Europe hits the buffersNick Land / text
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Europe hits the buffers
By Nick Land
Shanghai Star. 2005-06-09
The rejection of the proposed EU constitution by French voters on May 29
and even more decisively by Dutch voters two days later has brought the
long brewing European economic, social and political crisis into sudden
definition, ensuring that 2005 will earn a place in history books as a moment
of globally significant transition. Of the three countries to put the constitution
to the popular vote, two have now disdained it. Whatever happens next, one
thing is certain: The utopian expectation of a Europe united around a
continent wide attachment to a distinctive "Rhineland model" of socialdemocratic welfarism is at an end.
For at least two decades - and arguably for centuries - Europe has been
fractured by a rift between two competing social visions. On the continent
itself, the dominant political ideals have been based on a strong bureaucratic
state, suspicion of market forces, anti-Americanism, and - critics would add an affection for anti-Semitic totalitarianism. France is today the most
significant flag-bearer of these ideas, which it identifies with the principle of
"social solidarity". The "Rhineland model" has long given concrete shape to a
moderate version of this social ideal.
In the opposite camp are social trends denounced in France as "ultraliberal"
and associated with "Anglo-Saxon" countries, although they are shared today
by most of the EU's new Eastern European members. These emphasize
limited government, free trade, free markets and a strong trans-Atlantic
relationship with the United States. Many on the continent identify such
attachments - even in the diluted "third-way" form promoted by British Prime
Minister Tony Blair - with an unfettered "savage" capitalism which civilization
is duty-bound to repress.
The polarization between these visions has now reached a decisive point,
driven by prolonged economic malaise, steep demographic decline, anxieties
over immigration, new security threats and geostrategic controversies. In the
continent's market-hostile economies unemployment has been stuck at
around 10 per cent for over a decade, while growth rates persistently
disappoint - on a downward trend - and rapidly greying populations threaten
mammoth welfare states with financial ruin. As workforces shrink in
proportion to dependents, tax rates spiral upwards, further stalling economic
performance in a vicious circle. Europe's drastic relative failure, when
compared to soaring Asian and the steadily growing Anglophone economies,
further darkens the political atmosphere, as demonstrated by the resurgence
of unreconstructed communist and fascist parties that entirely reject
globalization and the elementary principles of open societies.
This dialectic - in the most sterile and destructive sense of the word - has
now brought Europe to the brink of calamity. There is every indication that, in
the wake of the recent votes and with Britain due to assume the rotating EU
leadership, it will now fuel rancorous argument that paralyzes every
meaningful impulse to reform in the continent's most troubled societies, as
irresponsible populism and ethnic chauvinism shout down rational discussion
of Europe's profound problems.
It would help if Europe's stagnant economies looked beyond Britain and the
United States to the wider world, where the linkage between robust marketoriented reform and economic performance is starkly evident. Unless
continental Europe takes "ownership" of such policies and rediscovers its