Bosznia-Hercegovina varázsa

"A vallás politika, a lelkében azonban minden ember egy." Ezt a mondatot egy perzsa szőnyegkereskedő mondta, a Morica Han-ban, Szarajevóban. Hogy mennyire akart hízelegni, vagy éppen a multikulturalizmust egy mondatban minden tételében megcáfoló igazságot terjeszteni, vagy amolyan vallási toleranciát hirdetni az iszlám kellős közepén, nem tudom. Mindesetre a magyar eredetmondát tökéletesen ismerte, és természetesen igazolva, hogy a perzsa és magyar törzsek rokonok, Mezopotámia a bölcső. Bár itt erős gyanúm volt, hogy csupán egy két és fél éven keresztül készülő kézi csomózású, selyem perzsaszőnyeget szeretett volna rám sózni, 16000 eurós törzsi-baráti áron. Hiába, sajnos már keresztény vagyok, mondtam neki, de ő csak mosolygott, és ismét megerősítette az egységes emberiségbe vetett hitét.

Node, hogy kerül egy iráni, bocsánat perzsa, Szarajevóba, egyáltalán milyen a lakosság etnikai összetétele, vagy éppen a helyes kérdésfelvetés úgy hangzana, hogy milyen a vallási összetétele a föderáció fővárosának, és magának a föderációnak? A vallás és etnikai származás közötti distinkció azért is szükséges, mert voltaképpen a bosnyák nemzeti öntudatra ébredés a 60-as 70-es évekig rejtve maradt, és igazán meghatározóvá a jugoszláv örökösödési háború vált; fejkendők és sertéshús tilalom addig nem létezett. Mind az Oszmán Birodalom, mind az Osztrák-Magyar Monarchia, sőt azt követő államalakulatok is elsősorban vallási alapon tett különbségeket. Természetesen a szerb nemzeti öntudat a Crna Ruka mozgalommal hamar nyilvánvaló lett az egész világ számára.

Tehát a vallás felöl közelítve Szarajevó lakossága muzulmán, de vannak ortodoxok, katolikusok és zsidó közösség is, bár a többség számára a vallási töltet népszokássá szelídült. Igaz, azonnal cáfolnom kell magam, mivel statisztikai adatok alapján az egy főre jutó mecsetek, dzsámik száma Bosznia-Hercegovinában a legmagasabb, megelőzve az összes arab országot. Gomba-módra bújnak elő a hegyoldalakból a vakító fehér templomocskák, mindenféle adományokból: maláj, indonéz, szaúdi, kuvaiti iszlám közösségektől. És nem csak mecseteket építenek a kuvaiti, szaúdi befektetők, hanem szállodákat, gyárakat vesznek és nagy valószínűséggel cserébe a Boszniában található vízbázis érdekli őket igazán (boszna szó jelentése víz, és az iszlám számára a mosakodásnak, a tisztaságnak fontos szerepe van). De ez csupán spekuláció.

Már ramadan idején járunk, de a kávézók, éttermek egész nap tele vannak, egy jó erős török (sic!) bosnyák kávéra mindig, mindenkinek van ideje. Valahogy az emberek nem rohannak itt el egymás mellett, leülnek, beszélgetnek, meghallgatják egymást. A müezzin imára hív, egy-két boltocska tulajdonosa zárja be üzletét és szalad a dzsámiba imára. A ramadam számunkra akkor válik hihetővé, amikor napnyugtakor ágyúlövés jelzi, véget ért az aznapi böjt, lehet enni-inni. Bár a Morica Han ágyú lövés előtt is telve volt, sokan csevapot vagy más sült húst, friss túrót esznek; Szarajevó nem kedvez a vegetáriánusoknak.

Az iszlám valóban jól látható és érezhető Szarajevóban, de az Oszák-Magyar Monarchia rövid jelenléte is meghatározó képet kölcsönöz a városnak, és voltaképpen Szarajevó ennek a rövid időszaknak köszönheti modernizációját: Európa első (mások szerint Temesvár után a második) ló vontatta villamosa itt indult először, ahogy az első világháború is innen, a Latin-hídról indult pusztító útjára. A történelem itt sűrűsödik, kultúrák, etnikumok, minden egyszerre jelen van, lélegzik és élni akar. A 90-es évek háborúja nem látszik a városon, az arcokon, jóllehet az emlékezetekbe mélyen beleivódott, ahogy a békés egymás mellett élés megszűnését szimbolizáló vegyes házasságok is az emlékezetekben vagy éppen külföldön élnek. A vallási és etnikai feszültség valahol a felszín alatt azonban ott bujkál, a szrebrenicai mészárlás sehol sem felejtődik igazán, és nem lehet tudni, mikor erősödik fel annyira, hogy a föderációnak ezt a formáját szétfeszítse.

De valahogy mégiscsak hiányérzetünk támad; a föderáció legnagyobb támogatója az iszlám mellett szinte láthatatlan. Ahogy sokan azt sem tudják megbocsátani, hogy Európa láthatatlan maradt a Daytoni-szerződés megkötésekor is. Igaz, az erős kompenzációs kényszer egy hidegháborús hangulatot kölcsönöz az országnak, minden hatalomnak megvannak a kegyeltjei. Most azonban béke van.

