Immigrant and Western workers:
a single struggle against imperialism
The "infinite war" of Bush and all Western imperialism against the peoples and exploited masses of the Islamic world continues without a pause: after Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq, the next in line are Iran and Syria.
The aim of the lords of the dollar, the euro and the pound is to plunder the oil of the Middle East, have access to entire populations that can be treated as slaves, crush the resistance of the working masses in the area, and thus lay the basis for attacking China in an attempt to force the submission of the Chinese proletariat’s golden egg-laying goose. These objectives are dictated by the status of the internationalist capitalist economy, its hunger for ultra-blackmailable labour, and its desire to crush the rights won by Western workers in the past under the pressure generated by the world reserve of an enormous industrial army.
To do this, Western governments are beginning to realise that they must also deal with the existence of a potential Baghdad in their own metropoli. They have seen the first puny signs in the revolt of young proletarians of African origin living on the outskirts of Paris, in the anger of Asian immigrants in London, and in the self-organisation of the black Americans of New Orleans seeking protect themselves against the blows of the flooding.
Although still in a relatively soft form, imperialism is also stepping up its war against this "internal" potential Baghdad. This is the meaning of the curfew and state of emergency decreed by the French government; the sending of 40,000 soldiers against the Afro-Americans of New Orleans; the "anti-terrorism" measures introduced in Great Britain, Italy (the "Pisanu package") and throughout Europe. As well as of the "dialogue with moderate Islam" launched by the Italian government.
The "domestic" policy of imperialism is intended to make immigrants bow down their heads, to isolate and divide the Muslim community, to stifle at birth the attempt of immigrants to safeguard their interests by means of a collective struggle, and to create a reservoir of colonial labour inside the West to be used to erode the "guarantees" of Italian and Western workers. The (so far still soft) war on the domestic front is in fact also aimed against autochthonous workers, although they do not yet realise it, because its purpose is to extend to them the super-exploitation currently reserved for immigrants.
This policy of Italian and Western governments and employers is accompanied by the promise that, if immigrant and autochthonous workers forget about politics, and only think about bread and work, they can lead a dignified life. But this promise is false for both immigrant workers and Italian and Western workers.
The immigrant workers who today even "only" want to defend their "bread and work" must do the opposite: organise themselves and fight collectively to safeguard their bread and thir work, support the resistance of their brothers in the Middle East and in the Southern world, and do what is necessary to create a movement of common struggle with the Italian and Western proletariat.
It is true that the latter are passive, and partially support the racist and anti-Islamic crusade of "their" governments. But this behaviour damages their own interests: their bread, their work, their security. It is not the immigrants who threaten them on all three fronts, or the resistance of the exploited in the South of the world, but "their" capitalist enterprises, "their" governments, and the spasmodic search to increase entrepreneurial competitiveness. Italian and Western workers can defend their bread, their work and their security only if they defend the bread, work and security of immigrant workers and the peoples of the Southern world. The experience of the last 20 years has demonstrated the truth of the contrary: recolonising so many Southern countries, and enforcing the precariousness and inferiority of immigrant workers has also allowed capitalists to begin to undermine the security of the work of the Western proletariat, and to start cutting their rights. Capitalism has created a globalised labour market, and prospers if there are divisions, contrapositions and hierarchical relationships among the workers of the West, East and South of the world. The workers can defend themselves from this two-pronged attack only if they transform their competition with each other into competition against capital, and against the imperialist powers that protect its interests.
It is therefore also necessary for Italian workers to change their approach by developing a struggle against the "external" and "internal" policies of the Italian and Western governments; by combining their mobilisation in favour of contracts, against precarious forms of employment, and in favour of trade union rights, with the struggle for the withdrawal of Italian and Western troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans; by developing an initiative aimed at ensuring the victory of the resistance in Iraq and forcing the neocolonial troops of occupation to surrender; by constructing a united organisation of autochthonous and immigrant workers, and forging bonds of struggle with American workers and the no war movement in the United States. Fighting together against globalised capital will lead to the reconstitution of the only programme capable of leading the defence and liberation of the exploited: the programme of internationalist communism.