THE HEALTH OF NATIONS Part 6 pot

The public realm is that part ofthe total social process ofa society which consists in the exercise ofthose social powers which have been conferred by society to serve the public interes

dialect ofGerman, which would eventually come to dominate and similate the Norman French ofthe latest (and last) occupying class Andifwe were cousins ofthose tribes who would come to identify themselves

as-as Germans, those tribes were cousins, or closer, ofthe tribes who wouldcome to identify themselves as French And the proto-Germans wouldget rid ofthe Slav tribes from what would one day become the territoryofthe German Democratic Republic And the proto-French would gobeyond the Somme and then beyond the Loire and frenchify the sur-vivors ofthe Romanisation ofGaul, and so link up with the Lombardswho had moved from northern Europe to become the proto-Italians

in conjunction with the aboriginal Romanised tribes ofItaly, includingtribes in southern Italy who had been colonised by the Greeks and so

on and on

7.85 The expression multinational Europe (1100–1500) reminds us

that it took manic efforts on the part of kings and their servants, andthe spilling ofmuch blood, to make these motley tribes believe that they

were a nation, genetically and/or generically distinct from

neighbour-ing nations, to separate the royal property ofone so-called nation fromanother, to combine highly effective subordinate social systems (feudalestates, the dioceses ofbishops, city-states, free towns) into centralisedpower-systems When French kings were kings ofEngland and Englishkings were also kings ofFrance, what was England, what was France?British kings continued to bear the title ‘King ofFrance’ long after theyhad ceased to control any part ofFrance Multinational Europe also re-minds us that it is only ideologically motivated historiography that hasmonopolised the historical imagination ofthe people with its storiesofthe antics ofkings and emperors and soldiers, whereas the centralsocial activity was, as it always had been, economic, that is, the transfor-mation of labour and desire into goods and services to which differenteconomic agents attach differential but commensurable value It is theinternational character oftrade in the High Middle Ages, the cosmopoli-tanism ofthe towns, and the development ofan international businessconsciousness which should attract our attention and admiration, as

it should have attracted the gratitude and not merely the greed oftheholders ofultimate political power

7.86 The expression social Europe (1500–1800) reminds us ofa very

striking thing, the most important pattern ofall – that, after 1453 (thesack ofConstantinople and the end ofthe eastern (Byzantine) empire),

the people ofEurope rediscovered the most important kind ofEuropeanunity, a unity ofconsciousness in the very period which is convention-ally presented as the period during which Europe decomposed into amodified state ofnature wherein the leading politico-military actorswere conceived as being ‘in the posture ofgladiators’ (to borrow anexpression used by Hobbes) in relation to each other.

7.87 Social Europe saw a great new flowering ofa shared Europeanconsciousness, a consciousness which had been preserved, almost mirac-ulously, in unbroken succession from ancient Greece and Rome Even

in the darkest days oftribal Europe, when the lamp ofcivilised societyburned low, the light ofthe mind burned steadily in the monasteries,those common organisations ofthe spirit, to be handed on to their intel-lectual heirs, the universities, in the twelfth century It was the ChurchofRome which had carried a most significant part ofthe intellectual, so-cial and even political legacy ofthe ancient world through tribal Europeinto multinational Europe And then, in the period ofsocial Europe,the European spirit manifested itself luxuriantly in the fine arts, mu-sic, literature, the law and social institutions, philosophy, humanisticscholarship, the natural sciences, technology, agriculture Social Europewas a European Union ofthe Mind, a single market ofconsciousness,with free movement ofartists and intellectuals, ofintellectual capital, ofthe products ofhand and brain Renaissance humanism, the scientificrevolution, the enlightenment ofthe eighteenth century, Romanticism,the industrial revolution, the political revolutions after 1776 – they wereall the work ofthe wonderful unity-in-diversity ofthe European mind.7.88 Social Europe also reminds us that, ever since the period oftribal Europe, we Europeans have been capable oflayered loyalty – loy-alty to family, village, guild and other social corporations, town, es-tate, province, nation, the Pope, the Emperor – loyalty to our religion,

to Europe (in relation to non-Europe), to the City ofGod as well asthe City ofMan Each loyalty has seemed perfectly compatible withall the others Some ofus, from ancient Greece onwards, have evenclaimed to be cosmopolitans, members ofthe international society ofthe whole human race, the society ofall societies As Europeans acquired

an ever-increasing sense oftheir own individuality during the periodofsocial Europe, that new personal self-awareness included an ever-increasing awareness ofthe complex and multiple and ever-changingsocial parameters ofour personal identity, the social subjectivity ofourpersonal subjectivity

7.89 And social Europe reminds us that, even among the degenerate

controllers ofthe public realms ofthe nations, there were signs tical socialising We think ofHugo de Groot (Grotius) as the prophet ofuniversal international law But he, and his great Spanish predecessors,can also be seen in their specifically European context, as voices in anew politico-military wilderness, the voice ofold Europe recalling theintegrity ofold Europe’s values, values ofsociality and rationality, in theface ofthe terrible challenges ofa new political world in Europe, ofanew-old world outside Europe

ofprac-7.90 So what changed after 1800, to make inter-statal Europe, the

Europe ofthe triumphant Public Realms? What made Hegel’s essay of

1802 on the reconstituting ofGermany so prophetic? What has led somany Europeans to believe that inter-statal Europe is Europe’s naturaland settled state? How is it that the European mind has produced theEuropean Union that we know, a misbegotten and anachronistic prod-uct ofinter-statal Europe, ofone uncharacteristic phase ofEuropeanhistory, standing in the way ofa true European reunifying, ofanotherself-surpassing achievement of the great and ancient tradition ofEurope’s unity-in-diversity?

