The Crisis in Europe III

Few of the assessments of the crisis look at society and the changes it has undergone in the last two decades. Occasionally mention is made of growing economic inequality, but what wider impact this might have is neglected. The proposition, that globalisation and its attendant developments, above all the post-2008 crisis, have imposed far-reaching changes on various social strata, often enough without their consent and sometimes even without the cognitive capacity to identify the nature of the change, tends to be overlooked. It may sometimes be evoked, but the analysis tends to stop there. Indeed, there is a kind a tacit assumption that society, especially society in the democratic state is invariant, is stable and responds to economic, social, cultural, political processes in much the same way as it did two-three decades ago.

In this context, both the speed of change and the multiple areas of life affected are central in their significance. The speed of change is a vague concept and is notoriously difficult to measure, not least because it is a subjective experience, nevertheless for older generations it is a real process. When too many propositions that members of society could take for granted are likewise affected, then we can identify something of significance, with consequences for politics and the relationship of society to power. Crucially, change in one area interacts with change in others, generating interactions and reciprocal potentiation that are or appear to be beyond control.

The mechanism identified by complexity theory, that small causes can have far-reaching outcomes, undermines the linear thinking that underlies thought-processes and predictability. The great majority of European societies start from the assumption that processes are linear, that systems will work as they are supposed to, that cause and effect are broadly in equilibrium (John Urry is particularly cogent in this area). The reality that linear and non-linear (complex) processes exist side-by-side and, crucially, that non-linear processes are less and less subordinated to linearity is very difficult to live with. The further factor, that thanks to globalisation, events in one part of the world can radically affect developments in another only exacerbates this.

Most assessments of the crisis recognise that near complete market freedom has resulted in mounting inequality, but only rarely have the political implications of this development received their due. Inequality has several outcomes with the decline of the material well-being that was taken for granted for decades being the most obvious. But there is another dimension of inequality that is not regarded by many as central, and this is the growing sense of injustice and the corresponding resentment at the system – after all, in a democracy citizenship implies a degree of equality of status, of respect, of life chances. These are now manifestly absent, albeit the situation is much more acute in some European states than others.

In this connection, the so-called losers of globalisation demand particular attention, not least because politically they have been largely abandoned by their traditional champions, the social democratic left. The unskilled and semi-skilled manual working class has seen sizeable losses both in actual jobs and even more galling perhaps, in status. The emergence of the global labour market has tended to price them out of the market – labour is much cheaper in China, for example – and they lack the skills that would allow them to return to active earning, even while global capitalism has no regard for them as citizens, but sees them as a costly unit of production.

Their ressentiment, which may well form part of a hereditary transmission, feeds into the other sources of perceived injustice analysed here. In effect, they have lost political representation in the system as it currently operates, so it should not surprise anyone that they listen to those who do attempt to speak in their name – the success of Marine Le Pen was certainly based on this at least in part. Not least, it is interesting to see how the newly elected President and government of France are using much the same discourses as those pioneered by the Orbán government in Hungary; something similar can be seen in the President Obama current campaign on behalf of the “poor” middle classes against the “rich”.

Those that have adopted the Anglo-Saxon free market recipe, and this includes much of the former communist world, are probably worst affected, but the opportunity afforded to some – the few – to pursue major enrichment is felt throughout Europe. Those at the margin do not like it and because the dominant ethos is that of liberal consensus, their voices are ignored.

The flip side of the same process is that the enrichment of the few has political consequences that likewise call the effectiveness of democracy into question. When corporate power not only ignores the bonum publicum, but simultaneously pressures political actors to take decisions that favour the few rather than the many, then it can reasonably be argued that an important aspect of democracy is being flouted. The extensive capture of the political sphere by partial interests may not be universal, but it is certainly widespread. This is perfectly understandable in a way. Those with power, economic power in this case, will do what they can to entrench it and to fight off attempts by political elites to re-establish control, regardless of what the voters may actually want. It is in this sense that corporate power is acting against the interests of democracy.

