Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Why The Left Must Resist Wanting A Piece Of The Xenophobic Action

Colin Crouch 2nd October 2018

Colin Crouch

Since 2008 the left around the advanced world has dreamed of a popular uprising against the neoliberal elite that brought us the financial crash. Now that uprising has come, but it has been almost entirely captured by a far right mobilizing hostility against immigrants, the European Union, other forms of international co-operation, globalization and foreigners in general.

While the left wants to swing public anger against class targets, some are asking whether it cannot gain some vital added traction by tapping into some of these highly effective themes: immigrants bring wages down; the EU is a capitalist club; trade with China is destroying manufacturing jobs. The top leadership of the British Labour Party swung into unequivocal support of Brexit. In Germany a new movement, Aufstehen, is being launched to rally anti-EU, anti-immigrant sentiment on the left. Similar rumblings come from Denmark, Italy and elsewhere.

The answer is ‘NO!’, for four reasons.

First, xenophobia should be morally unacceptable for the left. This is not entirely straightforward. Many, probably most, historical moralities have been rooted in the shared identities of communities, norms of good behaviour being bounded by, indeed being badges of, membership of the group. This kind of morality requires clear definition of insiders and outsiders. The solidarity of labour movements was built on identities of this kind. Miners were miners, not members of a wider working class. Indeed, Yorkshire miners never thought much of Leicestershire miners – an antagonism that played out its final confrontation in the mining strike of 1984-85.

But the historical achievement of labour and social democratic parties was precisely to weld these very particularistic solidarities into wider ones – not destroying them but subordinating them within a wider class-based morality of universalism. For most of the 20th century ‘universal’ meant ‘national’. The reason for this was an amalgam of pragmatic reasoning (the nation state was the level at which democracy could be most effectively established) and appeals to solidarities based on blood and soil. The universalist, egalitarian morality of the left stressed the former; exclusionary tendencies of the right, the latter. The precise mix did not matter much while the two could proceed in tandem, but as the nation state has lost its capacity autonomously to govern economic space, the case for insisting on the priority of the nation has leaned more heavily on appeals to blood and soil. Therefore, the right has become the main beneficiary of discomfort with a globalizing world. To share in that, the left has to abandon a universal, egalitarian morality in favour of an exclusionary one, a betrayal of the nobility of its past.

Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content.


We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Thank you!

Please check your inbox and click on the link in the confirmation email to complete your newsletter subscription.

.

To assert that the presence of Poles in a local labour market brings down the wages of British workers is not a socialist critique of capitalism but a cynical dog whistle. Locally visible Polish people are present in a way that the abstract idea of capitalism is not and are easier to hate.

Hate crime

Second, this also means that, far from stealing a piece of the right’s action, all the left achieves by following it on these issues is to legitimise the far right’s message, conspiring with it to tear down the boundaries that the genuine morality of universalism has over the years held the right in check. It is not chance that waves of hate crimes and violence against minorities followed the vote for Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the entry of La Lega into the Italian government. The debates around these events made legitimate the denigration of immigrants and other foreign persons and institutions that had been made shameful by decades of the great recoil from everything Adolf Hitler had stood for. Hate is by far the most powerful human emotion, and politically it is the property of the extreme right. It has to be kept down, outside acceptable discourse.

Third, individual nation states cannot by themselves regulate a global economy. There are three possible responses to this. One can consider this to be fine, as the global economy is best off being beyond the reach of regulation. This is the position of the extreme neoliberal right, who can then cynically throw their weight behind the nationalistic right, because nationalism has become economically toothless, limiting itself to symbol.

A second is to try to seal the nation state off from global pressures through protectionism. This is the approach of the anti-global nationalist right and left alike. It produces a world of reduced trade, smaller, poorer economies and little innovation, with potentially hostile relations among states.

Then, one can seek to build coalitions of nation states and international organizations that can regulate global transactions. This is the approach of moderate neoliberals and social democrats. It is difficult, because it requires agreement across numbers of countries, but it is the only way of combining the advantages of global trade with good standards of economic conduct, saving social democracy’s core strategy of making capitalism socially accountable. Attempts to climb aboard the xenophobic bandwagon prevent the left from developing the public opinion that is needed to support this next stage of its universalizing drive.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

The tolerant young

Finally, by no means all citizens are attracted by the xenophobic agenda, which rarely accounts for more than a third of voters. Decades of official hostility to xenophobia in many countries have had their effects. Also, many people dislike hate and prefer to be accepting and tolerant towards other cultures. These people, often the youngest, most educated and forward looking, are increasingly becoming a core constituency for the left. They will be the carriers of the left’s universalist values, taking these to the vitally important post-national level. A left that shuns them, shuns its own future.

