Capitalism must go

Workers have no country.

We have a world to win

Wipe the nationalist, xenophobic, slavers away from your mouth. Immigrant workers are not scabs. Every country now is part of an integrated global economy and class structure. It is the capitalist class's country and the capitalist class's world. Why should workers, who produce all the wealth in the world be denied the right to go where they please to engage in economic activity, or be restricted in their movements, while the parasite capitalist class can export their capital or exploit workers in wealth making opportunities for their self-enrichment, anywhere they damn well please without let or hindrance? Why should workers on benefits (reserve army of wage-enslaved labour for future exploitation by the capitalist class) have to jump through bureaucratic red-tape hoops, for the basic human need of a place to live, while the capitalist parasite class can have luxury homes all over the world? Why should the world’s workers, who produce all of the wealth, have to put up with inferior housing, while the parasite class live in mansions? Stuff the landlords. Immigration is hardly a factor in governments, Labour and Tory stopping building council houses and encouraging their sale, with no 'like for like' new builds.  Immigrants are not the cause of the housing crisis. They suffer the consequences just the same as we all do. The problem is capitalism's production for sale with private, corporate and state ownership of resources by the minority global and national capitalist parasite class. Food, housing, heating and clothing could be freely available as tap water used to be in a sane, democratic, production for use, free access, commonly owned post-capitalist society.

The idea that immigrants can only have a negative effect on wages and living standards is a common one. Nigel Harris in ‘The New Untouchables’ quotes research that argues that ‘modern econometrics cannot find a single shred of evidence that immigrants have an adverse impact on the earnings and job opportunities of natives of the United States’. And he gives the example of the Los Angeles economy which expanded in the 1970s, largely as the result of increased demand caused by legal and illegal immigration.

Likewise the increase in immigration in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s did not lead to increased unemployment – rather the massive explosion in unemployment levels in the 1970s and beyond was caused by the boom-bust cycle of the capitalist system itself. Secondly, immigrants and refugees are not a drain on the social security system – in fact, as Harris shows, they contribute far more to the ‘system’ than they receive in return. Whether you look at Caribbean immigrants who came to Britain in the 1960s, few of which drew retirement pensions, or whether you take Mexican migrants to California, where a 1980 study found that less than 5 percent received any assistance from welfare services, and in all sectors, except education, they paid far more than they received – a net balance sheet shows that the ‘host’ nation gains far more than it gives in return.

Furthermore, migration has another very favourable benefit for the ruling class in the ‘host’ country – namely that they don’t have to contribute to the cost of raising and educating the immigrant worker.

It is the system of capitalist production that produces unemployment, homelessness, destitution and crumbling health services, – not workers, be they ’indigenous’ or foreign. The bosses hope to keep the worst-off sections of workers fighting with each other over shrinking pieces of a small pie instead of uniting to fight for a decent life for all.

The rationale of immigration control is that such chauvinist legislation is founded on the nation state and the feverish competition in which that nation state is engaged. It splits and divides workers from their main objectives, and, in the long run, weakens their strength all over the world. It cannot be contemplated by a world socialist.

The only possible attitude of progressive workers, is opposition to immigration control. We have to reject all laws that divide the working class into legals and illegals. It is the height of treachery to our class and we would do well to remember that the working class stretches far beyond Britain’s borders. It is blatant racism, and opportunism to opt for a policy of blaming the immigrant for all British workers’ woes, even if this will strike a chord with the basest instincts of many workers.

Before anything constructive can be done, capitalism must go and, with it, the artificial division of the world into separate, competing states. This leads inevitably to war, when the capitalist parasitic class thieves fall out. (Business by other means). War and poverty are inevitable concomitants of capitalism. We need to abolish the out-moded and old-fashioned division of the world into nation states. Instead we need to cooperate on a world basis to meet our material needs and energy requirements.

A choice of extreme Tory cuts or less extreme Labour cuts. No, it is no choice. Capitalism must go. A plague on all parties who wish to retain capitalism. Socialism should be hostile to all the parties of capitalism, Red, Blue, Green, Tartan or whatever flag they drape over their wage-slavery administration exploitative activities. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It comes into the world oozing blood form every pore.

Only workers themselves can bring to fruition the post-capitalist revolution of free-access, delegated democracy, production for use, a price-free, wageless, moneyless, society. Business is not 'people friendly'. Real socialism will do away with the business of exploiting workers in return for a wage or salary and channeling profits to the few. Dissolve all government 'over' you and elect yourselves into common ownership and democratic control over all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

The socialist alternative to the profit system is:

• common ownership: no individuals or groups of individuals have property rights over the natural and industrial resources needed for production.

• democratic control: everybody has an equal say in the way things are run including work, not just the limited political democracy we have today.

• production for use: goods and services produced directly to meet people's needs, not for sale on a market or for profit.

• free access: all of us have access to what we require to satisfy our needs, not rationed as today by the size of our pay-cheque or state hand-out

The socialism we are espousing takes care that no elites can emerge, with a majority revolution. 

Firstly: Production for use creates a superabundance of necessities, so hoarding will be silly) when we all have the collective power and any democracy is delegatory, with recall-able delegates, when we need to use them, locally , regionally and globally. This, rather than representative democracy as presently where we surrender power to elected or unelected political elites. Secondly: Socialism is administration 'of resources' rather than, capitalist government, 'over people.

Capitalist bourgeois democracy is flawed in this regards as you seem to have figured, but perfectly adequate, to run top down administrations 'over' people, thus entrenching power, as all previous revolutions have been minority led ones to establish minority class dominance, although they used the majority to achieve their aims. There will be no government over people in the post-capitalist commonly owned world. This is an essential feature of minority ownership in capitalist class society. In a classless, commonly owned society, government ceases to exist as an oppressive necessity, loses this feature and becomes an administration of resources. People will organise wealth production and distribution themselves, locally, regionally and globally. In a real delegatory democracy rather than a representative government on behalf of a ruling elites. All wealth will spring, as it does presently, from labour. The difference will be as it is a production for use society, utilising the technological potential capacity of the present, to produce a superabundance of necessities, instead of rationing it, stifling production through the market necessity to profit for a few. There will be no means of exchange as markets cease to exist, when all wealth is owned in common. Don't follow leaders. Elect yourself instead to a democratic post-capitalist system of production for use and free access.

"From each according to their ability to each according to their needs".

Wee Matt