Refugees and Capitalism

http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/4693
Date Written:  2016-07-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2016
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21452

The process of escaping violence has turned into a "journey of death" for millions of refugees. For Syrian refugees it is also a journey of "no return."

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Millions of people are circulating around the world in search of work. Women from the Philippines, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are leaving their families behind to look after the families of strangers in the Gulf States, North America and Europe. Their men are recruited by construction industries to build monumental towers under slave-like working conditions.

Workers from Mexico and the Carib­bean are entering the United States and Canada as seasonal migrant workers to pick fruits and vegetables to cheapen the cost of labor for corporate agribusiness.

Most of us are affected by this "mass socialization of production" through selling our power to labor. The capitalist owners are in competition in buying, selling and exchanging commodities, ranging from labor power to finance capital or other forms of commodities such as food, garments or technology. Anarchy in the market requires the intervention of the capitalist state to regulate, moderate and control this anarchy on behalf of the capitalist class.

This unjust system has made life intolerable for the majority of the world population. The capitalist state often resorts to unrelenting wars, invasions, occupations or genocide. The predacious class controlling this state has left open the wounds of colonialism and centuries of slavery that have damaged the social fabric of communities and societies.