIIhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/miliprog/iii.htm
<6) Freedom of movement and occupation.
<7) Abolition of the social estates; equal rights for all citizens irrespective of sex, creed, race, or nationality.[…]
<12) Replacement of the standing army by the universally armed people.
<12) The police and standing army to be replaced by the universally armed people; workers and other employees to receive regular wages from the capitalists for the time devoted to public service in the people’s militia.[…]
<In the endeavour to achieve its immediate aims, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party supports every oppositional and revolutionary movement directed against the existing social and political set-up in Russia, but at the same time emphatically rejects all reformist projects involving any expansion or consolidation of the guardianship of the police and bureaucracy over the labouring masses.
<V. I. Lenin, 1917, Materials Relating to the Revision of the Party Programmehttps://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/reviprog/ch04.htmFrom here, you can already see that any excuse anyone gives to increase the repressive power of the bourgeois state under any pretext must be opposed by communists. Remember that the proletarian state has the right to use its revolutionary terror to socialize the economy and punish counterrevolutionaries as it pleases, since the state is an instrument of one class to oppress another.
There are many possible actions to be taken with wage equalization, unionization of all workers, the right to radical unionization to organize outside the control of the bourgeoisie or its state, advancement of the legal right to public defense, democratization of the legal and judicial process in addition to the guaranteed public legal right to legal processes for all workers to fight in solidarity together, adding to this with the socialization of needs so that the population has the right to housing, education, health, childcare as a social responsibility of the entire society instead of being at the mercy of all of this that will remain as commodities for profit in the market.