Why the European Union is a liberal democratic Soviet Union
Cross-regional and Blogosphere, Politics and Society29 Comments
Image by neweurasia's Schwartz (CC-usage).
Here’s a comment from KZblog on my post, “Marxism and Liberalism are the same for Central Asia“, that needs a response:
… I would argue that there is a huge difference between the EU and the USSR. Your analogy would make dictatorship and republics the same process because it both cases initiative, resources and sovereignty are transferred to a central government.
Under the USSR, Moscow could and did rule over the other countries and force a uniform ideology. The EU contains monarchies, parliamentary democracies, and republic, and no one country has power over another. No country is giving up anything it doesn’t agree to give up.
I think these are superficial distinctions. To begin with, some general points. First, republican systems inevitably lead to dictatorship, either by mechanistic and even violent means, as in the USSR, or those that rule by the manipulation and manufacturing of consent, as in the EU. If you don’t believe me, look across the Atlantic to see a republic that for over fifty years has been teetering toward all-out presidentialism despite its remarkable system of internal checks and balances.
Second, in both cases ideology is put before human needs. Does anyone seriously believe that Europeans are any freer under the god of Capital than under the god of Marx? In fact, the god in both systems is really the same one — the Janus of Production and Consumption. Look at the photo of the statue below. It’s tellingly iconographic: would you see any substantial semiotic difference if the euro sign was switched with a sickle and hammer? No.
Photograph by Flickr user gepat (CC-usage).
Now onto specific criticisms. First, again regarding republicanism, little does anyone realize but the Soviet system of rule was actually procedurally and conceptually republican. It’s true that the soviets were not bicameral, which is presumably a chief feature of republican governments, but hey, neither is the European Parliament. It’s also true that the peoples of the USSR could not elect their premier, but hey, did any of us vote for Van Rompuy, either?
Remember that “democracy” and “representative” meant different things than what they mean here in the West, especially America. “Democracy” literally meant demos (mob or mass) and “representation” of this demos did not mean doing what the public believed it wanted but instead what was conceived by the Party technocracy to be “really” in its best interests. Paternalistic, yes, but you can’t accuse it of not being representative.
Second, it’s true that even if the USSR was republican, however we may want to understand the term, there was little diversity opinion allowed. The premier set the tone and scope of debate, which at any rate, after Stalin identified Marxism with dialectical materialism once and for all, tended to be technocratic and not particularly ideological. But again, how is this substantially different than the EU?
Everyone agrees on free market capitalism and liberal democracy. Communists have become social democrats, social democrats have become moderates, and Christian democrats have become lightweight Americanists — but they’re all liberalists. Okay, it’s true that Moscow resorted to force and exiled dissidents to Siberia, but that’s not substantially different than Brussel’s tyranny of consent.
We don’t need physical gulags anymore; we simply have the gulags of public opinion, material comfort, and facile moderation. When was the last time you heard a European politician call for Revolution, Shariah, or some other seriously alternative system who wasn’t immediately ridiculed by the mainstream press and ostracized by his political colleagues? Say what you will about America’s lunatic Republican Party, but at least they’re lunacy is taken seriously.
Third and finally, the diversity of governing styles in the EU is increasingly becoming irrelevant. Did you know that 80% of all legislation now passed in the various national legislatures follows a continental agenda toward integration? For now it’s true that none of the EU member states are expected to relinquish anything they don’t want to (in this regard, the current situation in Greece is very interesting), but that doesn’t mean they won’t eventually.
I believe the time is fast approaching when the monarchies, parliamentary democracies, etc., become mere husks of what will ultimately be a uniform and federated system — precisely like that of the USSR, which was also theoretically comprised of many sovereign or autonomous nation-states. Perhaps I’m sounding a bit conspiratorial, but even a blind man can see that the momentum of the EU is increasingly toward a much tighter federation.
Okay, I think I’ve said enough. I invite anyone to challenge me. Let’s have at it! ;-)
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“We don’t need physical gulags anymore; we simply have the gulags of public opinion, material comfort, and facile moderation.” You phrase this as if moderation is something terrible to be avoided. Wouldn’t you prefer exile in a French cafe to a Siberian prison? Besides, there are perhaps moments in history when radicalism is truly needed, but right now in Europe is far from one of those moments.
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Isakov Reply:
March 24th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
@Schwartz, but what you just said is also subjective.
