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Migration in the Context of Global Capitalism – Class, Race and Gender
Five Hundred Years: The Malignancy Grows but the cure is in our hands.

by Arthur Yarish, Center for Global Justice, México

A Contribution to the discussion of a broader view of Migration. Inspired by my co-presenters Dawn McCarty who asked in her Essay “what is missing” and José Antonio Orosco whose Essay also helps us to find “what is missing”.

Throughout my original essay, “A Brief History of Migration”, I attempted to place the current, expanding xenophobia and new nativism in historical perspective. I learned from rereading that essay I had merely sketched an introduction to the deeper interrelated issues of Race, Class and Gender within Capitalist expansion. We cannot fully grasp the political-economic implications of the Migration Issue without placing it in the specific historical context of neo- classical Imperialism. Without fully assessing the use of Class, Race and Gender in the latest Imperialist assault of finance Capital, we restrict our analysis, limit our interpretation of the dynamic changes now in process, and truncate our ability to formulate programs and policies leading toward more equitable social and economic alternatives. The long term context is Capital’s growth and mutation, ongoing imperialist expansion, and its political-social practices of divide and conquer. We need to completely explain its intensifying process and methods of labor exploitation which destabilize local, regional and national economies that drive more and more people into the migrant march. As transnational Capital attempts promote policies and legislation to increase international labor competition, we need to learn new methods of international cooperation. In effect we have to convert the capitalist slogan of “comparative advantage” to a working class ethic of mutual cooperation

Focus on the Push

Analyzing and explaining the coordinated use political, economic and military forces that have pushed and are pushing increasing numbers of workers into the northward march in search of jobs is an essential educational step toward building mutually supportive cross-boarder cooperation. Working to dissolve the cultivated fears inflaming social prejudice is an indispensable task. We must clearly show that both domestic and international migrants are forced into the labor markets by political decisions that create instability and insecurity within countries and internationally. We must dispel the myth that economic decisions are made out side the political arena. The Mexican Migrant forced off the ejido by the US dumping subsidized corn into the Mexican market is just as much a victim the coordinated political-economic attack as is the US auto worker forced out of a job because of “out-sourcing” and a plant closing. The migrants’ struggle is our struggle. We must see the migrant as one of us. From this fundamental human perspective and out of our social analytical approach we can build a consensus based on our common needs and advance the necessary work to develop mutual cooperation.

Clearly the Mexican Migration to the North is only a part of a larger movement out of Central America , the Caribbean Islands and out of the deeper “Global South". This massive international and, interregional, migration is also accompanied by the equally important but rarely reported, internal migration of domestic labor within the United States . ”Lean and mean“, corporate reorganization and international economic restructuring results in thinner workers every where traveling longer miles in the march for fewer jobs. Neo-liberal structural economic reorganization on both sides of the border and in many parts of the World are reducing the need for workers and destabilizing national and international labor markets. In a nut shell, the pervasive and aggressive Neo-liberal, political-economic restructuring of finance and of production, on-time inventory controls and global marketing demands are pushing workers of all types into chaotic world-wide labor markets. These neo-classical policies and practices constitute only one aspect of the ongoing Global Capitalist war on the poor. This is the essence of the International Class War launched by neo liberal Capital and the root cause of the massive international search for fast disappearing jobs.  

As Capital's neo-Imperialist Globalizers penetrate more deeply into the “periphery”, or the Global South, we observe the historically familiar patterns of disruption carried on by equally familiar forces of destruction. The methods and practices may be called by new names such as currency realignment , structural adjustment plans , debt reduction programs , and free trade, free markets, but they all bring in their trail equally familiar disastrous results: lower wages, lost of jobs,  longer work hours, deteriorating living conditions, rising imports, declining national food production , reduced social spending for health services and public education , and increasing poverty ,that are followed by the inevitable mass exodus of people fleeing intolerable conditions. As more Mexicans are pushed northward, they are accompanied by more Central Americans more Haitians more Dominicans, more and more desperate people trying to survive the neo liberal assault on their lives. People and Nations that resist the Capitalist fix are threatened with military aggression. Independence from or alternatives to Capitalist exploitation are not tolerated. One need look no further than the long US Blockade of Cuba or the more recent overt and covert subversion of the Chavez' leadership in Venezuela to find ample evidence of the Imperialist pattern that extends back to the European Invasions of Africa and the Americas and then takes a leap across the North American Continent with "Birth of the -new voracious, imperialist-Nation" -The USA. The over used euphemisms that “trade follows the flag” or the reverse that the “Flag follows trade” should be our first clue to the Military–corporate or Corporate-military partnership in political-economic imperialist aggression. The tautology should be clear: with every territorial acquisition the US Private corporate interests expand the necessity for state military action to support corporate penetration and protect the new corporate acquisitions. From this formula of the Corporate / Military State there seems to be no limit to the claims of “National Interest “ and the extension of US military power.

