Utopian Liberalism, Treacherous Laborism

Reformists Support Border Force "Strikes"

In the midst of the clampdown on immigrants in Europe, and the Australian government’s ongoing barbaric treatment of refugees in its immigrant detention centres, reformist groups such as Solidarity and Socialist Alliance (SA) have once again taken to pushing the hopelessly liberal utopian demand that imperialist rulers the world over should “open the borders.” (For more on “open the borders,” see article this issue.)

Alongside sowing illusions that the bourgeoisie would voluntarily relinquish control over its territory, the aforementioned groups, as well as the Socialist Party (SP), Socialist Alternative (SAlt) and the Communist Party (CP), have also supported work stoppages by customs and immigration officers employed in the federal government’s Australian Border Force (ABF—an amalgamation of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service). Treacherously organised into the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), during stoppages ABF officers have carried signs calling to “Respect Border Protection,” “Don’t Slash Our Pay and Conditions.” While supporting the jobs and conditions of those who police the borders on behalf of the capitalist rulers might seem at odds with calling to “open the borders,” in reality both positions sit squarely within a social-democratic political outlook.

The reformists’ grotesque support to ABF “strikes” is all the more wretched given that these same groups joined and/or later promoted a hundreds-strong youthful and largely spontaneous anti-racist protest in Melbourne’s CBD on 28 August against the ABF’s announcement of “Operation Fortitude.” As part of the operation, ABF officers and police planned to trawl the city streets carrying out visa checks of individuals they “cross paths with.” In a small victory for the rights of all, the ABF and Victorian police were forced to cancel the official launch and then abandoned the operation itself in the face of broad public outcry.

Protests against ABF operations notwithstanding, by supporting ABF “strikes” these reformists both accept Border Force officers as a legitimate part of the workers movement and as playing a necessary role by “protecting” the borders of Australian capitalism. Following the recent round of stoppages Solidarity declared, “Workers in Customs have been particularly hard hit, due to the merger into the new Border Force agency” (“Strike action hits airports as CPSU campaign continues,” Solidarity August-September 2015).

The ABF stoppages have taken place in the context of broader work actions against government attacks by actual public sector workers who provide socially necessary means and services. In contrast, the job of ABF officers involves the enforcement of the bosses’ racist immigration laws, including patrolling air and seaports and carrying out deportations and onshore detention. Along with the military, police, courts and prisons, they are a part of the core of the capitalist state, which exists to suppress the proletariat and anyone who might challenge the bourgeoisie’s exploitative rule. It follows that these forces, along with their auxiliaries such as security guards, have no place in the workers movement and should be ousted from the unions.

Whenever public sector workers take action the servile reformists rush to also embrace the “unionised” elements of this armed fist of the state as part of the organised working class. In September 2011, during massive protests by NSW public sector workers, SAlt declared, “The crowd, which filled Sydney’s Domain, was made up of all different public sector workers including nurses, bus drivers, ambos, RTA staff, librarians, park rangers and even prison guards and police” (our emphasis). For its part the CP gushed, “The Police Association, whose members were on the same side of the blue line as the protesters said the police […] will remain united with the rest of the union movement to defeat the cuts” (see “For Class Struggle Against Capitalist War on Workers!” Australasian Spartacist No. 214, Spring 2011). In embracing cops, prison guards and customs and immigration officers as union brothers, or as the SP contends, “workers in uniform,” these groups are tailing and covering for the pro-capitalist union tops who organise these forces while preaching nationalism and loyalty to the capitalist state.

Standing opposed to all the bosses’ racist immigration laws and struggling to maximise the unity, solidarity and fighting capacity of the multiracial working class, we seek to mobilise the labour movement in defence of immigrants, including fighting for the closure of the immigrant detention centres, opposing deportations and demanding full citizenship rights for all who have made it here. As part of this proletarian-centred perspective we oppose draconian government attacks on public sector workers, including the slashing of thousands of jobs in the last two years and ongoing threats to cut the pay, conditions and jobs of those who remain in work.

To turn back these attacks it is necessary for workers to organise independently of the bourgeoisie, its parties and state, using the methods of the class struggle, including strikes and pickets. Any hard fought struggle in defence of workers’ rights, or the rights of the oppressed, will face the repressive apparatus of the state.

Calls on the capitalist rulers to “open the borders” and embracing Border Force officers’ “strikes” are consistent with the reformist view that the capitalist state can be made to serve the interests of the workers and oppressed. In contrast, as Russian revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin laid out in his seminal pamphlet The State and Revolution, “the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another.” Written during the revolutionary upheaval of Russia in 1917, this pamphlet spells out with crystal clarity that the capitalist state cannot be cleaned up or pressured to act on behalf of the proletariat and oppressed. It must be smashed through victorious workers revolution and replaced with a workers state. This became a reality in October 1917 when the working class under the leadership of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party seized power across the former Tsarist empire. It will be under the Bolshevik banner of international socialist revolution that a classless, egalitarian global communist society will be built.