National Post (National Edition)
A Canadian nationalist party would likely come from the left.
Political axes are being redrawn across the West. It used to be that the dominant schism was an interventionist, redistributive left against a laissez-faire, free market right, but the electoral success of Brexit and Donald Trump has changed the focus of the U.S. Republicans and of U.K. Conservatives. Right-wing parties in these countries — as in others — are now adopting nationalism as their defining cause. And parties that had already adopted nationalism as their defining characteristic — France’s National Front most prominent among them — are now serious contenders for power.
What are the implications of a political landscape whose primary schism is between nationalists and cosmopolitans? In Canada, focus on the nationalist challenge is mainly directed at the Conservatives, but if a nationalist party in Canada does come about, there’s a significant chance that it will emerge from the left, not the right
The fundamental difference between nationalists and cosmopolitans turns around the question of how much importance should be given to the welfare of foreigners. An extreme form of nationalism would hold that whether or not a foreigner lived or died, was happy or miserable is of no concern for domestic policy-makers. In contrast, an extreme form of cosmopolitanism would treat all peoples’ welfare — at home or abroad — as equally deserving of attention. Of course, no one actually holds either of these extreme views. Just like the left-right axis, it’s better to think of it as a continuum: nationalists give lesser weight to the welfare of foreigners than do cosmopolitans.
Economists — both the left-wing and right-wing variety — have historically had cosmopolitan leanings; the tradition of taking all peoples’ interest into account is deeply-rooted in the discipline. The reason why Thomas Carlyle dubbed economics the “dismal science” was not — as is widely supposed — a comment on T.R. Malthus’ bleak outlook for humanity, but a rebuke of economists’ support for the emancipation of slaves. As Sandra Peart and David Levy note in their essay The Secret History of the Dismal Science, “(i)t was this fact — that economics assumed that people were basically all the same, and thus all entitled to liberty — that led Carlyle to label economics ‘the dismal science’. ”
This anecdote might surprise some, but these cosmopolitan leanings shouldn’t. Economists — both the leftwing and right-wing variety — are typically more supportive of free trade and open borders than are the rest of the population.
Nationalists, on the other hand, are more skeptical of the benefits of interactions with foreigners. If nationalism has hitherto had a weak influence in Canada, at least part of the explanation been that it has been a divided force. On the right, Conservatives have historically been the home of those who are skeptical about the social and cultural effects of immigration, along with proponents for free trade. And on the left, the NDP has been the home of those who are skeptical about free trade, and who are unconcerned about (if not welcoming of) immigration flows. This is obviously a generalization: anti-trade and anti-immigration currents exist in all parties, and they haven’t always found their way into policy.
In industrialized countries, nationalist opposition to globalization is based on its effects on wages. Increased economic interaction with low-wage countries applies downward pressure on wages, and it doesn’t much matter if the borders are opened to trade or to immigration. Liberalized trade introduces imports of labourintensive goods from lowwage countries and liberalized immigration increases the supply of labour. Either way, rich-world wages would grow more slowly than they otherwise would have.
For a nationalist, this is often reason enough to oppose globalization. And for a left-wing nationalist, the resulting increase of within-country income inequality would make the anti-globalization case even stronger.
But for a cosmopolitan,
IS GLOBAL EQUALITY THE ENEMY OF NATIONAL EQUALITY?
some thought has to be given to the welfare of foreigners as well: especially the hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty. Moreover, global income inequality has been reduced. The world distribution of income used to be bimodal: a large lowincome peak and a smaller high-income peak. The gains made among those with low incomes have been significant enough to make the distribution unimodal, creating a global middle class.
Harvard’s Dani Rodrik describes this tension in the title of a recent paper: “Is global equality the enemy of national equality?” (The cosmopolitan/nationalist terminology used here is taken from Rodrik’s paper.) Rodrik suggests that the “China shock” is unlikely to be repeated: automation has made it less attractive to outsource and offshore manufacturing employment to low-wage countries. It will be correspondingly harder for low-income countries to use trade as an instrument for progress. So what’s left for reducing global inequality?
Immigration, that’s what. Many — including the Minister of Finance’s advisory council of growth — have suggested drastically increasing immigration flows as a partial offset to population aging. Others call for the acceptance of significantly more refugees. Higher levels of immigration would do for low-skilled foreign workers what trade used to do: provide them with access to rich markets and higher wages.
And again, the arrival of low-skilled workers would inevitably put downward pressure on the wages of their direct competitors in the labour market. This hasn’t really been the case in Canada, because our immigration policy favours skilled and educated immigrants, and our geography makes it difficult for low-skilled emigrants to make their way to Canada. But there is evidence in other jurisdictions that suggests that the wages of low-skilled native workers suffer in the wake of increased flows of low-skilled immigrants.
Nationalism is deeplyrooted on the Canadian left, and it’s not hard to imagine scenarios where the nationalist challenge comes from there. Some elements in the nationalist left — Maude Barlow, for one — find themselves both agreeing with the nationalism of Donald Trump and trying to avoid being associated with him. This stance may be harder to sustain if the flow of immigrants — and especially unskilled immigrants — increased sharply. If suppressed national wages and increased national inequality is enough for you to reject trade, then it’s not clear why you’d accept an immigration policy that has the same effect.