Closing the Door (1/2)

WORKERS UNITE FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

We are facing the largest movement of refugees since the World War II. The number of people forced to leave their homes rose to a record 60 million last year - with most of those people fleeing Syria's horrific war or coming from counties such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Iraq. Migrants have been making appalling and terrifying journeys and all too often dying in the process. People don't risk death unless they are desperate for life. People don't decide to uproot families unless that is the only choice available. But the response so far has been to vilify the people risking everything to get here, while fortifying borders: building more walls, erecting more fences, sending more militarised patrols, and raising the possibility of bombing the "death boats". As the walls go up around the borders, they have blocked our capacity to see the connections between foreign policies and the people living beyond our fortified frontiers. Rather than dream of permanent relocation, refugees often wish to return home, if they could. 'Humanitarianism' begins to take on another dimension with walls and warships to turn back refugees seeking political asylum and sanctuary. Civilians have little option but to flee their homes from war and conflict, fueled and financed by arms supplied by the Big Powers and their proxies. Immigrant movements will not stop by razor wire. It will only force immigrants to change direction not destination.

Any historian will tell you that the UK is a country built up by immigrants. Everyone if you go back far enough is either an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant. Throughout history immigrant labour had very solid benefits to society and informed critics know this to be the case. Immigration has always been a difficult issue for the labour movement. Why is it difficult? Because ‘common sense’ seems to demonstrate a central principle of capitalist economics: employment is a function of the simple supply of labour. The view exists that unemployment therefore occurs because there are too many workers competing for jobs, not because the system, the employers or the government determine it. To admit foreign workers, in such a view, is insanity. The real world is not so simple. Immigration is only part of a complex set of problems concerning the world’s labour force. Whenever we have high unemployment, those representing the interests of big business attempt to cover up their own responsibility for this situation by blaming working people.

Many depart their homelands, leaving behind their families and friends. Obviously they would not leave in large numbers and emigrate were it not for the fact that the conditions they are forced to live in are desperate. There can be no doubt that dire need compels people to abandon their native land, and that the capitalists exploit the immigrant workers in the most shameless manner. They leave behind unemployment and hunger to find here discrimination and prejudice. The wealthy travel because it broadens the mind they say but the poor travel through necessity. Those politicians who have never felt it necessary to defend workers’ wages or standards of living are the same ones who leap to the defence of British workers from the ‘marauding Africa hordes’. For centuries the blame for terrible social conditions – slum housing, sweatshops and unemployment has been laid at the door of the immigrant. When working people are stricken by crisis and in the times of social turmoil and upheaval, the nationalists thrust themselves to the fore. A picture is being painted of the Government that has no real control over issues such as immigration. This notion is very far from the truth. The Government is actually responsible for much of the “popular” anti-immigration feeling that is expressed, as a working class divided along national and racial lines is no threat to the capitalist class. Government also claim that “popular pressure” leads it into setting the limits and controls. Lift the illegality off the shoulders of those accused of being illegal and threatened with deportation and you have workers who can organise and strive for higher wages and conditions. All the mainstream politicians of the major parties have indulged in attacks on immigrants and immigration for years. It is necessary for them to have a scapegoat to blame for the ills of the political system that we live under and the immigrant, present throughout history, has always served as such a scapegoat.

The growth of migration is enormous and continues to increase. The conditions in their homelands are the direct result of capitalist exploitation. For many decades the class which is still exploiting us has been exploiting them in a most inhuman way. The capitalists drain the wealth from these countries in the form of raw materials or unprocessed agricultural products – for which they pay little – and send in return expensive manufactured goods. They never allow the development of self-sufficient industries in these countries for they would thereby forfeit their supply of cheap raw materials. The working people and peasants of these countries are therefore completely at their mercy. If e.g., the one-crop happens to be sugar, they must starve while the cane ripens and there is no work. If market prices fall, they must suffer wage cuts. Can't they find work in their own country? The answer is no, and one of the reasons for that is globalisation. Large corporations like to boast how their investments help underdeveloped countries grow in industrial strength. The truth is a lot different. When corporations enter an underdeveloped country, they provide jobs for just a handful of people — at the cost of distorting and retarding economic growth of the country as a whole. Thus, they are unable to develop many of the basic industries because the new business enterprises are crushed by giant multi-nationals. When corporations invest money, large profits are sent back to Wall St or the City of London for the bankers and shareholders of the corporation. Thus, money is drained out of many countries of Asian, African, and South American countries, to enriching the wealthiest segments of society.

