Skip to main content

The end of work, mass immigration, mass unemployment, and the primal need for human recognition are likely to explode in a worldwide Age of Identity.

The following has been excerpted from the latest Arktos publication, Conservatism Inc. by James Kirpatrick.

The purpose of the Lying Press is to tell Americans why they are not allowed to resist their dispossession. Thus, just before Christmas, The New York Times contemptuously informed its readers that immigration and globalization are not the real threat to jobs — automation is. Therefore, according to labor economists quoted by NYT, we need “retraining programs, stronger unions, more public-sector jobs, a higher minimum wage, a bigger earned-income tax credit, and, for the next generation of workers, more college degrees.”1

Otherwise, people might do something unacceptable — like start “blaming immigrants.”

Even if we concede that automation, not immigration, is the real threat to jobs, adding millions more Third Worlders onto Western infrastructure which is already buckling is practically a guarantee of permanent social conflict.

Yet in the long term, the United States is heading towards financial disaster as entitlement programs and health care costs will push the debt to ruinous levels. More handouts and entitlements are hardly likely to solve the problem unless they are paid for with massive tax increases, which would stifle already languid economic growth. And the current state (and cost) of higher education hardly makes “more college degrees” a panacea.

Furthermore, declining unions and falling wages are not separate from the phenomenon of mass immigration. From the perspective of the Chamber of Commerce, the whole point of immigration is that it’s a politically correct form of union-busting, driving down the wages of both skilled and unskilled workers.

And the Left goes along with this because it dispossesses the hated European-Americans.

The same motivations are at play in Europe. In Germany, the vast majority of the traitor Merkel’s refugees are both unemployed and unemployable.2 The costs are ruinous and there is no end to the migration in sight.

The so-called “anti-fascists” demanding more refugees are just the union-busting Pinkerton Detectives of today. The impact of their actions is to ensure the corporations they pretend to hate get the cheap workers they want.3

Still, Miller’s New York Times article brings up an important point — especially when it notes that while automation in the past created new jobs, “experts are beginning to worry that this time could be different.”4 We are coming to a point where, even absent mass immigration, vast swathes of the population will essentially be unemployable and entire industries will be stripped of workers.

Nearly half the jobs in Idaho will be automated in the next twenty years.5 The difficult but well-paying jobs in the oil industry are gone forever. Truck drivers will soon be under threat. Even industries like construction may no longer need workers.

This is not just something which will affect the West. Some countries, such as Japan, already seem to be adjusting to the new order. But others will face greater challenges.

In China, vast robot factories are being constructed for manufacturing, which have the potential to replace “millions” of workers.6 Almost 70% of jobs in India are threatened by automation, with an astonishing 77% in China slated to go. As the president of the World Bank observed, the traditional path of development “from increasing productivity of agriculture to light manufacturing and then to full-scale industrialization may not be possible for all developing countries.”7

In many countries, one of the most likely responses is a basic minimum income. Cyprus has something like it already.8 Finland is experimenting with it.9 Communities in Scotland are investigating trial programs for it.10 The Indian government is also taking steps to move towards such a program.11

The Swiss recently voted down a proposal to implement a guaranteed basic income,12 so there is nothing inevitable about this — in the short term. But in the long term, it seems like it will become a political necessity.

A major part of the Trump coalition were factory workers, coal miners and other working-class voters worried about their jobs being eliminated or outsourced. When almost everyone becomes a part of that threatened class, populism will increase even more.

And as the barista at Starbucks with a degree in English Literature and $80,000 in student loan debt can tell you, just sending more people to college isn’t going to do anything to help.

However, the implications go beyond populism. Ultimately, democracy itself will be called into question. A remarkably small number of people will be contributing in terms of technological progress or economic growth. In the post-work world, the vast majority of people will simply be consumers, passively absorbing increasingly degraded cultural products catering to their worst instincts. But because of universal suffrage, these masses will still have the political power to direct more public goods their way, even as the entire system becomes financially unsustainable. A major crisis is all but inevitable.

And adding to the instability: mass immigration. Even if we concede, for the sake of argument, that automation, not immigration, is the real threat to jobs, adding millions more Third Worlders onto Western infrastructure and social safety networks which are already buckling is practically a guarantee of permanent social conflict. It also increases the amount of competition for those few remaining jobs.

