WORLD WORLDWIDE AUSTRALIA - news journal UPDATE - (en) Australia, Melbourne, MACG: The Struggle Against Racism (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Workers are divided, conquered and controlled as a class, both in

Australia and globally, by the racial and ethnic divisions perpetuated
by capitalism. This results in horrifically disproportionate living and
working conditions for non-white workers, but it also results in worse
conditions for all workers. Only the collective power of working class
organisation can challenge and dismantle the structures of "white power"
which enforce the domination of all, at the primary expense of
racialised workers. In this struggle, the right of racially oppressed
workers to take action in advance of the wider working class will be
key, not only to defending their own rights, but to raising the
consciousness of other workers as to where their interests lie.

In any class society, the dominant ideology is the ideology of the
ruling class, so it is unsurprising that white workers who haven't
rejected capitalism are vulnerable to accepting racist prejudices. It is
also unsurprising that workers, whose conditions are mostly far less
comfortable than those of their masters, may express these prejudices in
starker terms than those used by the capitalist media. Nevertheless, the
source of racism lies in capitalist social relations.

In Australia, workers without permanent residence are at a disadvantage
in relation to their employers and the bosses know it. This applies
doubly if the workers are undocumented or working outside their visa
conditions. This leads to some occupations being dominated by immigrants
receiving much less than the minimum wage.

Indigenous people in Australia are primarily treated as an obstacle to
the exploitation of land by capital. Subsequently, they are either
integrated into the lowest strata of the working class or treated as a
completely surplus population. In either case, their very existence is a
repudiation of the legitimacy of capitalist Australia, so they are
subject to extreme criminalisation and treated as test beds for
dehumanising systems of control that are being considered for the wider
working class.

As a result of racialisation, bosses can work people harder and for
lower wages, while using the fear of replaceability to keep white
workers in line. Certain jobs (cleaning, back-of-house hospitality, meat
packing, fruit picking, etc) become racialised, while capitalist media
spin narratives of migrants "stealing jobs" and drum up racist myths
about violent crime.

A lack of working class solidarity is necessary to the continued
domination of capital. Whether it is through the explicit violence of
the White Australia policy or the apartheid regimes of South Africa or
Israel, or the less spectacular violence of modern concentration camps
for refugees, mass incarceration of Blak communities and the temporary
migrant labour system, capital always seeks a way to maintain a
permanent underclass of the hyper-exploited and oppressed. The
racialised, excluded and criminalised do the "dirty" work, the hidden
labour, the care labour and the rotten, dangerous jobs.

The struggle against racism is justified firstly as a fight against
something evil in itself, but also as a struggle to unite the working
class on the only basis possible - that of Touch One, Touch All. Because
the dynamics of racism in Australia are different for Indigenous people
and immigrants, there will be differences in the methods of struggle,
but a common thread will run through both.

Indigenous people in Australia have a long history of struggle and have
many well-established demands, though they are often pitched at
different levels of ambition. The struggle for land rights and the
struggle against police violence are where major strategic battles are
fought, while the struggle for Indigenous control of Indigenous
organisations and services is vital to the defence and extension of the
limited gains won to date. The struggle for treaty has the potential to
unite and deepen all other issues. But because it strikes at the very
foundation of Australian capitalism, no just treaty is possible this
side of a workers' revolution. There is thus both great potential and
great danger in this issue, which has led to Indigenous people not yet
having articulated a common vision of a demand here.

Anarchists in Australia should support the struggles of Indigenous
people and attempt to bring the power of the organised working class to
bear. A 24 hour protest strike against a cop murder of an Indigenous
person would do more good than every Royal Commission in history.
Similarly, unionised workers should ensure that no mine is built on
Aboriginal land without the full, free and informed consent of First
Nations communities. This would eliminate the practice of mining
companies shopping around for Indigenous people sufficiently desperate
to sign an agreement in return for a pittance.

On the other hand, migrant workers on temporary visas are often
inhibited from struggling at all. Here, Anarchists must take up the
struggle for full citizenship rights for everyone in the country. A key
demand which could get wide support is for all migrants arriving on a
work visa to have the right to apply for permanent residence on arrival.
This would remove the hold that bosses have over them, preventing them
gaining access even to their legal rights like an award wage. The unions
should fight hard for this. For asylum seekers, Anarchists should
attempt to bring the unions to active support for their rights under the
Refugee Convention. Crucially, this would mean not turning back boats
full of desperate people, not locking people up on Christmas Island or
Nauru and not denying visitor visas to people who are suspected of being
refugees. If refugees could fly here, they wouldn't need to get on leaky
boats.

We have to support existing struggles and attempt to win the wider
working class to the principle of Touch One, Touch All. Indigenous
people, temporary migrant workers and refugees should have the right to
control their own struggles against oppression. But it is also in the
interests of all workers, racialised or otherwise, to back these movements.

https://melbacg.au/the-struggle-against-racism/
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