By Richard Mellor in California, October 5, 2023
I appreciate much of Nate The Lawyer’s arguments in various issues he’s commented on. But this huge change in the Biden Administration’s immigration policies should not surprise us at all. Nate correctly points out the hypocrisy of Biden and the Democrats now being in favor of a wall after calling Trump a racist, a xenophobe etc. But the truth is that both parties are racist to the core. They are also anti-worker – black or white or brown. Or more accurately, as parties of the ruling class, major capitalist parties, they will use racism, being for it or against it, whenever it suits them. That’s why they will never allow public education to teach history in a way that unites us; only if it sets us against one another.
Racism, and the idea that colors are races, eg black and white for example, is a ‘divide and rule’ strategy aimed at undermining working class unity. The concept of the ‘white race’ was introduced into US society for that very purpose. It made the Irish the same race as the English; the English ruling class loved that I’m sure. The British used religion in Ireland as most people where of the same color. In Africa they used tribalism; in India they used religion. To conquer and oppress a population, you have to demonize them.
Racism and capitalism
They will always use racism when it is useful to them. As Malcolm X pointed out, “you can’t have capitalism without racism”. An all-out racist war they want to avoid as it’s very costly and threatens profits, it threatens the system. So at times it’s on the back burner and at other times shifted more to the front and in the open. They will use right wing fascists types, Christian nationalists, white supremacists, ruined petit bourgeois and so on worried about losing their identity, religion or culture to promote it, but they avoid going too far if they can; but if their system is seriously threatened they will do anything to rescue it, lives matter not.
As for immigration, having a former large colonial country on our borders is a threat as those ruined by imperialist policies from the global imperial power to their north head north driven by poverty, starvation and despair. The same is happening in Europe. Who honestly believes people below our southern border risk what they do (including rape and murder) because they don’t’ like home? Nate the Lawyer avoids the elephant in the room. What is driving the immigration? People don’t leave their homelands because they don’t like being Mexican or El Salvadorian or whatever, they are economic refugees fleeing decades and indeed a couple of centuries of destructive policies and domination by the US imperial regime to their north.
After the Mexican Revolution of 1912, Mexican peasants were guaranteed a small piece of land that was subsistence farming at best, but it was something. I can’t recall the number, but millions of Mexican farmers were driven off the land by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Where do you think they went? Also, the domination of US corporations like Dole and others in Central America ensured that a pool of workers at near poverty wages were available and those corporations murdered or financed the murder of hundreds of thousands of those who wanted to control their own destiny and economy. Every attempt by the rural peasantry or workers of Mexico, Central and South America attempting to free themselves from the clutches of US imperialism (recall what happened to Allende, or Cuba) was crushed by the US, either through proxies or directly. The history of Britain in Ireland is exactly the same. Why do you think the Irish are scattered throughout the world?
Capital doesn’t want ‘walls’ to stop its international reach
The Wall Street “Masters of the Universe” are opposed to walls or obstacles to capital. They want “Full Spectrum Dominance” to use their term. They want to export capital where they want, when they want and without interference from states or unions. For working people, no solution can benefit us if it comes from the think tanks or parties of the ruling class to the increasing crises we face, as global capitalism unravels in its slow and violent exit from the historical stage. The opposite is the case, it literally threatens the end of civilization, a very different end than Francis Fukuyama thought.
Working class people, what do I mean by that? I mean those of us whose means of subsistence or survival is through wage labor, through selling our life activity, our ability to work for a price, to the owners of capital. We are international and the only force on the planet that can drag us back from the abyss. Climate change has placed the very real possibility of this planet becoming unable to sustain life for the human species. And I am talking about decades, not centuries. I think if you have grandchildren, this is something you have to at very least think about with the intention of taking some action to change the future. One should certainly not carry on as if the future guaranteed. Civilizations have come and gone before.
Most of us are working class people, are wage workers, or wage slaves as I think the Wobblies claimed. We have very similar outlooks, needs and desires as workers in all other countries. We cannot rely on the representatives or theoreticians of a decaying ruling class to act for us. We must be independent, rely on our own strength and fight for class unity in order to build a future where we control the production of the necessities of life, what we produce, how we produce it and how we distribute it, all in harmony with nature not in opposition to it.
There is no other way out.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original can be found here.
