This article argues that the historic “class compromise” achieved by social democracy within the framework of the nation-state—often celebrated for delivering material security and social equality—has not resolved the fundamental contradictions of capitalism. On the contrary, its very success has concealed and intensified three endogenous systemic crises:
a spatial crisis (welfare regimes sustained by the externalization of exploitation and ecological costs),
a temporal crisis (the structural conflict between welfare commitments and growth dependency), and
a crisis of meaning (value erosion and existential disorientation within affluent societies).

Contemporary migration is not an isolated policy challenge but the most visible manifestation of these intersecting crises: it represents the bodily return of global inequality, the fiscal and political acceleration of stalled growth regimes, and the collapse of the nation-state’s imagined cultural boundaries. Migration thus exposes the historical limits of the nation-state as a political container for managing a global capitalist system.

The article contends that political struggle has irreversibly shifted from material distribution toward contests over meaning—identity, narratives, ways of life—and toward the creative reconstruction of institutions. Incremental reformism is no longer sufficient. Viable futures require confronting the interconnected nature of these crises and experimenting with post-growth economies, transnational democratic governance, and flexible forms of community beyond the nation-state.

Keywords: social democracy; nation-state; migration politics; post-materialism; global exploitation; politics of meaning

In the contemporary world of large-scale human mobility, a Hayekian metaphor appears unexpectedly apt: if borders were fully open, migration flows would constitute the ultimate vote on the quality of political and social institutions. Northern and Western European social democracies have become prime destinations of this “vote,” seemingly confirming their success in providing material security, social trust, and civic dignity.

Yet a paradox emerges. These same societies—often held up as institutional ideals—are internally marked by anxiety: eroding value consensus, deepening political polarization, and intense cultural and economic backlash against migration. The contradiction points toward a deeper truth. The material success of social democracy within the nation-state has not brought history to an end; instead, it has illuminated a set of structural crises that cannot be resolved at the level of material distribution alone.

Migration politics stands at the epicenter of this convergence. It is not the cause of the crisis, but its most legible symptom.

Social democracy represents a historically unprecedented compromise: within national borders, democratic politics temporarily tamed capital through taxation, redistribution, and social protection. However, this compromise rests on three interdependent foundations that have become increasingly unstable.

The ecological sustainability and social equality of welfare states are structurally dependent on the externalization of low-value production, environmental degradation, and resource extraction beyond national borders. This is not an accidental byproduct of globalization but a systemic requirement of global capitalism.

Domestic “class peace” has been achieved through transnational hierarchies of exploitation and the accumulation of ecological debt in the Global South. Spatial externalization temporarily removes contradictions from domestic politics, but it simultaneously concentrates inequality and resentment at the global level—eventually returning through climate disruption, supply-chain instability, and migration flows.

The welfare state functions as a sophisticated distributive machine whose viability presupposes continuous economic growth. Once growth slows—due to demographic aging, diminishing technological dividends, or recurrent crises—the fiscal basis of social compromise erodes.

A structural contradiction emerges between austerity and entrenched welfare expectations, generating crises of political legitimacy. Social democracy did not transcend capitalism’s logic of accumulation; it merely postponed its contradictions in time. On a finite planet, the promise of infinite growth ultimately collides with physical and social limits.

As material deprivation recedes, questions long suppressed by scarcity—alienation at work, lack of autonomy, erosion of community, and existential meaninglessness—reassert themselves. Traditional redistributive politics proves ill-equipped to address these post-material concerns.

Discontent in affluent societies increasingly stems not from absolute poverty but from a pervasive loss of agency over one’s life trajectory within systems governed by consumption, performance metrics, and competitive self-optimization. This “poverty of meaning” is the psychic byproduct of material success itself.

Migration is not an external shock to otherwise stable societies; it is an endogenous outcome of the three crises described above.

• As spatial return: migration embodies the global center–periphery hierarchy in human form. It represents the corporeal manifestation of global inequality and a living indictment of externalized exploitation.

• As temporal accelerator: migrants’ demands on housing, education, and healthcare intensify fiscal pressure in societies already strained by stagnating growth, compressing future crises into the present.

• As a crisis of meaning: cultural difference directly confronts the nation-state’s imagined community. When material privilege can no longer be monopolized, struggles over identity—“who belongs” and “who we are”—become politically explosive, fueling populism and exclusionary nationalism.