This illustrates another facet of the crisis. A generation ago, it was labour that pressurised governments to give it privileges. Today it is capital. And paradoxically capital is far more difficult to bring to heel, if indeed it is at all possible, than labour was in the 1970s. This is overwhelmingly explained by two contingent events. One is the global mobility of capital, as contrasted with the immobility of labour; and the other is the end of communism, unreservedly welcome though that was, which also meant that a counter-discourse to capital and capitalism had disappeared, thereby making it next to impossible to formulate alternatives to market fundamentalism before the crisis. The rediscovery of Marx and the radicalisation of sections of society are belated responses.

Still looking at the unintended consequences of market fundamentalism, there is the point made by Fukuyama, that the squeeze on the middle classes begins to threaten democracy, because it is precisely these sections of society that have the primary interest in the unimpeded functioning of democracy. The argument regarding the relationship between democracy and the middle classes is an old one, of course, and there are lessons from the 1930s as to what happens when the weaker middle strata begin to fear a deterioration – a loss of status, of power and a decline in incomes. They become vulnerable to radical language, whether of the left or the right. Generally the right does better because it claims to address the immediate concerns of those affected and will have nothing to do with the blandishments of universalism, but that’s another part of the story.

A second broad area which both affects the crisis and is exacerbated by it is Europe’s demographic decline (on this and much else see Krastev). The economically most salient aspect of this has been frequently highlighted, viz. that a shrinking working population has to sustain an ever larger post-retirement generation. But that is not where the story ends. Shrinking societies are generally lacking in self-confidence and are concerned about their collective futures, their futures as a viable society, their reproduction as societies. Clearly, the smaller the society, the more acute this perception will be, meaning that collectivities over a certain size will be less affected. To this fear can be added the age-old historical concern shared by all the populations of the smaller states of Europe and most strongly so in Central Europe that they are fated to die out, unless they make the greatest effort to avert this.

This fear does not have to have a rational basis for it to be real, nor does it matter if the fear affects only a portion of the elite, if that elite is capable of articulating this anxiety and making that anxiety a part of its plausibility structure. This demographic fear is also a factor in Europe’s aversion to war and to hard power. Obviously, the devastations of the 20th century and the way in which this has been memorialised are central to the aversion to war, but demographic fear adds to and intensifies it.

The liberal consensus has no remedy to offer, indeed it may even welcome the disappearance of small groups as obstacles to universalism, tacitly at any rate.‡ On the other hand, the consensus has overseen a significant fragmentation, both real and perceived, of society and in consequence of the polis itself. The rise of multiple sites of power has been accepted as highly desirable by the protagonists of the liberal consensus as a welcome development in advancing democracy. Quite apart from devaluing the role of legislatures (as noted earlier), the selfsame protagonists ignore the costs. One of these is the mounting complexity noted in the foregoing – the polis is simply more difficult to understand and, for that matter, so is good governance, whatever that may be at any one time. This is inevitable when the number of political actors has increased so greatly. But this fragmentation has another cost, and this is the weakening of the predictability and transparency of power, which then adds to the anxiety noted above.

A further facet of the demographic problem is the enormous expansion of tertiary education. Whereas 30-40 years ago, less then ten percent of the population received higher education, today it is up to around two-fifths. But this has produced an unexpected outcome. With the crisis, the employment prospects of those born after 1985 say have deteriorated radically – in Spain youth unemployment may be as high as fifty percent. And they are frequently overqualified for the jobs that they do have. This has resulted in mounting resentment, understandable in the circumstances, coupled with a deterioration of the quality of higher education itself – the worst outcome all round.

It is too early to see all the consequences of this generational crisis, but inter-generational resentment has already reached the political agenda; the Occupy movement is a case in point, as were the summer 2011 riots in London. It seems to be highly dangerous for the future that an entire generation’s entry into adulthood should be the experience of feeling useless. Some of the victims will necessarily have no faith in citizenship, the state or democracy, let alone the market. And from this initial experience, will they actually wish to start a family themselves? Somehow I doubt it.

But this demographic restructuring has had a further consequence. Even while the economic system as it currently functions is unable to provide career opportunities and the dignity that goes with it, youth has a much higher symbolic value than age. This is hardly surprising. The youngest age cohorts are small and the over 60s are perceived as increasing in size and living on without a time-limit, at any rate as a generation, not as particular individuals. This has the paradoxical result that at the very time when an ever smaller cohort of working age citizens have to provides for a growing old-age population, the value of the latter is declining. This can hardly add to a sense of justice on the part of the young.