And because all men are not created equal, class distinctions will also largely be based on racial and cultural differences, and will be interpreted as such. After all, those liberal arts college graduates the Left loves so much don’t really know how to do anything else.

Which brings us to the final factor: identity. Francis Fukuyama posited in The End of History and the Last Man that liberal democracy may be the end of Hegelian History because it best satisfies the human desire for “recognition.” But the “Who? Whom?” conflicts of identity are likely to increase if people can no longer attain dignity through their profession.

History is about to restart. Preventing the ethnic and cultural conflicts which will rip our civilization apart is the defining issue of the next century.

“Alienation,” as Marx defined it, will be even worse, because individuals won’t even be contributing to the production of commodities. And added to this economic alienation: cultural alienation, as Western nations will be filled with an ever-increasing number of economically useless Third Worlders eager to claim public goods through the ballot box and sharing nothing in common with Europeans.

The only outlet First World people will have left: identitarian movements. They will reclaim their dignity and reassert their identity as human beings by going “back to blood” and seeking meaning through religious, cultural, and ethnic activism. What’s more, many of them will have nothing better to do and will have no fear of having their “basic right” of a minimum income stripped away.

We are already seeing this in Europe. For example, the almost-comically radical Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary worked full time as an organizer and agitator because he received welfare payments from the very government he was trying to overthrow.13 He’s only one of many.

History is about to restart. The end of work, mass immigration, mass unemployment, and the primal need for human recognition are likely to explode in a worldwide Age of Identity. It will confront every Western nation with unprecedented challenges. Preventing the ethnic and cultural conflicts which will rip our civilization apart is the defining issue of the next century.

But our leaders seem determined to just make matters worse. After all, if automation is inevitable, then why are they making the inevitable problems so much more volatile by continuing mass immigration?

If we are governed by people this stupid and/or malicious, perhaps “a little rebellion now and then” is a good thing after all.

References

1 Miller, Claire Cain. “The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China. It’s Automation.The New York Times. December 21, 2016. Accessed May 19, 2018.

2 McGee, Patrick. “Survey Reveals Germany’s Top Companies Employ Just 54 Refugees.Financial Times. July 15, 2016. Accessed May 19, 2018.

3German Conservatives Seek Minimum Wage Exceptions for Refugees.” Reuters. September 29, 2015. Accessed May 19, 2018.

4 Miller, Claire Cain. “The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China. It’s Automation.The New York Times. December 21, 2016. Accessed May 19, 2018.

5 Kennison, Heather. “Will Your Job Be Automated? Nearly Half in Idaho Will Be in the next 20 Years.Idaho Statesman. December 28, 2016. Accessed May 19, 2018.

6 Knight, Will. “Inside China’s Effort to Replace Millions of Manufacturing Workers with Robots.MIT Technology Review. November 18, 2016. Accessed May 19, 2018.

7Automation Threatens 69% Jobs in India: World Bank.The Hindu. November 01, 2016. Accessed May 19, 2018.

8 Hazou, Elias. “GMI Net Widened to Offer More Assistance.Cyprus Mail. July 10, 2015. Accessed May 19, 2018.

9 Tanner, Jari. “Finland to Pay Unemployed Basic Income of $587 per Month.AP News. January 02, 2017. Accessed May 19, 2018.

10 Glaze, Ben. “Scotland Could Trial Giving Every Citizen a Minimum Income.Mirror. January 02, 2017. Accessed May 19, 2018.

11 Colson, Thomas. “The Indian Government Is about to Endorse Giving All Its Citizens Free Money.Business Insider. January 03, 2017. Accessed May 19, 2018.

12Switzerland’s Voters Reject Basic Income Plan.” BBC. June 05, 2016. Accessed May 19, 2018.

13 Dodd, Vikram. “Anjem Choudary: A Hate Preacher Who Spread Terror in UK and Europe.The Guardian. August 16, 2016. Accessed May 19, 2018.

The Arktos Restoration Initiative

We have handpicked thirty distinguished titles, previously lost to censorship, befitting any refined bookshelf. These esteemed classics are now offered in limited leather-bound editions, with a mere 100 copies per title. Owning one not only grants you a collector’s item but also supports our mission to restore them in paperback for all.

We will sequentially reveal three titles. After each pre-sale set concludes, we will move to the next trio. As each set is claimed, we will ship these treasures, while also making paperback versions available in our online store.

