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Europe Where the Right and Left Converge
Historian Perry Anderson is one of the luminaries of the so-called Western Marxists, that is, Marxist theoreticians who were based in Western and Central Europe, rather than the Soviet Union. He’s now a professor of history and sociology at UCLA. He used to be the editor of the New Left Review. This pedigree, I should think, would be sufficient for most on Ricochet to consider calling in an exorcist.
But I’m going to ask you to read him anyway. Just one essay, actually. It’s a piece about the EU in Le Monde Diplomatique, titled “Why the System Will Still Win,” in which he predicts that the European center will hold and the EU will survive. This is an outcome that as a revolutionary he deplores, of course.
What struck me reading it was how similar his arguments against the EU, and against Europe’s center-right and center-left parties and coalitions, are to those I’ve heard here on Ricochet — another forum where many (not all) of our members seem devoutly to hope “the system” will lose, too.
In some places, he uses a different vocabulary than Americans on the right would use. But I’m not sure he’s meaningfully describing different concepts. For example, he relies heavily on the word “neoliberalism,” which he defines this as “deregulated financial flows, privatised services and escalating social inequality.” But I don’t think this definition succeeds in distinguishing “neoliberalism” from “capitalism.” The word, it seems to me, has simply taken the place of “capitalism” in the Left’s vocabulary because after the fall of the Soviet Union, it sounded antiquated — and clueless — to say that one was “against capitalism.”
When you read what he’s written, mentally replace the word “neoliberalism” in every case with “capitalism.” I’m curious to know where, and how, his analysis substantively differs from yours. I stress that I’m asking in good faith, and I hope you’ll read his article in the same spirit, with an open mind.
The whole article won’t take long to read, but I’ll point out some of the passages that struck me:
The term ‘anti-systemic movements’ was commonly used 25 years ago to characterise forces on the left in revolt against capitalism. Today, it has not lost relevance in the West, but its meaning has changed. The movements of revolt that have multiplied over the past decade no longer rebel against capitalism, but neoliberalism — deregulated financial flows, privatised services and escalating social inequality, that specific variant of the reign of capital set in place in Europe and America since the 1980s. The resultant economic and political order has been accepted all but indistinguishably by governments of the centre-right and centre-left, in accordance with the central tenet of la pensée unique, Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that ‘there is no alternative’. Two kinds of movement are now arrayed against this system; the established order stigmatises them, whether from the right or left, as the menace of populism.
These “movements of revolt” in Europe, I’ll add parenthetically, now receive financial and political support from both Russia and the United States. For example, the largest donors to Geert Wilders’ campaign, by far, were Americans.
Also parenthetically, while he’s right to say that financial deregulation and privatisation were policies championed by Margaret Thatcher, many people overestimate the extent of financial deregulation she championed, wrongly associating the kind of reforms she advocated with those that led to the 2007 financial crisis. As I argued in this piece for the Washington Post, that’s a myth.
Like many on Ricochet, Anderson holds the European Union to be an unaccountable, massive bureaucracy that robs national parliaments of their sovereignty and subordinates them to Germany’s will.
From monetary union (1990) to the Stability Pact (1997), then the Single Market Act (2011), the powers of national parliaments were voided in a supranational structure of bureaucratic authority shielded from popular will, just as the ultraliberal economist Friedrich Hayek had prophesied. With this machinery in place, draconian austerity could be imposed on helpless electorates, under the joint direction of the Commission and a reunified Germany, now the most powerful state in the union, where leading thinkers candidly announce its vocation as continental hegemon. Externally, over the same period, the EU and its members ceased to play any significant role in the world at variance with US directives, becoming the advance guard of neo-cold war policies towards Russia set by the US and paid for by Europe.
So it is no surprise that the ever more oligarchic cast of the EU, defying popular will in successive referendums and embedding budgetary diktats in constitutional law, should have generated so many movements of protest against it.