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Dziugas Reply:
March 24th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
@Isakov,
I think Schwartz brings up a completely fair point. I was born in a Soviet state, and know people that have been sent to Gulags. Firstly, I must assume that the subjectivity which you refer to is in the comment on radicalism, not the first part. Surely you can tell the difference between not merely exile – but imprisonment, based on your political beliefs. Whatever little attention the EU dialogue gives to dissenting opinion, this is different from forcibly ejecting it from public discourse altogether. Anti-federalist sentiment, in fact, flourishes in certain states, such as Lithuania – even the EU Parliament members from the country are often decidedly anti-EU. And let us not forget the February 24th outburst of parliamentarian Nigel Farage. This (democratically elected) member of the parliament verbally assaulted the President of the European Council – and in the end was fined 10 weeks pay. Not only is this a joke of a punishment, but it was not unexpected from a member, and former leader of the eurosceptic United Kingdom Independence Party. This is something that under USSR would have been met with strong repercussions, quite likely a jail term.
And finally, my most important argument is the historical one. USSR was not merely an economic, legislative federation of apparently sovereign states. What you fail to appreciate is that states did not join USSR willingly, despite fervent claims of Soviet authorities to the contrary. The countries were forcibly occupied, and forced to join. Any resistance was met with force – take it from someone whose both grandfathers participated in said resistance. There is a vast difference between signing a social contract of sorts, and joining an economic union with other democratic countries, and being forced to do so. Choosing to relinquish some of your freedoms is not the same as having them taken away.
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Schwartz Reply:
March 25th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
@Dziugas, to back up your last point even further, the SSRs of the Caucasus and Central Asia were literally conjured into existence ex post facto. They weren’t even sovereign states to begin with, but Soviet creations (the Russian imperialist conquests of the previous century notwithstanding). The situation is barely comparable to the EU, in which all the member-states were pre-existing.
Turgai Sangar Reply:
March 26th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
@Schwartz: “the SSRs of the Caucasus and Central Asia were literally conjured into existence ex post facto. They weren’t even sovereign states to begin with”
There definitely were sovereign and home-grown (be it short-lived), states before the Bolshevik consolidation in Transcaucasia. One example that emerged after the collapse of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic is the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic which had already about the same contours as what was to become the Azerbaidzhanskaya SSR:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/a/a3/20090930153624!Azerbaijan_Democratic_Republic_1918_20.png
Another is the Democratic Republic of Georgia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/DRGMap.png
Dziugas Reply:
March 26th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
@Turgai Sangar, I hope you don’t mean that argument to undermine the one made by Schwartz – there certainly were sovereign countries before the takeover by USSR, but that in no way diminishes the fact that once the takeover occurred, the existing structures were restructured at will.
Turgai Sangar Reply:
March 27th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
@Dziugas, No, not to undermine just to stress that the Bolsheviks or Soviets did took over sovereign entities in the Transcaucasus as they did in the Baltics later on.
The map and borders of the SSRs that were created often strongly ressembled that of the old sovereign entity. I agree though that the political and territorial engineering was much stronger in the Transcaspian territories, the Kazakh steppe and Turkestan where the nominally sovereign entities that existed there on the eve of the Bolshevik takeover (i.e. the Emirate of Bukahra and the Khanate of Khiva, both in fact rump protectorates) eventually disappeared completely into the new SSRs.
Averroes Reply:
March 26th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
@Dziugas and Turgai Sangar, which is precisely what I believe will eventually happen to the member-states of the EU: their status as pre-existent won’t matter in the least once integration deepens.
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Dziugas Reply:
March 26th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
@Averroes, Well, as tough as it is to argue with your psychic predictions, the fact remains that I don’t see real evidence in your article besides things as similar iconography, and arguments were terms change meaning mid-sentence.
Tricia Reply:
March 26th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
@Dziugas, oh, do let’s take it down a notch Dziugas, while I agree with your general arguments, Averroes makes some better arguments than that – the argument on manufactured consent has a certain amount of validity. The far less obviously fascist elements of the west, and its ability to guide completely certain policies in far more quiet ways can hardly be denied.
Turgai Sangar Reply:
March 27th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
@Averroes, I like the statement that you made in another posting that at the end of the day, (neo-)liberalism proved to be as destructive in Eurasia as Sovietism did. In my opinion, the former consolidated some of the worst excesses of the latter.
First, neo-liberalism or at least neo-liberal economic policies coopted, or were adopted by, the (spawn of) rapacious native compradore-nomenclaturist elites that were created and installed under the Soivet system. Second, neo-liberalism, through the promotion of liberal lifestyles and attitudes consolidated the process of cultural dislocation and social disintegration.
Averroes Reply:
March 28th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
@Turgai Sangar, the theme of cultural dislocation is one much too often overlooked by the technocratic obsessions of neo-liberalism and communism. But by “liberal lifestyles” do you mean libertinism, Westernism, or something else?
Turgai Sangar Reply:
March 28th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
@Ibn Rushd :)
“But by “liberal lifestyles” do you mean libertinism, Westernism, or something else?”
