For a Joint Unemployed and Illegal Labour Union : Melbourne Indymedia

Nothing in the current industrial landscape is as shocking as the alignment of major unions with the nationalist project of strengthened border and immigration controls. This marks the abdication of solidarity by these organizations, for in persecuting so-called ‘illegal labour’ they pit worker against fellow worker. A worker living in fear of deportation by the police and denunciation by the trade-union is a worker with no bargaining power who must accept whatever conditions are available and who must live with the bosses’ tolerance hovering above like the Sword of Damocles. Such a worker has been forced into the condition of a scab by the prejudice of the unions themselves! As such, her struggle is also the unemployed worker’s struggle. When unions persecute workers because they are unblessed by the state, they have turned their back on the universal right to work, not just of the paperless but of everybody. They have resorted to scape-goats with which to hide their lack of courage and their own inability to win work for all workers. To the unemployed they smile and point a finger towards the undocumented worker, saying: “there is the reason you haven’t got a job!” To the employed they wink and mutter: “there is your reason why we can’t get you a break!” All the while, they wheel and deal with the bosses and debase themselves before the ALP. In this way, their desire to justify their own powerlessness erodes the power of both sets of workers, and we are left with nothing except a dire media spectacle with which to re-elect the brainless.

Our society should not be a detention camp. We should not live by a system of rewards administered by a state playing us off against each other. Work is not a privilege, and neither is the provision of a tenable life out of work a disposable luxury. If we allow the state to determine who amongst us may be allowed to work and who amongst us will be allowed to live outside work, we surrender to political parties our right to productive life itself. In their hands, this right becomes so many vouchers and nationalist delusions with which to buy workers for the lowest price and ensure their placidity. Once we surrender the demands of universal solidarity, that is to say – once we accept that some of us, by the mere location of their birth cannot be allowed a productive life in or out of work amongst us – we forfeit our own freedom. We can live by the delusion that persecuting the defenceless will bring back jobs lost to profit-seeking bosses, but this decision not only condemns us to chase our own shadows, it also makes sure that we will ourselves be vulnerable. Each deported illegal worker weakens the position of all illegal workers, and thereby weakens the position of all workers. We can chose to dream nationalist fantasies that barricaded inside our island we will be safe from the hordes outside, and we can chose to ignore the fact that the threat to our livelihood comes rather from those who would have us so barricaded. Throwing people out of the country won’t create jobs. You cannot create jobs by firing people, either from a factory or from a country. Neither will deportations make casual work permanent. You cannot improve work conditions by persecuting workers.

We can choose to cast our lot with these harmful delusions, or we can embrace the historic task of labour, of universal fellowship and contempt for national divisions, and forge a true international of workingmen and women, and of workless men and women also. So long as our brothers and sisters overseas live in abject misery, turning them away from our land is a crime of the highest order. How can we kid ourselves that an illegal worker at low pay here is any worse than a teeming population on no pay over there? The same week Mark Latham announced he would persecute illegal labour, that he will wage war on labour’s freedom of movement, he announced that he supported the freedom of movement of capital. This is not half-baked nationalism on his part: this is what nationalism entails. Our land is not blessed: it is fortified. The effect of this is devastating for those outside, but it is also very harmful for us. Every dweller of castles must worry about what goes on outside the gates and must live stalked by the thought that one day the walls shall crumble under the combined weight of his privilege and the shouts of the outsiders. Dinner parties taken on a distinctive feel when the neighbours are starving. Nobody wants to live like this, and we don’t have to, if we work together for the advancement of all – inside and outside our country, or better yet, with no concern for boundaries.

Nobody will win freedom for us on our behalf. The unemployed must stand up for their right to a livelihood in and out of work, for if the government can avoid giving them their rights, it will. Casual labour cannot hope to win rights by denying them to other people, for it is worse than pointless to give the bosses another stick with which to beat us. Illegal labour cannot hope to succeed by hiding. Only together can we be strong enough to win. Only by disobedience and furious solidarity can we forge a network that provides security for all. Such is our struggle.

International solidarity, mass civil disobedience and a judicious and restrained use of violence, ' propaganda of the deed' defeated a couple of fearsome regimes. The old South Africa and the STASI East Germany.
Unions these days are too big and cumbersome to act effectively for if they do, they immedietely get tied up in legal red tape. I am starting to be suspicious of any large formal organization for liberation just as we harness the massive networking possibilties of the web.
So I would argue for a decapitation strategy for the state and a systemic ' crown reduction pruning' of all authoritarian structures till we have no superpowers, no nation states and NO UNIONS in that order with ever more horizontality, decentralization and egalitarianism to follow.

