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By two comrades, May 3, 2006
The flags at the rallies are more accurate indications than the slogans brought by Euro-Amerikans handing out posters.
The nationalism of the oppressed nations is "applied internationalism," as should be obvious in the number of flags
working together against u.$. repression.
Even among supporters of the demonstrations, people are sympathetic toward but tripping over phrases such as "civil rights movement" and "workers' rights movement" in describing recent demonstrations in response to the anti-migrant movement. At a gut level, they must feel such names don't exactly fit. So, they try to use all of them in a catch-all way. Questions arise over how to name this "movement" against the anti-migrant movement, partly because of the ambiguous status of migrants in the eyes and schemes of Amerika-first liberals and so-called leftists, and also because protests against anti-migrant repression, at least on such a massive scale, seem new and unfamiliar to liberals who up until recently had spent most of their time listening to the demands of white Amerikans. Actually, there were collective protests against the fascist "Operation Wetback" in the 1950s, in addition to protests by Latino media then, though not as large and widespread as current demonstrations.
The distinction between the demonstrations and the movement they represent may be important to consider. These things are not identical, and in fact many demonstrators would accept increased repression against new migrants in exchange for legalization for some undocumented migrants. So, there isn't even just one movement, against repression, for example. It isn't just that demonstrations reflect a unity of different tendencies. Rather, demonstrators disagree over what the targets of demonstrations should be, some even calling for increased border and immigration enforcement. There is no single united front against a single threat. Without falling into the postmodern trap of saying there is either a million different movements or no movement, it is possible to speak of different, and intersecting or enmeshed, movements in the demonstrations. The apparent difficulty in naming the supposed "new movement" does not mean there is no movement at all or some kind of postmodern or post-capitalist movement. If the Euro-Amerikan so-called working class seems indifferent, and if there is a material basis for that (although Euro-Amerikans will not succeed in running their own economy by opposing all migration), people must revise their views of the class and social nature of progressive movements and realize that what they thought was the Euro-Amerikan working class is a reactionary bourgeois class. People should not dump Marxism or simplistically regurgitate all the slogans of the loudest or most visible demonstrators. A Euro-Amerikan dominated organization had the fanciest sound system in the New York City demonstrations, but the most radical speeches were by people sometimes without even a bullhorn.
Characterizing migrant rights demonstrations
Although objectives vary between and within demonstrations, "migrants' rights demonstration," or the less awkward "migrant rights demonstration," is a correct description of most demonstrations. "Migrants' rights" is broad enough to encompass many demands being put forth. It is also less specific than "immigrant rights" and doesn't exclude temporary migrants from people's visions. Moreover, "migrants" alludes to a difference between proletarian workers, and the bourgeois parasites who make up First World labor aristocracies. "Migrant" and "proletarian" are largely interchangeable, whereas First World so-called workers, when they do migrate, are cosmopolitans, expatriates or settlers with a bourgeois outlook and economic position. These First World migrants already have the rights that the migrant rights movement is seeking. Oppressor nation migrants are typically called "settlers" today. True, in 1776 white people in the united $tates were not from imperialist countries in Lenin's sense of imperialism which did not exist yet. In MIM Notes, MIM uses words appropriate for our era. Here we give some theoretical explanations.
Through placards, literature and flyers, groups focused on supporting the demands of the majority of white Amerikans have tried to impose a particular narrow vision on demonstrations. They have done this while describing demonstrations as a movement with multiple goals. That demonstrators have multiple and sometimes conflicting aims and demands is a fact, and that fact is not being disputed here. Furthermore, people opposing repression against migrants for civil rights- and humyn rights-related reasons are being progressive even if they stop short of making the most radical demands. But it is one thing to point out these differences, and another to characterize demonstrations in a self-fulfilling way that potentially changes them.
An English/Spanish flyer distributed by a certain Euro-Amerikan settler-dominated antiwar group in Los Angeles defines the demonstrations in several ways. Supposedly, the demonstrations are a "mass movement for immigrant rights," an "immigrant rights movement," a "movement for equality," a "Civil [R]ights movement," and a "workers' rights movement" -- all in one and all at the same time. People should see these as certain people's peculiar slogans for what demonstrations should turn into, not statements of fact. The demonstrations as yet are not just a civil rights movement, but some want to change that and turn that description into a reality. Anyone who claims solidarity with the "new civil rights movement" or even the "immigrant rights movement," without criticizing repression of temporary migrants, is in fact trying to impose certain goals on demonstrators, goals that are at odds with the interests of the majority of migrants. Many rallies and marches are said by some participants and organizers to be in support of "immigrant rights," but the goals of demonstrators are broader than that and include support for temporary migrants and opposition to the overall anti-migrant movement. The opposition to Minutemen refers to anyone crossing the border, most especially those not having access to the proper channels for immigrating. Furthermore, if people insist on saying they are demonstrating or rallying for "immigrants," rather than migrants, there is only so much we can dispute their subjective intentions, but the underlying social struggle may have different or broader aims.
