My view is that the four arguments which you so derisively dismiss aren’t half as bad as you think they are, for reasons that other commenters, as well as I, have already explained rather extensively. By the way, you refer to them as “counter arguments” but you appear to have accepted the position you defend without any argument at all: just a groundless appeal to your idiosyncratic understanding of the “core principles” of the left.

If the core principle of the left is some kind of direct universal utilitarianism then it’s news to me. (It would also be news to most unions and to Marx, who, as I think you know, did not think highly of ‘bourgeois morality’ and was pretty serious about the ‘class interest’ which gives you so much amusement.)

Justice and egalitarianism on the other hand, though equally tendentious as the “core” of leftwing politics, are fine principles, but they are entirely compatible with a belief that we owe differing moral obligations to different people.

Yes, but they’re low enough that they don’t deter immigrants from undercutting natives’ wages. I don’t think they’re relevant.

me, #67 (out of context): Voting socialist is the way to prosperity and happiness.

#73: Well, testing that charming proposition… I’m not sure this was what was being suggested.

No, it was satire. I wrote:

You can (as in comment #56) suggest they go home, elect a socialist government, and build a better country for themselves. That’s a little glib and self-serving for my tastes. “See? Voting socialist is the way to prosperity and happiness. You’re welcome. Now off I must go to my two-hour lunch break, tra la.”

Emphasis and quote marks added for clarity. That part is my characterization of abb1’s argument in #56.

Okay, but allowing immigrants to enter the country does not imply a weakening of the right to organize or to strike (except inasmuch as illegal immigrants have no rights, and my whole point is that they should be legalized and given rights). Your point seems to apply to the exmigration of jobs, not the immigration of workers. Or did I miss something?

#70 (actual quote): But if you allow your boss to start recruiting scabs in Mexico who can do your job for a fraction of what you’re paid – good luck with your lunch, man.

This is a transparent appeal to the natural fear any privileged group has of egalitarian policies. If it weren’t for the word “scabs”, you’d sound just like Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Voting socialist is the way to prosperity and happiness.

Well, testing that charming proposition would require you first find a real socialist to vote, which has become quite an effort in the year 2005. Plus, we’d have to vote on what a real socialist is. Or even, if pure undiluted socialism at its most charming is the one and only answer to all problems. I’m not sure this was what was being suggested.

Alternatively, you can do what the U.S. does: turn a blind eye and let these people sneak past and work illegally; establish no serious policy about them whatsoever. This is very bad indeed, but much better than your suggestion.

Hmm, I will have to ponder long and hard on that. But, only as a first impression, it does strike me as a very hypocrite and convenient apology for exploiting illegal work, so if I were you I wouldn’t be so sure of having the moral upper hand of the argument.

Also, what abb1 said in #70.

One problem with “help the Turkish plumber” brigade is that they’re fine with a market for products and low skilled labour. However, when it comes to opening up the single market for services in order to substantially increases the wellbeing of Polish architects they switch from a position of international solidarity to one of national solidarity – as we’ve seen recently.

They’re not just “middle-class hypocrites who want cheap baby sitters and house cleaners” they’re “middle-class hypocrites” who are fine when it affects other people, but not when it affects them. Henry’s right to debate whether national solidarities should or should not trump our international solidarities, but it’s suspicious when people advocate both positions at the same time.

Any attempt to do anything else should be done with the utmost cautious. And there again. most attempts at internationalism have failed : failures ranging from the slightly ridiculous and mostly harmless (EU constitution) to the horrific (Soviet era).

Well, Jason, have you heard about the labor movement? This, for example: Strike in Minneapolis

…The truckers, in hard times needing radical leaders with radical solutions, pushed the Dunne brothers and Farrell Dobbs, all Trotskyists, into leadership of the union local (the branch) in the city.

They organised three strikes in 1934. Then local businessmen declared martial law. The National Guard was sent in to attack the strikers. The police killed two pickets and protest rallies of up to 40,000 were held regularly during the strike.

These famous strikes were like none seen before in America. The strikers had patrol cars of their own, stopping trucks entering or leaving the city. A daily newspaper, loud speaker broadcasts, an advice centre, ambulance services for the wounded, canteens to feed the pickets, were all organised and the wives of the men were involved in the strike.

This is why you are still being able to enjoy that two-hour lunch break.

But if you allow your boss to start recruiting scabs in Mexico who can do your job for a fraction of what you’re paid – good luck with your lunch, man.

Now, as far as the Mexicans or Turks go, I am sure they aren’t stupid or lazy or inferior to you in any respect, which means that they can make it too, provided that other more powerful countries (like yours, for example) stop messing with their politics and economics. That’s all there is to it.

I kind of itch to join in this debate, but I lack the appropriate convictions. But I do wonder if the relevant factor in economic compatibility is growth efficiency (dynamism). I have to say that if this was the case, I think France and Turkey would get on fine – watching Sweden, Finland and the UK disappear out of sight. But that’s only one reading of the facts.

