The proposed immigration bill is causing tensions. The far right clearly benefits electorally from the leftist demagoguery which offers on a silver platter a majority fraction of the French proletariat which votes en masse for the far right parties, and this is a tragedy. Massive immigration not only poses an electoral problem for the workers' camp, but can constitute a significant obstacle to the hope of a communist solution to the crisis of capitalism. The numerous works of experts on Marxian thought, quotation in support of Marx and Engels confronting the question of Irish immigration reveals that not only is it not being racist nor xenophobic to opposing massive immigration, but above all it means defending a policy that is consistent from a working-class point of view. Marx and Engels had certainly developed a policy to tempt the exploited Irish social classes of this period without much success. They drew consequences from it. It is up to us to adapt our policies to our times without demagogic angelism typical of leftism which delights in capital. The CGTU, a left-wing split from the CGT, in the last century noted that massive immigration served the interests of employers and weakened the proletarian camp economically and politically. Concerning us today, we make the same observation. We republish the motions voted in 1907 by the Second Socialist International, voted by Lenin and Rosa... CLICK ON THIS LINK
It is obviously not a question for us of obviously defending the petty economic theses of the extreme right by wanting to put an end in substance to state medical aid, or to humanitarian or social provisions intended for populations from the immigration present in France. We are for the regularization of undocumented immigrants without delay in order to allow them to escape the horrors of trafficking of all kinds, and not to allow rogue bosses to use blackmail to take advantage of their weak situation.
On the other hand, we advocate workers' control of immigration in continuity with the positions of the CGTU which we cite in our text as well as the end of the colonial domination of the French bourgeoisie on the African continent which continues to organize regular and systematic looting as the NIGER crisis has revealed to everyone. Everyone also understands that the colossal sums at stake from trafficking around illegal immigration, but also from the privatized management of the reception of immigrants forced to take risks for their lives in order to flee the The poverty with which they are plunged by the so-called “host” countries motivates the promoters of this absurdity of an irrational social order. Wouldn't it be better for us to help the development of African countries rather than pillage them like savages? Would this not be the expression of true “internationalist” solidarity of a socialist nature?
To those who chatter about "workers' democracy" all year round, we say shit to them: let them join us in advocating workers' control of migratory flows and economic solidarity with the working peoples of Africa... It would be much more useful than leaving millions of workers in the arms of Marine LE PEN whose advent to power constitutes a major risk, deadly for all proletarian organizations.
" 30% of workers would vote for a left-wing candidate in the first round, 17% for Emmanuel Macron, only 8% for François Fillon and a very high proportion – 43% –_11100000-0000-0000- 0000-000000000111_for Marine Le Pen, who would obtain her best score among workers, all social categories combined."
State of immigration in France according to INSEE
In 2022, 7.0 million immigrants live in France, or 10.3% of the total population. 2.5 million immigrants, or 35% of them, have acquired French nationality. The foreign population living in France amounts to 5.3 million people, or 7.8% of the total population. It is made up of 4.5 million immigrants who have not acquired French nationality and 0.8 million people born in France with foreign nationality. 1.7 million people were born of French nationality abroad. With immigrants (7.0 million), in total, 8.7 million people living in France were born abroad, or 12.8% of the population.
Since 2006, immigrant outflows have been relatively modest compared to their inflows. On average between 2006 and 2019, four immigrants enter the country while one leaves, for example at the end of school or professional experience in France, or even upon retirement. The net migration of immigrants decreases between 2018 (+ 222 000_11100000-0000-0000-0000- 000000000111_people) and 2019 (+ 182_11100000- 0000-0000-0000-000000000111_000 people) under the effect of an increase in outflows. In 2018-2019, the net migration of immigrants is within the average observed since 2015 (+ 202_11100000-00 00-0000-0000-000000000111_000 on average between 2015 and 2019 ), this being higher than over the period 2006-2014 (+ 159 000).
For those who throw around quotes from Lenin in favor of the immigration of repressed minorities in Tsarist Russia of the last century, we dedicate to them the quote, below, which mocked the dogmatists who do not understand that Marxism is not a cult but a guide for revolutionary action in the service of the proletariat. This statement applies perfectly to the various contemporary Stalino-Trotsko-Maoist sects which have transformed theoretical and practical experiences of Marxism from the past into a series of dead and timeless dogmas, transformed the main figures of revolutionary Marxism into untouchable, sacred totems. The priests of the Catholic Church are not doing any better... They lack more than places of worship with statutes... (humor) . Sects dominated by a petty bourgeoisie, full of prejudices, and full of moral lessons, the spare wheel of a reformism in full decadence, politically responsible for the skyrocketing rise of the worst enemy of the organized proletariat... It would be It is very urgent to break with this suicidal policy if we still want to hope to avoid the worst (incidentally, the fantasy of the Melanchonist revolution through the ballot boxes is not for tomorrow morning...).