Mostar egy másik világ, talán mostanra már turistacsapda. Az újonnan felépült Öreg-híd, magyar mérnökök segítségével, kiválóan szimbolizálja a horvát-bosnyák újra összekapcsolódást, a megbékélést talán. A tömeg mindkét irányba hömpölyög, bár a kettős, bosnyák-horvát intézményi struktúra valóság, két kórház, két tűzoltóság, két rendőrség. És itt a szimbólumok versenye továbbfolytatódik: keresztek és keresztek és keresztek mindenütt. Innen tudjuk biztosan, hogy már Hercegovinában járunk.

A csúcspont Medjugorje, ahol a Mária jelenésnek 1981-ben komoly üzenete volt az egész térség számára. Mára azonban be kell lássuk, Szűz Mária iparággá vált, a giccs ural mindent, Máriát minden méretben lehet kapni, ahogy rózsafűzért, keresztet, szentcsaládot és minden egyéb tárgyakat, csecsebecsét. Talán még a limonádé is szentelt vízből készült...

Csak remélni tudjuk, hogy nem a szimbólumok harcába süpped Bosznia-Hercegovina, nem a mecset és kereszt számok döntik el, ki az értékesebb, hanem igazolva perzsa szőnyegkereskedőnket, csak az ember számít.

kng

Útinapló: 5 nap, 5 karika

július 27. péntek

Korahajnali indulás a Liszt Ferenc reptérről, a tömött géppel és egy ajándékba kapott órával korareggeli érkezés Lutonon. Csak találgatható, hogy az olimpiai-schengeni övezetbe való belépés előtt kígyózó mintegy félórás embertömeg mekkora része tudható be az általános londoni tumultusnak és mekkora része köszönhető a ma esti nyitóünnepséggel induló XXX. Olimpiai játékoknak. A Lutonból a belvárosba haladó vasúti szerelvényen az agglomeráció ébredező lakói- egyik kezükben kávé (tea?), a másikban pedig újság, ahogy azt a londoni hangulatot felvillantó, két héttel később esedékes záróünnepség is megidézi majd.

Jellemző, hogy miközben a londoniak elmúlt egy éve az Olimpiai játékok alatt várható iszonyatos embertömeg miatti óvintézkedésekről (a szabadságok ekképp történő időzítése, otthoni távmunka stb.) szólt, a 6 metró- és temérdek vasúti vonal találkozásán fekvő St. Pancras állomáson reggel fél 10-kor csak szállingóznak az emberek, ami egyaránt tekinthető a megnyugtató szervezés eredményének és baljós előjelnek (mint később kiderül, a helyzet az előbbi: a várható 3,5 millió látogató mellett mintegy 2 millióan hagyták el a játékok idejére a várost). A városban az Oxford Street felett kifüggesztett nemzeti lobogókon kívül egyelőre semmi nem utal a ma estétől kezdődő sporttörténeti eseményre, délutántól azonban egyre többen foglalják el az olimpiai visszaszámlálónak helyt adó Trafalgar Square-t. Fényképező turisták, a jó beállást kereső operatőrök és helyszíni tudósítók, interjút adó sportolók, járőröző katonák és rendőri biztosítással áthaladó sötétített üvegű járművek (az Olimpia alatt a rendőri intézkedésekre és a biztonságra 1 milliárd fontot költöttek, csaknem ugyanannyit, mint a sportlétesítményekre). A még itt ragadt londoniak már déltájban elhagyhatják munkahelyüket, délutántól pedig egyre több ember tölti meg az utcákat. Estére megtelnek a Pub-ok a Sohoban, a nyitóünnepséget a helyszínen jelenlévő, fejenként legkevesebb 700 fontot fizető 80 ezer néző mellett a becslések szerint mintegy 1 milliárd ember követi televízión.





július 28. szombat

A különböző fegyvernemek sorában a női tőrvívás indítja meg a 2012-es vívóolimpiát. Az összesen hét sportágnak (pl. az asztaltenisznek, a súlylökésnek, a cselgáncsnak) helyt adó, London keleti részén fekvő ExCeL-i létesítménybe két órával korábban ajánlják az érkezést, így reggel nyolc óra tájban már kisebb tömeg hömpölyög békésen a vasúti megállótól önkéntesek által övezett úton. A szervezésre jellemző egyébként, hogy jelentős energiát fektetettek a humán erőforrásba, azaz a különböző életkorú és nemzetiségű mintegy 80 ezer önkéntes felkészítésébe, akik eltéveszthetetlen lila egyenpólójukban élő láncként mutatják az érkezőknek az utat az összes olimpiai helyszínen.

Az ExCeL-i stadion előtt a reggeli fényben a szurkolók a rend fenntartóival fotózkodnak, akik pillanatok alatt belesimulnak új szerepükbe. Míg a hatalmas magyar zászlóval próbáljuk a megfelelő beállást, a tőrvívást hamarosan közvetítő magyar tudósítók jönnek oda beszélgetni, akiktől azt is megtudjuk, hogy az aréna közepén felállított, olimpiai színekkel megvilágított pástok közül Mohamed Aida melyiken fog vívni a 32-es táblától egyenes kieséssel a negyeddöntőig tartó délelőtti turnusban. A jegyünk természetesen éppen a nézőtér legtávolabbi pontjára szól, de nem esünk kétségbe: látva az üresen maradt helyeket és a jegyszedők lanyhuló figyelmét, hamarosan már a kék pásttal szemben szurkolunk.

