*** IVAN KRASTEV: Le destin de l’Europe. Une sensation de déjà-vu. Editions Premier Parallèle (13 rue de Vaucouleurs, F-75011 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 84251183 – Email: contact@premierparallele.fr – Internet: http://www.premierparallele.fr ). 2017, 155 pp. €16. ISBN 979-10-94841-62-4.
After Europe, was originally published by Penne Press in English and is both a magnificent and cruel discovery. As the writer of the European Library pages (Bibliothèque européenne) it is cruel because after having read it with great attention and unceasing curiosity, I am only too aware that I will only be able to provide a very reductive and too superficial account of it. It is magnificent because it helps to uncover a very powerful political scientist and ideas that are often illuminating and always incisive and penetrating. Ivan Krastev is a Bulgarian political scientist who is relatively unknown by the public at large in the “Europe of old" but this is a unlikely to remain the case for very long because his sombre observations and predictions formulated in this publication will without any shadow of a doubt provoke a number of reactions among those who are concerned by the current state of European construction and within quarters that are clearly more restrained but who are indeed supposed to be concerned about the future direction this construction is going to take.
Is, “the European Union condemned to disintegrate in the same way as the Habsburg empire" almost exactly a century earlier? This is the piercing question posed by the author at the beginning of his book. The response he subsequently provides is reflected from the very first subtitle of the book and his mention of a, “feeling of déjà vu…”. "The European Union has always been an idea on a quest to become reality” and everything has now conjugated to lead Europeans, all Europeans, citizens and leaders, to live, “in fear of disintegration, despite the fact that now more than ever they share a common destiny”. Is it therefore stupid to claim, as this Bulgarian intellectual does, that, “it is ‘not’ that rare for societies to commit suicide” (which has again been confirmed recently by the British Brexit…) given the fact that current nostalgia for the Habsburg Empire nurtured in central Europe indeed confirms that, “the apparent absurdity and apparent rationality of something hardly means that such a thing could not happen again"?
The pessimism of this figure currently residing in Vienna is based on an observation: the current wave of migration could be “the new revolution” insofar as it, “creates a consciousness of national loyalties that were previously considered dead and buried but which are returning today in revenge for the naive optimism nurtured in the past”. In this publication, Ivan Krastev explains how and in what way this crisis has changed European societies, whilst profoundly dividing them between themselves, between the East and West and within themselves. It is as if we have the, “the tourist and refugee as the faces of the Janus of globalisation”. The former is the happy face - and an increasingly more privileged one, and includes the face in the west - and the latter is the hideous side, the one that arrives “‘among’ us but who is not one of ‘our own’”. Moreover, the author believes that these migrants are indeed the, “agents of history who will decide the fate of European liberalism" and who secrete at the same time and particularly in the “new Europe” a movement - diagnosed by the American political scientist, Ken Jowitt – as, “revolts directed against the very idea of universalism and westernised cosmopolitan elites" so very well embodied by the European Union and its removal of the borders.
For many Europeans, open borders “are not a sign of freedom but are now a symbol of insecurity”. Even worse than this, although they were previously happy with the values of the Union being exported throughout the world, many of them would now, “agree with the Russian President Vladimir Putin when he asserts that the diffusion of the democratic model triggers destabilisation", the fear of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism that has been also unleashed a feeling of “moral panic" that can also provoke “a re-nationalisation of policy”. This is a politically sensitive phenomenon for very good reasons, as the author points out in a detailed analysis, for example, of the issue of, “the botched integration of the Roma” and the “demographic counterrevolution" that succeeded the democratic revolution of 1989. All this has created in central Europe a deep distrust of the “conception of the cosmopolitan world” embodied by “Brussels" and which has provoked, “a shared attitude on how to tackle the challenges relating to diversity and waves of migration”. We are forced to recognise that, “this shared attitude strongly resembles what we have witnessed within Western societies themselves between the major cosmopolitan capital cities and the provinces".
