STRENGTH IN UNION

FdCA communiqué on the Action Day for Migrants - 31/01/04

In this age of global preventative war, the men and women of the earth are caged, in a state of "permanent terror". With the destruction of local economies, capitalist globalization is forcing growing masses of the disinherited into forced exile: the "New World Order" is marked by the hunger and war that accompanies it.

Millions of immigrants fleeing from their countries of origin in pursuit of the "promised land" in the West where they can find a more dignified existence, find only fences and barbed wire and the nightmare of repatriation on charter flights. Being clandestine makes them invisible.

Millions of people treated as slaves who, in an effort to climb free of the doomed spiral, find themselves in the hands of organized crime where they end up strengthening the networks of the labour black market and the submerged economy. For this they have the honour of doing the worst jobs with starvation wages and no rights, hoping only for a visa amnesty, yet another "backhander" to pay to the State, or to organized crime, in the hope of getting their existence back.

Millions of people who, on arriving in the opulent West, discover that they haven't left poverty and exploitation behind them. And then there are the millions of migrant women who are the worst hit by the contradictions which are created by the rapid social and cultural changes affecting the West, who are forced to look after others, or fill the need for prostitutes or for "traditional" wives for the benefit of men who are unable to view them as equals.

And though war is one of the principal causes of this exodus, the fear of invasion and Fortress Europe's siege mentality serve to feed racism and the discriminatory policies which are at the root of hatred of the "other", of the foreigner, and give nourish the war against the enemy abroad.

But the "permanent terror" is not only a condition of the global war. It is intrinsic to the society in which we live. It is the expression of a relationship of domination produced by the laws of the capitalist market.

This domination can be seen today in the savage attack on the material conditions of millions of workers. The buying power of wages has been halved and workers are forced to accept work conditions which are ever more precarious and deregulated. The conditions of pensioners and the privatization of basic social services (healthcare, education, etc.) are euqally under attack.

Given this situation, with the centre-right government's policies becoming increasingly aggressive and authoritarian, it is no surprise that the workers are responding: social conflict is spreading and growing while the repressive apparatus of the State tries to contain it by criminalizing the struggles.

In this phase, it is even more important that the struggles of migrant workers be united with those of the other workers in this country and demand more rights for all: the right to freedom of movement beyond all borders, the right to housing, the right to a job and a decent wage, the right to education and the right to free public healthcare.

For this reason, migrant workers must be brought out of the dead-end street of charity in order to become active participants in their own social demands and active political entities. Social integration requires unity of the various political elements and groups which the working class forms autonomously in their self-organized fight against the State and Capital.

The 31st January can therefore represent a good occasion to re-launch the anti-racist initiative with the aim of seeing the demands of this particular political subject as a part of the contradictions between Capital and Labour, for the liberation from capitalist exploitation and from the State, its faithful servant.

The struggles which the Workers Movement has engaged in over recent years with sacrifice and determination will not find full success unless it includes the demands of migrant workers, the weakest link in the segmented and hierarchical system of capitalist exploitation.

Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici
January 2004