Editorial

Citation

Coleman, J. and Rankin, A. (2002), "Editorial", European Business Review, Vol. 14 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2002.05414eab.001

Editorial

EditorJohn Coleman

Deputy EditorAidan Rankin

In this issue of New European, our contributors have coalesced more or less spontaneously around a common theme. That theme is the failure of European politics to match the complexity of Europe's present social and economic juncture. In the physical sciences, a narrow, linear approach has for some time been giving way to theories of complexity that are at once more holistic and more particular, allowing for almost infinite variety.

Political thought, meanwhile, has lagged far behind. It is expressed in slogans that often seem childishly simplistic and which are refuted by everyday experience. Events in Holland, for example, have made a nonsense of the patronising "rainbow" politics imported from the USA but popular primarily with the left. The idea of racial, religious and sexual minorities, and feminists, united in shared victimhood and reading obediently from "liberal" scripts, has perished with Pim Fortuyn. The left is rootless and angry as a result. Meanwhile, the right is learning painfully that man cannot live on "market forces" alone. But above these seismic shifts, members of Europe's political class seem strangely like visitors from outer space, adrift amongst us without an historical anchor or a point of cultural reference.

Sir Peter Smithers, who is both of these, embodies the true European spirit. His involvement in European politics spans more than half a century, from the epoch of post-War idealism to our more sceptical era today. Because he is a European (or in British terms a "pro-European"), Sir Peter opposes the creation of a federal Europe. A supra-national state, he argues, goes against the grain of the European spirit. There is a common European culture, but it is divided into sub-cultures that have evolved organically and defy attempts to force them together in political union. Furthermore, Smithers argues, federalism is based on a false analogy with the USA. Americans (with two notable exceptions, the indigenous people and the descendants of slaves) are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, who have sought a new identity in a new society. Europeans, by contrast, are proud of their historical roots and wish for a politics that reflects those roots. Sir Peter hopes that federalism as an ideological project will give way to a pragmatic, but humanitarian Europe, more like the Council of Europe model than the present EU, based on friendly nations co-operating. His optimism is chastened, however, by the immature response of Europe's establishment to right-wing populists like Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Here, Sophie Masson, a novelist, applies her extensive knowledge of French cultural history to Le Pen's rise and current fluctuating forces. She believes that the slogans of "anti-fascism" applied against Le Pen (by moderate right as well as far left) are trite and meaningless. He does not advocate a fascist-style Corporate State and the support he receives from some immigrants, chiefly black Africans, suggests that to call him a racist is to simplify and reduce. Support for Le Pen's Front National is a protest against the sclerotic political establishment that refuses to acknowledge popular grievances, notably crime and drugs, the collapse of social solidarity and the red tape that binds small businesses but exonerates large corporations. More than that, support for Le Pen has strong historical roots, going back to the 1790s and the Revolutionary Terror. The Revolution produced two rival visions of France. The first, the Jacobin tradition, is based on abstract theory and centralised practice. The second, which Sophie Masson calls La France Profonde, is traditionalist, pragmatic and diverse. Le Pen does not necessarily reflect that spirit of cultural conservatism, but he has acted as medium for the anti-Jacobin spirit.

Marxist and neo-liberal thinkers have both made the same mistake. They have behaved as if economic forces override all other aspects of human life, including personal or collective loyalties and cultural identity. He charts the rise of "libertarianism", a radical free-market ideology as scornful of tradition, and human tenderness, as the Jacobin left. Libertarianism, he believes, is a destructive travesty of the idea of private enterprise. Commercial processes should not exist in a moral and spiritual vacuum and when they do so their success will be short-lived. Many, including successful entrepreneurs, are uneasy about the process of globalisation, the negative aspects of which are fuelling a dangerous and indiscriminate backlash.

It is this theme of "anti-capitalist" rebellion that Michael Mosbacher takes up, in his Social Affairs unit monograph reviewed here by Aidan Rankin. Mosbacher skilfully dissects the protest movement's contradictions, hypocrisies and bad faith. However, according to Rankin he stops short of admitting that free-market fundamentalism and political correctness are two parallel forms of reductionism, one economic and the other cultural.

All these writers agree that the last thing Europe needs is reductionism. We should aim for a Europe of complexities, instead of a Europe of facile slogans and grand designs. Paradoxically, perhaps, that would make life much simpler.