"Precisely because Marxism is not a dead dogma, a finished, ready-made, immutable doctrine, but a living guide for action, it could not fail to reflect the singularly rapid change in the conditions of social life This change resulted in a profound disintegration, disarray, fluctuations of all kinds, in a word: a serious internal crisis of Marxism. A vigorous action against this disintegration an energetic and stubborn struggle for the defense of the principles of Marxism is once again on the agenda. The extremely broad layers of the classes who cannot avoid Marxism to formulate their tasks have assimilated it to previous era in the most unilateral, most distorted way; they retained such and such "slogans", such and such answers to tactical questions, without understanding the Marxist criteria of these answers. The “revision of all values” in the different areas of social life led to the “revision” of the most abstract and general philosophical principles of Marxism. The influence of bourgeois philosophy, in its most varied idealistic nuances, was felt in the epidemic of machismo which spread among Marxists. The repetition of "slogans" learned by heart, but neither understood nor meditated on, led to the widespread spread of empty phraseology; this practically led to tendencies fundamentally contrary to Marxism and petty-bourgeois, such as "otzovism [ 2 ]", frank or unacknowledged, or the point of view recognizing otzovism as a "legitimate nuance" of Marxism. "
Marx and Engels were strongly involved in trying to organize the common struggle of the Irish and English workers in the 19th century in a colonial context. When we take the time to look at the Irish question of the 19th century, we are struck by the parallel of the situation between contemporary colonial France which plunders Africa without this raising the "retching" of the moralizing leftists... In summary for our readers, in the 19th century, Ireland was then a fundamentally predominantly agrarian country under English domination. Without wanting to go into detail here, the class relations which linked the destinies of Ireland and England were a brake on the overthrow of capitalism. According to various specialist studies, Irish landowners were then unlikely to bring capitalism to maturity as much as English entrepreneurs in Ireland, nor did the Irish peasantry lag behind an organized English proletariat. The two Irish classes, landowner and poor sharecroppers in a weak position vis-à-vis their English counterpart. While the English proletariat had been described by Engels as being the subject most likely to overthrow capitalism in the near future during his lifetime - a thesis that Marx fully shared - the Irish peasantry was far from claiming the title of revolutionary avant-garde: it rather constituted a brake. In his study of the English working class, Engels developed entire chapters in his works on the fate of Irish immigrant workers in England. Engels then describes the Irish as a “race […] slightly above the savage” (*) whereas that they were pure products of their rustic rural origins and undoubtedly had a negative impact on the development of the class consciousness of the English proletariat. This was obviously not a racist point of view, a concept invented in the 20th century, but a point of view of a communist activist, a thinker of the revolution... It would be unacceptable for us today to use the same qualifiers without exposing yourself to being shot by leftists...
(*) (source: Fr. Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 with a Preface written in 1892, translated by FK Wischnewetzky, 2005 [1845], p. 47. Accessed March 5, 2019 at http : //manybooks.net)
We provide for our bilingual readers a synthetic study on the question "Marx and Engels's theory of history. Making sense of the race factor" which explores what might be perceived as racist components of the thought of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx and Engels applied the term Russian, or the English race, to a wide variety of human collectives. These emancipation activists obviously never developed a racialist theory as explained in the document:
"Thus, in Marx's imagination, it is precisely the environment that might have been instrumental in creating hereditary racial communities. Paul concludes that Marx and Engels were neither 'extreme racists' nor 'antiracists'"
It is not racist or xenophobic to even draw a parallel of the situation with a significant fraction of the millions of immigrants who swell the ranks of the lumpenproletariat in the suburbs of European metropolises come from a sub-proletariat, mired in medieval prejudices , many of which are under the influence of a nationalist and religious extreme right, financed by imperialist powers such as Qatar and Iran. Marx then did not have his tongue in his pocket to describe the LUMPEN , some of whom today find nothing better to do than to assassinate teachers in the middle of the street, in a high school where to organize a massacre in a ball in an isolated village:
"Penniless roués with dubious means of existence, and equally dubious origins, depraved and adventurous offspring of the bourgeoisie, vagabonds, dismissed soldiers, released prisoners, convicts escaped from the galleys, swindlers, acrobats, lazzaroni, pickpockets, bonneteau players, gamblers, pimps, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ turners, ragpickers, grinders, tinkerers, beggars, in short, the whole indeterminate, dissolute, tossed and floating mass, which the French call “bohemia”
Source: Class Struggles in France Marx
For Marx the lumpenproletariat must be abandoned to its fate and that it is vain to seek to reform it, and that we must above all preserve the working class from its contamination, wise advice which does not seem to prevent irresponsible leftists from sleeping peacefully ...