Anarchism or Statism that is the question and the smallest state is criminal in its dreams.

Thiago Oppermann
by Antiorganizationism Wednesday January 21, 2004 at 02:56 PM

Does it make sense to oppose all organization? No that's just a way to be satisfied in our hopelessness. Whether a union is a tool of management or an expression of workers' autonomy is up to us.

I would not limit the proposal to illegal and unemployed workers. i think a general investigation of precarious labour is required. That is i would included casual, illegal, temp, unemployed as i think many people pass through all this catagories and one or another time. This space is wide open as the traditional unions with their fordist models of production have been an absolute failure in responding to the process of deregulation, casualisation, decentralisation of prodction, tertiary sector and communications work. Their only response is to call for a return to the 50s.

On that note i would question one of your statements.

"Neither will deportations make casual work permanent. You cannot improve work conditions by persecuting workers."

Who says permanest work is better than casual work. The point is to make work casual on our basis, the basis of labour, rather than on the wims of the capitalists. I don't want a full time job for life. I want to be able to work when i need it and not work when i don't as this exceprt explains

"The reality of labour flexibility is the other side of this kind of emancipation from capitalist regulation. We should not underestimate the connection between refusal of work and the flexibilisation which ensued."

"I remember that one of the strong ideas of the movement of autonomy proletarians during the 70s was the idea "precariousness is good". Job precariousness is a form of autonomy from steady regular work, lasting an entire life. In the 70s many people used to work for a few months, then to go away for a journey, then back to work for a while. This was possible in times of almost full employment and in times of egalitarian culture. This situation allowed people to work in their own interest and not in the interest of capitalists, but quite obviously this could not last forever, and the neoliberal offensive of the 80s was aimed to reverse the rapport de force. ."

"Deregulation and the flexibilisation of labour have been the effect and the reversal of the worker’s autonomy. We have to know that not only for historical reasons. If we want to understand what has to be done today, in the age of fully flexibilised labour, we have to understand how the capitalist takeover of social desire could happen."
http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=04/01/16/1733237&mode=nested&tid=9

Well OJ, I could not agree more with what you are saying. Indeed, my cat, Kat Klinkenstein, tells me that this is only a draft :)

Yes. Casual and precarious work is extremely important. I think the term 'casual' is a pretty serious misleader. What's casual about it? Who knows.

Perhaps the kind of struggle I am trying to articulate (this is really the struggle for clarity in my head for the moment...) is much more in line with the rejection of work itself, along midnight notes/Zerowork/Aufheben or Toni Negri lines. I think that this stuff could do with a focus and I have a very strong hunch that there is a nexus of Unemployed-Casual-Undocumented resistance that could be particularly strong. Undocumented-Unemployed is an important dimension given that it is the key line along which the nationalist unions push for border controls. Besides, that is pretty much the axis in which I have moved, when not in Academic World(tm).

Thiago

Kat Klinkenstein: You are a buffoon.

Illegal immigrants take jobs from unemployed people, so why would unemployed people join the same union that illegal immigrants are in?

What you seem to have ignored is that illegal immigrants who work in Australia are being selfish, breaking the law and are simply doing the wrong thing. They should go back to their own country. If there is something wrong with their own country then they should try to fix it up, instead of trying to steal Australia's economic resources.

GLAD to see these discussions. also have been thinking about indigenous underclasses, indigenous autonomy, autonomy of movement for migrants. might be good thought food.

this link has some good stuff on a confernce discussing this and other such things.

dear stella/queenie/silo
I am glad to see you are finally revealing the basis of your ecological nationalist politics.
Did you even manage to read the article. What would those working without papers have in common with the unemployed?
they are both at the bottom end of the social scale and are hyper exploited by capital. The unemployed as a reserve labour army for capital that help keep inflation and wages down and migrants who are unable to organise against their exploitation for fear of being deported meaning they have to work for low wages and bad conditions.

So we have two distinct routes we can take in trying to deal with these problems. We can choose the reactionary nationalist route and ever fortifiy the borders and the government apparatus against the barbarian hordes, or we can learn and act within the fact that we live in a globalise world and that humanity doesn't stop at the border. If we are to defeat those that exploit both humans and the environment a common basis for the exploited to be able to act together needs to be established.

stella/queenie/silo I don't know what site you think you are on but my understanding was that this network of independent media centres was originally created to find ways of crossing borders, not creating more of them.

perhaps you should go and join the labour party?
and do some more reading
http://www.infoshop.org/texts/immigration.html

oh yeah there's a thought to ...

