14. Migration: Natural and Unnatural

Due to the interdependence of thought and word it is clear that languages are not really a means to represent the truth that is already known, but rather a means to discover the previously unrecognized truth. What makes them different is not their sounds and signs, but their world views.81
– ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

The diversity of living conditions in this world has always triggered migrations of individuals and entire peoples throughout history. There will also be reasons for migration in the future. For example, new technologies can make locations that were previously unattractive attractive, and vice versa. The same can happen because of climatic changes. Economically, it can be said that when capital and labor are internationally mobile, the absolute costs will decide where capital will be invested in the world and where people will want to settle.

Job seekers migrate from regions where marginal labor productivity and hence wages are low to regions where marginal productivity and hence wages are higher. This reduces the supply of labor in the areas from which people emigrate—and increases the marginal productivity of labor and thereby wages. On the other hand, labor supply increases in the immigration areas and marginal labor productivity and wages decline here as a result of the now increased labor supply.

With free mobility of labor, migration continues until the same marginal productivity for the same work prevails everywhere in the world. Different regions of the world will then have differences in their population density, but equal wages for equal work will be paid worldwide. In this way, the productivity of the work is optimally exploited. That is the economic law of migration. If we want to apply it to the present situation, we must bear in mind that a world has arisen in which land is no longer a free good but is privately or publicly owned. The significance of this “restriction” for migration becomes clear when we consider migration under two conditions: (1) migration in a free economy and society without a state and (2) migration in an unfree economy and society with a state.

Considering (1) in a liberal economy and society, unconditional respect for property applies—understood as self-ownership of one’s own body and of the goods legally acquired in a nonaggressive way. If property is accepted in this way, the migration of persons between regions is possible, but only if the owners of land expressly issue an invitation.

Every property owner has the right to invite guests into his house and onto his land. He or his guest must pay for the costs of travel, accommodation, meals, and clothing. Companies are allowed to hire employees as they wish. However, employees will only (be able to) accept the job offer if the companies pay wages with which the employees can finance their way of life.

Uninvited immigration—entering an area of land owned by a person or community who has not invited them to enter—is tantamount to infringing property rights, and the owners will justifiably defend themselves against it. In a free economy and society (without the state) there would be no systematic migration problem in the sense of unwanted movements of people. There may be some cases of uninvited visitors here and there, but no chronic uninvited migration.

Considering (2) if a state exists and its immigration policy violates the property rights of the people in the country of immigration, the picture changes. As is well known, the state opens up the possibility for some to assert their special interests and privileges. This inevitably leads to strife that ignites due to conflicting interests. For example, workers whose wages are falling as a result of immigration will call on their unions to demand immigration restrictions: the wages of domestic workers decrease when the domestic labor supply increases.

However, immigration restrictions put domestic entrepreneurs at a disadvantage: they have to pay higher wages and make correspondingly lower profits compared to a situation in which there are no immigration restrictions. Domestic production is lower and more expensive than it could be with immigration. Businesses will therefore also seek to use their influence in policymaking to facilitate immigration.

Political programs will also want to influence immigration policy. A motive can be the humane desire to alleviate need: people from countries with low incomes should be allowed to immigrate in order to lead a better life. Or the motive may be to avert the economic consequences of a shrinking population through immigration. Another motive springs from the idea that world peace is promoted when people of different descent, different cultural and religious backgrounds do not live far apart from one another but in close proximity.

The objective of the democratic socialists in this dispute is to abolish the principle of the nation-state and above all to abolish the nation. This is an indispensable, a necessary condition for opening up the possibility of creating a unitary nation and a unitary state in the first place. But how can that succeed? For example, how about the following idea: the nations will be unified by eliminating through migration the spatial separation that has existed so far between regions with national populations?

This could happen, for example, by forced resettlement. However, at present it is very unlikely that political majorities in support of this can be found in the nation-state democracies. The costs and suffering that forced resettlement would entail for the people affected—the displaced persons as well as the “hosts”—would be too great. An alternative route to this is politically controlled migration: the nation-states are opened up to immigration from outside; above all immigration is promoted for those whose language and culture are foreign. But could the nations really be dissolved in this way?

