Angela Merkel’s recent denunciation of German multiculturalism marks another step in the tightening of ties between the market-liberal right and ethnic-national tribalism, evident in other European countries and in the US (most obviously with the rise of the Tea Party). In part at least, this is a result of weakness. The positive appeal of market liberalism has declined a fair bit since the triumphalist decades of the 1980s and 1990s, and the global financial crisis exposed the failure of its theoretical basis. But there are obvious problems for social democrats in responding to this development. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and have come to the view that it’s better to put up some half-thought ideas for discussion (and maybe debunking) than to wait for a perfect formulation.
The left needs to offer a transformational vision of a better society if it is to motivate the kind of enthusiasm needed to overcome a rightwing politics of tribalism and (often misperceived) self-interest. The 19th/20th century vision of socialism and class solidarity provides a model and a starting point, but that model is no longer adequate, and the political movements it gave rise to are in disarray. We need, a world view that extends the solidarity of social democracy to the whole of humanity [1].
The institutions of social democracy have been developed primarily at the level of the nation-state and the popular appeal of social democracy rests on notions of solidarity which arise most naturally in a relatively homogeneous society. Most of the last few decades have been spent defending the social democratic welfare state against attacks which were largely justified by claims about the need to respond to (market liberal) globalisation. That defence has been surprisingly successful, even when market liberalism seemed to have won conclusive intellectual and political victories. It’s natural to continue that defensive stance in response to the current push for “austerity”, and to organise that defence at a national level, while seeking to refurbish and to some extent rationalise the national welfare state.
That defensive struggle is necessary, but I don’t think social democracy can endure indefinitely in this defensive/managerialist mode. As I said a while ago we need to mobilise a positive alternative to the fear, anger and tribalism on offer from the right. That means setting out goals that are far more ambitious than the incremental changes debated in day-to-day electoral politics. The goals that seem to me to offer the most hope – a world free of nuclear weapons and extreme poverty, an end to the acceptance of war as an instrument of national policy, action to stabilise the global climate – all involve going beyond national governments and concepts of national interest. And, so I believe, does any plausible program to renew and extend social democracy.
The need for global action on issues like nuclear disarmament and climate change is obvious enough. The argument about social democracy is less obvious. In a world where national borders no longer act as an effective barrier to migration, it is harder to justify social welfare systems in terms of solidarity with people like ourselves (since the population is more diverse) or in terms of mutual insurance or past contributions, at least as regards recent arrivals. Particularly where migrant groups are concentrated at the bottom of the income distribution and are therefore net beneficiaries from the welfare state, including health and education systems as well as social insurance. Less obviously perhaps, internationally mobile workers are unlikely to be happy about paying taxes for welfare systems from which they may not benefit. Within the framework of national social welfare systems, the alternatives are to cut back the system for everyone, to discriminate against recent arrivals, or to tighten restrictions on migration.
The alternative is to extend the welfare state beyond national boundaries. This has already happened in a very modest (and often grudging) way with various agreements between national governments, and somewhat more systematically under EU rules which require national governments to treat all EU citizens equally with respect to some social services.
As between very rich and very poor countries, the benefits of this all go one way. People from poor countries gain from access to social services in rich countries, but not vice versa. But we can turn this argument around to say that the achievements of social democracy in the developed world can’t be secure as long as so much of the world is in extreme poverty. As Jeffrey Sachs has argued (and I’ve argued further), ending extreme poverty is entirely feasible, given an effort comparable to that the developed world has put into fighting pointless wars.
The ultimate goal ought to be one in which, everyone, no matter where they happen to be born has access to the basic requirements for a decent life. That doesn’t entail a world government (at least in the sense in which we typically understand the word “government” today) but it does entail a break with ideas based on nation-states as the ultimate focus of sovereignty. One relatively minor, but important step towards this would come with a “contract and converge” approach to CO2 emissions, which would ultimately imply equal entitlements to emissions per person in all countries [2].
All of this seems utopian in (at least) two senses. First, it seems very hard to sell politically. In part this reflects the long-standing distinction between a maximalist statement of long-term goals and a ‘fighting platform’ for a particular election. Part of my argument is that it’s the lack of long-term vision beyond the preservation of past gains that is sapping enthusiasm for social democracy.
But even after making the obvious adjustments to electoral reality, it’s far from obvious how to fashion a platform based on these ideas that is going to attract majority support in the short term. The power of nationalism and tribalism is strong, and the counter-appeal of global idealism goes only so far. On the other hand, it seems as if there is enough support for greens and leftish social democrats to form the basis of a significant minority that would support such ideas. Given a reaction against rightwing austerity politics, this group could form part of a majority coalition with mainstream social democrats.
More importantly, tribalism and monoculturalist nationalism belong to the past (as do essentialist versions of multiculturalism, in which people are defined by birth into some particular culture). The possibility of sustaining, in any country[3] a majority group (or even a dominant minority) that can be defined homogeneously in terms of race, religion, sexual politics and world-view (all at once) is slipping away fast. Part of the rage of the Tea Party is the fact that its adherents at once recognise this and are unwilling to concede the existence of an America that is not overwhelmingly white, Christian and traditionalist in terms of sexual mores and broader social attitudes. So, the more that social democracy and acceptance of social diversity are seen as two sides of the same coin, the better the long term prospects for social democrats.
The deeper question is whether such a program is feasible at all. Traditional views of international politics take the nation-state as an immutable atomic constituent of the system that can’t be wished out of existence by idealistic political movements. But the reality is that the sovereignty of nation-states has been eroded in all sorts of ways over the years since 1945. That’s most obvious in Europe, but all countries are bound up in a web of international arrangements that are increasingly hard to break out of. Big and powerful states like the US, Russia and China still act intermittently on the assumption that the rules don’t apply to them, but such displays (US and Russian military adventures, China’s attempted blackmail over rare earths) typically have high costs and few benefits. The real question is whether (as was assumed unquestioningly in the years leading up the global financial crisis) such constraints work inevitably in the interests of financialised market liberalism or whether they can be turned in more socially productive directions. I don’t know the answer, but I do think that the attempt to do this represents the best hope for a social democratic future.
Obviously, a lot of what I’ve written above is only partly thought through, and at least some of it is doubtless wrong. However, I’m not really interested in dealing with snarky nitpicking and general derailment, so I will exercise a fair bit of discretion in deleting comments I regard as unhelpful. Over at my blog I’ve opened up a “sandpit” thread where I will direct snark and lengthy off-topic monologues and back-and-forth disputes between commenters.
Finally, a few links to things I’ve found useful (not necessarily because I agreed), from John Keane and Policy Network.
fn1. This certainly isn’t a new claim – Ulrich Beck has been arguing for a similar, cosmopolitan and social democratic, position for some time. But it certainly needs a lot of working out and discussion, and blogging provides me with an avenue to try out ideas like this.
fn2. Although I don’t believe the process is as conscious as this, the ferocious rightwing resistance to the reality of climate change ultimately reflects an intuition that some global action of this kind is the only possible response.
fn3. The big potential exceptions are China and perhaps Japan, although it seems obvious that maintaining current restrictions on immigration will be very costly for Japan.
{ 89 comments }
The Raven 10.24.10 at 9:07 am
“…it seems to me important to dust off some of the old hopes for the future: world governance, world peace, freedom for all, equality for all, the elimination of poverty, a healthy relationship with the natural world. Now that these things have become real possibilities many are terrified; hence the ascendance of the reactionaries. At a certain level, I think it is accurate to say that we as a species are afraid to grow up. But there is no ‘good’ alternative, and I think it is important to say that over and over, until it is believed and understood.”–me, six years ago
JulesLt 10.24.10 at 9:16 am
A thought : the right assaults the EU (in Europe) and the Federal government, in the States, claiming a dislike of big government. On the other hand, it tends to be favour of the WTO, IMF and other undemocratic international organisations (at least when it suits).
I’m intrigued as to what their Utopia is – mercantile city states?
The Raven 10.24.10 at 9:41 am
Jules, corporate neo-feudalism.
Chris M 10.24.10 at 9:57 am
Good post. Certainly the right question to be asking.
I would have thought that the great unifying hope is class, and the pursuit of the pursuit of working class interest on a an international basis – the greatest hope for democracy I can see. Yes, this will require new institutions. The difficulty is that so long as that project is tied to social democratic reformism it is subverted to the national interest, and ultimately the interests of capital accumulation for the few.
Guido Nius 10.24.10 at 10:07 am
Thank you, John, the left should be about emancipating every individual in every respect. You have tackled the nation state restriction. It would be good if we could also tackle the individual responsibility restrictons. An ambitious left should not presuppose the duty to work – or other duties (the duty to try to make the best of life even if you hate it) – in order for individuals to be qualifying for the benefits of society. Basic income.
Jack Strocchi 10.24.10 at 10:20 am
Jack, please comment in the sandpit in my blog. Anything here will be deleted – JQ
Bread & Roses 10.24.10 at 10:35 am
well, sounds good but hard to picture without at least some example proposals.
The only thing that comes to mind is a scheme I read about a while ago to make national health insurance reciprocal between nations (first bilaterally). So, for example, someone with Canadian national health insurance could be served by Medicare, and someone with Medicare could be served by Canadian national insurance, and each national health insurance system would reimburse the other. Nevermind the complications and questions that immediately spring to mind with that (first, for me, being what’s the incentive politically?) . But, is that the sort of thing you’re envisioning?
