When will we have immigration reform? Why is organized labor under attack?
Again this May 1st, we marched and rallied for immigration reform. We marched and rallied against the attacks on the ethnic studies program in Arizona. We marched against enacting anti-union laws in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio.
But after the rallies and marches, state legislatures are still moving to take away workers’ rights and to balance state budgets on workers’ backs. And immigrants and their families are still suffering gross violations of their rights by employers, ICE agents, and the police.
When will we have immigration reform? Why is organized labor under attack? What is happening to the American Dream?
The answer lies in an epochal change underway in the economy. Workers are being rapidly replaced on the job by computers and robots. The corporations’ use of these new tools — and everything that derives from that — has ushered in a time of social revolution, of great social change.
This process began in the late 1970s.
Today, the step-by-step changes in production are step-by-step obliterating jobs, not just until the recession is over, but permanently. The historical relationship between the worker and the capitalist is being broken [begin italics] qualitatively [end italics] with robotics. There’s no going back.
This means that the capitalist oligarchy and their corporations less and less need a well paid, healthy workforce. The end result is that people without work, or with too little work, have no money to buy cars, houses, refrigerators, food — the necessities of life.
Because of that, discontent is setting in among workers, and the oligarchy fears that they will unite and flex their muscles politically. Historically, in such times of crisis capitalists have used the immigration issue to divide and conquer, just as they use the racial issue, pitting black against white. They make immigrant workers the scapegoat for all the ills of society.
Historically, too, the native-born Americans most susceptible to anti-immigrant propaganda have been those workers who see their way of life threatened by capitalism’s new ways. They are duped into believing that the immigrant is to blame.
Today the corporate media is working overtime to make native-born Americans believe immigrants are taking their jobs and using government benefits that they don’t pay for.
In the past, once the capitalist class achieved its economic and political goals, the attacks on the immigrant population subsided and a temporary truce was achieved. Most of the older immigrant groups — the Irish, Italians, and Eastern Europeans — have now been integrated into the mainstream of the United States.
Today is different. The move from labor-based industry to computerized, labor-replacing industry is casting everyone into the throes of social revolution. Today, neither capitalist nor worker can stand on the sidelines. We are all being forced to take a position if we are going to survive.
Today, Republicans and Democrats alike are using the attack on immigrants as a way to sway American-born workers to supporting their agenda — to obliterate the laws and programs that have benefitted workers and to save the capitalists’ hides.
But the real fight isn’t immigrant against native-born or black against white. The overriding factor is class. Either we unite as workers, regardless of color, creed, or national origin, or the oligarchy will extinguish us under the wheels of change.
And there is an alternative. The labor-replacing new technology has created the possibility of achieving a world of great abundance for all. It makes possible a cooperative society in which everyone can benefit from the wealth produced.
That new world is possible. But it can only be built if we take production from the hands of the oligarchy and organize it to provide for the welfare of all..