A londoni szervezést illető egyik legsúlyosabb kritika egyébként éppen az üresen maradt nézőtéri helyekkel volt kapcsolatos, amelyeket az évekkel korábban pályázó, de jegyhez nem jutó nézők is jól láthattak a közvetítések során. A jegyek értékesítése több körben történt: a leginkább favoritnak számító eseményekre (nyitó- és záróünnepség) és sportágakra (atlétika, úszás) már évekkel korábban kellett pályázni, míg más versenyekre, mint a vívás, vagy a kézi- és vízilabda, kellő éberséggel és gyorsasággal még május végén is lehetett az Olimpia hivatalos honlapján 20 fontos kezdőártól jegyet venni.

Egyszerre négy páston zajlanak tehát az asszók, és vívó legyen a talpán, aki mellette folyó küzdelmet ünneplő-tapsoló hangzavart ki tudja zárni saját pengeváltásai közben. Mohamed Aida bejut a legjobb 16 közé, ahol azonban a dél-koreai Nam-mal szoros küzdelem alakul ki. A háromszor három perces menetek közti szünetben az edzők a pástra szökkennek, kezükkel cseleket írnak le, ordítva magyaráznak tanítványuknak- Mohamed Aida háta mögött egy nyugodt és hallgatag ember áll köpcösen. Legyen ez betudható az összeszokásnak, vagy a magyar reziszteanciának, az semmiképpen sem tehetett jót, hogy a mester két héttel az Olimpia előtt kapta meg felmondólevelét. Talán még jó párszor négy év kell, hogy ilyen és hasonló dolgok nálunk se történhessenek meg, Mohamed Aida mindenesetre a nyolcaddöntőben a hirtelen halált jelentő ráadástussal búcsúzott, az este pedig hármas olasz éremszerzéssel zárult.





július 29. vasárnap


Pihenőnap, nekünk legalábbis, és hamisítatlan londoni hangulat: English breakfast olimpiai színű paprika-karikákkal és English summer rain. A Kossuth rádión keresztül követjük a magyar férfi vízilabda-válogatott Szerbia elleni vereségét, és egyszeri szurkolóként kicsit kevésbé keserít el az eredmény: annál nagyobb lesz a tétje a keddi mérkőzésnek.

A briteknek köszönhetjük egyébként, hogy július elején csodával határos módon sikerült még jegyet szereznünk a Magyarország-Montenegró vízilabda meccsre. A csoportok sorsolása ugyanis már két hónappal ezelőtt eldőlt, a szurkolók ennek megfelelően vehették meg jegyeiket. Az utolsó pillanatban azonban a teljes menetrend borult annak érdekében, hogy a hazai 'Team GB' a legtöbb néző által követhető délutáni órákban játsszon, és óriási jegy-cserebere vette kezdetét a közösségi portálokon.

Vasárnap délután a helyszín a nyugat-londoni Hammersmith és a lokális történelmet megtestesítő, Dove névvel fémjelzett pub, amely a világ legkisebb bar room-jával a Guiness Rekordok könyvébe is bekerült, de nekünk ma itt másfajta, sport-történelem íródik. A helységben szitáló fekete-fehér kisképernyős televízió mutat valami aktuális és számunkra unalmas eseményt, de rajtunk nem fognak ki. Wifi hozza be a Kossuth rádiót és a telefon fölé hajolva drukkoljuk végig Szilágyi Áron aranyérmét az olasz Occhiuzzi ellen. A verseny közvetítéséből egyébként semmit nem von le a képi világ hiánya: az amúgy is fantasztikus rádiós kommentárokkal ez különösen igaz a vívás esetében, ahol a bírói ítélet alapjául szolgáló gyors pengeváltások egymásutánja szabad szemmel egyébként sem igen követhető. Az elmúlt évek gyakorlatához képest azonban mégis történt e téren előrelépés: az asszókat előnyösebb szögből és közelebbről lehetett szemmel kísérni, ami a laikus nézők számára is élvezhetőbbé tette a versenyt. A különböző sportágak közvetítésére egyébként hagyományosan különböző nemzeti stábok szakosodnak, a vívás pedig ebben a tekintetben abszolút magyar territóriumnak számít.

És szerencsére most már (illetve ismét) nem csak ebben a tekintetben: a győztes pont beadása után Szilágyi Áron az égre mutat néhány éve elhunyt nevelőedzőjére, Gerevich Györgyre emlékezve, akinek szintén kardvívó édesapja a mai napig sporttörténeti rekordernek számít ugyanabban a számban (férfi kard csapat) elért hatszoros olimpiai győzelmével. Olyan sikerszéria veszi ezzel kezdetét, ami augusztus 12-ére, az Olimpia zárónapjára a nagyon várt, de elmaradt érmek ellenére is a 204-es lista 9. helyére repíti Magyarországot, olyan országokat megelőzve, mint Ausztrália, Japán vagy Kanada. (Ha pedig valakit a népességszám szerint súlyozott eredménytábla érdekelne: itt is a nagyon előkelő, 8. helyen szerepelünk, míg az érmek számát GDP-hez viszonyítva a 14. helyen állunk).




július 30. hétfő


A harmadik londoni Olimpia nem csak a sportesemény történetében kívánt maradandót alkotni: óriási kulturális kínálat fogadta az Egyesült Királyságba látogatókat. A házigazdák bemutatkozása, kultúra (-export) és sport keveredett ebben a két hétben. Bár a közel 12 ezer rendezvényen mind a 204 induló nemzet bemutatkozott, a kulturális Olimpia alapvetően a brit identitás-megerősítésről szólt, csak úgy, mint a verseny nyitó- és záróünnepsége, amelyet az ipari forradalom nyomán felemelkedő londoni metropolisz történetének, az angol humornak és a brit zenei kultúrának szenteltek. Ha azonban elfogadjuk azt, hogy egy ilyen, többmilliárd ember által követett világesemény évekig tartó, hatalmas költségeket felemésztő megszervezése, majd pedig több ezer ember összehangolt munkáját igénylő lebonyolítása kiemelt helyet foglal el egy társadalom önmeghatározási és önértékelési folyamatában, akkor az Olimpia alatt végtelenségig hangoztatott hívószavak egyfajta útkijelölésként is értelmezhetőek.

