On the Value of Work in a Social Democracy

A career and a job where one does economically and socially useful work is an important part of any successful, healthy and wealthy society. But more than this, it gives people an identity through the job that they have and a social dignity lacking in long-term unemployment.

There are of course a lot of difficult, boring, dirty and sometimes dangerous jobs that have to be done, but a technologically advanced society like ours can use its inventive genius to create more and better machines and automation to do these jobs, so that human beings aren’t forced to do them.

But not all jobs are like the ones described above. For many people, their jobs – while often challenging or requiring hard work – are nevertheless safe, interesting, rewarding, and sometimes enjoyable. Some people are lucky enough to have jobs they absolutely love.

A really decent society run on social democratic principles would provide full employment and not leave people on welfare to become a deskilled, demoralised, dependent and depressed class of people, some of whom descend into irresponsible hedonism and drug abuse.

And there is certainly something to be said for the principle that people should not be allowed to simply live off welfare for years on end as long-term unemployed, but not as in the vicious and victim-blaming right-wing hysteria of libertarians or neoliberals – the latter having increasingly imposed a vicious, disgusting and punitive welfare system over the past 30 years.

The whole point of a society run on social democratic and Keynesian principles of full employment is precisely: we shouldn’t even need a big welfare bill for people of working age, because by means of (1) macroeconomic management of the private sector and (2) government employment programs at decent wages, there would only be a small body of unemployed anyway (essentially people in seasonal and frictional unemployment).

To achieve this today would require not just fiscal policy to create jobs in the private sector but government employment programs to find and create economically and socially useful work, e.g., in public infrastructure development, housing, social services, etc. That of course requires much more government planning than we currently have and perhaps ditching parts of the current welfare system (except for people who cannot work) for a system where people not employed in the private sector are provided with work at better and decent wage rates in public sector jobs. Private sector jobs probably do need to pay more, as in MMT-style job guarantee programs, but even in recruitment and distribution of people between the sectors more planning probably has its virtues too.

One could have a universal basic income under such a system, but everybody who is fit for work should be provided with a job appropriate for them and their skills to obtain income above the universal basic income. Such a system in, say, the United States would, I strongly suspect, start to do something substantive to fix the social problems of the African American community and white working classes too.

In that respect, a social democratic and, for that matter, old-fashioned socialist system is certainly not about shoving the human race onto welfare or the dole, but it is about bettering the human condition through a system that really does value work and employment and provides it for its citizens, as compared with a dysfunctional laissez faire capitalism that repeatedly fails to provide full employment.

In that respect, there is also something to be said for this Marxist take on this subject, even though I would shun the doctrinaire aspects of Marxism and reject a command economy. But, as the author says, it is true that there are some people who do not wish to work, and:

“Socialism is not about putting everyone on the dole, but putting everyone to work, doing work with dignity, respect, honor, satisfaction, and human fulfillment. Not everyone wants to work. Not everyone wants to be a civilized human being. Those who don't want to work, those who want to be predators, they will feel the hammer of the state, hard enough to satisfy any authoritarian.”
http://barefootbum.blogspot.com/2016/03/a-rant-on-socialism-authoritarianism.html

I wouldn’t go that far, however. The “hammer of the state” is a bit too much for me, unless the people in question are criminals. But a sensible punitive demand that people – especially young men – should not be lazy and irresponsible work-shy hedonists is not objectionable by any means.

Now today, while there is plenty of manual labour and unskilled labour that could be done under such a system even in the first world nations, there is also a very great deal of economically and socially useful work that can be done by intellectuals trained at universities, e.g., in the natural sciences, engineering, medical science, neuroscience, computer science, and the more useful social sciences.

Above all, governments in the Western world could also begin to employ people in much larger programs to start really helping with Third World development, e.g., health care, public infrastructure, disease control, education, etc. Promoting Third World development by allowing a space for independent economic development, import substitution industrialisation, utterly reformed international institutions and direct assistance by Western labour would be far better than the current system of neoliberalism.

It is undoubtedly true that as technological development soars, automation, robots and artificial intelligence will make it more and more difficult to find work for people of value, but nevertheless economically and socially useful work will still be of great value, even if the working day and working week will probably shrink as compared with today.

Open Borders within and into Europe is a Disaster for Social Democracy

And I hope more and more left-wing people can see this now. Look at some of the news from Europe in recent days. This in Sweden is just a recognition of reality.

