Roger Eatwell and Matthew
Goodwin, National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy,
Pelican Books, October 2018
How to respond to the rise of
national populism? The phenomenon is evident not only in Trump’s US but
throughout Europe, as shown in this book’s comprehensive review of changes in
mass opinion. The book also attempts to provide a solution to the problem, one
that will defend democracy, but in doing so it inadvertently highlights the
bankruptcy of the liberal outlook. They detail how, over the past two decades
and more, new political forces have undermined support for the traditional
political parties in the West, and especially for the social democratic parties
of western Europe. Yet their ‘solution’ is to make concessions to reactionary views
in order to ‘engage with’ the concerns people express in opinion polls. Like
many liberal commentators, on the face of it they will have no truck with
racism. But they seem to be fine with the nationalist mentality and an
anti-immigration stance, and they persistently raise the question of ethnicity
in national politics.
The book’s real value is in
documenting how pervasive are reactionary opinions in the West. They show how
the success of Trump, et al, cannot be put down to ‘angry old white men’, who will
all die soon anyway, or simply to those who have lost out economically with
‘globalisation’, and who may then be attracted to a left-wing party’s plans for
economic reform. The political problem in the West is far deeper, and more
depressing. As they put it: ‘people who support national populism are not
merely protesting: they are choosing to endorse views that appeal to them’ (p
39).
Four D national populism
Eatwell and Goodwin organise
their work along the lines of what they call the Four Ds. This is how the
‘elitist nature of liberal democracy has promoted distrust of
politicians and institutions’, how ‘immigration and hyper ethnic change are
cultivating strong fears about the possible destruction of the national
group’s historic identity and established ways of life’, how ‘neoliberal
globalised economics has stoked strong feelings of what psychologists call relative
deprivation as a result of rising inequalities of income and wealth in
the west and a loss of faith in a better future’, and finally, the ‘weakening
bonds between the traditional mainstream parties and the people, or what we
refer to as de-alignment’ (pp xxi-xxiii).
If you are already finding your
blood beginning to boil with a phrase like ‘immigration and hyper ethnic
change’, then I recommend taking a few deep breaths because things get worse.
Worse because of the reality they describe, not because the authors are closet
racists hiding behind academic language – although in some of the things they
write, they will come close to readers interpreting them that way. Towards the
end of the book, they sum up the argument as follows:
“The ‘Four Ds’ have left large numbers of people in the West
instinctively receptive to the claims being made by national populism: that
politicians do not listen to them, even treat them with contempt, that
immigrants and ethnic minorities benefit at the expense of ‘natives’, and that
hyper ethnic change and in particular Islam pose a new and major threat to the
national group, its culture and way of life.” (p 272)
I will deal with these D issues
a little later, but first it is worth covering some of the characteristics of
voters that the authors set out. In the end, these are the decisive people in a
democracy.
Having paid a lot of attention
to the social dimensions of voting, they note that the unemployed and those
very dependent on welfare payments tend to vote less than average, that the
youth vote also tends to be below par and that, at least in the past, white
workers without degrees were under-represented in samples taken of popular
opinion, which helped lead to the poll surprises of Trump and Brexit. In their
view, it is the ‘middle educated’ who are most open to national populism –
those who are not uneducated, but who do not have university degrees.
This middle group also tends to
feel more vulnerable than others, being above the unemployed but below the
middle class economically. In the UK, it was the group focused upon in the
Conservative Party’s term ‘just-about-managing families’. However, this is not
to say that better off workers did not vote for Trump or Brexit, or for
populist causes in general, or that support only came from white (male)
workers. They show that national populism also gets significant, if usually
minority support from younger people, women and ethnic minorities.
One reason is that the national
populists also address welfare issues. This helps undercut the traditional
capitalist state-dependent approaches to national politics of more left-wing
parties and groups. For example, the leader of the conservative, populist
Sweden Democrats argued that ‘The election is a choice between mass immigration
and welfare. You choose’ (p71).