In these circumstances I would say more libertinism.
Bill O'Reilly Reply:
March 28th, 2010 at 10:32 pm
@Averroes, BBC’s Newsipe show’s got a darn scary report about “manufacturing consent” over in the USA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aEk864YrKw
To me the difference between the USSR (and many former Soviet States) and the EU is quite clear.
In the EU, Germany cannot snap its fingers and rearrange its own government, let alone snap its fingers and change policies in the entire EU. It is simply impossible. And if they were to engage in some kind of interference or manipulation in France’s political system, the independent press and the judicial system would act to expose and rectify those wrongs. And at any point France could chose to leave the EU.
In the USSR, Moscow could snap its fingers and change anything in any republic of the USSR. Without any appeal or way of undoing it, except through the party. No republic could leave.
Or look at it this way. Let’s say some friends want to meet for the evening. I want to go to the movies. Bob and Dave want to go to a cafe. I may try to manipulate my friends–I can bribe them to go to the movies, or lie that all the cafes suck or threaten not to be their friend. Ultimately it is still their decision. And anyone can decide to leave at any moment. That’s a far cry from forcing anyone to do anything. Notice also that in a democracy you cannot force people to do things. If I put a gun to my friend’s head, I would be arrested and put in jail.
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Another point :
I do not think there has ever been a government in the history of the world that did not claim to represent the interests of the people or do what is best for them from the Facist party to North Korea to Lord of the Flies-style dictatorships. So by your argument, all governments have always been democracies.
I think we need to draw a distinction between governments that are held accountable to the people and those that are not. Again, if I work for my boss and I ignore all his orders but say I am doing what I think is best for this company, will that fly? No, I’d be fired. Which is why bosses have a check over their employees–pay checks.
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Averroes Reply:
March 26th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
@KZBlog, two points:
#1 The same can be said for Washington or Jakarta, the seats of two other federal unions, sure. I concede that Western governments are more accountable. However, we must not overlook their increasing ability to manufacture consent (or, more accurately, corporations’ ability to wring consent from both the people and politicians).
#2 My argument about the etymology of communist governmental terminology is not one of “everyone says they represent the people”, but that communist ideology itself stipulated the type of government they had. When they called themselves the “People’s Democratic Republic” of such and such, they were actually being sincere, but their definitions were different from the West’s.
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Isakov Reply:
March 26th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
@Averroes, Well, lets be fair to communism here, I don’t think communism stipulates necessarily the fascist elements of a Stalinistic state.
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Averroes Reply:
March 28th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
@Isakov, how so? They both have the same goals and necessarily involve totalitarian social organization. Can you imagine either fascism or communism accommodating a liberal democratic or anarchic syndicalist system without feeling the need to totally take them over?
I don’t agree with the USSR-EU comparison as far as the genesis, the economic structure and defence goes. On the other hand, the shift of power to an opaque and top-heavy bureaucracy with its own parasitic Euro-nomenclatura does rings a bell…
Socially and economically though, one historical ressemblance that I see is one between modern-day Europe -and the EU-15 in particular-and the Western Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries.
For a bit of a raunchy scenario how it could have been: http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/uusieurooppa.png
:)
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Averroes Reply:
March 28th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
@Turgai Sangar, hahaha did you snatch this from Robert Harris’ “Fatherland”? By the way, ever read David Brin’s “Life-Eaters”? It has another alternate history take on the Nazis and Europe. And the stuff about Nazis raises an interesting historical issue, i.e., that industrial social democracy actually has its roots in 1930s Germany. Well, that’s arguable anyway. Certainly John Lukacz tries to argue that.
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Turgai Sangar Reply:
March 28th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
@Averroes, Héhé. No, not from Fatherland although I ready the book and saw its filming with Rutger Hauer. This map is far more sophisticated than the one in the book. Its maker obviously had a good knowledge of the Nazi’s ‘Generalplan Ost’, a series of scenarios for the conquered eastern territories. Several of the entities shown were indeed planned or even partly existed during the war (e.g. the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, Greater Romania).
It got it from here: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/10/17/186-europe-if-the-nazis-had-won/
It’s a blog for map buffs. As it says there, the orginal source is a dedicated Finnish ‘alternate history’ website valled Valtakunta (www.valtakunta.eu) which had a detailed description of how the Third Reich, including its society and daily life, could have looked like today. But seems to be offline now.
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Turgai Sangar Reply:
March 28th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
By the way: if you read Germen, here’s another one made by more professional historians:
http://www.obersalzberg.de/typo3temp/GB/9db8e763ab.jpg?file=uploads%2Fpics%
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Turgai Sangar Reply:
March 28th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
GermAn of course.
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