De mik is voltak ezek hívószavak? Fenntarthatóság- azaz az Olimpiai Park területén elbontott anyagok 98%-ának újrahasznosítása, tartós anyagból készülő és visszabontható létesítmények, a road-show-jellegű építési láz helyett hosszú távú tervezés, több sportág összevonása egy létesítménybe, városrehabilitáció. Szociális felelősségvállalás- azaz munkanélküliek, fogyatékkal élők és helyi lakosok foglalkoztatása, a következő generációk sportra nevelése, szociális bérlakások kialakítása az olimpiai falu helyén. Továbbá, on-line forgalom, hatalmas informatikai rendszerek és még több futurizmus: a gyermekek igényei szerint megtervezett formabontó kabalák és az ExCeL-i stadionnál az égben haladó közlekedési eszközök. Bár azzal mindenki tisztában lehet, hogy nem egy tündérmeséről van szó, az alapvető célok megfogalmazása egy olyan új irányt mutat, amelyben egyszerre tűnik fel egy dinamikusan fejlődő metropolisz jövőképe és egy több évtizedes, gazdasági prosperitást hozó időszak végének tudomásul vétele.





július 31. kedd



A 30. nyári, és az első őszi olimpiai játékokra ébredünk: 17 fok és szakadó eső. Reggel hét órakor már úton vagyunk a Central metro line East End-i részén található Olimpiai Parkba. A közlekedés kényelmes, ami úgy értendő, hogy a tömeg semmivel sem elviselhetetlenebb egy átlagos londoni reggelnél, és egy metróátszállással kint találjuk magunkat a stradfordi helyszínen. A szervezők becsületére legyen mondva, hogy a horribilis tömegközlekedési árak mellett az olimpiai jeggyel rendelkezők az aktuális esemény napjára egész napos, London mind a kilenc zónájára érvényes bérletet kaptak.

Az olimpiai falunál, akárcsak ExCeL-ben, a reptérihez hasonló biztonsági vizsgálaton kell átesni, ezután széles hídon át halad a folyamatosan érkező tömeg az Olimpiai Stadion felé. A 80 ezer férőhelyes arénán kívül a 350 futballpálya nagyságú Park területén találhatóak többek között az úszásnak, vízilabdának, kosár- és kézilabdának helyet adó létesítmények is. Az 5 ezer fős vízilabda-centrum is egy azok közül az épületek közül, amelyeket az Olimpia végeztével teljes mértékben el fognak bontani.

A ma reggeli esemény két mérkőzést, a már említett Magyarország-MontenegroMagyarország-Montenegró, és a Horvátország-Spanyolország meccset foglalja magában. E négy náció szurkolóin kívül néhány amerikai turista és békésen szemlélődő brit család található még a nézőtéren, a magyar fölény azonban első pillanattól szembetűnő. Ha a társadalmi szolidaritás mértékét az Olimpián tanúsított szurkolói aktivitáson mérnék, akkor egy jóval kiegyensúlyozottabb nemzet képét tükröznénk: a lelátókon tapasztalható példátlan magyar jelenlétről és támogatásról nem csak a helyszínen levők, de a tudósításokat nézők-hallgatók is meggyőződhettek. Az nem számít, hogy szinte végig vesztésre állunk, sőt az sem, hogy nem is játsszunk a legjobban, zeng a stadion. Öt percen belül a mellettünk ülő amerikai férfin is piros-fehér-zöld matrica díszeleg, másfél órával később pedig egy csapásra mindenkiből spanyol szurkoló válik, amikor a horvátok elleni utolsó másodpercben lőtt egyenlítő gólukat -tévesen- nem adja meg a bíró. A látottak megcáfolják, hogy mindenki a nyertes csapathoz szeretne tartozni: mindenki a legnagyobb összefogást mutató, a kollektív élményt nyújtó csapatnak szeretne a részese lenni. És éppen ez adja meg egy ilyen világesemény valódi jelentőségét: a közös rítusok olyan interakciókat és kapcsolódási pontokat teremtenek, melyeken keresztül egymást megismerjük, magunkat pedig elhelyezzük a világban. Ki cáfolná, hogy erre -csakúgy, mint az újkori olimpiák 116 éves története során bármikor-, ma is égető szükség van?

S.Z.

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.

Crisis in Europe II

A key aspect of the crisis is the weakening of self-regulation and self-limitation, both essential elements of democracy. Self-regulation is abiding by an overt set of voluntary rules, while self-limitation is the acceptance of the spirit of the rules, of their informal dimension. Very largely, if not indeed entirely, self-regulation goes by the board when market fundamentalism rules. When the market becomes the hegemonic source of rule making, self-regulation is, in effect, superfluous, because market outcomes automatically achieve the same (best) results, supposedly anyway.

