Solidarity Against Prejudice in the Working Class (Part 1)

A Tale of Mistaken Identity

In my years living in the US South, I have met many working class people who more or less completely agree that their bosses are useless and yet get all the money, they know the government here isn't a democracy so much as the protectors of the rich, and they almost always agree it would be a good idea to start a new government where working people had a say.  And yet, many times, after saying all of this, they will complain about Mexican immigrants.

I spoke to another worker recently who agreed to all those points above, but was very angry indeed about illegal immigrants from Mexico.  "They come here and don't have to pay taxes and they can live on less than me, so they get the jobs.  You can't tell me that doesn't hurt the average worker."

"But they are here in fear, facing brutal repression, just trying to feed their family, maybe find a better way of life.  They have nothing.  If the bosses who are paying immigrants too little and aren't hiring you at all were taken out of the picture, US workers and immigrants would have more than enough to share."

After our conversation, I realized that the whole problem was that this guy saw his differences with the illegal immigrants, not his similarities.  Those differences (or race and nation and legal status) are all from the imagination of the rulers.  Race is defined by the powerful (created and enforced by their laws which have created a racial caste system).  Nations are made up by and for the rich.  The legal statutes of the land are written up by the rich and their congressional lackeys.

As long as these fictional lines keep the oppressed from unifying against their common enemy (the bourgeoisie), we'll never be able to overpower them.

Solidarity:  a Working Class Necessity

Solidarity (the unity of all workers, impoverished, and oppressed regardless of nation, race, sex, religion, or any other imaginary division) is the only way we can overthrow capitalism.  Now more than ever, when the imperialist West controls the strongest military might in human history, when international corporations bully entire countries, when the IMF, WTO, and World Bank are more powerful than elected leaders, and when so much anti-imperialist resistance has been co-opted by religious extremists, the oppressed of the world must come together.