Increasingly, it seems as though the idea of multiculturalism is losing its place as the dominant paradigm of the world, even in the West. Putin claims liberalism has “become obsolete”1, while Merkel has said that multiculturalism has “utterly failed”2.
For brevity, we can take multiculturalism and liberalism to mean relatively open borders and immigration policies, on a very superficial level.
I’d like to argue that multiculturalism is not only desirable, but that it is inevitable.
First of all, let’s point out that the idea of any sort of monolithic culture is itself a total invention. Any human society has individuals as its base, upon which atomic then extended families are built, then tribes (formal or otherwise i.e. a “tribe” could be “people who are into yoga in your area”), and so on with increasingly large and complex networks. At each level, there is variety in culture, down to individual personalities. Culture at higher level networks, whether geographically or otherwise dileneated, are then the combination of various cultures in themselves. To think that there is a single thing as “German” or “Russian” is to deny the very process through which these concepts arose. It’s absurd i.e. simply not coherent with logic.
So we’ve hopefully shown that everything, really, is “multicultural”. Next, let’s pretend that we think national boundaries separate imaginary monolothic cultures. What happens if you enforce these boundaries and restrict the movement of people, so as to isolate these supposed monolothic cultures? You end up with no choice but to have economic autarky. This is because when parties trade, people interact. Closing borders means drastically limiting these interactions. The outcome would be to forfeit the benefits of trade like comparative advantage, and specialisation in larger unified markets. Even if one did not believe in the economic theory of free(er) trade, at the very least diversity of goods and service in any one country would plummet. Autarkies are both inefficient and restrict economic diversity.
One might then still argue that human interaction isn’t really required for trade. Borders could be shut to people, with robots and AI carrying out trade. In theory, this sounds plausible. But presumably, more complex trade interactions are beneficial. A fixed set of goods and services could automatically pass between countries, but this wouldn’t match the richness that emerges from people interacting, exploring and adapting to different markets. Furthermore, if robotic autonomous agents were ever to match this richness of interaction, they’d essentially be human or super-human - would borders really be closed in that case? Or closed to organic entities alone? Again, the conclusions are utterly absurd.
Alright, so everything is multicultural, and closing borders also has nonsensical economic consequences. Finally, I’d like to argue a more qualitative point: multiculturalism is simply desirable, because diversity is good. For whatever reasons, it’s kind of nice that different colors, sounds, and tastes exist. If you want a black and white (or just a black or white) world, sure, let’s be monolithic. But otherwise, realise that diversity is intrinsic to beauty and goodness. ‘Tis unwise to deny it.
Ultimately, the world will never be monolithic, nor will it be homogeneously multicultural. There will always be pockets of more uniform, or varied culture. The point is to let it emerge naturally. There are certainly arguments in favour of managing social and economic interactions to achieve certain outcomes, such as protecting a nascent industry, or local social norms. But this is merely pruning a splendid tree; not trying to denounce its existence.
Despite what Merkel, Putin, and others have said, multiculturalism is not dead. It is not dying. Because it cannot die. And I think that’s a good thing.