The Present Neo-Liberal, Imperialist goals conform to the classic Capitalist practice of making collectively developed, commonly held property, private. This Coerced Privatization has a long vicious history backed-up by state force. Extending from the English Enclosures through current sale of ejido lands to the assault on social support programs of the modern Welfare State , they all have had the same and cumulative effect of pushing people off their base of self-sufficiency and into the uncertainties of Labor Markets to survive. When the

English yeomen farmers were made wondering vagabonds, they were regularly hanged as today the migrants are some times shot but often jailed on their walk to find job in the northern labor markets.

Capitalism continuously destroys or appropriates the collectively produced wealth and destroys the sustaining economic-cultural practices of societies for individual gain. By incessantly breaking down traditional “Commons” and the legislated commons as we may call the entitlements of the Modern Welfare State, Capitalists deliberately and knowingly destroy the fabric of social cohesion and sustenance. Neither the corporate Capitalist or individual Capitalist can tolerate independent cooperative forms of collective self-sufficiency. In order to insure to itself continuous flow of workers into the labor markets, Capital systematically destroys alternative sources of sustenance. In its neo-liberal form, privatization is designed to achieve its historical goals of reducing and eliminating the material foundation of collective self-defense against the international Capitalist on all society. To increase Capital’s source of profit, all of life’s materials and activities must privatized and made available for sale for private gain. Capital must free the self-sustaining artisan and the farmer from the security of his or her work and the socially sustaining community to create the isolated individual “free” to enter the labor market to be freely exploited for a wage. The “economic man and women individualized and isolated is a capitalist creation. The only source of capitalist productivity is raw, individually marketed human labor power. Capital must insure to itself an adequate supply of individual workers who have no alternative but to constantly sell themselves independently for lower wages. The ability to buy and sell is the essential and narrow notion of Freedom in Capitalist economic relations. Human beings must be made free to sell themselves to the Capitalist buyer of their capacity to work. In order to insure to itself the lowest possible wage the corporate economic individual cannot abide any form of collective resistance based on the collective or independent production and control of materials or organizations out side of the market nexus. From the historic assault on the traditional “Commons” to the ongoing assault on cooperative activities such as seed sharing and Union building, the Capitalist strives to “free” worker from self-sustaining practices for super exploitation on the corporate farm or in the capitalist factory. We clearly see that Worker and Farmer self-support and self-defense institutions have been under constant attack over the past thirty years. The Private appropriation of all forms of collectively built wealth and cooperatively developed institutions leaves workers free for Capitalist exploitation. At this point we can identity the core meaning of “Free” and Freedom in the Capitalist vocabulary. The ideal worker is the totally individualized, isolated, human being made with no other source of gaining an income other than entering capitalist conditioned labor markets.

The current, world-wide wondering of workers must be situated in the historic Capitalist formula for free labor exploitation. The workers must be free in a double sense: Free from any alternative form of self-sufficiency so that they may be freely bought at the lowest price on the “free” labor market. This conveniently narrow, self-serving Capitalist concept of freedom of labor exploitation is predicted on limiting the freedom of workers from any other independent,

collective institutions of self-supporting or self-sustaining protection. The minority of Capital’s privileged few legally employ the force of law and all the instruments of state coercion to insure their free exploitation of the many. Every imaginable instrument of force and

propaganda is used to insure the abundant flow of workers to labor markets. From Slave markets to the “Free Market” the Worker and the Farmer arrive liberated of all other means of subsistence thus made available once to be sold and today to sell his or her only marketable product, the capacity to labor. Here we not only arrive at the narrow core notion of Capitalist freedom but a core value of Capitalist culture, their ideal of the isolated and totally dependent individual.