To return to the Irish question, the English proletariat was considered by Marx and Engels to be the subject most likely to overthrow capitalism in the near future while the Irish peasantry was not only far from claiming the title of pre- revolutionary guard by Marx and Engels, but constituted a brake:
"By reason of their numbers, their acclimatization to miserable living conditions or their propensity to drink, Irish immigrant workers depress the wages of English workers in two ways. They provide a large industrial reserve quantity, and they establish low civilizational standards which the English will soon adopt."
"the degrading position of English workers, generated by our modern history and its immediate consequences [industrialization and pauperism], has been further degraded by the presence of Irish competition"
Source: 31 Fr. Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 with , translated by FK Wischnewetzky, 2005 [1845], p. 47. Accessed March 5, 2019 from http://manybooks.net. 32 Fr. Engels)
Also for Marx, Irish immigrant workers weakened class solidarity among workers in England. He believed that the situation of Irish immigrant workers in this network of class relations and colonial domination undermined their capacity to initiate any revolutionary action.
"the most important country for the workers' revolution and, moreover, the only country where the material conditions for this revolution have reached maturity."
Source MECW 1988 [1870]: vol. 43, p. 475.
Marx drawing on the failures of the transnational struggle of the English and Irish working class to overthrow capitalism in England observed in 1871 at the Congress of the International:
“The competition which Irish workers have created in the labor market […] constitutes an obstacle to the revolution in England which is skillfully exploited by the government and the upper classes, convinced that no bond can unite the English workers with the Irish . It is true that no union
is not possible in the political sphere, but the same is not true in the economic sphere. The two camps form sections of the International which, as such, must move forward together in the direction of the same objective.
For Marx and Engels, the theater of class struggle is therefore located in one nation or the other, but never on an axis which would go from one to the other . The mobilizations of the two working classes should be prepared and orchestrated in parallel, but there is no question of intertwining them. The concept of “ internationalism” is therefore indeed part of the register of universal solidarity _11100000-0000-0000-0000-0000 00000111_and is indeed built between closed communities of workers organized into nations . It is not a question of a transnational solidarity which would cut through these categories what Marx wrote in 1848 with Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party:
“The proletariat of each country must naturally put an end to its own bourgeoisie”
Marx therefore saw immigrant workers as a problem rather than a solution. Because the latter then find themselves caught between two national blocs, to which they only belong imperfectly. Immigrant workers were more of a problem, even an obstacle given the past, but also current, weakness of the communist movement.
The contemporary leftism of organized capital deliberately exploits a feeling of solidarity of the communist movement by organizing confusion around the historic slogan of the communist movement "Proletarians of all countries, unite" _11100000 -0000-0000-0000-000000000111_and the concept "internationalism" . However, according to the texts of the two authors, the Marxian definition of this concept "internationalism" does not mean negation of the notion of "nation" and therefore of the cultural identities, and the historical specificities of each human community , each social class of country disputes. It is therefore an inter “national” solidarity, between socialist “nations”. Marx therefore accepts the nation as a substantial historical entity. He has an internationalist vision of the organization of the world and not a “cosmopolitan” vision of leftism. Because national traditions are very real phenomena. They reflect the economic development of society, the level of relations between classes in various periods, and are specific to each country. Today it is obvious that the traditions and level of development differ from a country with large imperialist centers, like France, from a country on the Arabian Peninsula, or Persia. What concerned Marx were the European countries, France, England, Germany and Russia. For Marx , what was decisive from the communist point of view was not the right of each group to form an independent autonomous national state. What mattered to Marx , as it should for any true communist, was the search for a fraternal and egalitarian society that only communism could satisfy. This hope can only be satisfied within the framework of communism which should take precedence over everything else, and especially over imbecile leftist demagoguery. Engels wrote to Bernstein in 1886:
“We have to collaborate with the Western European proletariat and we must subordinate this objective to all others.”