He reviews these forces in broad outline: In pre-enlargement Western Europe, protest movements of the far-right predominate. In post-enlargement Western Europe — Spain, Greece, and Ireland — protest movements of the far-left predominate. Italy has both.
He takes it as given that pooled sovereignty and the Continent’s domination by a peaceful, democratic Germany are undesirable. These are both points that I think need to be argued, not assumed; and I think they’re both wrong. But it’s his article, not mine, and I know many on Ricochet take his side of this argument.
All the significant movements of the far-right, he correctly notes, save Germany’s AfD, predate the economic crisis. Some have roots that date to the 1970s or earlier. But they grew in influence, he argues — and Syriza, M5S, Podemos and Momentum were born — as a direct result of the global financial crisis. This, in his view, is a reaction to “the structure of the neoliberal system,” which finds “its starkest, most concentrated expression in today’s EU,”
with its order founded on the reduction and privatisation of public services; the abrogation of democratic control and representation; and deregulation of the factors of production. All three are present at national level in Europe, as elsewhere, but they are of a higher degree of intensity at EU level, as the torture of Greece, trampling of referendums and scale of human trafficking attest. In the political arena, they are the overriding issues of popular concern, driving protests against the system over austerity, sovereignty and immigration. Anti-systemic movements are differentiated by the weight they attach to each — to which colour in the neoliberal palette they direct most hostility.
Movements of the far-right, he argues, now predominate because if their focus on immigration. But as he notes, and I agree, “this is typically linked (in France, Denmark, Sweden and Finland) not to denunciation but to defence of the welfare state; it is claimed the arrival of immigrants undermines this.”
In some countries, he argues, particularly France, the far-right has another advantage over the far-left:
The single currency and central bank, designed at Maastricht, have made the imposition of austerity and denial of popular sovereignty into a single system. Movements of the left may attack these as vehemently as any movement of the right, if not more so. But the solutions they propose are less radical. On the right, the FN and the Lega have clear remedies to the strains of the single currency and immigration: exit the euro and stop the influx. On the left, with isolated exceptions, no such unambiguous demands have ever been made. At best, the substitutes are technical adjustments to the single currency, too complicated to have much popular purchase, and vague, embarrassed allusions to quotas; neither is as readily intelligible to voters as the straightforward propositions of the right.
Now, what I think I detect in his tone is a reluctant admiration of the far-right: They’re the only ones, he seems to be saying, who are really willing to tear the whole system down and to use whatever levers need to be used to do it. We’ve seen a lot of this, historically: the far-left has always been vulnerable to co-option by the far-right; the segment of the population that for temperamental or socioeconomic reasons is drawn to revolution tends to be drawn by the group that promises it more convincingly, rather than the one that’s ideologically most pure. Modern nationalism was one of the earliest leftist ideologies; it emerged in the French Revolution. National Socialism was called National Socialism because that’s what it was. And so forth.
But to Anderson’s dismay — and to my relief — he concludes that anti-systemic parties have no hope of succeeding in Europe:
Polls now post record levels of voter disaffection with the EU. But, right or left, the electoral weight of anti-systemic movements remains limited. In the last European elections, the three most successful results for the right — UKIP, the FN and the Danish People’s Party — were around 25% of the vote. In national elections, the average figure across western Europe for all such right and left forces combined is about 15%. That percentage of the electorate poses little threat to the system; 25% can represent a headache, but the ‘populist danger’ of media alarm remains to date very modest.
I hope so, although I worry he may be wrong.
Now, he attributes the lack of enthusiasm for anti-systemic movements (or in more traditional vocabulary, the Revolution), to the widespread fear (justified, in my view) that it would make things much worse, economically:
The socio-economic status quo is widely detested. But it is regularly ratified at the polls with the re-election of parties responsible for it, because of fears that to upset the status, alarming markets, would bring worse misery.