If immigrants assimilate linguistically and culturally—if they abandon the language, customs, and religion of their country of origin and adopt those of the country of immigration—the nation-states remain homogeneous in themselves but at the same time heterogeneous among themselves. This applies both to the nation into which immigration is taking place and whose population is increasing, and to the nation from which emigration is taking place and which is decreasing in number. If, on the other hand, immigrants fail to assimilate, the country of immigration becomes heterogeneous: it will become a region in which other nations will establish themselves alongside the nation that has been the state- defining nation up to that point.

The supporters of a unified international democratic socialism must therefore rely on immigration not leading to assimilation.82 Admittedly, unassimilated immigration does not guarantee the dissolution of the nation and the nation-state principle. But it at least opens up the possibility that, at least in the country of immigration, the nation and the nation-state principle will be pushed back and perhaps ultimately dissolved. In this context, however, the following is particularly serious: immigration leads to a particularly thorny problem in a country of immigration where the democratic majority principle prevails.83

The greater the role of the state in economic and social life, the more bitter the political struggle for the majority position will be, and the greater the political powerlessness of those who lose out in this struggle, those who end up in the minority position. Tensions between the people who are in the majority and the people who represent the minority are inevitable in a democracy, in democratic socialism. However, they are mitigated in areas where the population is relatively closely linked by language, customs, tradition, culture, and religion.84 The majority here will not completely lose sight of the interests of the minority; and the minority will also be prepared to bow to the majority to some extent, albeit grudgingly.

The picture changes dramatically when people with very different linguistic and cultural backgrounds live together in the same area. The majority principle then ensures that the minority here is immediately oppressed. The majority has little or no incentive to give any special consideration to a minority that seems fundamentally alien to them. The minority therefore has only two alternatives: either it assimilates, or it does not assimilate.

The case of voluntary assimilation is associated with the least problems. The immigrants gradually adopt the language and habits of the people in the country of immigration and become part of the nation of the country of immigration. If the immigrants do not wish to assimilate, they remain a minority and are excluded from political decision-making. They lose their self-determination. Either they come to terms with it or they may want to protest—for example, by trying to become the majority in the country of immigration.

In the case, however, where non-assimilated immigrants seek the majority position (e.g., through further immigration or high birth rates), the inhabitants of the country to which they immigrate have to fear that they will fall behind. Either they submit to the fate of being ousted from their previous majority position in the future or they oppose the fact that immigrants ascend to the majority—for example by forcing assimilation. There will be conflict when the inhabitants of the immigration country force immigrants to assimilate but the immigrants preserve their peculiarities and do not want to give them up.

We recognize that democracy (if understood as the right to self-determination) proves to be not a peacemaker in a linguistically and culturally heterogeneous population, but a cause or aggravator of conflict. For supporters of international democratic socialism, this means that attempting to heterogenize or abolish the nation-state through politically controlled migration is not a viable way to maintain democracy.

Rather, democratic socialism must abandon its democratic roots and transform itself into a totalitarian socialism if it is to ascend to a unified global system. However, in public the democratic socialists never tire of expressing their inseparability with democracy. What to make of that? Not too much: the democratic solidarity of democratic socialism turns out to be a bogus claim, according to the “iron law of the oligarchy.” This “law” states that party democracy forms an oligarchized elite rule that silently and secretly undermines and controls democracy. The significance of this for the possibility of establishing a world state with a world currency is discussed in the following chapter.

• 81Wilhelm von Humboldt, Über das vergleichende Sprachstudium in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Epochen der Sprachentwicklung (Berlin, 1820), p. 255.
• 82As a rule of thumb, the greater the number of immigrants per year compared to the population in the host country, the greater the likelihood that immigrants will not assimilate.
• 83This is pointed out by Ludwig von Mises, Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft: Beiträge zur Politik und Geschichte der Zeit (Vienna: Manz’sche Verlags- und Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1919), pp. 31–45.
• 84This notion can be found, e.g., in F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge Classics, 2001), p. 144: “The belief in the community of aims and interests with fellow-men seems to presuppose a greater degree of similarity of outlook and thought than exists between men merely as human beings.”