If we combine the erosion of self-regulation with the dominance of liberal morality (see supra), then the picture becomes a little more complex, in that an element of regulation is provided by “naming and shaming”, but only in areas not directly subjected to market rules and, in any case, this form of regulation loses its force after a while – shaming only works if the actors care. The two clearest cases where it is evident that the mechanism of shaming has failed are the behaviour of banks and of the media; the latter, of course, is the primary instrument of shaming, but will hardly ever apply it to media behaviour itself. Both banks and media have a relationship with political power, as well exercising power themselves, but in common with other sites of power they seek to establish maximum autonomy for themselves, to minimise regulation and to diminish the voice of the stakeholders.

It is also noteworthy, that when self-regulation and liberal morality are pre-eminent, consistency also tends to weaken, of not indeed disappear, presumably because the actors involved assume that their behaviour is inherently rational and that “the invisible hand” will re-establish an equilibrium. Equilibrium logically restores consistency (somehow, somewhere). Where damage to some actor is visible and evident, this can be dismissed as collateral or as a short term loss. For those with power, the disappearance of the demand for consistency is greatly liberating, because it permits both individuals and institutions to act entirely in their own interest.

The overt primary motivation of the finance sector is, of course, profit and that of the media is a mixture of profit and consumption (influence, authority). These can function as the yardstick by which the activities of these two sectors may be assessed and by which they assess themselves. Both assume a one-way relationship with the society with which they operate, despite their dependence on the public. This assumption underrates or, all too frequently negates the agency of those affected by their activities and thereby weakens or erodes democratic citizenship. Crucially, they both deny that they are exercising power, hence they likewise deny that they should assume any responsibility for the power that they exercise. Politics, as against this, proceeds from the proposition that power is, indeed, being exercised, hence the primary yardstick relied on by political actors is legitimacy, meaning a real legitimacy; instruments of legitimation are similarly real, even if in late modern societies technocracy and bureaucracy have placed a considerable distance between elected politicians and the voters.

So if actors are to be seen as purely market driven, as with the banks and the media, then it is hardly surprising that the authority of overtly political institutions diminishes – the banks and the media, powerful actors, have exempted themselves from the penumbra of politics (or so they think). It is worth noting, furthermore, that whereas actors that claim to operate by market rules are under no great pressure to follow precedent, political actors must do so if they are to retain their legitimacy, because that legitimacy is derived from society, unlike market actors which can and do claim that their actions are motivated by the “magic” of the market. Thus legitimate political actors are at a disadvantage when faced with market actors, given that their accountability (and transparency) levels are very different indeed. The rule of law is supposed to secure consistency, but the market can trump this, as has been evident with respect to both the banks and the media.

The rise of the market as a putatively “pure” and “natural” force is itself a social and cultural construct, albeit one that its countless adherents and beneficiaries would deny that this is so. What this “pure” concept of the market ignores, however, is the underlying foundation of trust and, equally, legal regulation that protect private property and the sanctity of contract. These obviously have cultural and political origins. Adam Smith, so often invoked by market fundamentalists, added morality, which is likewise culturally circumscribed. In this sense, a “pure” concept of the market is a fabulation, as well as a legitimating narrative of self. And it’s a free rider on culture and the law. Imagine what would happen if a state were to say to the market fundamentalists, “ok, you want the state out of the economy? Sure, no more protection of property by the state.” The answer, of course, is something like Russia.

A response to this argument might be that, yes, true up to a point, but other market actors function as a self-correcting mechanism and thereby can protect the public good, the bonum publicum. Hence, the question is, do self-controlling mechanisms exist where power itself is concerned?  Only if those exercising it accept some external control or yardstick. This may be an ethical constraint or the power of others or prudence. Yet trust in those exercising sovereign power to some extent depends on exactly this, that such self-correcting mechanisms do exist and can ensure that the holders of power behave appropriately, in accordance with their stated goals. When they do not and when a section of the elite behaves otherwise and can mobilise society, or a part of it, to support it, then a crisis will ensue.

Yet in both the banking world and the media there is what can usefully be called a belief system, the core of which is that all regulation is undesirable because regulation means imposing constraints one’s freedom of action. Such constraints, goes the argument, are counterproductive and illicit; for bankers this is about profit, for the media it is supposedly about democratic values and accountability. Indeed, I once heard Dunja Mijatović, the OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media, assert that she was opposed to all forms of media regulation, including self-regulation. The belief systems constructed on this basis are naturalised by insiders, who thereby become wholly oblivious of their own power and the impact of their power on others. There are no legitimate stakeholders in this mindset. As with all closed systems, information or arguments that might be disturbing are screened out or attacked as irrational or evil.

All this raises important issues affecting democracy. The implication is that any institution – the overmighty subject problem – that functions as a monopoly or something close, setting its own rules, dominating the discursive options and acting without looking to the interests of the stakeholders is liable to become captive of its own norms and discursivities. Above all, it will not just ignore the bonum publicum, but probably deny that there is such a thing at all. Yet if a democracy is to exist and function, then it is the task of the sovereign power to define what the bonum publicum is. This will vary in time and place, of course and will certainly be the topic of debate by the political class (and the citizens), with a variety of inputs from elsewhere. At the end of the day, however, it is the task of the sovereign power to say, “this is it” (or “the buck stops here”) and to insist that the partial interest of the monocultural institution has become self-serving and not serving the public good.