He seems to dismiss this fear of “alarming markets” as a form of cowardice, whereas I see it as common sense. His seem to be standard far-left assumptions: the capitalist (or neoliberal) system should be destroyed; “the markets” and their judgments are bad things, rather than the only tool humanity’s ever successfully employed, ever, anywhere, to achieve First World standards of living; and the preference of most Europeans for “less misery” is somehow vaguely contemptible, given that it’s at odds with Revolution.
I’ll let you read his explanation for Brexit, which he believes will be the last success of the anti-systemic movement in Europe.
He then proceeds to write a paragraph that might have been written by a member of Ricochet:
Trump’s victory has thrown the European political class, centre-right and centre-left united, into outraged dismay. Breaking established conventions on immigration is bad enough. … [But] Trump’s lack of inhibition in these matters does not directly affect the union. What does, and is cause for far more serious concern, is his rejection of the ideology of free movement of the factors of production, and, even more so, his apparently cavalier disregard for NATO and his comments about a less belligerent attitude to Russia.
Whether Brexit or Trump succeed in tearing down the capitalist system that he so deplores, he writes, remains to be seen. But he concludes there’s little hope of revolution in the rest of Europe:
The established order is far from beaten … and, as Greece has shown, is capable of absorbing and neutralising revolts from whatever direction with impressive speed. Among the antibodies it has already generated are yuppie simulacra of populist breakthroughs (Albert Rivera in Spain, Emmanuel Macron in France), inveighing against the deadlocks and corruptions of the present, and promising a cleaner and more dynamic politics of the future, beyond the decaying parties.
There are some obvious differences between his view of Europe and those I’ve seen here. He views Europe as the hellish apotheosis of capitalism, whereas many on Ricochet seem persuaded it’s an exemplar of a socialism no less horrifying than the Soviet Union.
It’s a lot closer to the first than the second. I saw the Soviet Union with my own eyes, and I live in Europe: Europe is nothing like the Soviet Union. Europe is tremendously capitalist and prosperous by comparison with most of the rest of the world. I think this is a good thing. There’s a lot of room for reform, but a revolution, anywhere in Europe, would be insane.
This, I’d say, is the difference between the conservative view and the populist or far-right view. My view: Revolutions never deliver on their promises and result in something far worse than what preceded them. (And if I thought that before, I think it twice as much since the Arab Spring.) Don’t tear down a fence until you know why it was built in the first place. In other words: It’s insane to dismiss as irrelevant the reasons the EU was built, and particularly to dismiss as irrelevant Europe’s history as the most bloodthirsty, aggressive and violent continent in human history. Changes to any political system, especially in an ecosystem as prone to war as Europe’s, should be made gradually and incrementally. If the EU is to be dismantled, it should be done as slowly as it was assembled.
Anderson concludes that the Left must become more radical if it’s to have any hope of destroying the system in Europe:
For anti-systemic movements of the left in Europe, the lesson of recent years is clear. If they are not to go on being outpaced by movements of the right, they cannot afford to be less radical in attacking the system, and must be more coherent in their opposition to it. That means facing the probability the EU is now so path-dependent as a neoliberal construction that reform of it is no longer seriously conceivable. It would have to be undone before anything better could be built, either by breaking out of the current EU, or by reconstructing Europe on another foundation, committing Maastricht to the flames. Unless there is a further, deeper economic crisis, there is little likelihood of either.
I don’t believe committing Maastricht (or anything, for that matter) “to the flames” is apt to result in “something better” being built. Ever.
I’d like to know — and again, I’m asking this in good faith, I’m genuinely curious: If you believe the destruction of the EU and the far-right have something to offer Europe, why? Have you lost faith in the kind of conservatism I describe, and if so, why? If you’ve lost confidence in capitalism, why? (I think many have, in the wake of the financial crisis, and not without cause.) Are the steps in your argument very different from Anderson’s? If so, where?
Published in General
That’s…that’s not how it works….
Alright I finally slogged through the bloody thing. Here are some thoughts:
Agreement
We both recognize that the EU is unrepresentative and unaccountable.
We both think that’s not terribly healthy.
