Only the overthrow of capitalism can put an end to its barbarity

Sooner or later it had to happen and now it has happened again. The carnage in the sea off ​​Lampedusa[1] is not a tragic accident but the logical consequence of the bourgeoisie’s policies to halt the flow of refugees or "simple" migrants in search of work; people who are fleeing civil wars and poverty. The first consequence of this is to make immigrants a low cost commodity. A more docile labour force that is easy to blackmail means there is almost no limit to how much surplus value can be extorted: capitalism’s single most important reason for existing. This is the substance of increasingly harsh immigration laws enacted by governments of every political persuasion. The official entry doors to Europe have been bolted only to deliver the lives of thousands and thousands of people into the hands of traffickers, including the trafficking of human organ parts for the rich bourgeoisie. First they are held in concentration camps, then put in institutions set up by the likes of those who flaunt their outrage and pity on television. The CPT, now the CIE[2], is a ruthless bureaucracy which looms like a sword of Damocles to remind migrants that their existence depends on passively accepting exploitation, even conditions of slavery as in southern Italy’s tomato fields or when hidden in the recesses of some factory making manufactured goods in the north.

The repugnant cynicism which the bourgeoisie is capable of is not surprising: capitalism was born and lives in mud and blood, pain and tears, and has always masked the brutal violence it carries out, the basis for most shameless hypocrisy. From the "cradle of democracy" (USA) to "the cradle of human rights" (Beccaria, Italy) the men and women who have died in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, or in the waters of the Mediterranean are counted in tens of thousands. "People" fleeing from environmental disasters either made worse by, or the direct consequence of, the "markets". “People” fleeing wars, poverty and hunger, all equally legitimate offspring of the "markets", i.e. of the pursuit of profit.

The crisis, namely the difficulty of realising enough profit for today’s composition of capital, is at the root of migration policies implemented by the bourgeoisie of every continent. It is another fundamental element of the war against the proletariat, against the dispossessed of the world. This carnage thus has a legislator — capitalism, and functionaries, the bourgeoisie, from those who sit in parliaments to those who speculate with the ships of the sea. If you do not understand this and do not draw the necessary conclusions, then the anger, the pain felt for the murder victims of Lampedusa are feelings: noble, sure, but sterile.

We have to oppose capitalism’s barbarity with the unity of all proletarians — indigenous, migrant, white and black. Proletarian internationalism has no colour.

Battaglia Comunista

Friday, October 4, 2013

[1] On Oct 4th a ship carrying 520 African refugees overturned near the Italian island of Lampedusa. More than 300 are either dead or missing.

[2] Centres for Identification and Expulsion (CIE), previously known as detention centres (CPT), according to Italian law are provided to hold foreigners "subject to expulsion and or refusal of entry with forcible escort to the frontier" in the event that the decision is not immediately executable.