A different dimension of the same problem is, in fact, the question of monoculture. (On monocultures, see James C. Scott, Seeing like a State.) Clearly, if an institution or individual acts largely or wholly by unregulated market criteria, then the motivations for those actions will be radically narrowed. Monoculture, furthermore, tends to become solipsistic over time and to ignore external realities. Crucially, this applies to the dynamic of power. Every institution, whether primarily a market actor or not, will try to accumulate power as far as it can and it will regard constraints and self-regulation as obstacles to be evaded. The public good – and these institutions do operate in the public sphere – is then downgraded and subordinated to the power dynamic. In the current crisis, a significant part of the problem is the economic power has been able to marginalise politics and to insist that its own norms enjoy hegemony.

In addition, this is where the fragmentation of power problem becomes palpable (see Savoie). These processes, together with the overmighty subject, have combined to exempt sizeable areas from political – as distinct from legal or media – scrutiny, to depoliticise significant areas of the polis and to have come together to constitute of serious crisis of democracy. In many respects, the consequence of market thinking is that the bonum publicum does not actually need to be defined at all, let alone protected, because the market and liberal morality will secure this anyway by some obscure automatism, hence there is no need for stakeholders or governments or even active citizens.

Thus the restoration of sovereign power becomes a necessary condition for the revitalisation of democracy. If this requires a measure of recentralisation, so be it, as long as the sovereign power remains open to alternatives and is aware of the need for self-limitation. Thus auto-regulation and hetero-regulation are to be seen as offering a fundamental condition for a properly functioning democracy, whereas liberal morality and markets are insufficient.

Note too that whereas for markets and liberal morality consistency is not an issue, for the ongoing legitimation of sovereign power it is pivotal. Cultures in which there is a strong culture of pragmatism can finesse this to an extent, but inconsistency in decision-making comes back to haunt power elites at a later date. Indeed, given that inconsistency is widely regarded as immoral, governments which rely on the liberal morality principle and practice pragmatism too blatantly are seen as cynical. In an ideal world, the rule of law and a sense of fairness are supposedly the means by which consistency is secured. The implication is that pragmatism is to be exercised only under tight constraints.

From another perspective, can power itself become monocultural? The answer is clearly yes, as can be seen in the history of communism. In a monoculture, it is increasingly difficult to deal with complexity, in this instance the domestic complexity generated by systemic development, and this is massively exacerbated by globalisation. Those in power, those who have control of the levers of power, are generally determined to accumulate as much of it as they can (this is fairly standard ground in theories of power) and to evade constraints and regulations as tedious obstacles. The bonum publicum then becomes subordinated to the imperative of acquiring power.

This is where self-limitation, self-regulation and the acceptance of constraints come in as essential to the foundation of democracy; and this is where these processes are threatened by liberal morality and untrammelled market behaviour. It is worth stressing that the same imperative of accumulating power applies to the world of banking and the media as it does to governments or other agencies of sovereign power. And this is why the absence of self-correcting mechanisms, the ones that work, are so dangerous from the perspective of democracy and, equally, why these power centres will kick and scream when governments attempt to impose regulations on them. Crucially, and this again is standard, all exercise of power must have an external yardstick by which it can be assessed. The weakening, or sometimes the erosion of the external yardstick – the bonum publicum as it may well be – then demands remedial measures if democracy is to be sustainable, otherwise the overmighty subject will capture too much power.

Sch. Gy.

Jan-Werner Müller’s latest encounter with Hungary

Jan-Werner Müller has written a number of scholarly books and articles. I thought highly of several of his writings, but he loses all credibility when he writes about Hungary. And he does so often, it’s not going too far to suggest that he’s becoming obsessional about Hungary, the Fidesz government and, predictably Viktor Orbán.

His central message, in so far as one can be discerned, is that what the Fidesz government is doing is dangerous to democracy, it’s setting a terrible precedent (who knows, the Fidesz strategy might actually be working?) and is a frightful threat to liberalism.

One of his recent contributions appeared in the London Review of Books (paywall). It’s a meretricious piece of writing, spiked with half truths and decontextualised factoids. The underlying thinking, however, is rather more serious and raises vital questions of parity of esteem and respect for alternative ways of understanding political problems.

Not for the first time, someone coming with a liberal universalist epistemology seeks to impose the selfsame universalism on others who do things differently. The name for this is colonialism and it is an intellectual imperialist mindset that Müller epitomises, even to the extent of listening only to Hungary’s comprador intelligentsia. It’s something that Marx would certainly have been able to identify. By the same token, Müller’s liberalism does not include much in the way of tolerance and to judge from his writings on populism (here), his attitude to popular aspirations is strikingly elitist.

I wrote a letter to London Review of Books, challenging Müller on some his points about Hungary, but the LRB chose not to publish it. Here is slightly edited version of what I wrote:

Jan-Werner Müller relies on a sophisticated technique to create a less than reliable picture of Hungary under the Fidesz government. He provides plenty of information, but just not quite enough to give a balanced picture.

He starts by describing the events of 1956 as “an uprising”, evidently not being aware of the distinction between a revolution and an uprising (like the great French uprising of 1789 perhaps?). No Hungarian would ever describe 1956 as an uprising. Nor was the Kádár regime quite as agreeable as the rose-tinted view of it that Müller offers. He makes no mention of the petty humiliations of everyday life that much of the population had to undergo, of the way in which the communist system infantilised the people and denied them any concept of citizenship.

“Undermining the rule of law”, charges Müller, but offers no evidence; there is none. Then, allegedly, “paramilitaries in black uniforms patrol the streets”; no, they don’t, the Fidesz government banned them. Tourists are “liable to find themselves facing an angry crowd burning the EU flag”, he avers. Again, no. This happened once. And was the crowd really “angry”? Was he there? Just poetic licence, presumably, like so much else in his article.

