This loathsome society of profit and exploitation

If it were possible to measure the depths of loath generated by this society based on profit and exploitation, one (but only one!) of the most effective criteria would certainly be to see how migrants are treated: the refugees, those with no reserves to fall back on, the “miserable” victims of the iron law of “growing misery”, an army of the desperate, fleeing hunger, famine, unemployment, war, environmental ruin, “natural” disasters, and so on. From Africa, the martyr first of centuries of colonialism and then of imperialist penetration; from the Middle East, shaken by endemic wars, fruit of the constant and merciless redrafting of geographies by the leading world powers; from the East, shaken by the upset of an impetuous and devastating transformation to capitalism; from Central and South America, where the poisonous fruits of capitalism are now over-ripe – from all these areas of the world flows a tide of millions of proletarians, semi-proletarians, sub-proletarians in search of… of what, if not the bare and precarious minimum for survival?

To understand who they are and why they are in such a desperate state there is no need to get smeared with the sticky-sweet benevolence poured forth by a Pope who is doing his utmost to take the place of “socialistoid” reformism, now short of breath and unable to play its role of control and skull-stuffing to the full. Better, instead, to go and read or re-read Book One, Section One of Marx’s Capital: “The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as ‘an intense accumulation of commodities,’ its unit being a single commodity.” An enormous accumulation of commodities: the products of work, fruits of the earth, physical and intellectual capacities, human beings… Everything is a commodity, everything is exploitation and speculation in the capitalist mode of production. And the horrendous tragedy of the migrants shouts this aloud. They are the “surplus products” of a mode of production that knows only the categorical imperative to produce and go on producing, so as to sell and gain profit.

It is therefore a mode of production that encounters cycles of surplus production and is at a loss as to how to “place” its excess goods – except by destroying them, alternately in small doses or in huge masses. Human beings as commodities, bought or sold on the market, who serve capital as cheap labour to keep down salaries in the countries they manage to get to, and are discarded as quickly as possible when they are no longer of use. This is a long story, which began with the birth of capitalism: it is the story of the Irish and Indian proletariat at the time of the industrial revolution and of the millions of other proletarians that have followed them all over the world – commodities to nurture the voracious machinery of capitalist production, tossed from one side of the world to the other in search of… we know quite well what: the bare and precarious minimum for survival. Towards England, then towards Australia and towards America – and today towards all corners of the world, because the whole world is now crushed beneath the iron heel of capitalism in its imperialist phase.

Boats loaded to the hilt sail the waters of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, processions of refugees try to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, waves of farm workers without land flow to the cities of China and Vietnam, masses of refugees attempt to leave behind them the smoke and flames of bombardments halfway over the world. And Europe, “cradle and guiding light of civilization”, lives under the illusion that it can lock its doors: at Ventimiglia in Italy and in Calais in France, at the beginning of this 2015 summer, the borders are closed and the desperate are chased from place to place, trapped on the cliffs, hunted down on trains and buses; in Hungary and elsewhere walls are built to stop them. Surplus commodities. There is no end to the disgust this society generates.

And the many ways in which profit is extracted from these desperate people (literally on their skin) shouts even more loudly that everything is a commodity. There is the obscene migrant business, from which politicians, local councillors, cooperatives, various sizes and shapes of criminals from various backgrounds have never ceased to speculate and profit in the very same days and months when some of them were raising their voices and protesting (or crying crocodile tears) over the “indiscriminate flux” of fleeing unfortunates: two euros per immigrant in the Centro d'Accoglienza Richiedenti Asilo of Mineo, just outside Catania (Italy), formerly the Residence of the Aranci, where the US soldiers stationed in Sigonella were housed (a significant coincidence – war is always on the cards!). An obscene business which, in Italy as elsewhere (the whole of the capitalist world is part of the same village), develops in a myriad of different ways: through the dubious charity of a whole series of organizations, more or less NGOs, more or less non-profit, in the cynical or whining tones of newspaper articles or TV programmes, in debates and initiatives (the maxi-meal for five thousand “poor people” at the Milan Expo!). In the meantime (as we never cease to emphasize) police control is increasing and getting stricter, the military control of society is extending through a fine network, the repressive function of the State is becoming more and more explicit, plans are made to bomb here and there to stop the migratory flow (by the way: bombs, too, are “surplus products” that have to be got rid of!) and the mechanism of ideological elaboration which, particularly amongst the stunned half-classes, makes of the “migrant”, the “outcast”, the “poor man” (or simply the “foreigner”) a potential “enemy”, is operating at full blast.

We don’t wish to repeat here what we have already said and written many times on this subject¹. We confirm that the essential slogan for communists is “No to any control over immigration!”. No to any form (military, bureaucratic, cultural) of limit on the movements of refugees, migrants, the landless and the homeless – proletarians amongst proletarians, the enormous army of those lacking any reserves that capitalism creates minute after minute in its greed for profit, its need for flexible and blackmailable labour. But this “No” (unconditional and without any hesitation) is accompanied by the awareness that we communists must restore in the rank and file of all proletarians: precisely because it is the bastard child of capitalism, this immense tragedy can only be cancelled from human experience by eliminating its prime cause – only by overthrowing capitalism once and for all and finally clearing up all the disgusting mess (material and ideological) that it has produced and left behind it.