Migration thus exposes the fatal limitation of the social democratic project: it attempts to solve a globally produced systemic problem within the closed container of the nation-state. When the container fails, contradictions erupt in visceral and emotional forms.

Under these conditions, political conflict has undergone an irreversible transformation.

Struggle now extends beyond workplaces and parliaments into culture, algorithmic information systems, everyday lifestyles, and bodily autonomy. The central stakes are no longer merely wages or redistribution, but narrative authority, cognitive sovereignty, and control over life trajectories.

The unified political subject of the industrial working class has dissolved. In its place are fluid, often conflicting coalitions organized around ecological survival, gender equality, local autonomy, or nationalist identity. Consensus formation has become structurally difficult.

Political conflict increasingly asks foundational questions:
What constitutes a good and sustainable life in a post-growth future?
How should political responsibility be distributed in a world of global capital, data flows, and human mobility?
What democratic forms are possible when sovereignty is eroded by transnational corporations and digital platforms?

The material compromise achieved by social democracy within the nation-state can no longer resolve the spatial, temporal, and existential crises it helped generate. It functioned as a transitional formation—stabilizing capitalism while pushing its contradictions into more complex phases.

The future does not lie in nostalgic border fortification or in futile pursuits of higher growth, but in confronting the systemic interdependence of these crises and initiating a deeper civilizational transformation:

• Economically, by exploring post-growth and steady-state models, strengthening local and cooperative circuits, and internalizing global externalities through just supply-chain alliances.

• Politically, by experimenting with post-national democratic arrangements, multi-layered citizenship, and decision-making institutions aligned with the scale of capital and human mobility.

• Culturally, by cultivating flexible meaning-making networks rooted in local communities yet grounded in universal dignity—capable of accommodating plural identities while restoring agency and belonging.

This marks a paradigmatic shift in political imagination: from managing material compromise toward creating new institutions and shared meanings. History no longer promises a homogeneous welfare utopia; instead, it challenges humanity to construct a more complex, freer, and more responsible common future—without a map.

This article argues that the historic “class compromise” achieved by social democracy within the framework of the nation-state—often celebrated for delivering material security and social equality—has not resolved the fundamental contradictions of capitalism. On the contrary, its very success has concealed and intensified three endogenous systemic crises:
a spatial crisis (welfare regimes sustained by the externalization of exploitation and ecological costs),
a temporal crisis (the structural conflict between welfare commitments and growth dependency), and
a crisis of meaning (value erosion and existential disorientation within affluent societies).

Contemporary migration is not an isolated policy challenge but the most visible manifestation of these intersecting crises: it represents the bodily return of global inequality, the fiscal and political acceleration of stalled growth regimes, and the collapse of the nation-state’s imagined cultural boundaries. Migration thus exposes the historical limits of the nation-state as a political container for managing a global capitalist system.

The article contends that political struggle has irreversibly shifted from material distribution toward contests over meaning—identity, narratives, ways of life—and toward the creative reconstruction of institutions. Incremental reformism is no longer sufficient. Viable futures require confronting the interconnected nature of these crises and experimenting with post-growth economies, transnational democratic governance, and flexible forms of community beyond the nation-state.

Keywords: social democracy; nation-state; migration politics; post-materialism; global exploitation; politics of meaning

In the contemporary world of large-scale human mobility, a Hayekian metaphor appears unexpectedly apt: if borders were fully open, migration flows would constitute the ultimate vote on the quality of political and social institutions. Northern and Western European social democracies have become prime destinations of this “vote,” seemingly confirming their success in providing material security, social trust, and civic dignity.

Yet a paradox emerges. These same societies—often held up as institutional ideals—are internally marked by anxiety: eroding value consensus, deepening political polarization, and intense cultural and economic backlash against migration. The contradiction points toward a deeper truth. The material success of social democracy within the nation-state has not brought history to an end; instead, it has illuminated a set of structural crises that cannot be resolved at the level of material distribution alone.

Migration politics stands at the epicenter of this convergence. It is not the cause of the crisis, but its most legible symptom.

