Instead, we are seeing the highest stage of neoliberal capitalism playing out all over the Western world right now, and here is the BBC doing us all a tremendous service by describing it, as advocated by a non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a UN special representative for migration:
Brian Wheeler, “EU should ‘undermine national homogeneity’ says UN Migration Chief,” BBC News, 21 June 2012.The highest stage of neoliberal capitalism is the quite explicit drive for the demographic replacement of the peoples of the developed capitalist Western world.
Neoliberalism and Neoclassical economics place no value on national identity, or social and cultural cohesion, whether of working class people nor of whole nations. Hence the utter insanity being pushed today, as also advocated here by Noah Smith.
Funny how Marxists aren’t interested in analysing, discussing or acknowledging this.
Because many Western nations have fertility rates below replacement levels, Neoliberals want massive levels of immigration to prevent a falling population, not to mention more and more low-wage workers for capitalist exploitation, and no doubt other Neoliberals and corporate capitalists will love such labour as they use it to smash the high wages and labour rights of workers.
But that logically requires the destruction of the cultural and ethnic homogeneity of pretty much all Western nations, and the Neoliberal advocates of this don’t even bother to hide that this must be the consequence of their policies.
But why should native Europeans be in favour of their own dispossession and demographic replacement? (even if it did have, economically speaking, benefits, which is doubtful.)
And for that matter why on earth should any people – say, for example, the Japanese – be in favour of such a thing even if they did have a low birth rate?
Wouldn’t it be better to try much more radical means to raise the birth rate to replacement levels before destroying the national identities of nation after nation, or attempting insane social engineering experiments not seen since the disaster of Lysenkoism in Soviet Russia?
And this is all, once again, proof of the straightforward point about free market capitalism as argued by Ha-Joon Chang:
“Wages in rich countries are determined more by immigration control than anything else, including any minimum wage legislation. How is the immigration maximum determined? Not by the ‘free’ labour market, which, if left alone, will end up replacing 80–90 per cent of native workers with cheaper, and often more productive, immigrants. Immigration is largely settled by politics. So, if you have any residual doubt about the massive role that the government plays in the economy’s free market, then pause to reflect that all our wages are, at root, politically determined.”The most crippling and disgusting problem with the Left today is that there is no left-wing moment willing to oppose open borders capitalism and the destruction of the national identities of Europeans.
Chang, Ha-Joon. 2011. 23 Things they Don’t Tell you about Capitalism, Thing 1: There is no such thing as a free market
On the contrary, most of the Left is vehemently in favour of these policies, even though its more radical wing prides itself on opposing the excesses of free market capitalism. But why is this?
The Left has simply been taken over by the quasi-religious obsession with multiculturalism, Third Worldism, quasi-Marxist internationalism, and what can only be described as a toxic racial hatred of European people and the very idea that European people should have majority homelands in which they survive as a majority to preserve themselves and their culture.
At the same time, it is unlikely that these leftists in question would deny those rights of national homelands and national identity to non-European people all over the globe. Why, for example, don’t most Leftists call for massive diversity in Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, India, Africa, Indonesia, or Saudi Arabia?
Government is financially unconstrained. It can easily accommodate immigrants. If a job guarantee exists in then it's difficult for private companies to exploit workers by providing them with very low wages as they need to provide them higher wages compared to Job guarantee scheme. Government can provide employment to immigrants. Infact each and every facility can be enjoyed by immigrants Eg public housing ,health care etc. It would help in having adequate aggregate demand and reduce the problem caused by low fertility rate.
ReplyDeleteNext comes the problem of identity. It is true that people are attached to their identities . However integration, mixed marriage, assimilation would minimized it's role.
If mass immigration is encouraged then proper policies must be implemented.
Gov is NOT financially unconstrained. Take a look at Venezuela. Inflation is completely out of control.
Deletehttps://www.quandl.com/data/DOLARTODAY/BSF_USD-DolarToday-Bolivar-Fuerte-USD-Exchange-Rate
"Wouldn’t it be better to try much more radical means to raise the birth rate to replacement levels"
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be better just to let the businesses go where the people are if they want people?
All of this is just a consequence of the economy being there to serve the needs of business rather than the businesses being there to serve the needs of the people.
I agree with you about what the Left has become.
ReplyDeleteSo alas has much of the centre and the right.
I think I will read 23 things. A local library has it ...
Interestingly enough Noah Smith argued in a recent blogpost on immigration that it would be a bad for Japan to accept mass immigration. he thinks that the benefits they recieve from homogenity is more than the bendfits they could get from more imligration. Seems like a strange double-standard to me.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading your blog for years and it's interesting to consider that neoliberalism hasn't taken a position on culture. But I'm not exactly clear on what you are arguing. Are you saying that it is good for a country to adopt some form of ethnic national identity in order to preserve their culture?
ReplyDeleteCan't there be room for western culture to be preserved while allowing immigrants the freedom to express their heritage? I grew up in the US - SF Bay Area and there are lots of different looking people but western value's take precedence even when people celebrate their ancestors. Seems to work out fine.
Yes, neoliberalism and neoclassical economics are fixated on profits and the supply side, primarily, it seems, because the financial sponsors of both, the already wealthy, profit from the adoption of both in the political sphere.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, the left has spun itself into irrelevancy because of its fixation on identity politics and cultural absurdities causing it to have abandoned its historical connection to the workingman and its traditional economy building and society strengthening fixation on increasing the working classes' wages.
But no one has developed an economy that is not dependent on growth and growth in the economy is largely a function of population growth. In the face of declining birth rates I see no option to immigration to spur growth. The secret to preventing immigration from being one of the means by which neoliberals suppress wages and increase profits is a political coalition targeting raising wages for the working class, not just racial groups or just women, but for everyone who works.
But we are, unfortunately, far away from achieving this, or even agreeing that this is what we should target. The modern left identifies many of the symptoms of our economic problems but seems to have no interest in economics and the reasons for the problems, much less for possible solutions. They believe that they are in a racial, gender and gender identity war when they are in a class war.
Academic economics is totally in the grip of the neoliberals. The so-called muddy waters economics of the post-Keynesians is barely a bridgehead in the US, one that suffers from a lack of support.
The children of immigrants usually adopt the values of the culture of the country that they were raised in. The grandchildren's and later generations through many marriages only contact with their heritage is their last name, an unreliable one at best. This has been true throughout the history of the US.
There are right-wing groups and movements in Europe and the US that favor left-wing economics and certain left wing social policies.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Left, they're generally in favor of those policies because immigrants tend to be a leftist political constituency that votes for the Left, and because they believe those policies will promote the "contradictions" and disruptions that will favor the Left. The Left doesn't regard the advancement of national groupings as an end in itself.
The Left does promote diversity in places like Japan and elsewhere. You see articles about it in Western papers every once in a while. It's just that the Left has no traction and penetration in places like Japan, where even well educated elites tend not to know much English or follow Western political culture.
Exactly. Brilliant post.
ReplyDeleteWhere is the new radical tendency on the Left - the national tendency?
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For what it's worth LK, Bernie Sanders did oppose open borders.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0
He took a lot of heat from the Liberals and the Democrats for it.
I think that in moderation, (Ex: importing the best of another nation), it can be helpful (Ex: entrepreneurs), but only in moderate numbers. The other big issue is to emphasize assimilation and I say this as an immigrant myself.