From the March 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter
Borders – Who needs them?
The Spanish word for a national border is La Frontera. Often these arbitrary partitions are emphasized with different types of walls meant to keep people out. Some contemporary examples are, for instance, the now toppled Berlin W all, and the current wall Israel is in the process of building in order to divide Palestinians and Israelis.
The border that divides the U.S.A. and Mexico also contains sections of wall and fence at different points along La Frontera. In spite of those walls and numerous trigger-happy law enforcement agencies that patrol them, thousands of Latinos risk life and limb each year to cross into the US.
The compulsion is simple. It hinges on economics and the struggle to survive. If the economic tables were turned, US citizens would do the same thing. Human beings will, after all, brave many dangers in order to make a better life for themselves and their loved ones.
Each year, however, hundreds are killed trying to make this arduous journey. Some are shot to death, but many more die from exposure trying to cross the desert lands in the region.
A recent news story in Primer Impacto showed the section of the wall in Tijuana Mexico. It had coffins nailed to it, and each coffin had the number of people who had perished for each year inscribed on the lid, 340 in 2002, 400 in 2003. A sad reminder of mans’ inhumanity to man.
We often hear of illegals supposedly taking jobs from native-born workers, or that they steal medical and educational services at tax payers expense. Sometimes we even hear the idea being tossed about of amnesty for illegals. These are preposterous notions, for why should any person be denied the right to be able to work, to be educated, or have access to medical services? By what right or reason can amnesty be granted a human being of this earth who is a natural component of it anyway?
Only the system that puts profits before human life creates these arbitrary partitions and all of their life- threatening lunacies.
We could easily do away with these boundaries though, by abolishing the capitalist system that gives rise and legitimacy to them, and replacing it with socialism. The democratic ownership and administration of the means of production and the free access to all goods and services would mean an end to nation states, borders, poverty, war, and pollution. It would amount to a true amnesty for everyone on the planet. People could then travel and live anywhere they wanted without having to risk their life to do it. Such travel would only be motivated by the individual desire, however, and would not be coerced by an inhumane anti-human economic system.
Lets work for a world without borders.
Gulf Coast Red (TX)
From the March 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter
Chicken Little Politics?
I am addicted to reading political journals of all stripes, left, right and center, as well as socialist. As I came to the positions of the World Socialist Movement, I began reading left newspapers with a new understanding. I now see a nearly constant hysterical pitch – Doom is coming! Fascism! Economic Collapse!! Environmental Degradation!!! Repent sinners, the end is near, join our vanguard, coalition and/or the affinity group and save the world through action, action, action . . .
But is the left (which is distinct from socialism) advocating practical action or perpetual motion? There have been plenty of perpetual motion machines invented, and they are as successful as the left has been, doomed to entropy. In racing around posing countless reforms, transitional demands, desperate for any contact with the working class, the left has forgotten what it is they thought they wanted in the first place.
Instead of seeing that the revolution will come from a profound change in social consciousness, they substitute adrenaline headlines to try and scare folks into party activities, which aim for reforms, which they think will slowly raise consciousness. But the problem is that working for reforms can succeed only if we don’t talk about, or at best downplay, talking about the “s” word.
A friend of mine in my union is active in a post-trotskyist group that does many good union activities in the US and Canada. They teach workers how to take back their unions, fight the boss on the shop floor, etc. For 30 years they done very good, practical, day-to-day union work. My friend has told me that some founders, after all these years of working for these reforms for the workers, have confessed to him they are disappointed that they never, ever, get to talk about their ‘socialism’.
Likewise the doddering Communist Party USA acts as the loyal left wing of the Democratic Party. Both parties are active in much practical work, have lots of followers. But when the need for socialism gets left behind, what is the practical consequence? You maintain capitalism and the problems you are trying to stop.
Throughout the 100 years of the existence of the World Socialist Movement, we have refused to play the game of chicken little politics. In the 1930s, when the left from Social-democrats to anarchists were hysterically calling that the economy was about to collapse, and that would be the end of capitalism, we said no, while the economy may or may not collapse, that doesn’t mean that capitalism will. Then and now we will tell you that there may or may not be fascism around the bend, and environmental collapse may occur or maybe the lions will sleep with the lambs.
We’re socialists, not fortune tellers, what we do know is that capitalism is based on the exploitation of workers. As workers understand that, become conscious, we will have the ability to create a new world free of the inhuman demands of a system driven by profits.
Eugene Debs once said, “It’s better to ask for what you want and not get it, than ask for what you don’t want and get it.”
If you really want socialism, join the World Socialist Party. Ask for what you do want.
F.N. Brill