Source: see attachment.
This position is not Western chauvinism nor "social chauvinism", nor racism ... It is an identification with the higher interests of the international proletariat. Because as Engels explained, when this one is freed, all the proletarians of the planet will have the hope of finally living free. This is exactly the eternal position of PLATEFORMEJAUNE!
This recognition of this state of affairs does not imply political adherence to bourgeois nationalism, an ideology which wants to believe that there is a community of interests between exploiters and exploited sharing the same cultural identity. In this sense, we reject patriotism and/or bourgeois nationalism. In the lower phase of communism there remains the proletarian State which is nothing other than the expression of one class dictatorship over another. A proletarian state retains its borders and defends the interests of a "homeland" that has become socialist: that is to say, a homeland where the abolition of all forms of economic domination and exploitation reigns. The flag of the socialist homeland is not "tricolor", but "red" to be clear and remove all forms of unhealthy suspicion. The program of this “homeland” is “communist”. A federation of socialist states could be an expression of internationalist solidarity in the lower phase of communism.
It defends itself with arms against the very predictable “international” bourgeois reaction. We are therefore very far from the opening of borders to everything advocated by leftist sects which creates confusion between the lower phase of communism and the necessary conservation of a State, and its upper phase from which we are light years away...
We are therefore certainly not going to advocate the arrival of tens of millions of immigrants, of a sub-proletariat, soaked in religious and reactionary prejudices, opposed to socialism, from countries which have not experienced the same social history of the proletariat. European, and in particular that of the French proletariat which benefits from a strong memory of the revolutionary crises of the last century, of the revolt of the Canuts of Lyon, of the commune of Paris until May 68... Because the unity of the working class cannot be done on the basis of adhesion to Arab or other nationalisms, to support for reactionary semi-feudal regimes, even less for a religion of the 7th century slave-holding Bedouins of the Arabian peninsula. The unity of the working class can only be achieved on the basis of overcoming bourgeois democracy, communism. This program is not negotiable whether with the petty bourgeoisie, or with the lumpen proletariat which has always been the reserve army of capital to repress all revolutionary inclinations of our social class.
It is up to the French proletariat to put an end to the political domination of its own French bourgeoisie in France, but also to its colonial order which condemns hundreds of millions of Africans to the hell of immigration, so that they can live finally with dignity in their own country. It is up to the organized working class to help Africans build their own communist organization. Because everyone understands that the solution is not for hundreds of millions of Africans to come and emigrate to France, any more than for the billion Chinese... Defending this communist thesis is obviously neither racism, nor xenophobia: We are in continuity with the motions voted by the congress of the Second International Socialists, published below, voted by Lenin and Rosa, by the motion voted by the congress of the CGTU, left-wing split of the CGT, (attached with this email), before its sad Stalinist degeneration where Marxist and anarchist coexisted. We are in continuity with the positions and analyzes of the founders of scientific socialism, which is anything but a religion of rednecks. The CGTU demanded workers' control of immigration. FOREIGN LABOR REPORTS. III CONGRESS OF THE CGTU from August 26 to 31, 1925. Some extracts carefully entered manually:
Trade union organizations, and in particular the CGTU, must fight to ensure that migratory flows are not left solely under capitalist influence and work to strengthen the bonds of solidarity between workers from all countries employed in France.
In France, the employers, won over by the justified introduction after the war of millions of new workers, are stepping up their maneuver. It attempts to overfill the French labor market, to cause unemployment and by this means to crush proletarian demands.
The CGTU by demanding the regulation of the MOE, that is to say the entry of the quantity of workers necessary and justified by means of control of the workers' unions, claims to oppose the employers' maneuver.
SOURCE: monthly bulletin of the General Confederation of Unitary Labor
Today, just like the late CGTU, once again, we advocate workers' control of migratory flows with the help of trade union organizations. It is up to the communist movement to try to disseminate the socialist program among immigrant populations without making imbecile demagoguery and making concessions to reactionary prejudices, particularly religious ones. To be a communist is once again to openly proclaim one's atheism for the nth time and not to hide one's political opposition to all religions, and not to refrain from criticizing religions. Islam is no exception to this rule.
