But we can't have those immigrants over here, playing their filthy music and taking our groupies.
We'll fight to keep our charts exlusive for British Artists like Blazing Squad and that nice James Blunt fellow.
Immigration "small benefit" to UK
- Thread starter Dhimmi
- Start date
But we can't have those immigrants over here, playing their filthy music and taking our groupies.
We'll fight to keep our charts exlusive for British Artists like Blazing Squad and that nice James Blunt fellow.
LOL
Thanks god for that - you were joking all along
Well, you ahve to be realistic.
Capitalists will always sit back, and say,
"well what's your alternative?"
And if all you have is a bunch of demands of things that everyone would like, but no way of making them viable in the real world, then basically, the capitalists win the argument.
At least drugs and music are something we do rather well. I reckon we're rather shooting ourselves in the foot by not marketing our best product in a consumer-friendly fashion.
I mean who wants to go to a party where there are no spliffs going round, eagle-eyed security looking bad-tempered, and closing times.
And what's the alternative, ? A dirty squat party in East London, where you worry about getting robbed.
Spion
I hear ya
How, in the real world, would that situation actually arise?
Pish. It's nearly always those immigrant types over here that grow and import the best drugs.
Hell, you wouldn't want to leave it to our 'native' hippies and East End gangsters.
Same goes for music really. We'd have all folk singing hippies and power balladeering ex-army officers if it wasn't for them funky immigrants.
It's really not that difficult. Why can't you work it out for yourself. ?
You seem to think we should ahve open borders, and solidarity with all working class people. And that the proper left-wing response to the problem of falling wages is to persuade the people from other countries to join unions and not accept lower wages.
Well suppose you've done that, successfully, and you're a union rep, and then, as it turns out, you;'ve got loads of Poles in the welders union, and you've agreed that no-one in the union will accept less than £10 per hour for welding. But then a bunch of romanians come to England, perhaps specially brought here by unscrupulous employers, who tell them work for us for £6 per hour and don't join the union or you'll be sacked.
Now your unionised poles start coming to you, and saying, look we've lost our jobs, we can't get any work for £10 per hour, we're going to have to take work for less, because otherwise we're not going to be able to pay the rent.
What do you tell them?
Well the west indians have been here long enough that it seems quite wrong to call them immigrants. They're just as much from this country as I am, if not more so.
Spion
I hear ya
I don't understand how the ones in place lost their jobs exactly, but that would be the place to start with the threat of strike action to defend the existing jobs and wage levels, spreading it to other companies/sites - "No wage cuts, no sacking/redundancies"
Of course, it's not easy, and it's an ongoing thing - but it's the right thing to do, and the only one that can really work, while also ensuring workers begin to control their own destiny.
All you seem to want to do is to try to mobilise the state controlled by the bosses to protect jobs that they want to ensure are as low paid and 'flexible' as possible. It's a ludicrous idea
When there's a flood of easily exploitable cheap labour, and no shortage of supply, -which is what you advocate- unions don't have any leverage through strking because the employers can still get the work done by other people.
Hardly anyone's going to be on long-term contracts these days, so - suppose you do have mass strike action, - what stops the employers just sacking all the strikers and getting a new workforce?
And that's why you won't find it easy to persuade the people you want to persuade to follow your lead.
Hardly anyone's going to be on long-term contracts these days, so - suppose you do have mass strike action, - what stops the employers just sacking all the strikers and getting a new workforce?
And that's why you won't find it easy to persuade the people you want to persuade to follow your lead.
Well, no, I'd quite like to see the left engage with their constituency by acknowledging their concerns, instead of telling them that they're wrong, so that leftism can at least have a chance, rather than seeing the disaffected go to the BNP.
But my main reason for joining the thread is because I think durrutti et al, talk more sense than you and other people putting out the classic left-wing line.
And I think that's because what durruti is saying is rooted in experience of reality, whereas yours is rooted in ideology, an ideology that is already proved to be pretty much ineffective, whether or not it's "right."
Do you know about the liverpool dockers strike?
They struck for two years or more against casualisation. And they had loads of solidarity.
But they still lost.
They struck for two years or more against casualisation. And they had loads of solidarity.
But they still lost.
Spion
I hear ya
No one said it was easy. I just don't see the point of championing immigration controls. It doesn't benefit me. It doesn't benefit the working class (except for some, and in the short term) and it doesn't benefit the left.
You can champion them if you like but you may as well support one of the many other parties that is already doing it
Spion
I hear ya
So, they were wrong to strike?
They didn't get solidarity *action* tho did they? Strikes need to be spread to win and generally that has been stifled by the union bureaucracy.
These fellahs know how to do it http://libcom.org/news/article.php/israel-ashdod-port-strike-090306
Spion
I hear ya
What are your politics, btw? What do you consider yourself to be?
I'd like to see a government elected that was devoted to dismantling government slowly, carefully, and cleverly.
I think there's some place for a minimal government, to prevent a new gang of criminals taking over. I'm in favour of using the minimal democracy we have to change the system, because I think it's easier to persuade people to vote en masse for a new system than it is to persuade people en masse to refuse to pay their rent, - though I think that's just as good an idea.
I think contracts should only be enforceable in law if they involve a one-off exchange. Or to put it another way I think rent and mortgage contracts should be unenforceable in law.
