POL 5032 WEEK VI
/Nationalism: Identity and agency within supra-national entities. Are states withering away or just becoming a little different?
Questions:
a). “The European Union is, at its core, a project of Kantian peace, an attempt to create a peaceful union of European states that had been at war with each other for many centuries, but whose orgy of violence in the first half of the twentieth century left Europe exhausted.” — David Held. Is the European ideal of a Kantian Peace still at the heart of European development?
b). The recent financial crisis in Europe has raised fundamental questions about identity and politics. Against this background, signs have emerged of increasing social disintegration and a resurgence of nationalist sentiment; anti-semitism, racism and far-right politics. In your view, what does it mean to be European and will European identity survive the global financial crisis?
c). Will France or Germany submit to a new right wing ideology? How will ethnicity and nationalism develop in a Post-Communist Europe, and especially in Eastern Europe?
I am indebted to two scholars for my point of departure this week: First, Mitch Ilbury, who reminded me that the origins and debates surrounding particular modern problems may be found in the minds and writings of the ancient Greeks; and second, Christian Salmon who wrote so eloquently in his article, which I found as ”L’impotenza della sinistra,” La Repubblica, March 21st 2015, p.21.
Writing in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues:
Things that are exchanged need to be somehow comparable. This is why coins were invented. All good[s], which are exchanged, should be measured by some sort of standard coin, which represents a measure of human needs. [From] the name coin (nomisma) comes the word law, regulation or convention (“nomos”), since the value of a coin is by regulation.
The issue here is that the ‘value of coin is by regulation’. What Mitch Ilbury argues goes right to the heart of the matter. I quote: “Aristotle claimed that proportional reciprocation (exchange) is one thing that holds a city together. It is the reason why people associate with each other. Various other forms of human association follow that quite basic notion of exchange of goods and services. Functionalism follows a similar line of thinking. It is founded on the idea of common interests, just like the notion of exchange between citizens in an Aristotelian conception of the state; in the case of functionalism, integration is founded on sharing knowledge, technology and expertise. Further association between states follows this as their initial association is grounded on a common interest principle. However, Aristotle also claimed that the law held a city together in that it tended to preserve community in the city. This touches on the limits of functionalism. Although the theory explains integration by association, it does not explain how the association is to be maintained. In a city, exchange is supported by this idea of law, as an assurance. Functionalism places a great emphasis on the benefit of association, as there is significant pressure on the potential benefit to bind the association. [Nevertheless], without the structure of law, exchange only tells half of the story; it is not evident that association by exchange alone is enough to maintain the bind found through functionalism.” In other words, a union based on a substitute currency, the Euro, without the necessary legal backing in the form of universal European fiscal policy with centralized interest rates and control over the money supply, is doomed to be extremely problematic to put this issue mildly.
Christian Salmon builds on this idea. Coming to prominence with Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind. (London; Verso, 2010), he now paints a picture of French politics as the French turn out for local elections to decide who will win the second round gunfight between Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP and Mariene Le Pen’s National Front on March 29th. Writing on the first round, Salmon focused on how the political landscape in France is being polarized between the Socialists on the Left and the far right National Front. The impotence of the left is the subject of Salmon’s article. The rise or ascent of Mariene Le Pen’s National Front corroborates this story of the Left and the impotence of the Left’s intellectuals, who besides some exceptions have demonstrated that all they can do is express a moral indignation at Le Pen’s values. Leftist intellectuals now entrench themselves by defending Republican values as mythical paladins.
In assessing the ideology governing France, Salmon arrives at three phenomena: the colonial imagery of France; political attitudes and repression of foreigners; and the lack of sovereignty of the state. By replacing the French Franc with the Euro, and by losing control of its boundaries, France has not just given up aspects of its sovereignty, but as Salmon opines, France has dried up the symbolic terrain where its credibility is built. Thus sovereignty is simply dissipating in every direction. Vertically upward toward Brussels, the European Commission and European financial markets, and downward to smaller cultural regions within France like Brittany for example.
For Salmon, the lack of sovereignty starts a dangerous spiral, which leads to bi-polarism within the political landscape as each political party arrives at a direction based on its own narrative. On the Right, it is back to the future by going home. On the Left, it is the economic conquest of the world. For the Right, the hexagon that makes up the boundaries of France is symbolic of a unique horizon. For the Left, the hexagon is an unlimited horizon. On the Right, a regressive belligerent discourse, on the Left a naïve epic with no boundaries.
The argument turns on a nationalist chimera that glorifies a fantasized France against a globalist utopia of Europe. There are two mythologies: On the Right, an identity of France of villages and steeples. On the Left, an identity of Europe with boundless markets. France will now choose: whether to move to a petrified or ossified state or the dissolution of France itself. In Salmon’s pessimistic view, it’s a funeral dualism in which the politicians are consumed by their own failure.