The employing class incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavour to keep them disunited. Class-conscious workers, realising that the break-down of all the national barriers by capitalism is inevitable try to help to enlighten and organise their fellow-workers. Owing to the immaturity of the labour movement, to the lack of a socialist outlook and of working class theory, they were easily swept in behind the chauvinist policy of the capitalist class. The age-old tactic of the capitalist ruling class is to break the unity of the working class. The ruling class has long known that if it must control people whose numbers are much greater than its own, sheer physical strength is not enough. The ruling class must DIVIDE in order to RULE. Meanwhile they distract the working people of Britain from their own plight. The working class must remember that in their unity is their strength. That the strength of the working class is all powerful because it is based on the determination to end all oppression, all exploitation of man by man, and to oppose all subjection of man on grounds of sex, nationality, colour, or creed. Unlike the unity of the capitalists it is based on a total and enduring unity of interests. But in the absence of working class unity, the strength of the capitalists is greatly increased. Nothing could have been more dangerous for the ruling classes than that of native and foreign born workers should make common cause, as they are doing today, and instead of fighting each other join forces and fight employers. There is indeed a need for ‘integration’ and of ‘multi-culturalism’ but no socialist is going to be associated with moves to rob people of their culture and customs.

When they say: – “The immigrants are taking your jobs,” we answer: – This is a lie. It is not true that increased immigration leads to increased unemployment. It is the capitalist system which causes unemployment as it did in the 1920s and the 30s. Then the scapegoat were the Irish. Another lie blaming the newcomers for the housing shortage and the increased demand upon the social services such as the hospitals and schools. It is necessary constantly here to emphasise the important contribution made to those social services. Nor do not forget that a higher proportion of migrants from Eastern Europe, for instance, entered the country as fit and available workers, whom the capitalist State is not require to “raise” and “educate”. Immigrants and refugees are not a drain on the social security system – in fact, the evidence shows they contribute far more to the system than they receive in return.

Capitalism needs nation states – to regulate relations between firms; to impose common laws and currency which aid capital accumulation; to organise labour markets and the provision of education, transport and healthcare and to try to prevent recession turning into economic collapse. In fact the deeper the crisis, the greater the tensions between firms, the more the competition heats up, the more the state is needed to impose some sort of ‘order’. So today, far from the state disappearing, it plays an increasingly important function in the regulation of the world economy such as we see in Europe and the Euro. The state also has a role to play in aiding and assisting in the exploitation of the workforce – hence the use of immigration controls. On the one hand those who own and control the wealth want the freedom to make as much profit whenever and however they want. But at the same time the system is based on oppression and exploitation, so they demand the right to restrict the freedom and movement of labour. These restrictions take the form both of attacking trade unions at ‘home’, and also controlling those that are forced to seek to pastures new.

Immigration control has nothing to do with ‘flooding’ the labour market or any such nonsense. Automatically, immigration corresponds to the needs of the economy. Similarly, in close capitalist logic, immigration does not in any way aggravate the shortage of social services, since the immigrant brings with him not only his or her body, which has to be housed, but also his and her work, which helps to build the house. Immigration control is nationalistic legislation. It cannot be contemplated by a socialist, for its whole rationale is founded on the nation state and the feverish competition in which that nation state is engaged. This struggle between nation states has two main effects. It splits and divides workers from their main objectives, and, in the long run, weakens their strength all over the world. While the battle between nation states continues there remains no chance for a switch in resources from the ‘developed’ to the ‘underdeveloped’ world. The socialist case does not stop with opposition to border control but extends to making it clear that we are looking for a system where people are not forced through economic circumstances to leave the homes and cultures they know and understand. Socialists must make it clear that they are opposed to anti-immigrant propaganda, opposed to immigration control, not for any abstract principle, but because of the need of workers of all nationalities, to forge a weapon which, unlike immigration control, will carve out the highest standards of life and living for all workers.