Immigration, racism and nationalism
The authors are clear about
their perspectives, which should help readers also to clarify what they think
about these issues. Take the question of racism. I raise this question,
because, when the authors do talk about racism, they appear to cross the line
into endorsing what a United Nations Convention would call ‘racial discrimination’.[1]
The UN defines such discrimination as being on the basis of ‘race, colour,
descent, or national or ethnic origin’ and, in discussing popular political
views, the authors write:
“We do not think that the term ‘racism’ should be applied
solely because people seek to retain the broad parameters of the ethnic base of
a country and its national identity, even though this can involve
discriminating against outside groups” (p 75).
Unless the word ‘broad’ somehow
lets them off, ‘retaining the broad parameters of the ethnic base of a country’
would indeed be racial discrimination according to the UN!
Are they only describing how
such views exist, rather than endorsing or advocating them? I found the focus
on ethnicity to be a strange one for these UK academics to spend much time on
since, in the Brexit debate, for example, it was clear that race and ethnicity
had little or nothing to do with the anti-EU case. Instead, popular views were
much more concerned about competition in the jobs market from low wage, white
East European workers – the ‘Polish plumber’. Of course, the coverage in this
book is not just of the UK, and not just of Brexit. But the authors are not
just describing how there is opposition to other ethnic groups. While they do
not explicitly share these concerns themselves, they go out of their way to say
that these are valid. For example:
“Too often the left view this immigration angst solely as a
byproduct of objective economic grievances when it is in fact a legitimate
concern in its own right and … is rooted in broader subjective worries about
loss and relative deprivation.” (p 222)
and, on popular anxiety about
immigration and ethnic change:
“While many of these fears are exaggerated – especially in
the case of Muslims, who as a group are often damned for the sins of a very
small minority of Islamists – we need to appreciate how people feel. Given
ongoing immigration and rapidly rising rates of ethnic, cultural and religious
change, it seems to us unlikely that these anxieties will fade.”
“It is important to try to engage with their concerns,
particularly for those on the centre-left who, to avoid further losses, will
need to make short-term concessions. Meeting the demand for tighter borders or
modifying the type of immigration … is compatible with progressive
politics.” (pp 281-2)
Basing their stand on the
evidence from numerous opinion polls, they can correctly dismiss as mistaken
the views of the established political parties and of the left that if workers
can be given ‘more jobs, more growth and less austerity, then their support
will return’. Yet that leads them to argue that policies should be
adopted to address and deal with ‘people’s concerns about immigration and rapid
ethnic change’ (p 261).
If the authors escape the charge
of endorsing racism, they still remain guilty of accepting and working within a
framework of nationalistic politics. The irony running throughout this book is
that they have set up national populism as a political challenge to liberal
democracy and then have taken on board the concerns of the national populists.
Imperial politics
The authors do not ignore
capitalism in their analysis, or the wider political trends. They cover quite a
lot of ground in a summary historical review of how capitalism has developed,
the different forms of politics that emerged in the West that helped to endorse
the system in the eyes of the population, and of earlier forms of populism.
They also note the different phases of immigration into the US and the UK over
the past hundred years or so, and the more recent trends in a wide range of
European countries.
I was pleasantly surprised to
find some brief mentions of the term ‘social imperialism’, describing how
capitalist parties and governments in the late 19th and early 20th century
countered the appeal of socialism and attracted support from workers by ‘a
combination of welfare measures to help poorer people, such as the introduction
of old-age pensions, and the celebration of national greatness and expanding
Empire’ (p 228). But this remained only part of their historical review and did
not seem to have much implication for their discussion of more contemporary
trends.
It would have been more
consistent for them to spell out how masses of people in the richer countries
remain wedded to the social imperialist outlook. Welfare provision by
governments in rich countries has grown far beyond what it was in the early
20th century, and it has been a key pillar of what is effectively a ‘social
contract’ between the national working class and the capitalist state. In other
words, workers will remain loyal to the capitalist system and the national
state, including support in wars, as long as the state provides some basic
economic security.
That deal has now been
undermined by two important developments. Firstly, the growth of the global
market, aside from its dysfunction and destructive tendencies, has also shown
for capitalist business that there are cheaper ways to get things produced than
depending upon welfare-supported workers in the richer countries. Employment
conditions have been undermined by outsourcing, supply chains and worse labour
contracts, with only some privileged areas remaining relatively unscathed, in
high level engineering, technology and some other monopolistic sectors.
