Phoenix from the ashes
The European idea is dying of its own contradictions, battered from the west by American dynamism and from the east by the emergence of India and China, which are gradually relegating our continent to the role of a minor economic and political player. The resurgence of nationalistic sentiment, the Greek crisis and the collapse of the euro are good examples of these tensions. Suffering from divisions, the absence of a common government and mass unemployment, the noble European project built on the ruins of the Second World War is sinking, coming to look more and more like a Potemkin village. For half a century, the Old World has been tormented by regret. Brooding on its past crimes – slavery, imperialism, fascism and communism – it sees in its long history nothing but a trail of slaughter and pillage, culminating in two world wars. The average European, male or female, is a creature of extreme sensitivity, always quick to lament social ills and to take the blame for them, always asking what the north can do for the south instead of what the south can do for itself. At every confrontation, at every setback, vast numbers of intellectuals or political figures tell us to wear sackcloth and ashes; we are found guilty of the attacks against us when, in reality, our attackers are scoundrels who envy the fact that we dare to be wealthy. We instantly accept the verdict that our enemies give us and we bear it willingly. From now on, we have one fatal ambition: to give ourselves up to the frenzy of the time and, when it comes to tackling social and economic problems, to restrict ourselves to the role of administrators.
However, European masochism is nothing but the critical spirit of the Enlightenment taken to its extreme. Ever since the Renaissance, Europe has given itself up to self-destructive doubt, condemned itself to the sentence of an unyielding judge and submitted to permanent cross-examination. Involving suspicion of tradition and authority, together with rejection of established dogmas, this incredible act of demolition of the old clerical, feudal or bourgeois order lies at the heart of western rationality, which destroys every idol in its path. There is no doubt that Europe has given birth to monsters but, by the same token, it is responsible for the very theories that enable it to reflect upon and destroy those monsters; it has patiently succeeded in overcoming its worst abominations. Following the example of the old world, every modern people and every modern state feels a duty to see the other side of the story.
But there comes a moment when the critical spirit risks turning into hypercriticism and self-hatred, and begins to destroy itself with a morose determination that leaves nothing standing. The suspicion that tempers our most brilliant successes often degenerates into facile defeatism. On the left, but also to some extent on the right, we have become dependent on self-denunciation. We will be permanently indebted to the poor, to the disadvantaged, to immigrants and even to the planet, which we are helping to destroy through our growth. We will have only one obligation: to atone constantly and to return every single thing that we have stolen from humanity since the very beginning. Such a vision is a total caricature; if the entire history of Europe, as one popular view suggests, were reduced to the grim and stupid sound of the crusaders or adventurers thirsting for gold, why is it that so many previously enslaved people still aspire to join us, to settle on our soil and to espouse our values? Consider, for example, the wave of repentance that is sweeping across Europe like an epidemic, particularly in Catholic and Protestant churches. This is a positive step forward and a valuable moment of realisation, provided that it is reciprocated and that other cultures and religions elsewhere, including Islam, recognise their own errors and inconsistencies. Penitence should not be reserved for the select few and innocence should not only be granted to those who claim the status of victims of persecution as if it were a moral annuity to be paid out by the entire human race. For many countries, particularly in the Arab-Muslim world, Africa and Latin America, self-criticism coincides with the search for a convenient scapegoat; it is never their fault, always someone else’s. And Europe, absent from the great global stage, is only too content to play the role of the villain. All this gives it a symbolic importance that it has lost in political and economical terms.
But this culture of remorse conceals the dual phenomenon of fatigue and fear. Too often, we forget that contemporary Europe was not born out of a desire for a fresh start, as was the US, but rather from revulsion towards slaughter. It had to experience the disaster that was the 20th century so that the old world could emerge as virtuous, like those prostitutes whom age has forced to go straight from debauchery to bigotry. Without the two world wars and their procession of horrors, this aspiration towards peace – which we tend to confuse with the aspiration towards rest – would never have existed. We have become wise, perhaps, but it is a force-fed wisdom, exhausted by carnage and resigned to more modest ambitions. European democracy resembles the state of convalescence that a once truculent public might impose on itself after losing the taste for battle. It becomes what is left after all other dreams have been abandoned: a diverse nation in which it is good to live, to find fulfilment and to enrich oneself if possible, surrounded by great cultural masterpieces.
This is certainly an admirable project, since this type of government limits the wastage of human life and saves the cost of violence. Such a state of calm would be perfect at a time of great serenity, in an immobile world that has finally gained “perpetual peace” (Emmanuel Kant). But we no longer like history. It is a minefield from which we have struggled to emerge, the first time in 1945 and the second in 1989, yet it continues to unfold without our help. Today we are despairingly lucid, that is to say discouraged. Gone are the long-term commitments of the past; now, when a crisis erupts, we indulge in procrastination, we temper our indignation with cynicism and we judge the aggressor and the victim equally as if, guided by our excessive prudence, we no longer see any difference.
In every situation, we show the perceptiveness of the cuckold who swears that he won’t be caught out again. An anxious colossus, threatened with obesity by its territorial expansion and losing in effectiveness what it gains in size, Europe has become the Pontius Pilate of nations. To take a recent example, the silence that it maintained over the Iranian revolt against the theocracy of the mullahs last summer – which was, after all, conducted in the name of democracy and respect for the constitution – was remarkable (although the reaction of Obama’s America was admittedly no better), especially given how much the protesters were expecting our support.
Utopian economics?