You say tribalism and monoculturalist nationalism belong to the past- but there seem to be a goodly number of people still willing to fight and die for them- and the human impulse to be part of affinity groups, hold those groups superior to other groups, and fight for resources for their own group, seems to me to be a fundamental quality of human nature. Whether it is expressed as tribalism, nationalism, religious bigotry, imperialism, corporatism, trade unionism, whatever- solidarity of us is a strong drive, and implies a “them”
I think in the proper conditions, multiple “us” can work towards common goals- as long as they aren’t seen as threatening the group’s resources. Polio eradication seems like one. But most goals- like elimination of extreme poverty, or working on global warming, you’re starting to involve large amounts of resources and privilege. To a privileged person, the arrival of justice means loss of that privilege- and often, therefore, feels like an injustice.
Koen 10.24.10 at 10:56 am
“Angela Merkel’s recent denunciation of German multiculturalism marks another step in the tightening of ties between the market-liberal right and ethnic-national tribalism, evident in other European countries and in the US (most obviously with the rise of the Tea Party).”
Not sure this is true. Many of the right-wing parties in Europe are quite leftwing/socialist in their economic policy. Geert Wilders’ party in the Netherlands for example has quite a few similarities to the Socialist Party on economic policy. And I have not heard of people in the Sarah Palin camp of the Tea Party who actually want to cut much spending on either the warfare or the welfare state.
Also not sure whether “ethnic-tribal nationalism” is a fair way of describing what Merkel said (nor do I think “market liberalism” describes Merkel’s policy very well)
“In part at least, this is a result of weakness. The positive appeal of market liberalism has declined a fair bit since the triumphalist decades of the 1980s and 1990s, and the global financial crisis exposed the failure of its theoretical basis.”
Wait what? The global financial crisis is a crisis of regulated capitalism and opinions differ on wether it is the regulation (the Federal Reserve printing money, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac dominating mortgage market, etc.) or the capitalism part that caused the crisis.
Peter Nunns 10.24.10 at 11:05 am
Two things come to mind.
The first is Tony Judt’s (rather shockingly conservative) defense of social democracy, in which he called for a “social democracy of fear” rooted in an understanding of the genesis of the fascist political movements of the Great Depression. I wasn’t convinced by it – for one thing, class dropped entirely out of the equation, and one was left wondering: Who should fear whom? Which groups have the most reason to fear this sort of social breakdown?
The second, apropos of Jack Strocchi’s scepticism, is that there’s been a lot of relevant writing on the ways in which globalisation is implanted within existing territorial units. Saskia Sassen’s 2006 book, Territory, Authority, Rights is a great example of this kind of thinking – her sections on the (still emerging) denationalisation and rescaling of citizenship are particularly relevant to this discussion. Neil Brenner and Manuel Castells have also written interesting things on this front.
The overall conclusion I’d draw is that a lot of the capabilities that used to exist at the level of the nation-state have been displaced, but not always upwards to the global scale. Sometimes the capacity to regulate the global political economy shifts down to city or regional scales. (Think of the special role of the NY Federal Reserve in managing international capital mobility, or the ways in which citizenship is being defined at the state rather than national level in the US – e.g. Arizona’s profiling law and debates over California’s driver’s licensing rules.) Any call for a rescaled social democracy will inevitably have to reckon – in a theoretical and practical sense – with the complex new geographies that are emerging here.
Henri Vieuxtemps 10.24.10 at 11:21 am
Surely there’s something to say for decentralization and local autonomy (whether mono or multi-cultural) as well, and it’s probably a more popular concept too. I don’t see a problem with the folks who espouse sectarianism organizing their local communities on that basis, as long as they don’t bother anybody.
BenK 10.24.10 at 11:32 am
It seems to me that by posturing to create this ideal of international liberal democracy and then throw at it a single international foe – which you call tribalism, in what I take to be a derogatory tone (how ironic) – you are setting up straw men all over the place. Straw zombies even; weak, flammable, and threatening.
Please deal honestly with failings and foes. I believe that your dream of an international welfare state is essentially flawed from its most basic assumptions. You somehow imagine that the organization you create at the international level will be all things pure, beyond the humans who create it, who staff it, and who will treat it like a video poker system to be hacked and manipulated. Out of this crooked timber… wait…
There are alternatives to this imagination, even alternatives that may result in caring for the poor; but not through the mechanisms either of the naked state/international government and naked individual (which is, after all, where the liberal legalistic vision of liberal moralists gets one) or through the naked markets interacting with supposedly rational and competent actors – soon to be slaves to the grind (which is where the libertarian, or liberal market, dream arrives).
There are other alternatives, but they dampen the purity of the markets, they restrict the ‘moral’ potency of those who craft laws for others to follow. They reinforce the supposedly corrupt potency of local government, de facto legislating by local community organizations, and the oppressive family system. They reverse what many people were told was decades of progress. They rest on things that can’t be measured so easily, or abstracted, codified and written down. They are not friendly to theory or to the dogmas of academics. They are not efficient.
It is there we must look, with an eye to solving our present problems, because furthering the ‘progress’ that got us here will not be enough to carry us forward.
Daniel Wolf 10.24.10 at 11:55 am
It cannot be emphasized enough that the recent moves within the CDU, by Merkel and others, with regard to immigration/integration and the massive conflict over the Stuttgart 21 railroad infrastructure project have largely rendered the Social Democrats irrelevant and actual leadership in the opposition to the CDU/FDP coalition has been taken up by the Greens. This has lead to a massive increase in polling support for the Greens, in which in now looks possible that Germany will have three major parties, CDU, SPD and Green, each hovering between 20 and 30 percent, with possible red-green coalitions increasingly ceding the senior role to the Greens. The Greens have a very good chance of electing the next Mayor of Berlin and Prime Minister of Baden-Wurttenburg, a major change in the political landscape of a country which has, since its founding, only known CDU or SPD leaders at the Land level.
While a good degree of the increase in support to the Greens comes simply from their advantage of being the party out of power in a time of general public discomfort with any governing policy, despite the relatively good economic conditions in Germany, they have established a respectable record of competence and professionalism when in government and they have a lively internal discussion culture which better echoes the current public demand for more popular sovereignty over major policy decisions. This, combined with the tired and imagination-less state of the present SPD leads me to the strong conviction that if there is to be any serious theory, discussion, and concrete political program for “a transformational vision for a better society” it will come more from the Greens than from the SPD.
Clay Shirky 10.24.10 at 12:04 pm
“The power of nationalism and tribalism is strong, and the counter-appeal of global idealism goes only so far.”
This strikes me as part of the answer (and is an echo of Rorty’s “Justice as Larger Loyalty.”)
A story: When I moved to New York, I worked with a children’s theater company, which was intentionally and self-consciously cosmopolitan. The company was made up of kids from the same ethnic rainbow as NYC itself is made of: asian, caucasian, hispanic, black.
As opening night (afternoon, really) approached, the kids learned that a school group from Darchai Menachem, an Orthodox Jewish boys school, would be coming, and that there would be a conversation after the show. One of the kids groaned and said, mimicking payot by spinning his fingers around his ears, “Not those guys with the curly hair!”
As a recent, grateful arrival to NYC and naively cosmopolitan, this reaction stunned me. I thought the kids had internalized the idea that in-group/out-group prejudice was simply to be dispensed with. Instead, what they’d learned was that Puerto Ricans were OK, that blacks and asians could be friends, that not all caucasians were jerks. They’d expanded the in-group, not abandoned it; they had not extended this idea to Orthodox Jews, because they didn’t have any experience with Orthodox Jews.
If the counter-appeal of global idealism only goes so far (which it does, alas), one answer is to postpone “final talks” and instead to figure out the next increment. As with EU expansion, what could we in the US do to think of ourselves as having shared purpose with Mexico? What could we do to sympathize with our working class, now toiling on our behalf in Guangdong province? How could we harness the Islamist hate groups to raise tolerance for cosmopolitan Muslim citizens? And so on.
Put another way, this…
“The possibility of sustaining…a majority group that can be defined homogeneously…is slipping away fast.”
…is not true.
The astonishing thing about humans is that we are willing to believe any emotionally appealing frame for group identity, no matter how little it comports with reality. Portmanteaux like “Anglo-Saxon” take centuries of animosity and deadly struggle and group them together as if they represented a homogenous whole, as do labels like “Judeo-Christian tradition.” The US basically invented the idea of white people, as a time when asking a European resident if Greeks and Norwegians were part of the same ethnic group would have elicited little but concern for your grasp of reality. We simply re-define homogeneity to include the people we’ve accepted.
There are two groups because there are _always_ two groups: there’s Us, and then there’s Them. The way your project has always succeeded in the past is to expend extraordinary effort to extend, slightly, the ambit of the group contained in Us, and to commit ourselves, at enormous cost and with equally slight results, to treating the remaining Them slightly less abominably.
And the catastrophic, world-damaging failures have often been a result of trying to get to a global system all at one go, a project who’s ambition all but foretells centralization and subsequent use of murderous power.
Guido Nius 10.24.10 at 12:06 pm
9- They will at minimum bother themselves and their children. Anyway, decentralization is – as John says I think – mostly a good thing if applied to the right type of things and not used as some form of exclusion of people that happen to be on the other side of the border.