1. Just to reinforce a point, Illegal immigrants are effectively thieves, they are stealing an economic resoure.

2. OJ writes: "those working without papers ... are both at the bottom end of the social scale and are hyper exploited by capital." That is largely crap. Many illegal immigrants working without papers are actually British or European tourists/travellers. They are just as wealthy as you or me or anyone else in Britain. They can easily go back to Britain, where they have full access to all the social services that every other British person is entitled to.

3. OJ writes: "The unemployed as a reserve labour army for capital that help keep inflation and wages down and migrants who are unable to organise against their exploitation for fear of being deported meaning they have to work for low wages and bad conditions"

Exactly! You make a point that I agree with. Which is why the unemployed and Australian workers on low incomes should be AGAINST illegal immigration, because illegal immigration drives down wages and working conditions, and benefits capitalists. That' why like you OJ, Kat & Thiago, the capitalists SUPPORT immigration, both legal and illegal. In fact, on this forum you are doing the work of the capitlists in supporting immigration.

OJ writes: "perhaps you should go and join the labour party? and do some more reading "

Maybe you should do some reading OJ. Karl Marx would have supported me, not you.

Yes, the first international of workingmen would obviously be opposed to the international solidarity of workingmen. Duh.

Andrew 'I like to send emails but not receive them' Campbell's comments that the unemployed should be at the illegals' throats is exactly why undocumented-unemployed solidarity is so important. For the overwhelming part, unemployment is not caused by illegal migration. I would have thought that this dopey idea that employment is determined straightforwardly by the supply and demand of labour would have been thrown in the garbage heap years ago, specially by social democrats. Ever read Keynes?

The government of Cuba monopolises labour within national boundaries at discount rates - and then on sells it to global multinationals at higher rates - skimming the difference.

For example;

"...international companies pay Acorec, a firm owned by the Cuban government, approximately $450 a month per worker, yet Acorec in turn pays the workers only $5 a month...."

http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/lawsuit63099.html

As a Cuban minister, said, developing nations need to stick together, because "we produce goods and services with comparative advantages that they [that is, the United States and Europe] are trying to take away under the pretext of so-called labor standards."

http://slate.msn.com/id/1004101/

For the same reason, independent labour unions are banned in Cuba.

Immigrants drive down wages and conditions for workers. If you can't work that out, go and read a year 11 economics textbook.

If as you pro-immigration people advocate, we opened up our borders to immigrants, we would have probably millions of people coming into the country seeking work. If you don't think that would drive down wages and working conditions for ordinary Australian workers, you need to turn your brain.

Just think about it for ten seconds. What is the average wage in Indonesia - $10 a week? (I am guessing). Unlimited immigration to Australia would eventually cause the average wage in Australia to fall to $10 a week too. Is that what you want, Thiago and others?

Thiago, I did not receive an email from you. Anyway, if you have something to say you may as well say it on the forum.

"The government of Cuba monopolises labour within national boundaries at discount rates - and then on sells it to global multinationals at higher rates - skimming the difference. "

If that is true, which could well be, it is no different from the behaviour of multinationals, who employ people at discount rates, say in Mexico, and then sell the products at similar prices to those produced by workers on higher pay elsewhere, pocketing the difference. Usually, we call that difference 'profit' and the alleged activities of the Cuban government we call 'capitalism.' At any rate, bringing this poorly thought out red herring is either a sign of desperation or a pretty daft effort at red-baiting. Or capitalist-baiting, perhaps - it's hard to tell, so disingenuous it is.

As for Mr. Campbell. Of course you didn't get my reply, since you have blocked my address - without ever having received an email from me before. That's class.

Hmmmm....

"..... bringing this poorly thought out red herring is either a sign of desperation or a pretty daft effort at red-baiting. Or capitalist-baiting, perhaps - it's hard to tell, so disingenuous it is....."

Actually, I thought it was a very good example in SUPPORT of your agument elsewhere (see below) about how governments and multinationals conspire to manipulate closed labour markets to maximise the expropriation of workers' surplus labour.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2004/01/60641_comment.php#60797

Without borders. the steady flow of illegal immigrants from Cuba - with a small labor market - to the high wage centres of Miami and Fort Lauderdale - amid the vast USA labor market - would probably result in a new wage price equilibrium very much in the favour of Cuban workers.

