With
a good reason, Jurgen Habermas in his paper “Democracy in Europe” discusses the
possible ways of reforming the institutional and social setup of the European
Union. The main issue that he tackles is the one which has almost occupied the
intellectual and public spheres in Europe and that is, democratic deficit of
the EU. Habermas rightly indicates already in the introduction that “national
democracies are becoming more and more entangled in problems arising out of
growing discrepancy between a world society that is becoming increasingly
interdependent at the systematic level and a world of states that remains
fragmented”. This formulation, though, may be put in a slightly different form,
which would again stress the inability of nation states to deal with
contemporary world problems, but would at the same time define the problem in
more social terms. So, one could argue that both international institutions and nation states, have become too weak
to deal with socio – economic dynamics at the international level, same as with
its repercussions at national levels. This means that both levels of institutional activities have become incapable of dealing with social reality in general. This formulation might sound similar to
Habermasian one, but actually shifts the focus from the matter of formal sovereignty
to the matter of social and economic structure, both internationally and
nationally.
Habermas’
analysis of the international conditions that have accelerated the process of
delegitimation of the EU on one hand and inability of nation states to tackle
both socio – economic and political problems on the other, is convincing. He
emphasizes two main problems: one is deepening of social and economic
stratification internationally, which have led to political impotency of the
nation states to deal with neoliberal offensive. The second issue is the EU’s
lack of democratic legitimacy and therefore inability to provide nation states
with a necessary back up support when facing problems on supra – national level.
This is why Habermas calls for deepening of European political integration. The
method he uses is also quite convenient.
While very easily “crashing” the argument of the non – existence of the
“European demos” as being the main obstacle to the further and more democratic
political integration of the EU, he agitates for further political integration
of the Union on the basis of typical nation – building process. In brief, the argument
is that no nation state has ever been created on the basis of preexisting demos, but rather as an imposed and
produced legal constitution, from above. To put it in more simple terms, in
spite of the fact that some inhabitants of Sicily or Catalonia don’t “feel”
Italian or Spanish, this still doesn’t mean that nation building of Italy or
Spain was unsuccessful. What is important, rather than a common identity of
“homogeneous” demos, is common public sphere where people of a certain
community, regardless of their identity claims, come together to discuss
political issues and reach the main goal of every public sphere – the balance
of interests. This is, apart from “double sovereignty”, European electoral law
and balance of power among the existing EU institutions, Habermas’ main point –
we need a common public sphere in order to create political unity, necessary
for solving the issues concerning us at present time. This condition, as a
matter of fact, is the main precondition for all other institutional and social
reforms. Due to this reason, it is the European public sphere that I am going to
address here, in order to challenge it.
My
disagreement with Habermas therefore, starts and finishes at the point of
spreading the public sphere onto European level. Even though pointing out that certain
social groups transnationally suffer from economic crisis regardless of which
nation state they live in (the same goes for the elites who do not suffer or
even, benefit from the crisis regardless of their national belonging), Habermas
somehow at the end, misses the point of why and how we should spread the arena
of public debate from national to supranational level. In more simple terms,
the problem isn’t that he finds this arena to be the mediator of different
social interests across national boundaries, the mediator “between different
conceptions of the common good”. The problem is rather that this public sphere,
together with institutional changes, in his view, needs to be legally imposed
from above. In other words, by avoiding and successfully “beating” the argument of “no further political integration without
European demos”, he falls into another trap.
It is true that nation states legally
constituted civic solidarity from above, but the reasons and historical moment
when this had been done is incomparable to the present moment and unsuitable to
the problem which European Union and its member states are facing today. While
nation states were established after the bourgeois revolution, in order to
legitimize the new ruling class, while at the same time creating an additional
legitimation tool called “public sphere”, they were still an emancipatory step
away from feudalism. The new supra – national public sphere suggested by
Habermas however, wouldn’t differ from its historical predecessors as long as
it does not build itself upon a new, radically different initial point. Historical
circumstances under which we live today are simply different from the ones at
the time of the development of nation states that Habermas is referring to when
trying to deal with present time’s problems. With that respect, what use to be
emancipatory in one historical period (imposing the new legal framework from
above), isn’t emancipatory in the other. It was evident already with the last
wave of nation building processes (in Eastern Europe or former Yugoslavia
especially, for instance), that “late” formations of nation states went into
the opposite direction from the emancipatory road.