Mike 10.24.10 at 12:19 pm
It seems to me that, for whatever reasons, the global sphere has mostly been the turf of liberalism and conservatism while social democracy has tended to be far more closely wedded to the nation-state. So I definitely think that what you propose is one of the areas where social democracy can (and maybe needs to) reinvigorate itself.
But I also think you overlook a more basic problem. If you consider traditionally strong social democratic parties like the Swedish one and examine what sort of policies they’ve been crafting during the past decade, then I think you’re going to find a lot of stuff aimed at “the immigrants,” “the women,” “the poor,” and so on. Basically, particular solutions for particular people. The kind of Enlightenment inspired universalism that has historically been the core of social democracy doesn’t really seem to be the core of most social democratic parties anymore, who, along with many intellectuals on the left, instead appears to have been bedazzled by a kind of post-modern, relativistic, and anti-empirical identity politics*.
In essence, if a “cosmopolitan social democracy” is to be possible, then it first needs to be recognized that universal emancipation is a core tenet of social democracy, and I don’t think this is the case right now.
*As Bo Rothstein put it in his analysis of the SAP’s recent electoral catastrophe (in Swedish): http://www.newsmill.se/artikel/2010/09/22/d-rf-r-har-socialdemokratin-havererat
Henri Vieuxtemps 10.24.10 at 12:20 pm
9- They will at minimum bother themselves and their children.
Well, if that’s the attitude, the cosmopolitan utopia is likely to feel more like a dystopia to most people.
sg 10.24.10 at 1:30 pm
Is multiculturalism actually official german policy? Multiculturalism isn’t just “lots of different races come to our country,” like in the UK. It’s a conscious method of getting those races to live and work together. It’s not policy in France, as far as I know. Is it policy in Germany? Because I think, if it’s not policy, Merkel’s recent statements can’t be taken to have any relevance to actual multiculturalism as actually enacted in countries like Australia and Canada.
Guido Nius 10.24.10 at 1:58 pm
14- Why? Because they aren’t free to be racist in private? I don’t want Utopia but dystopia for people that want to feel free to be racist in private seems like a step in the right direction.
Sorry for taking this off-topic but then again, I don’t see how sectarianism and emancipation can be compatible.
MPAVictoria 10.24.10 at 2:56 pm
Wow Guido,
You are a troll. Look at his remarks people. He is messing with you.
Lemuel Pitkin 10.24.10 at 3:10 pm
This is a very good and important post. I’ll try to make some substantive comments later, but for the moment just this: This is exactly the conversation we should be having.
Red 10.24.10 at 3:51 pm
I think I’m with Chris M. (@4), but do worry that we’re essentially having a 19th-century debate again, but now in even worse circumstances for working people. There is not only the formidable market-liberal or neoliberal ideology to contend with in times of recession; we’re also dealing with market forces of enormous global strength. The only bulwark against it remains national government. (A word of caution for Europeans, who possibly regard the European union as an alternative framework: let’s not forget that the entire enterprise of European cooperation has always been driven by business interests). But we know how often social democracy has been betrayed by the nation state.
John Q. seems to be thinking of a new vision for social democracy that articulates new policies. I am skeptical, unless we can find new instruments of power to advance such policies. (Re)creating a new international labor movement would be a first step. I’d love to see a new International, of course, but then we’re really talking about Utopianism.
All of this said as an American citizen looking at what promises to be the most idiotic Republican House (and possibly also Senate) majority in a lifetime.
Alan Peakall 10.24.10 at 3:56 pm
It seems to me that Clay Shirky’s thesis leads ultimately to an Epimenides-type paradox in which there is an in-group defined by the belief that the in-group/out-group distinction is eradicable and an out-group defined by the belief that it is not.
Omega Centauri 10.24.10 at 3:59 pm
At the risk of taking this discussion off topic, I see the coming decade as being
a crucial one. And the main driver of action is going to be the effects of the combination
of the continuation of the great recession along with the increasing bite that global
resource limits takes on the economic wellbeing of populations. In fact because of the later, I do not see any sort of recovery from the
great recession as likely to happen. So most politics will be a reaction (including) denial of
these strong drivers of change. The common human reaction to double down on the strategies of the past “we just haven’t been pure enough capitalists, ‘drill-baby-drill'” is goinf to create a very challenging situation.
So the left’s primary task should be to quide us into some sort of future sustainable economic/ecological
organization. The transition is not going to be an easy one however. At least in the US, the right
has invested heavily in popular memetics designed to deflect blame towards leftist and green groups. The idea
that the earth has been endowed by god with unlimited resources for his children is well entrenched in
some circles. Scapecoating of leftists, and scientists as well looks to be an unpleasant feature of
this coming decade. Defense is likely to be much needed. Well, in deference to the old saw that
“offence is the best defense” go ahead and plan your offense. Just keep in mind that it is going to be
put to its most valuable use to bolster the defense.
rayllove 10.24.10 at 4:09 pm
I live in Texas now and at 54 and I have lived most of my life near the US/Mexico border, but mostly in California. I have traveled extensively in Mexico and in the mid 1980s I spent a few months in Central America.
When I was 17 I lived for 11 months in the wilderness while building a fence on a ranch in Southwestern New Mexico. During this time the only contact I had, for the most part, was with 3 undocumented workers who were in my charge. We were all about the same age and we became close friends. And I have worked and lived alongside other undocumented Hispanics since then.
The point is that I have had far more contact with ‘illegals’ than what most ‘gringos’ have had. In fact, most of my Caucasian countrymen have never had ‘any’ social contact with our foreign guests.
Liberal/progressives in the US do in fact, almost without fail, hold to some misconceptions regarding the issue of illegal immigration that reveal just how far off any real progress might be concerning the inherent racism, nationalism, or what might be more broadly be summed up with the word ‘territorial-ism’, or by the ‘us’ and ‘them’ description. What has become a common occurrence in discussions on this subject is for progressives to assume that all illegal immigrants would prefer to stay in the US as permanent residents. In truth though, many of those who have been here and experienced the hardships of a migrant workers life would prefer to move back home. Many others come to the US with no intention of staying. What most US citizens find difficult to grasp is just how deeply connected most Hispanics are to their families and to their communities. But, among US citizens it is conveniently believed that living in our shadows is better that anything that could possibly exist in the communities where these people come from.
Conversations on the subject of illegal immigration, which I have been involved in going back about 40 years, become the most revealing when it is explained how illegal immigration has helped to solve the military recruitment problem that was made so inescapably evident by the Viet Nam War. Low-end labor markets kept in a state of oversupply by the influx of immigrants as jobs and opportunities in manufacturing and agri-related sectors have diminished has however had a rather obvious influence on military recruitment. It is more than just about the numbers though. What has changed since the Viet Nam era is that with the opportunities that existed during the Viet Nam era eliminated, the military is perceived as the only alternative for an entire class of young adults, and so, over time, there has been a shift in attitudes regarding military service. And, of course, there has been no need for a draft, nor has anti-war sentiment been a significant problem.
So, when it is explained that the largest number of Latin Americans could be treated the most compassionately and honestly by a combination of phasing out ag subsidies, and by granting those who then choose to stay, citizenship, with the return of value to corn crops being integral in giving immigrants a choice that is not the result of market manipulations, and assuming that this choice would relieve some of the pressure on labor markets in Mexico as well, and thereby allowing labor values to adjust upwardly on both sides of the border, it is surprising just how negative the reaction to those proposals, by the ‘progressives’, typically is… here in these United States.
But I continue to make the argument anyway. Thanks for another opportunity on what seems to be an excellent site.
Adrian Turcato 10.24.10 at 4:43 pm
It has been touched on to a certain extent above, but as I see one of the main issues in play here to be the entitlement to “plunder” manifest in the current social democratic system. All the extractive industries, and the manufacturing industries that rely on them, take for granted the oppression they rely on. To support universal emancipation would incur an incredible derailment of any individuals ability to accrue vast personal wealth, and isn’t this the underlying principle that our states are founded on? More than anything else we are guaranteed the freedom to search out avenues to take advantage of other peoples situations. (Obviously the degrees of acceptability vary)
Frankly it is only once we divorce ourselves from the structures of power and wealth that we will be able to fostering any sort universal human condition.
We need to settle for less. We can’t expect this sort of dizzying growth where imperialism is finally abolished. A world of universal emancipation would be fairer but not nearly as opulent.
Henri Vieuxtemps 10.24.10 at 4:45 pm
The only bulwark against it remains national government.