It has become routine for political commentators of many shades of opinion to rant against ‘liberal elites’, with the adjective spoken with a sneer that increasingly clings to the word ‘liberal’ itself. It is against illiberal and anti-liberal elites that we need to rally opinion. Their power is growing as xenophobia spreads across Europe, the US and elsewhere. The forces of everyone on the left and centre are needed to combat them.

The author’s latest book, The Globalisation Backlash, is published by Polity Press/John Wiley on October 19

Colin Crouch

Colin Crouch is a professor emeritus of the University of Warwick and external scientific member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies at Cologne. He has published within the fields of comparative European sociology and industrial relations, economic sociology and contemporary issues in British and European politics.

Home ・ Politics ・ Why The Left Must Resist Wanting A Piece Of The Xenophobic Action

Most Popular Posts

schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
world order,Russia,China,Europe,United States,US The coming world orderMarc Saxer
south working,remote work ‘South working’: the future of remote workAntonio Aloisi and Luisa Corazza
Russia,Putin,assets,oligarchs Seizing the assets of Russian oligarchsBranko Milanovic
Russians,support,war,Ukraine Why do Russians support the war against Ukraine?Svetlana Erpyleva

Most Recent Posts

trade,values,Russia,Ukraine,globalisation Peace and trade—a new perspectiveGustav Horn
biodiversity,COP15,China,climate COP15: negotiations must come out of the shadowsSandrine Maljean-Dubois
reproductive rights,abortion,hungary,eastern europe,united states,us,poland The uneven battlefield of reproductive rightsAndrea Pető
LNG,EIB,liquefied natural gas,European Investment Bank Ukraine is no reason to invest in gasXavier Sol
schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling

Other Social Europe Publications

The transatlantic relationship
Women and the coronavirus crisis
RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?
US election 2020
Corporate taxation in a globalised era

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Towards a new Minimum Wage Policy in Germany and Europe: WSI minimum wage report 2022

The past year has seen a much higher political profile for the issue of minimum wages, not only in Germany, which has seen fresh initiatives to tackle low pay, but also in those many other countries in Europe that have embarked on substantial and sustained increases in statutory minimum wages. One key benchmark in determining what should count as an adequate minimum wage is the threshold of 60 per cent of the median wage, a ratio that has also played a role in the European Commission's proposals for an EU-level policy on minimum wages. This year's WSI Minimum Wage Report highlights the feasibility of achieving minimum wages that meet this criterion, given the political will. And with an increase to 12 euro per hour planned for autumn 2022, Germany might now find itself promoted from laggard to minimum-wage trailblazer.


FREE DOWNLOAD

ETUI advertisement

Bilan social / Social policy in the EU: state of play 2021 and perspectives

The new edition of the Bilan social 2021, co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), reveals that while EU social policy-making took a blow in 2020, 2021 was guided by the re-emerging social aspirations of the European Commission and the launch of several important initiatives. Against the background of Covid-19, climate change and the debate on the future of Europe, the French presidency of the Council of the EU and the von der Leyen commission must now be closely scrutinised by EU citizens and social stakeholders.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Living and working in Europe 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic continued to be a defining force in 2021, and Eurofound continued its work of examining and recording the many and diverse impacts across the EU. Living and working in Europe 2021 provides a snapshot of the changes to employment, work and living conditions in Europe. It also summarises the agency’s findings on issues such as gender equality in employment, wealth inequality and labour shortages. These will have a significant bearing on recovery from the pandemic, resilience in the face of the war in Ukraine and a successful transition to a green and digital future.


AVAILABLE HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

EU Care Atlas: a new interactive data map showing how care deficits affect the gender earnings gap in the EU

Browse through the EU Care Atlas, a new interactive data map to help uncover what the statistics are often hiding: how care deficits directly feed into the gender earnings gap.

While attention is often focused on the gender pay gap (13%), the EU Care Atlas brings to light the more worrisome and complex picture of women’s economic inequalities. The pay gap is just one of three main elements that explain the overall earnings gap, which is estimated at 36.7%. The EU Care Atlas illustrates the urgent need to look beyond the pay gap and understand the interplay between the overall earnings gap and care imbalances.


BROWSE THROUGH THE MAP

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us on social media

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube