How Immigration Serves
Ruling Class Interests
By Jerry Woodruff
Text of remarks
delivered at a conference sponsored by the Fitzgerald Griffin
Foundation, "Shots Fired: Sam Francis on America's
Culture War," at the National Press Club, Washington,
D.C., March 20, 2007.
INTRODUCTION
'm
going to talk about the theory of elites in American society
as developed by Sam Francis, and about the role that mass
immigration plays in that theory.
As
far as I know, Sam did not explicitly in a single essay
or article fully explain why he believed mass immigration
became one of the major underpinnings of the contemporary
American ruling class -- as Sam understood it -- but I do
know he believed that immigration was in fact an integral
component of the means by which contemporary elites maintain
and expand their social, political, and cultural power in
the United States today.
Sam
made this explicit in an introduction to a collection of
his newspaper columns on immigration. He wrote,
"The
truth is that support for immigration comes from the ruling
class, from ... businesses and organizations that represent
the most powerful forces in American economic, political,
and cultural life, and these forces support immigration
for one simple reason: it brings them money and power."
(America Extinguished: Mass Immigration and the Disintegration
of American Culture)
Sam
alluded to this question in numerous columns and essays,
but I don't believe he fully developed that view in a single
work or essay, or explained comprehensively just exactly
how immigration brings money and power to the ruling class.
That
is what I will try to do today -- to present a general outline
of Sam's theory of elites and show how Sam viewed the role
of immigration in that theory of elite behavior. The information
I will present comes from a variety of his columns, essays,
speeches, private conversations, and unpublished notes.
I
will first discuss the basic outlines of Sam's understanding
of elite behavior, and then I'll examine how mass immigration
serves the interests of those elites.
RULING CLASS THEORY
I
know that the phrase "ruling class" usually does
not sit well with people who regard themselves as conservatives.
To many conservatives the words "ruling class"
sound like some sort of left-wing curse, usually hurled
dishonestly at conservatives. But in reality, the phrase
"ruling class" does not have a perjorative meaning
-- it is simply a neutral description of a social and political
reality.
That
reality is simply this: There is a class of people, always
a minority, that rules, and a class of people, always a
majority, that is ruled. A ruling class is simply that group
of people in every society that performs political functions,
tends to monopolize power, and enjoys all the benefits and
advantages that power brings.
Ruling
classes can themselves be a stratified phenomenon, with
some people holding the formal titles of power, while others,
who might not hold formal positions or titles of office,
are able nonetheless to influence the exercise of power
through their contacts, their wealth, or their ability to
direct social forces or lead constituencies that can influence
the formal governing group.
For
the purposes of our discussion, one of the most significant
characteristics of a ruling class or elite is the fact that
all ruling classes rule through the use of a myth or ideology
that explains, justifies, and legitimizes their rule.
In
an unpublished manuscript, Sam explained that elites, or
ruling classes, "do not hold power purely through force
and intimidation. They formulate doctrines that rationalize
or justify their control in logical, moral, theological,
or philosophical ways."
Sam provided this example from history:
"The
ideology of the landed elite of seventeenth century England,
for example, did not baldly assert that crown and parliament
must protect the rights of privileges of landed property
because it was in the material interests of the landed elite
to do so. Rather, it presented a set of formal arguments,
drawn from religious, historical, legal, and philosophical
sources, that the power and privileges attached to landed
property were morally right and socially necessary. It is
unlikely that very many members of the landed elite doubted
the truth of this ideology... " (Unpublished manuscript)
In
other words, elites do not simply make up their ideologies
out of whole cloth. The members of elites generally believe
in their own ideologies, and they try to behave consistently
with their implications.
So
the myth or ideology identifies the interests of the elites
and defends them, but does not do so overtly, but in a way
that satisfies both the elite and those classes outside
the elite that power is institutionalized in a form regarded
as just and that serves the interests and rights of everyone.
Ideologies
are not generated spontaneously. They evolve through a process
that Sam described this way:
"An
ideology often builds upon elements of belief that were
generally accepted prior to the rise of the elite that espouses
it (and often such elements are themselves the remnants
of older ideologies of earlier elites), but these elements...
are reinterpreted or adapted to fit the new ideology that
the new elite formulates and imposes. The process of imposition
varies ... but common instruments of ideological imposition
in history . . . have been churches, schools, art and literature,
and the press and other media of mass communication, all
of which may possess official or semi-official ties to and
privilieges from the regime of the elite.... In any society,
different individuals, sects and schools of thought formulate
a variety of ideas. Some of these ideas are more or less
consistent with the perceived interests of the elite, which
tends to sponsor or promote them and those who formulate
them; while other ideas are not useful to its perceived
interests or appear to represent a threat, and the elite
tends to ignore or suppress them and their sources. This
process of selection leads to the evolution of an ideology."
(Unpublished manuscript)
The
myth or ideology also serves to integrate the ruled with
the rulers, uniting them in a very broad common outlook.
"Only
by the ideological integration of the population at large
can the elite obtain more or less spontaneous obedience
and deference..." Sam wrote. "An ideology that
successfully integrates a society is often called a 'public
orthodoxy' and dissent from it is frequently subject to
severe sanctions." (Unpublished manuscript)
THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION
To
understand how Sam applied this view of ruling elites to
contemporary America, we must turn to the work of James
Burnham, because Sam was very much influenced by Burnham's
theory of the managerial revolution.
The
theory has had some lasting influence and has sparked considerable
controversy. It is also very rich and complex theory, much
too complex to go into great detail here today. But Sam
agreed with several major parts of the theory, so we will
just cover those parts of the theory relevant to our discussion
today, albeit in a very general, perhaps oversimplified,
way.
The
core of the theory of the managerial revolution is that
the entrepreneurial or bourgeois elite that prevailed in
Western and American societies in the 19th century is being
replaced by a new elite of technically skilled "managers"
who will over time undermine the economic, political, and
cultural institutions, beliefs, and moral codes of bourgeois
society, and construct a new set of institutions and social
values that reflect the needs and interests of the managers.
We'll
examine the nature of those "managers" in just
a minute.
Sam
emphasized that the origins of managerial society lay in
the revolution of mass and scale in economics and population
that erupted in the last half of the 19th century and the
first part of the 20th century. The central characteristic
of that revolution consists in the vast and dramatic enlargement
of organized, civilized human activity -- that is, the growth
of mass populations concentrated in huge urban areas, the
development of large factories and offices for mass economic
production, the emergence of mass consumption by mass markets,
and other organized mass activities such as voting, electioneering,
communicating and entertaining.
The
inability of traditional capital markets to finance the
huge sums required for giant enterprises in the new mass
society -- such as railroads, for example -- helped spur
the growth of corporations that raised capital by selling
shares of ownership to a very large number of investors.
The
size and scope of these new economic projects obliged corporations
to hire and depend on technically trained professionals
-- that is, managers -- who understood the details and operations
of new technologies of economic production and possessed
the training and skills for organizing mass production and
distribution on a mass scale. The owners of the corporation
-- that is, the scattered shareholders -- possessd neither
the cohesion as a group nor the required skills to participate
in the day-to-day economic operations of the corporations.
One
of the main sources for Burnham's theory came from a work
by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means entitled "The Modern
Corporation and Private Property."
Berle
and Means found that independently owned business firms
were declining in numbers and importance in America, and
were being replaced by the managerial-style firms, that
is, the corporations in which the stock is owned by one
group while the operation and control are maintained by
a different group, the managers.
Berle
and Means noted that this separation between ownership and
control meant that those who operated and controlled the
means of production no longer had a vested interest in the
rights of the property of the owners. The managers of large
corporations therefore had no direct economic stake in opposing
a significant governmental role in the economy as much as
traditional entrepreneurial business firms had.
At
the same time, the natural tendency of government to grow
was no longer restrained with the same strength once displayed
by bourgeois economic forces that traditionally favored
limited government, but which were now in decline.
Burnham
explored the social ramifications of this separation of
control and ownership, and refined and extended the concept
of managerialism to other social institutions besides the
corporation. Managers, in Burnham's theory, were not only
the operating executives and production managers, but also
those bureaucratic administrators in government agencies
who shared the same skills and what Burnham called the same
"habits of mind."
Burnham
expanded the definition of manager to include not only the
board of directors of corporations, but also any professional
or executive who contributed to the technical control of
production, and by further extension, to any professional
whose expertise was essential to running any large, mass-scale
organization. Thus, to Burham and Francis, the manager can
be not only a corporate professional, but also a government
bureaucrat or administrator of any large organization concerned
with social and cultural affairs. What has come to distinguish
the new ruling elites is not their legal, formal ownership
of the means of production, but their proficiency and control
of the apparatus of economic, social, and governmental organizations.
