Immigration, right-wing politics: capital's reserve army of labour

Immigration: the reserve army the right and big business always wanted

The thesis that mass immigration mainly benefits capital is not new, but it resurges with force every so often. The most famous case involved French president Georges Pompidou, who in 1973 admitted having peine the borders at the request of businessmen such as Francis Bouygues, in order to have docile, cheap labour that would push wages down and weaken the labour movement. «They always want more», he said of the employers.

Fifty years later, the same scheme repeats itself. While no party dares to call for more immigration openly, big business does so without embarrassment. The analyst Alain de Benoist documents this strategy since the nineteenth century: large companies have used immigration as a tool to contain labour costs and break trade union unity. The paradox is that part of the left also calls for more immigration on humanitarian grounds, producing an objective coincidence of interests with employers.

In Spain, the PP (centre-right People's Party) has launched a strategy to win the Latin American vote with its plan for «new Spaniards», encouraged by Ayuso's success. But from other quarters it is argued that the left has abandoned the class struggle and that, in practice, it is VOX that defends the interests of native workers by opposing mass immigration. The debate, like so many others, pits those who see immigration as a human right against those who consider it an instrument of capital to cheapen labour. Pompidou's confession suggests the latter have history on their side, but the dominant narrative continues to ignore it.