Il Partito Comunista 373

On Saturday 16 September, the SI Cobas organised a demonstration in Bologna in defence of migrants. This is the leaflet our comrades distributed there in the Italian, French, Spanish and English languages

For the adoption of a single platform of defensive demands against the common front of the capitalists and all of their States!
For a real Class Trade Union which organizes the struggle of all proletarians!
For the establishment of an Internationalist and Revolutionary Communist programme and party!

That a mass of proletarians and semi-proletarians are currently fleeing poverty, unemployment, and war is not an exceptional event but rather the umpteenth confirmation of the real, and permanent, nature of the present system, which is based on profit.

Capitalism, under which the market in commodities and capital has become fully globalized, cannot avoid the same happening as far as the labour power commodity is concerned. That waves of people in search of wages are crossing the boundaries between North and South, East and West, and clambering over State and national borders, is very sad, but it is also a progressive factor, insofar as it demonstrates the international nature of the working class, a single global class of the exploited.

Workers have no country. Capitalism has turned the proletariat in all continents into a class of emigrants. Uprooted from countries that are no longer their own, the disinherited, the wage earners and the small producers have nothing more to lose, although their loss is compounded in the West, where they live under the conditions of the modern proletariat, propertyless and living off their wages, but nevertheless with a world to win from the destruction of the most modern, concentrated and putrescent of capitalisms. History, and the revolution, often travels on foot.

The current wars – in which each State and imperialist alliance seeks to strategically position itself in view of the impending third world war, which all of them are preparing for – are accelerating this epic emigration and making it difficult to contain.

In the West so-called public opinion is cleverly manipulated – drugged and hypnotised as it is by capitalist society – and frenzied debates are whipped up between the supports of a generic humanitarianism, whether lay or religious, on one side, and racism and nationalism on the other: a bourgeois right and bourgeois left united in their opposition to and fear of genuine, organised and effective class solidarity.

The global economic crisis of capitalism, which originated in the rich countries and is concentrated there, is an irreversible crisis of over-production which is only destined to get worse. Capitalism is saturated with commodities and capital, and there is no policy of the bourgeoisie, whether liberal or statist, that can alter that ineluctable fact.

But capitalism, even in crisis, continues to produce enormous quantities of commodities and it always needs labour. Only labour power produces profit. The wealth of capitalism depends entirely on the willingness of proletarians to engage with it. This is why the boss class has a vested interest in replenishing the industrial reserve army with proletarian immigrants.

It will depend on the balance of forces between the classes whether the bourgeoisie, in order to maintain its economic regime and petty privileges, will manage to increase the exploitation of the proletariat, increase working hours, lower wages and increase the intensity of work. What weakens the working class is not “competition” from immigrant class brothers but submission to false workers’ parties and trade unions who have sold out to the bourgeoisie, because wages are regulated only by hard class struggle, and weight of numbers is a positive factor in strength terms, not a weakness.

That is why the bourgeoisie is using its countless regime-supporting spokesmen to stir up indigenous proletarians against foreigners. Racism is not a “prejudice” from which the present society can be cured, but a weapon used by the bosses to divide the workers, same as nationalism. Fighting racism in the name of a generic “humanitarianism” is impotent and dangerous since it is based on an a tacit endorsement of the division between exploiter and exploited.

The one real fight against racism is the CLASS STRUGGLE for the defence of wages, against sackings, against the division between old workers in ‘guaranteed’ employment and young workers deprived of any protection, against the super-exploitation by gangmasters in field and factory, against the use of co-operatives as a cover for exploitation, and for the generalized reduction of the working day with no reduction of wages.

Only the class struggle against the bourgeois “race” unifies the workers above ethic, national and religious differences and brings about a sense of brotherhood, leading them inevitably to direct their struggle against capitalism and to join together to overthrow it.

Only communism, after obtaining victory everywhere, can resolve the problem of how to distribute people across the planet in the most favourable way, with movement taking place not on the basis of terror or need, but of the best collective and individual development for all.

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE !

The governments of all the Americas, from Washington to Buenos Aires, as well as in every continent, raise the flags of patriotism and mobilize workers for the defence of the fatherland.

In some cases, it is a matter of territorial disputes between bourgeois states, behind which hides the conflict between national and transnational capitalist corporations for control over raw materials or for the dominion of strategic localities from the point of the theatres of military operations, or for the movement of commodities and raw materials.

