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Vol. 79/No. 33      September 21, 2015

 
(editorial)
Open the borders to refugees now!
 
The Socialist Workers Party demands Washington ‘Open the borders!’ to the hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria and elsewhere driven from their homes as a result of capitalist exploitation, competition and war. The SWP’s sister Communist Leagues in the United Kingdom, Canada and elsewhere are initiating and joining protests demanding their imperialist rulers do likewise.

We salute the proletarian response of tens of thousands of working people in Europe who reject chauvinism and welcome the immigrants, demanding the governments where they live do the same.

The deadly turmoil in the Middle East and Africa today is a result of the coming apart of the imperialist-imposed order headed by Washington, as well as decades of betrayals by Stalinist and nationalist misleaderships that claimed to speak for the toilers of the region. It is a product of the world crisis of capitalist trade and production, which falls most heavily on toilers in the semicolonial countries.

The Socialist Workers Party has a proud history of demanding Washington open the borders to those seeking refuge — from Jews fleeing Nazi concentration camps in the 1930s to Kurds and others following the 1991 U.S. assault on Iraq.

“Crumbling borders weaken the employer-fostered competition between workers of different nationalities and widen the cultural scope and world view of the working class,” SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes wrote in Capitalism’s World Disorder. “This process strengthens the fighting potential of labor’s battalions and brings new experiences and militancy into the workers movement.”

Widespread working class solidarity and aid to the fleeing toilers stands in stark contrast to the response of their rulers, who block fleeing refugees with border fences and naval flotillas and paint immigrants as terrorist threats. Workers can see more clearly the need for our class to act — to take a revolutionary course to break from the capitalist parties, to build labor parties based on the unions on the road to overthrowing the dictatorship of capital and joining the worldwide fight for socialism, a society based on relations of human solidarity, not me-first dog-eat-dog capitalist values.
 
 
Related articles:
Europe: Refugees break out of camps, win solidarity
Thousands face cops, say: ‘We are human!’
UK rally protests gov’t attacks on immigrants
 
 
 
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