I think people are basically good, but corrupted by their environment, and that if people were free of having to pay to keep a roof over their heads, natural human ingenuity and the freedom to put their time to doing what seemed good to them would make things evolve well.
I'm in favour of free markets. I don't think there's any alternative. But I think all contracts should be completed in one go, or else be unenforceable, -i.e.ebay as a model. And by the same principle, I don't think charging interest on money should be enforceable in law.
Even people who've just arrived from the islands today? Not by the standards of most here and, more importantly, immigration.
My (West Indian) family's been over here for a generation too, but plenty of folks would still consider us immigrants or 'foreign' in some way.
Well, I wouldn't, but there's no denying that you're raising a problematic issue.
The thing is, the way I see it, what's the point of a national government?
As far as I can see, if it ought to have a role at all, then its role ought to be to make things better for the citizens of the country. And that's the problem. Because it does require that you have some principled divide between who has the privileges of citizenship and who doesn't.
If you take the strongly idealistic stance of saying we should have completely open borders, and considering everyone who's in the country as entitled to citizenship, then you simultaneously deprive yourself of the possibility of being a government dedicated to bettering the lives of its citizens, because, on a world scale, you stick out as a government that provides all these benefits, and so if you attract loads of people to a better society, then ultimately you're not going to be able to benefit them all, because the UK isn't rich enough or big enough to be the social worker to the whole world.
But I don't think that means that we should rule out all new immigration, - but that we need to find some decent and principled way of deciding who's a citizen and who isn't.
The alternative, which seems to be the current view is to decide that the role of government is to occupy power, in order to do nothing except allow whatever happens to happen, carry out the demands of global capitalism, retrench on providing any benefit to citizens, and say whatever seems likely to keep you in power.
I think the truth of global economic situation at the moment is we've been well overdue the crash for a while now, - but it was held off by making the housing market the motor of the economy. We should have decided quite a few years ago to do something different, but the problem is the electorate were never even presented with a credible alternative. And it's probably too late now.
That's probably a historical accident I guess. Maybe whoever's job it was to create a credible alternative couldn't find any way of doing it. Maybe it wasn't possible. Maybe he was just inept. Maybe no-one was sufficiently interested. All the same, a few years ago, I used to think that change was at least possible. But the time for a change is when things seem all right, and that's when people don't bother to vote for one.
What do you find bizarre there?
Don't know how you work that out.
I don't want more of the same. Haven't said that I did, don't see how I've left that impression.
I don't want more of the same. Haven't said that I did, don't see how I've left that impression.
Spion
I hear ya
it's your faith in the market which I find bizarre, it being the key driver in the way present society is organised and is the main powerful interest in maintaining the governments most of us have to put up with most of the time. To suggest governments which regulate markets in the interest of the most powerful sections of society might dismantle themselves is quite ludicrous
Unless you mean dismantle government so that the mass of people can govern via new forms of organisation, but somehow I don't think you do.
audiotech
wav, aiff, mp3, ogg, flac
You assert that there is no alternative to the 'free market' and 'minimal government'. Well, how ironic can one be considering the government is bailing out Northern Rock as we speak.
I don't think the current politicians are remotely likely to dismantle the apparatus of government or govern for the benefit of people. That's why I think we need to find a way of persuading people to elect a new bunch of representatives who do aim ultimately to dismantle the government.
When I say there's no alternative to free markets, I'm making a purely libertarian point. And I totally accept that the market isn't free at the moment.
I think people are by nature free to sell their goods or their labour for whatever someone will give them for it. If you want to prevent that, then you'll need some coercive governmental apparatus to control and alter the natural state of things.
I don't want a coercive governmental apparatus, so I have to accept that there's no alternative to free markets.
But the advantage of not having a coercive governmental apparatus is that there wouldn't be any bailiffs to evict people from their homes for non-payment of rent or mortgages.
I think people are by nature free to sell their goods or their labour for whatever someone will give them for it. If you want to prevent that, then you'll need some coercive governmental apparatus to control and alter the natural state of things.
I don't want a coercive governmental apparatus, so I have to accept that there's no alternative to free markets.
But the advantage of not having a coercive governmental apparatus is that there wouldn't be any bailiffs to evict people from their homes for non-payment of rent or mortgages.
It's not the market that's the key driver in the way present society is organised. It's the enforcement of the rights of landlords, and the practice of charging interest on money.
Spion
I hear ya
What utter twaddle.
I don't know why you focus on those aspects and neglect then centrality of private property and its place in law, which is a relatively new invention (17th C) and which - with its apparent equality of people and companies as 'legal persons' - is at the root of exploitation in this society.
I expect I might have to explain that one for you
Spion
I hear ya
It's not natural because it hasn't always existed. There was no such thing as a free market in labour or land, not to a large extent of goods, before the 1640s (in the UK).
And yes, I think that particular historical episode will have to be coerced out of existence by the majority of people planning what we do with the earth's resources to meet our needs rather than line the pockets of a few property owners.
God you're being unpleasant. And really determined to disagree for the sake of it..so much so that you don't even appear to read what I say, because you've already decided to disagree
I'm perfectly well aware that the notion of private property is a new invention, and it's one that I'm opposed to. That's what I mean by saying that the root of the problem is the enforcement of the rights of landlords.
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