Racists and Anti-Racists Against the Proletariat - ICG

After the march for equality end against racism of 1983, after the motorcycles of "Convergence" that left from five French cities to meet at the carnival-parade gathering more than 30.000 people in Paris on Dec.1st, 1984, now the spotlights zoom on "S.O.S. Racism" and on a new musical happening at the Concorde. Every year it's the same bullshit with a different topping.

The people who organized last year's march could rely from the very beginning on the help and the support of the French State, of the democrats, of humanist and religious associations, of the Trotskyist Communist Revolutionary League as well as still other nationalists. They pretend that they don't act with a precise political goal, but simply "want to show what happens in the social ghettos, how people from all horizons live there and express their hopes". The slogans of the march were: "For a multicultural France", "Together for equality", "Neither rejections nor assimilation, for a new citizenship".

As for "S.O.S. Racism" with the badge "Touche pas a mon pote", they hold on to a more simple discourse, they claim to be against all racism and their actions are limited to press-conferences, investigations and counter- investigations, legal proceedings and other mobilisations of sensibilization.

All these initiatives are part of the sinister attacks capital leads against our class.

Since the Socialist Party was democratically elected into government in 1981, all workers have "benefited" from governmental action: increase of unemployment (of which no single bourgeois no longer contests the need), expulsion of all "irregular" immigrants, reinforcement of the democratic forces of law and order (new crusade of Pierre Joxe - the French home secretary -, to modernize the repressive system), reestructurations (=intensifying exploitation) without forgetting the action of Badinter - the minister of justice - who grants particular care (as witnessed by the mutinies in prisons) to the black sheeps of socialist France.

Today, with "S.O.S. Racism" as yesterday with "Convergence", the State receives a new support to actively repress the proletarian movement, particularly concerning the explosive sector of young immigrants.

In France it was mainly during the summer of 1981 that those young proletarians of the suburbs of Lyon and Marseille, rebelled against the boredom and the misery of their lives. It was not an isolated rebellion: at the same time, the Brixton riots, where whites and blacks, men and women, young and old were united to fight the cops and to burn down and ransack, followed within a few months by new rebellions in twelve other English cities, showed that this struggle is the struggle of all exploited.

S.O.S. Capitalism

To prevent the violent assertion of the community of interest that unites all the workers of the world against the bourgeoisie, capital revives racism, systematically imposes it on all relations between citizens, as one of the means to oppose workers one against the other, to atomize them.

The bourgeoisie has not invented racism, it is the product of the division of society in classes. Capital, in its wild race for profit, always gives birth to categorial differences between workers, the most important being the one between national workers and immigrants. By exploiting those differences the bourgeoisie develops and generalizes the racist ideology and turns it into a material force of its preservation: racism permits to avoid the polarisation of society into two antagonistic classes.

But the indispensable complement to racism is anti-racism. Anti-racist wants to maintain a society where harmony reigns between all citizens who, despite their differences of culture and colour, should be able to benefit from the same rights. But what rights do workers have?

Yesterday, when the immigrant was valorizing capital, was sweating value, he represented no problem to society; on the contrary, society used to welcome immigrants with open arms (which is a formula, because when it wasn't hunger that forced them to travel thousands of miles to find work, it was directly the State who, under the threat of guns forced them to exile!).

But today, it's the crisis, there are too many proletarians so it has become necessary to eliminate part of them: the bourgeoisie "discovers" it has an "immigration problem". And our anti-racists shout: "Beware, no racism! Equal rights for all!".

As long as proletarians behave as honest and responsible citizens, if they accept to participate to the national effort to save the economy, if they accept to participate to the elections, to the unions if they accept everything, including loss of jobs, evictions and even the sacrifice of their lives in always more deadly extermination wars, then they can benefit from all imaginable rights (which in certain countries are duties!): vote, self-expression, associations,...

But if workers, and no matter what colour they are, don't respect capitalist logic (or if their mere presence hinders this logic), if they say no to sacrifices, shit to national economy, if they struggle against wage decreases, if they organize themselves against expulsions and bullying, then immediately, in the name of these same rights and of democracy, in the name of civilisation, a flood of repression pounces upon them. These proletarians, who break social peace and organize themselves against society to obtain by force the satisfaction of their needs, are nothing but provocateurs, rioters, enemies of democracy!

By claiming "equal rights for all", anti-racists do nothing else but submitting proletarians a little more to the "laws of French people". These laws regulate as everywhere else, the relationship between buyers and sellers of goods, they do nothing else but submitting the workers to the necessity to get rid of the surplus of this commodity, labour power, when it exceeds the needs of valorization of capital. To claim "equal rights for all" means submitting the workers to the legal repression by the State, to all anti-workers measures,... that are very democratically decided by the elected parliament of the nation! Need we recall the "legalisation of all immigrant workers without working permits" that allowed the French State, supported by all leftists, to expulse ten of thousands of immigrant workers!!! Those are the kind of perspectives anti-racists propose.

Class solidarity

Our struggle has nothing to do with the right of being legally exploited and repressed. The rights are nothing else but the legitimation of bourgeois democratic terror. Let's not be fooled by their speeches about "solidarity" between French and immigrants, by their flatteries about good immigrants who "have contributed to the wealth of the country". That solidarity is social peace, it means the reinforcement of individual submission to capital for all proletarians.

To Impede wage decreases, lay-offs, police repression, expulsions, evictions, fascist aggressions, we don't need neither pity nor charity, but our own class force organized beyond all divisions.

Organizations such as "S.O.S. Racism" only prepare the denunciation and isolation of combative workers who, to defend themselves against expulsions, beatings,... use direct action against all the forces of law and order: police, fascists, unions,... without justifying themselves as good citizens would. Only the struggle on the ground of class war against bourgeois legality represents the common interest of all workers.

The repression of part of the workers is a defeat for the whole working class: against the anti-racist priests, we must organize against all sacrifices, towards active solidarity with all the struggling proletarians!!

Down with equality!!!

Capital is killing us!!!

Let's live for our struggles!!!

The proletariat has neither nationality nor rights!!!