Capitalism, since its inception, has always meant forced displacement of the working masses from their places of origin. Always with the desire for domination, exploitation, and maximizing profits.
But human migration around the world has reached unprecedented levels. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs estimated the global number of international migrants at 281 million as of July 1, 2020. Recent capitalist-imperialist wars, combined with severe poverty and environmental crisis, have driven it to even higher levels. History has shown that immigrants have played, and will play, an important role in making the communist revolution.
There is a contradiction for the capitalists-imperialists. They need migrant workers to superexploit, but that increases the revolutionary potential of those workers.
Our displaced working-class families, including their children, are forming and will form the new ranks of soldiers in the rulers’ militaries. And the new ranks of industrial workers in the fields and factories in the new host countries. And, united with native born soldiers and workers, they will form a new movement for total emancipation.
As of May 2023, more than 110 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide. To date, more than 31,184 Palestinians have been killed and 72,889 injured. More than 85 percent of Gaza’s total population has been forcibly displaced due to the Israeli government’s fascist and genocidal military operations.
More than 10 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes since the start of the US/NATO vs. Russia war there.
Nearly 25 million people, half of Sudan’s population, need help and some eight million have fled their homes amid the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Capitalists and Imperialists, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States, have supplied weapons to that ongoing conflict.
In the Congo (DRC), since the beginning of 2024, another 940,000 people have been displaced by the ongoing war, making the total around 7.3 million.
The Congo is the second largest country in Africa, with the fourth largest population. It is strategically located at the center of the African continent. Its unparalleled natural resource wealth includes cobalt, copper, gold, tantalum, tin, diamonds, petroleum, and water.
Here, too, the major imperialists like China and the US dispute the area and continue to send weapons.
Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and the Congo are just a few examples where inter-imperialist rivalry is wreaking havoc on the masses of the world. There are many others. And as capitalist-imperialist rivalry intensifies, there will be more conflicts that will eventually explode into World War III.
Faced with the death and destruction of the imperialists’ World War I, the Russian masses mobilized under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party and overthrew the tsarist (and then the liberal capitalist) government, establishing the first workers’ state.
During the imperialists’ World War II, more than 14 million Chinese lost their lives. The masses mobilized under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and established workers’ power in 1949.
But both our Russian comrades and our Chinese comrades mobilized for socialism. They could not get to the root of exploitation, which was the existence of money. The leaders of both new workers’ states received higher wages while the rank-and-file workers received less. In the end, the wage system itself – buying and selling labor – was and continues to be the problem.
ICWP has learned that we need to mobilize the masses directly for communism. Not only must we completely abolish money, but also borders. No more nation states, nationalism, or wage slavery.
As the imperialist capitalist carnage escalates and as millions of our working-class families are displaced around the world, let us welcome them everywhere. As an immigrant comrade emphasized, “All of us together can once again overthrow the capitalist masters with communist revolution. We can establish a world of communist relations where every human being lives a dignified life free from exploitation and war. We have a world to win!”
Read Our Pamphlet: “Fight for the Day When No Worker will be Called Foreigner” here