Long History, Long legacy and Continuing Resistance

Central to the successful conquest of the Americas and Africa , from the first moments of the European invasion to the present neo-Imperialist expansion, has been the mobilization and control of a massive labor force to advance private gain at the expense of collective hardship and pain. From Slavery and encomienda, to indentured service and debt peonage to low-wage labor markets, capital has been forced over the centuries to adjust its styles of exploitation but the goal of extracting profit workers sweat remains the same. When the cost of Race Slavery became too high, the strategic shift to wage/debt slavery followed and along with it came new forms of manipulation supported by familiar methods of coercion. We should recall well that when the Freed Slaves in Trinidad gained control of Plantations and forced wage increases, the British Imperialist encouraged East Indian Migration to the Island to break the back of free labor’s new found power. By the end of the US Civil War, Capital had learned and did not give the freed slaves their “Forty Acres” or a “Mule” but The Klan was allowed to ride free. Through each stage of social resistance, Capital has modified its form and methods of controlling the labor supplies and its methods and rate of labor exploitation but two essential instruments of coercion remain: the threat of hunger and the use military or para-military force. We must view the current forced movement of newly “freed” Mexican workers and Central Americans walking the north ward route to the labor markets as the latest advance in the Capitalist drive to give Labor “the Right to work for less”. Five hundred years of European / American military aggression has forced the formation of international labor exploitation. One need merely walk along a highway in Honduras to see Campesinos scratching out a furrow for planting on strips of land between fenced-in Pineapple plantations and the shoulder of near by roadway. As in the time of Zapata, the only obstruction to the rich fields beyond the barbed wire is military force.

From the Sword and the Cross Era of Spanish conquest prosecuted under the guise of saving souls, we have arrived to the point of the "Sword and the Dollar" of Capitalist conquest of markets, men, women, children and materials. Advancing under an endless stream of noble pronouncements the Capitalist systematically purses its less lofty goals. Any excuse would do; from saving souls to spreading democracy, people have been relentlessly pushed, punished and dispatched by the point of the sword to save them from perdition of paganism or worse, socialism. From European Wars of conquest for God and Gold we continue to hear the shrill claims of righteous ends: Holy wars followed by imperialist wars succeeded by wars to end all wars, Wars for democracy which have become Water wars, Wars for Oil, War for profit, all are wars to intimidate people, wars to break down National resistance, war for practice to have more wars to sustain Capital. They are the ongoing Wars of Conquest, the continuing wars that leave people destitute, desperate,

and defenseless but properly prepared for the “Free” exploitation in labor Markets. All these wars should be properly called wars of persuasion, wars to condition workers for the markets.

Through all the Wars since the invasion of the Americas , to current endless wars to make the world safe for capitalist exploitation, we have seen the same results: destruction of stable traditional communities and the making of the salable individual worker. Impoverishment of the defeated, their removal from their traditional home and the destruction peoples’ life sustaining traditions, followed by their forced march to the corals of “free” labor markets. The Long Trail of Imperialist shame through the African/American slave trade extends from Indian removals and the creation of the US-Apartheid-reservation system, through forming segregated Black and ethnic Ghettos, to the "Internment" of the Japanese, and the formation of the Prison State. In each successive phase of aggression, we witness the unremitting use of police-state force to achieve private economic gain that result in huge profit for the few and accumulating misery for the many.  All societies that resist the Capitalist assault are subject to military force served up with vaunted political propaganda designed to vanquish constructed enemies: Savages, anarchists, socialist, Communists, entire “ Rogue States ” and our very own home made terrorists. The underlying unrelenting motivation is Capitals insatiable hunger to accumulate by dominating and controlling every thing, every body in order to buy and sell everywhere. 

