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
Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 219 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    Jamie Lockett (View Comment):
    James, if human beings are basically descent (an odd admission coming from a Christian) then why aren’t you an anarcho-capitalist? The Libertarian idea that rational selfinterest and social interaction can force human beings to act against their instincts in no way inflicts with the libertarian lament that governments monopoly on force is abused in arenas beyond the extremely limited role for government in civil society.

    People will mostly try to do the right thing. Hegemonic forces mostly exercise authority by shaping what we understand that to be. Absent government, other institutions become hegemonic and societies dominated by warlords and gangs tend to be less pleasant to live in than those dominated by states.

    The people on Ricochet who advocate for genocide in the Middle East, or for depriving transgenders of generally available government support, or for using the ugliest tactics of the left against them aren’t doing so because they’re abandoning their moral structures but because that’s an acceptable outcome from those structures. A decade ago more of them would have felt comfortable expressing the “I’m disgusted by this, so the government should punish them” stuff they now apply to transgender Americans to gay Americans, but they don’t now, with government playing a substantial role in that change.  Decriminalizing sodomy legitimized it in a social and moral as well as a literal sense.

    In a similar way, liberals will whine and moan about Trump and conservatives did about Obama, but they don’t seriously reject Presidential authority. State formed ideology is often awful, but liberal democratic state formed ideology beats every other alternative. Totalitarian state formed ideologies are not always better than the alternative of warlordism, although they often are.

    • #211
  2. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    For my understanding in long form, I’m pretty close to Fukuyama’s The Origins Of Political Order.

    • #212
  3. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    James Of England (View Comment):
    For my understanding in long form, I’m pretty close to Fukuyama’s The Origins Of Political Order.

    Yeah, but he says everyone wants to get to Denmark.  It’s maybe not as bad as Sweden, but that’s where I don’t want to go.

    • #213
  4. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    James Of England (View Comment):
    For my understanding in long form, I’m pretty close to Fukuyama’s The Origins Of Political Order.

    Yeah, but he says everyone wants to get to Denmark. It’s maybe not as bad as Sweden, but that’s where I don’t want to go.

    Origins goes as far as the French Revolution, but no further. Life in the 21st century US is much more like life in 21st century Denmark, than in 18th century anywhere, let alone the medieval and ancient focus of the book.

    Even in the next volume, he doesn’t mean the US should be more like the Danes,  but Congo. Ragging on Denmark is like waiting until you work out if it’s Truman or Ike in power before responding to which side were the good guys in the Cold War.

    • #214
  5. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    James Of England (View Comment):
    Even in the next volume, he doesn’t mean the US should be more like the Danes, but Congo. Ragging on Denmark is like waiting until you work out if it’s Truman or Ike in power before responding to which side were the good guys in the Cold War.

    You make the Truman-Ike debate seem like one of great significance.

    • #215
  6. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    James Of England (View Comment):
    Even in the next volume, he doesn’t mean the US should be more like the Danes, but Congo. Ragging on Denmark is like waiting until you work out if it’s Truman or Ike in power before responding to which side were the good guys in the Cold War.

    You make the Truman-Ike debate seem like one of great significance.

    If I’m genuinely being unclear I should do better. “Getting to Denmark” would mean exactly the same thing if it was labeled “Getting to America” or “Getting to Iowa”. It’s about building a stable liberal democratic order of the sort that Denmark and Iowa share, with free markets, a reliable judicial system, civil rights, education, and such. A functioning modern society. To us, the difference between Denmark and Iowa is huge, but if Truman were running against Ike it would seem pretty important to me who won. The distance only becomes trivial if it’s compared to Stalin or Somalia.

    • #216
  7. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    James Of England (View Comment):
    If I’m genuinely being unclear I should do better. “Getting to Denmark” would mean exactly the same thing if it was labeled “Getting to America” or “Getting to Iowa”. It’s about building a stable liberal democratic order of the sort that Denmark and Iowa share, with free markets, a reliable judicial system, civil rights, education, and such. A functioning modern society. To us, the difference between Denmark and Iowa is huge, but if Truman were running against Ike it would seem pretty important to me who won. The distance only becomes trivial if it’s compared to Stalin or Somalia.

    By not wanting to get to Denmark, I want to get away from many of the ways in which America has already become like Denmark.

    It’s analogous to what happened to indigenous peoples when they were conquered by the Euro-Americans.  Yes, the Brave New World was more of a functioning, modern society, with more material prosperity and “happiness.  There was less killing, and justice was more systematic. It was also a world in which they could not bear to live.  There was too much of human relationships that was lost. Many of them resorted to alcohol in order to quicken their departure.

    By the way, in my recent re-reading of Brave New World I saw that Huxley consciously worked the analogy with indigenous peoples into the book.  That was a point whose significance had completely escaped me when I last read the book, decades ago.

    • #217
  8. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    The overwhelming bulk of Native Americans died; there are likely fewer alive today (about 5 million, including both single and mixed race) than were alive in 1492.

    After that, there were centuries of abuse and ethnic cleansing. They drink abusively primarily because they’re genetically prone to alcoholism rather than as an unbelievably slow suicide effort. Their position is not our position.

    That said, if anyone wants to trade their life in America for one overseas with more meaning (and it’s not like I don’t see the appeal; I’ve generally found developing country work more rewarding),  it’s not exactly hard to make that exchange. Few do because most people recognize that it’s better to be in the West.

    Still, if you think that the migrant flow is in the wrong direction, then you’re right that Fukuyama is probably not for you (I believe that Jamie is more fond of America and the West, even with its government, than of other places and that it is an informed preference for him, too).

    Where do you choose to live?

    • #218
  9. Umbra Fractus Inactive
    Umbra Fractus
    @UmbraFractus

    James Of England (View Comment):
    Using a gun for self defense is not the same thing as using a gun for law enforcement. If you’re suggesting that the problem is that we cannot attack and murder policemen, then describing them as men with guns is much more relevant than I thought.

    The point is that any criminal could conceivably be the next Michael Brown. That the majority of them choose not to escalate does not change the fact that the threat is still there.

    • #219
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.