For the working class, borders are nothing but monuments to the wasted lives of workers the world over. It was the trench warfare of World War I in Europe which wiped millions of young soldiers off the face of the earth. to carve out the borders that we know today in Africa and the Persion Gulf area: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine/Israel.
For the capitalists-imperialists these borders created their nations and their empires.
Four million people were killed and 35 million became refugees when the India/Pakistan border was created.
The genocide of some 90 million Native Americans from Argentina to Canada set the stage for carving out borders by the US and European imperialists throughout the Americas.
If the graves of these dead workers, soldiers and native populations had voices they too would surely chant like the activists today “We want a world without borders!” “No human being is illegal!”
Masses worldwide are beginning to raise these slogans. They are expressing their aspirations for a world without nations, borders or immigration laws.
Only worldwide communist revolution can make these aspirations a reality. Communism will eliminate all these artificial barriers, including fences and private property, created by class societies’ rulers to exploit and rule over us.
In communism no human being will ever exploit another. Exploitation was the material basis for the rise of class societies: slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and socialism.
Communism will destroy capitalism, its wage slavery, money and markets. Nothing will be bought or sold, especially our labor power. We will collectively plan, produce and distribute the fruits of our labor according to need.
Racism: an exclusive product of capitalism.
Without racism the capitalists couldn’t exploit and oppress us. They are the smallest weakest ruling class in history. Yet they must exploit and rule over ever increasing billions of us. Our historical task, however, is to be their grave diggers.
This contradiction puts them into a very precarious situation. We run their industrial complex. They train and arm us to defend them from other capitalists, to put down working class rebellions and revolutions, and to fight their wars for empires and profits.
We can win our brother and sister soldiers, as Russian soldiers were won one hundred years ago, to turn the guns around to make a revolution – this time for communism, not socialism.
Racism’s main role is to divide and weaken us, and especially try to prevent us from successfully organizing for communism.
Thus there are aspects of racism in all capitalist laws and policies. Immigration laws are no exception. From their very inception they were racist and anti-working class to the core.
The first immigration law was passed by US imperialism. It was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which excluded Chinese laborers from immigrating to the US. In 1901 Australia passed its first immigration law, called “white Australia policy.” Then came the US Immigration Quota Law of 1924 which restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, and in practice prohibited it from Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Patriotism: a product of the creation of borders and nations
Patriotism elevates the homeland or nation above everything else. Patriotism blinds us into supporting our capitalist class enemies against our working class brothers and sisters, nationally and internationally.
Nationally, it leads us into suppressing any revolutionary organizing to overthrow our capitalist masters. Internationally, it leads us to fight and die for the interests of one group of capitalists-imperialists against another.
Patriotism also engenders Xenophobia, which turns our immigrant brothers and sisters into enemies. It scapegoats them for the unemployment, rotten working conditions and lack of benefits that the capitalists impose on us to exploit us all.
The fight for communism is ever more urgent
As the capitalists’ crisis of over production intensifies, it pushes them to bigger and bigger wars, including world war. The capitalists will spare no efforts to win us to their rabid racism, xenophobia and patriotism.
We should also spare no efforts in organizing for communism: distributing Red Flag and recruiting to our Party. This will enable us to respond as a class to all anti-immigrant attacks by organizing political strikes against capitalism and for communism.
Our goal should be to put an end to capitalism-imperialism that needs racist immigration laws, borders and nations, and to build a communist world.
We are mobilizing the masses for a world where all workers are welcome everywhere. Instead of competing for slave labor jobs, we will cooperate as brothers and sisters, to work collectively to meet everyone’s needs—everywhere. We need a world where we learn from each other’s experience to create the best for our class, without money or profits. A world where all workers can travel anywhere to share with other workers, but where no one will be forced to leave their home and family to survive.
Join ICWP to fight for this communist world!