More like a tool, in most cases.
ogmb 10.24.10 at 4:57 pm
I’d say the very comparison between Merkel’s comments and the Tea Party is a non-starter. Germany is a massively secular, egalitarian society where the Tea Party contingent, if it even exists in that form, grumbles aloud that it isn’t heard even within its own traditional homestead (the protestant pastor’s daughter Merkel’s traditionally Catholic-leaning CDU/CSU) and is making noises about starting its own populist party based on the Republikaner/Schill-Party template. Even Merkel understands that she couldn’t possibly pull off any nationalist grandstanding given that the Helmut Kohl-reared mainstream within the CDU is fairly committed to the pan-European idea, so she’s settling for a EU-without-Turkey play, and even on that front she’s checked by her hand-picked President Wulff. The combined left in Germany is currently polling at 60% and is mostly engaged in an internecine warfare between which brand of left-leaning politics should prevail in a post-Merkel government, the industrialist SPD, the post-capitalist Greens or the anti-capitalist Linke, with (as Daniel @10 points out), the Greens very much in the driver’s seat right now. None of this comes anywhere close to matching the sway the Tea Party has over the political “discourse” in the U.S.
frances 10.24.10 at 5:00 pm
@sg 15
Foreign Policy has a reasonably succinct article on the history of (Turkish/Gastarbeiter) immigration in Germany. It fits largely with what I’ve heard from people in Berlin, though I can’t attest to any bias in the piece as I haven’t done much reading on this issue.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/22/germanys_age_of_anxiety_0?page=full
My understanding is that whatever Merkell regards as ‘multiculturalism’ and its attendant failure is a very different thing from that in Canada and Aust/N.Z.
Bruce Wilder 10.24.10 at 5:14 pm
Because of the rapid advances in communication and computing technologies, control is cheap for the first time in human history. And, as you note, there are also global problems, like global warming, demanding increased global coordination.
The idea, though, that the increasingly powerful Center / Global Elite will be kindler and gentler, if we just have an inspiring vision of global solidarity and universal citizenship. Jesus Christ tried that; how has it worked out, so far?
The most urgent tasks for the Left, I believe, require generating a particularist opposition to the Center, a Rebel periphery, which will prevent the Elite from using its new-found means of control, to use increasing rents on increasingly scarce resources, to suck up all the surplus, for itself.
Already, in the U.S., a globalized elite of financial managers and CEOs, unopposed by unions or regionalists or any other mass organization, threaten to impoverish millions, using a vampire finance sector and a succubus of a health care system. Billionaires are about to steal Social Security!
The most useful thing the Left could do in Europe, right now, would be to organize political coalitions in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland, to stop the endless bailouts, stop austerity and reform or kill the neo-liberal Euro.
Too many intellectuals on the Left are always fantasizing about what kind of political strategy would motivate themselves; but, they are not the ones, who need to be motivated. The trick in building a successful political coalition is to find an appeal that will steal a significant block of support from the other side, and that block is always the authoritarian followers, Merkel is trying to appeal to.
In the 19th century, liberals and socialists were trying to overthrow the landed aristocracy, so that government could be transformed from the private plaything of the descendants of feudal brigands into a socially useful bureaucracy, and the economy could be restructured from a landlord’s rural fief into an urban, industrial powerhouse. The struggle was always over the loyalties of the authoritarian followers, who wanted the benefits of a more paternalistic or a more egalitarian order, and could not distinguish between the two. Nationalistic solidarity was the liberal’s main weapon against the Empires of the aristocrats; it worked, because it attracted ordinary people, with authoritarian attitudes and anxieties. In the end, the form of violent revolution that worked was World War, in large part because the grim struggle for national existence pitted elites against one another, and required not just appeals to the masses, but resource transfers and the granting of rights, in order to strengthen the nation for the struggle.
Globalization has freed the globalizing elite of our own time from genuine fear. Now, fear of terrorists is just a cynical ploy to manipulate the masses. There’s none of the fear that led conservatives like Disraeli and Bismark to paternalistic measures and patriotic appeals, let alone the kind of challenges presented by the World Wars and their aftermath.
It is not an either/or choice. Opposition from the periphery can strengthen the Center, and make it more honest. An unobstructed, unaccountable elite drawing all power and resources to the top of the pyramid makes for a weak and brittle superstructure below. And, the danger that that is what we are getting is acute, from a globalized elite of a few thousand billionaires and a few institutions of globalized technocracy, with no accountability to democracy.
But, a strong, responsible Center can make possible a vibrant, diverse periphery. The EU makes possible a Scotland or a Slovenia. I don’t know if Scottish or Slovenian patriots fully understand how dependent on a functioning EU they are. Vice-versa, even less certain am I that the fat and happy Franco-German condominium running the Euro understands that impoverishing Greece or Spain is no way to run an economic zone.
Red 10.24.10 at 5:16 pm
Vieuxtemps@22: oh sure, I agree. That’s why we need to develop other institutional powers–but I don’t think it will be the “international arrangements/constraints” that John Q. hopes to transform into more worker-friendly mechanisms.
bianca steele 10.24.10 at 5:30 pm
What does it mean to be free to be a racist “in private”? I assumed it meant to live in local communities where everyone has the same ethnicity and culture, and is free to leave once they’re eighteen if they don’t like it. Does it actually mean you don’t ever have to overhear someone in a bar saying racism is wrong, because it makes you feel icky?
adam 10.24.10 at 5:49 pm
What benefit, exactly, do the people in the world’s various cultural communities derive from multiculturalism? Particularly when homogeniety lowers social transaction costs and makes cooperation in pursuit of the public good so much easier to achieve?
I’ve lived in a city where the politics were defined by alligence to one of two cultural communities. The effectiveness of city government suffered as a result.
I just don’t see any real intellectual superstructure underlying your beliefs. Instead just I see a specific reactions to specific things you don’t like (mistreatment of minorities in your country, the electoral tactics of rightwingers, poverty in third world nations, attempts to role back the welfare state) glued together with a utopianism than denies human nature.
Russell Arben Fox 10.24.10 at 6:10 pm
What benefit, exactly, do the people in the world’s various cultural communities derive from multiculturalism? Particularly when homogeniety lowers social transaction costs and makes cooperation in pursuit of the public good so much easier to achieve?
Adam asks a good question, one especially pertinent for social democrats and democratic sozialists. Obviously anyone with least bit of historical consciousness recognizes that defending certain universal liberal principles is a crucial tool in combating racist or xenophobic laws and practices that cause a great deal of harm. But unless one assumes from the starting point that people do not construct for themselves (or come to recognize themselves as belonging to) “cultural communities”–an assumption which, as several here have already commented, is utopian in the extreme–then one is obliged to ask oneself: is “multiculturalism” in all its forms really necessary for the defense of those aforementioned universal principles? And moreover, is multiculturalism, given the (thus far in historical experience, quite common) complications and tensions which it appears to introduce to the project of building solidarity, really necessary for the social democratic project of egalitarian justice? It seems to me that the best thinking on sozialism today (I’m thinking here of Erik Olin Wright’s recent book) is open, even if sometimes against its own predilections, to recognizing that social empowerment has to happen in a variety of ways, some of which are going to local, communal, and likely monocultural. Pointing at any such talk and reading it as a species of “ethno-national tribalism” that has no place on the left is not a very good way, I think, to help make more viable the social democratic project.
Stuart 10.24.10 at 6:16 pm
Adam: What benefit, exactly, do the people in the world’s various cultural communities derive from multiculturalism? Particularly when homogeniety lowers social transaction costs and makes cooperation in pursuit of the public good so much easier to achieve?
Freedom? Economic opportunity? Better flow of skilled employees to places they are most needed? Less wars and better international relations? That sort of thing.
The specific issue of only two cultures drawing battle lines against each other is a transitional issue, as more and more different cultures and groups merge together such issues become less of a problem (after all it is multiculture, not duoculture). Eventually everyone is part of a minority, or equally everyone is part of the majority, it just becomes a much broader thing.
TS 10.24.10 at 6:23 pm
John Quiggin said: “Angela Merkel’s recent denunciation of German multiculturalism marks another step in the tightening of ties between the market-liberal right and ethnic-national tribalism, evident in other European countries and in the US”
John, I am not sure this statement makes that much sense in the specific context of Germany. The post-WWII Christian Democrats were always more about (moderate but persistent) social conservatism, with a very light brand of market-liberal policy probably to the left of current US democrats. So this statement by Merkel is not really a surprise, but seems to me like a (very blunt but maybe calculated) affirmation of what her party has represented for a long time.
The other thing to consider about her statement is that the term “multiculturalism” does not necessarily have the exact same meaning in another country. These imported terms are often adapted as wedges to the local political landscape. I remember once having a discussion with a (fellow) German that touched on “political correctness”, another term imported over the last 20 years, and it took me a while to figure out that his interpretation of the term was different from what I experienced in the US. So, as sg said in comment #15 above, these things have limited relevance to other countries.
I would argue that the existence of a relatively non-tribal, pro-immigration, but strongly market oriented conservative movement in the US (and maybe some other anglophone countries) over the last few decades was the exception that maybe is now coming to an end. Most conservatism was always much more about tribal/social than market issues.
Red 10.24.10 at 6:27 pm
For Adam @27: if you want the argument to start with that question, we’re indeed back in the nineteenth century. I find it astonishing that you can even suggest it.
Henri Vieuxtemps 10.24.10 at 6:51 pm
Eventually everyone is part of a minority, or equally everyone is part of the majority, it just becomes a much broader thing.
Yeah, but this happens (when it happens) organically; it doesn’t seem like it can be (realistically) achieved by a top-down design.
Evan 10.24.10 at 6:54 pm
One thing that’s really been on my mind lately is the idea that in order for a supra-national politics to work, you’re going to have to rework how politics works in general, up and down the scale. Most people have little or no particiation in the broader social project beyond paying taxes and voting a couple of times per year, at least in advanced democracies. I think that since information technology is pushing the costs of participation down so sharply, there’s a lot of room to increase the responsiveness of people’s local environments to their input, and to create a more gradual slope from local to national power. I think that this will lead to people putting both more trust in national governments and the supranational entities that those nations participate in.