Secondly, more stagnant economies over the past decade or so have thrown into
sharper relief the accumulation of debts, and state spending deficits in
particular. Accentuated by problems of an ageing population in many countries
and capitalist pandemics like obesity, welfare provision is under pressure.
But these developments have not
led the mass of people in richer countries to realise that the game is up and
capitalism no longer works for them. Instead, they have turned towards
reactionary politics. This can hardly be much of a surprise, since, as the
authors themselves note, there have been longstanding racist and nationalist
opinions. Liberal views were often more supported by the social strata that
were made comfortable by the system, while the remainder kept relatively quiet
as long as things were ticking over for them. Now that the capitalist markets
supported by the working class have come back to bite them, they have spoken
out.
This is the relevant background
to the authors’ focus on ‘hyper ethnic change’. The popular reaction to a rapid
influx of immigrants seen over the past few decades, and especially in the past
10-20 years (after 2004 in the case of the EU, following the accession of
several new Eastern European members), reflects the worry of the ‘native’ masses
about their social and economic welfare. They don’t stop for a moment to
consider the many fires that their governments have started in and the
destruction they have brought upon countries in the Middle East, Africa and
Latin America, nor of the collapse of living standards in many East European
countries when they were incorporated into the western capitalist markets.
Culture and privilege
Privileges enjoyed by the mass
of people in the rich countries are being taken away, so they blame Mexican or
East European workers, Chinese and Asian goods, and they wrap that up in moans
about the threat to their ‘way of life’ and culture, especially from the Muslim
community. As the authors put it, using apologetic brackets to distance
themselves: ‘most national populists see the quest for lower immigration and
slower ethnic change as an attempt to stem the dwindling size of their group,
to advance its interests and (in their eyes) avoid the destruction of their
culture and identity’ (p 162). Let us consider this culture question for a
moment.
I do not know whether any of the
myriads of opinion polls cited by the authors have ever asked the question of
whether Muslims, or other groups considered unwelcome in these polls, are
believed to have a stronger sense of community than the anti-immigration
respondent. The ‘native’ reaction is to a different group, whether that
distinction is made visible by them using a different language, religion or
something else. But it raises the question of what they are really protesting about.
‘Native’ working class culture
has been disintegrating for the past 40 years or more in many western
countries. Even before, it was nothing to brag about, and the latest decline
has nothing to do with immigration, ‘hyper’ or otherwise. The protracted crises
of the 1970s and 1980s dealt a blow to many traditional industries and forms of
employment that were the centre of settled working class communities, from
mining to manufacturing, from steel making to shipyards and transport, and the
hollowing out of jobs in many areas. There have also been changes in technology
and work practices, a reduction of trade union membership and the creation of
many new service sector jobs less covered by trade unions. These and other,
more recent developments, sometimes labelled the ‘gig economy’, did not come
from immigration. Popular sentiment has nevertheless found immigration as
something to focus on, since it was never far from a nationalistic and
sometimes racist mindset in any case.
What is it about ‘culture and
identity’ that popular sentiment wishes to save from ‘destruction’? The
population has done little or nothing done to combat the capitalist market
trends that have undermined them, and instead it has been absorbed by mass
consumer culture. It is only now, when the economic foundations of an
acceptable life are being taken away, that the pro-imperialist working class
protests. It fights back by demanding that the capitalist state cuts or stops
immigration. The authors say that even if more ‘jobs and growth’ were created
then ‘tensions over perceived differences in culture and values will remain’ (p
152). But that is because a large section of the working class has chosen to
try and defend itself by relying on ‘its’ state to take action against
foreigners. The truth is that it is in no position to hold up anything in its
own culture worthy of respect.
Political climate
This book gives a systematic
overview of contemporary political opinion, especially that underlying the
support for national populism. It helps to clarify the depth of the political
problems faced by those who do not like what is going on, but the solutions
offered by the authors end up endorsing the concerns of the reactionary
populists! When the capitalist system is pissing down on everyone from a great
height, they join in the argument about the distribution of umbrellas and
raincoats, and wonder if immigrants should be given any if that risks the
‘native’ workers going without.
[1] The United
Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination in 1966, of which Article 1 of the Convention defines racial
discrimination as: ‘... any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference
based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the
purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or
exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the
political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life’.
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