Migration, Etc. (was Re: Wen Ho Lee Support)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>From Angela to Max:
>> To me the term "internationalism" connotes an
>> overarching, radical vision of worker solidarity.
>
>in order to organise nationally, workers have to take a leap out of a
>particular occupation and/or firm, have to account for different laws,
>different occupations, different cultural practices, etc -- in short, to
>see themselves as a national working class, a whole series of debates over
>those differences gets provisionally resolved and remains contested in an
>ongoing way.   who or what gets posed as representative of such a class
>formation is always a matter of conflict and debate.  we always touch on
>those debates when we discuss which issues should be granted strategic
>and/or organisational priority (childcare, wages, health care, welfare,
>etc).    the leap to an internationalist conception of working class
>organisation supposes all of those debates on a grander scale, and unless
>you want to presuppose that there is some natural and uncontested unity
>which obtains within national working classes -- or rather that workers
>within a particular country confront the same sets of laws, economic
>histories whose unit is national, or even suggest the need for the same
>organisational models in all national sectors of the economy, to name a
>few --  then claiming that internationalism is abstract or 'overarching'
>doesn't make sense.

Let's take a look at an example from steel labor.

*****   In the late 1850s, Pittsburgh-area puddlers - skilled workers who
controlled key steps in the ironmaking process - responded to wage cuts by
organizing the Sons of Vulcan, which they'd reorganize and attempt to raise
to nationwide status as the National Forge in 1862.  But the National Forge
had just 600 members in 1868, only 3,331 by 1873.

Labor's focus remained on skilled workers for years, leading to the 1876
formation of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers of
America. Organized along craft lines, the Amalgamated grew to some 24,000
members before the strike at Homestead, where it had strong community
support though it included only about one millworker in five.

The Amalgamated's influence at Homestead was attributable in part to Andrew
Carnegie's differences with even more ruthless rivals.

He tolerated small, local unions so long as they didn't seek to influence
matters he considered management's alone, link with organizations elsewhere
or conduct strikes.

But as Carnegie introduced automated processes that needed only unskilled,
mainly immigrant labor, skilled workers' influence with management waned.
<http://www.ghplus.com/SteelWorking/steel8.htm>   *****

Labor radicals responded to the changes in the organization of production
by changing their organizing scope, and the the Steel Workers Organizing
Committee introduced industry-wide organizing, leaving behind the focus on
skilled workers.  Now, in the context of transnational production,
industry-wide organizng of necessity demands internationalism.  The mode of
organizing either responds to changes in production and transforms itself,
or else it is doomed to frustration.

Yoshie