Besides
extending the idea of the manager, Burnham expanded the
concept of technology to include a broader sense than is
usually understood. To Burnham, technology includes not
only the applications of physical science to economic production,
but also the applications of social science to human activity.
That includes such disciplines as public relations and advertising,
which more or less came to rely on human psychology and
other investigations into human behavior. Sam believed that
even "mass organizations themselves are a form of social
technology, and there are a number of more or less scientific
disciplines or technologies that facilitate the organization
of large numbers of people within single social structures."
Among
the new social structures of mass society are the bureaucratized
mass state and its manifold agencies affecting nearly every
aspect of human activity. In the economy, they are the mass
corporations and labor unions. They are also reflected in
society through giant universities and mass public education,
as well as mass media and communications systems designed
to reach millions, and mass associations and clubs whose
members also number in the millions.
Sam
summarized the social ramifications of the revolution this
way:
"The
large scale and complexity of mass organizations, and their
dependence on highly technical functions and the skills
that perform them, serve to create elites ... that differ
in composition, structure, mentality, and interests from
those that presided over the prescriptive civilizations
of Europe prior to the industrial and democratic revolutions
of the 18th century, and from those that ruled 19th century
bourgeois Europe and America." (Address to the Ludwig
von Mises Institute, 1991)
THE MANAGERIAL IDEOLOGY
As
we know, Sam believed that every ruling elite arrives with
its own ideology, and the new managerial ruling class was
no different. As a result, the new managerial elite came
into conflict not just with the old elite of independent
business owners that it was replacing, but also the old
ideas that the old elite represented.
In
a very general way, the old ideology of the bourgeois capitalist
society is represented by traditionalist, conservative forces.
And the new managerial ideology -- in the United States
-- is represented by modern liberalism.
The
conflict between them has had both political and cultural
consequences.
In
his book on Burnham, Power and History, Sam gives this description
of the political conflict:
"Politically,
traditional entreprenurial capitalism tended to promote
parliamentary government and a decentralized political structure.
Socially and intellectually, entreprenuerial capitalism
had been associated with individualism, with the nuclear
family, individualized religion, and an emphasis on individual
repsonsibility and action. Internationally, capitalism had
been associated with the nation-state.... All these institutions
and values expressed the economic and political interests
of the old entrepreneurial elite; they were justified in
terms of entrepreneurial ideologies, and they were now about
to be replaced by new and very different institutions and
values reflecting the ideologies and interests of the new
managerial class."
Under
the new system, managers shift power away from decentralized
parliamentary bodies and toward the administrative bureaus
of the expanded state. The executive branch of government
and its auxillaries in the bureaucracy work to undermine
and supercede the older assemblies such as state legislatures,
and local governments.
In
an unpublished note, Sam gave this general description of
the social and cultural conflict:
"When
one ruling class or elite gives way to a new one, the system
of morality, religion, manners and taste by which the one
legitimized its dominance also gives way to a new system
compatible with the interests of the new elite. From the
perspective of the old elite and its adherents, the transition
appears to be an abandonment of all morality, a period of
anarchy and the triumph of vulgarity. But what appears to
them in this light, will seem to the emerging elite and
its apologists to be a period of liberation, creativity,
and progress. Thus, the complaint of ... conservatives today
is that the family, patriotism, sexual morality, religion,
and common courtesy all are in a condition of absolute collapse.
What is collapsing however, is simply the system of legitimization
by which the bourgeois elite supported its social power..."
Sam
believed the new managerial elite displaced the older bourgeoisie
as the dominant force in politics, the economy, and culture
in the early twentieth century. The new elite found a rationale
for its aspirations in the idelogy of liberalism, which
offered justifications for the enlargement of the state
and its fusion with other mass organizations such as corporations
and unions, mass universities, large foundations, and the
mass media.
Sam
sometimes referred to the new ideology as managerial humanism.
This ideology has several salient features, but I'll mention
just three major pillars of it that were important to Sam's
analysis.
First,
managerial humanism promotes and feeds on social change.
Managerial humanism believes that human beings and their
social and economic activities can be managed by the same
skills and techniques applied to inert materials. In other
words, management skills can manipulate people just as management
skills can manipulate mass production and distribution of
goods and services. One need only have the right experts
who are able to skillfully apply the right technical principles
to achieve the desired end. Conservatives know this aspect
of managerial ideology as social engineering.