If
this new Event from bellow would not take place, what we might got with
reforms from the above (even if they aim at opening the new, wider and a common
space for public discussion and mediating different interests), is what we
always have gotten every time, when capitalism was in crisis. Here, I mainly
refer to the “30 glorious years” and the welfare state model. It has been shown
numerous times in history, that keeping the same basis, meaning the same social
relations of production, while demanding better conditions of life for ever
larger majority of people, always meant that the best you could get, are short
terms concessions (more social giving and welfare), which only served as:
1) An excuse not to change the basis
radically, since even with this base social state is possible
2)
As a perfect tool for bridging over the time of lack of legitimacy and wait for
the new suitable moment for re-appropriation of intensity of class domination
Not so long after, it would be possible again
to legitimize social spending cuts and cancelation of concessions that had
previously been provided. As a matter of fact, Habermas himself says that the
“idea of social Europe has perceptibly failed, with the reasons for the failure
residing in Europe itself”. At the same time he argues that this doesn’t mean
that resistance to the European unification is justifiable – and I indeed
agree. However, neither “European unification” nor “European solidarity” necessarily
have to be adopted or applied on the same basis upon which the EU was
founded. On the contrary, isn’t his admission that causes of problems of ever
larger social and economic discrepancies and identity conflicts in Europe are
to be found in Europe itself, a good start for requisitioning the causes and not
only effects of this European
project? Isn’t this admission a perfect chance for admitting also that European
economic problems are originating from the central pillar of European
integration – which is the integration of European elites in order to secure a
free flow of capital? Of course, when indicating (four) reasons of why we need
to reform the EU today, Habermas mentions that initially, the intention was
also to prevent the escalation of conflicts among European states. This is also
correct. But, I would argue, more important issues from the very beginning were
economic, rather than political ones. Here I am referring to the claim of
Yanis Varoufakis, that the EU was
primarily established upon the agreement to remove the barriers for coal and
steel and that ECSC was nothing else but
the outcome of the decision among six nations, to create the supra – national
institutional set up for a (coal and steel) cartel, whose purpose was to
regulate production and price levels.[1]
In accordance to that, it is logical
that economic interests could not “trickle down” to the more serious political
integration, since these interests would be threatened by the political
democratization. As Jacques Ranciere points out, (from the standpoint of the
elites), “there is only one good form of democracy – the one which confronts
the catastrophe of democratic civilization”.[2]
This is why it is often heard in public
debates that the only ones, who feel Europeans today, are the elites
themselves.
Instead
of concluding words, I would just refer to one of Habermas’ “super -
structural” suggestions, namely the “double sovereignty”. In order to have a double sovereignty, one
first needs to have national sovereignty upon which to build the supra –
national one. The problem is that national sovereignty have already been gone for
a long time. Financial capitalism made politics in general dead, let alone
concepts such as national sovereignty under the rule of multinational capital
and international financial institutions. Doubling something which is non –
existent would be as if we would be multiplying by zero. Of course, the solution is not the
return to the concept of nation states. The solution is, as Habermas suggests, finding
the tool for reaching the point of international solidarity. However this should be, in my view, achieved through establishing a different and less fragile grounds which would be posed from bellow. One may
say that this sounds more utopian than changing the system radically from the
inside – but creations are never to be judged in advance. The new creations are
possible only to be imagined and then retroactively evaluated, when already created.
There is no other way. Finally, Habermas argues that “higher level” or “shared”
sovereignty means sacrificing part of national sovereignty in order to conserve
the (old) revolutionary achievements in the past. The overall point of my paper
lies in a counter – claim, which is in the “worst” case, as normative as
Habermas’ claim. What we need today is, therefore, not conserving the old
revolutionary achievements which are not any longer capable of dealing with
contemporary political, economic and social problems, simply because they are
the part of the problem. What we need today, are rather new revolutionary
achievements.
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