Cameron, free market and refugees

Among the “23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism”, Cambridge University economist Ha-Joon Chang lists the fact that “the living standards of the huge majority of people in rich countries critically depend on the existence of the most draconian control over their labour markets — immigration control”. He adds: “Despite this, immigration control is invisible to many and deliberately ignored by others, when they talk about the virtues of the free market.”

How fitting, then, for such staunch free-marketeer as British Prime Minister David Cameron to speak of a migrant ‘swarm’. And this from a man who once claimed that “free markets promote morality”. But why the insistence on the “migrant” label, when most of the people “swarming” the Mediterranean to reach Europe are in reality refugees fleeing war?

The 340,000 new arrivals to the European Union (EU) this year represent a mere 0.045 per cent of the total European population and, overall, developing countries host 86 per cent of the world’s refugees, up from 70 per cent a decade ago. If Cameron were consistent, he would open his country’s borders and let the market work its magic, including his own party’s obliteration at the next general elections. Instead, at home, the free market creed is deployed to justify austerity with all the ensuing welfare spending cuts, which disproportionately hurt the poor. This is the Tory dystopian vision of a “low tax” for capital, “small state economy”.

When faced with refugees, however, the prime minister rediscovers his protectionist self. Refugees need labelling as migrants, though, as the former are afforded protection under international law; the latter aren’t. In this way, a humanitarian crisis is portrayed as an invasion of migrant labourers set to steal British jobs.

There is no more effective way to divide the working class than to create the migrant bogey man. As political geographer David Harvey put it, “the neoliberal state needs nationalism of a certain sort to survive”. And what is nationalism if not an exercise in collective fear of the other?

A working class divided between “our” and “their” (migrant) workers swallows austerity and votes Tory. But under this nationalist guise, Cameron is just protecting the power of capital to hire and fire in a relentless race to the bottom. Quite aside from Britain’s moral responsibility due to its colonial past, not to mention a latter-day imperial folly in Iraq, austerity helps to replicate these divisions at home, further undermining working class solidarity.

The latest London Underground strike provides a glaring example of that, as a striking driver succinctly explained in the Independent: “Over decades people stood up and said no more and that’s what we’re doing now. Why is it when people moan about athletes, bankers or movie stars earning too much, they’re told to stop being jealous, yet when a unionised workforce receive a decent pay that they’ve fought for they’re labelled greedy?”

The bad news is that Cameron is in good company with his EU counterparts, who dread “the radicalisation and linking together of workers’ struggles across Europe, and beyond”. The European ruling class, in other words, is united in its defence of capital and austerity — as was on full display in the ruthless handling of the Greek crisis.

The worse news is that, with no end in sight to the many wars wrecking the Levant, the EU leaders will keep bickering about migrant quotas, instead of focussing on how to stop the bloodshed.

Only when European workers will connect the dots between austerity, the fabricated migrant scare and the divisions marring the working class will an alternative to free-marketeerism begin to emerge. (It is too early to say whether the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour Party’s leadership will be a turning point in this respect). Until then, expect many more refugees to wash up on Europe’s beaches. This is the cost, when all is said and done, of keeping Cameron’s free market free — of them.

Franco Galdini is a roving freelance Italian journalist with a background in international politics.