Against state repression and racism
in support of the revolts of the immigrants
The summer of 1998 was characterised by a ferocious exacerbation of
State repression against immigrants trying to land on Italian shores.
The "policy of dissuasion" adopted by the "Left" once again led to
the murder of immigrants, as happened in the case of the five who were burnt alive in
a ship's cabin at Genoa. In the case of those who actually managed to land, the government
turned to mass imprisonment in what can only be described as concentration camps (delicately
known as "Reception Centres") inside of which survival was impossible: the
umpteenth proof of the substanti al conti nuity between nazi-fascism and democracy.
The protests of the immigrants justly exploded against such examples of white
barbarity. This time they refused to submit passively to the repression, their inhuman
conditions of detention and their forced expulsion. The "Reception Centres" were
the scene of countless revolts and attempts at mass escapes, against which the
government reacted by means of brutal aggression, beatings, denunciations and even more
restrictive immigration measures ttan those established by the last odious decree.
Once again, the "benevolence" of the govemment headed by Prodi and supported by
Rifondazione Communista has revealed the truly antiproletarian nature of its
strenuous defence of capitalist interests by adopting an increasingly extremist and
ggressive position against immigrants who are painted as delinquents, drug addicts and
possible terrorists.
The Italian government is not alone in this radicalisation of the anti-immigrant
offensive. As Western imperialist robbery continues to aggravate the living conditions and
exploitation of Third World countries, there is an inevitable increase in the flow of the
oppressed seeking to flee their misery and starvation.
All of the governments in the West are responding to these uncontainable waves of
immigration by establishing crusades that have the aim of sealing the borders of
Europe and allowing the controlled access of a new, cheap and super-blackmailed
labour force to set against Western workers and the unemployed. In this way they
are looking to provoke divisions and wars between the two sides in order to weaken the
capacity to resist of both one and the other.
The globalisation of the economy, the increase in the contraditions characterising the
capitalist system and the growing competition between the imperialist plunderers are
driving capital to try to defend the profits and privileges of the bourgéois class by
unleashing a general offensive designed to hit (albeit to different extents) both
the Western proletariat and the disinherited masses of the dominated countries. There is
no escape for either, nor any possibility of seeking reformist improvements in their
conditions of existence. If it wants to avoid falling into the abyss, the only path
open to the proletariat of the world is to unite its forces against the declared or
concealed attempts of the bourgeoisie to divide them and set them against one another in
order to be able to increase its exploitation of all of them.
One important step in this direction is to construct a common pathway of struggle and
trade union organisation that can weld the fight against racism and discrimination of
the immigrant proletariat to the fight against illegal work and in favour of the defence
of equal workers' conditions.
If we look at the independent and general interests of the proletariat in an international
and internationalist light, of equal importance is the struggle against growing
imperialist aggression - such as the latest examples in the Sudan and Afghanistan -
designed to reinforce imperialist plundering and attack the movements of the exploited in
the south of the world who rebel against it.
It is only in this way that the phenomenon of immigration towards Western countries - a
phenomenon that cannot be arrested under the dominion of capital - can be transformed by
the exploited from a weapon of blackmail in the hands of the bourgeoisie into a resource
for strengthening mutual resistance against the increasing capitalist attack.
This summer's immigrant revolts represent an exceptional sign of a readiness for struggle
that we welcome and warmly support. It is up to the Western proletariat to demonstrate its
ability to recognise and relaunch it in more advanced terms of organisation and
mobilisation in order to strike at the roots and destroy capitalism which, by means
of its savage depredation of natural wealth and its inhuman exploitation of the labour
force, is not only the cause of forced migrations but also the cause of all of the ills
affecting the proletariat as a whole.
ORGANIZZAZIONE COMUNISTA INTERNAZIONALISTA