Sam
believed this drive for social change was at the heart of
the managerial system. In his essay, "State and Revolution,"
that appeared in Chronicles, he wrote,
"As
it is presently constituted, the mega-state exists for the
purpose of social manipulation. Its elite, trained in the
techniques of social engineering and social therapy, gains
power and budgetary resources by inventing social problems
and crises, and then designing and applying solutions for
them."
On
the importance of social change in the morality of this
ideology, Sam quoted Athur Schlesinger, Jr., one of the
leading proponents of progressive liberalism, who wrote
the following very revealing passage in his book, "The
Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom":
"The
reform of institutions becomes an indispensable part of
the enterprise of democracy. Given human imperfection, society
will continue imperfect. Problems will always torment us...
The good comes from the continuing struggle to try to solve
them, not from the vain hope of their solution."
What
he is saying, in effect, is that the good, or even goodness
itself, resides in the government programs themselves, and
not in their efficacy.
Second,
managerialism promotes cosmopolitanism. The system sees
human beings as interchangeable units. It is an abstract
view of man that tends to ignore or reject the importance
or significance of his historical and cultural roots in
differentiated groups and local communities. In fact, these
characteristics are often seen as impediments and barriers
to what the managerial system regards as social progress.
To the earlier elites of pre-managerial society, kinship,
social connections, and local loyalties were seen as being
of special importance in defining one's relationship to
the larger community and differentiating groups and persons.
By seeking to eliminate these differences through its cosmopolitan
universalism, managerialism tends to categorize or see men
through the use of a low common denominator, one that features
or emphasizes simply what all men have in common, which
is mainly their appetites.
Third,
managerial ideology believes expansion of the state and
the application of managerial skills to virtually every
facet of society is a public good, because managerial ideology
sees itself as socially therapeutic. Managerialism promotes
the use of state power and money as solutions to every social
and economic problem. This enhances the power of managers
by increasing their scope of operations, and creates new
managerial agencies that will require new managers, bureaucracies
and budgets.
In
a speech to the Ludwig von Mises Institute back in 1991,
here is how Sam brilliantly charactized this aspect of managerial
humanism:
"By
discovering ever new technical dimensions of normal social
life and redefining social life as a series of technical
problems, the elite -- in the state, economy, and culture
-- is able to locate new opportunities for extending its
power. In the early part of the century [he meant the 20th],
the elite discovered economic dislocations such as unemployment,
underproduction, labor disputes, and slums to which it could
apply its technical skills and by which its power could
be enlarged. More recently, the elite has discovered social
and cultural dislocations -- crime, drugs, family breakdown,
racism, homophobia, sexism, sexual harrassment, illiteracy,
homelessness, child abuse, spouse abuse, environmental abuse,
AIDS, gun ownership, smoking, junk food, alcohol, date rape,
Eurocentrism, etc., for which it has a bottomless supply
of sciences, therapies, and technologies from which it can
expect to gain even more power."
IMMIGRATION
Now
that brings us to the question of immigration and how it
serves the interests of the managerial system. No doubt
the managerial system can continue to operate just as it
has without mass immigration. But mass immigration provides
the opportunity to accelerate the drive of the managerial
system for more power and increasing social change.
Given
the nature of the system and its ideology, there are many
possible ways that mass immigration can be seen to serve
those interests, but I'll mention just four of the ways
that Sam Francis often stressed in his writings.
First,
immigration serves the interests of the ruling class by
fueling expansion of the state. Consider the impact on public
education. The more immigrants that come, the more the schools
will need bi-lingual education programs, for example. That
means bigger budgets and more managers to run the programs.
Just a few years ago, the California Research Center of
the University of California complained that Spanish speaking
students made up 80 percent of students with limited proficiency
in English. In a report, the Center noted that those students
routinely scored low on academic achievement tests. The
Center then suggested that the state of California will
have to spend more money to meet the needs of these immigrant
students. That means bigger budgets and expanded programs
that will have to be administered and managed.
Importing
large numbers of low-skilled workers has a similar effect
on the demand for government intervention nationally. The
Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., released
a study entitled, "The Impact of Welfare Reform on
Immigrant Welfare Use" and concluded that immigrant
use of public assistance continues to be significantly higher
than that of the native-born.