“Shadow economy” and “tax evasion”, Müller asserts, yes, but these are diminishing thanks to the reforms passed by the Fidesz government. Or, a nice detail to make him appear authoritative, referring to the exit from communism, “which Hungarians simply call ‘the changes’”. No they don’t, though the few that Müller encountered might have simplified “rendszerváltás” for him. It’s best rendered as “system shift”. The “deep” v. “shallow” Hungarians contrast disappeared a long time ago; I haven’t heard it for 50 years. Incidentally, the word “shallow” is better translated as “dilute”. And in its time, in the 1930s, it was more directed against assimilated Germans, but never mind, why should Müller be accurate about Hungary?

And so it continues. The national theatre “on the banks of the Danube” (that bit’s right at least) may be “bombastic” to Müller, but one does not need accept him as a critic of the Central European aesthetic. Or Péter Medgyessy: yes, he was a banker, but rather more to the point, he had worked for the communist secret police. I’m not sure that Müller would have welcomed a former member of the Abwehr as German Chancellor in 1957, or would he? The parallel is exact.

Gyurcsány may have been charismatic to Müller, but then he is not Hungarian. And why, I wonder, does he not mention that Gyurcsány’s wealth was acquired during the semi-legal privatisations of state property of the late 1980s? Another missing detail – the initiative to have Gyurcsány prosecuted came from a member of the LMP, a leftwing, anti-Fidesz party.

The events of 23 October 2006 were really rather more than police “overreaction” to a demonstration. What took place was a massive attack on a peaceful demonstration, with the riot police firing tear gas grenades and rubber bullets directly into the crowd, with mounted police charges, the pursuit of dispersing demonstrators into the night and the torture of those caught – all this in an EU member state. It’s strange, though, that there was not a squeak about this at the time in the world media, even while since 2010 there has been constant criticism of the Fidesz government’s violation of human rights. A double standard? Well, some Hungarians can be forgiven for thinking so.

Or, again, Trianon; the problem was (and is) not that Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory, but that over 3 million Hungarians found themselves citizens of foreign states, something to which they never consented. This has seriously weakened the citizenship concept of the states involved, because they have proved incapable of accepting that their Hungarian population has ideals, aspirations, sense of the past that are different from those of the ethnic majority.

“It’s not clear how many responded or what they said” in response to the questionnaire about the draft constitution; both untrue. The figure is just under one million and the views expressed are freely available to anyone (who reads Hungarian).

Finally what Müller does not see is that constant attacks on Hungary from abroad, like his, do not go unnoticed. My constituents have become markedly more Eurosceptic and introverted in consequence, something I regret, and the attacks could well help to secure Fidesz a victory in the 2014 elections. No one likes to be criticised unfairly and that includes Hungarians.

Sch. Gy.

The Crisis in Europe Part I

What we are looking at is far more than an economic crisis and far more than a crisis of European integration, even if much of the analysis chooses to explore it from this perspective. While the perspective is valid in itself, it has the consequence of hiding other processes – political, cultural, sociological – that affect the crisis and, by ignoring them, we make the solution of the crisis less likely. In short, deep seated changes taking place in Europe and some of these are partly accelerated by the economic crisis, which has exposed the fragility of Western material well-being. It is in this sense that the word crisis is appropriate – social realities are increasingly out of alignment with institutions and elite thinking.

The crisis has also brought into question the reliability of both state and market as the central organising principle of Western democracy. After 1945, a great deal of trust was invested in the state as rational redistributor and allocator, as well as the ultimate source of rationality. By the late 1970s, this was being questioned and the dysfunctions of the state were to be eliminated by the market. The market, therefore, was seen as the supreme source of rationality. Note here that whereas as the state is and must be a political category, the market is understood as free of politics and is a primarily economic process, albeit culture, psychology and other factors are now recognised as forming a part of market behaviour. What this elevation of the market to paramountcy ignored, however, were and are the political implications of the shift, that this effectively amounted to abandoning politics and political inputs into the central processes of society. Democracy was thereby reduced to something narrower, almost to being a spectator with little legitimate points to make. At the same time, the functioning of the market was naturalised and to some extent sacralised. The supreme rationality of the market ruled and was above and beyond questioning; those who did raise objections were dismissed as “irrational” or as “dinosaurs” or “reactionaries”.

This supremacy of the market, together with the truth claim that market rationality would invariably produce the best answer, that these answers could be applied to any and all social problems, that markets would always return to equilibrium state became unquestionable and irrefutable propositions. One of the minor ironies of this is that it resembled Marxism-Leninism as the sole source of “truth” – all monistic systems do this – but unlike “real existing communism”, which relied on high levels of coercion, market liberalism “enforced” its legislative claims voluntarily, and it became a matter of something close to a faith or belief system. As with all monistic systems, akin to putting all one’s eggs into one basket, it became dangerously exposed to a single, overwhelming shock (cf. Taleb’s Black Swan).

Market supremacy did, however, generate a political counterpart, and this was what can be described as liberal individualism. The individual was invested with supreme, possibly sole, rationality, all interests were subordinated to economic, material or monetary factors, thereby ignoring the multiplicity of human motivations and the role of impulses like pride, the quest for power, status, aesthetics, religion (to name only a few) was simply screened out, regarded as tiresome irrelevancies.

