Capitalism is built on lies

Their globalisation or ours? National borders exist to maximise profits. Jobs are allowed to migrate to cheaper locations, while the people who work those jobs are blocked from moving to higher-paying locations. Globalisation could benefit us all but governments and corporations are shaping globalization the same way they shaped automation, to boost profits at workers’ expense. As borders have come down for capital and goods, they have been reinforced for human beings.

The capitalist class has no loyalty to any set of workers. The extent to which workers fail to understand this and stand behind “their” capitalist class is the extent to which they fail to protect their own interests as workers. By enforcing national borders, capitalism prevents the working class from uniting to defend itself. National borders divide workers into legal, illegal, documented, undocumented, permanent, temporary, native-born and alien. Employers use racism, nationalism and sexism to divide workers and weaken their collective power. Lies are used to divide workers. States assume a gatekeeper function to regulate the flow of labour for the capitalist economy, opening and closing the flow of immigration in accordance with needs of capital accumulation during distinct periods. Immigrants are sucked up when their labour is needed and then spit out when they become superfluous or potentially destabilizing to the system. The state must play a balancing act by finding a formula for a stable supply of cheap labor to employers, and at the same time, a viable system of state control over immigrants. Immigrant workers are not only flexible, but are disposable through deportation, and therefore, controllable. The condition of deportable must be created and then periodically reproduced. Borders and nationality are used by transnational capital, the powerful and the privileged, to sustain new methods of control and domination over the global working class.

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We are taught that workers who are better off have achieved this position at the expense of workers who are worse off — that men benefit from the oppression of women, that whites benefit from the oppression of blacks, that workers in richer nations benefit from the exploitation of workers in poorer nations, and so on.  If this were true, then class solidarity would be impossible. Fortunately, it’s not true at all. Only employers benefit when workers are divided. The differences in wages and benefits between various sections of the working class go to the employers. When workers unite, they raise the living standards of all workers. The purpose of pitting workers against one another is to prevent that unity. Scapegoating of immigrants has always been a ploy of the ruling class. When economic downturns happen in our capitalistic economy, the first people to be blamed are not the owners of the economy, but the most oppressed and exploited sectors of our society. Immigrants have had a long history of serving the purpose of being a punching bag for those who suffer under capitalism. This racism crushes the unity of the working class to create competition between "native" and "immigrant" labour. Capitalists are notorious for using the "divide and conquer" technique to squash resistance and to sustain profits. Due to informal racial divisions, immigrant workers get the worst kind of jobs that few people want to work. These jobs are low-wage, not gratifying, dangerous, non-unionized, and are typically in agriculture, construction, and personal services. Immigrant workers must work such jobs in order to survive. The targeting of immigrants conveniently removes capitalists from being held responsible for the failures of capitalism and their own involvement in the oppressive system. Sadly, the least responsible people suffer the most. People who claim that immigrants are taking our jobs have a distorted and racist understanding of who's really causing economic inequality

Solutions to international trade problems is generally posed as a choice between free trade and protectionism. However, both policies benefit the capitalist class. Protectionist polices shield weaker industries from global competition, while free-trade policies enable stronger industries to penetrate foreign markets. Unions have traditionally sided with the protectionist wing of capitalism. This strategy has failed to save jobs, as thousands of laid-off steel and autoworkers can attest. Protectionism undermines the labour movement by pitting native workers against their counter-parts in other lands. Foreign workers can bid down British wages through trade. Whether they come here or not, their effect on wages is much the same. A more effective strategy is to demand an end to national borders and for workers to defend their jobs as if these borders did not exist.  While they promote free trade, no state supports opening borders to workers. On the contrary, capitalists go berserk at the thought of abolishing national boundaries because their system can function only by dividing workers and trapping them in low-waged areas. Of course, they would never admit to such selfish motives. Instead, they warn that open borders would flood the developed world with impoverished people and drag everyone down. This is absurd.

It's all too easy to slip into a left-wing version of opposing immigration, which goes something like this: socialists defend workers' wages and conditions, which are under attack because there are too many workers competing for too few jobs. So we should support restrictions on immigrant labour. The ratio of the wage share in GDP to the profit share hasn't much changed in the last 10 years even though the number of foreign-born workers has risen. In fact, the wage share is higher than it was in 1997, even though the number of foreign workers has almost doubled. Wages are being squeezed not by immigrants, but by some fundamental trends in capitalism.  Those who seek to link immigration with falling living standards are guilty not just of (perhaps wilful) ignorance. They are trying to shift the blame from capitalism to some of the least powerful members of society. There are those scapegoating immigrants for the realities of the UK’s jobs market. It is ignored that some foreign workers are complements for native ones, and so raise wages of the latter. For example, Polish brick-layers allow British plasterers and electricians to do more work.

There is a story of a working-class mother, holding her young child, say she was protesting alongside UKIP because immigrants were getting houses and generous benefits, things she herself was being denied to take care of her child. She stood there alongside people, all of whom would enthusiastically vote to cut the Welfare State for everyone (using the rhetoric that Eastern Europeans are taking advantage of the system, and never acknowledging that in fact native-born poor and working-class people are the largest group receiving benefits).  Why wasn’t she trying to create a different culture and society for her child to be raised in - a culture and society that affirms, ensures and protects the inherent worth and dignity of all people.

Instead of attacking working people who're essentially forced to leave their homeland and risk everything to help their families escape poverty, we need to direct our attention towards the economic elites and rich. The negative consequences of capitalism that working people face are real. The wealth gap is steadily growing and people are worried for their future. Such concerns are legitimate when jobs are out-sourced off-shore in favour of greater profits. The labour movement has lost all of its teeth: millions of workers are being reclassified as self-employed sub-contractors resulting in no benefits or labour rights, companies subverting the right of workers to organise, the dependence on sweatshops in the clothing industry, healthcare being a rarity, rich campaign donors purchasing both political parties, and bankruptcy laws that let corporations off Scot-free. The corporate media, politicians, and CEOs have successfully redirected the rage and frustration of workers towards their fellow workers. We must see that capitalism is the root problem that must be addressed. Immigrants have historically been oppressed and scapegoated for the short comings of the capitalist economic system. The issues of racism, immigration, and global capitalism cannot be resolved without seeing the interconnections between them.

The Socialist Party reasserts that the international class struggle is a fact, that the working and ruling classes of the world have nothing in common, and that every attempt to prevent the working class of the world from uniting in their own interests requires the unqualified condemnation of all those who profess to speak in the interests of labour, regardless of their assertions and pretenses to the contrary. The Socialist Party extends a fraternal hand of welcome to all immigrant workers and invites them to join in our efforts to abolish capitalism. Our only hope is to build a unified for a socialist society that will put people first.