Disagreement
At bottom, he sees the unrepresentative elite imposing a project that he regards as too (neo)liberal, while I see it imposing a project that is not (neo)liberal enough.
He objects to privatization, and an (erstwhile) retrenchment of the welfare state.
I object to heavy handed regulation, and a still massive welfare state.
He sees post-1970s capitalism as a glass half empty, producing stagnation and inequality. I see it as half full, producing prosperity and innovation.
He decries austerity, I applaud living a little closer to “within your means.”
He loathes US leadership in the world and European complicity in it, I find it the best of a lot of imperfect options.
(cont.)
(cont.)
Moreover, in many cases we simply frame things differently – the way the NYT and NRO can write the exact same story with the same facts using entirely different words, with entirely different shades of meaning, thereby creating entirely different impressions of the same circumstances (compare, e.g. “austerity” and “miserliness” with “thrift” and “prudence”).
I hope that answers Claire’s last question about where my views differ from the author’s.
As to her others, yes-ish, I believe the destruction or at least dramatic constraint of the power of the EU offers something to Europe, for reasons I hope I’ve made clear. I am not sure I am a fan of either the far right or the far left’s programs for doing so though. I have not lost faith in capitalism, and I think the far right has, and the far left never had it.
In your mind
This sums up the whole debate in one clause.
Responding to some of @claire‘s or thoughts,
Usually, but not always. Consider the European “revolutions” that ended the Cold War. Consider also the American Revolution: the Americas already had state legislatures and political leaders who led the revolt, the revolution was really a secession, and the revolt seeked to undo the policies of the preceding 25 years, not the entire basis of government.
I view NATO, not the EU, as the guarantor of European peace, and that peace was minutes away from war until 1991. Based on my (puny compared to your) knowledge of European history, the times when Europe has been at peace is when allied against foreign threat (Crusades, Cold War) or when war is agreed upon as terrible (post-Napoleon, between WWI and WWII, and post-Cold War). Both apply now. I think with or without the EU, the European countries will have strong incentives to work together against Putin and radical Islamism, and war (if it comes) will be against them, not intra-European war.
Point well made.
This could be the topic of a full article. I would like to learn more about this.
As for the complaints of rent-seeking companies, do they not merely reflect a gradual transition from regulatory capture by way of national government to the same by international government? It’s the same game, but the players (companies) lose their lobbying investments in national officials when needing to appeal rather to EU officials.
Maybe. America is used to being a superpower, but Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore are small countries, at least semi-independent from superpowers (China with its “1 China, 2 systems” arrangement), and they get pretty good trade deals. I suspect if dealing with Latvia was good business, Latvia would get good business. And if it isn’t, I suspect being part of the EU just gets it enough scraps from Germany to shut them up about it -see Greece’s complaints. I am not suggesting that the relative economic weakness of Greece and (potentially, I haven’t actually looked) Latvia are Germany’s fault -only that that if they are weak, it is not obvious to me that being a weak member of the EU is any real advantage over being a weak member not in the EU, and it certainly isn’t an advantage over being a strong member out of the EU.
No, in the real world. Maybe the EU made a mistake in admitting Greece maybe it didn’t, but the flaw lies in Greece’s failure to adhere to the standards required for EU membership, not in the EU accepting a new member that agrees to its terms.
Because every single one of them is on a major trade rout, were historically free ports and most importantly – remain basically free ports to this day.
@Claire your worry over intra-European war is completely unfounded. Yes, Europe was a very violent and war ridden place in the past. Now there is absolutely no potential for European powers (including Russia) to engage in violent conflict with one another. The reason is simple – demographics. Europe and (Russia) don’t have the excess of young males that enables violent conflict.
The Muslim world does, which is why Europe is in tremendous danger and the EU policy of unrestricted immigration and non-assimilation is the heart of the problem.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the caveat for admittance into the EU placed on these countries was that they comport their future business in a way that would bring about compliance with EU regulations. They failed to do that.