Should we recall once again that the same leftist sects which cry wolf as soon as the question of immigration is raised from a working point of view, have been and remain consciously absent from the struggle of the pan-African movements for the social liberation of Africa by sheltering behind a "purism" of bad quality... In short, a bunch of big hypocrites... who in reality want to keep the crumbs granted to them by the imperialism of their own very national bourgeoisie and thus remain the eternal formal opponents of the existing social order which condemns billions of human beings to misery and decline. Concerning us, we advocate a communist revolution in France in the hope of then extending it throughout the planet, and particularly in Africa, because we are betting that France is the weak link in 21st century capitalism with class most conscious worker. This does not mean, however, that we are not opposed to the inhumane measures provided for in the current bill under discussion in parliament towards immigrant workers: suppression of the AME , family allowances, etc. But in any case, it is not the jeremiads of the leftist sects gravitating around LFI , in search of an eternal "citizen revolution" through the very chimerical ballot box, which will change the situation for immigrant workers and for African peoples. condemned to survive on one dollar a day... The only hope to escape from this hell would be a real revolutionary irruption of the European proletariat and in particular in France to clean up this mess.
Author JEAN GILLOT PLATEFORMEJAUNE
Le groupe gauchiste REVOLUTION PERMANENTE des beaux quartiers à encore frappé fort. CONTRIBUTION D'UN CORRESPONDANT DE PLATEFORMEJAUNE QUI SOUHAITE CONSERVER L'ANONYMAT
Some thoughts that inspire me at the time, these incredible claims put forward by RP...
By defending polygamy and the establishment of certificates of virginity, RP offers us the striking demonstration that Bolshevism was the Jacobin radicalism of a bourgeois revolution to come, in the countries of underdeveloped capitalism, and this, in the era of imperialism. Applied within the framework of a Western industrial power, Leninist ideology quickly shows its limits and stands like an obstacle before the proletariat, maintaining the most perfect confusion. This is what we are going to demonstrate.
I/ On Leninism in Russia...
In the Russia of the tsars where ethnic and religious minorities saw themselves persecuted by a power in which the Orthodox church associated with Nicholas II, firmly opposed the demands of a peasantry eager for agrarian reform, conflicting in the name of the proletariat all the opposition to absolutism in search of the application of elementary bourgeois rights, as Lenin does, is perfectly explained.
It doesn't matter then that Muslims are demanding some reactionary demand such as polygamy or even the certificate of virginity. The double oppression they suffer as peasants deprived of land and a crushed religious minority explains their flight into faith, an expression of their suffering and radicalism against the power in place. The same goes for the Jews then prey to pogroms, and for all the victims of medieval authoritarianism in control of the country.
History is thus made that at the dawn of the 20th century, it is up to the proletariat to take charge of the historical task to which a national bourgeoisie too frightened at the idea of setting in motion the legions of workers against domination of Western Capital, gave up, to accommodate his modest fate, even if it meant not being able to free himself from the constraints of a medieval societal corset,
Freeing the peasant from the landowner by guaranteeing him the right to exploit his own piece of land should increase agricultural production tenfold and allow a considerable increase in industrial production. This perspective, which would make Russia the equal of the Western powers and the improvement in the standard of living of the masses that it presupposes, offers the best guarantee as to the progressive evaporation of reactionary religious whims whose flourishing rests on the breeding ground of the crast poverty, and augurs the fight for Socialism.
There is no point in this debate to question the social class which must assume power in these particular circumstances where the proletariat has taken on the role that history reserves for the bourgeoisie, it is a other subject. The main thing to remember is that Bolshevism, even if it relies on the working class, leads a fundamentally interclassist struggle in backward Russia.
II/ Its application in imperialist centers...
It is equipped with this same ideological corpus that leftism is rampant in the capitalist West where the question of bourgeois democratic rights arises in a completely different way.
The society in which we operate offers formal equality to all its members, including minorities. The inequality of treatment felt by women, Muslims, students, the blind, the deaf and mute, the one-legged, the disciples of the Moon sect, whether real or not, cannot find a solution in the framework of bourgeois relations of production.
Indeed, private ownership of the means of production and the existence of the social classes that it inexorably carries within its flanks, is the outdated product of societies of shortages where the sting of competition irremediably favors the strongest to the detriment of the most. weak, in an environment where the rise in production remains vital for the existence of humankind.
However, Capitalism, unlike the class societies which preceded it, offers this particularity, that it pushes the majority of the inhabitants of this planet into the most complete destitution, not because of chronic underproduction, but on the contrary because he produces too much! This apparent contradiction demonstrates forever that as a social relationship, capitalism now has its place in the museum of antiquities.