"Civil rights and workers' rights movement" is an increasingly popular combination. A variation on this includes "human rights," which is actually more accurate than the other two designations. If "workers' rights" implies support for improving the wages, benefits and conditions of U.$. workers in general, and "human rights" support the free movement of people into more privileged countries as a matter of principle, then "human rights" better represents the demands of most demonstrators.
As MIM has previously pointed out, to simply call the demonstrations a "workers' rights movement" would compel people to explain why the majority of U.$. citizen workers aren't involved and therefore raise uncomfortable questions for pseudo-socialists and labor bureaucrats. So, the labor aristocracy in a ridiculously awkward move tries to call the demonstrations three different things or more in order to unite the different tendencies reflected in demonstrations while co-opting all of them.
In reality, most of these demonstrations do reflect a kind of workers' rights movement. But in the U.$. context, this implies that bourgeoisified Euro-Amerikan workers are included. So, we have to be more specific.
The real basis for seeing the struggle against the anti-migrant movement as a workers' movement
To say the demonstrations represent both a migrant rights movement and a workers' rights movement would to a certain extent be redundant even though not all migrants are workers. Globally, most workers are proletarian, and most proletarians are potentially migrants whether they know it or not, and even regardless of whether they have migrated yet or not. (Many Third World non-proletarians are migrants, too, but their nations are proletarian/proletarianized nations, thus making it somewhat unnecessary to distinguish between proletarian and non-proletarian Third World migrants. In the big picture, the distinction between proletarian and non-proletarian migrants from Third World countries is irrelevant for most purposes in the imperialist-country context except for some economic analyses and detailed analyses of class structure. Contemplating "brain drain" and the creation of a migrant comprador bourgeoisie are some other exceptions.) Under the current imperialist world economy, most proletarians are migrants in the sense that there is a real compulsion for them to travel a great distance to move to another place even if there are things holding them back. Migrants have particular characteristics, but the difference between proletarians who actually migrate, and those who don't, is not so great that there is some essential difference between the two groups.
The proletarian is a migrant -- and conversely the migrant is a proletarian. Whether it is Filipino migrants, Nigerian migrants, Pakistani migrants, or ex-Soviet migrant proletarians, etc., migration in the world presents itself as an overwhelmingly proletarian phenomenon. It is also a wimmin's phenomenon related to the global patriarchy, which oppresses the world's wimmin and youth while constructing Third World males as wimmin. When Euro-Amerikan so-called workers migrate, on the other hand, it is to take bourgeois jobs, or even to become mercenary "security contractors" or plunderers in Third World countries, such as Afghanistan, Haiti, and Iraq. In terms of what they think, many First World people who migrate do not even think of themselves as migrants, but as some kind of cosmopolitan, expat or even settler, which reinforces the proletarian connotation of "migrant rights movement."
Because it involves semi-colonies of U.$. imperialism, particularly Latino nations seeking self-determination, we should not say the migrant rights movement is only proletarian. There is also the national question involved. The proof is that Minutemen and Lou Dobbs are not bloviating about the border with Kanada.
The anti-migrant movement is in fact also an attack on Latino nations. Inside u.$. borders, Latino migrants are somewhere in the tens of millions but still a small number compared with the rest of the population inside U.$. borders. Relatively-speaking, inside u.$. borders there is only a small proletariat due to the influence and extent of U.$. parasitism. Consequently, there is an incorrect impulse to speak of a civil rights movement or an equality movement of some type to assimilate the relatively smaller minority.