I think that there’s a clear need for more and better supranational government, but I don’t think that you can defuse tribalist/nationalist sentiments well enough to get people to buy into them without getting those people more involved in and complicit with the action of government, and better acquainted with the practicalities of actual governance, rather than their current world-views, which are largely divorced from those practicalities and the brutality that the execution of their vision would imply.
adam 10.24.10 at 7:25 pm
For Red @31. If you find that question so astonishing and antiquated, perhaps you can provide the consise answer missing in your reply.
For Stuart @29. Economic opportunity and the more efficient allocation of labor are appear market liberal justifications for multiculturalism, not social democratic justifications for liberalism. I’m not sure what you mean by freedom.
For Henri Vieuxtemps @ 31. The organic process whereby everyone becomes a member of Stuart’s majority is called assimilation. It is the antithesis of multiculturalism.
Another word for a state ruling over a multitude of distinct cultural communities, each jealously preserving their boundaries and guarding against assimilation, is an empire. Empires are not know for being democratic, or liberal.
burritoboy 10.24.10 at 7:56 pm
Empires traditionally were traditionally viewed as, and in general were, vastly more “liberal” than the democratic alternatives of the day (the city-state). City-states tended to be almost quasi-totalitarian – it was standard for the city-state’s laws to tightly regulate such things as food consumption, dress standards, social mobility, religious observation and much else. Citizen/non-citizen distinctions were extremely volatile issues. Many city-states only allowed those residents to become citizens and politically active whose families had lived in the city for generations, and sometimes centuries. Several medieval city-states restricted full political participation to those families who had essentially initially settled the city 300 or more years before. Also, city-states did not tolerate religious dissension well and typically were strict (sometimes fanatical) followers of a single sect, with absolutely no religious minorities permitted of any kind.
rayllove 10.24.10 at 8:13 pm
I live in Texas now and at 54 I have lived most of my life near the US/Mexico border, but mostly in California. I have traveled extensively in Mexico and in the mid 1980s I spent a few months in Central America.
When I was 17 I lived for 11 months in the wilderness while building a fence on a ranch in Southwestern New Mexico. During this time the only contact I had, for the most part, was with 3 undocumented workers who were in my charge. We were all about the same age and we became close friends. And I have worked and lived alongside other undocumented Hispanics since then.
The point is that I have had far more contact with ‘illegals’ than what most ‘gringos’ have had. In fact, most of my Caucasian countrymen have never had ‘any’ social contact with our foreign guests.
Liberal/progressives in the US do in fact, almost without fail, hold to some misconceptions regarding the issue of illegal immigration that reveal just how far off any real progress might be concerning the inherent racism, nationalism, or what might be more broadly be summed up with the word ‘territorial-ism’, or by the ‘us’ and ‘them’ description. What has become a common occurrence in discussions on this subject is for progressives to assume that all illegal immigrants would prefer to stay in the US as permanent residents. In truth though, many of those who have been here and experienced the hardships of a migrant workers life would prefer to move back home. Many others come to the US with no intention of staying. What most US citizens find difficult to grasp is just how deeply connected most Hispanics are to their families and to their communities. But, among US citizens it is conveniently believed that living in our shadows is better that anything that could possibly exist in the communities where these people come from.
Conversations on the subject of illegal immigration, which I have been involved in going back about 40 years, become the most revealing when it is explained how illegal immigration has helped to solve the military recruitment problem that was made so inescapably evident by the Viet Nam War. Low-end labor markets kept in a state of oversupply by the influx of immigrants as jobs and opportunities in manufacturing and agri-related sectors have diminished has however had a rather obvious influence on military recruitment. It is more than just about the numbers though. What has changed since the Viet Nam era is that with the opportunities that existed during the Viet Nam era eliminated, the military is perceived as the only alternative for an entire class of young adults, and so, over time, there has been a shift in attitudes regarding military service. And, of course, there has been no need for a draft, nor has anti-war sentiment been a significant problem.
So, when it is explained that the largest number of Latin Americans could be treated the most compassionately and honestly by a combination of phasing out ag subsidies, and by granting those who then choose to stay, citizenship, with the return of value to corn crops being integral in giving immigrants a choice that is not the result of market manipulations, and assuming that this choice would relieve some of the pressure on labor markets in Mexico as well, and thereby allowing labor values to adjust upwardly on both sides of the border, it is surprising just how negative the reaction to those proposals, by the ‘progressives’, typically is… here in these United States.
But I continue to make the argument anyway. Thanks for another opportunity on what seems to be an excellent site. Perhaps I should also add that I in no way meant to imply that right-wing views are an alternative with better solutions to any of considerations here.
Henri Vieuxtemps 10.24.10 at 8:16 pm
The organic process whereby everyone becomes a member of Stuart’s majority is called assimilation. It is the antithesis of multiculturalism.
Why, surely stable cross-cultural mutualism is possible too. Whatever works.
Red 10.24.10 at 9:05 pm
For Adam @34 : http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/nurmlaw2.html
adam 10.24.10 at 9:07 pm
for burritoboy @35
Aside from your choice of examples, which reach back 2000 years while ignoring the last 200, I find it very interesting that most of your examples concern consumer freedom, rather than political freedom. Hey, you may not have a vote, but you bought some handmade furniture and the ethnic restaurants are great!
More seriously – the social regulation that you cite in city states was present in empires, only enforced by each communities informally.
adam 10.24.10 at 9:16 pm
for Red @37
Are you trying to make some kind of argument? I feel like I’m at the national review online and somebody has just responded to my argument in favor of the public option with the assertion that socialism failed.
Try again.
Red 10.24.10 at 9:23 pm
Shall we go back to your post @27: “homogeniety lowers social transaction costs and makes cooperation in pursuit of the public good so much easier to achieve”. Maybe you should clarify that first.
salazar 10.24.10 at 10:32 pm
It’s possible the hopeful cosmopolitan vision John is trying to articulate will one day earn significant following in industrialized democracies. I just don’t think it will happen here in the United States as long as the nation’s demographic and ethno-racial makeup remains what it is now. Too many Americans are emotionally and economically invested in holding the enemy down, be it through military action abroad or repression at home. Let’s have this conversation again in 30 years. Not before.
sg 10.24.10 at 11:18 pm
adam asks precisely the wrong question because he doesn’t understand what multiculturalism is.
Multiculturalism is not “diversity.” It is a specific social and political method for handling diversity, i.e. a policy for lowering the transaction costs of multiple cultures living together, while maximizing the benefits (to phrase it in adam’s repulsive crypto-libertard tones).
The benefit “the world’s communities” get is irrelevant, since multiculturalism is a policy for specific nations to handle the results of migration within their borders. The benefit people in nations with functioning multicultural policies get is huge and obvious.
The problem with these “questions” is that people are substituting “mismanaged diversity,” and “integration policy” for “multiculturalism.” It’s deceptive to say “multiculturalism has failed” when talking about countries that haven’t tried it, or have discussed it a little, haven’t made it central to policy, and/or also have collapsing infrastructure that can’t support even their existing populations (e.g. the UK).
Gary Lord 10.25.10 at 12:50 am
Wouldn’t it be funny if the Global Greens became the inheritors of the Bilderberg Group’s dreams of world government?
As a political entity, the Greens are a pretty inclusive bunch (often to the point of derision). And yet they have representation in countries around the world, and Australia is only one of many places where they are ascendant. I keep waiting for the US Greens to get noticed, which could happen one day if the powers-that-be continue making avaricious fools of themselves.
My point being that a global linking of Green parties might one day point citizens around the worlds towards our common humanity, at which point the local political manipulation of nationalistic differences might become a losing “wedge” issue.
Even if you don’t think such Green global ascendancy is possible, it’s an interesting thought bubble.
Russell Arben Fox 10.25.10 at 12:53 am
adam asks precisely the wrong question because he doesn’t understand what multiculturalism is. Multiculturalism is not “diversity.†It is a specific social and political method for handling diversity, i.e. a policy for lowering the transaction costs of multiple cultures living together, while maximizing the benefits (to phrase it in adam’s repulsive crypto-libertard tones).
Now this is a productive response (though I’m not sure why Adam’s original question, which I read as posing a genuine challenge to people serious about social democratic possibilities, should be characterized as “crypto-libertard”; I have no idea what Adam’s actual position on these matters is, but when he phrases his concern in terms of the potential–and frequently evidenced in the historical record–complications which multicultural policies arguably pose for “cooperation in pursuit of the public good,” it sounds to me like a question that social dems and democratic sozialists ought to take seriously). The reality is, immigration is a fact, global markets are a fact, empowered minorities-within-culturally-dominant-nation-states are a fact, and no person who gives the least credence to the value of liberal policies of toleration, etc., can deny such. If “multiculturalism” is simply a way to refer to the various policies of accommodation which represent efforts to best manage such realities, then of course it hasn’t “failed”; it’s just been done better or worse in different national contexts (or not been done at all). In that way, multiculturalism poses no threat to social democracy. But then, neither would multiculturalism, spoken in those terms, be particularly crucial to social democracy; if a situation warranted social empowerment be pursued in localist, culturalist ways, I see no reason why a democratic socializist couldn’t pursue egalitarianism in such a manner. I feel like some connection could be made here to Walter Benn Michael’s The Trouble With Diversity, but I’m too tired to make it right now.
tarun 10.25.10 at 12:59 am
The first three aren’t really aspects of multiculturism anyway, but rather open markets.