Its survival can only generate ever more vile exploitation of labor and rely on our divisions to thus fuel new oppressions. In this precise context, the working class must reclaim its class dictatorship, and in the absence of the necessary awareness, limit the damage by opposing any attempt by a beleaguered bourgeoisie to dissolve the basis of democratic rights, on which as a then progressive class, it had risen.
The questioning of blasphemy, the largesse granted to different religions as well as obscurantist boasting, have become the prerogative of all bourgeois factions, even if some circumstances linked to the divergent interests that each of them defends, temporarily oppose this drift. Anti-racism has become state religion, while the nomination of Assa Traore as possible personality of the year by the very respectable “Time” confirms that leftism and Capital are competing for the same idols. Secularism, the last bulwark against the desire displayed by the bourgeoisie to organize society on communitarian criteria of “race” and religion – a real war machine against the class struggle – is threatened by an expanding united front. from the French extreme left to the American ultra-liberals. The growth of populism, at which Besancenot and Macron whine, confirms that the working class, aware of the danger that threatens it, no longer finds representation on the left of the political spectrum.
These indisputable facts are concentrated in the two demands put forward by RP in this mind-blowing publication, which if it found an echo among the masses, would reserve for the women of this country a status similar to that which they have in Pakistan or in Afghanistan. We cannot find a better example of the absolute bankruptcy of Leninism applied to the heart of the imperialist powers.
AUTHOR: AN ANONYMOUS CORRESPONDENT OF PLATEFORMEJAUNE
POSITION OF THE 2ND SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL ON IMMIGRATION (signed by Lenin and Rosa…)
Resolution of the Congress of the Second International unanimously approved, Stuttgart, August 1907:
The immigration and emigration of workers are phenomena as inseparable from capitalism as unemployment, overproduction, underconsumption: they are often one of the means that capitalism has at its disposal to reduce the share of workers in the products of their labor and sometimes take on abnormal proportions as a result of political, religious or nationalist persecution. The Congress cannot consider as means of averting the possible danger with which emigration and immigration threaten the working class, nor any exceptional measures, economic or political, because they are ineffective and essentially reactionary, nor especially a restriction of free movement, nor an exclusion of individuals belonging to foreign nationalities or races.
On the other hand, Congress declares that it is the duty of the organized working class to oppose the frequent depression of their standard of living as a result of the mass importation of unorganized workers; he likewise declares that it is their duty to prevent the importation or exportation of Saracens.
The Congress recognizes the difficulties created in many cases for the proletariat by the mass immigration of unorganized workers, accustomed to a lower standard of living, and originating mainly from agrarian or family economy countries, as well as the dangers caused by certain forms of emigration; He considers, moreover, from the point of view of proletarian solidarity, the exclusion of individuals of specific nationalities or races as an unacceptable measure for this purpose;
For these reasons, he recommends the following measures:
I. In countries of immigration:
· 1) Defense of the importation of workers under contracts which prevent them from freely disposing of their labor force and their salaries;
· 2) Legal protection through the introduction of a normal working day, a minimum wage, the abolition of the sweating system and the regulation of work from home, strict monitoring of hygienic and residential conditions;
· 3) Removal of all restrictions which exclude and make more difficult for specific nationalities or races, the stay in a country, the enjoyment of social, political and economic rights and facilities given for naturalization;
· 4) For trade unions in all countries, the following principles shall be of general application:
o 1) Unrestricted access of emigrant workers to unions in all countries;
o 2) Ease of access by setting a reasonable contribution;
o 3) Free transfer from one national organization to another, subject to full obligations towards the national organization;
o 4) Creation of an international trade union cartel which will determine precise regulations consistent with these various requirements and will ensure the execution of these principles and measures;
o 5)Aid for trade union organizations in countries where emigration mainly occurs;
II. In countries of emigration:
· 1)Active union propaganda;
· 2 Information given with publicity on the true situation of working conditions in immigration countries;
· 3) Close agreement of the unions of the countries of emigration and immigration in order to achieve common action on the questions of emigration and immigration;
· 4) Whereas in addition, the emigration of workers is often artificially stimulated by railway and shipping companies, by land speculators and other fraudulent enterprises, by false and misleading promises, the Congress demands: Surveillance of navigation agencies and emigration offices, possibly legal and administrative measures against them, in order to prevent emigration from being organized in the interest of capitalist enterprises;
III. New regulations for the transport industry, especially by ships. Supervision of the execution of the accepted rules by inspectors with discretionary powers, to be chosen from among the organized workers of the countries of immigration and emigration;
Preventive measures in favor of emigrants upon their arrival, so that they are not delivered to the exploitation of the parasites of capitalism (privateers of capitalism). As the transport of emigrants can only be legally regulated on an international basis, the Congress instructs the International Socialist Bureau to prepare proposals for the new regulation of this matter, in which the arrangement and installation of the ships will be determined, as well as the minimum air cube per passenger, and special importance will be given to emigrants dealing with their passage directly with transport companies without the intervention of any intermediaries. These proposals will be communicated to the various leaderships of the Socialist Parties with the aim of bringing them into legislative application and using them for propaganda.