The human price paid through the long wars of Five Hundred years of the continuing Conquest has been too high and is rising. A simple calculus of who pays and who plays, who works and who profits is revealing. The profits gained were never worth the lives lost. Merely reflect on the loss of 95 to 97 % of the indigenous population of the Americans, the enslavement of approximately 70 million Africans brought to the Americas to replace the loss, but then add the immeasurable on going cost of the social legacy of the deliberate legal construction of racism. The gold could have stayed in the ground and the tobacco uncultivated. At best, the measurable result of this long age of plunder is that 10% of the world’s population lives in relative comfort founded on a base of increasing world-wide poverty. Capitalism has no claim to success. Its long wave of the private accumulation and concentration of the world’s collective wealth put capital’s failure in clear focus. When less than five hundred billionaires hold a total income equal to all the income of half of all humanity and nearly four billion people live on less than 2usd per day, it is not surprising that the need for coercion increases. As wealth and income are increasingly concentrated in few hands, poverty, hunger, disease and war spread through the Global South.    

The New Holocaust  

The legendary Four Horsemen ride a Man-made beast of historically unequalled force. The familiar four: Pestilence, Plague, Famine, and War joined by Racism are now engulfed by the unimaginable greater forces of Environmental devastation. As polar ice sheets slide into

warming seas, drug resistant bacteria flourish, new diseases mutate and spread, species disappear, human hunger deepens and general poverty increases, the Diaspora grows.

That is only the introduction to the new Holocaust. As Capital pursues its endless quest for private profit and food self-sufficiency declines, the increasing human desperation moves us a step closer to Barbarism. The rising numbers of people, estimated at about 30 to 40 million a year, entering the new world-wide Diaspora is merely the prelude to a wider social calamity.   

Mass migration is the consequence of the massive economic war on the world's poor. The on going political-economic war sometimes silent , at times covert , at other times blasting and blazing under the most powerful  weapons of mass destruction , delivered to innocent people under  names such as "Desert Storm" and "Shock and Awe"  combine to terrify , destabilize and move  populations. Capitalist WTO-IMF designed economic destabilization programs require the companion threat of war and its frequent demonstrations of actual war to achieve its economic goals but its goals are not consistent with historically developed human needs.  

For more than five hundred years, we have seen the basic imperialist play book replayed first by the Spaniards in the Americas along with the Portuguese joined by the French, the Dutch and the British who were later accompanied by and defeated by imperialist USA , the new “Colossus of the North”. The American war for Independence was also the first US War of expansion but we are told that it was our Manifest Destiny to expand to the West and to the South. We hold certain... truths of our superiority ...are self evident. Equality took second place to racism and sexism. The contradiction was concealed in the first deceptive phrases of the Declaration of Independence in which only propertied white men we really created equal. While women were not included, the underlying truth of profound racism was revealed by the Three-Fifths Clause to the US Constitution and the long lived reality of race-based slavery. The list of the contradictions is long and the legacy of lies suffered, are more painful. Wars without end enclosed the Natives, segregated the Mexicans and freed the Africans slaves for super exploitation on farms and in factories. The War to “Remember the Alamo ” and “The Main" were racist-imperialist wars for territorial expansion. The racist content was deeply engraved in the annals of US Imperialism throughout the Indian Wars, in the Black Codes, the atrocities in the Philippines , and Vietnam  to the massacres today in  Iraq . The endless US wars fought under official slogans of freedom and liberty now, at long last, clearly reveal themselves as wars of expansion for resources, markets and the control of labor but to achieve a fuller analysis we must clearly identify its racist content.

 All the wars destroyed huge numbers of people who resisted the advancing capitalist war machine. From the early US conquest of the Ohio  valley to Oil Wars in the  Middle East , we can easily identify a familiar pattern of Conquest for expansion and the control of markets, resources and labor but we should also recognize the role reserved for racial manipulation and persecution. The police weapons blazing through the migrant filed US ghettos or the Bombs bursting over the Middle East convey the same historical message: Conform or perish.

Toward a Broader and Deeper Analysis

Just as we should not judge a person by his or her self assessment but buy the substance of the life lived , we should , we must, evaluate the claims of the national purpose, direction and goals by a critical analysis of actual content of the history produced. In the case of the United States , the inescapable conclusion is nearly uninterrupted Imperialist expansion since its inception. Conceived in Merchant Class values and the Slaveowners' racist notions of free trade in human begins, and unfettered labor exploitation, the internal contradictions endure, proliferate and influence the continuing imperialist expansion and its racist content. Politically convulsed by the profound contradictions of its own mutated historical development, the increasing shrill of official propaganda always encourages to us focus on the latest constructed threat and to have us see the noble national solutions of spreading democracy but we are learning that Empire and democracy are not compatible. The irreconcilable internal contradiction is also becoming increasingly clear at home and abroad: neither the military-political methods used nor the mode of production imposed is compatible with democracy. Capitalist authoritarian methods of enclosed command production are anathema to democracy and tend toward fascism.  