The real question is why should a society encourage different social norms for different groups without either attempting to integrate or surpress those of newcomers? Multiculturism seems to be a static idea where different groups don’t change and just “tolerate” others’ practices. I’d suggest this is the main difference in the US versus the EU – most groups in the US integrate to some extent and adopt the “mainstream” just contributing random easy-to-swallow bits of their historic culture (e.g. Cinco de Mayo parties at the local Mexican joint in the US or curry adoption in the UK).
@sg in fact, it would be easier and cheaper to force everyone to speak the same language, to adopt the same holidays and the same national religion as a precondition for citizenship – thus multiculturism seems keep transaction costs high (e.g. cultural conflict costs, ghetto-izing spanish speakers in the US, etc.) but preserves individual liberties.
sg 10.25.10 at 1:07 am
tarun, I don’t understand your point, but you again seem to be misunderstanding what multiculturalism is. In a multicultural society, everyone is “forced” to speak the same language and adopt the same holidays, and there is no national religion (how can a society with a national religion be “multicultural”? It’s a contradiction). But in a multicultural society people are also able to speak their own language and adopt their own holidays in their own business, or often in someone else’s (which should give you a hint, if you needed it, that a multicultural society is not possible without a certain degree of workplace rights and flexibility).
Multiculturalism is a policy designed to reduce cultural conflict costs. If you need an example of how, consider this article in defense of multiculturalism by a notorious Australian right-winger. Even the conservatives in Australia see the value of such policy in keeping these so-called costs down, and avoiding ghettoization.
Clay Shirky 10.25.10 at 1:08 am
Belated reply to @Alan at #20: No need for limit-case paradoxes — the situation you describe is the normal one. Moderates who benefit from social capital or strong positive externalities of in-group networks or what have you will tend to believe that they benefit from the way the world is, and that people who don’t enjoy those benefits are either lacking (in meritocratic terms) or are deliberately absenting themselves from an obviously beneficent system (in Juan Williams’ terms.)
And I think this is more than a funny aside — with @Henri at #32, I think that the difference between expanding to some larger loyalty, visible from within the current situation (as with, say, common cause between US and Mexican citizens around the drug war, or between the EU and the Turks around EU membership) and attempting some global way of addressing these problems is such a great difference in both requirements and style (cultural nudging vs. cultural override) that I think they should be called different things.
daniel waweru 10.25.10 at 3:58 am
@Clay Shirky
I don’t see how this goes with what you said earlier:
That doesn’t sound exactly right since people often take on identities which they know will be emotionally unsatisfying, and fail to take on identities which they expect to be emotionally satisfying if accepted. But whatever.
If people are willing to accept any emotionally-satisfying frame for group identity, then, when the Martians attack, it should be possible to get an ingroup containing all human beings. And if the fightback against the Martians weren’t either emotionally satisfying or imaginable from here, it’s hard to see how it could have been the premiss for so many books and films.
Kaveh 10.25.10 at 4:50 am
Agree with what Lemuel #19 said: Now we’re talking!
hix 10.25.10 at 4:54 am
I have no idear what exactly people that use the term multiculturalism want exactly in Germany or Australia. Maybe SG could help us with his definition for Australia?
My idear what the “Christliche Leitkultur” CDU wants is much clearer. John Quiggins seems to overestimate the tension between market liberals and cultural conservatives within the CDU. The old men that largely represent rich and powerfull in Germany are typically on board with both the CDU market liberalism and christian conservative values. For those who are not, theres always the FDP. But typically the FDP voters are just concerned that the CDU is not right wing enough on social issues aswell.
incredulous bastard 10.25.10 at 5:25 am
I find it difficult to listen to lectures about multiculturalism in germany from people who refuse to make the same arguments about israel where the situation is far worse and the roots of the ideology are identical. That gets to the heart of a crisis not only in europe but the world. Israel claims to be and is treated by westerners as a western outpost in the east. The choice is either to defend such policies or not. It cannot matter where.
On another note, cosmopolitanism as a mode of behavior is a form of ecumenical or interfaith traditionalism. It is a form of flexible conservatism, conservative in a sense critical of individualism. Libertarians are anticosmopolitan because they use only one measure of value. The akp in turkey is cosmopollitan by comparison.
Not sure y’all are ready for the real thing but happy to hear otherwise.
John Quiggin 10.25.10 at 5:47 am
A quick response to a point that’s been made a few times. I’m aware that there are very big differences between the parties I’ve lumped together as “market liberal”, and also that the supporters of tribalist parties have a range of views on economic issues. Nevertheless, AKAIK, tribalist/ethnonationalist parties and movements have gained a share of political power in developed democracies almost exclusively through alliance with market liberals (broadly defined). More importantly, such alliances will soon, I think, be the norm rather than the exception.
That leaves social democrats, greens and various sympathisers on the other side. They/we have the choice between joining a bidding war for tribalist votes (almost certainly losing in the long run) or embracing cosmopolitan universalism.
Jamey 10.25.10 at 7:16 am
Not sure that this covers it completely, but I would suggest, “What’s the Matter with Kansas” by Thomas Frank. It doesn’t really offer any solutions but it does sort of layout howwe’ve managed to manage to get where we’re at.
Guido Nius 10.25.10 at 7:39 am
Well, we already have cosmopolitanism and we already have some proto-supra-national types of government. The problems are that the latter is governed by neo-liberalism still and that we have Wildersian claims on cosmopolitan universalism to mean: “the capitalist Western heirs in the Christian tradition will prevail.” It is understandable that many on the left take this cue and go anti but John is right: we should get over that already.
On the risk of being called a troll again, maybe a point on multiculturalism somewhat in defense of Merkel. In Europe this word means various things to various people. It is a word claimed by either side to stigmatize the other side. One interpretation is that everybody should just live as if they were in their own homogeneous mono-cultural place of origin. That is what gets attacked by the new populist ‘decent’ right in Europe. It is something that is maybe held by some, but not by many, on the European left. It is populist because from a grass roots level (after all that is the outcome of most recent European election) it kind of tunes into what many people feel, without addressing any real action other than mirroring a Utopia where everybody is assimilated. Now, I don’t think Merkel should have conceded anything but at least to some extent we should have some understanding for her wishing to get past this debate as it is a polarizing one instead of one that can unite.
And from a cosmopolitan point of view, diversity is the place to go but not the type of diversity where everyone has good reasons, based on their own tradition, not to be exposed to what other people are doing.
Hayekian 10.25.10 at 9:11 am
Very interesting post and comments. As a big fan of Hayek and a supporter of a social safety net, I would like to add that another consideration for those who advocate for social democracy is the aging of society. One common pattern in virtually all cultures is a decline in fertility as prosperity rises. In the long run, this appears to undermine – at least to some extent – the viabiltiy of social democracy, at least those aspects of it which involve transfer payments to the aged. This largely explains the fiscal austerity measures we see today in western Europe. So, it seems that we ultimately have two choices : either have more children, or raise retirement ages and / or means-test benefits for older citizens. This would seem to be a big challenge for advocates of social democracy.
Stuart Ingham 10.25.10 at 9:38 am
The left needs to focus on giving people a sense of control over globalisation: stop talking of it as a irresistible force that we all have buckle up for and hope that something of achievements are left standing. The truth is those same distance destroying devices of communication have the capacity to make ordinary citizens strong just as they have made Financial Capital.
New forms of communication are at their most potent and disseminating information and knowledge, the very goods, along with credit, that gives Finance its privileged position in the global economy. If local communities were willing to pool resources to create local investment funds, and network with other other communities to share business solutions, investment in the 21st century could be based on long term visions of stability and gainful employment- not short term speculation on firms under pressure to exploit in order to profit maximise.
In order for such visions not to be utopian the class institutions of social democracy would have to be radically altered. Small business, managers and workers should be encouraged to associate on grounds of their common interest to decentralise power over decisions of production in the economy. Unions should recognise that their ability to negotiate is compromised when they face firms who are not dependent on British(based) labour. Small businesses should realise that their dependency on Big Finance for credit is an unhealthy power relationship in which the lender is so large that they are indifferent to the long term health of their creditor.
The left ought to re-orgonise on the basis that gives itself the best chance of tackling the economic forces that threaten the welfare of ordinary people today. Those forces are a class of investors whose monopoly on credit give them the capacity to dictate terms of employment. A re-orgonisation of class institutions could enable investment to become more community focused, providing stable employment and a reasonable bargaining position for workers. Just as importantly it could give communities the sort of sense of control of their own future that has been missing for 20 years.
It is this sort of empowering vision that the left should be selling in the 21st century. I don’t disagree that we should care about global poverty- or that it provides an uplifting vision of human capability in contrast to the fear of neo-liberalism- it just has poor prospects as an electoral mobiliser in what are still national elections.
Guido Nius 10.25.10 at 10:33 am
There should be global law regulating multi-nationals. At the very least, none of them should be bigger than an average current nation state.
