Unite and fight

The term "internationalism" has been subjected to the confusing influences of a usage supporting the efforts of nations, usually in the name of peace and freedom, to band together to improve their position in the ferocious struggles of capitalism. In this article we use the word to mean a world approaching and arriving at socialism — a world without nations. As socialists, we are internationalists, opposing the idea that the rulers and ruled within a nation have any interests in common.

The socialist working-class movement has always been recognised as an internationalist one. Why is internationalism such a vital part of the socialist movement? Perhaps most important among the answers is that working-class internationalism is a powerful antidote for some of capitalism's most vicious and virulent ideologies, including racism, nationalism and chauvinism of all kinds. A clear view of the communality of interests of oppressed classes throughout the world provides a powerful bulwark against the bellicose, chauvinist propaganda which issues daily from ruling-class sources. Recognition of the interest all exploited peoples have in ending the systems of class rule which dominate the world is a large step toward exposing and withdrawing support from the nationalist aims of their respective ruling classes.

The call for international proletarian unity was not simply a call for the working class of one country to support the activities of another, but also had to do with the fact that the employers and governments in its everyday economic relations, play one working class against another. The problem of importing foreign labour to undermine the struggles of workers was a key issue in the development of the International itself. Thus, the 1866 Instructions for Delegates of the Provisional General Council of the International drafted by Marx established as one of its main objectives: “to counter the intrigues of capitalists always ready, in cases of strikes and lockouts, to misuse the foreign workman as a tool against the native workman.” The working-class struggle could not be actively promoted, Marx insisted, if confined by national walls when faced with a capitalist system that expanded globally.

Yet, for all of his calls for international solidarity, Marx also stressed that it could only be built on the basis of national, working-class organisation rooted in the material conditions of exploitation in given national contexts, and aimed at the state apparatuses of various nations. If a working-class movement was to be organised, it therefore had to be initially national in form, aimed at its own national state and its own “immediate arena” of struggle. At the same time Marx insisted that these national struggles had to be organised—as were the capitalist’s own “free trade” efforts—into an international movement, representing the international activities of the working class.

Today, we witness Cameron depriving a section of our fellow workers of the protections and benefits that our forefathers had struggled and fought for. We have UKIP intent upon extending the definition of immigrant to include the Royal Family, Winston Churchill, Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage’s own family. Labour’s response, as usual, is to adopt the latest anti-immigrant rhetoric and also pledged support for some of the Tory proposals. When left nationalists claim immigration is a capitalist ploy to drive down wages it is voiced simply as a populists vote-catching trick.  Labour has accepted the argument that immigration is a threat to jobs and services, and follows the Tories in insisting that migrants should be forced to do more to “integrate” in order that, in shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper’s words, “our communities are not divided. Yet the real cultural divide exists at a class level, at Oxbridge, at Ascot and at the Henley Regatta, just a few examples of class division that show for ordinary people the privileged few live parallel lives to everyone else. We aren’t even privy to it except for the occasional gossip in the society pages of the right-wing press.

The rise in anti-immigrant views has been encouraged and fostered by the actions and words of the mainstream parties. Immigrants are being blamed for a general lowering of incomes and for “stealing” jobs that otherwise would have gone to local folk. Nationalists also blame immigrants for a host of other problems such as unaffordable housing or poorly-performing schools or over-crowded doctor waiting rooms. Many anti-immigrant positions, after all, are based on falsehoods underlying popular misconceptions and those who are really culpable escape blame and responsibility.

Suppose we have 100 people producing 100 things. What will happen to unemployment if we add 100 people to this community? Will the new people be unemployed? Of course not, the 100 new individuals produce and consume. The new entrants will allow the community to produce and consume much more than 200 things because of gains from the specialisation of labour. The addition of 100 people allowed a general increase in the standard of living of all the individuals in the community.

Where are those jobs? Outsourced by the corporations to sweat-shop nations of the world. Where is the better standard of living? Cut by the government’s austerity programme to subsidise those employers who re-locate jobs abroad. What about misconception is that immigrants are responsible for unaffordable housing? Where is the council house building projects. Scarce urban land are offered planning permission to those builders on condition that a small percentage are available to rent below the market value….20% or so which still makes them unaffordable. Don’t spend money on schools or the NHS and of course we will experience the fall-out of cut-backs. Theresa May displayed disdain for the facts when she claimed that for every additional 100 immigrants, 23 British workers would not be employed. In March this year it emerged that May had ignored advice not to rely on the Migration Advisory Committee study on which she based her claim and that she had then suppressed a government report which, based on a comprehensive overview of research since 2003, concluded that the effect of immigration on “indigenous” jobs was negligible. And we have our own eyes as evidence when we see the number of ‘Polish delis’ springing up in our streets, all requiring wholesalers, warehouse workers, delivery drivers and shop assistants.

In economic terms, the ruling class benefits from the removal of restrictions on immigration as it enables businesses to recruit workers from a global workforce. In political terms, however, especially during times of economic crisis, the ruling class benefits from being able to divide workers against one another in order to deflect anger at the base of society away from the system. Turning “indigenous” workers against immigrants is one key tool that enables them to do this. With governments committed to unpopular austerity measures it is politics rather than economics that is driving its agenda on immigration at the moment.

The propaganda argument is that immigration is creating unsustainable pressure on public services and jobs. This is the reasoning preventing migrants from draining ‘precious resources’ away from the welfare state by insisting that they can only come here if they can fend for themselves. This argument, however, bears no relation to economic reality. The evidence is that such immigrants do not “burden” the welfare state but, on the contrary, make a net positive contribution through taxation.

The employers benefit when workers accuse each other of causing low wages and governments are not held to account for policies that increase misery. Pinning this on foreigners is simply another way in which the capitalists and politicians , helped by their obedient media encourage workers to turn against each other rather than against the system that breeds poverty and joblessness. Unity between British and foreign workers is the only guarantee that employers can be forced to maintain decent wages for all.