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.

The world is turning into a vast graveyard. For several weeks, the Middle East has once again been ravaged by fire and bloodshed. After Gaza, it is now Lebanon and Iran that are being subjected to a deluge of bombs by the Israeli and American states, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah fire rockets, drones and missiles towards neighbouring countries. Amid this deluge, civilian populations, held hostage by the imperialist rivalries of all the belligerent nations, are desperately trying to escape death, wandering through the rubble and ruins, stepping over the corpses littering the streets of Tehran, Beirut and many other cities besides.

Unchecked barbarism …

A great swathe of humanity is currently being massacred across the globe. According to the UN, in three years, the civil war in Sudan has caused “more than 200,000 deaths, displaced nearly 14 million people and triggered the worst global food crisis”. In four years, the war in Ukraine, with its 500,000 to 600,000 deaths, military and civilian combined, holds the record for the worst bloodbath on the European continent since the Second World War. Everywhere, wars are generalising, spreading, or just waiting to erupt, with no other outcome than death, destruction and desolation.

As for countries not directly affected by military conflicts on their territory, military spending is skyrocketing. In France, the defence budget is set to rise from 32 billion in 2017 to over 67 billion in 2030. In Britain, this marks the sharpest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War.

Against the backdrop of a global economic crisis, the all-consuming cancer of the war economy means cuts to health, education and cultural budgets, the militarisation of the workplace — with workers facing hellish work rates, reduced staff numbers and wage cuts — amidst soaring food and energy prices... Everywhere, in very country, the bourgeoisie calls for these sacrifices to be accepted in the name of the nation’s greater good and peace.

… and dead ends

We must not accept this! Our world has the capacity to feed, house, clothe and care for the whole of humanity whilst respecting the environment. We have the knowledge and the technology. Instead, all social forces are being thrown into destruction: the bourgeoisie gives the orders and the working class pays the price all over the world. So, we must fight! But how?

In March, huge demonstrations took place in the United States and Spain under the slogans ‘No King’ and ‘against the war’. Thousands of genuinely outraged people gathered to protest against the horrors of this world. In reality, they have fallen into a trap: the bourgeoisie knows that a growing section of the working class is asking itself how to fight. It therefore offers its false answers, and pushes many of those who want to take action into dead ends.

That of ‘pacifism’, for example, which distorts the workers’ outrage at the barbarity of war into a sweet melody of defence of freedom and peace… within capitalism. As if this system of exploitation and repression could exist without war. History shows, on the contrary, that the logic of pacifism always leads to war. This is how this ideology served as a justification for social democracy to participate in the First World War. Because it was supposedly a conflict forced by ‘the other side’, the ‘warmongers’, the ‘barbarians.’ In short, one had to allow oneself to be conscripted in turn to defend ‘democracy’, ‘civilisation’ and ‘peace’.

Then there is democracy itself, another asset of the bourgeoisie, “a form of capitalism that would bring happiness, prosperity and peace… but which dictatorship would try to destroy”[1]. In reality, democracy is just as barbaric: the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, napalm in Vietnam, electric torture in Algeria… these horrors are crimes committed by the great democracies. Whether left-wing, right-wing, democratic or authoritarian, all capitalist states massacre, torture, deport, imprison, starve…

Since 1914, war and its preparation have been at the heart of decadent capitalism. The capitalist system survives the ravages of competition only through the increased exploitation of the working class. It has no choice to offer the proletariat other than that of one nation at war with another, that of one economic power competing with others, that of one side of the border against the other. Capitalism is war! And exploitation is death and misery!

Only one way: the class struggle

To counter this deadly dynamic, we must fight and oppose all the sacrifices demanded of us by the bourgeoisie. It is through our struggles, as an exploited class, that we can create a favourable balance of forces against the ruling class: with class solidarity against the defence of one sector against another; for class solidarity against the defence of one state against another. We must bring down this decaying system: the world proletarian revolution is the only alternative to barbaric capitalism.

Everywhere, the working class is under attack. Everywhere, it has the same interests. Everywhere, it has the same struggle to wage, the same solidarity to build, across borders.

But it is in the industrialised countries of Europe and North America, where the dynamic of militarism is detonating, where the working class has the greatest historical experience, where for decades it has been confronting the traps of democracy and the sabotage of ‘free’ trade unions, it is in these countries where capitalism was born that the working class must show the way to the proletariat of the whole world, by waging a conscious, united and determined struggle against the bourgeoisie and the appalling living conditions it imposes.

Capitalism is leading humanity to its death; only the world proletarian revolution offers an alternative to escape this decaying and barbaric system. The slogan of the Communist Manifesto is more relevant than ever: “Workers have no country. Workers of the world, unite!”

Julie, 13 April 2026