Russell Arben Fox 10.25.10 at 12:03 pm
If local communities were willing to pool resources to create local investment funds, and network with other other communities to share business solutions, investment in the 21st century could be based on long term visions of stability and gainful employment–not short term speculation on firms under pressure to exploit in order to profit maximise. In order for such visions not to be utopian the class institutions of social democracy would have to be radically altered….The left ought to re-organise on the basis that gives itself the best chance of tackling the economic forces that threaten the welfare of ordinary people today….A re-organisation of class institutions could enable investment to become more community focused, providing stable employment and a reasonable bargaining position for workers. Just as importantly it could give communities the sort of sense of control of their own future that has been missing for 20 years.
I like this response very much. And I suspect that it would help do exactly what John derided as “almost certainly losing in the long run”–enable to left to claim at least a little bit of the populist/localist/”tribal” allegiance which market liberals exploit for their own ends.
Tim Worstall 10.25.10 at 12:07 pm
“There should be global law regulating multi-nationals. At the very least, none of them should be bigger than an average current nation state.”
Going by this wikipedia list median country GDP is about $40 billionish (Cameroon for example).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29
The equivalent for a company to GDP is profits (although some would say profits plus wages paid), no, it absolutely isn’t turnover.
Which means that such a law would regulate Exxon and perhaps a couple of others. Or “size” could be measured by population, there median country seems to be 9 million or so. So we’d be regulating no multi-nationals at all.
snuh 10.25.10 at 12:21 pm
john, did you catch john howard using the word “cosmopolitan” as an insulting description of labor’s cabinet tonight on qanda?
sg 10.25.10 at 1:27 pm
hix, the definition of multiculturalism used in Australia and Canada is accessible very easily through the appropriate government websites – it’s a policy, not a motherhood statement, so it’s easily checked.
Guido, multiculturalism can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean in their own precious little European imaginations, but it is actually a quantifiable and definable thing, and the fact that a few right-wing idiots ranting to the youth wing of their own right-wing party want to redefine it to mean “I don’t like immigrants” doesn’t change what it actually means.
The political right want to turn multiculturalism into a by-word for “races living together.” That’s not what it means. Left-wing people should pander to their racist tricks.
Russell Arben Fox 10.25.10 at 1:44 pm
Left-wing people should pander to their racist tricks.
I assume sg means shouldn’t here.
Guido Nius 10.25.10 at 1:58 pm
Tim, thanks – I stand corrected: ‘not larger than 10% …’ but you got my drift ;-)
incredulous bastard 10.25.10 at 2:36 pm
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/world/europe/18germany.html
Its not a falure of multiculturalism but also a failre to accep dark skinned converts to germanness. Germany hasn’t changed enough.
sg 10.25.10 at 3:11 pm
very correct Russell.
Daniel Wolf 10.25.10 at 3:21 pm
Gary Lord wrote:
“I keep waiting for the US Greens to get noticed, which could happen one day if the powers-that-be continue making avaricious fools of themselves.”
As long as the US has first-past-the-post elections, a Green party is a no-goer. Instead of coalitions between parties as in a parliamentary system, we have a system with coalitions of interests within each of the two parties, with the relative weight of the two parties largely determined by the precise palate of interests represented. I think, however, that a serious Green platform within one of the two major parties will increasingly be essential. Unfortunately, it looks like only the Democrats come into question as the environmentalist Republican tradition, from Teddy Roosevelt to Tom McCall, has gone the way of the Dodo, which means that environmentalists, as a force, are significantly weakened in the leverage that they can exercise against the other forces in the Democratic party coalition, thus largely limiting the international leadership role that the US can play in environmental questions.
Kaveh 10.25.10 at 5:02 pm
Stepping in rather late, but here are a few thoughts:
1- Cultural purism/anti-cosmopolitanism is like inbreeding–this might even be a good rhetorical strategy: “This is what Angela Merkel wants to do to German culture.” Cosmopolitanism means increased cultural diversity, and increased access to it. Cultural diversity is like biodiversity. One strain of corn might appear to be superior to the others because it gives better yields, but a change in climate or the appearance of a new disease can cause it to fail catastrophically. Like biodiversity, cultural diversity is hurt by forced homogeneity, but it wouldn’t exist without constant evolutionary pressure and change. Maintaining a degree of cultural relativism is like maintaining a policy of not monocropping, or not inbreeding.
2- “Who we are” is inseparable from “what we do together”.
Democratic socialism in the sense of policies that promote the well-being of people within the nation–“people like ourselves”–relies on both a sense of shared culture (shared beliefs, values, meanings) but also the sense of a common project. Post-WWII American imperialism has made it a lot harder to formulate a common, liberal/leftist project in simple terms. “American empire is a monster that must be stopped” doesn’t square well with “make America great again”. I imagine this holds to some extent in the rest of the global English-speaking diaspora, in Europe, and in rising Asian powers, where modernity or modernization is inextricably linked to European colonial empires, either by organic continuity (the UK, the US) or by adopting the forms and institutions of the nation state (Turkey, China) and shortcomings such as forcible ethnic homogenization. This is a recurring conflict for US Democrats, where Dems have tended to formulate a foreign policy something along the lines of “we’ll get the terrrrists better than Bush”.
Part of the positive reinforcement from cosmopolitanism (the negative reinforcement being avoidance of bigotry/forced homogeneity) can be the very act of associating with other people. Political websites thrive because they create ad hoc communities of the like-minded, as well as the promise of making a real impact (through offline stuff like GOTV as well as by disseminating information not available in other media). There’s no reason why these communities need to be confined to individual nation states. I’ve been sort of keeping an eye on avaaz.org ( http://www.avaaz.org ) as one attempt at this. So far I think they just do online petitions, like moveon.org, but I think they could grow beyond that.
@69 What the Green party could do is focus at this point very heavily or even exclusively on local offices like mayorships, city councils, &c., where party affiliation means little. Then work their way up to state and national offices. With strong local bases of support, they might manage to be more than a spoiler in bigger, e.g. state, elections.
Patrick S. O'Donnell 10.25.10 at 5:33 pm
I have two posts that may be relevant to those interested in cosmopolitan social democracy. The first, on a “Cosmopolitan Left,” is here: http://www.religiousleftlaw.com/2010/04/first-and-foremost-there-is-the-need-for-a-global-solidarity-a-sense-of-world-citizenship-i-am-under-not-illusion-tha.html
The other is a list of titles relevant to the topic of the ethics, economics and politics of global distributive justice: http://www.jurisdynamics.net/files/documents/GlobalDistributiveJustice.doc
Peter Dorman 10.25.10 at 6:07 pm
First off, I apologize for not reading all the comments — just no time. But I have a couple of thoughts on this issue, which has also been important to me for many years.
1. The agenda of “global public finance”, including the struggle to shut down tax havens and the tax loopholes under which multinational firms operate, is central. Check out the website for the Leading Group for Innovative Financing for Development, hardly an extremist outfit, as well as the Tax Justice Network. The US is the main obstacle to progress on this front, and hardly any Americans even know there is a front.
2. As a practical matter, cosmopolitan politics cannot go forward without genuinely cosmopolitan movements and organizations. I have lost interest in international conferences where delegates, or whoever pays to attend, endorse toothless wish lists. What we really need is a transnational program, hammered out in its contentious details at international working sessions of like-minded parties. Then it would be possible, in each country, to say “I am part of this international group, and we have a worked-out platform for which we want your support.” How, for instance, do grassroots enviros want to distribute the global obligations of dealing with climate change? How do unions and other labor activists want to restructure the global trading system? Wish lists (freedom, sustainability and prosperity for everyone) don’t cut it — we need programs that can actually be implemented by someone. You can’t beat something with nothing, even if the nothing is wearing a giant smiley face.
Lee A. Arnold 10.25.10 at 8:00 pm
The defensive struggle for social democracy within the United States is where the action will be for a while longer, since it’s the world’s remaining free-market plunderhole. So vote for Capitalishiousness: free markets with a strong safety net!
Globally, there has already been an extraordinary proliferation of NGOs and other groups. It is possible to send them money and to get them publicity. It is important to keep open as many lines of communication as possible, and to protect freedom of speech and expression. From these things, a new way may come.
But some new social-psychological change must also occur, and it is difficult to prespecify it.
These sorts of changes have emerged in the past from the combination of population numbers and external conditions, such as the transition from acephalous to cephalous political structures and so on. We must be in another transition now, since people have been wondering about a mounting crisis since at least the end of the 19th century.
But there is no way beforehand to offer an overall transformational vision of a better society, other than to offer the regular provisos. No one will trust another person’s vision, largely because there is far too much to learn, in order to evaluate it properly. Oscar Wilde once said something like the problem with socialism is, it takes up too many evenings.
But now we are a little beyond that point: people distrust government and business equally. Big institutions allow individuals to take a hidden advantage. In the U.S. there is much fear and mistrust of individuals’ motives, e.g. you can’t know if someone else is free-riding on your taxes. Washington or Wall Street, they’re all the same, to most of us.
But the U.S. is also running headlong into a confrontation over taxes and the basic safety net. So we need all hands on deck to pull as hard as possible. Now is the time, people! Let’s start banging these clowns on the head. Drive a wedge between the mainstream Republican leadership and their foolish voters. Demand that the Republicans don’t get any tax cuts, unless they put the matching spending cuts in the SAME Congressional bill. So everybody can see what they are planning to trade off. Destroy the GOP!
On the positive side, I think this defensive struggle for social democracy will be successful. And that will be a very good step.
