Im talking about the gulf. Social fascism would be the most apt way to describe them - social democracy, class collaborationist, delineation along ethnic lines, etc. But at the same time, it feels like westerners who might agree on this point would be doing so out of orientalist preconceptions of the gulf rather than on an actual clear understanding. They would be more loathe to call Norway or Sweden a social fascist state. Am I inventing a strawman?
Egh, that’s the reserve army of labor
Under the Gulf-state-model, they’re majority foreign to the Gulf nation-states, as far as I’m concerned, and {Gulf} Capital directs and controls them, however they please, by their travel documents, to pay and shelters… even if they make up the majority of the state’s population (Eg. UAE)
Particularly brutal, but not very unique among many others… (migrant labor in the U.S)
Thinking of Volume 1 again, the exploitation never stopped, it was simply off-shored, and the labor of the Global North made labor aristocrats, settlers, both or, instead placed in dominated Global South conditions…
I mean you’re not wrong about this but I also think you’re being a bit glib about it.
What goes on in KSA etc. makes visible the mostly-obscured relationship between developed countries and over-exploited countries, that’s true. But workers under these conditions are absolutely not protected by the labour laws of the countries they work within and they lack any sort of privileges or rights that are afforded to the KSA reserve army of labour proper. And I think that’s the major difference, where you really see the true face of social fascism laid bare; if these workers went on strike the government would crack down on them with impunity. The government where I am in wouldn’t go as far as the Qatari government would but they would absolutely punish any troublemaker migrant workers to the full extent of the law and then deport them.
We don’t have to imagine what the US would be like because we’ve seen plenty of historical examples of how the US government has crushed labour movements with military and police brutality, and we already know what CBP/the DHS does to undocumented migrants and refugees.
This is where it’s different imo. US citizens on strike aren’t likely to be disappeared en masse into CBP blacksites to be detained indefinitely before being booted into Mexico without any concern for their country of official residence.
That’s where it truly reveals itself as an arrangement of treats for the citizen and fascism for the rest; that’s where it is undeniably social fascism imo.
So, it’s the undocumented status and lack of citizenship that distinguishes and makes for the revocation of not only the Gulf reserve army of labor’s ‘appearance of equality as a seller of labor’, but even their liberal U.N given rights, at the impunity of the Gulf state…
Can you elaborate what it’s different to? You mean US citizens vs migrant labour?