Once the market is established as the paramount process, it then becomes important – possibly vital – to construct a discursive strategy that marginalises political activity, even while maintaining the appearance of politics and participation, as is proper in a democracy. This may be regarded as a shadow or penumbra of the market, a clear but fluid discursive strategy that offers the simulacrum of politics, operating in the preexisting institutional framework, but which is difficult if not impossible to interrogate. Unlike the language of Marxism-Leninism, which became dead, this liberal-market discourse remained and remains sufficiently open to be able to deal with challenges non-coercively. This may be seen as the outcome of the 1990s turn, the elaboration of a strategy that asserts that “politics is management”, or speaks of “good governance” or “benchmarking” and replaces political action with morality, a key aspect of which is to insist that the “spirit” of the process transcends all other possible readings, even while the definition of “spirit” remains in the hands of the dominant elite. It has proved to be an effective trick, because it is difficult to disprove, reverses the presumption of equal access to the truth, i.e. it is up to challenger to do this, and erodes the definition of the reality that might overturn the starting proposition. Thus alternative readings, other discourses are placed in a secondary, hierarchically inferior position and attempts to rely on, say, legal or administrative language can be set to one side. Arcadian shepherds and their semblables may be able to operate this system in a fair-minded way, but Arcadia is a very long way from contemporary Europe, hence the possibility (and reality) that arbitrariness, inconsistency and abuses of power can proliferate. The result is resentment on the part of those who do not agree with the quasi-belief system and are marginalised; and resentment is the breeding ground for polarisation, for the rise of counter-belief systems, for political hysteria and paranoia, all of which feed into extremism. Circumspice.

At the heart of the 1990s turn, the emergence of a vaguely centre-left consensus structured around liberal individualism, market freedom and the centrality of moral values (universalism, human rights, gender mainstreaming, citizenship replacing ethnicity, a democracy agenda). By this means, a morality-driven, value-centred discourse sought to create and sustain a particular concept of politics (the liberal consensus and moralisation are analysed in Chantal Mouffe’s work, notably in the book on populism edited by Francisco Panizza).

This concept can be regarded as an attempt at constructing a post-political politics, in that it sought to eliminate political conflict and preferred to resolve issues through “politics as management”, administratively or juridically. Crucially, this separated liberal democracy from the demos, because it necessarily excluded certain social strata, above all the semi-skilled working class. Those who would not or could not subscribe to the market-cum-morality concept of post-political politics – and there’s a contradiction in terms if ever there was one – were basically excluded from its remit. Although the proponents of this new order placed great emphasis on citizenship buttressed by the “empowering state”, in sociological reality, matters were different. Non-elite sectors of the demos were simply excluded from it, although they were certainly not seen as victims of social exclusion. Not surprisingly some of them turned elsewhere to find a political home – towards the extreme right and the extreme left.

Sch. Gy.

Genocide and Raphael Lemkin

A Conference was held in Geneva on the 20 June 2012 to launch the Raphael Lemkin International Prize for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities. I was asked to make a few concluding remarks.

What is profoundly shocking, deeply disturbing about the Nazi genocide is that it employed the methods and instruments of the modern state for utterly evil ends. What I have in mind here is the impersonal, detached functioning of a modern state bureaucracy, its methods of organisation, communication, maintaining registers, transport, logistics – all aspects of Weber’s legal-rationality – which are then deployed for mass killing.

We know from the Milgram experiment that hierarchy, command and authority are often sufficient to override individual conscience, resulting in the dehumanisation of the victims, if authority so commands.

Zygmunt Bauman (building on Adorno) makes it clear that the Holocaust was not inexplicable or incommensurable, but can be understood as one possible outcome of modernity, namely the industrialisation of killing.

All this is profoundly disturbing, because it wholly undermines the Enlightenment assumption (a) that there is a single humanity - it undermines the idea of a single humanity, because genocide is irrefutable evidence that one human group perfectly capable is seeking to exterminate another. (b) That rationality is benign and (c) that history is moving towards something progressive, with a positive outcome (this last is deeply encoded in Marxism, liberalism and Christianity).

Hence there is the impossible, intolerable conclusion that rationality can result in dystopia – this necessarily questions the entire Enlightenment project and places an intolerable burden on Europe and the West; hence the propensity to argue that the Holocaust was absolute and an anomaly, there was never any event that could (and should) be compared with it.

However appalling it was, nevertheless we should not be mesmerised by Auschwitz (and I think this was Lemkin’s position), we should not lose sight of the world’s historical experience both before and since the Holocaust, that there have been mass killings that relied only partly on the instruments of modernity. Thus we can cite mass killings where the methods of modernity established the possibility by collecting the victims using the methods of modernity, but the actual killing was personal and non-industrial.

Lemkin himself accepted the mass killings in the Soviet Union under Stalin as falling under the same category of genocide, notably the Holodomor in Ukraine; Timothy Snyder’s work, in his book Bloodlands, shows that millions of people were starved to death or were shot, including Jewish Holocaust victims. We can further cite Rwanda, Cambodia, Jugoslavia both in 1945 and during the early 1990s, Mao Tse-tung’s famine and others.

Should we be relieved that the majority of mass killings and genocide used methods that we were only partly the instruments of modernity? Hardly.

Lemkin’s legacy, then, is that the Enlightenment may have encoded the promise of universal reason, but history has overridden this, that the instruments of reason are neutral as between rationality and irrationality, and can be deployed for wholly evil purposes in an entirely rational way. It is essential that we confront this proposition, however uncomfortable that may be. Lemkin did.

Sch.Gy.