"A perfect storm in the labour market": Donald Houston speaks to BBC Radio Orkney

UKICE Senior Fellow Donald Houston spoke to BBC Radio Orkney about post-Brexit and post-pandemic challenges facing the labour market in Scotland

[@Purple_flower09]

A further factor in the North West Highlands is older English people moving there to retire, pushing up property prices and using health and social services but not working. It's not easy to talk about that problem without sounding like a bigot.

[@gilgamecha]

It's the end state of capitalism predicted by Marx - maximum immigration, maximum exploitation, bare minimum wages.

[@danielwebb8402]

As you correctly show, he / you would have predicted "end state" 150 years ago, been wrong, said yeah but in 25 years time, been wrong, said yeah but in 25 years...... "Yeah OK, capitalism is awesome. I'd much rather be at 10th percentile today than 90th 200 years ago. But I uniquely know that graph has now peaked. I'd have said the same in 1900. And been wrong. But I'm right this time honest guv"

[@gilgamecha]

@@danielwebb8402 I don't think he ever put a time frame on it. Unless you have a quote?

[@Purple_flower09]

​@@gilgamecha I believe it's mistaken to include immigration here. As far as I can find Marx did not write that maximum immigration would coincide with the collapse of the capitalist system. Marx noted that Irish people were shipped off to England to force down the wages of English workers and to create the conditions in Ireland that most suited the colonialists. Irish and English proletariats were set against each other and this benefitted capitalists. Marx thought that labour should be mobile across state boundaries. Capitalism is international and therefore labour should be too. In that sense Marx was in favour of migration. He also recognised that capitalism would seek to profit from it. But this discussion is not about the end of capitalism but rather its routine workings. It's interesting that Marx thought capitalists would use migrant labour to force down wages. The same argument was used by some on the left in the Brexit debate. But most Marxists think workers are workers regardless of where they were born and need to organise internationally.

[@gilgamecha]

@@Purple_flower09 ya got me there