Goalpost moving. The claim was America enjoys being a superpower, and so has no conception of the value of the EU. These are not superpowers. The point is rebutted. Even with the new standard, the claim doesn’t hold up. Latvia could easily become a free port -and was in fact, once part of the Hanseatic League -evidence it didn’t need a big brother to negotiate its trade deals 200 years ago. There is nothing stopping it from doing so again. I continue to see no particular reason to think being a member of the EU is necessary for Latvia to get good trade deals.
Interesting timing in this thread, as earlier this month marked the rise of crazed nationalist movements that threatened the stability of Europe for decades to come. Things would be so much simpler today if those upstarts hadn’t been so reckless.
I am willing to believe that Anderson is a pretty good Marxist historian, but he is a very dull read because, like all Marxists, he attempts to explain history as a product of impersonal, sweeping forces, whose names and meanings are a jargon understood mostly by historians like himself. What might “austerity” mean to Anderson–who knows. I suspect it means a lousy economy presided over by inept and corrupt statists; overtaxed workers; low birth rates. And he’s probably right that European nationalist movements are not hostile to socialism of some kind. The same could be said of the left, which will use nationalist propaganda when it suits their agenda. Both left and right, I suspect, know their dissatisfaction is due to the socialism they cling to. It’s a real problem if Europe’s finest minds don’t write about individual liberty and why it’s valuable. They don’t seem to have a vocabulary to express it–they’re too cynical.
I don’t know that it’s true of many, but it’s true of me.
When I think of the Soviet Union I think of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. When I think of the EU I think of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It has been many years since I’ve read either book, but I was recently reminded of this comparison when reading Ryszard Legutko’s The Demon in Democracy : Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies. I thought Legutko had spelled it out in his introduction, but a look at the place where he mentioned Huxley’s book suggests that this is my comparison, not his.
Just because people are happy and prosperous doesn’t mean they aren’t living in a hellhole where it’s impossible to be human. I wouldn’t think any better of the USSR if socialism had been built there without the killings and poverty.
That’s just not true: While England, per se, has no immigration policy, the UK certainly has one that’s independent of the EU. In fact, this was one of the biggest misunderstandings that led to Brexit. The UK had, independently, decided to allow unlimited immigration from the newly-joined East European members of the EU (the A8), whereas other countries, like Austria and Germany, independently decided to protect their labor markets and impose transitional controls. But the bulk of immigration to the UK doesn’t come from the EU at all: It comes from the US and the Commonwealth. (Yes, the top country on this list is an EU country — Ireland — but this has always been true.) If people in the UK were fed up with immigration, it was their own Parliament they should have blamed. (Politicians do tend to blame the EU for problems they should be solving — it’s always a convenient excuse for unpopular policies that they want to ram through anyway.)
Of course it gave it say over its fisheries. Britain’s negotiations about fishery policy are the stuff of legend. Do you seriously think that now that the UK is out of the EU, it will no longer have fishing-rights disputes with those countries that need a negotiated settlement? Fish don’t know they’re British fish: They migrate in waters shared with EU member states. So the UK now has to negotiate this all over again, but this time at a severe disadvantage. And when it’s done, its fishermen won’t have access to the (enormous) single market. Of all products that Britain might be able to sell in the hypothetical terrific trade deals it’s going to sign with other countries, fish are among the least likely to succeed: unless they’re frozen, fish need to be sold rapidly. Geography matters. Singapore isn’t a good market for fresh fish: The cost of flying them there means they’ll be obliterated by local producers. Even if British producers plan to compete internationally on frozen fish, they’ll be competing with countries where labor’s a lot cheaper.
The EU has done no such thing. Some EU countries have, indeed, conformed with their obligations under the 1951 Convention on Refugees, which has nothing to do with the EU. Britain remains a signatory to that treaty and its protocols. So does the United States, by the way.
So here, it sounds, is where you agree with Perry Anderson?