In other occasions, patriotic slogans are raised when the functioning of the national economy and its shares of profit and rent, as part of surplus value obtained by the exploitation of wage workers, are threatened.

But wage workers don’t benefit from new territories annexed to the country nor from a smooth growth of the national economy. In both cases, a battle for the defence of the fatherland only economically benefits capitalist enterprises.

Workers won’t obtain any benefit from the Venezuela and Guyana conflict or from the conflict between Venezuela and Colombia. Neither will the situation of the Bolivian workers improve with a reconquering of the Atacama Corridor, Bolivia’s historic access to the sea, which today is in the hands of Chile.

Likewise, there won’t be any change to the exploitation of workers if Argentina takes sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. Its the same case with every territorial dispute in the whole world. There will be no difference for proletarians between the control of raw materials such as petroleum or gas, copper, Steel, iron, etc., by the national bourgeois states or by imperialist consortium with concessions for their exploitation. In any of these situations, capitalism only goal is the search for maximum profit through the exploitation of the labor-power of wage workers.

Wage workers don’t even benefit from the riches generated by their labour in the different economic activities which are accomplished in the actual territory of the country in which they now live, much less will they benefit from the annexations or retaking of territories on the part of the national bourgeois state. In the end, private property in land will walk all over the sovereignty of the national states of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois governments agitate for the defence of the fatherland while elsewhere they sign agreements with transnationals to do business, giving away the national sovereignty they claim to defend.

The workers in the entire whole world have to ignore these calls by the bourgeoisie, petit bourgeoisie, politicians and unionists to line up to defend the fatherland and national economy, because in doing so, they’re only defending the interests and businesses of the capitalist class.

There is no socialist fatherland. When the con artists talk of a socialist fatherland, they only vindicate bourgeois nationalism and the continuance of capitalism under the camouflage of a leftist and opportunist discourse that aims to put the workers at the tail of the bourgeoisie, deceiving them with the lie of a false socialism or road to socialism.

The working class has nothing to gain in national unity between wage workers and their employers, between those who are exploited and those doing the exploiting. This road doesn’t lead to revolutions and a break with capitalism, and can only enable the over-exploitation of the working class.

While the bourgeoisie, the politicians and the union leaders play the game, they call on workers to fight high prices of primary goods and services and against a black market. The real working class movement needs to be united and organized by the rank and file and across borders has to raise the international flag of struggle for
 – an across the board increase in wages,
 – for the reduction of the working day,
 – for salaries for the unemployed,
 – for the reduction of the age of retirement,
 – for the elimination of overtime and extra hours of work and
 – for better working conditions and environment.

And when the spokesmen of the bourgeoisie raise their voices to say that the workers are damaging the nation and its economy, the response of the workers’ movement should be: the proletarians don’t have a fatherland!! We not interested in defending what we don’t have!!

General Strikes need to be employed as a reflection of working class unity in action. We need to be breaking with regime unions and establish the emergence of class unions where workers are organized without regard for their nationality, trade, race, religious faith, or political leaning. Strikes need to be organized across industries and workplaces uniting workers with joint demands.

The proletariat is the only revolutionary class, and by its nature is pushed to overthrow capitalism and create a society without exploited or exploiting and without national borders, commodities, or wage labour. With the conquest of political power, the proletariat will implement its dictatorship, the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the international communist party, and will practice its class program, the communist program.

Revolutionary communists call for the unity of action in the economic struggles of workers on a local, national, and international levels. We also need to remember to:
 1. Reject imperialist wars, without aligning with any of the contending governments, evoking revolutionary defeatism and the confrontation against the government and employers in every country.
 2. Reject calls for national defence and the taking sides in territorial disputes between countries, as reflections of inter-capitalist conflicts for the control of raw materials and market shares.
 3. Reject government repression and intimidation of workers’ economic struggles on the basis that workers’ demands are “anti-national”, “pro-imperialist” or “terrorist” conspiracies.
 4. Resurrect the strike and demonstration as the principal methods of struggle. These need to be undefined, without minimal services and include workers of different trades and industries. Organizing strike funds to give support to propaganda and to attend to the necessities that might themselves to the movement of the struggle.