Immigration and its consequences are a further exacerbating factor, though one that few would place in this context. In sum, because multiculturalism has failed (I’ve argued this at considerable length in my Politics, Illusions, Fallacies), parallel societies have come into being and these are regarded as highly disturbing by many in Europe, in as much as unintegrated or semi-integrated migrants and their descendants challenge local norms and are perceived to be challenging them. The most visible aspect of this is the growing number of mosques throughout Europe; what Suleiman the Magnificent failed to achieve by the sword is seemingly feasible for his latter day successors by peaceful means (of course).

The further factor that immigrants are perceived to be the beneficiaries of redistributive justice, which is one of the foundations of the modern democratic state, and to be doing so disproportionately, only adds fuel to the flames of resentment. That sections of the elite, the reality-defining agencies that propagate liberal universalism, insist on “celebrating” multicultural living creates yet more resentment, because by the deployment of this discursive instrument, the anxieties of the majority are dismissed as “racism”. Whereas a century ago, “race” was regarded as natural phenomenon, with superiority attributed to oneself, this has not only been turned on its head, but any explanation relying on identity difference counts as vicious and sinful (the use of religious language here is deliberate).

Besides, somehow it is always minorities that are to be “celebrated”. Diversity and all the material and symbolic goodies that flow from it are not really available to majorities or even some minorities (e.g. historic minorities in Europe). Majorities as citizens pay their taxes, but see or think they see fewer of the benefits. Redistribution is only legitimate if it is perceived as fair and if its beneficiaries are accepted as full members of the community of solidarity. It is precisely this last that the liberal consensus is determined to eliminate as the most serious obstacle to the single humanity project.

A further source of anxiety is the loss of freedom resulting from rapid advances in IT and various forms of surveillance technology. Much of this is common ground and needs no particular elaboration – surveillance techniques, face-recognition technology, the merging of data-bases, the proliferation of registers, pin numbers, credit cards, mobile phones etc. add up to tools that allow agencies of the state to maintain control over the citizens in ways that were unthinkable a generation ago. True, data protection should address this, but the development of technology constantly outpaces the protection. And even if the level of surveillance is significantly lower than is thought, the level of fear – a palpable fear of the unknown – remains high. And fearful sections of society do not make good democrats, on the contrary.

The relationship between societies as voters and citizens on the one hand and elites as those exercising power and as reality-defining agencies on the other has been deteriorating for a while, but just how far they have deteriorated was only made visible by the crisis. When seen from below (and here my own experience in Hungary is clearly relevant), voters feel that elites are remote, not particularly interested in their concerns, quite prepared to enjoy the material and symbolic benefits of elite status (like indulging in constant moral legislation), but couldn’t care less about the fears and anxieties of the citizen in the street. It follows that these reality-definitions are fraying and not just at the edges, but much more centrally. It only makes matters worse in the eyes of the citizens that those who do appear to be addressing their concerns are then reviled as populists, ethnicists and, maybe, racists.

To this may be added a feeling that existing elites  are responsible for the mess – the sorcerer’s apprentice syndrome – and are quite incapable of finding a solution to the crisis. In other words, elites are seen by a growing number of citizens as incompetent. This ties in with a loss of faith in both the state and the market and that, in turn, has started a process of questioning democracy in its present form itself. The answer in the eyes of many is a return to the nation-state, to a qualitatively stronger state structured around a discursively condensed nationhood, with clear-cut inclusion and exclusion criteria. A survey carried in 2011 in England was highly revealing in this connection. Nearly half of those polled said that they would support an English national party as long as it was not associated with violence.

After all, if citizenship is to mean anything, it cannot be universal, it cannot include everyone in the world.

‡ An extreme illustration of this attitude is Kenan Malik, “Let them die”, in Prospect, 20 November 2000. I quote, “The preservation of dying languages and cultures is pointless and reactionary. People want to join modernity…” (paywall).

Sch. Gy.