But that's only because Cuba is a little country.

I mean, aren't George bush and his cronies trying to open up their labour markets to LARGE infusions of South American guest labour to push their own labor costs DOWN?

Was it the example that troubled you?

If the country in question had been, say, Chile or Guatamala, would that have been more to your liking.

Erm, no I don't mind the example, except that Cuba is highly unusual in a number of ways. In particular, it has a nefarious regime which adds an entire humanitarian rationale for migration. I am not interested in discussing that; my concern is first and foremost 'non-humanitarian' migration. I want open borders for people, not a nicer or broader category of 'refugee.' Guatemala and Chile are far more typical, and would indeed be better examples.

Does the example of Cuba illustrate my case? Well, perhaps. But the existence of a single employer for labour in an entire country (your presumption about the Cuban system, not mine) is indeed highly unusual. It is far more interesting to discuss the usual case, where there are multiple employers. Cuba is also extremely tight with the transit of capital, and so workers there are in a very different position to workers elsewhere.

I think that Bush is simply caving into to the reality that there are millions of workers in his country who are being fucked over, and he realises that maintaining these people in an illegal condition is damaging to his own nationalist project. He understands that it is better to regulate such migrants than to persecute them, since they've been persecuting them intensely - the US/Mexico border is the most heavily militarized between two countries at peace - an it simply doesn't work. Also note that Bush's plan is a guest worker plan, which is something entirely different from free migration.

Our Mark Latham, on the other hand, is either stupid or to the right of George Bush. That's pretty instructive about what the ALP actually is. You'd have to look at someone like Le Pen for a set of policies like his.

Thiago

I wish to make clear that the struggle I envisage is not one that creates a regime of universal work, where all are compelled into 'labour' understood as a specific regimentation of productive life. I believe that the unemployed ought to organize for the right to work, but also for the right, as Ivan Illich might have put it, to gainful unemployment. What is 'gainful'? That's up to each of us to decide.

Meeaw!

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve been here (I won’t go into the reasons, but it’s not because I thought Indymedia was a bad site), but I just have to put my 2c worth in because I disagree with so much of what’s been said.

Let’s start with the biggest furphy of the lot. Silo reckons that “Illegal immigrants take jobs from unemployed people”. This is complete rot. Neither do they “steal Australia’s economic resources”.

Everyone, native-born or immigrant, is both a mouth to feed & a pair of hands to work. The legal status of their residency is immaterial to that fact. Getting rid of the “illegal” immigrants would actually cause a drop in demand in the economy which eliminated approximately as many jobs as the immigrants had occupied. We’d be back in the same situation as before, but with more cops, more police powers & more paperwork. Further, if the solution to unemployment can be found by deporting “illegal” immigrants, it can also be found by deporting “legal” immigrants as well, because their visa status makes no difference to their economic impact. And finally, we might as well also go down to the local high school & round up the Year 12s for deportation, since they’re about to hit the labour market as well. If you think this is crazy, it is - but it’s no more crazy than trying to solve unemployment by deporting “illegal” immigrants.

Secondly, some contributors, while adopting a praiseworthy stance of solidarity with the unemployed & “illegal” workers, display neither a proper grasp of class analysis nor an understanding of how to organise effectively in the interests of these people. The key thing to realise is that there are only two classes that matter in an industrialised society - the working class & the capitalist class. Both the unemployed and “illegal” workers are components of the working class and have the same basic interests in common with the rest of their class.

This is not to say that “legally” employed workers necessarily understand this issue. As a matter of fact most of them in Australia have decidedly wrong ideas on the subject. The point is, however, that workers who take the nationalist line on “border protection” &/or the “dole bludger” line on unemployment are weakening their own position rather than strengthening it.

A key example of the issue can be seen in the different stances of the NSW & Victorian branches of the Construction Division of the CFMEU. The NSW CFMEU takes a “border protection” line and brings the police & the Immigration Dept down on building sites in order to get rid of “illegal” immigrants. The Victorian CFMEU takes a very different line & says it’s not concerned about whether building workers have their immigration papers in order - it's concerned instead about whether they’re union members & are getting the union rate for the job. The difference here is that in NSW “illegal” building workers have to keep their head down & take whatever the boss dishes out to them and thus become levers for the bosses to undercut wages for all, while in Victoria all building workers can stand together and have a stronger base for defending themselves. And, by the way, the bosses are really annoyed about how labour costs in Victorian construction are one third higher than in NSW.

