18.07.1996
Smash all immigration controls
Is the SLP policy of “establishing a humane and non-racist immigration system” correct? Alan Fox argues for the smashing of all immigration controls
Revolution or reform - that was the clear choice facing members at the founding conference of the Socialist Labour Party on May 4 1996. Should the SLP become a left Labour Party, or should it ditch the ideas of Labourism and lay down the basis for what the working class really needs to achieve socialism - a revolutionary internationalist party?
The conference brought contradictory results. The reformists swept the board in the elections to the national executive committee, although several revolutionaries just missed out. The reformist position won the day on the ‘economy’ discussion document, but a sound revolutionary stance was taken on Ireland.
However, as Lee-Anne Bates wrote (Weekly Worker May 9),
“The clearest debate between revolutionary international socialism and reformist national socialism came at the end of the conference in the discussion on the ‘anti-racism’ policy document.”
The paper under discussion contained the following passage:
“The SLP will scrap the Asylum Bill and re-examine in the cold light of day all existing immigration controls within the framework of establishing a humane and non-racist immigration system. A socialist Britain would welcome asylum seekers who are in flight from any oppressive regime without restriction.”
Two amendments sought to delete this section of the report and replace it with a simple idea - in the words of the proposal from South London SLP members, “The SLP will scrap all immigration controls and the Asylum Bill.”
Some comrades were genuinely baffled as to why we characterised the document’s proposal as reformist and the amendment as revolutionary and internationalist. Surely it was “idealist” and “unrealistic” to abolish all border controls? Even under socialism, ‘we’ would still have to defend ourselves against ‘our’ enemies, runs the argument.
We should be grateful to the comrades from The Marxist who submitted a piece for publication in the Weekly Worker (‘A socialist immigration policy?’ June 13) which beautifully captures this viewpoint. Chiding us for being “puerile” and “utopian”, these comrades complain of being dubbed “racist and social chauvinist” for simply proposing ‘sensible’ policies for the ‘here and now’.
While we would not accuse most adherents of such views of being racist (they are merely lacking in socialist imagination), we think that our friends from The Marxist, wittingly or not, certainly fit that bill. How about this as a justification for limiting immigration? –
“There will always be racist attacks committed by fascists and the mentally unstable. But the number of immigrants present in a particular area will very often determine the extent to which fascist attacks are tolerated, if not tacitly endorsed.”
You are just asking for trouble if you let in everybody, argues The Marxist. “There has never been a universal right to migrate.” It is at this point that one begins to wonder why they chose that particular name for their journal. Marx stood for the liberation of the whole of humanity - liberation from all the oppressive restrictions that class society imposes upon us. But for The Marxist such oppression is destined to remain with us always. Their ‘communism’, if it can ever be achieved, is for the dim and distant future. In the meantime, apparently, we should get on with the job of running the existing order. And they wonder why we call them reformists.
In a recent front page article we wrote: “Workers must be able to travel and live anywhere in the world with equal rights.” Incredibly, The Marxist retorts: “Who believes this idealistic nonsense?” It has never happened, so it cannot be.
One person who did believe this “idealistic nonsense” was a certain VI Lenin. In a letter to the Socialist Propaganda League in America he wrote:
“In our struggle for true internationalism and against ‘jingo-socialism’ we always quote in our press the example of the opportunist leaders of the Socialist Party in America, who are in favour of restrictions of the immigration of Chinese and Japanese workers ... We think that one cannot be internationalist and at the same time in favour of such restrictions. And we assert that ... such socialists are in reality jingoes” (quoted in J Riddell (ed) Lenin’s struggle for a revolutionary International New York 1986, p344).
Perhaps we should expect no better from the likes of The Marxist. But what of those followers of the Fourth International Supporters Caucus, such as Brian Heron and Trevor Wongsam, who spoke out so vehemently against the revolutionary amendments at the SLP conference? Surely they are aware of the internationalist stand which is central for communists and which Lenin outlined so clearly?
The truth is that Fisc’s opportunist strategy, to subordinate everything to leaders of workers’ struggles such as Arthur Scargill, no matter what reformist illusions such leaders may hold, inevitably leads them to embrace reformism themselves.
The bourgeoisie is more advanced than these comrades. The European Union has already implemented ‘the impossible’ for the citizens of its member states and, strangely, their society has not collapsed as a result. But for The Marxist (and Fisc, presumely), “Immigration must be planned.” No society “can rationally organise human endeavour or resources on the basis of an unregulated flow of people in or out of it”. Not content with mocking us for wanting to extend human freedom, these comrades are actually advocating the reimposition of national boundaries, where they have already been dismantled. Everyone should stay where they ‘belong’.
