The movement of peoples is not, contrary to popular thought, a modern invention. In fact, the history of peoples is also that of movement. Millions of people did not stay fixed in one single location forever, even in the most strictly feudal arrangements. However, the regime (and degree) of control over how, when and which people move, that is in fact quite recent. And it is precisely this control that we face today, as Marxists, that we have to engage with; the division of one great majority of populations into “non-citizens”, oncoming from abroad as this great, so-called “horde”. Politicians and media tell us constantly that they are coming for “our” wages, “our” jobs, “our” women, and so forth. But not only that. Even within the trade unions, the citizenship principle rules above all else – to be represented in the large trade unions, you must be a German, an Englishman, a Frenchman, et cetera. Otherwise, you are a threat to the “native” workers. Not just economically, however; but also, the migrant “brings” corruption from abroad, as here in Germany and elsewhere, there’s a greater order established. And so forth.
As Marxists – so it should go – we do not believe in this. Right? But there’s often a subtler type of chauvinism, the sort of, “are-we-not-all-in-this-together-as-workers”? It is a refusal to see the migrant worker as someone who may have a different experience, a different approach by a socialist organisation. That he or she is a worker is undeniable – but that there exists a difference between the way they’re integrated. Setting asides – for now -- the constantly growing, and constantly necessary section of the illegal migrants that make sure sectors like the German agriculture is profitable (albeit not sustainable), the migrant will be under suspicion even as she attempts to assimilate into the peculiar norms of the German nation. In theory, this should be ameliorated in a generation or two; in practice, the way that Turkish people are treated, seems to show that isn’t the case. So, we have a contradiction, one existing at the heart of the nationstate’s reality. That question, of the nationstate, will be delved in deeply tomorrow. For now, let’s focus on the way Marxists and socialists have interacted with the phenomena of migration.
Where can we begin, if not in Marx and Engels’ thought. Their analyses drawn up in Capital are, primarily, de-racialized and assuming white workers (or, perhaps, it is us assuming so?) as the main subject. This means that the engagement with the question of migration is limited. Which is unfortunate, as this imparted onto the future Second International a lacking structure – one assuming that the question of labour would be internationalized anyway, and all will be equated. That being said, Marx’s journalism is less poor in this regard, though certainly muddled. The Irish question, intimately tied up with immigration, was where he and Engels made the most pronouncements on the subject. It is a strange line he drew; if one wishes to be unkind, it prefaces a lot of the both-siding arguments that would follow in his wake. In effect, he argues that the best way to break English dominance over its working class is by the liberation of Ireland, which would be something that the English workers should strive for out of their own self-interest. He sees this not from the perspective of supplying labour, but rather, the incitement of anti-Irish attitudes amongst the workers (but then that very real fact is equated with anti*-English* attitudes, which is unreasonable). So, in theory, an independent Ireland would mean that there would be a loosening of the English chains – but that did not occur, unfortunately. Partially, because the Irish national liberation is incomplete in regards to Northern Ireland; partially, because British capital still had undue influence upon it, until the beginning of the Cold War. The U.K is still, the #3 capital exporter to Ireland, and the English worker is nowhere near liberation. In some ways, the issue is that Marx misidentified the actual base of English rule – India, but also, in fact, the very advancement that he quotes as necessary for a socialist revolution. There is a clear decline of the English capitalist classes, but no end, just quite in sight. This can only be understood by the presence of imperialism, both in the past, and today. So, let’s look at that.
With its growth in the late and early 20th century and the dispossession it brought across the world, this led to millions of peoples flocking towards the metropoles of their respective colonial states, as migrant workers. In France, that primarily meant workers from Algeria, while for the U.K, that was peoples from India and Africa. In Germany, this was a more interesting phenomena – the rapid industrialization seemed to attract overall more European migrants, particularly from occupied Poland and Italy, as well as overall Eastern Europe. The fact of migration was set before the socialist movement at the Stuttgart conference in 1905. It is worth noting the way it went over. The settler socialist parties [Socialist Party of America in particular] exhibited clear racism in majority of cases, as they spoke of how barbarous “coolies” were going to swarm over their countries, unless there are immigration restrictions put in place to keep safe the white workers. The divide is stark, but it is also complicated. For one, the S.P.D had internal divisions within its ranks, as especially the trade unionists found themselves receptive to the racist propaganda – already having had at one occasion showing no solidarity with the Polish miners in Herve, and their wildcat strike of 1899. While, from a strict point of view, the Polish were considered citizens of the Second Reich, de facto, they were treated as a second category peoples.