This expanding social /economic gulf between the exploiting many the exploited few is complemented by the political contradiction of corporate dictatorship in the work place and the historic denial of the ideals of democracy to people every where. Let’ recall clearly that Kissinger declared that the Chileans made a mistake in electing a socialist government which the US democracy felt it was obliged to correct with dictatorship. The threatening many are every where in the Capitalist view. The many indigenous people, the many yeoman farmers, the many slaves, the many Mexicans, the many immigrants were and are seen as a constant threat to the profoundly undemocratic oligarchy. However, we must ask who is threatened and what is threatened? Just as the Master tried to control the Slave, the Capitalist strives to control the workers. All principles are shoved aside in the quest for profit. The threat that formal democracy might become real popular democracy was and is constant danger which threatens US Imperialist-driven, WTO-designed world economic and military domination. US led, oligarchic-Capitalist programs must take full responsibility for the expanding poverty, the resulting world-wide migration and the rising threat of people every where demanding relief. The shallow claims of formal democracy and equal procedural justice are every where contradicted by political subversion and widening economic and social injustice.

 In order to properly examine the current massive Caribbean and Latin American Diaspora it is necessary for us to situate this growing migration in its actual political-economic reality of international Capitalism. We must deepen our study of the ongoing manipulative patterns of Capitalist exploitation, the organization of its growing repression and the increasing domestic and international resistance to both. We have to develop an analysis of Capital's mutating Imperialist strategies based on the results of its historic practices and contrast the results with its claims. The skill used by the reactionary right to create wedge issues such as migration play on natural fears of increasing competition for jobs and vanishing public services is extremely effective but we must recognize that migration is a Capitalist instrument of labor control that leads to intensified exploitation.

We must find ways to break out of the narrow range of the present debate. We may take the lead of Paul Krugman of the NY Times who recently labeled the debate on Migration as an argument between the Republicans who want to punish the migrants and those who want to exploit them but we must go beyond his framing of the issue. Although it is perhaps the clearest comparison, it is also a dangerously facile dichotomy. While showing how the debate is situated between two wings of the national reaction, we must not fall into the trap of taking the side of Capital's need for additional labor power as the base of our argument but elevate the issue to a universal human rights level. We ought to show that the current framing of the National debate on migration confines the discussion well to the right of center and defines the attempted one/ two punch of the neocon's intended goal to allow migration, intimidate the migrants and use them to intimidate the domestic US Working Class as a constant threat to job security. Sustaining the contrived divisions is essential to keeping wages down.  

The Migration Question, as presently framed by the right, represents the effective manipulation of public fear of the migrant presence in the US labor markets and among the national population. Intimidating the migrants is a policy practice for controlling the new labor force which domestic Capital now needs to fill labor shortages in various, low-wage service sectors such as office cleaners.  Allowing the debate to remain confined to its present parameters, limited to the needs of the more or less exploitive political wings of The Capitalist parties, will tend to sustain social divisions which reduce our ability to expand cooperative outreach among all groups of workers, to develop, unite and fight for a distinct working class alternative. 

What we need to do?  

Above all we must know were we stand and how we must proceed to form an independent perspective toward building alliances that will lead to a solution that meets workers needs. While the opposing sides of the liberal Capitalist and neo-Nativist-Right Reaction will continue their destructively acrimonious debate, our task should be to build a foundation on common international and interracial working class needs. It will be necessary for us to break out of the typical positivist, econometric number-crunching of the standard supply/demand analysis and formulate an argument based on our social assessment of how we should build a cross-border labor solidarity that has the potential to lead toward improving the international cooperation necessary to give birth to cooperative organizations which will greatly reduce or eliminate the destructive aspects of US labors' protectionism. Berkeley Professor David Card’s work offers an opening for our future analysis. Expanding an evaluation of statistical data by including normally unnoticed and economically unmeasurable social dynamics, Card's work takes us on to forgotten pathways toward a more productive social / economic analytical approach which can form the empirical base on which to build new levels of working class cooperation and building alternative institutions. However, we should view this as our starting point. 

