But perhaps more important to the long-term fate of immigrant and minority communities is the systematic and increasing discrimination to which they are subjected by capitalist states, manifest in attacks on the rights of immigrants, cuts in welfare services, and racist police and court systems. Throughout the history of capitalist development, racism as an idea helped to justify slavery and empire. Racism as a form of discrimination or oppression facilitated high levels of exploitation. Today both slavery and the formal empires have been overthrown. Firstly, it allows the capitalists to secure sources of cheap, unorganised and highly exploitable labour.
Key examples are immigrants and minorities.
In times of capitalist crisis these segments are most readily deprived of political and social rights, the first to fall in the overall assault on the working class. Secondly, racism allows the capitalist ruling class to divide and rule the exploited classes. Racism is used to foster divisions within the working class, thus helping to keep the ruling class in power. Put at its most crude, it suits those who want to hold on to power if the poor and the unemployed are blaming refugees and immigrants for their poverty. So, as anarchists, we see the fight against racism as an inherent part of the fight against capitalism.