When workers give credence to reactionary ideas, only the bosses win.

Further, the idea of a separate union for “illegal” workers just doesn’t make sense. Workers need to organise on the basis of their common enemy, not on the basis of their legal status. In the case of “illegal” workers, it would be first of all an invitation to the Immigration Dept to raid them (“Hey, I’m working illegally! Come & get me!”). More importantly from a political perspective, though, it would serve to isolate “illegal” workers from the very people in a position to offer practical solidarity and to abandon them to the political domination of conservative bureaucrats. It means dodging the hard work of convincing the bulk of the working class of where their true interests lie.

And finally, people need to realise how the great majority of the population can & can’t be convinced of the validity of revolutionary politics. It will only be done through the direct struggle of workers for objectives that they feel important to their interests. This is because it is only through political struggle that most workers will realise that their adherence to popular reactionary ideas (e.g. nationalism or racism) is an obstacle to their own victory - even in simple “bread & butter” disputes. It is only in the heat of the struggle that the revolutionary potential of the principle “an injury to one is an injury to all” will be seen and embraced.

For the bourgeoisie, there is a conflict between acting morally & acting in their own interests. For them, rejection of racism & sexism is an act of worthy self-denial and can only seriously be entertained if they are materially comfortable. On the other hand, it is when the bourgeoisie are struggling most directly for their own interests that they are most reactionary.

For the working class, the situation is entirely the opposite. It is when workers are struggling hardest for our own interests that we are most receptive to appeals to assist the oppressed. Solidarity is the only weapon the working class has and it is by building solidarity across the whole working class, including the sectors which have traditionally been most oppressed, that we can achieve our liberation.

For this reason, I don’t see any point in making propaganda against work in the style of some of the contributors to this debate. Only people who already adhere to a revolutionary critique of capital will understand what they’re saying, while the rest will incorrectly assume that the authors are either academic wankers or just plain bludgers (I must, however, say that I’ve seen the same arguments made even more abrasively and with real contempt for the supposedly “ignorant” and “servile” workers). There are plenty of examples in labour history of coming at the same argument from a different perspective, so that workers can see it as the natural culmination of the material struggle against their present exploitation rather than a declaration which puts regularly employed workers in the same camp as their employers and in a different one to the unemployed.

Ablokeimet.

ablokeimet seems to have cut thru the fog (i.e. i agree with im!) , be interested to hear how much KatK concurs.

A comment earlier suggested Bush really does want to give TPV's to illegals in the US. Personally i think its just an election year media play with no legislative substance behind it; he'll talk it for a while, it'll drop from the news, dodo. Pat Robertson & co have gone so frothing already, & Bush can't risk his religious right constituency.

Interesting to note that the libertarian right in the US has (in responding to bushs epiphany) plunged down the same erroneous immigrants=unemployment hole as Latham. I suggest their resentful-middleclassness blinds them even the notion of solidarity, shows its not just the Australian 'left' that can't find its own bum, or the real interests of its supposed constituency.

No Thiago, I have NOT blocked your email address. Why on earth would I do that? You must be paranoid. There was probably an error with the message, or may account. Anyway, if you have any comments, post them on the forum.

Thiago, I am not surprised that you are a supporter of George Bush, the puppet of the capitalists.

You wrote: "I think that Bush is simply caving into to the reality that there are millions of workers in his country who are being fucked over, and he realises that maintaining these people in an illegal condition is damaging to his own nationalist project. He understands that it is better to regulate such migrants than to persecute them, since they've been persecuting them intensely "

Personally, I hope that George Bush loses the next election because he is a total a__hole!

Furthermore, Thiago, if you believe what you said about George Bush's supposed sympathy for illegal immigrants then you are completely naive. George Bush is a right-wing a___hole. He wouldn't give two hoots about the welfare of illegal immigrants. Like I said, his main aim is to do the bidding of employers, IE big business IE capitalists, who you are apparently on the same side as.

silo, what Thiago said does not suggest that he is a supporter of Bush, or believes he acted out of pure benevolence, and it seems disingenuous to suggest otherwise. I'm interested in this discussion so please don't try to drag it down.

That's so funny. You probably think you're pretty clever too. BTW, it turns out that my bigpond server has been banned by a whole bunch of mailers, and yours turns out to have been one of them. So I apologize for that. But you're still off by miles in your points.

