Skipping the parts on which I agree with you, I'll begin here:
>i would assume a marxist analysis would
>begin from a critique of the notion of supply and demand as an axiomatic
>principle in the formation and decomposition of the labour market, not
>least because labour is (to paraphrase) not a commodity like any other.
You might want to develop the above. Anyhow, my point as to job competition is mainly that within the horizon of capitalism, that's how many workers experience it. A default consciousness, so to speak, in the absence of class consciousness that seeks the end of capitalism.
>vietnamese migrants in australia tend to be,
>rhetorically at least, anti-communist; but quite committed to opposing
>anti-immigrant politics.
The politics of immigrant communities is a bit more complicated than that (I don't know about specifics of Australia -- tell us more if you get around to it). Often, the shops where immigrants work are owned by immigrant capitalists, who in turn subcontract for large corporations.
>simply because the union movement has failed to organise the
>informal and casual sectors (which it clearly is now learning to do because
>this is the regular condition of a substantial part of the workforce) does
>not mean that workers should be represented as reflexively
>anti-immigrant -- only that the union movement, those organisations which
>purport to represent workers, should.
I don't think workers should be represented as "reflexibly anti-immigrant," though I don't think workers are sanguine about "open borders" argments either. In short, one shouldn't underestimate the state of affairs, but one doesn't want to overestimate it, by bending the stick in the opposite direction too much. Don't many workers think like Max and Tom, when it comes to import and immigration? If not, we don't have to have this discussion at all. We'll just move on and get things done.
>c) i think the problem with the ultra-left in the US, unlike that of the
>EU, has yet to take up in any serious way the issue of border controls.
We really don't have any ultra-left to speak of. Unless you are talking about the Eugene anarchists here, the Spartacists there, etc., but in my view they have so little power that it doesn't make a difference whether or not they take up border controls as an important issue. So the "problem" is irrelevant as far as I am concerned, but when you speak of the ultra-left, you might have something else in your mind, for all I know. The problem I'm concerned about is the absence of the well-organized socialist left. (What we have instead is scattered individual socialists & grouplets, occasionally "networked," as Chuck0 would say.)
>d) perhaps most important of our different conceptions: xenophobia is not
>i think a symptom (though it certainly remains the case that to even begin
>to speak about _how_ xenophobia works, one would have to refer to a
>symptomatology of the experience of capitalist antagonisms); but an
>important _means_ of class decomposition.
We don't disagree here at all.
>anti-border control activism is an integral
>part of forming an internationalist organisation
Surely, as with anti-racism, anti-sexism, etc. In the case of the USA, however, the ruling class & governing elite in this country have never respected other countries' borders (nor treaties with the First Nations). If we could force them to, that would be a great leap forward.
>e) yes, most migrations occur between developing countries. but what
>makes them "more complicated"? i can't see it
Open borders sound good on paper, but insecure borders are often symptoms of, and contribute in turn to, a very weak, or barely viable, above-ground economy -- an economy fundamentally dependent on underground smugglings of everything from cars and TVs to drugs and weapons. "Anti-border control activism" makes sense only where the state is actually functioning enough to control the borders to begin with. As is often said, under capitalism, the only thing worse than being exploited is not being exploited. The same goes for the state under capitalism -- the only thing worse than living under state power is not living under state power and instead being at the mercy of competing local & foreign powers, from gangs to international "aid" orgs.
Yoshie