International conference of secretaries of central trade unions, held in Christiana, September 15 and 16, 1907
The correspondence journal, number 12, December 1907, pp. 154-155.
The conference condemns workers or groups of workers who, in the event of conflict, go to countries where workers are in struggle, taking the place of strikers or locked out workers. The capitalist bosses now practice this method of going to find traitorous workers in other countries, the conference therefore recommends to the representatives of the trade union organizations to draw the attention of the National Centers of the respective countries and to propose publishing the names there. traitors abroad to betray their working brothers (...)
(...) The conference then recommends that the socialist deputies of all countries, where there are socialist deputies, submit to Parliament laws preventing the export of sarrazins (...).
K. Kautsky, The Socialist Program, 1909.
(Pierre Saly, Alice Gérard, Céline Gervais, Marie-Pierre Rey, Nations et nationalismes, Armand Colin, Paris, 1996, p. 243.)
For workers in countries that enjoy a superior existence and better working conditions, where immigration subsequently exceeds emigration, this internationalism causes many inconveniences and even provokes dangers. It is indisputable, in fact, that these workers who occupy a high position are hampered in their struggle by competition from needy immigrants without any resistance.
In certain circumstances, this competition, like the rivalry of capitalists belonging to different nations, can inflame national antagonisms; arouse the national hatred of workers against foreign proletarians. But the struggle of nationalities which in the bourgeois spheres is a constant phenomenon can only be temporary among the proletarians.
Sooner or later, they are forced to recognize, if not by another way, at least at the cost of cruel hopes, that the immigration of inexpensive labor forces, coming from backward regions, into economically advanced countries, is also necessarily linked to the capitalist mode of production as the introduction of machines, women's and children's work into industry. This immigration cannot be prevented any more than these last two phenomena.
The labor movement of an advanced country suffers from yet another point of view from the backward state of workers in foreign countries: the degree of exploitation that the latter tolerate provides the capitalists of the first nation with an excellent pretext, and even a solid reason to resist the efforts of proletarians to improve their working conditions by means of legislation or weak conventions. One way or another, the workers who remain in the country understand that the progress of their struggle depends very much on the progress of the working class in other countries. If at the beginning they feel some bad humor against foreign workers, they end up convincing themselves that there is only one effective way to remedy the harmful effects of the lack of development of foreigners: it is necessary to put an end to this inferiority. The German workers have the best reasons to wish that the Slavic and Italian workers abroad as well as at home obtain higher wages and shorter days, and, if possible, they must act in this direction. English workers have the same interest vis-à-vis German or other workers, Americans vis-à-vis Europeans. The close dependence of the class struggle led by the proletariat of one country on the class struggles of other countries necessarily leads to a close union of the proletarian fractions of the different nations.
The vestiges of national isolation, of national hatred, borrowed from the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, are disappearing more and more. The working class is freeing itself more and more from national prejudices. The worker learns more and more to recognize and appreciate in his work companion, whatever language he speaks, the companion in struggle, the comrade.
The Third Congress of the ISR, Resolution on immigration
La Vie Syndicale, June-July 1924, number 14.
(...) Consequently, the Third Congress considers that it is necessary to practically implement the following proposals: on the international level: creation of an International Emigration Service with the following responsibilities:
· a) Centralization of information and statistics concerning international emigration and immigration.
· b) Ensure liaison between the different centers.
· c) Fight against the import and export of strikebreakers.
· d) Send to the executive office of the ISR all information and documents enabling the migratory movement to be put into action in the international revolutionary syndicalist movement for the benefit of the proletariat.
The World Migration Congress, International Federation of Socialist Workers' Unions
Proposals adopted by the Congress The Voice of the People , July-August 1926, number 72. Preamble.