Unfortunately, people in Sweden and throughout the EU have failed to realise that the evidence is strong that most of the migrants coming into Europe this year are not genuine refugees, but merely economic migrants. Europe cannot take in 1 million or 1.5 million people a year for the foreseeable future when most of these people are economic migrants. You cannot stick your head in the sand and ignore realities.

In the European context, the policy of open borders, both within and into Europe, is one of the last bankrupt tenets of the neoliberal catastrophe that is the Eurozone and European Union.

First of all, which political ideology has historically been in favour of open borders immigration?

Surely you know the answer: libertarians, and especially the unhinged anarcho-capitalist libertarians. These crazy bastards love open borders partly because they hate the state and understand that open borders undermine the welfare state and the social democratic model for society.

Of course, some left-wing libertarians seem to support it too, but they are equally deluded. For the left anarchists, they seem to support open borders as part of their long-run model of human society as a federated, decentralised system of free associations. But this is incredibly naïve and utopian nonsense. For the moment, human beings are far too attached (whether rightly or wrongly) to their own languages, cultures, nation-states, traditions and interests for such a vision of society to be an effective system. In our present world, it is just an unhinged idea, for reasons we will see below.

Here is the primary reason why, if you are left-wing and in favour of a social democratic system, you should vehemently oppose open borders:

A social democratic government cannot effectively and efficiently engage in short-run or long-run planning and funding of public services and infrastructure if it has no control over its borders and has no idea how many people will enter its country in any given year or in the long run.

It’s that simple. A government has finite resources and needs to engage in planning to provide effective public services and infrastructure, such as universal health care, education, public housing, transport and welfare, etc. You can’t do this without the knowledge necessary to plan public services and infrastructure, and that knowledge requires good and reliable estimates of future population.

What is a humane, sensible and general left-wing policy on borders and mass immigration? It is as follows:

(1) it would not oppose immigration per se, nor a country taking in its fair and reasonable share of refugees in desperate need.

(2) it would not oppose controlled immigration of a reasonable number of economic migrants, if this can be justified on economic or social grounds, e.g., a skilled labour shortage. But here you have to very careful about the West “brain-draining” the developing world. What good does it do to suck in vast amounts of talented and skilled labour from the developing world? This policy just contributes to preventing development in the third world.

(3) however, the left ought to be well aware that huge mass immigration in many circumstances will tend to lower or hold down real wages.

(4) the left should oppose endless mass immigration that simply provides big business a club with which to smash trade unions and organised labour. This will polarise working class communities and tend to contribute to the already serious issue of wages not rising in line with productivity growth.

(5) the left should recognise, as we have said above, that a government cannot effectively and efficiently engage in short-run or long-run planning and funding of public services and infrastructure if it has no control over its borders and has no idea how many people will enter its country in any given year or in the long run.

(6) the left should recognise the fact that unending mass immigration is partly based on an extreme and foolish cultural relativism that comes right out of Postmodernism. More cultural diversity is not necessarily a good thing for your society, if this means more extreme religious fundamentalism, parallel legal systems and the introduction of values that radically conflict with the core values of a secular Western society (e.g., gender segregation, homophobia, female genital mutilation, misogyny, etc.).

(7) in the special European context, there are more and more urgent security issues within Europe that are so obviously related to the open door borders policy.

(8) finally the left should recognise the fact that unending mass immigration will tend to cause severe issues related to urban overpopulation, supply of housing and cost of rent.

A new left-wing, anti-open borders camp should proudly stand up and defend its position. Its view is different from that of certain sectors of the anti-immigration far right, where genuine and irrational xenophobia or bigotry can be found.

The reasons above I have listed for opposing open borders and mass immigration are compassionate, humane, sensible and intelligent. An opposition to open borders is a fundamental way in which a decent and compassionate left-wing government would look after its citizens – no matter what their race or ethnic origin.

Finally, what is the solution to the problem of global inequality? The solution is radical reform of global international institutions like the World Bank, the IMF and World Trade Organisation. A reformed global reserve currency along the lines suggested in Post Keynesian economics is needed. For those countries with large enough economies, what is needed is a space for import-substitution industrialisation and industrial policy.

If necessary, the industrialised world should directly pay for basic infrastructure projects in the developing world (e.g., sewage, clean water, education and health care) and even subsidise the transferal to the developing world of the technology and capital goods they need to build modern industrialised societies. Radically reform the outrageous and hideous corporate intellectual property rights regimes that have been a hallmark of neoliberalism for the past 30 years (e.g., concerning drugs and pharmaceuticals).

Only these solutions can allow the developing world to escape its poverty and lack of development.