[lbo-talk] Dean Baker on immigration

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu Apr 20 07:37:14 PDT 2006



> On Apr 18, 2006, at 10:08 PM, Carl Remick wrote:
>
> > There is no activity more natural or more central to the
> mechanism of
> > capitalism than setting desperate marginalized groups against each
> > another.

So there would be no social conflicts without capitalism?

I think part of the problem, not just with this thread, but with the political discourse in this country in general, that it goes for the "fast food for thought" - quick and conventional (for a particular political camp or school of thought) answers that make people *feel* that they understand what's going o, but in fact they understand less. This mode of thinking rests on a logical fallacy known as "pars pro toto," which consists of focusing on one, usually most salient, feature of a complex entity (an organization, a state, a society, an ethnic group) and treating it as the cause of all other properties and behavior of that entity. The most primitive form of that fallacy is racial or sex stereotyping - skin color or female reproductive organs (salient features) are seen as "causes" or "indicators" of everything else that a person does (sociologists call that "status generalization").

A more advanced, or perhaps insidious, form is ideological stereotypy e.g. in the form of communism bashing. By that logic, every social problem in, say, x-USSR or Cuba is attributed to its most salient feature - official ideology. The problem with this approach is that it really gives up a difficult intellectual task of analytical thinking - which consists of identifying and separating out specific threads, phenomena and causal effect in complex phenomena - and replacing it with "fast food for thought" solutions - simplistic answers that speak more to emotions than to reason.

Capitalism bashing belongs to the same category. It does not really try to grasp the complexity of modern social organization, it purges the notion of agency from the notion of causality except in its most primitive form - conspiracism or "great men" history - but instead provides simplistic answers causing adrenaline rush and thus filling the audience with proper emotional and moral indignation that passes for "understanding." In the end, emotions subvert reason. How American!

I have been following this thread for some time and it appears to me that the crux of controversy is which pars-pro-toto fallacy is better, immigrant-bashing or capitalism bashing? Clearly, there is no rational solution here because each appeals to emotions rather than reason.

The reality is that neither immigrants created strain in the US social welfare system, nor capitalism created conflicts and poverty (which is not the same as saying that it does not do much to eliminate them, or that some capitalists take advantage of them). Problems of similar nature also existed in socialist countries and did not involve any ethnic differences. For example, the influx of rural migrants to cities resulted in numerous social problems - from crime, to housing shortages, to culture clash, and to hostile attitudes of urbanites to "country bumpkins." In fact, blaming "country bumpkins" for all social and political problem was a popular theme in the 1970s which dove tailed with communism bashing (as communism was believed to "deliberately" move peasants to cities to "proletarianize" them). The fact was, however, that neither blaming the migrants not blaming the system addressed the real problems linked to migration: housing shortages, crime etc.

I do not have any easy answers how to reconcile potential conflicts between immigrant and local groups - but I a pretty sure they will not away, even when the revolution finally come. Therefore, one need to find a third way, beyond bashing immigrants and bashing the system.

Wojtek



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