Outwardly, however, the S.P.D and the European Second International parties showed an united front against the racism displayed, and denied the need for immigration restrictions as empowering the capitalist class, by flaring up xenophobic and nationalistic sentiments; and furthermore, that the process of labour movement was in some ways, inevitable. Where the differences in the position actually came in was as to the immigrants in themselves. While the threat of “coolies” swarming Germany were clearly false, in the S.P.D, [although, it is an interesting thing to consider how settler socialist delusions of a racial conflict clearly did have some uptake in Germany; this is clear in 1905 as it is in 2024] when it came to the migrant, the position was that there were, in fact, different types of migrants. Noting that railway companies and emigration bureaus tricked people into coming to Germany, the distinction was drawn between “free” migrants, and “unfree” migrants. It was believed by social-democrats of the time that the former could, even if they come from “undeveloped” areas, become part of the proper, educated and disciplined Western working classes, who could then join in the joint struggle. This produces an implicit hierarchy here, implying that there are certain nations who are by “force” moved to Germany, and who do not understand the ways of European peoples. Now, it would be trivial for all of us here, to substitute the similarly mind-petrifying cliches of “legal” migration versus “illegal” migration; the way that we hear scaremongering about how millions of Syrians are being exploited by ruthless traffickers into the Garden of Eden, Europe (or was it a jungle?), and so forth. Only, the difference is that the German state is not wielding the categories of legality to supposedly civilize the immigrants, but rather, to cow them into submission and fear. One last historical irony for me, in particular, is that the Slavic nations in 1905 were equally seen as undermining the wages and rights of German workers as they still do in 2024. Truly, a progress has been really made.
After the end of the Second World War, we see the establishment of the modern immigration system, growing out of the corpus of laws first drawn up in the beginning of the 20th century – as seen above – and the subsequent devastation of Europe after the war necessitating further labour to be replaced. This was done primarily via pressure on the emerging Third World, which even once it became decolonized, still existed in a heavily dependent relation. So, while Algeria got its independence and engaged in developing itself, that did not change the fact that thousands of Algerian workers still had to – often illegally – work and live in Paris and elsewhere. The same applies to the Windrush generation; who, for all of their labour and contributions to British society got appalling racism and, eventually, threatened with deportation as of recently. Is there an alternative to this model of capitalist migration, one dependent on exploitation and racial hierarchies? Perhaps. In the Eastern Bloc, during the Vietnam War, there was an outpouring of internationalism within the Pact countries, much of it actually genuine [f.e I’ve read a letter to the MfA asking to volunteer to the frontlines!]. One way that manifested was via labour exchanges. Here, I will speak specifically of Bulgaria, as I am better equipped to understand it – it is, however, important that there wasn’t a singular model for how exactly the process operated, only the universal fact of people’s movement from Vietnam to the Eastern Bloc. But to get back on with it. In 1973, the first agreement regulating this movement between Bulgaria and Vietnam was signed. The basic conceit was that Vietnamese people would come over to Bulgaria, where they would acquire skills and education (as often they’d be also studying in universities, free of charge, naturally). In exchange, they would work in Bulgarian factories, as the need for labour was growing exponentially as a part of the intensifying industrialization. From the get-go, it is notable that Bulgaria received unskilled workers, who were then to return to Vietnam and continue socialist construction; secondly, that the Bulgarian state saw its duty to take care of them, providing for their housing, clothing and healthcare – in other words, to facilitate their social reproduction. Finally, the agreement in itself also stipulated that the Vietnamese peoples are not workers, but practitioners – the implication being that they would not be necessarily locked down to Bulgaria, although half of them were to do so. This is important, in the sense that the work they were doing was not in the traditional migratory sense, but it was rather, a building-up of the individual worker, so that he or she, obtaining the necessary experience in a “developed” socialist country, can contribute further. Migration here was seen as a way to equalize the inequalities between the First and the Third Worlds by the way of the Second World (that is to say, the socialist countries), but if we contrast it with the earlier thesis of assimilation by the S.P.D, this did not equate to a worker coming over to Bulgaria and becoming a Bulgarian (as it implicitly would in the above model), even if, naturally, the insistence was on how Bulgaria and the Warsaw Pact have had established a “developed socialism”.