Social democracy represents a historically unprecedented compromise: within national borders, democratic politics temporarily tamed capital through taxation, redistribution, and social protection. However, this compromise rests on three interdependent foundations that have become increasingly unstable.

The ecological sustainability and social equality of welfare states are structurally dependent on the externalization of low-value production, environmental degradation, and resource extraction beyond national borders. This is not an accidental byproduct of globalization but a systemic requirement of global capitalism.

Domestic “class peace” has been achieved through transnational hierarchies of exploitation and the accumulation of ecological debt in the Global South. Spatial externalization temporarily removes contradictions from domestic politics, but it simultaneously concentrates inequality and resentment at the global level—eventually returning through climate disruption, supply-chain instability, and migration flows.

The welfare state functions as a sophisticated distributive machine whose viability presupposes continuous economic growth. Once growth slows—due to demographic aging, diminishing technological dividends, or recurrent crises—the fiscal basis of social compromise erodes.

A structural contradiction emerges between austerity and entrenched welfare expectations, generating crises of political legitimacy. Social democracy did not transcend capitalism’s logic of accumulation; it merely postponed its contradictions in time. On a finite planet, the promise of infinite growth ultimately collides with physical and social limits.

As material deprivation recedes, questions long suppressed by scarcity—alienation at work, lack of autonomy, erosion of community, and existential meaninglessness—reassert themselves. Traditional redistributive politics proves ill-equipped to address these post-material concerns.

Discontent in affluent societies increasingly stems not from absolute poverty but from a pervasive loss of agency over one’s life trajectory within systems governed by consumption, performance metrics, and competitive self-optimization. This “poverty of meaning” is the psychic byproduct of material success itself.

Migration is not an external shock to otherwise stable societies; it is an endogenous outcome of the three crises described above.

• As spatial return: migration embodies the global center–periphery hierarchy in human form. It represents the corporeal manifestation of global inequality and a living indictment of externalized exploitation.

• As temporal accelerator: migrants’ demands on housing, education, and healthcare intensify fiscal pressure in societies already strained by stagnating growth, compressing future crises into the present.

• As a crisis of meaning: cultural difference directly confronts the nation-state’s imagined community. When material privilege can no longer be monopolized, struggles over identity—“who belongs” and “who we are”—become politically explosive, fueling populism and exclusionary nationalism.

Migration thus exposes the fatal limitation of the social democratic project: it attempts to solve a globally produced systemic problem within the closed container of the nation-state. When the container fails, contradictions erupt in visceral and emotional forms.

Under these conditions, political conflict has undergone an irreversible transformation.

Struggle now extends beyond workplaces and parliaments into culture, algorithmic information systems, everyday lifestyles, and bodily autonomy. The central stakes are no longer merely wages or redistribution, but narrative authority, cognitive sovereignty, and control over life trajectories.

The unified political subject of the industrial working class has dissolved. In its place are fluid, often conflicting coalitions organized around ecological survival, gender equality, local autonomy, or nationalist identity. Consensus formation has become structurally difficult.

Political conflict increasingly asks foundational questions:
What constitutes a good and sustainable life in a post-growth future?
How should political responsibility be distributed in a world of global capital, data flows, and human mobility?
What democratic forms are possible when sovereignty is eroded by transnational corporations and digital platforms?

The material compromise achieved by social democracy within the nation-state can no longer resolve the spatial, temporal, and existential crises it helped generate. It functioned as a transitional formation—stabilizing capitalism while pushing its contradictions into more complex phases.

The future does not lie in nostalgic border fortification or in futile pursuits of higher growth, but in confronting the systemic interdependence of these crises and initiating a deeper civilizational transformation:

• Economically, by exploring post-growth and steady-state models, strengthening local and cooperative circuits, and internalizing global externalities through just supply-chain alliances.

• Politically, by experimenting with post-national democratic arrangements, multi-layered citizenship, and decision-making institutions aligned with the scale of capital and human mobility.

• Culturally, by cultivating flexible meaning-making networks rooted in local communities yet grounded in universal dignity—capable of accommodating plural identities while restoring agency and belonging.

This marks a paradigmatic shift in political imagination: from managing material compromise toward creating new institutions and shared meanings. History no longer promises a homogeneous welfare utopia; instead, it challenges humanity to construct a more complex, freer, and more responsible common future—without a map.