Nationalism on the Rise

Recent opinion polls put Reform UK well ahead of the parliamentary competition. If an election were held next week, it is possible the ex-banker ex-Tory Nigel Farage would become Prime Minister. But, whether or not they are successful, they have already won a major victory – the anti-migrant agenda has completely taken over mainstream politics, with both Labour and Tory parties attempting to outdo Reform at their own game. The next election, whenever it happens, will be a contest of who can appear the most hard-line on migration – a repeat of the Brexit referendum, with the mask off.

Of course, Farage’s party (or rather, ‘entrepreneurial political start-up’) does not offer much in the way of ‘reform’. If anything, its policies are merely more of the same asset-stripping and destruction of the social wage that we have seen from other establishment parties (whatever their supposed ideological orientation, ‘right’ or ‘left’) for decades. As always, it is the working class which will pay the price for it, though Reform is hoping to distract from this by posing as ‘patriots’ and taking a particularly conservative position in the ‘culture wars’.

But Farage and the parliamentary right are only half of the story; protests by the far-right at asylum-seeker hostels continue, as do random attacks on ‘foreigners’ across the country. The ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march in September pulled in over 100,000 participants – arguably the largest far-right march in the UK’s history. Undoubtedly, the capitalist far-right feels emboldened.

Unemployment and Poverty are not Caused by Migration

There are real underlying reasons for people’s anger. Real wages are falling behind inflation. Workers’ share of national income has been in decline for decades. Generational unemployment, casualisation, precarity and under-employment are all realities for huge numbers of people. Declining social services after years of austerity, homelessness, rising rents and utilities bills, the collapse of the NHS – all of these factors and more make people’s lives increasingly miserable. More people than ever are turning to food banks and many of them are, at least on paper, employed, but unable to make ends meet.

None of this is caused by migration – it is the consequence of a system founded on the exploitation of our labour, which finds itself in a drawn out crisis of profitability. It has survived this long by tightening the screw, making us work harder for less, creating a situation where the richest 1% now have more wealth than the bottom 95% of the world's population put together. The far-right – backed by investment bankers, property moguls and hedge fund tycoons – hopes to capitalise on people’s misplaced anger. Blaming the failures of capitalism on ‘the other’ is a very old tactic of the ruling class. As long as workers are divided against each other we will not unite to defend our interests as a class. A divided working class can also be more easily dragooned into accepting war, and the austerity that pays for war.

In fact, the drive to war is what underpins the current rise in nationalism. The ruling class has no real answers to the crisis facing it. All that is left is an increasingly desperate scramble to ensure resources and strategic supplies as re-armament takes place. Economic competition turns into military confrontation. We are heading for increasingly dangerous times, and the drive to generalised war is now out in the open. Nationalist campaigns are a vital propaganda tool for the ruling class – obviously, not just in the UK. In every country, workers are told to direct their anger not at the bosses and the politicians but at their neighbours.

Our Answer to Racist Division: Class Unity!

We must defeat the far-right politically with working class unity and reject the divisions capitalism seeks to exploit. We must tell workers the truth – the boss who looks like you is not your friend, the worker from the other side of the world is not your enemy. It is not the fault of migrants that capitalism cannot give you a decent life, it is inherent in the contradictions of the system itself.

Fighting for a better life today means fighting against the economic reality that pits us against each other in an endless race to the bottom. Let’s be clear however: this fight cannot be delegated away to left-wing politicians or trade union leaders. Neither the compromised Labour, nor the opportunist Greens, not even the splintered Your Party will save us from the storms capitalism is brewing. Ultimately, these false friends want to preserve the current system of money and wage labour, just by dressing it in nicer clothes. Like the bosses, they are afraid of independent working class initiative which could point towards a higher system of production, governed by human needs and solidarity, not making profit. Such a solution does not lie in parliament, but in the streets and workplaces.

We in the ICT see it as imperative that workers recognise their class interests against the false communities that the ruling class promotes to protect their rule – whether these are nationalist, religious, racial or whatever else. A united working class is the only force that can halt the drive to war and overthrow this obscene system.

The above article is taken from the current edition (No. 73) of Aurora, bulletin of the Communist Workers’ Organisation.