Unfortunately, things did not stay the same. By the late 70s, a new batch of agreements was signed, and the difference is quite stark. While an increased amount of Vietnamese workers were taken in Bulgaria, here the relation was different. They had to be qualified workers, with no marital ties back to Vietnam; they had to sign individual employee contracts (this wasn’t the case at all previously, essentially due to the ‘practitioner’ formula); their movement was severely restricted, and perhaps most importantly, they were not to return to Vietnam until the end of their contract (previously: only until the end of their training). In this sense, it resembles far more the capitalist model of migration, and this only intensified, when from 1985, the Bulgarian government began to dock the wages of the Vietnamese workers, in order to pay off the outstanding debts of Vietnam. The dawn of democracy, however, brought even worse things. The Vietnamese people in Bulgaria became scapegoats for both unemployment, and the inefficiency of the economy; the nation, quite literally, had to be purified of the ‘impure’ elements of it, with the notion that they were corrupting it, and anyway, they had to be grateful for the gracious benevolence of the Bulgarian state. That shrill tone was particularly clear in the right-wing newspapers and organisations that would eventually usher into the democratic transition. By 1993, the process of expulsing Vietnamese workers from Bulgaria was finished, with something like twenty thousand peoples having to leave as political parties and trade unionists alike threw around racist accusations. But, luckily, since then, Bulgaria has indeed been on the road of pure, white transition towards a free market economy, which brings warmth to one’s heart.
What can we conclude from here?
First of all, the creation of a hierarchy of nations. Intriguingly, perhaps not merely the two-tier relation we’re used to think of – in the above example, for an example, in higher to lower “order”, we can draw down from the USSR-Bulgaria-Vietnam; and a more contemporary relation would be that of Germany (and the U.K) needing cheap Polish labour, but significantly, then of Poland needing cheaper Ukrainian labour, which with the ongoing conflict, will be sure to continue coming in. That can truly produce a dizzying effect – particularly in imperialist nations such as France or Germany, where a Slavic worker can complain about being undermined by those god-awful Arabs who are willing to work for nothing! It is needless to say that this is devastating to solidarity and any sort of resistance against the capitalists.
Secondly, the fact is much of the migration debate has been posed, when it comes to the working classes, in purely negative terms. The argument has been made over and over that it drives down wages; that it degrades the “native” workers, and so forth. I would like to pose a different thesis. I believe that, at the very least, since the end of World War 2, migration has in fact benefited the Western working classes. This is not a straightforward relation – otherwise, xenophobia wouldn’t exist, and we wouldn’t have fascist mobs marching across the streets. The labour market has been restructured in such a way that there is a very peculiar re-distributing as to whom works what jobs; so, for an example, you have Bulgarians and Romanians picking asparagus; and then you have Filipinos working in nursing (more on that by comrade Simon, of course), and so forth. For the Germans, they get the high-level management, the white collar jobs. Of course, this isn’t all Germans, and this being a free market society, there are winners and losers – the losers go and join the AfD. But this isn’t all. The superexploited labour force that is being siphoned from abroad via imperialist violence lowers the costs of commodities, meaning that the German consumer, existing as he – or she – is better off than majority of humanity, can all live in comfort. This isn’t sustainable in the least, and breakdown is beginning to show its ugly face, especially as there is, in fact, a limit – physical, but also economical – to how much exploitation can be leashed out solely to the foreigners that we’d like to have out of sight. In other words, the moment is coming when even “native” Germans would be at the end of their respective bourgeois classes’ gunpoint. However, I do not believe that is the reason why Germans should struggle against that – or, perhaps, rather, it shouldn’t be the sole interest. While the sustainability of this regime is clearly becoming more and more clear, this will really result into a further scrap for what’s remaining (as we can see). No: I believe that this needs to end because it is unjust; the continuation of this rule brings yet further destruction upon greater humanity each and every day.