Some for the beginselen

Tonight the beginselen commission meets, and I thought that what I am posting here might be relevant for the beginselen discussion. It is a text that I wrote a while ago for the forum of kritischer groenlinkser, but it was never discussed... so perhaps now...

Enjoy...


To be (liberal) or not to be: that is not the question

Inti Suarez
Bestuurlid GLUtrecht; vz Kleurrijk Platform

Foreword

Too many times have been said that after the German wall fall, we all became liberals. Groenlinks, perhaps too late, perhaps too early, caught up with the trend. Too fast because we have still too many sectors of our society in a position that further liberalism will only reduce their chances to access current levels of well-being. Or too late, as is written in the last De Helling, where we are told that the liberalism that groenlinks party-topers embrace today is as old as the Jacobine movement, back in the times of the French revolution.

Now, we might not have to choose in between the too late or the too early options. As Halsema repeated many times the past two years, the discussion about our supposed liberalism just misses the point. To be liberal today is a sticker so vague that can be used for the VVD or for Groenlinks, not to mention the democrats in the USA. The devil, as usual, is in the details. Lets have it about some details. In what follows I hope to show that groenlinks ideas on economy are far too liberal to be good, and groenlinks ideas on migration are far too conservative to be of relevance.

Nordic ideas

One issue in which the liberals of groenlinks have made headlines (at least in our internal discussions) is in the so-called Scandinavian model of economy. In such a model, basic tenets of the Dutch welfare state are attacked. The proposal calls for flexibility of the ontslagrecht, stronger reintegration investment and better networks of support for the unemployed. If this whole package would be implemented together, it does sound Ok. But is it Ok?

The most important claim that the Wetenschapelijk Bureau has done promoting this model is that it will create a dynamic economy. Dynamic here means that more people is fired faster, so others, traditionally excluded from the labour force, are capable to take the vacated jobs, so far unavailable to them. In the eyes of groenlinks ideologists, the people excluded from the labour market will profit from more flexibility. But how much of this is true?

In first place, let's define the analysis. There are many ways to classify the different components of a society. One could think in gender, or in ethnicity, or in education level. Or in a combination of those factors. Once the classification is decided, the next step is to explore the labour participation of each population segment. Labour exclusion does occur in every society group, but in some more than in others. With this results in mind, one could analyse the results of labour market flexibility in each particular segment.

Let's go step for step, then. Consider ethnic or gender segmentation. Simply comparing level of employment in autochtoon versus allochtoon (the analysis, at least in broad lines can be repeated for women) we learn right away that the allochtoon Netherlander is far less included in the Dutch labour market than the autochtoon segment. One conclusion of this is to say that labour exclusion is a relevant issue in the allochtoon population. So far, so good. In the program of groenlinks so much is acknowledge, since we claim that labour exclusion is a relevant issue, via discrimination, for the allochtoon citizen. Now, would flexibility help?

Now that we know who is excluded from the labour market, let's proceed. Is the allochtoon employee flexible? How would further flexibility of the labour market change their employability? The last report of the arbeisdinspectie1 tells us that allochtonen (and women) are very mobile segments of the labour force. So we discover that in reality, the allochtoon employee is more flexible than the autochtoon employee. Allochtonen change their jobs faster and more frequently than autochtonen. So the question arises: would further flexibility help this sector?

Let's put the argument together: One sector of the Dutch population, in which exclusion of the labour market is a relevant problem, occurs to be also a very flexible and dynamic sector. Dynamism is positively associated with exclusion, then. How more dynamism could possibly help the inclusion of this sector?

The example offered here illustrates a broader trend in groenlinks flavour of liberalism. The idea of dynamic economies as source of employment is theoretically sound, and it has been breached in many countries, principally in France. Now, what this trend has to do with the real excluded from the Dutch labour market? Not much. What the liberalism of groenlinks today misses is the rooting in the real conditions of the excluded labour force. Is the phenomenon due to olded employees that can not be fired? Do we really believe that if a relevant percentage of current employees would be fired then the excluded of the labour market will be -suddenly- included?

An alternative analysis of exclusion in the labour market goes along the lines of intrinsic -microeconomic- causes, instead of structural -macroeconomic- causes. The results of several studies hired by our TKfractie past years verify that, at least in regard to the allochtoon workforce, discrimination is a much more relevant cause of exclusion than lack of economical dynamism. But this line of thinking produces problems, as groenlinks well knows. Of course, what I am referring here is to the well known law Samen, which introduced by the Rosemuller fractie, was not renewed few years ago. Interesting is that such a law seems to go against what liberalism is. In a “laissez faire” state, there is no interest of the government for telling a business owner whom to hire. Perhaps attempts comparable to the law “Samen” fall out of the current liberal trend. In any case, this is not the place to attempt a revival of an old groenlinks idea. What I do intend to do here is to point at limitations of the current liberalism of groenlinks. Our own research, or data easily obtainable from the CBS and the Arbeidsinspectie tell us that exclusion is certainly not solved by more liberalism.


Free flow

Now, lets attempt another dilemma currently discussed in Europe, with have a classical liberal answer, and that has recently discussed by groenlinks. I would like to turn our attention to the migration dilemma that European societies face today.

The free flow of people across countries is a fundamental tenet of liberal ideology, as fundamental as the free flow of goods and capitals. Every classic (or neoclassic) economic theory function if and when markets are open. The interesting question is how good scores groenlinks here? Or Europa, for what it matters? Not very good, actually.

If we go back to the congress of Groenlinks occurred in R'dam, back in 2005, you will remember that a visietext migratie was there discussed and ultimately voted. In that text four dilemmas were presented to the groenlinksers. Migration in Europa today is an issue that sets dilemmas far from trivial. The commission that wrote the proposed visietext presented no full solutions to those problems, but ways to tackle them. Around a months ago, that is two years after the congress, our representants in the European parliament meet their collega's from the European Green Party in Berlin, in an attempt to settle a position on migration from the EGP. If you read what our Kathalijne brought to this meeting, it certainly goes along the lines that groenlinks set back in 2005. The emphasize is in circular migration. Faced with the increasing migration pressure, what Europe can offer as solution is a controlled circular migration scheme.

So far so good. We have a representant of groenlinks lobbying in the European political scene for the standpoints that we agree on. But to place this in the context of my discussion here, the question has to be made. How liberal is circular migration? Is circular migration a step in the direction of a world of open borders? Or at least to a world in which flows of people are as open as possible? Well, actually not. Circular migration schemes, actually, are very non liberal, or at least, very non open. The word circular means that the person that arrives and is welcome in Europe, does not stays but for a well defined amount of time. Actually, any scheme of circular migration requires a enforcing state, able to track foreign workers and able top deport them when their time is due. Surely not a very liberal state of affairs, neither a society to aim at.

Even if we take the ethical considerations apart, circular migrations schemes are known and have failed since long in Europe. What else is the good old idea of gastarbeider? What we know is that the circular part simply doesn't work. Or the guest part does not. A relevant amount of people that arrives to a place to work, stays. A circular migration scheme is bound to fail as a realistic alternative to the immigration pressure that Europe faces today.

So. The intention of the lines above is to clean up the start for the serious discussions that we need inside groenlinks today. My two examples aim to prevent our discussion to be phrased in terms of being, or notbeing, liberal. I hope to have presented two cases, both relevant in today's politics, in which groenlinks is too liberal, or too conservative. You might or might not agree with me about my own preferences. But let's agree that the questions that we have to answer is in the details, and not in the big lines.