Although we have lost much political ground over the last thirty years of the neo-Classical Capitalist assault on the world’s economies, we now can identify clear patterns of national and international cooperation. Since the neo liberal assault on the entire progressive social agenda in recent years, the propagation of unrestrained consumerism and extreme individualism both wrapped in hyper-nationalism as if they were a US birth right, presents us we added challenges. In face of the segmenting of US society, we are confronted with the overwhelming task of rebuilding cooperative mutually supporting social structures while relearning proven methods of building international working class solidarity. At least since Seattle in 1999 many organized groups have made impressive public statements ranging from the April/ May pro-immigrant demonstrations to the Bamako Appeals. At minimum the necessary frame work for meaningful conversations leading to mutual cooperation, are developing. At the same time we are witnessing a growing resistance to the most extreme material and emotional consequences of the expanding range of Imperialist repression at home and aggression abroad. Out of the budding, multi-national dialogues we must organize to rebuild international working class solidarity on material base of fulfilling common needs. As our needs proliferate, to paraphrase Marx, the richness of our creativity should soon follow but we will need to develop that rich analytical and organizational ingenuity.

Organize, Organize and …

To meet these manifold challenges by increasing our alliances we must again organize from the bottom up. Education, organization, validation and celebration of our multicultural and multiracial composition are indispensable. We must create a new multicultural, interracial working-class ethic as we cultivate mutually recognized international standards of respect and cooperation. Within the US and, at minimum throughout the Americas we must cooperatively construct multi-directional pathways toward mutual self-education, intercultural understanding and cooperation. We must recapture our history as the basis of carrying forward our present and future struggles. We must take command of our history and future development. For example, while it is imperative for all of us on all sides of the many boarders to stress the general rights of labor and develop combined programs and policies to achieve international social justice, we must also acknowledge that the current character and nature of labor exploitation is an obstacle to further mutually beneficial cooperation. We will need to intensify our work on three levels of education: historical, political and organizational. Historically, we must reappropriate our working class heritage. Politically, we must advance a clear working class program for ourselves based on a new paradigm of learning and finally we must relearn the historically proven organizational methods and quickly adapt them to the rapid mutations of expanding Capital exploitation.

It will be necessary to reclaim our tools of critical analysis, teach the Critical Method and develop our own organic intellectuals. By redeveloping these tools through the theory practice method, we will reestablish our independent analytical perspective on the current mode and methods of Capitalist exploitation and expand the effective range of work for our organic intellectuals who will become the organizers of the necessary change. We as a group must be able to clearly explain the causes and consequences of Capitalist accumulation, its

concentration, its method of exploitation, its continuity, its social consequences and our reasons and  methods  for ending it as we explain and effect our approach to creating viable alternatives. Above all we must recognize that the rising migrant population is a natural ally. Latin American migrants in the US have already demonstrated their class perspective and organizational skills. We can learn form them as we work more closely with them.

We must celebrate with our natural ally and educate ourselves about our combined but often separate history of struggles and the positive contributions made over many years by all groups of immigrants. However, we should also stress that the contributions were made in spite of unremitting prejudice and oppression faced over too many centuries. Without romanticizing the immigrant experience, we must also engage in an incisive, critical analysis of Capital's calculated historical and contemporary use and manipulation of diverse immigrant groups to reduce wages, erode working standards and living conditions on both sides of the boarder, both side of the Oceans and through out the world. At the same time we should point out the benefits that will flow through the Americas if we allow for the free, cross-boarder movement of labor. We must base ourselves on the recognition of full equality and freedom of movement. We will need to find ways to seize the moral high ground by mounting a clear argument supporting mutual development based on cultural respect and a working class ethic.  

