Contribution of the Swiss Communist Party

Contribution by the Swiss Communist Party to the ECA teleconference on the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum

 

Dear comrades,

Last April, the European Parliament adopted the Pact on Migration and Asylum. This new EU framework for managing migration in the long term was prepared by the European Commission. In her 2020 communication, the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen presented this pact, when it was still at the draft stage, as a human-centred and humane approach aimed at saving human lives, particularly in the Mediterranean, and organising solidarity between EU states. We know perfectly well that behind this pseudo-humanist demagogy lies in reality the intention to organise labour migration according to the capitalist-imperialist interests expressed within the European Union. It seems to us that the control of immigrant labour, whether from within the European Union or from third countries, has become a fundamental factor in modern imperialism and the fierce competition that is expressed within it.

In his work on imperialism, Lenin devotes two chapters to the division of the world. First, he refers to the division of the world between capitalist groups in the following terms. The concentration of capital having reached the stage of monopoly in production and banking, as well as the growth of the export of capital extended to the whole world market in zones of influence, led to the formation of international cartels and an agreement between the big capitalist groups.

Lenin concludes that ‘the epoch of modern capitalism shows us that certain relations based on the economic division of the world are being established between capitalist groups and that, at the same time and consequently, relations based on the territorial division of the world, on the struggle for colonies, the struggle for economic territories, are being established between political groups, between states’.

In the chapter analysing the division of the world between the great European colonising powers, Lenin refers to the definitive division of the globe and places this moment at the end of the 19th century, when the European colonies extended their territories into Africa and Polynesia. Lenin concludes that ‘for the first time, the world has been entirely divided up, so that in the future there can only be talk of new divisions, that is to say, of passing from one possessor to another, and not of taking possession of masterless territories’.

It is interesting to note that, in Lenin's work on imperialism, the statistical tables showing the division of colonial territories mainly compare surface areas, but also mention the number of populations. At that time, control of new economic territories obviously included natural resources above all. Lenin analyses that ‘the more capitalism is developed, the more the shortage of raw materials is felt, the more fierce is the competition and the search for sources of raw materials throughout the world, and the more brutal is the struggle for possession of the colonies.’

In fact, Lenin is referring to the populations, more precisely the populations of the metropolises, when he mentions the words of a British capitalist. For this king of finance,colonial expansion would be a good thing in order to solve the British social problem and avoid a murderous civil war, because the surplus British population could settle in new lands.

It is clear that the world capitalist chain at the beginning of the twentieth century circulates primarily capital, commodities and raw materials on the world market. As Lenin said, at that time, the division of the globe was definitive in the sense that all its territories were known and exploited by capital. The emigration of the surplus population from the metropoles to the colonies was not so much a question of imperialist competition as a means of avoiding social and political problems in the metropoles.

Today, the colonial form has been overtaken by the successive development of several phases of capitalist globalisation and, at the same time, the population surplus to capitalist exploitation in the former colonies forms the modern phenomenon of labour migration to the metropoles, which follows the flows of capital and economic growth. Labour migration has become an integral part of imperialist competition and circulates in the world market according to the new agreements between the capitalist blocs on the division of the world.

Just as labour power is a commodity that circulates from capitalist to capitalist in domestic markets, it has also become a commodity that circulates economically in the global capitalist pyramid.

The European Union's pact on migration and asylum therefore has no humanitarian purpose whatsoever, but is in fact a renewal of the agreement between the European capitalist monopolies to share out the world's surplus labour.

The imperialist wars of recent years (Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine) have led to major migratory flows with different characteristics depending on the country of origin, including refugees from these conflicts on the one hand and migrant workers on the other. The merging of migration and asylum issues in this pact demonstrates once again the capitalist basis of the European Union, which sees refugees as a commodity to be exploited. Indeed, the European capitalist powers are directly responsible for the outbreak of these wars.

As you know, Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, but it is a member of the Schengen area and the Dublin agreement. The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum contains a number of legal instruments that are binding on Switzerland: the regulation on asylum and migration management, the regulation on crisis situations, the regulation on Eurodac, the regulation on border returns and the regulation on screening. Their implementation has been put out to consultation until 14 November 2024.

Switzerland has a long history of exploiting foreign labour on the one hand and of successive reforms tightening up the granting of asylum on the other. Switzerland has often welcomed waves of migrants, either as a result of political conflicts or economic crises, and has always selected according to the needs of the Swiss capitalist monopolies. According to European Commission statistics, by 2022, 30.7% of Switzerland's resident population will have been born abroad. In the EU, the figure is 12.4%.

We can cite the cases of seasonal workers from Italy, Yugoslavia, Spain and Portugal who have worked in Switzerland between 1946 and 2002. Initiative referendums to limit the foreign population were launched in Switzerland in the 1970s, but were rejected by popular vote. In 2002, Switzerland signed a bilateral agreement with the European Union on the free movement of persons.

The case of the Chilean refugees after the 1973 coup d'état was a model case in Switzerland, because it reinforced asylum as a democratic right won by the workers' movement through hard struggle. Faced with the Federal Council's decision to take in only 200 Chilean refugees, and moreover to make its decision conditional on the economic needs of Swiss companies, the Swiss worker-popular movement campaigned for a popular reception, that is to say in people's homes, and finally succeeded in forcing the granting of asylum to a larger number of refugees.

The law on asylum adopted in 1979 defines the conditions for granting asylum and the procedures for anyone persecuted for political or other reasons. However, these procedures have been considerably tightened up to date.

Dear comrades,

If the modern phenomenon of labour migration is today a decisive economic factor in imperialist competition, it is also a factor in the class struggle and social revolution. The Communist and Workers' Parties must fight alongside immigrant workers for communist reconstruction, worker-people power and socialism-communism.