I’d like to thank @kenanmalik for engaging with me on this, also because it gives me the chance to clarify some points about my controversial thread on “what the left doesn’t get about social conservatism” that might have been unclear.
Firstly, I’d like to apologise to Malik if he feels I misrepresented his argument. While it’s true that the “nonsense” part is in the title, not the article, I feel the rest of my thread is a fair analysis of the article itself – not of Malik’s entire body of work, granted.
I think it’s fair game to criticise an article (and exposing what one may perceive to be as fallacies and inconsistencies) without having read all the author’s previous articles. That said, I promise to read the various articles of his that he has linked!
Moving on to the specific points raised by Malik in his response: they mostly revolve around immigration. Malik restates his case that the main cause of the growing material and existential precariousness of the working class…
… and erosion of communities and collective institutions has been neoliberalism – austerity, welfare retrenchment etc., and the neoliberalisation of left parties themselves –, not immigration. The latter has simply “become symbolic of a world that feels out of control”.
(Malik doesn't use the term neoliberalism, that's me).
Now, I completely agree with the first part of that statement. Of course the top-down class war waged on workers over the past four decades is by far the main cause of the deterioration of workers’ lives in the UK and throughout the West – in both material and immaterial terms.
My disagreement with Malik is over the second part of that statement. In this context of top-down class warfare, immigration, though not the main cause – obviously – of the impoverishment and marginalisation of native workers, can easily become a real, not “symbolic”, co-factor.
Leaving aside the social/cultural impact of immigration, not only is free movement of labour, in a context of weak unions and neoliberal anti-workers’ policies, used by the capitalist class to drive down wages…
… but, in a context of welfare retrenchment and austerity, immigration causes increased competition over scarce and declining public resources (housing, health etc.). The fact that such resources are kept artificially scarce doesn’t make the competition any less real.
By the same token, to the extent that neoliberalism has also “ero[ded] the more intangible aspects of [workers’] lives – their place in society, the sense of community, the desire for dignity”, as Malik writes…
… a too-rapid inflow of immigrants with very different cultural and social norms can further erode – again, in real, not symbolic, terms – those “intangible aspects” of workers’ lives.
In other words, to ascribe working class hostility to immigration and free movement of labour purely to right-wing propaganda and media bias is to ignore that there may be rational and reasonable economic/material grounds for such hostility.
That said, one may ask: if anti-immigration sentiments (both materially and immaterially grounded) are largely the result of the precariousness caused by neoliberalism, why talk about immigration at all?
Why talk about the need to respond, from a left perspective, to the widespread unease over immigration, even if it fails to take into account “the bigger picture”? Shouldn’t the socialist left’s objective be that of explaining to people the “real” cause of their dissatisfaction?
Here's why I think that's a flawed strategy. Firstly, because I believe that borders and a sensible management of immigration would be necessary aspects of social cohesion even if we got rid of neoliberalism. It’s not all about economics.
But more importantly, because in order to solve the root cause of working class alienation – neoliberal policies – one needs to, well, get elected and take power. And you don’t do that by lecturing the working class about the “real” problems, false consciousness etc.
You do that, first of all, by acknowledging working class demands, even if they may be unpalatable, for example re: immigration. Especially if we consider that changing a society’s economic model is a long process, while immigration is perceived as a tangible and pressing issue.
How about trying a different approach? Such as acknowledging and addressing working class concerns about immigration, actually winning an election, once in power working to overcome neoliberalism, expand welfare and improve the living standards of all...
... and at that point, once you have created a more caring, supportive, inclusive economy - NOT before that - you launch a national debate about immigration. Wanna bet that most people will have a more welcoming attitude?
How about trying to break the cycle? END OF THREAD