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the western elites fell victim to a fatal illusion: the belief that the market attached to parliamentary institutions would vanquish the last bastions of despotism and convert the most aggressive tyrants into lambs. As well as the belief, which has still not been validated, that the entire world wanted democracy, the certainty triumphed that, just as Montesquieu claimed, trade would have a civilising influence, reconcile interest, morality and justice, oblige mankind to work together and help forge peaceful relationships. In addition, the love of money and profit would supposedly prevail over honour and fanaticism, and narrowly selfish acts would assume an altruistic dimension. From the chaos of individual intentions, a system would emerge that everyone could understand and profit from as long as nothing could impede it, least of all action by the state. If economics were initially emancipated from morals and politics, it could then more easily replace them and devote itself to a single, ambitious goal: to set itself up as a rival to religion. Not only would it increase people’s wealth but it would also contain human passions and turn them into culture and civilisation at the very point when faith, in all its forms, only succeeds in exacerbating them. The market has become part of a theory of redemption, a “process without a subject” (to take an expression used by both Friedrich Hayek and the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser) that establishes itself without the knowledge of its protagonists and for their benefit, even if it occasionally destroys some of them. As Hegel argued, the history of mankind is the history of their errors, which eventually become truths. Something better always emerges from the jigsaw of human enterprise, and a hidden benevolence is at work when we suffer our worst hardships.
In this neo-liberal ideology, then, there is no place for doubt or despair. There is no vertiginous feeling of being at the brink of an abyss, since this ideology holds the solution to human vicissitudes. It knows everything, and because of this knowledge, it can no longer be assailed by the least confusion. The inevitable consequence is total commitment to the market. This is a system that so perfectly combines our freedom and our desires that it offers us wealth and justice, provided that we give ourselves up to it completely. The result is a disinfected universe, a fantastic Arcadia that worldly torments do not penetrate, because good governance can unite justice and efficiency, fulfilling the ambitions of every human being. Here we come close to the second-hand Messianism of faith in economics, to which, as well as other once great historical forces – the Hegelian spirit, the Marxist proletariat – the third world has smoothly added its own: the redeeming market, which, after the fall of communism, would spread the democratic spirit everywhere. Unfortunately for the evangelists, this doctrine – which, incidentally, has been badly undermined by the crash of 2008 – failed to stand up against Islamic terrorism. Carried out by young, educated, rich people, such acts are proof that material comfort is no guarantee of moderation and tolerance.
Curiously, Europe, rather than the US, is the principal victim of this illusion. Through the voice of its elites, our ageing continent believes itself to have entered a post-national and post-historic eras, and is extricating itself gently from world affairs. This is not the end of history, as proclaimed by over-optimistic prophets; it is just the end of Europe’s role in history as the only actor in this great drama. Our moral decline is made of a mixture of remorse and comfort, one reinforcing the other, with the posture of guilt strengthening the hold of consumerism. The wisdom of which it boasts is just another way of saying renunciation. It is astonishing that Europe, home to socialism and to the great ideologues of the labour movement, has been completely conquered, on the right and on the left, by economics or, in other words, the belief in the power of material wealth to tame human passions. Even the opponents of market dominance are under the thumb of a mercenary ethos that obsesses them and that they cannot shake off. Their anti-capitalism is a symptom of their allegiance to the market, at which they direct all their rebelliousness and energy. They are reminiscent of those atheists who blaspheme God only to bring him back to life. Evolving in a profane world bent on increasing purchasing power, standards of living and private contentment, western Europe appears to have lost what other great nations, including the US, have managed to preserve: a precarious balance between a taste for enrichment and the ideal of freedom, between private interest and collective values. So it is for good reason that our continent, whose population is falling rapidly (Europe is projected to lose 54 million inhabitants by 2050), is only concerned with protecting itself from a world that it no longer understands and whose vitality – in Africa, Asia and Latin America – terrifies it. The fear of Turkey, immigrants and Muslims comes first of all from a lack of confidence in ourselves.
House of cards
Henry Kissinger’s famous quip – “Which number do I call for Europe?” – is now more relevant than ever. The current crisis is, in large part, due to the dramatic absence of a European government, a diplomatic service and a proper army, which neither the Maastricht nor the Lisbon Treaties have been able to create. If Europe does not see itself as a political force and subject – which would involve reducing its size and rebuilding itself from its core outwards, it will fall down like a house of cards. The most obvious symptom of this withdrawal is the relative lack of interest that the Obama administration has shown towards our continent, as if it has already recognised our insignificance. The fact is that our desire to purify the past, clean it, polish it and “slam the door on this sick 20th century”, as Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said in 2002, will have a detrimental effect on the future we are trying to build. There comes a moment when the ‘duty of memory’, the endless dwelling on our crimes and our atrocities, prevents us from looking ahead to the future. In the absence of a single grand project, Europe is turning on itself and sinking into self-destruction. Greece has long since been left to fend for itself, in contempt of its most fundamental principles of solidarity. Northern Italy is attempting to cut itself off from the Mezzogiorno and Catalonia from Spain. Belgium is about to implode because of an absurd linguistic quarrel. A sinister Lilliputian syndrome, born of egoism and chauvinism, has struck many of our nations.
For Europe to reconcile itself with history and rediscover a taste for risk, it must prove itself worthy of its heritage; it must rediscover the boldness of the Enlightenment and resurrect the subversive attitude that tested tradition and arbitrary rules to breaking point; and it must fight fanaticism and ignorance. In sum, it must join with others to lay the foundations of a new plan to liberate the human race. But to do this, it must first believe in itself and in its values instead of wallowing in self-mortification; it must proclaim everywhere the beliefs that underpinned its success half a century ago, that alliance of democracy, science and prosperity that we once called progress. It may be that the chaos of today will become an effective catalyst and that Europe, at the edge of the abyss, will rediscover its fighting spirit with a sudden flash of vitality. There is not much time left; never has the choice between resurrection and extinction been so harsh. In the words of Friedrich Hölderlin: “Where danger grows, so does deliverance.”
Pascal Bruckner is a French writer and philosopher
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