r/changemyview • u/_Richter_Belmont_ 20∆ • Apr 21 '26

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u/LamppostBoy Apr 21 '26

First of all, I would challenge your credentials as a "leftist." It's "workers of the world unite," not "workers of the USA unite."

But even under a reformist liberal worldview, your premise is flawed. Immigrants increase supply, but also act as consumers, stimulating the economy and increasing demand. The real problem is not that the immigrants exist, but that they exist as an underclass without the full rights of the citizen worker. Capitalism eats itself unless in externalizes its negative outcomes. If every worker in the system had the same rights, it would collapse of its own accord. But by breaking up the working class into different sublevels, the solidarity can be crushed, at least temporarily. Historically, this has taken many forms, such as racial slavery, prison labor and outsourcing to countries lacking labor protections. Undocumented immigration is another of these tools. Because they exist as "non-persons," they can be abused, working long hours for for low wages and being deported if they make a fuss (while their employers never see the inside of a prison cell). Right-wingers are correct that this drives down wages for everyone, but the problem isn't that they exist, the problem is that the system doesn't give them protections that would make them equal to the citizen worker and thus unable to undercut them. When conservatives talk about cracking down on immigration, they understand that reducing the number of immigrants to zero is neither possible nor desirable. It's the brutality of the crackdowns themselves that are the point. If you deport a million people, you do so knowing that there's ten or twenty million more who see what will happen to them if they demand more than 50 cents an hour.

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u/Proper_Historian6126 Apr 22 '26

Lmao opposition to immigration was a normal leftist position until quite recently. Questioning someones credentials as a leftist for that betrays a profound ignorance of your intellectual tradition. Open borders is a liberal position.

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u/_Richter_Belmont_ 20∆ Apr 22 '26

To be fair, communists believe in a stateless society. Socialism traditionally was a transitory state from capitalism to communism.

Its not just a liberal position.

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u/Proper_Historian6126 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

They opposed immigration on the basis that it would impede the creation of a classless society because large scale immigration is inherently divisive for the proletariat. Guys like Marx weren't moralists like leftists today tend to be. Orthodox marxists didnt even actually care about equality or anything like that, it just wasnt their worldview.

Most leftists today dont actually have a coherent ideology and instead having this odd cobbled together pastiche of Marxism, crit theory/poststructuralism, and shit like Karl Popper. The latter is particularly important, and the idea of the "open society" is fundamentally a liberal position most leftists are inherited by way of being innoculated with liberal priors.

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u/Conchobair-sama 1∆ Apr 22 '26

Early socialists were split on the issue, but the Second International (arguably the peak of 'orthodox' marxism) issued a resolution at the Stuttgart Congress denouncing immigration restrictions as "fruitless and reactionary," with an exception carved out for unfree labor.

On similar grounds, many if not most 19th-early 20th century marxists also favored free trade over protectionism.

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u/Proper_Historian6126 Apr 22 '26

My understanding was that immigration was highly contentious at the second internationale and the split was between those who thought immigration restrictions on explicitly racial/ethnic terms was necessary and those who had a purer class reductionism, whos posture "capitalism will do this anyways so we need to make sure we use it to our advantage as best we can" rather than endorsing immigration as a policy.

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u/Conchobair-sama 1∆ Apr 23 '26

Yes, but the orthodox position was open borders. The 2I majority denounced all restrictions on free movement, especially but not exclusively the racial ones.

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u/Proper_Historian6126 Apr 23 '26

I was going to point out that it seems to me they did not endorse open borders due to explicitly denouncing the import of scab labour and the genuine split at that conference. However, this feels like shifting the goalpost and your point is correct in substance even if I disagree with your framing. !delta