Against the traps of bourgeois democracy

We are publishing a letter from a young sympathiser in Sweden, who asked us how we would analyse the recent anti-deportation protests there. Our answer is that we agree completely with his approach: while recognising the legitimate anger that impels people to protest against the increasingly brutal immigration policies being adopted by all states, this anger, whether in Sweden, the US or elsewhere, is being channelled onto the bourgeois terrain of ‘defending democracy’ or ‘human rights’.

We also agree with the comrade’s criticism of the illusion, held by the sympathiser of the Internationalist Communist Tendency mentioned in the letter, which implies that these protests could somehow be turned into genuine working class movements. In fact we have recently published a number of articles which show that this illusion is being spread by the ICT itself[1].

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I wonder how ICC views the protests against the so-called ‘teenage deportations’ in Sweden right now. I have seen the news about it and I think that every honest person agrees that the deportations of families with children are appalling. But some groups on the left have categorised the protests as ‘popular’ or ‘working-class self-defence’, ideas that I consider to be incorrect and harmful. I believe that the ICC's review of the ICE protests also applies to our equivalent in Sweden. The ICC wrote that ‘the protests against ICE today are not a class struggle against the attacks of the capitalist state on immigrant workers but a campaign for the democratic lawful restriction and brutalisation of immigrant workers’.

In Sweden, we see something similar to the problems with the American protests. People are protesting for a ‘dignified refugee policy’ and to defend human rights, arguing that immigrants who contribute to society should not be deported. In other words, this protest movement is not actually critical of the deportation of workers, but only critical of these particularly grotesque deportations of families with children. The message of the protests also legitimises the bourgeois state and its ‘human rights’ by criticising the deportations on the grounds that they violate international law, but not because deportations as a whole are contrary to the interests of the working class. When deportations took place under the Social Democrats and at the beginning of the Tydö government's term, we saw no similar protests, so the protests have no connection to a general criticism of the deportation of workers. The protests cannot therefore be said to have been shaped by the working class, in defence of the working class. Defending immigrants on the grounds that ‘their work contributes to society’ only serves to worship the position of the working class as an exploited class. For that matter, such thinking also reinforces national barriers, since Swedish workers apparently do not have to meet the same requirements as others. The communists cannot therefore take a stand with the protests, either in the United States or in Sweden, as they promote ideas that communist organisations cannot legitimise. Pushing for protests means playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie. For that matter, all the parties in parliament agree that something must be done to counteract the deportations of teenagers, especially the red-greens, so the protest movement has an undeniably bourgeois character.

Unfortunately, all the self-proclaimed communists/socialists seem to be taking a stand with the protests. Socialist Alternative has taken part in the protests, limiting its rhetoric to things like ‘Stop the deportations, reinstate the right to asylum, the right to family reunification and permanent residence permits and citizenship for all who wish it’ or ‘Invest in welfare – not the military. Fight against warmongering and divisive nationalism‘, demands that are completely within the framework of capitalism. When I spoke to a person my age who sympathises with ICT, he agreed that the protests do not, of course, question the validity of the bourgeois state, but that the protesters are nevertheless fighting on a “class basis”. As I said, I find it difficult to see this as a fact, given that the general goals of the protest movement are either a change of government or a more ‘ethical’ refugee policy (which still defends deportations!). Of course, it is possible to convince individual workers who participate in these types of protests, but what is not possible is for the workers to take control of the protest movement itself. Just as the working class cannot simply take control of the bourgeois state in its current form, workers cannot conquer the bourgeois protest movements either.

 

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[1] See for example Falling into the trap of the struggle for bourgeois democracy against populism, International Review 174