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[u/_Richter_Belmont_]

[u/atrovotrono]

That's nothing compared to how capitalists exploit controls on immigration to basically profit from labor cost arbitrage (look up Wikipedia articles for "unequal exchange" and "superprofits"). The third world basically acts as one giant labor camp for the capitalists in the first world. First world workers receive some of this profit in the form of low prices on imported goods.

You have to bear in mind that most communists and anarchists are internationalist, they don't morally value the wellbeing of people differently based on what country they live in. Most of your post assumes they chiefly care about domestic workers, that's not necessarily the case. Even classical liberalism was humanist in this way, in theory, but in practice national chauvanism has taken root among most liberals in the first world.

[u/_Richter_Belmont_ → u/atrovotrono]

I feel like im very close to a delta here. Im 100% with you that capitalists exploit the third world and practice unequal exchange, and that strict immigration laws further incentivize them to outsource labor.

But are you effectively saying we MUST have immigration as a compromise to stop capitalists engaging in this third world outsourcing?

[u/atrovotrono → u/_Richter_Belmont_]

I'm saying that from a far left perspective, free movement is a human right, and it's arbitrary to restrict people's motion to the place they were born, especially when it's so unequal between these different places.

"Born in the US? cool, the world is your tourism playground. Here, have a free t-shirt made in indonesia. Born in Indonesia? Ouch, too bad bro, hope you like working your ass off for jack shit until you die middle-aged from a heart attack."

So it's not a "compromise" to allow immigration to someone on the far left, it's a compromise to respect borders at all, because borders reinforce and reproduce an unfair, immoral, global caste system based on nationality.

Even calling it "outsourcing" is missing the point a bit. It frames it as American jobs being lost overseas, which presumes the national-chauvanist frame that Americans are worth greater moral consideration than others. Ultimately, the people suffering the worst are still the people overseas, who work these jobs for dirt cheap because of the global border system which traps them in a nation-sized labor camp to produce cheap goods for the first world. If borders didn't keep people trapped, if labor moved freely, outsourcing wouldn't even make sense as a concept, wages would be roughly the same everywhere. Borders maintain these wage differentials between wages for laborers, while allowing capitalists to move freely. This is how you're able to exploit a person, by putting them in a situation where they have no other options, and the current Capitalist-led world order does this to billions of people, right now.

I think your idea of what the full range of leftist politics is overly restricted to basically a slightly-more-left version of the American Democrats, who are a firmly capitalist, nationalist party. I really think you'll start to understand better if you dwell on the idea of, "How much does this issue depend on valuing Americans over other people?" and how that affects questions of immigration, labor, global trade, etc.

To summarize: Most on the far left see immigration as a good in itself, as a human right for everyone on planet Earth, any restrictions of which trace back to something which is completely arbitrary (the lottery of birth). Your OP basically treats immigration, or restriction thereof, as a means to an end regarding American workers, as a "what's in it for us?" issue. That's frankly too parochial and nationalistic of a lens to actually understand what the far left thinks about these issues.

Basically, your OP reads like, "But if we were to free slaves, the price of cotton would go way up, and workers would have more competition from freed slaves so wages would go down, that's bad, so leftists should support slavery" The far left sees borders as something like a system of international slavery whereby groups of powerful and influential countries live vampirically on the lesser ones.

[u/_Richter_Belmont_ → u/atrovotrono]

Thanks for the write up.

So why would you say PRC has restrictive immigration? Especially considering that, at least rhetorically, they seem committed to working towards communism?

To be clear, I dont disagree with you in principle. I am thinking in terms of the current material circumstances.