The World Migration Congress, convened by the FSI and the IOS, held in London from June 22 to 25, 1926, defined its attitude towards immigration problems as follows:
Capitalist evolution tends towards an ever-increasing intensification of the productive forces, which has the counter-effect of a reduction in the labor force necessary to manufacture a given quantity of articles. The expansion of distribution markets has not kept pace with this acceleration in production. The result is an increase in labor, unemployment of frightening proportions which, especially in Europe, which was hit hard by the aftermath of the war, has hit even those industrial states whose development was already advanced.
In this unfavorable situation of the labor market, the movement of emigration of workers towards countries with relatively superior economic conditions is always increasing.
A further reason for emigration is the inclination always present among workers from countries where the standard of proletarian living is lower to move to those where it is higher, in order to settle there either for a temporary stay, or permanently. Moreover, countries which, despite weak economic development, nevertheless have a large population increase, provide a perpetual flow of emigrants; and finally, the political oppression of the working class constitutes an ever-renewed reason for emigration.
The movement of an excessive number of workers to countries with greater economic development, still capable of receiving them, can, in certain cases, create a danger for the workers of these States, since there is a fear, not without reason, a lowering of the standard of living and other conditions of native workers. Congress does not recognize in the tendency, currently so marked, to emigrate from States in an unfavorable economic situation, an effective and lasting means of overcoming economic crises; emigration seems to him rather a phenomenon resulting inevitably from capitalist evolution.
The incapacity of the current capitalist system to bring about a solution to the global economic crisis is clearly evident in the proposals made by its representatives, who, through their reactions, often only serve to accentuate the crisis.
The Congress also wishes to affirm its conviction that it is the duty of all governments to provide for the settlement of migration problems in the manner best conducive to international peace and the promotion of the combined interests of emigrant workers, as well as of workers from the countries where the first go.
This is why the Congress recommends to the International Trade Unions and the Socialist Workers' International to appoint a joint commission which would study the economic, social and technical factors of migration and to submit the results to a subsequent Congress.
Engels a Judeophobe, Christianophobe and worst of all...a "Nazi" Islamophobe for the petty bourgeois leftist ideologues who have been polluting the communist movement for far too long...
Already in the Middle Ages the parallelism of the two phenomena was evident during the first uprisings of oppressed peasants, and in particular, of the urban plebeians. These uprisings, as well as all the movements of the masses in the Middle Ages necessarily wore a religious mask, appeared as restorations of primitive Christianity following an invasive corruption [Note: To this the uprisings of the Mohammedan world, notably in Africa , form a singular contrast. Islam is a religion appropriate to Orientals, more especially to Arabs, that is to say, on the one hand to city dwellers practicing commerce and industry, on the other hand to nomadic Bedouins. Therein lies the seed of a periodic collision. The townspeople, having become opulent and luxurious, relax in their observance of the “Law”. The poor Bedouins, and, because of their poverty, severe morals, look with envy and covetousness at these riches and these enjoyments. They unite under a prophet, a Madhi, to punish the infidels, to reestablish the ceremonial law and the true belief, and to appropriate, as a reward, the treasures of the infidels. After a hundred years, naturally, they find themselves exactly at the same point as these; a new purification is necessary; a new Madhi arises; the game starts again. This has happened since the wars of conquest of the Almoravids and the African Almohads in Spain until the last Madhi of Khartoum who defied the English so victoriously. This was the case, or almost so, with the upheavals in Persia and other Mohammedan countries. These are all movements, born of economic causes, although wearing a religious disguise. But even as they succeed, they leave economic conditions intact. Nothing is changed, the collision becomes periodic. On the other hand, in the popular insurrections of the Christian West, the religious disguise only serves as a flag and a mask for attacks against an economic order that has become obsolete; finally this order is reversed; a new one arises, there is progress, the world moves on.], but behind the religious exaltation there were regularly very positive worldly interests hidden. This was evident in a grandiose manner in the organization of the Taborites of Bohemia under John Zizka, of glorious memory; but this trait persisted throughout the Middle Ages, until it disappeared little by little, after the Peasants' War in Germany, to reappear among communist workers after 1830. The French revolutionary communists, as well as Weitling and its adherents, claimed to be primitive Christianity, long before Renan said: "If you want to get an idea of the first Christian communities, look at a local section of the International Workingmen's Association."[6]
Source: Contributions to the History of Early Christianity. -Engels
