by One of the most laughable aspects of modern Marxism and left anarchism is their endless bloviating talk about how they allegedly speak for the working class.First of all, there is the reality that Marxist or communist parties are virtually dead in the Western world (here, here, and here). There are no doubt more working class people voting for conservatives in the West than for far left Marxists (e.g., for the UK’s recent general election see here), and that won’t change any time soon.Secondly, there is the blatant reality that Marxists and far left anarchists are badly out of touch with the working class on two important issues: open borders and mass immigration.Far left anarchists these days seem to be militantly in favour of total open borders, an utterly insane policy, and even Marxists seem to be militantly in favour of unending mass immigration too.Unfortunately, these things aren’t very popular amongst the working class (see here, here, here, and here).The only apparent response from Marxists to this is to live in a fantasy world and pretend that these working class opinions don’t exist or working class people have been “duped.” That is not the case, however, and open borders impose severe economic, social and cultural problems.
Topics:
Lord Keynes considers the following as important: hypocrisy, left libertarians, Marxists, mass immigration
This could be interesting, too:
Lord Keynes writes The Mass Immigration Debate within the Socialist Party of America from 1910–1912, Part 2
Lord Keynes writes A Question No Leftist/Liberal Can Answer
Mike Kimel writes George Borjas on the New Immigration Meme
Lord Keynes writes Robert Putnam on the Negative Effects of Diversity
First of all, there is the reality that Marxist or communist parties are virtually dead in the Western world (here, here, and here). There are no doubt more working class people voting for conservatives in the West than for far left Marxists (e.g., for the UK’s recent general election see here), and that won’t change any time soon.
Secondly, there is the blatant reality that Marxists and far left anarchists are badly out of touch with the working class on two important issues: open borders and mass immigration.
Far left anarchists these days seem to be militantly in favour of total open borders, an utterly insane policy, and even Marxists seem to be militantly in favour of unending mass immigration too.
Unfortunately, these things aren’t very popular amongst the working class (see here, here, here, and here).
The only apparent response from Marxists to this is to live in a fantasy world and pretend that these working class opinions don’t exist or working class people have been “duped.” That is not the case, however, and open borders impose severe economic, social and cultural problems.
Even worse, most mainstream left-wing labour parties and Social democratic parties – taken over by middle class cosmopolitans obsessed with neoliberalism and cultural leftism – are in favour of unending mass immigration too, and so working class voters with concerns about the economic, social and cultural impact of mass immigration have to go to the conservative side of politics to get any traction for their views.
This is a major reason for the rise of Donald Trump, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People’s Party, the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), the Freedom Party in Austria, the French National Front, and UKIP.
One of the most stark realities of the populist right parties is this: they have substantial working class support (see Evans and Mellon 2015: 3, 5). In Britain, the working class support for the neoliberal New Labour party imploded in the 1990s and 2000s, and many working class voters went to the conservatives, and then to UKIP (Evans and Mellon 2015: 4), not to the far left.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Evans, Geoffrey and Jon Mellon. 2015. “Working Class Votes and Conservative Losses: Solving the UKIP Puzzle,” Parliamentary Affairs
http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/04/16/pa.gsv005.full