I specifically said that Bush's plan is one for guest wokers. I intensely oppose such a plan, whch is merely a way of exploiting workers and dividing the working class. I support open borders, which is a very different matter. My point is that if you want to find someone spouting Latham's policies, you have to go further right than Bush, to the wasteland inhabited by Le Pen.

Ablokimet wrote:

"It is when workers are struggling hardest for our own interests that we are most receptive to appeals to assist the oppressed. Solidarity is the only weapon the working class has and it is by building solidarity across the whole working class, including the sectors which have traditionally been most oppressed, that we can achieve our liberation."

In the first instance, this suggests that workers and "the oppressed" form two separate categories, and it seems to imply that 'assistance' is required for the unfortunate, as if solidarity were a kind of charity. Maybe I am misreading this, but as I have understood you, I find this very unsatisfactory. On the whole, however, I agree with you comments. They are very interesting.

There is some confusion, I think, surrounding the word 'interests'. From a class perspective, as opposed to a national perspective, it is not possible for workers to look after their interests without striving for no borders and without them striving for the right not to work. Capitalism provides you the choice: work or die. So long a that's the choice we face, we are in quite a bind as to exerting power of the character of work. Social Democracy provides rather an iron bargain: you may live, badly, out of work, but at the cost of your solidarity with workers from other nation states. That's no better.

I would also dissent with the picture, which I think is implied in what you wrote, that although anti-work discourses might be very useful, they should only be revealed tot he initated. First people learn Basic Revolutionary doctrine, then they can be let into the Advanced theory of zerowork. Although Proponents of zerowork have themselves to blame for couching their arguments in extremely obtuse language, I believe that the demand for gainful unemployment, no borders and class solidarity are the basis on which to launch a struggle, not bells and whistles to be attached latter.

Klink

Kat has made some mostly reasonable comments, considering what I wrote above, so it’s appropriate to clarify myself & state where I still disagree.

1. When I said “the oppressed”, I meant those people who some Marxists refer to as suffering “special oppression”. Women, blacks, gays, etc, are examples of this. These people, on the whole, suffer oppression regardless of what class they are in. People in groups who suffer special oppression have to be very powerful capitalists before they receive immunity from this.

Further, most people who suffer “special oppression” are part of the working class, but their oppression extends beyond the workplace and is often expressed most viciously outside of it. It is useful, therefore, to be able to speak about this in language that allows for this distinction.

2. Solidarity is not charity, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be expressed as assistance. The key is to realise when & where workers have power and when they don’t. Workers in the workplace have power, but workers out of the workplace don’t. This is a constant. There is also a related but temporary phenomenon – workers who are better organised &/or in a more strategic sector of the economy from the capitalists’ perspective have more power than those who aren’t. When, for example, building workers put a green ban on a job being opposed by a residents’ group in a working class area, it is clear that the building workers are assisting the residents’ group to achieve something that they couldn’t do by themselves.

The difference between charity & solidarity, however, comes in when you look at why the workers give the assistance. If workers give assistance out of the understanding that it’s in their own interests as well, it’s solidarity rather than charity. The key is that an injury to one is an injury to all and it takes class consciousness to realise it.

3. Kat says:

>.From a class perspective, as opposed to a national perspective, it is not
>.possible for workers to look after their interests without striving for no
> borders and without them striving for the right not to work

At the general level this is true, but we need to be more specific. If we start from where specific groups of workers are now (i.e. we start where an industrial dispute starts), we can see that the existing level of consciousness, organisation & solidarity may or may not be sufficient to win the objectives that these workers have in mind. If it isn’t (as is often the case), specific reactionary ideas will be definite obstacles to the adoption of the tactics objectively necessary to win that dispute. Nationalistic illusions &/or “dole bludger” myths are examples of such ideas. In recent years, economic developments have meant that these ideas have to be confronted more often and in smaller disputes. And we usually lose, because as a whole the working class still hasn’t learnt the lesson.

The way Kat has expressed the idea is, therefore, too much “all or nothing” for my taste. The generalisation is so sweeping that it won’t convince anyone who doesn’t already agree.

4. Kat said:

> I would also dissent with the picture, which I think is implied in what you wrote,
> that although anti-work discourses might be very useful, they should only be
> revealed to the initiated.

While it’s certainly possible to read my contribution that way, it definitely wasn’t what I intended. I was, rather, criticising the “antiwork” approach, as it is inherently incapable of communicating with people who aren’t revolutionary. Instead, we need a different approach, one which speaks in a language which the working class as a whole can understand.