France is not alone as other regions within Europe are also agitating for more political autonomy. To my mind the issue remains one of exercising politics over economics. For far too long, Europe has drifted on a debate between Keynes and Von Hayek. Revving the economic engine or practicing an austerity that has crippled the lives of many who find themselves destitute and out of work. We find, in Aristotle’s words, that law in the end holds the polis together, preserving a community. Economics without the concomitant legal structure can lead to dissolution and failure. And in fact the number of regions seeking to go it alone is increasing. Both resurgence in nationalist pride and disappointment at Brussels’ centralized economic management have led to an increase in separatist moods.
We can begin with Scotland’s referendum that took place on September 18th 2014. Scotland’s referendum was closely watched by Catalonia, which already enjoys a wide degree of autonomy. Nonetheless the economic crisis in Spain has led to a surge in Catalan nationalism. And on April 19th 2014, 2.1-million Venetians representing 89 percent of the voters chose independence from Rome in an informal poll. There is no doubt that Belgium is splitting between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the North and French-speaking Wallonia in the South. If Flanders decides to go it alone, Belgium may cease to exist as a country. This would probably mean that French-speaking Wallonia would seek to join France, as the region has been French in everything but name. Indeed Marine Le Pen is already stoking the fires of French nationalism, “If Belgium falls and Flanders declares independence, which seems more and more possible every day, France will welcome Wallonia with pleasure.” A less known independence movement is in Brittany in northwestern France. A recent poll found that one in five Bretons want independence from Paris. Brittany has long been isolated from the rest of France. Breton is a Celtic language close to Cornish and Welsh and has recently undergone something of a revival, as efforts to assert a distinct Breton cultural identity enjoy ever-greater support. Nationalism as a Northern Italian phenomenon is far more prevalent when looking at the Lega Nord per L’Indipendenza della Padania. The party, often referred to as Northern League by English-language media and literature, is also referred to simply as Lega or Carroccio. Lega Nord, founded in 1991 as a federation of several regional parties of northern and central Italy, advocates the transformation of Italy into a federal state, fiscal federalism and greater regional autonomy, especially for northern regions. And lets not forget the elephant in the room as Greece moves ever closer to default and potential financial disaster.
In moving towards a particular cultural or national identity, communities are displaying nationalism within Europe. In trying to unpack this phenomenon, Rochella Schollij argues from a constructivist perspective that the nation is an imagined community, built on social interaction and historical experience. It is seen as imagined, as most members of a sovereign state will never meet the majority of their co-members; yet imagine the collective as a bonded community. The idea that states will revert to a form of nationalism in times of adversity is not new. Writing in 1963, Blair Bolles, argued in Rising Nationalism: A Threat to Projected European Union that in times of strain or economic recession, the first response is national self-sufficiency. As a result, Schollij avers, ‘where the nation is threatened, national identity becomes activated. In both a political and economic sense the implications for the state are significant. We can understand this further by looking at political identity, how it is constructed and used and how it is activated.’
Again, I am indebted to Rochella Schollij who argues that in order to understand how identity plays a part in the relationship between citizen and state, we need to look to Hegel. Despite the fact that he lived and wrote between 1750-1850, his understanding is valuable because he was present at a time when political thinkers were observing the evolution of national identity. He wrote on what modern political identity should look like in order to allow both state and citizen to thrive. Within an individual’s identity, he separates out two aspects: first, he states that every individual has a practical identity within a state. This identity is constituted by the practical obligations of a citizen, for example, through voting. These characteristics are uniform, and endow an individual’s life with a positive purpose. This is distinguished from political identity and may be termed as action-motivating identification. Individuals will therefore vote because they identify themselves as part of a group that holds this collective responsibility. Second, an individual identifies himself as having a political identity, which in turn has certain repercussions. This involves an association with a particular history, but also, with a particular prospective narrative. Regarding political identity, Hegel states that an individual must have agency. He must lead a ‘healthy’ political life in order to flourish as a human being in a structured environment. Hegel sees the relationship with the state as dynamic and dependant on its citizenry and holds that mutually beneficial relationships are vital. When a citizen sees the laws of the state as being part of who he is and how he wishes to live, rather than being imposed from above, it makes for greater fulfillment.
Hegel’s argument goes to the heart of the matter. The European Union, by its very nature, has a democratic deficit, as its development has been guided recently not by a political ideal, but by an economic imperative. David Cameron’s ‘EU speech at Bloomberg’, delivered on Wednesday January 23, 2013, provides a point of view that is interesting. Put simply, David Cameron has argued that the first purpose of the European Union was to secure peace, and this he argues, has been achieved. Today, he maintains, the main, overriding purpose of the European Union is different: not to win peace, but to secure prosperity.
Given the continuous economic problems the EU is still experiencing, it would appear that the future of the European Union lies in fixing its economic problems through a new political formula. I feel that there are three options:
1). Continue with more of the same, but as Cameron argues, “More of the same will just produce more of the same – less competitiveness, less growth, fewer jobs.”
2). Strengthen the ‘federalist’ component by creating a central bank, a single market, a single currency, a federal parliament, together with a new central government on the lines of either Germany, Switzerland or the United States of America. This would immediately stop the economic rot, but is this the only solution?
3). Create a confederation of states that devolves power back to the states within the European Union; a European Union that respects the rights and individualism of each state while strengthening the notion of a single market without necessarily adopting a single currency.