It would be difficult to describe the existential problem confronting the European Union better. Its Eastern part is not the only one concerned: undoubtedly the “ordinary citizens in Central Europe" are openly constructing, “their legitimacy around a national identity opposed to Brussels” but who would dare to provide assurances that identical feelings are not alive and kicking in the “old Europe”? The "spectre of populism" is growing within it to the extent that “democratic confusion" is prospering on the debris of genuine democracy, given the fact that it is so emasculated at a national level (the author hammers home the message that, “we are now aware that it is of the utmost importance for the common European currency to survive that the voters in debtor nations are not denied the right to change governments but the right to change economic policy”) and prevented from developing at a European level. How long will it take for the members of the European Council to understand, as suggested by Emmanuel Macron during his victorious election campaign, that the only way of avoiding the destiny of the Union becoming that of the Austria of the Habsburgs is by accepting that the accusations made by European citizens are not “a rejection of Europe but… a desire for another Europe”? Michel Theys
*** CHRISTOS HADJIIOSIF: L'intégration européenne, l'Allemagne et le retour des nationalismes. Editions Bibliorama (51 rue Stournari, GR-10432 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 5221112 – fax: 5221466 – Email info@bibliorama.gr – Internet: http://www.bibliorama.gr ). 2017, 128 pp. €12.72. ISBN 978-960-9548-31-1.
Christos Hadjiiosif was a professor of contemporary history at the University of Crete from 1987 to 2014 and also headed the Institute of Mediterranean Studies at the Foundation of Technology and Research. In this book he presents an original study combining historic knowledge and political reflection, whilst tackling the major challenges at the heart of the current international public debate: what is the basis of Germany's economic and political sovereignty, what are the dangers threatening it, what makes it different and, until recently, what are the challenges posed by German nationalism, the return of nationalism almost everywhere in Europe, “multi-speed Europe” and the “4th industrial Revolution" due to changes in technology. The author describes the fact that the European integration process is a “European paradox" with its trans-national structures that, in theory, were supposed to overcome national rivalries… but which has heightened the contradictions between the member states of the Union and rekindled the phenomenon of nationalism within them. He identifies the roots of this contradiction and locates it in the concrete shape taken by the integration process since 1989, with the introduction of the euro speeding up the tendency inherent in each customs Union to promote the most economically solid members, which was the particular case of Germany. Christos Hadjiiosif considers that the policies implemented since then have taken place in an ideological context that has tolerated inequalities between the member states of the Union, as well as among citizens. Today, with the massive arrival of refugees exacerbating the social and political instability caused by the deepening of the Union, these inequalities have persisted to such an extent that the future of European construction has been seriously undermined. (AKa)
*** THEODORE STATHIS: En cherchant un modèle de démocratie pour aujourd’hui. Editions Kaktos (46 rue Panepistimiou, GR-10678 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3840524 – fax: 3303098 – Email: info@kaktos.gr – Internet: http://www.kaktos.gr ). 2017, 261 pp. €15.90. ISBN 978-960-382-328-5.
Economic failure in Greece has increased the number of citizens who are indifferent to politics. Increasing numbers of people believe that whatever party arrives in power, inequalities and injustice will remain the rule. Just as was the case previously. Increasing numbers of Greek citizens feel and that their votes are just part of a masquerade. They are therefore increasingly more likely to fall into despair, which is as always a fertile ground for those who feel that they are the soul of “the saviours” who are prepared to tackle the innumerable ills of which society suffers. Unfortunately, very few people remember the misery that followed the dawning of the Hitler regime that came out of the Weimar Republic… The aim of this book is to provide a warning against these illusions and provide a reflection with which Greece could provide itself with a democracy worthy of this name and which ultimately proves an effective system for the majority of people. Theodore Stathis is a professor of economics at the University of New York, as well as a parliamentarian and Minister on three different occasions. He points out that there are many democratic regimes in the world that are also failing to deliver the desired results, particularly with regard to the way in which wealth in each country is distributed. The author believes that the problem is due to the way in which the institutions of the democratic system are structured (its composition and organisation), which usually results in people losing out, ill-conceived laws or laws that are not implemented. It is on these issues that he proposes that the Greek citizens begin to take action. (AKa)
*** Futuribles. L’anticipation au service de l’action. Futuribles Sarl (47 rue de Babylone, F-75007 Paris. Tel.: (33-1) 53633770 – fax: 42226554 – email: revue@futuribles.com – Internet: http://www.futuribles.com ). January-February 2018, No. 422, 128 pp. €22. Annual subscription: €115. ISBN 978-2-84387-435-2.