Your contribution aids the metapolitical battle, ensuring that vital ideas and concepts remain accessible to an ever-expanding audience.

IArcheofuturism (Limited Edition)
$129.50
Pre-Order
Racial Civil War (Limited Edition)
$79.50
Pre-Order
James Kirkpatrick

James Kirkpatrick is a refugee from Conservatism Inc. who labored in “the movement” for more than a decade. A self-described nationalist, he’s worked for both establishment conservative organizations and Dissident Right publications inside and outside the Beltway. Currently a columnist at VDARE and the Social Contract Press, his goal is to create an American Right that could fulfill the unrealized promise of the Spirit of 2016.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
4 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Twin Ruler
Twin Ruler
4 years ago

Mark my words. Colleges and Universities shall be the slums of the future. Things will keep going down hill from here on.

David Schmitt
4 years ago

This is a very compelling foreshadowing that is worth sharing with friends and associates in your political mailing list, as well as–if you have the means to do so–broadcasting to an audience unknown. It is of the “I predict, but do not advocate” genre, or IPBDNA genre, which I have come to predict and do advocate the use of.
Through the combined craft of deception, mercantilism and stupefaction, as well as an active, political and biological selection program against males capable of perceiving and protecting their fatherlands, the powerful have apparently succeeded in the destruction of the new, most-recent, “Old World.” For the Rulers, the artifacts of Tradition are valuable only as pieces chopped up for sale in art museums and discount stores. “Oh, look Myrna, a section of the altar from that Notre Dame thing before it was turned into a state mosque.” “You bet, Morton, let’s get a Coke in the museum food court, I saw that the large plastic cups sport a nice picture of the Mona Lisa.”
The overlords took over all levels of federal, state and local government long ago. The United states has already been broken up in Regions awaiting full functional expression. Regional EPA officials would visit our particular state agency for reviews and to promulgate new directives or programs. On one occasion, out of roughly a dozen individuals from EPA, I recall a couple White women (no White men) and all others being phenotypically non-Whites from exotic and not-so-exotic nations. And that is just one federal agency. But your state agencies are hardly much better, if at all.
As for those White women, according to some views, women are gene-mixing receptacles anyway, capable of executing their own bio-political revolution at anytime. As such, they count less as reliable members of any given fatherland. Thus, the Rulers find them psychologically and obstetrically quite useful for deconstructing nations. “Turn the woman against the man…” I realize that this seems too bracing for some. This is precisely why they must hear it. The reality of things inoculates against the deceptions. It allows many women the opportunity to appreciate what they could have had without the necessity of war.
To Europeans (viz., male Europeans) in whatever nation you live, your governments are no longer your governments—they are not your friends. You have effectively been occupied, imprisoned, delegitimized, discredited, economically neutralized, criminalized and–for increasingly many –castrated. Now what do you do?

K R Bolton
4 years ago

Essential issues that need addressing by the right because the left is incapable, and Mr Kirkpatrick is spot on in identifying the Left as the whores of global capitalism.

Social Credit has considered the problems of work, automation, and the pseudo-sanctity of full employment since 1918. Ezra Pound became a zealot for Social Credit as the means of making economics function in accord with human need. The Right has often forgotten this legacy, and other variants of monetary reform. As Gottfried Feder tried to point out, before all else, first must come liberation from ‘interest slavery’.

HamburgerToday
HamburgerToday
4 years ago

The technological displacement of workers has been consistent throughout the industrial period. One needs only to appreciate the emergence of the Luddites to understand the problem has a long history. Notwithstanding the political-economic solution that Marx proposed, his analysis of alienation in industrial/capitalist societies was spot-on and the Right has been one of the few political enterprises that has taken alienation seriously. The question is whether the Identiarian Right can fashion a political-economic program that can address this fundamental issue of industrial capitalism in a way that (a) works and (b) the propagandized Folk of the current era can embrace.

I am in agreement with K. R. Bolton that the first, best place to focus is monetary policy. Identitarians cannot create local-scale economies using international or centralized currencies. Conversely, we need a way for local currencies to support transactions between local currencies. This isn’t hard (currency exchange takes place all the time), but it would be a good idea to have a single, ‘universal’ Identitarian currency against which all local currencies could be ‘pegged’ to facilitate international trade between Identitarian economies.

4
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x