Chapter 7 : Destroy Borders, Destroy Slavery!

DESTROY BORDERS, DESTROY SLAVERY!

This is the text of a leaflet distributed in February 2004 at Waterloo station (London), where border guards meticulously control the documents of passengers arriving from and directed to France, as they have to guarantee that no ‘illegal immigrant’ is among the respectable passengers, the commuters and the rich tourists.

Our abhorrence of borders extends to this whole society of slaves where each has a role to play in maintaining a system of globalized plunder. In its ruthless selection of the cheapest of everything, the latter knows no borders at all.

The best-loved slaves are cheerful and compliant, content to surrender their lives in exchange for status, a monthly salary, lavish expense accounts. To them we leave their illusions, determined to do our best to make them short-lived. Millions of others carry out their daily routine, clinging to what they’ve got in an uncertain world where the unions have joined the bosses under banners of ‘work mobility’ ‘flexibility’ ‘participation’. But there is a level of exploitation beyond which they will not go, a level indispensable to the smooth running of the production machinery. The supermarkets, the services industry, electronics assemblage, etc therefore all rely on a huge mass of underpaid, uprooted slaves who have nothing left but chains of debt, exclusion and fear. Housed in prison-like conditions which they pay for at extortionate rates, they work around the clock, until they drop.

They are the undesirables, ‘barbarians’ from far off lands ripped apart by war or famine, (natural disasters of capitalism drawn up in buildings just a stone’s throw from here), stripped of everything that qualifies them as ‘citizens’, ‘people’ or even ‘human beings’. Without them the whole death machinery of capital would collapse.

For a couple of hours some from all of these categories sat side by side in the Eurotrain, superb transporter of human merchandise, assisted by smiling hostesses. Now, having reached their final destination, the moment of truth is about to dawn. Because, precisely here, behind this great hall festooned with enticements of weekends in Paris for romantic lovers, lurks a place where Gestapo-style operations are constantly in act. The undesirables are identified, held, criminalized and dispatched to concentration camps surrounded by barbed wire, left to languish for months before being dispatched to their country of origin. Some of the ‘lucky’ ones are presented with papers and allowed to join the super-exploited which the bosses in this country need so much.

We are here because we feel a common bond with the wanderers. We too are aliens, undesirables in a world of which we want no part. We have not come to appeal to dialogue or the democratic integration of ‘papers for all’. Zenophobia, hierarchy and racism cannot be fought with such means. Nor can they be fought with fratricidal wars sworn on bibles or patriotic flags.

In breaking the silence and indifference of the civilized we want to widen the space for revolt, increase the possibilities for direct attack on the pillars of this world. The objectives can be seen everywhere: the concentration camps, the airline companies that deport aliens, the ‘waiting zones’, the slave traders, the lines of communication, etc etc.

Only through direct solidarity shall we be able to refuel the social tempest of class war, sabotage and relentless attack where the division into nationals and foreigners, legal immigrants and aliens dissolves in joyous collusion against the enemy that oppresses us all.

Vagabond hearts, enemies of all borders.

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