But I haven't looked at the lit on brain drain and migration in a long time. What seems most terrible is the neo bracero program being pushed through Congress; it seems that housing vouchers will be acceptable as part of the pay package even if there is no housing for the workers (see Leo Chavez in Immigrants Out for a provocative analysis of migrant agricultural workers). Pete Wilson, who supported the proposition to end public aid to illegal aliens who pay more in sales taxes than they take in public benefits, supports the neo bracero program. The twists and turns of a sadistic demagogue who backs reactionary props to kick start a presidential campaign he can't even stay healthy enough to get off the ground!!!
Forgive the Marxist language, but capital seems intent on achieving a higher rate of exploitation.
Talking about Marx, here are a couple of passages which speak to deskilling and reskilling of labor in the context of capitalist dynamics (but they create great problems in interpretation):
"Thus although from a technical point of view, the old system of divsion of labour is throw overboard by machinery, it hangs on in the factory as a tradition handed down from manufacture, and is then systematically reproduced and fixed in a more hideous form by capital as a means of exploiting labour power. The lifelong speciality of handling the same tool now becomes the speciality of serving the same machine. Machinery is misused to transform the worker, from his [sic] very childhood, into a part of a specialized machine. In this way, not only are the expenses necessary for his reproduction considerably lessened, but at the same time his helpless dependence upon the factory as a whole, and therefore upon the capitalist, is rendered complete. Here, as everywhere else, we must distinguish between the increased productivity which is due to the development of the social process of production, and that which is due to the exploitation by the capitalist of that development." Capital, vol 1., Penguin, p. 547
"Modern industry never views or treats the existing form of a production process as the definitive one. Its technical basis is therefore revolutionary, whereas all earlier modes of production were essentially conservative. By means of machinery, chemical processes and other methods, it is continually transforming not only the technical basis of production but also the functions of the worker and the social combinations of the labour process. At the same time, it thereby also revolutionizes the dvision of labour within society, and incessantly throws masses of capital and owkrers from one branch of production to another. Thus large scale industry, by its very nature, necessitates variation of labour, fluidity of functions, and mobility of the worker in all directions. But on the other hand, in its capitalist form it reproduces the old division of labor with its ossified particularities. We have seen how this absolute contradiction does away with all repose, all fixity and all security as far as far as the worker's lifetime situation is concerned.; how it constantly threatens, by taking away the instruments of labor, to snatch from his hands the means of subsistence, and by suppressing his specialized function, to make him superfluous. We have seen too how this contradiction bursts forth without restrain in the ceaseless human sacrifices required from teh working class, in the recless squandering of labour powers, and in the devastating effectgs of social anarchy. This is the negative side. But if, at present, variation of labour imposes itself after the manner of an overpowering natural law that meets with obstacles everywhere, large scale industry, though its very catastrophes, makes the recognition of variation of labor and hence of the fitness of the worker for the maximum number of different kinds of labor into a question of life and death. This possibility of varing labour must become a gneral law of soical production, and the existing relations must be adapted to permit its realization in practice. That monstrosity, the disposable working population held in reserve, in misery, for the changing requirements of capitalist exploitation [the helpless dependence described above--rb], must be replaced by individual man who is absolutely available for the different kinds of labor required of him; the partially developed individual who is merely the bearer of one specialized social function must be replaced by the totally developed individual, for whom the different social functions are different modes of activity in turn.
"One aspect of this transformation, which has developed spontaneously from the foundation provided by large scale industry, is the establishment of technical schools. ANother is the foundation of 'ecoles d enseignement professionel' in which the children receive a certain amount of instruction in technology an din the practical handling of the various implements of labor...There is...no doubt that those revolutionary ferments whose goal is the abolition of the old division of labor stand in diametrical contradiction with the capitalist form of production, and th eeconomic situation of the workers which correspond to that form. However, the development of the contradictions of a given historical form of production is the only historical way in which it can be dissolved and then reconstructed on a new basis." p. 617ff
1. Only Pasinetti seems to have developed a similar theory of technological unemployment based on dynamics and death of industries, but Pasinetti does not theorize how towards the end of exploitation, capital must limit the development of labor in order to consign it to simplified easily trainable and replaceable tasks. The postkeynesians have precious little critical to say about the actual mode of production; they view society from the perspective of benevolent technocrats. For this reason, Pasinetti may underestimate how severe the problem of technological unemployment is *under specifically capitalist relations of production.*
2. Has anyone read Richard Sennett's new book on the insecurity of the working class?
best, rakesh