There’s an excellent article by Aleks Eror in The Critic magazine on the subject of national borders and why the Left should care about them. In this piece Mr Eror talks in depth about how welfare states did not grow out of internationalism but were rooted firmly in the soil of the nation state.

Mr Eror goes into some detail about the creation of welfare states from the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck through to the explosion in the size and scope of the welfare states of Western nations such as the Nordic states. He said that with money much more movable today than it was when many welfare states were set up, governments have to be careful about how much they tax corporations lest they decamp to a more tax friendly country. This has led to the citizens of welfare states having to shoulder much of the burden for the costs of welfare states. J

It’s quite possible in my view for a social democratic state to have high personal taxation but excellent and innovative services paid for out of that taxation. However, that’s only achievable if those paying the taxes see themselves as paying into a national cultural community what Mr Eror describes as: ‘distinct political community of citizens that comprise the nation’.

It’s clear that welfare states paid for out of the taxation of the citizens fail when those who pay much in not only see welfare state resources going to those whose contribution is meagre to nothing, but are forced to make use of ever deteriorating public services. Britain cannot indefinitely support an International National Health Service and neither can it continue to fund and house those who have come to the UK from elsewhere who are not making any appreciable contribution to the nation. This creates resentment among the indigenous population and those who have made Britain their home but who have assimilated and contributed to the life and economy of the nation. As long as the Left and their fellow travellers push the idea of open borders for Western countries alongside the existence of a comprehensive welfare state then the resentment of the indigenous and the contributory migrant will grow and the welfare state or even the wider economy will collapse under the weight of its obligations.

But back to Mr Eror’s excellent article. What caught my eye in his piece is this section was his assertion that the welfare state in a nation is only supported as long as it is treated like a resource for their extended family in the form of the nation .

Mr Eror said:

The high taxation that generous and well-functioning welfare states rely on can be far more easily justified if the electorate can be convinced to treat the nation as a sort of extended family united by common ancestry and shared ethno-cultural bonds. The “system” that people pay into isn’t presented as a redistributive bureaucratic machine, but a community that has been built collectively over many generations by the forebears of its individual members. As soon as you start letting foreigners into such a community, solidarity understandably starts to crumble because it’s glaringly evident that new arrivals haven’t contributed to building that community. Their contributions pale by comparison even after multiple generations because it’s still common knowledge that the natives have been there for far longer.

David Goodhart made this point more than 20 years ago to predictable outrage. The notion that there might be limits to human compassion, or that ethnicity, culture, and national belonging are a far stronger basis for collectivism than “Mr Blobby patriotism” is heretical to a progressive worldview that only believes in limits on individual wealth. As we can see from the Green party’s migration policies, the modern left wants collectivism without a genuine collective – that’s if you discount fuzzy notions about common humanity that disintegrate as soon as normal people come into contact with weird foreign practices like cousin marriage or taharrush gamea.

This is such a timely and well written article that I would urge the readers of this blog to go and take a look at it. It can be found via the link below.

https://thecritic.co.uk/why-left-wingers-should-care-about-borders/