In the United $tates and in some Third World cities, Liberal ideology is so dominant that we cannot dismiss the possibility that some Amerikan flag-waving and pro-Amerikan rhetoric at demonstrations actually obscures a national struggle against U.$. imperialism. The migrant rights movement has so far been mostly a show of strength against the anti-migrant movement, and in some cases a misplaced reformist struggle for legalization in the face of an anti-migrant onslaught that requires a different response. (We cannot say the same thing for Israeli flags at demonstrations even if they are hardly worth mentioning amid a much larger sea of Amerikan flags. The Israeli flag more often than not doesn't represent a struggle against U.$. imperialism, whereas the Amerikan flag in the United $tates, with internal semi-colonies, could paradoxically be a national struggle's cover against repression, however ineffective this defensive tactic may be.) Were it not for the Euro-Amerikan and comprador Spanish-speaking mainstream media, there would be less pressure to pander to imperialist patriotism in the first place. U.$. labor bureaucrats, and comprador Latinos and Mexicans in Euro-Amerikan-occupied Mexico, with lots of resources have helped finance displays of pro-imperialist patriotism at demonstrations and rallies, pressuring people to participate and otherwise displacing different messages.
Pro-Amerikanism at demonstrations as a reflection of assimilationist policies and tendencies
Pro-Amerikanism also reflects a long-standing effort to "Americanize" migrants. The dominant labor unions support this practice, and some migrants buy into it either reluctantly or wholesale. Much of the pro-Amerikanism at demonstrations has an external origin. Stripped of patriotic rhetoric and symbols, migrant rights demonstrations look like a national struggle that has partly taken the form of a legal struggle for rights. The "immigration reform debate" has no anti-imperialist side, but national struggle still manifests itself in terms of that debate. Here, it is crucial that demonstrations, making use of legalistic language such as "amnesty," not be turned into demonstrations dominated by exploiters wanting to integrate with the Euro-Amerikan nation or desiring to serve a comprador role alongside this oppressor nation.
There are seemingly bizarre cases where even people who are otherwise openly and righteously anti-Amerikan get caught up in waving Amerikan flags. For a few other people at least, this unfortunately has the effect of generating and reinforcing loyalty to U.$. imperialism. In other words, Amerikan flags and pro-Amerikan messages at demonstrations don't automatically make the demonstrations reactionary, but there is a dangerous potential for reactionary tendencies to creep in. Certainly, there already is a comprador tendency present in the migrant rights demonstrations, which should be distinguished from genuinely progressive tendencies that are nationalist and sometimes openly proletarian. Evaluating demonstrations requires not just looking at how they affect the larger population, but also considering how they affect demonstrators themselves and people they talk with back at home, school, or work. As the white media and white nation continue to lash out at demonstrators, by calling migrant rights demonstrations "pro-illegal immigration" and disturbingly and menacingly raising up the Minutemen as some kind of counter-demonstration, for example, hopefully more demonstrators and their communities will realize the futility of pandering to crude Amerikan chauvinism.
The difficulty that "Left" groups in the United $tates are having in pinning a label on migrant rights demonstrations is hardly surprising considering their tendency to pay lip service to international working-class unity while wrongly collapsing U.$. workers into a single "multiracial" nation. They are motivated by either a white chauvinism denying national struggle within U.$. borders or a bourgeois oppressed-nationality fantasy of integration into privileged U.$. imperialist society or even assimilation into the Euro-Amerikan nation. An oppressed-nation movement that crosses borders -- in the sense that there is cross-border organizing and demonstrations, and also in the sense that the movement is not bounded by borders -- is not really in their vocabulary. They are forced to impose preexisting, preconceived concepts and categories onto demonstrations that don't neatly fit their visions of change through white liberalism, integrationism, or white-worker national "socialist" revolution that sneers at the idea of the world's exploited and oppressed being the true vehicle for revolutionary change.
Movements against anti-migrant repression are world-wide, and there are real links between oppressed nationalities, migrant or non-migrant, inside U.$. borders and oppressed nationalities in other countries. The idea of a homegrown "immigrant rights movement" is completely presumptuous, as is the idea, reflected in the anti-Maoist antiwar coalition's flyer, that this will grow into a larger "people's movement," which by implication in the context of this group's ideology includes bourgeois Euro-Amerikan so-called workers and non-worker bourgeois Euro-Amerikans. The idea that migrant rights demonstrations should be subsumed under a labor aristocracy struggle against the "bosses" and against Third World workers is reactionary and a move by the labor aristocracy to co-opt the proletarian and national struggle of migrants.
People with more sophisticated rhetoric talk about "im/migrants," with a slash. Compared with "immigrants," this is a step in the correct direction and raises important questions. However, the 50/50 ratio perhaps implied by "im/migrants" is not really correct either, and "migrants" would be more correct as a generalization than even this attempt to split things 50-50. In the U.$. context and certainly throughout the world, not even half of migrants are immigrants in any real sense of the word. Even many migrants who naturalize in the United $tates want to go back home eventually and some do return home. Many Mexicanos and other Third World nationalities in the United $tates who are eligible to naturalize still don't naturalize. Migrants who do stay in the United $tates indefinitely, sometimes as permanent residents, still maintain strong connections to communities and people back home.