Okay, this helps. I see the place where we disagree. I think “happy and prosperous” matter a great deal, and nothing about the EU leads me to say, “This is a hellhole where it’s impossible to be human.” (What exactly is it about the EU that makes you say that? What does it mean to you to “be human?”) I would very certainly think better of the USSR had it been built without the killings and poverty. I rank things like “absence of mass murder” and “prosperity” very high on my list of “qualities that make a country a good place to live.”
I’m not getting it — I’m sure you’re aware that those countries didn’t want to be part of the Soviet Union, but did want to be part of the European Union. And Ukrainians are right now dying in a conflict that began because they wanted to take the first steps toward joining the EU. How do you account for that if your assumption is that they’re the same kind of thing?
It’s a deal.
This is not a complete answer but 1) there is not universal agreement on what happiness is, and 2) as Professor Schmidt explained to me, “Germans aren’t happy unless they’re miserable.”
I don’t know if I would have preferred living in the Soviet Union of the 1960s to the EU of the present time. I never lived in the former, and I now visit my daughter in a EU country every so often. And it’s not that I don’t know the horror stories. I’ve read Solzhenitsyn, Applebaum, and Bukovsky, among many others. I’ve also read Legutko’s book about Sweden, and find it horrifying — horrifying to see how far the U.S. and the EU have gone in that direction.
One thing about the 1960s, though, is that I was younger then.
I should add that if I was faced with the kind of treatment that Bukovsky faced, I would probably get away from there and go to the EU if I could, and forever afterward hate myself for it.
outlaws6688 (View Comment):
What a system that gave England no say over its immigration policy.
That’s just not true: While England, per se, has no immigration policy, the UK certainly has one that’s independent of the EU. In fact, this was one of the biggest misunderstandings that led to Brexit. The UK had, independently, decided to allow unlimited immigration from the newly-joined East European members of the EU (the A8), whereas other countries, like Austria and Germany, independently decided to protect their labor markets and impose transitional controls. But the bulk of immigration to the UK doesn’t come from the EU at all: It comes from the US and the Commonwealth. (Yes, the top country on this list is an EU country — Ireland — but this has always been true.) If people in the UK were fed up with immigration, it was their own Parliament they should have blamed. (Politicians do tend to blame the EU for problems they should be solving — it’s always a convenient excuse for unpopular policies that they want to ram through anyway.)
Wow, that’s why Cameron had to go to to the EU and Germany about every other month to negotiate the numbers on how many immigrants and refugees it had to admit. You love undemocratic systems so much you now are drinking the Cool Aid.
Clair, I think you snipped the part where Reticulator said the EU brought to mind Huxley’s Brave New World, which I think explains a lot. I’m no fan of the EU, but that doesn’t even work as hyperbole, as anyone who’s both read the book and spent a little time in the EU can tell you. I think, Reticulator, you must be reacting to a caricature in your mind rather than the actual place. It is a long, long way from the Brave New World.
How about anti-semitism?
How about safety? Safety is a human need that is not being fulfilled in Europe due mass migration which lead to no go zones, terrorism, and in some cases mass rapes. Oh but I forgot, these aren’t happening, they are just made up figments of the far right’s racism.
Sure, the EU is a long way from the Brave New World. And the USSR was a long way from Animal Farm, if you’re looking for actual pig DNA in the Politburo. And Trump is a long way from anything resembling a fascist.
They’re all far apart. But for apt comparisons, I would rate USSR/Animal Farm at the top, with the EU/Brave New World in second place, and Trump/fascism a distant third.
My point is independence is good. Period.
You favor stability over independence. The breakup of the Soviet Union destabilized Europe by your definition. By your definition it made war more likely. There’d be no conflict in Crimea if Ukraine had resisted their irresponsible, far-right, nationalist urges stayed in their nice, stable union. The Baltics would not be worried about Russian aggression if they had just resisted the urge to upset the apple cart 27 years ago.
Similarly, I’m sure independence weakened the 13 British colonies in North America in the 1770’s. Do you think that was a mistake?
The desire for safety would be an argument against my comparison. If Europe has become an unsafe place, that would also be an argument against my comparison.