Perhaps, in the name of rational organisation, we should introduce internal passports, restricting the citizens of our future ‘liberated’ society to one particular town or city?
Here we have the difference between the reformist outlook of limiting our demands to what appears possible within the confines of existing class society and the revolutionary vision of fighting for what workers need for their liberation.
For example, when we call for workers to fight for a minimum income of £275 per adult per week - what is necessary to reproduce themselves culturally in a developed society such as Britain, we are often told - by workers themselves - that our sights are too high, we will never get that much. Similarly, as The Marxist says, “Many working class people ... reject the call to ‘end all immigration controls now’ as perverse.”
It seems ‘impossible’ under the capitalist society they know, so why demand it at all? But our job is precisely to raise the sights of workers to fight for what is necessary, what they will easily be able to achieve once they themselves take collective responsibility for running society.
Lee-Anne Bates wrote: “Socialists are internationalists with the whole of humanity as their concern, not the government of Britain” (Weekly Worker May 9). Incomprehensible as this may be to reformists such as the supporters of The Marxist, it strikes at the very heart of revolutionary politics.
Reformists in the SLP want the party’s election manifesto to be a list of ‘promises’ of what our politicians will do for the workers. That would make it just like the manifestos of the capitalist parties. A revolutionary manifesto sets out the demands which workers themselves should fight for - demands which can only be won on a permanent basis through world revolution.
The Marxist has a very peculiar notion of proletarian internationalism. Not only should we aim for policies applicable to Britain alone, but according to ‘A socialist immigration policy?’ imperialist oppression is best attacked “by supporting the elements fighting for national independence, sovereignty and self-reliance” (my emphasis).
There is no future in arguing for the ‘self-reliance’ of socialism in one country - national ‘socialism’, as we have called it. Capitalism is a global system and there can be no retreat to the past. We will destroy capitalism, but we will build upon all its progressive features, including its world economy.
Our main task as proletarian internationalists is to make revolution in our own country and assist in every way possible the spread of world socialism. It is not to demand a ‘fairer’ capitalist world through removing “the immense debt interest burden” imposed on the ‘Third World’, nor, for heaven’s sake, supporting Christian Aid, as The Marxist implies.
Of course, some capitalist restrictions are too much even for reformists. Even they think the Asylum Bill is beyond the pale. But, The Marxist solemnly intones, we must distinguish between “genuine refugees fleeing political and religious persecution and those simply seeking to better their lot by migrating to another country”.
Where an individual is under direct threat of persecution, arrest, torture or assassination - that is one thing. But when oppressive class rule results in widespread impoverishment, homelessness, malnutrition or starvation: sorry, but you are not ‘genuine’ refugees.
Even those fleeing assassination cannot always rely on The Marxist’s support. You see, “large scale permanent movements of people can never solve ... problems of inter-communal strife, whether in Rwanda or what was Yugoslavia”. We cannot let in all and sundry to our isolated ‘socialist’ paradise. After all, “immigration policy has to be determined according to the needs of the host country to productively employ people and assimilate them in the community”.
How reminiscent all this is of the social chauvinists Zinoviev polemicised against in The social roots of opportunism:
“They identify economic interests with a temporary advantage amounting to a few more pennies. They split the working class inside every country and thereby intensify and aggravate the split between the working classes of different countries. Thanks to the common efforts of the bourgeoisie and the social chauvinists, the world proletariat is being split both horizontally and vertically” (quoted in Riddell, p493).
We do not expect the world revolution to occur simultaneously in every country. For a period the class war will be fought out internationally, with the world divided into two camps - bourgeois and proletarian. During such a period the proletarian world will strive to protect itself in every possible way against the forces of counterrevolution. No doubt such measures will include border controls.
But the borders we will be protecting will not be those of existing countries. They will be the class borders separating the two camps. Our aim is to complete the world revolution in the shortest possible time so as to dismantle permanently all borders, all artificially produced divisions. We do not make a virtue out of what might, temporarily, be necessary.
We should state here and now what we are aiming for: let us raise the miserable expectations of all the oppressed and inspire them with the vision of what can be attained.
“We only want the Earth,” is the modest demand of James Connolly, reproduced on the membership card of every SLP recruit. For The Marxist and many SLP reformists, this is a mere platitude, to be used to rouse the members at election time.
But we communists mean it. We are fighting now to make that slogan a reality: to make a world free from all forms of class oppression - including immigration controls.