One World – One People

There are a hundred ways the profit system keep workers fighting each other, competing for scraps. It pits low-paid workers against lower-paid workers, those with bad housing against those with terrible housing. In each case, it is workers who suffer when they fight each other instead of the system that is their common enemy. Eliminating racism and xenophobia will take much more than general appeals to good will or the passage of the occasional legislation. Such approaches leave untouched the root causes of division. The underlying forces of the profit system make poverty, urban decay, and unemployment permanent problems, continually overwhelming patchwork efforts to improve the status of African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and others within the working class. The acquittal of cold-blooded murderers of African-Americans by the police provides white supremacists with a license to kill African-Americans at their pleasure.

To fight racism effectively requires two things -- a clear exposure of the capitalist roots of racism and a class-conscious unity of workers to oppose it. Only a class-conscious position can cut through decades of racist propaganda and expose the inadequacies of reformist or separatist approaches to this fundamental problem. It is impossible to work for a socialist society without fighting against racial divisions among workers. But it is equally impossible to mount any really effective campaign against racism that is not at the same time a fight against its capitalist cause. The stand against racism and xenophobia is but a part of the larger social question, that the fundamental division in society is along class lines (exploiters and exploited), and that the workers of all races have a common interest in solving the larger social question. All the evidence demonstrates that the many social questions arise from the exploitation of the many by the few and that it can be solved in but one way, by the socialist reconstruction of society. The World Socialist Movement appeals to the workers of all colours and national origins, and to all who recognise the evils of capitalism, to join us in our efforts to bring a speedy end to the capitalist system and to create the economic and social conditions for freedom, equality and universal brotherhood by establishing the free society of socialism, thereby eliminating the cause of racial prejudices and national chauvinism.

When slavery was abolished by the Civil War and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, the concept of "inferior" and "superior" races that had been fostered by capitalist necessity remained. It will take the successful outcome of yet another struggle -- the class struggle -- before workers of all backgrounds will have the power to collectively enforce their claim to "liberty and justice for all." In a class-free socialist society, with full democratic rights guaranteed for all, no one will be persecuted for their physical appearance or sexual orientation.