And there are variety of reasons why migrants naturalize, some of which having nothing to do with having a positive view of Amerika or a desire to assimilate, or even having a desire to change one's country of residence. Much cross-border migration is intra-regional with migration between Mexico and Mexican and indigenous lands occupied by the Euro-Amerikan nation, rather than inter-country in a real sense. "Immigrant" is further inapplicable for this reason. The very idea of people migrating in their own land is suspect, though intra-country and rural-urban migration are frequently spoken of. "Immigration" is even more incorrect than "migration" when applied to people moving within their own land.
In this context, the obsessive drive to legalize a subset of migrants and also encourage them to become immigrants, without ending the overall practice of anti-migrant repression, must be seen as an externally imposed attempt by Euro-Amerikans to assimilate migrants while preserving their subordinate status. This is being facilitated by Mexican and Latino comprador capitalists who support assimilation out of a sense of duty or gratitude to U.$. imperialism, or because they support turning more Latin American migrants into a labor aristocracy in occupied Mexico. Assimilation is just a flip side of outright repression. Both can be part of an anti-migrant movement, and both are, in the current anti-migrant movement. Allowing more people to get legal status by itself would be a desirable and winnable reform, but from Euro-Amerikans' viewpoint this means assimilation coupled with repression. In the so-called immigration reform debate, disagreement over how much assimilation to carry out is an inner ruling-class struggle of the dominator nation involving the imperialists and the labor aristocracy, both of whom are considering legalization for economic reasons as well. Qualified, halfway calls for amnesty that call on migrants to learn English, have "good moral character" if they want to become citizens, and even leave their "ethnic enclaves," fully resonate with the long-existing racist and chauvinist practice of "Americanizing" migrants, an institutionalized practice that has existed for almost a century. Some legalization advocates openly say that legalization is a first step toward assimilation and discouraging political "extremism." Fear-mongers even go as far as suggesting that undocumented migrants would otherwise be terrorist recruiting material, specifically singling out Middle Eastern and North African migrants but also casting undocumented migrants in general in the same light. So, there is this additional motivation, "Americanization," underlying some calls for amnesty, not just economic concerns.
The international struggle of migrants
The antiwar coalition's flyer previously mentioned criticizes only the "U.S. rulers," completely neglecting to mention the role of ordinary Euro-Amerikans in building and perpetuating the anti-migrant movement. The is in keeping with fascistic reactionaries, posing as leftists, blaming everything under the sun on a Bush "cabal" in order to distract from the root causes and forces underlying reactionary movements, while buttressing the living standards of Euro-Amerikan workers and the "middle class." "Migrant(e)" appears absolutely nowhere on either side of the flyer. There are just calls for legalization for migrants already in the United $tates. "Amnesty, legalization and full equality [individual economic and political rights, not liberation]" are presented as maximum demands. The flyer correctly identifies one alternative to HR 4437 as repressive, but supports higher wages for already parasitic bourgeois U.$. citizen workers. May 1 actions by Third World workers are just "solidarity" actions according to the flyer, rather than an integral part of an international movement against repression. And the flyer has the nerve to say that Black people won the "full equality" that they demanded during the Civil Rights Movement, when in fact the civil and political rights of Blacks are regularly violated as part of the ongoing national oppression of Blacks. This flyer of a supposedly radical antiwar group is a paternalistic piece of white-liberal trash.
Some people have drawn a comparison between the U.$. demonstrations and rallies on May 1, and the 1886 general strike and the situation surrounding the Haymarket events. This is meant as a compliment, a pat on the back, a way of saying that demonstrators are almost as radical as European migrants of the past were (when they weren't attacking non-European migrants and workers). But whereas European migrants became part of the Euro-Amerikan labor aristocracy, demonstrators today are for the most part not demanding improvements in economic conditions, but, instead, opposing repression and calling for economic national self-determination in some cases. Migrants did not suddenly decide they wanted to become permanent residents or naturalized citizens overnight or in the past two months. Massive demonstrations are the culmination of years-long resistance to increasing anti-migrant repression and sentiment.
