Against the attack on the conditions of all workers, natives and immigrants! Against the “Security Decree!” For a United Working Class Trade Union Front!

ICP Intervention on immigration distributed at a Rank and File Union demonstration in Rome, Saturday 15 December 2018

For years the living and employment conditions of workers have been deteriorating, subjected to attack by the capitalist class – national and international – which hides its dictatorship over the working class through the false and misleading democratic theater that only serves to turn the puppets that are in the government.

The so‑called „security“ decree, recently passed by the right‑wing government, reveals the true face of the ruling class forced to reduce the so‑called „democratic spaces“ to divide the working class and repress their struggles. It goes against the struggles of workers, turning roadblocks into criminal offences, punishable by imprisonment of up to 6 years (12 for the organizers), increasing the penalties against the occupants of houses, extending the prohibition of participation in events. At the same time, it attacks the unity between native workers and immigrants, forcing the latter to be illegal, eliminating the humanitarian protection permit, the main channel for regularizing asylum seekers; moreover, it doubles from 3 to 6 months the maximum period of detention in the Stations for Identification and Expulsion and provides for the revocation of the residence permit and also of citizenship to immigrants accused or convicted of certain crimes.

This decree does not serve to reject immigrants but only to make their situation even more difficult and precarious, to make workers more blackmailable and therefore more exploitable, with undeclared work, without contract, without rules, for starvation wages.

The question is not whether to accept or reject immigrants. Immigration from countries devastated by the economic exploitation of imperialist states that produces wars, famine and hunger is an unstoppable process that affects tens of millions of people all over the world and there are no walls or barriers that can stop it.

The central issue for the proletariat is to find unity in the struggle, to unionize immigrant workers, to fight together to overcome any division that may foment downward competition between proletarians, to demand for them the possibility of having a residence permit and citizenship to escape the blackmail of employers.

Combating racist propaganda by opposing it with anti‑racist propaganda on the humanitarian level, as the Church does, is insufficient and can only lead to failure because it means not being able to recognize the true objective of the ruling class, which is not the affirmation of the infamous racist ideology in itself, but its use to divide the working class, keep it oppressed and exploit it more.

Immigrant workers are a „resource“ for every national bourgeoisie as long as it manages to exploit them more than it already does with the indigenous ones. But they are also a „resource“ for the workers’ movement in general when indigenous workers and immigrants fight together for the same class goals.

The winning ground on which to respond to the attack of the boss and the State is that of the struggle and unity of the workers, above all divisions, for their general class objectives:
 – strong wage increases, greater for the worst paid categories;
 – reduction of working time for the same wage, for the whole working class;
 – full wage to the dismissed workers (not „citizenship income“ linked to the acceptance of low‑wage jobs and therefore also useful to lower the average wage);
 – lowering of the retirement age.

These claims, because of their general nature, have an intrinsic political value, which is not that of being against a government of this or that colour but against the entire bourgeois regime. However, they can only be carried out by a strong trade union movement capable of deploying general and extreme struggles.

For this reason it is increasingly urgent and necessary to overcome the division that passes within the grassroots unionism and of which this demonstration is also a result having been called by the Unione Sindacale di Base only! The unity in the struggles of class struggle unionism (in the rank and file unions and in the class currents inside the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro) would in fact inflict a hard blow to the wall that the masters want to erect to divide the Italian workers from the immigrant ones; it would be the best way to give strength to the authentic class unionism within the grassroots unionism and to defeat its opportunist leaders.

The capitalist economy is on the verge of collapse because of the inevitable crisis of overproduction of goods and capital and the inexorable decline in the profit rate. The only solution available to the bourgeoisie of all countries against the catastrophic blockade of global markets is to unleash a new war, a new world slaughterhouse to destroy excess goods, putting the proletariat of the different states once again against each other. To this end, it is essential for them to return to the nationalist, populist, „sovereign“ propaganda that not by chance is beginning to take root in every country and that has among its pillars fear and hatred of foreigners and immigrants.

The importance of the international unity of the workers’ movement is also demonstrated by the movement of the „yellow vests“ that in recent weeks has shaken France and that for many false claims would even represent the antechamber of the revolution. In that movement the proletarians are present only individually, they are not framed in their economic organizations, they are not led by their political party. It is true that the resumption of the class struggle, after so many years of counterrevolution and betrayal, can only forcibly pass through spontaneous movements outside any organization, but if the movement of struggle does not give itself a class trade union organization, claiming its proletarian nature, and does not reconnect with the party, it can only fall prey to the bourgeois reaction and the workers will suffer a painful defeat.

This is also why unity among workers in every country and beyond national borders is vital, because it concretely opposes nationalist and patriotic propaganda with the practice of proletarian internationalism, of revolutionary and international struggle, above all frontiers, to break down the regime of capital.

The proletarians have no homeland!