Left-Wing Immigrants

Immigration is seldom politically neutral. Large-scale immigration as experienced by the wealthy Western countries changes the balance of power between domestic parties.  Immigrants seem to never divide their loyalties evenly between existing parties. And, immigration may indirectly be responsible for the emergence of new, nativistic political parties.

Immigrants to France, nearly always join the French Socialist Party. Immigrants to the UK tend strongly to vote Labor. Immigrants to the US vote overwhelmingly Democratic. The reasons for these tropisms are complex. They may include the possibility that some sort of vaguely defined social democracy is the default preference for a humanity ever so slowly extricating itself from ancestral collectivism. Why else would socialist-sounding noises have still not lost their allure in spite of the many failures, some tragic, associated with the word, in spite also of the manifest success of capitalism in raising millions out of poverty? The dramatic sinking of socialist and oil-rich Venezuela though well documented by the media seems to have made little impression on young Americans, on people reared in the midst the plenty of capitalism. It’s as if a sort of subdued ethnocentrism protected Americans from rational consciousness: They are Latins; of course, we would naturally do better. Immigrants from poorer countries, immigrants from less well informed countries are not likely to resist the lure better than young Americans. (“Not likely,” it’s not completely impossible.)

Market-oriented thought does not come naturally to the many because, with its inherent (and, in Adam Smith, explicit) justification of selfishness, it’s ethically counter-intuitive. It invites us to act exactly contrary to the way our mothers and most of our religions demand. (Take the current Pope, for example….) At any rate, few Americans read Adam Smith, of course. It’s not obvious how much basic economics is taught in high school, or in college. In fact, it’s easy to graduate with honors from a good American university without a single course in economics. Others in the world, with a less vivid personal experience of successful capitalism, read him even less, I suspect. I don’t think I could find a single French adult who has read anything by Smith though some well educated people there have heard of him. (I cast a line on this issue on an active French pro-capitalist Facebook group – Libéraux Go – for a week without a single bite.)

I fear that there is no reservoir of intellectually market-oriented potential immigrants anywhere. Or of immigrants with a potential for market orientation. India will continue sending America leftists who function well individually in a market- oriented society while collectively wishing to bring it down. The most promising regional source of people ready for capitalism is probably the Islamic world. That’s not because many Muslims have a theory of the market but because, sociologically speaking, there is a vigorous merchant tradition in Islam. The fact that the Prophet himself was a merchant, as was his older, educated, mentoring first wife, probably also helps a little. The additional fact that Islam early on provided an explicit ethical framework for entrepreneurship – including lending – probably awards a degree of legitimacy to anything related to capitalism in Muslim countries that is practically lacking in the formerly Christian world, for example. (Please, don’t tell me about Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism! My friend, the late François Nielsen and I destroyed its myth in 2001 – “The beloved myth: Protestantism and  the rise of industrial capitalism in 19^th century Europe.” Social Forces 80-2:509-553.)

Perhaps, I am engaging in wishful thinking but, the multiple failures of socialist experiments in Latin America in a person’s lifetime may supply a trickle of pro-capitalism immigrants. (Currently, there is an exodus of middle-class Venezuelans to Florida.) Finally, disenchantment with the unkept promises of high-tax European welfare capitalism may give the USA another source, although the countries concerned are in sharp demographic decline. The first Macron government in France created a new cabin-level post charged with persuading the young elite to not emigrate! I take this as a good sign for the US.

[Editor’s note: in case you missed it, here is Part 13]