All the major corporations in the 1960s in particular found themselves suffering from
the problem of scarcity of labor. They didn't have enough labor, and scarcity of labor meant
they had to start to pay higher wages, and better with contracts. And so what seemed like,
in a way a paternalistic concession to the workers in 1945 in terms of better contracts,
by the time you get to the mid-1960s what you're talking about is a situation where
the working class is quite powerful because of the scarcity of labor.
And what the Civil Rights Act did was to say well actually where labor can start to flow more freely
into the monopoly procter. That was one of the consequences. Labor can actually start to-- black
labor can start to imagine living in a suburb. In fact that didn't really happen very much, but
it was it was theoretically possible. But there was another reform in 1965 which is absolutely
crucial to this story. And that reform was the reform of the immigration laws. Up until 1965
immigration from Europe would be based on a quota system. You know, the Italians had plenty of
spots because, you know, historically they've been very important.
British people, Germans and the like. So it was it was based essentially on giving priority
to those immigrant groups which had come into the country in the 19th century. So the quota system
was very, very important. And what that did was to hold say that you know people from Latin America
can't come in, people from the Caribbean can't come in, people from Asia, hard to get in. So
in the 1960s that was the situation. But in 1965 all of that quota system was was abolished,
and that of abolition meant that the United States was basically saying it was open to
bring in new labor resources from all around the world, no matter what their color or what their
provenance. This was, I think, very significant moment. And it was a very significant moment
that was shared across the capitalist world. Scarcities of labor were everywhere being felt.
And it's astonishing now when you when you read about it but in the 1960s West Germany
(as it then was) was subsidizing the import of Turkish labor. It was bringing in Tturks and
encouraging the Turks to come in and labor. The French were subsidizing the import of
North African labor (the Maghrebians as they were called) from Algeria, Tunisia and the rest of it.
The Swedes were bringing in from Yugoslavia and from Portugal. The British were opening up to the
British empire, saying basically "we need you." In fact, immigration was seen by the corporations as
one of the key means by which you could undermine working-class power. And therefore there was a
broad support amongst the corporate capital for immigration policies that were relatively open,
and which would allow a challenge to be made through immigration to working-class power.
And this, I think, was kind of a major major feature. Connected with the Civil Rights Act,
what that did in this country was very, very simple. It introduced the idea that big labor,
and in fact the power of labor in general, could be undermined by
the import of labor, and that imported labor could be of any color any provenance. In other words you
had to open yourself up to that. The same was true in Europe. What this did was to actually boost
a long history of anti-immigrant feeling. It was this moment which led to all sorts of shifts
going on. And it was the moment when the white working class
was feeling threatened by immigrant labor of different color and the like. Now,
then this issue of immigration started to become significant to the degree that we are still faced
with these problems of immigration. They have their roots. And this is where the long duration
comes in, they have their roots back in the 1960s when immigration was used by corporate capital
to undercut the power of the working class.
But the anti-immigrant politics these days is always thought of as a cultural question,
whereas back then it clearly had its roots, clearly had its roots, as a labor question.