In this edition of the French perspective review headed by Hugues de Jouvenel, the philosopher, Patrick Viveret, looks at ways of "Reinventing" politics, which in his view, is guilty of lacking vision. To this end, he is proposing three keys, which correspond to 3 major institutional pillars: the legitimacy of the political function (he argues that there is need to move from a purely dominating power paradigm to a paradigm of creative power because the enemy is now the fragility of the planet and the humans who inhabit it), its relationship to the economy (because politicians should address outcomes that have “the common good" as objectives and that politicians reinvent themselves on the lines of professions and no longer employment, which obviously means a necessity to think in the long term) and their relationship to citizens, who have lost confidence in their representatives and who continually think in terms of leaders. In his editorial, Hughes de Jouvenel highlights the delays in responding to the alarms sounded several years ago in the domains of the environment and demographic ageing, which are putting the future of pensions in danger. The editor-in-chief of the review calls on the readers themselves to become “the actors of the change” required. Some of the other subjects tackled involve the more or less important potential contained within the third Industrial Revolution and the significant trends outlining developments in the world of work. Thierry Gaudin looks at how changes to the management of currencies and institutions could impact in the world. Finally, in his customary “European column", Jean-François Drevet provide an update on the right to independence in the context of the European Union and territories such as Catalonia and Scotland (but also with references to the Balkans and Kurdistan), which leads him to highlighting the naivete of those who believe that European level politics could help to speed up or simplify the regulation on demands from regional independence movements within the European club. (MT)
*** ALESSANDRO BRESOLIN: Albert Camus: l’union des différences. Le legs humain et politique d’un homme en révolte. Presse Fédéraliste (c/o Maison de l’Europe et des Européens, 242 rue Dugesclin, F-69003 Lyon. Internet: http://www.pressefederaliste.eu ). « Textes fédéralistes » series. 2018, 304 pp. €23. ISBN 978-2-9558710-4-1.
Whoever can remember Camus will also generally quite simply remember a brilliant novelist too. This book is a much more comprehensive version of a book originally published in Italian (Edizioni Spartaco) and which also points out that the author was obviously a man of culture but also one of political convictions and struggle. As explained in the preface by Agnès Spiquel on the half of the Society on Camus Studies, the historian Alessandro Bresolin highlights the trajectory of a Franco-Algerian intellectual who was resolutely engaged in the battles of the 20th century and who saw very quickly, “the fertile soil of all kinds of totalitarianism in nationalism”. He illustrates his “deep convergences… with libertarian thinking" and who, in the case of the Algerian problem, led to him opening up about federalist thinking and, as written in the preface, imagining “a new, multi-ethnic and multi religious Algeria… built as a Federation, federated with France and the European Federation, followed by a euro-African federation before finally becoming a world federation”. The author of this book shows to what extent his thought and political action was constructed step-by-step in the rejection of extreme solutions supported by nationalists (already…) and colonialists in “constant distrust" of each other and also with regard to “politics as understood as a partisan system”. His federalist convictions are further developed in the resistance and in the Combat organisation before it became a newspaper. The author also returns to the years of federalist struggle with, among others, Altiero Spinelli and his Ventotene manifesto, which would ultimately lead “to the betrayal of the resistance after the liberation”. The historic failure of those who shared this federalist struggle “does not invalidate their political convictions”, argue Agnès Spiquel. Alessandro Bresolin is not wrong to think that “the nuances of Camus’s anti-dogmatic, universalist and cosmopolitan thinking" could still prove both useful and beneficial in the Europe and world of today, in which nationalism is once again spreading… (MT)