We will also have to show that currently NAFTA is a totally lopsided agreement:unfair and unequal at its core. Under its rules Capital is free and encouraged to roam the Americas in search of profit, while workers are every where enclosed behind legal restrictions and expanding walls.  We know this fundamental inequality but we must be able to explain it coherently in terms of struggles lived and lives lost. One may assert this reality but we have to learn to teach it on two interrelated levels of analysis. First we must clearly place the current political economic situation in readable flowing narrative interpretations of its historically specific context and sharpen our ability to use the tools of incisive critical interpretation. When we join our analysis of the political-economic features of the dominant capitalist system with the social relations of production demanded for the extraction of increasing rates of labor's exploitation, we will be able to fully demonstrate its motive forces that are producing the growing economic and social injustice. We will be able to convincingly explain the reasons for the growing gap between the rich and the poor and point out the necessary directions for change. We know, workers of all types know, that our real wages and living standards have been stagnant or declining on both sides of the boarder for more than two decades. We must explain how we will reverse the course of Capitalist destruction of people's lives and the environment and demonstrate our ability to create viable alternatives. 

Neo liberal Globalization has been correctly characterized by many analysts as the race to the economic bottom for the majority of the world's population; enriching the few and impoverishing many. We merely need to glance at our negative national saving rate and dissolving pensions to see the coming economic disaster. In face of the impending economic and financial crisis, the evident Capitalist remedy is the production of fear. Its instrument is expressed in continuing application unequal laws to support the use of the classic Divide and Conquer techniques at home and abroad. Our work of turning orchestrated public fear into optimism of opportunity is our immense challenge. It is both an organizational and educational task.

We, The Working People, Will need to stand against Barbarism.

The Danger signs are clear.

The continuous characterization of new immigrants, like the old, as people with personal substandard habits or socially destructive values, subverting some vague self-inflated, mythical cultural standards a la Samuel Huntington, is absurd.  However, when combined with racial stereotyping, these characterizations take on a dangerous public tone. Maligned and disparaged for the miserable conditions in which immigrants are forced to live in the North, many of the mixed raced migrants are regularly scapegoated and blamed for many external problems over which they have no control but do directly condition their daily lives. Economically and socially marginalized, stigmatized by assertions of inherent inferiority, feared and under constant suspicion, with little or no public voice, the migrants become almost defenseless. Pushed to the sidelines of mainstream society, viewed as threatening intruders seen as taking scarce jobs, presented as a drain on declining social services, they are under constant suspicion, fear, public criticism and ridicule. When the race factor is added to the malicious media production of a negative public images and the cultivation of fear, the historical moment becomes ripe for the creation of the new subhuman “other". Cultivated hatred rises out of manufactured fears. Fear is an instrument of division which we must overcome.  

It is not surprising that more astute social critics have noted the close similarity of the historic characterization of Blacks and dark-skin Mexicans and are calling for a new variation of the Civil Rights Movement. If the Nazi propaganda machine could construct a threatening image of European white people who just happened to be Jews as the internal enemy, we can never say "It can't happen here" .Let’s face the reality that the Nazi's and the South African Apartheid regimes referenced the US history of racism and ethnic cleansing, that is, destroying Native Americans and enclosing them on Reservations, as both their model and justifications. It did happen here. It happened as recently as the Japanese interments and Oliver North's and John Pointdexter’s recommendations to used old military installations as prisons for domestic political dissidents. Gitmo? It’s a wake-up call!  Prisons for Profit! What next?

We have no choice but to rally to the defense of the new immigrant, we defend them in order to defend ourselves. We defend them to defend our own humanity. We must embrace the immigrant as a compañero in the struggle for Working Class dignity and in the pursuit of fundamental human rights and economic and social justice. We US nationals must extend our hand of friendship , and cooperation with the view that we will welcome their arrival and

celebrate their cultural contributions as a foundation for multi-level cooperation toward achieving common goals.

Part of our self defense is to reconstruct our own history, the "other side of history" and tell the "untold story". As we know, immigrants today, like those who came yesterday, preserve and practice long-held, deeply-felt family traditions and rich cultural values. We must give voice to the voiceless and help them learn to tell their own story and relearn our history from their story. We should make an extra effort to put the new immigrant at the center of our working class story. Let’s recall the Magón brothers and put them beside Joe Hill, Saco and Vanzetti, Pete Cacchione, Pedro Albizu Campos, Harry Bridges and Cesar Chavez .

I now find that I have again merely outlined the three fold tasks of the future our necessary international working class solidarity initiative.

I feel that I and we have much more work ahead.

I hope that I have contributed to some helpful ideas. I will welcome you critical comments of this work in progress. AG 

18 July 2006

program

index of 2006 workshop papers