| monica ross on Tue, 30 Mar 2004 11:38:36 +0200 (CEST) |
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| Re: <nettime> Marion von Osten: email interview with Brian Holmes |
How can the immense majority of you still go on believing that we live
in
the best of possible worlds?
Mind the gap, my friends...
best, BH
<bold><fontfamily><param>Geneva</param><bigger><bigger>Monday March 29,
2004<underline><color><param>0000,3333,6666</param>
The
Guardian</color></underline></bigger></bigger></fontfamily></bold><fontfamily><param>Geneva</param><bigger><bigger>
An employment agency involved in a government-backed initiative to
clean up the gangmaster industry has been supplying debt-bonded labour
to pack fresh produce for British supermarkets.......
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
</bigger></bigger></fontfamily>the erasure of the ' proletariat", and
the destruction of an organised and articulate working class has
produced the kind of gap where the enslaved labour of illegal migrants
has become an "invisible" commonplace. these socially " non
-existent' workers are a necessity for mass producers, particularily
in the production of our so called " cheap'' food. everytime we shop
for food we consolidate the "gap" which provides the illusion that we
are living in a decent and fair society. the end of ' the dictatorship
of the proletariat", or of unionised and regulated labour in this case,
facilitates the reproduction of bonded slavery as a substitute for the
proletariat.......
the reality is that thousands of bonded workers are doing the jobs
britons don't want to do, from picking fruit and flowers to packing
meat and there are plans to import even greater numbers of migrant
workers under controlled conditions...meanwhile the fear of immigrants,
of cultural swamping is a highly visible discourse....these dynamics of
multiple alienations repeat the scenarios of importing irish labour in
the 19th century, eastern european, carribbean and asian labour in the
1950's, but take it a step forward-backward,not only in terms of
property and social relations but in decreasing perception of these
relations to the point of invisibility. The construing of this
ambivalent 'gap', as brian holmes describes it, is a necessity for the
creation of a reality where slave labour conditions can be naturalised
...... are we not heading backwards as much as towards pre- and post-
marx conditions?
monica
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