Working class people are tired of living in poverty, tired
of living payslip to payslip, tired of seeing the products of their hard
efforts evaporate before their very eyes. The times are tough for many of us,
where we don't know how we're going to survive. Politician after politician
makes empty promises, and still there's no relief for us workers. So we start
to look around at who to blame, and it's easy enough... we blame black people,
brown people, immigrants. It's simple enough. We're in competition with these
people for jobs and resources, so it seems like a logical enough conclusion to
come to. Historically, we've always been at odds with foreigners. We can better
relate to others born here, no matter how poor or rich. They're more like us,
and that's something we can identify with, come to terms with. So, obviously,
our natural enemies become those not from here.
The only problem with this idea
is that we've had it wrong for centuries. The lynch-mob approach, the
ganging-up on victims defined as of lesser importance, appeals to bullies,
whose humanity is stunted and who lack any notion of fair play. We've been kept
blind to the true nature of what is really going on. Look around. Who fills council
estates and inner city slums with us? Who works in the factories or fast food
restaurants with us? Who is beside us working in the fields, picking produce
that we'll never really be able to afford? Is it rich people? Hell no, it
isn't. It's brown people, black people, yellow people. It's people with different
accents than us. They are the people that are in similar situations to us,
living paycheck to paycheck, suffering like we do. So why then would we view
them as our enemy? When you walk into your workplace tomorrow, where are the majority
of the blacks? Or brown-skinned people? Or migrants? Are they in positions of
power over us? Sure, a few might be. But where are the majority of those that
are at our workplace? That's right: side by side with us, experiencing the same
drudgery and wage slavery as us. So, logic might tell us that they should also
be side by side with us in our fight for liberty and an end to oppression.
Wouldn't that make more sense than working side by side with the same people
that rob our paychecks and swindle us out of the products of our labor?
The true interests of workers lie with other workers, no
matter what their race or natuonality. Other workers, of all races, are
exploited. We are exploited. We work to barely meet our needs, while bosses and
the people in charge profit from that labor. We are born and we die in squalor
or relative poverty while the rich and the politicians live in the lap of
luxury. Who are these rich people? Who are these politicians? Tonight when we
go to bed in our overcrowded apartments, our small damp houses they are the
ones who will go to bed in luxury, in comfort, with no worries at all.
The blunt reality is that working class people have been
used by rich people to colonise for, kill for, work for, and then better the
living standards of those same white rich people, all the while sacrificing our
own needs, wants, aspirations, and even lives. It really is as simple as that.
No one denies the history of what has happened at working people's expenses.
Wars, poverty, homelessness, wage slavery... these are all ills created by
someone, and perpetuated by us... the same workers who suffer these ills. For
centuries we've been used by the rich among our own country to promote their
agenda and suffered because of it. Yet, somehow, we've still been convinced
that our allegiance is to our nation, to these same rich elite that would just
as soon see us die as they would be to help us as fellow citizens. Let's get
real, how often do the rich actually give handouts to us poor kin-folk? Do you
really think they care at all about our well-being? Where's the allegiance from
them, the people that put us in the worst situations we face and spew out the
racist, xenophobic speeches?
The heart of the matter is that we've been too busy fighting
the people who should naturally be our allies against these injustices. The
rich have used our skin colour against us, have blinded us with their
nationalism and patriotism into fighting other working people of other nationalities
while they sit on the sideline and reap the benefits. For far too long, the
ignorant stooges of the wealthy within our own class used words like "red"
and "commie" at folk that may have finally started to awaken to the
truth of what's really happening. Real socialists hate Lenin, hate Stalin, hate
Mao. But we also hate Cameron, Merkel and Obama. These people, all of them, are
the ruling elites that we despise, who live in relative luxury while the rest
of us work away our very existence to barely eat.
The time is now actually better our lives. It's time to see
who our friends must be. For starters, we have to reject the ridiculous notion
that immigrants from other countries are our enemy, that they are somehow
stealing our jobs, that they somehow really threaten us. Let's get real. Who's
really stealing our jobs? Who closes the factories, relocate the offices,
off-shore the jobs. Who's really stealing our jobs? Poverty stricken Eastern
Europeans or rich CEOs? We're fed ridiculous ideas of the "invading" foreigners.
If we're busy fighting asylum seekers at the border, and busy trying to round
up all the "illegals" working in restaurants then we're too busy to
fight that real enemy, that one that keeps eluding us, the ruling class we keep
talking about. If we want to defend our families and our communities, then fight
our real enemy, the "enemy within" , our employers and landlords but
in reality, we're weakening ourselves even more by attacking fellow workers. The
rich people have us so confused that we'd rather be on the border hunting for foreigners
than actually fighting those people that create the social conditions that we
all collectively suffer in. Our blind hatred of non-native people will continue
to be the nails in our coffins (Other nails will be the attitudes we show
toward women, the old and the young, people with different sexual and gender
identities, people with disabilities, and people of different religions.)
The rich have been very keen on dividing us up as much as
they can, by distorting and magnifying existing divisions and differences among
those of us that suffer at their hands. We would rather vote for somebody that
stands against giving sanctuary to the suffering even though he will still
steal our money and exploit us economically. We consistently get used just to expand the
power of those already above us. We'd rather fight against the newcomers than
actually organise for higher pay and better conditions.
Deep down, we all know that no matter who we vote for, we're
still going to be screwed, and we're still going to be ranting about our jobs
being stolen or the Roma being too ‘criminal’while
ignoring the rich that rake in the profits and power. Wake up! We've fallen for
this deceit for far too long! No Farage or UKIP is going to save us. Only we
can do it... together, as people of all lands and backgrounds that are sick of
living like this!
This is an open call to ignore the baiting of the right-wing
EDL/BNP, to ignore the racist allegiances that the rich try to get us to buy
into, to ignore the illogical and ridiculous calls among the ignorant among us.
This is a call to reject the idea that our allegiance is somehow determined by
what skin pigment we have or the place of our birth, no matter whether our real
life situations are so different. Our enemy is the capitalist class. Our friends
are those people who are forced to work for a living. Until we get these simple
ideas into our head, then we're doomed. Doomed to repeat everything that's
happened for the last centuries. We'll still be here trying to climb out of the
squalor we find ourselves in, and our children will inherit that destiny as
well, and their children after them, and so on... until finally, a generation
of working people realises that we've been tricked. That we've been used by our
masters. To meet other working people who really want a life worth living, you
can join the Socialist Party. Hurry.
There's no time to lose. We've been losing for too long.
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