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Dutch advance socialist case against immigration
The Socialist Party of the Netherlands has profited from its opposition to immigration and the free movement of labour
Anyone who argues that, as a political force, socialism is dead, ought to visit the Netherlands. The Socialist Party of the Netherlands (SP) is the fastest growing political group in the country.
They won 25 seats in the last general election - an increase of 16 seats - and made huge gains in last year's local elections. They are now the third largest party in Holland in terms of members and could well replace the Dutch Labour Party as the main alternative to the Christian Democrats.
Why are they so successful? I would suggest that it is because they are a socialist party that actually has socialist policies. They oppose the privatisation of public services, advocate higher taxes on the very wealthy and have condemned the "the culture of greed" caused by "a capitalism based on inflated bonuses and easy money". They oppose war and Nato and the nascent European superstate. They were the only left-wing Dutch party in Parliament to oppose the new EU Constitution in the 2005 referendum.
Of course the fact that they have one of the most charismatic - and photogenic - of all of European political leaders in the 41-year-old epidemiologist Agnes Kant does them no harm.
Part of its popularity with the voters lies in one particular policy which differentiates it from British or other European parties of the left: they oppose large scale immigration. The SP see the 'free movement of labour' as part of the neoliberal globalist package - something which benefits big business but not ordinary people. Their opposition to immigration is not based on racism - as tends to be the case with the BNP and other far-right parties in Europe - but on their socialist ideology.
A recent publication by the SP asserted that labour migration in the EU was making "more acute the contrasts between rich and poor and competition between different groups of workers within the EU". Instead of lauding the free movement of labour as other parties on the left do, the SP calls for policies "to make migration unnecessary" and for the EU funds to be used to enable poorer regions of the continent to be self-supporting.
The SP says immigration is a capitalist ploy to drive down wages
The SP's opposition to large-scale immigration is not a recent development. In the 1980s, the party's booklet Gastarbeid en Kapitaal (Migrant Labour and Capital), denounced the migration of foreign workers into the Netherlands as a capitalist ploy to drive down wages and destroy working class solidarity.
This is a far cry from the traditional position of the British left - which despite overwhelming evidence that large-scale immigration does reduce wages - still clings to an the ideology of open borders. In doing so, they are not only complying with the wishes of big business, who for obvious reasons welcome the influx of large numbers of people from low-wage economies onto their labour market; they are also espousing a policy which is unpopular with large swathes of the electorate and which is likely to become even more unpopular as unemployment grows.
The success of the Socialist Party of the Netherlands shows that there are lots of votes to be won by an unequivocally left-wing party which has the courage and sense to oppose large-scale immigration on non-racist, anti-capitalist grounds. ·
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The only people, I think, who could possibly object to this are those who are not living on a minimum wage on a council estate somewhere and who can thus well afford to have a benign view of Neo-Liberal corporate serving policies like this.
Immigration is caused by economic differences between countries and nations, the real challenge, as the group makes clear, is for individual collectives in individual countries to fight for things like minimum wages, better working conditions and pay etc. for their own workforces, rather than stir up tensions over jobs and housing allocations between people from the same economic bracket and feed the far-right.
Perhaps a global minimum wage?
The current situation gives bosses the power to cherry pick those they believe to be cost effective ie. those who they believe stupid enough to work for peanuts out of desperation. That is not a position any real Socialist can possibly accept.
The fact that our Trade Unions seem so cravenly committed to preserving the GDP at the expense of communitarianism and cohesive working class communities shows just how far the disease of corporate assimilation has spread.
There is something truly opportunistic about a so-called socialist party that opposes immigration on the basis of what purport to be socialist principles. Since the days of the Paris Commune, real socialism has been internationalist and has regarded nationalism as a divisive force, not the diverse attributes and points of origin of the workforce. The Dutch socialist party should seek to restrict the free flow of capital, not of labor; and it should advocate policies that prevent the exploitation of all workers.
Well said, spot on:
"large-scale immigration does reduce wages" [and benefits]
"complying with the wishes of big business"
About time we all rose up......
BTW - don't you just hate word processors: "still clings to an the ideology of open borders"
- trust me, an audio secretary is so much beter
What excellent news, a socialist party taking the wind out of the sails of the far right on immigration. It had to be the Dutch, always more logical and radical than other Europeans, if only we had the equivalent in the UK as the BNP gains support, taking votes from the chatterati wonks of NewLabour with their failed doctrine of multiculturalism masking uncontrolled immigration.