” What’s the justification for shutting out worse-off Polish or Latvian workers from West European labour markets.”
Speaking from Hungary: the best way to help us is to have a strong, egalitarian, economically viable society in your country. So giving strength to our arguments in our debates against the neoliberal agenda.

That would be nice, but I’m not sure what you’re proposing. Are you saying that immigration should be allowed, but the government or a union should set the prices? or prop them up with subsidies?

Would you still be rooting for the hypothetical Turk to go work in France on a building site for 1 euro an hour?

That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? I think you’re greatly exaggerating the wage difference, but let’s just go with it for now.

A lot of Mexicans work illegally in the U.S. as undocumented construction workers. I can’t imagine what would make a person leave home and cross a desert in the middle of the night, risking death from thirst and exposure (100 die every year), to do hard labor illegally for peanuts in a country where everyone despises him and no one speaks his language. Why? Can you explain why someone would endure all that? I have my own guesses.

If you live in a rich country, there are poor, desperate people on the other side of all your borders. What do you do with them? You can (as in comment #56) suggest they go home, elect a socialist government, and build a better country for themselves. That’s a little glib and self-serving for my tastes. See? Voting socialist is the way to prosperity and happiness.* You’re welcome. Now off I must go to my two-hour lunch break, tra la. To me, it seems like you’re literally locking these people out of the prosperity you enjoy only by virtue of the accident of birth. They will suffer all their lives as a result of your choice. Meanwhile you will have high wages and a generous pension.

Alternatively, you can do what the U.S. does: turn a blind eye and let these people sneak past and work illegally; establish no serious policy about them whatsoever. This is very bad indeed, but much better than your suggestion.

*I couldn’t say about happiness, but it seems to me that what produces a wealthy society is long periods of peace, security, political stability, and minimal government corruption—not leftist or rightist policies per se.

Charlie b – apologies for neglecting your earlier enquiries. By tax externalities I’m referring to a set of debates in the EU over whether or not the states with strong welfare states and higher levels of taxes (especially on business) will be able to maintain them in a context where business can easily relocate across borders and not have to pay any penalties. Countries like Germany feel that they are suffering from this. Interestingly, some of the traditional ‘social democratic’ states like Sweden have low rates of tax on business and have had them for quite a while – this is something that social scientists have had a hard time explaining.

Sorry to hear you’ve been having a bad day.

Your post – thanks, but I’d rather not read it again – is about the welfare state but the argument we have been discussing – number 3 on your list – is not: at least not in the form you presented it there. To repeat my original question again: how exactly does this argument “assume what it should argue”?

I was not accusing you of holding views influenced by your class. On the contrary, I’m glad you don’t buy into all that social science bunk and I think it’s quite heroic that you are speaking up for the starving African children even after having paid your social security contributions. I was attempting to clarify an argument, of someone else’s making, which I thought you were dismissing rather hastily and which appears to me to have political, if not moral, force.

This argument is a charge of hypocrisy directed at members of the middle class who advocate increased flows of goods and people across borders on moral grounds. Middle class people, as you noted before you flew off the handle, are much less likely to suffer job insecurity, and also enjoy cheaper goods and services, as a result of these flows. They invite this charge when they sweep these facts aside and frame their case as a moral appeal, citing the benefits to outsiders.

Your little lecture on the regressive nature of European welfare states is therefore beside the point. I do find your claim that European welfare states “do not primarily cater for the working class” bizarre, though. I know universal provision offers generous benefits to the middle class and that has kept these programmes popular. Universal programmes may, in fact, be the most politically viable way of providing these goods to everyone who needs them. Which class do you think is the primary beneficiary, counting costs and benefits, and why were you and your egalitarian buddies not calling for their dismantling before? What’s the progressive dilemma that you’ve been ringing your hands over? It all sounds dead simple to me: smash the welfare state.

Go easy on the caffeine.

You really don’t have a clue, do you. The post (go back and read it) is about the European welfare state. The European welfare state, for your information, is not an institution that primarily caters for the working class. It does by the middle classes very well indeed, which is why it’s been so difficult for politicians to scale back. I’ll say it again – it’s in large part a middle class programme. So if you seriously want to engage in some gimcrack version of class position analysis, I’m actually going against my class interests in making the argument that I am making. And indeed, against my own personal interests too – I’ve a few years’ contributions socked away in the German system. If I may make a polite suggestion – you may want to change your online monicker – you’re really not doing your illustrious namesake very much credit.

As for lemuel’s rather pathetic little

Nailed it. Somehow, tho, I doubt that Henry will be giving us an answer.

see above for the answer that you claim I won’t be giving. Anyway, I seem to recall that the European textile worker vs. starving Africans simile is a canard that you introduced. As I hope you will be able to discern, I’m talking about whether or not there should be cutbacks in a universalist program, which affects textile workers and middle class professionals alike. Hence your accusations are entirely bogus. You’ve done a lot of ducking and weaving, introduction of tendentious and disingenuous similes etc, but as far as I can discern whatever solidarity you have to those outside the EU is of that Pecksniffian variety which involves neither cost nor inconvenience.