Capitalisms endless war against immigrants

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The article argues that the mass migration crisis in the Mediterranean is not a natural disaster or an unfortunate byproduct of global instability, but a direct and necessary consequence of capitalism's imperialist dynamics. The central thesis is that European states are waging a deliberate, systematic war against migrants — not despite capitalism's needs, but in service of them. The ruling classes require immigration to expand the reserve army of labour and drive down wages, yet simultaneously need to divide the working class along racial and national lines, scapegoat migrants for the effects of capitalist crisis, and maintain a repressive apparatus that keeps immigrant workers in a state of maximum vulnerability. The humanitarian catastrophe — 30,000 dead in 15 years, concentration camps in Libya, deliberate delays in rescue operations — is not a failure of policy but its intended outcome.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is grounded in the Marxist theory of imperialism and the reserve army of labour. It draws on Lenin's conception of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, where the extraction of superprofits from the periphery requires the systematic destabilisation of entire regions — through direct military intervention, support for corrupt client elites, and the imposition of unequal terms of trade. The article explicitly connects the destruction of the Libyan state in 2011, the Syrian war, and the Saudi war on Yemen to the flows of refugees, arguing that these are not coincidental but causal.

The concept of the reserve army of labour is deployed to explain why capital simultaneously needs and persecutes immigrant workers. Immigrant labour, particularly in irregular status, provides capital with a super-exploitable workforce that depresses wages and conditions for the entire working class. The article rejects the artificial bourgeois distinction between "political refugees" and "economic migrants" as a hypocritical device for justifying repression, insisting that both categories are products of the same imperialist system.

The analysis sits firmly within the Trotskyist tradition's emphasis on permanent revolution and the critique of reformism. It treats the European Union not as a progressive institution that can be reformed, but as a vehicle for imperialist coordination. The article's conclusion — that only the overthrow of capitalism can resolve the crisis — is the logical endpoint of this theoretical framework.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was published in October 2017, at the height of the post-2015 refugee crisis. It cites specific data: 4,337 deaths in the Mediterranean in the 12 months to September 2017, a threefold increase in the death rate from 0.89% in late 2015 to 2.7% in 2017. It references the EU-Turkey deal of March 2016, which effectively traded €6 billion for Turkey's cooperation in blocking the Aegean route, and the deliberate withdrawal of European search-and-rescue missions from international waters, which was immediately followed by a spike in drownings.

The article names specific actors: the Italian coast guard's refusal to intervene in the October 2016 sinking of a boat carrying 260 people, the Libyan detention centre "Garian" where 1,400 people were held in 15 warehouses, the role of NGOs forced to fill the vacuum left by state withdrawal. It connects the collapse of the Libyan state after the 2011 NATO bombing to the emergence of a smuggling economy that now accounts for an estimated 50% of Libya's coastal GDP.

The conjunctural relevance extends to the present. The dynamics described have intensified: the death toll has continued to rise, the externalisation of borders to third countries like Turkey, Libya, Morocco, and now Tunisia and Niger has accelerated, and the far-right political exploitation of immigration has deepened across Europe. The article's analysis of the "scaremongering campaign" linking immigration to terrorism and declining living standards has become the dominant political discourse in much of Europe.

Where the Argument Continues

The article opens several lines of argument that are developed elsewhere in the IDOM corpus. The analysis of the EU-Turkey deal and the externalisation of borders is expanded in articles on the EU's migration policy and the role of Frontex. The discussion of immigrant workers' struggles in Southern Italy — the Rosarno revolt of 2010, the Castelvolturno strike, the Salento action — connects to broader IDOM coverage of the Italian class struggle and the rise of the "caporalato" system.

The theoretical framework linking imperialism, war, and migration is developed in Against the Stream episodes on the Syrian war, the destruction of Libya, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. The article's rejection of the political refugee/economic migrant distinction is a recurring theme in IDOM's coverage of immigration.

The argument about the reserve army of labour and the super-exploitation of migrant workers connects to broader Marxist debates on the labour aristocracy and the role of migration in the global accumulation of capital. Readers should consult IDOM articles on the "race to the bottom" in European labour markets and the role of immigration in the post-2008 crisis.

Connections

The article should be read alongside Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism for the theoretical framework on imperialist rivalry and superprofits. Marx's discussion of the reserve army of labour in Capital, Volume I, Chapter 25, provides the economic foundation. Trotsky's writings on the permanent revolution and the relationship between the national and the international are relevant for understanding the article's rejection of reformist solutions.

Within the contemporary Marxist literature, David Harvey's work on accumulation by dispossession and the "new imperialism" provides a complementary framework, though the article is more explicitly Leninist in its emphasis on inter-imperialist rivalry. The article also connects to the broader tradition of Marxist analyses of migration, including the work of scholars like Saskia Sassen and the journal Race & Class.

For a contrasting liberal analysis, the Amnesty International report cited in the article — A Perfect Storm: The failure of European policies in the Central Mediterranean (July 2017) — provides the empirical detail but lacks the class analysis. The article's critique of the EU-Turkey deal should be read alongside the UNHCR's own criticisms, though the article goes further in arguing that the deal is not a violation of international law but its logical expression under capitalism.

Key Quotes

1. "The equivalent of a silent, unilateral war has been going on for years in the Mediterranean Sea. It is not a war in the traditional sense, because it lacks contending armies, but a war of the entrenched 'civilised world' against hundreds of thousands of unarmed people."

2. "The European governments' hypocritical attempts to justify their present repressive immigration policies by introducing an artificial distinction between 'legitimate' political refugees (escaping war and oppressive regimes), from alleged 'illegitimate' economic migrants, is nothing short of a travesty."

3. "By ceding the lion's share of responsibility for search and rescue to NGOs and by increasing cooperation with the Libyan coastguard, European governments are willingly increasing the deaths at sea and turning a blind eye to abuse the immigrants that are sent back to Libya are subject to, including torture and rape."

4. "The capitalists need immigration, but by making integration of immigrant workers into the working class-and their organisations more difficult, they expand the 'reserve army' of unemployed, underemployed and more vulnerable layers of society in order to divide the workers in a competition for survival of the poor against the poor."

5. "These proletarians will gain confidence in their strength when mobilising in unison, challenging not just the conditions they are forced to live in, but the very foundations of the system that is creating these conditions: that is capitalism."