not have risen in the dramatic way that they did without the expansion and development of capitalism as a global social system. It's a kind of crude Luddism (machine-breaking) to think you can stop that process of development. It's worth noting the point that in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Latin America, the sites of European mass migration, all the periods of mass migration (the 19th century, and the 1950s and the 1960s in relation to Australia) have also coincided with a rapid rise in living standards.
It is almost a truism of trade union activity that the best time to press hard for improvement in wages and conditions is during the early stages of the upswing in the boom-bust cycle endemic to the capitalist system, and this upswing usually coincides with periods of increased migration.
What actually happens with mass migration is that the capitalist class always attempts to use the latest cohort of migrants as a source of cheap labour, to weaken trade unionism and the struggle for living standards. In most of the cases mentioned, the new migrants, being the objects of greatest capitalist exploitation, usually wise up pretty fast, and become involved in trade union and and other struggles for the economic and social interests of the whole working class.
It was like that in the United States and Australia in the 19th century and it has been like that in Australia in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The capitalist class wants a В«reserve army of labourВ», but what mass migration produces is a proletariat with real class interests, which always poses in real life the question of working-class organisation.
It is always wrong and unprincipled, from a socialist point of view, to try to stop migration. It is unethical to do so from the point of view of the working-class ethics at the core of Marxism. It's impossible to stop anyway, because of the powerful dynamism of the so far not expropriated capitalist system, a dynamism that continues to operate in the same framework as the equally pronounced tendency of the capitalist system to devastating and periodic crisis, which is also inherent in the system.
In migration matters, it is far better, both from the point of view of socialist ethics and practical politics, to accept the reality of migration under capitalism and to turn all energies towards uniting the working class, both migrants and those already here, in common struggle for their economic and social interests. In my long experience of the labour movement, left talk about the reserve army of labour in relation to migration has usually disguised an essentially anti-migration, and often racist content.
From the commencement of white settlement in Australia there was a constant shortage of labour, which slowed down capitalist development and led the representatives of the different capitalist interests to explore different sources of migrants for the Australian colonies. A number of assisted migration schemes were organised from the British Isles by the British and colonial governments and they satisfied the labour demand to some degree, although one constant idiosyncracy was that the assisted migrants included far too many rebellious Irish to make the British Australian ruling class feel comfortable.
From the 1840s gold rushes on, the constant shortage of labor, combined with the development of embryonic but reasonably effective trade unionism in the Australian colonies, forced the price of labour quite high, particularly from the 1860s through to 1890. This caused considerable comment throughout the capitalist world. Australia became quite famous for the high cost of labour, which the capitalist class resented and the working class celebrated.
Because of this perceived high cost of labour, various sections of the squatting elite toyed with the idea of ​​importing large numbers of Indian and Chinese coolies to keep wages down. They also kidnapped («blackbirded» in the racist language of the time) a lot of Kanaks (usually referred to in those times as Kanakas) from the South Sea Islands, with the same intention.
The ship owners tried to run coastal shipping in Australia with cheap Chinese crews. What they found very early on was that even the Chinese В«cooliesВ» and В«KanakasВ», once they landed in the Australian environment, started to get themselves organised. Kanaks in Queensland organised embryonic trade unions and had strikes. The Chinese started to organise a seamen's union, and Chinese in Melbourne organised a Chinese furniture workers union.
Despite the incipient development of trade unionism among the Kanaks and Chinese, the main response of the existing white colonial proletariat was to feel strongly threatened by В«cheaper coolie labourВ». Such a response meshed in with, and even subtly expanded and extended, the prevailing racist ideology of the Briti...