Another flyer, purporting to be signed by activists centered around Indymedia and Infoshop.org, was distributed in San Diego on May 1 that claimed not to be "an attempt to control or to speak for the emerging movement of immigrants." "We are only a few dozens community organizers and collectives in a handful of cities. We seek dialogue to unify our struggles against racism, war and oppression." (Actually, someone was distributing this flyer to random onlookers in vehicles watching a march!) The four-page leaflet in English and Spanish, containing the phrases "massive struggle for immigrant rights," "movement for justice" and "fight for immigrant rights," makes a comparison to May 1, 1886. It goes on to defend all the gains of the now-bought-off-and-bourgeois Euro-Amerikan labor aristocracy that, without any consistent and sustained struggle against imperialism, resulted in terrible exploitation for the majority of the world's workers. The flyer contains some factual statements, about border history, migrants being the most exploited workers, and some effects of NAFTA, for example, but has absolutely no analysis of how imperialism and neo-colonialism confer parasitic privileges on imperialist-country populations. Again, there is absolutely no mention of "migrants," and the flyer's main text closes with a swipe against temporary-worker programs, calling them "bracero" programs. The resounding take-home message is "no guest workers," not "no borders." There is a cartoon with a politically mistaken premise, with an inaccurate depiction of a Wampanoag chief, on the last page of the English portion of the flyer that encourages people to contemplate what the reaction of the Plymouth colonists would have been had indigenous people forced them to apply to a "guest worker program" -- as if the Wampanoags were an oppressor nation. "You're eligible to apply to our guest worker program, but, eventually, you'll have to go back to where you came from."
While we agree that liberals should offer full citizenship rights to the best of their ability, history says that they won't get the job done. If they would just focus on giving out universal citizenship as they did for whites in the past, then the liberals would eliminate temporary worker programs without uniting with the Minutemen and Lou Dobbs. The white liberals have no desire or power to change their historical ineffectiveness so far, but the people of Aztlán already are gaining power in their own land.
The left-wing of parasitism shares the underlying belief of the Minutemen that class struggle occurs by closing borders including to temporary workers instead of allowing in all workers and standing with them. Ultimately, the recent vote in France against the European Union was the same thing-- the open unity of the oppressor nation so-called Left with Le Pen to keep workers outside imperialist country borders.
The strategic vision of the Le Pens/Minutemen and phony communists is not realistic. Even if they close the border with Mexico, that will just mean more people working in the Bracero program equivalents on the other side of the border. That won't really affect international wages, just the location of the work done and the politics going forward. We at MIM see that the bourgeoisie has to produce its own grave-digger. We'd like to see some grave-diggers take back Aztlán, and set up a socialist People's Republic, but we have to defend them while they're digging the grave of imperialism.There is hardly anything in the "radical" flyer that Amerikan labor unions would disagree with. The flyer merely exploits memories of the Bracero Program to suggest that temporary migrant workers are and would be subject to Bracero Program-like conditions. The flyer even passes over current abuses of migrant workers, in the H-2A program, in complete silence. The whole point is to portray temporary workers as nothing less than peons deloused with pesticide and subject to the worst abuses of the Bracero Program. It would be like pointing to the degraded condition of a slave as a reason not to favor abolitionism. The "radical" flyer pays lip service to open borders, but the bottom line is a sensational criticism of temporary-worker programs that does nothing to clarify the struggles and desires of temporary migrants who aren't seeking citizenship. And although it calls for unity among "working people," the flyer speaks to the narrow economic interests of U.$. so-called workers and precludes the possibility of U.$. so-called workers exploiting Third World workers and migrant proletarians.
The focus on temporary workers ostensibly has to do with demanding equal imperialist privilege for migrants, but the real motivation is to shut out migrants so white workers can keep their current jobs and at even higher "wages," actually exploiter incomes. Labor aristocracy opposition to temporary-worker programs today, like its opposition to the program of the 1940s-'60s, has nothing to do with supporting open borders or migrants.
Beside being a racist caricature whose images of "Pilgrims" and "Indians" are taken from an Amerikan elementary school lesson about colonial encounters, the cartoon in the flyer reinforces the idea that the colonials were workers, rather than conquerors and settlers, backstabbers and murderers. Perhaps in 1776 or even Marx's day we could expect no better, but in the era of imperialism, we have to make sure the wrong lessons do not filter through. Now we have Lenin's concept of oppressor nation and proletariat and there is a class on the historical stage prepared to dig imperialism's grave that was too young or non-existent in 1776.
This sums up the settler labor aristocracy intervention in migrant rights demonstrations, which have become internationally known. The "we are all immigrants" slogan, and the various formulations such as "immigrant rights movement" that fail to challenge white nationalism, are an attempt to trick migrants into accomodating to the economic and national interests of the Euro-Amerikan so-called working class and ultimately the imperialists themselves.