Globally in the long term, I think that educational attempts to clarify ideas can arm people with the tools they need. Increasing crowding and complexity will show more and more people that the current path is unsustainable — this will create a lot of fear and ennui, but ultimately it is an open, self-transcendent system where the solutions might emerge without prescription or prediction. We may also get crises that serve as tipping points, after which some things always change rather quickly, even after much intransigence.
The next era is not likely to be completely capitalist, because the 80-20 rule is going to run up against the obvious opulence of some, and perhaps against the resource depletion of the whole. Also, as Schumpeter foresaw, productivity and innovation are becoming the function of corporate R&D departments while middle class incomes become more volatile and they begin to see that economic remuneration is evermore divorced from merit.
Yet until social democrats start their every sentence with the value of self-initiative and continuing education, they won’t get a lasting hearing.
Norwegian Guy 10.25.10 at 9:03 pm
It should perhaps be noted it wasn’t really Merkel who started this round of debate in Germany. Thilo Sarrazin from the SPD was too disgraceful, but social democratic leader Sigmar Gabriel made a criticism of multiculturalism before Merkel.
Steve Sailer 10.25.10 at 9:08 pm
Professor Quiggin’s assertion of “tightening of ties between the market-liberal right and ethnic-national tribalism” needs more documentation.
In contrast, giant corporations’ image advertising on, say, golf tournament broadcasts is overtly pro-cosmopolitan and pro-multicultural. The footage used in these commercials almost always features a rainbow of highly diverse but wildly happy employees and customers from all over the world: e.g., an Australian aborigine standing in front of that big rock in the Outback doing business over his smart phone with a Masai woman on the Serengeti with giraffes in the background.
Freshly Squeezed Cynic 10.25.10 at 9:19 pm
…aaaaaand here’s Steve Sailer, rushing to defend the sacred honour and privileges of white people in ways that they do not want or need.
geo 10.25.10 at 9:27 pm
Terrific post, John. My only suggestion (so far) is that programs and visions shouldn’t be constrained by a felt need to reach the goal within the next generation or two. Given the abysmal level of political culture in the US, China, Russia, and India and too many other places, it’s important to think in stages, enabling preconditions, etc. No society where a large proportion of the population is economically insecure, overworked, poorly or narrowly educated, and bombarded by incessant consumerist messaging and mass-entertainment trivia is going to function as an effective democracy. But that’s where we’ve arrived, at least here in the US. I don’t see how, in such sorry circumstances, any bold measures, however rational and humane, can gain much traction. This may mean, for the time being, a combination of modest substantive measures and much thinking about how simply to get people thinking, at least without the colossal financial resources deployed by the right.
rayllove 10.25.10 at 11:57 pm
When this thread began I was not sure just what was meant by the term ‘multiculturalism’, and, I am still a little confused. This thread also seems to lack any examples of when and where any such efforts have succeeded, or even been tried, perhaps that absence of examples is telling in its own right?
The only example of government policies aimed at bringing cultures closer together, that I know of, were the ‘forced busing’ programs in the US back in the ’70s and the ’80s. These of course resulted in what became known as ‘white flight’ and an upsurge in private school enrollment rates.
There are in fact traces of this same migration away from the inner cities in the recent housing crisis because parents were often overextended due to their efforts to live in areas with better or safer schools, areas that were evidently beyond their means. There were cases involving parents who were willing to commute up to 100 miles each way to work in order to live in neighborhoods that they deemed suitable. But of course most large cities here in the US have sections as large as small cities that are absolutely inhospitable to anyone considered to be an outsider, regardless of their cultural background. That said, I wonder if the ‘Great Society’ programs in the US would fit the definition of ‘Multiculturalism’?
Steve Sailer 10.26.10 at 1:11 am
Steve – I’ll direct you to the sandpit at my blog, where you and Jack S can hammer all this out.
sg 10.26.10 at 2:11 am
Rayllove, if you google “australia multicultural” or “canada multicultural” you’ll get links to a wealth of government policy documents which define multiculturalism for you. You can then make an effort to distinguish between a “multicultural society” and a “diverse society.” Multiculturalism is simply a policy prescription for handling the latter; which distinguishes it from integration or assimilation, two other tried-and-failed policies for doing the same thing not as well.
Kaveh 10.26.10 at 2:20 am
@80 In the US, the Fair Housing Act combined with a relatively liberal immigration policy. In terms of where it has helped, big metropolitan areas with diverse immigrant populations–New York, DC, Chicago. In these cities, immigrant groups are economically diverse and make up a lot of the population within the city limits. At least in Chicago, I believe immigration has gone a very, very long way towards compensating for white flight. Pretty much every neighborhood in Chicago that has a lot of immigrants is at least reasonably livable–is not, e.g., a food desert, or suffering from very high crime. This includes neighborhoods on the south side where there has been very heavy white flight.
Juan Cole’s recent post pointed out that a big factor in linguistic assimilation is neighborhood integration–do non-native speaker immigrants live in the same neighborhoods as native-speakers? Cole poses the question of whether Germans would be willing to pass their own Fair Housing Act, if they are worried that immigrants are not assimilating. They don’t necessarily need to go as far as “forced busing”.
rayllove 10.26.10 at 4:27 am
sg,
Thanks. I just skimmed through the material that you recommended but I think I get it. Here in the US, the affirmative action program would seem to be the best example of ‘Multiculturalism’? And, it did begin in the 1960s so maybe my guess regarding The Great Society wasn’t too far off?
sg 10.26.10 at 6:44 am
I don’t know, rayllove, I don’t think Australia has much in the way of affirmative action programs. But as you can see, “multiculturalism” is not the same as “diversity.”
Norwegian Guy 10.26.10 at 9:18 pm
Well, in the opinion of not that few of their core voters, the left (though social democrats to a lesser extent than others) has been too multicultural and cosmopolitan for their tastes. A more cosmopolitan social democracy sounds like a great gift to the right-wing populists, who in many countries already have taken far to many working class voters from the social democratic parties and other left-of-centre parties.(*) The development should rather be in the other direction. Cosmopolitanism might be fine for middle class green or liberal voters, but it should not be too central for socialist parties that seek working class support.
*Right-wing populists have been less successful in Germany than in many other countries. The rise of the Greens might be somewhat worrying here though. Such parties mobilise on cultural issues, and greens and right-wing populists are at opposite ends of this axis.
david gress 10.27.10 at 4:14 am
Of course I’ll be censored again by the oh, so tolerant and multicultural Dr. Q, who admits only posts that buy his bizarre preconceptions. Let me mention just two: ethno-nationalist tribalism. Where do we see this? Well, I see it, for example, in Egypt, where Moslems murder Christians. Or in Iran. But somehow I don’t think that was what Dr. Q had in mind. Now why would I think that?
Another is something odd that Dr. Q calls the “market-liberal right”. I look around the world and can’t seem to locate this beast. Perhaps some mild version of it lurks in Singapore, but other than that, it is not a beast I recognize in the current global fauna. Rather, I see one statist government after another, eagerly seconded by NGO’s all sucking at the public teat and arriving for any conference or interview strongly supported by the pliant media. Where is this market-liberal right? As a liberal, I’d love to see it, but again, WHERE IS IT?
To my observation, it’s been dead and gone for decades. Neither Thatcher nor Reagan really did anything serious to resurrect it, and if they couldn’t, who can?
Market-liberal right should mean, in normal parlance, a political movement devoted to reducing the total tax burden to, say, 20 per cent, and the weight of government to something similar. Where in all the world do you see any movement with any political clout with such an aim? Nowhere. The “market-liberal right” is a figment of Dr. Q’s somewhat inflamed red imagination. Rest easy, Dr. Q. You’ve won. There is no market liberalism. There is multiculturalism, i.e. forced dissolution of historic nations in the name of some vague ideal whose more violent and disagreeable effects the likes of you, Dr. Q, can evade by living in comfortable white enclaves.
You, sir, are an oikophobe in Roger Scruton’s admirable definition: one who hates and fears the people and culture he stems from. Why is that? Why do you hold European and Christian civilization in such contempt that you wish to stamp it out? I really never have understood this destructive predilection of some leftists. I’d like an explanation. You have my email.
You certainly judged correctly as regards WordPress, which threw your rant into automoderation. But since it’s such a perfect illustration of the fusion of tribalism and market fetishism, I’ve hauled it out – JQ
Norwegian Guy 10.27.10 at 3:48 pm
My main problem with something like “cosmopolitan social democracy” is that it reeks as something from the 90s, when the dominant mood was a celebration of neoliberal globalisation. The right wing of social democratic parties was espousing this, while the left was and is challenging it. I know that this isn’t what you mean by it, but that is how someone like for instance Matthew Yglesias would interpret “cosmopolitan social democracy” (free trade, laissez faire immigration policies, deregulation etc.). Me, I see the nation state as a bulwark against neoliberal over-national institutions like the EU, WTO, World Bank, IMF etc, that has to be defended by the left, including social democrats. Both for policy reasons, and because if the left doesn’t do it, someone else will.
Anyway, I think a discussion of the future of the left shouldn’t focus exclusively on Europe, North America and Australia. The region were the left has been generally most successful during the last decade or so is probably South America. My impression of the Latin American left is that it is more nationalist (i.e. anti-imperialist) than “cosmopolitan”.
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