In a stateless communist society, we will have transformed “work” so that it no longer exists as a separate category of activity. This will be because:

(a) “Work” will be under the control of the people who do it, through both individual initiative and co-operative effort. People will be able to decide how to do it, when & where, according to the inherent demands of the task & their own personal inclination.

(b) The abolition of property and markets will enable a great deal of work to be eliminated, since it is not devoted to increasing society’s sum of goods & services, but to ensuring that a privileged group has and keeps a disproportionate share.

(c) Technological change will greatly reduce the amount of work necessary to produce a given sum of goods & services, even if we only generalise the use of the best existing technology. New technology will take it even further.

(d) Much existing consumption of goods & services does not contribute to individual or social well-being. Some of it is a substitute for control over one’s life and/or authentic personal and social relationships (and thus the need for it would disappear with the need for those substitutes). Other aspects of consumption are artificially generated by media-driven demand or planned obsolescence, both of which would not exist in a stateless communist society. And the work necessary to produce them would also be gone.

(e) A fair proportion of existing consumption of goods & services is a visible mark of status or a means to acquiring such status. Economists call them “positional goods” (private school education is one). A society which has abolished both wealth & power will not generate demand for these “positional goods”. As above, the work necessary to produce these goods & services will be abolished.

(f) Because work will be more enjoyable and under the workers’ own control; the amount of work will be greatly decreased; and the common wealth will be distributed according to need rather than power, people will find that all features that clearly distinguish work from play will be abolished. The remaining “work” will be so enjoyable and so little that people will do it willingly for the joy of using their abilities, the feeling of achievement, the companionship of collective effort and the solidarity of the global human community.

Now, this is a pretty wordy way of putting things, but you definitely don’t have to be a revolutionary to understand it. People mightn’t agree with me when I say it, but at least they’ll understand & not write me off as a ratbag bludger who just wants to stay in bed all day and expects the world to operate by magic.

The other problem with the “zerowork” approach, of course, is that it’s a handy camouflage for *real* ratbag bludgers looking for a r-r-revolutionary cover for their anti-social attitudes. I’m sick to death of ratbags dragging the name of anarchism through the mud, when their ambition isn’t to change the world but to spend a few years acting like they’re superior to it. I have no doubt that Kat is genuine, but the language of “zerowork” is an obstacle to building the only thing that can change the world - a global anarcho-syndicalist union confederation.

Ablokeimet

"The other problem with the “zerowork” approach, of course, is that it’s a handy camouflage for *real* ratbag bludgers looking for a r-r-revolutionary cover for their anti-social attitudes. I’m sick to death of ratbags dragging the name of anarchism through the mud, when their ambition isn’t to change the world but to spend a few years acting like they’re superior to it. I have no doubt that Kat is genuine, but the language of “zerowork” is an obstacle to building the only thing that can change the world - a global anarcho-syndicalist union confederation."

This is sort of off topic, but I suggest you stop worrying about anarchists. It's just not healthy. So what if people are lazy and want to go around striking Rage Against the Machine poses? Their problem, it just isn't mine.

At any rate, we can agree that we have many decisions to make in terms of how to articulate a (necessarily, in my opinion) transnational working class. Why prefigure these decisions by saying that the result must be something as quaint as an anarcho-syndicalist union. As may be obvious, I have every sympathy with that, but do I know we can achieve a 'staless communism'? Do I know this would be fair? No, I don't. I have doubts, very strong ones, about the capacity of stateless communism having any kind of reasonable institution of justice. At any rate...

I think that you have made a fatal mistake in your argument with the category of 'special oppression'. I find the notion, as explicated, utterly unacceptable. Women, blacks, gays and whatever else - these become lumped together as if the fact their persecution is not obviously (or rather, directly - I think to say the persecution of blacks isn't related to capitalism is just nuts) connected to capitalism meant that they had something in similar. That's bad enough; it's the flipside of 'identity politics', the problem of which, in my opinion, is the positing of something called 'identity' which can be contested and whatnot. Let's not confuse words and things. What is worse is the addition to this sort of nebulous category of a new class of oppressed person, the refugee. Well, I find this just an extra bit nuts. Refugees as such don't have, save for racist reasons, any problem fitting into the wheels of capitalism, as Zbignew Brezinsky, Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright and pals show rather clerly. But the ostracism of illegal migrants is primarily a form of class warfare. It is not about 'extra' exploitation - it is about the maintenance of the fundamental aspects of capitalist exploitation. Capitalism is a geographically hierarchical system. This is the secret meaning of these borders, not so secret if you are on the wrong side of them, either here in Australia or out there.

