Daily Times

The hegemonic designs of imperialism have turned this world into an inferno. All countries of strategic importance have turned into simmering cauldrons. Every dawn disseminates death with or without democratic disregard. In the name of religion, creed or even abstract democracy, drenched in their own blood by their countrymen, droned by the US and its allies, crushed by anguish, bewildered with terror, dazed through pain, they cannot sit amidst the ruins of their life waiting to greet the inevitable. Hence, to find refuge, they run and run amok, in leaky boats and that too in battalions. Where else can they go if not to those who are the cause of this tragedy but what they do not realise is that those who inflict malady do not appreciate the urgency it creates. To them it is nothing beyond madness with economic motive behind it. In reality, the case is otherwise; the hegemonic powers are using their madness, the mania of war, “as a cloak to conceal the sword of their purpose, the dagger of their will”. The same journey through boats that once officially brought the expropriated human beings in a regained paradise as future/potential rulers has now been downgraded and stigmatised as a crime committed by people smugglers. An argument as shallow as this tends to “deform the defender and what they defend” since people smugglers are merely reaping the benefits of the ordeals created by these wealthy imperialist states.
This Machiavellian plan or wicked design meant for the gallery is more than obvious to common folk. A stunt by the pseudo-democratic Orwellian political parties to generate a new wave of fascism through mass hysteria has yet not succeeded in stifling the thought process of the masses. But with media in their stride they can make the dimensions of this process so “superhuman that even the imagination, which has withstood the mutilation of mass culture” at some stage will refuse “to derive this state of affairs from its social origin” (Horkheimer). The fact is contrary to fiction presented for people’s consumption. It is not the people smugglers but people themselves, in pillory, drawing their breath in pain, striving to survive from the shadow of Hades, who are the real victims of this naked state terrorism. They are the ones who, instead of smugglers, are being tormented and debased. Death, while rattling its dry bones, slyly stares and gnaws its hapless prey. The expression of ‘boat people’ is vilification of humanity, a disingenuous phrase if humanity means anything to the snugged ruling elite that treads the primrose path and shuns insecurity. This reveals the efficacy and extent of control of the forces that make every act of non-conformity irrational and, hence, counteraction becomes impossible. “Civilisation as rationalised irrationality integrates the revolt of nature as another means or instrument” (Horkheimer). It is not merely playing for gallery; necessity demands capitalism to arrange either the liquidation of all those cast out of the productive process or to send them back to where such people are destined to be kept — to the black hole of history or let them quiver in detention centres “under the shelter of a wall” as Plato put it, till they turn into cadavers.
Capitalism knows neither territorial borders nor ideological frontiers. But, by way of a bewildering paradox, 16th century capitalism imposed this blight of strict limitations upon the people, dividing them into nation states. Capital transcended all the barriers, but the flow of labour was stymied. For two birds one stone proved lethal. Democritus states: “Truth lies at the bottom of a well” or perhaps “under the rose”. Immigration is such a fact that can only be viewed in this context. Rather than human rights, the real emphasis was the untrammelled supply of cheap labour for capital; when required, this was dexterously achieved. Immigrants in any state are a vibrant source of such power. Their first generation invariably, in a submissive way, remains accustomed to obey no matter how repugnant the working conditions are. From the immigrant, the state reaps economic benefits with deliberate disregard to the economic aspect. It continues to suggest that asylum policy is purely a humanitarian subject. In the end, it is not the individual circumstance of an asylum seeker, but the need for extra labour that determines the fate of a person who is seeking his right to survive.
However, in capitalism, rights remain an abstraction; everything is a favour. Cribbed, barred and moored with the rusty chain of being an ‘intruder’, the asylum seeker, akin to a criminal, waits in limbo as the ashes of his hope turns grey and cold, for a verdict — the last laugh. Akin to a sinner, he seeks forgiveness of the sins that, instead of him, are committed either by his state or the ‘benevolent’ one. In the Freudian sense, it alludes to another direction as well. Akin to freedom of thought and action, the instinctual liberation offered by the west is equally a myth. In the west, ‘tolerant’ fathers are hypocrites since they do not allow instinctual liberation to translate itself into political and economic freedom. They are the ones who are guilty and want to impose their guilt on their sons.
Boats keep sinking. The miseries and scenes of drowned corpses that now have been effectively eclipsed from the media are only highlighted by few conscientious advocates of humanity. In the detention centres of Manus Island, Nauru and to some extent Papua New Guinea, atrociously corrupt, ruthless private contractors are making hey while under inhuman conditions people are regularly committing suicides. Where lies the Geneva Accord, which binds Australia, one of the richest countries in the world, to fulfill its obligation to asylum seekers? Leaving the US aside, which thrives upon warfare, the western political elite that deals with abstractions like ‘human rights’, while yelling loudly, cares less about human life. The same holds true for the Australian ruling class; rather than human life, its concern wiggles around the people smugglers who are solely blamed for turning living human beings into cadavers. Though, according to the supply and demand principle, they are not violating any law of free market capitalism. Why all the body bags are accrued to their account while thousands are being massacred in the so-called war against terror, which actually is a war of terror, is incomprehensible. This reminds one of Bordiga who states: “If they show lampshades made of human skin it’s to make us forget that capitalism transforms the living man into a lampshade.”

(Concluded)

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com