When
larger numbers of people receive the benefits of the welfare
state, it becomes increasingly difficult for political opponents
of the welfare state to argue for its dismantlement. As
the state creates more and more dependents, the constitutency
for it grows in power and influence.
There
are many, many other ways that immigration fuels the expansion
of the managerial state. The California Research Center,
which represents just one small managerial apparatus in
just one state, had plenty of recommendations to make to
deal with mass immigration, including the following -- all
of which call for expansion of the state:
Increase
the number of labor law enforcement personal to make sure
immigrants are not unfairly exploited;
Provide
for state-sponsored education to teach labor laws to immigrant
businessmen;
Expand
health care coverage for non-English speaking and poor immigrants;
Establish
state adult education programs for immigrants;
Expand
public school curricula to teach what they called "practical
life skills" for living in America, to help them integrate
into society;
Establish
state-funded community organizations to help protect immigrants'
rights
Transform
schools into neighborhood training centers in towns and
cities where immigrants have settled in large numbers;
Seek
a new state-federal partnership to ensure that the state
receives federal funding for immigration-impact assistance.
Many
of these recommendations are already being implemented,
not just in California, but througout the country.
Second,
immigration fuels the power, activism, and expansion of
left-wing community organizations and labor unions that
have great influence on, and important connections with,
the ruling class. With mass immigration, they will have
lots of community organizing to do, and marches and demonstrations
to plan in order to demand social justice and more of those
very same government programs I just mentioned. It also
provides the opportunity to those left-wing groups and organizations
to apply for more government grants to apply managerial
therapy to the social ills caused by importing low skilled
labor. Those groups, many of which are already federally
funded, include MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense
and Eduation Fund, LULAC, the League of United Latin American
Citizens, the National Council of La Raza, and countless
hundreds of local advocacy community groups scattered througout
the country. According to the late Rep. Charlie Norwood
of Georgia, The National Council of La Raza received as
much as $15 million last year from the federal government
to operate its various immigrant-related programs.
Third,
immigration augments the economic strength of a major social
and economic component of the ruling class, namely its corporate
constituency. The people pushing for more immigration in
the private sector are the people who stand to profit from
it. They include software giants such as Microsoft and other
high-tech corporations, the construction industry, the hotel
and restaurant business, and of course agribusiness, as
well as the national U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents
a variety of commercial interests.
In
2004, the Center for Immigration Studies issued a report
entitled, "Increasing the Supply of Labor Through Immigration."
It found what any free market economist would have suspected,
namely, that when you increase the supply of a commodity,
such as labor, the price falls. The study found that the
effects of mass immigration on wages and salaries were different
depending on which labor group was being examined. But overall,
immigration was providing business with cheaper labor. For
high school drop-outs, immigration lowered wages by 7.4
percent. For college graduates, 3.6 percent. For high school
graduates and those with some college, wages were lowered
at least 2 percent.
There's
no need to wonder why the Wall Street Journal calls for
abolishing America's borders.
Fourth,
mass immigration is used by the managerial system to undermine
and overthrow the remnants of the old traditional order
that it seeks to eradicate, thus enhancing its social power
and removing impediments to its continued expansion.
Sam
described the fourth use of immigration this way:
"Third
World immigration allows for the importation of a new underclass
and provides unglimpsed vistas of social manipulation in
the form of new opportunities for managing civil rights
and ethnic conflict... Government elites thus anticipate
using immigration as a fulcrum of bureaucratic power, and
they will have allies in other elites, public or private,
that can advance their own agenda of managing social change
and displacing traditional cultural institutions through
the care and feeding of immigrants. Hate crime laws, racial
senstivity courses, and anti-Western curricula are among
the instruments for imposing a new cosmopolitan cultural
hegemony and plowing under Euro-American patterns of culture."
In
response to the efforts by American elites to undermine
traditional American habits, values, and customs, Sam recommended
that conservatives must adopt an insurgent, rather than
a defensive strategy. Sam believed that the dominant social
and political elites in the U.S. today not only do nothing
to conserve what most of us regard as our traditional way
of life, but actually seek its destruction or are indifferent
to its survival. "If our culture is going to be conserved,"
he said, "we need to dethrone the dominant authorities
that threaten it." (Winning the Culture War, address
to the American Cause Foundation, 1993)
Whatever
the flaws or merits of Sam's theory of elite behavior and
the role of immigration, it remains an important contribution
to conservative thought and deserves serious study and attention.