Thiago

Thiago has brought up some important points. I’ll reply briefly to a few.

>So what if people are lazy and want to go around striking Rage
> Against the Machine poses? Their problem, it just isn't mine.

If they called themselves “RATMists”, it would be purely their problem. It’s *not* just their problem, however, if they’re discrediting a useful philosophy with their parody of it. I’ve been around the Anarchist movement for many years and have seen the movement torn apart more than once by the conflicts which start when a relatively small group of people use their ability to deploy Anarchist rhetoric to:

(a) Drive out of the movement anyone who is trying to achieve anything constructive; and

(b) Pour scorn on anyone with whom they disagree.

Most people who are actually trying to change the world, rather than find a comfortable sub-culture, end up being convinced that Anarchism won’t work - and it’s their experience of the authoritarian behaviour of so many supposed “Anarchists” that convinces them. This is something I find greatly frustrating, since I believe Anarchism is the correct philosophy to hold. The superior state of development of the Anarchist movement in most other industrialised countries is something which indicates to me that the fault is in the holders of the name in Australia rather than the philosophy itself.

Most Anarchists would be offended if, for argument’s sake, the DSP were to call itself “anarchist” but continue with its authoritarian structures, opportunist politics and manipulative tactics. I would, too, and I’m glad they don’t call themselves Anarchists. On the other hand, there *are* people calling themselves “anarchist”, but carrying on with invisible authoritarian structures, sectarian politics and manipulative tactics - and *that* offends me.

>Why prefigure these decisions by saying that the result must be
> something as quaint as an anarcho-syndicalist union.

What’s quaint about that? I’m not proposing a rerun of the Spanish CNT of the 20s & 30s (though there’s a lot for us to learn from in that example) and I strongly disagree with the sectarian approach to anarcho-syndicalism taken by many of its adherents. Rather, I think we need:

(a) Workers organised in the workplace rather than in parties;
(b) Workers organised on an internationalist basis rather than a nationalist one;
(c) Workers organised on the basis of a clear understanding that capitalism & the State are our enemies; and
(d) Workers organised in a way such that, in the process of struggling for their own immediate goals, they transform themselves to become capable of running the world without masters over them.

This, I believe, is an empirical description of the qualities of a global anarcho-syndicalist union confederation. And, while I’m happy to discuss things with others who are trying to go in the same general direction, it would be dishonest of me to pretend that I don’t already have ideas that I’ve thought through & feel are pretty soundly based.

> I have doubts, very strong ones, about the capacity of stateless
> communism having any kind of reasonable institution of justice.

Yes, I’ve seen Thiago make this statement before. I’d like to debate it some day (but not today - I've got to go soon).

> I think that you have made a fatal mistake in your argument
> with the category of 'special oppression'.

It seems that I didn’t make myself clear, since I can find little in what Thiago said in the rest of the paragraph with which I would disagree. On the other hand, having re-read the relevant paragraph in my own post, I can’t see how he thought it was necessary to say what he did.

(a) The reason I bracketed women, blacks & gays was that their oppression isn’t based in the workplace. This is different from saying that it’s not connected to capitalism and it also isn’t meant to imply that their oppression shares much else in common than the negative characteristic by which I was distinguishing “special oppression” from the exploitation of the working class.

> What is worse is the addition to this sort of nebulous category
> of a new class of oppressed person, the refugee.

Sorry, but I can’t find where I said that refugees were a new class of oppressed person, but if I did, I was wrong. Refugees in Australia today are attacked and oppressed because of racism. We can tell that, because the ostensible principle of “border control” behind which the ruling class is mobilising the population applies also to the greatly more numerous number of tourists overstaying their visas, but since they’re mostly European and even predominantly Anglo, they don’t get sent to Nauru or Port Hedland.

Ablokeimet

Hi, my name is Jan Klinkenstein. Sorry for not writing a comment to your article but i searched in WWW for my last name. Im from Germany and just found you and this link with google. In Germany the name is very seldom and i want to know something about the history of our family. Do you know wether some ancesters of YOUR family came from Germany?

Thanks. Yours Jan

Combining unemployed and illegal workers is a seriously good idea because there is so much crossover.

But what is this draft actually for? Maybe I missed something but are you actually going to do anything? Tell me where I can get more info.