7.91 We can offer a rudimentary explanation of the complex torical process by which such a thing came about We can begin to findour way into the heart ofEurope’s darkness What we find is that theEuropean Union is a product ofa particular developmental process in

his-the most dynamic European societies, a process which enabled his-the state

(in its internal sense) to acquire an ideal, real and legal hegemony

over the other totalising complexes ofsociety (especially society and

nation and economy) and to acquire an external hegemony over all other

transnational phenomena (the internal state externalised to become the

state ofso-called international relations and international law).

7.92 But the social hegemony ofstatism has passed its apogee, andall the totalising social concepts are undergoing radical reconceiving

We will be obliged to conclude that the European Union, in its presentand potential state, is an exotic relic ofa fading social order, like thelate-medieval Church ofRome or the latter-day Holy Roman Empire.7.93 Alexis de Tocqueville’s discussions ofthe American and FrenchRevolutions are among the greatest achievements ofhuman self-contemplating Among his many powerful and prophetic insights wasthe idea that the new kind ofdemocracy had within it the seeds ofto-talitarianism, to use a modern word which he did not use He quotes

a warning uttered by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison

in 1789: ‘The tyranny ofthe legislature is really the danger most to befeared, and will continue to be so for many years to come The tyranny ofthe executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.’607.94 De Tocqueville said that, as the number ofpublic officials in-creases, ‘they form a nation within each nation’ and that governmentswould come more and more to act ‘as ifthey thought themselves respon-sible for the actions and private condition of their subjects [while]private individuals grow more and more apt to look upon the supremepower in the same light’.61

7.95 And so it happened: the controllers ofthe public realm came to

be a nation within each nation, a social class with its own class-interests,and then, as they began to identify with each other transnationally, atransnational class with its own class-interests And the European Union

is the product oftheir ideals and their ambitions European Union is the

partial integrating of the public realms ofEurope by the controllers of the public realms ofEurope (The public realm is that part ofthe total

social process ofa society which consists in the exercise ofthose social

powers which have been conferred by society to serve the public interest

ofthat society.)

Ideas and illusions

7.96 The form of the constituting of the European Union has beendetermined and profoundly distorted by certain peculiar characteristicsofthe minds ofthe controllers ofthe public realms, idea-complexes that

we may call technocratic fallacies.

60 A de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (tr H Reeve; New York, Schocken Books; 1961), i,

p 318.

61 Ibid., ii, pp 323–4, 336–7 Aristotle had foreseen the tyrannical potentiality of democracy.

In what he called a monarchical democracy, the people become monarchical, one ruler composed ofmany persons ‘Hence such a democracy is the exact counterpart oftyranny among monarchies; its general character is exactly the same Both lord it over the better class ofcitizen and the resolutions ofthe one are the directives ofthe other; the tyrant’s flatterer

is the people’s demagogue, each exercising influence in his sphere, flatterers on tyrants, demagogues on this type ofpopular body They are able to do this primarily because they bring every question before the popular assembly, whose decrees can supersede the written

laws This greatly enhances their personal power because, while the people rule over all, they rule over the people’s opinion, since the majority follow their lead.’ Aristotle, The Politics,

iv.4 (tr T A Sinclair; Harmondsworth, Penguin; 1962), p 160.

7.97 The first fundamental fallacy has been the idea that a tution is a legally formulated arrangement of institutions The second

consti-is the idea that there consti-is something called the economy which consti-is

au-tonomous in relation to the rest ofsocial phenomena, that res economica

is systematically separable from res publica, and even from res privata.

The third fallacy is the idea that democracy can be conducted as if itwere a species ofdiplomacy, as ifdiplomacy can be democracy by othermeans

7.98 The life-threatening effects of these fallacies can be detected inthe deep-structure ofthe European Union system and, with the conclu-sion ofthe deplorable Treaty on European Union in 1992, the constitu-tional situation has become worse rather than better.62 At the heart ofthe system remains the fantasy of the Diplomatic General Will, the ideathat the controllers ofthe public realms ofthe member states are able torepresent the totality ofthe national interests ofthe participating peo-ples, and hence that the public interest ofthe EU – which is expressed

in the law ofthe EU – is nothing more than the aggregate ofthe publicinterests ofthe member states, mediated through the collective willingofthe public-realm controllers The underlying supposition is that the

infinitely complex and intense social phenomenon known as politics,

which is at the heart ofthe process ofwill-formation in a democracy,can be transmuted and subsumed in a bargaining process among thecontrollers ofthe respective public realms, spuriously legitimated bymobilising the ante hoc or post hoc consent ofthis or that institutionwithin the member states

7.99 At the heart ofthe system remains also the fantasy oftheAggregate Economy, the idea that an EU economy and market can

be made by the legal and administrative co-ordination ofthe nationaleconomies and markets, and hence the idea that the economic public in-terest ofthe EU – which is expressed in its economic and monetary policy,and in economic legislation, and in the interpretation and applicationofeconomic legislation – can be treated as being the aggregate ofthe

62 The Maastricht Treaty introduced into the EC Treaty technocratic fantasies in providing

separate legal-constitutional regimes for so-called Economic Policy and so-called Monetary

Policy and in arbitrarily legislating certain transient capitalist dogmas, with collective

pun-ishments for recalcitrant member states And it provided a new non-EC (intergovernmental)

system for so-called Common Foreign and Security Policy,Police and Judicial Co-operation in

Criminal Matters andJustice and Home Affairs (this last aspect being more or less reintegrated

into the EC system by the Treaty ofAmsterdam of1997).

economic public interests ofthe member states The underlying position is that the organising ofthe infinitely complex and intense

sup-social phenomenon ofinteractive (public and private) economic

decision-making ofa capitalist social system can be transmuted and subsumed

into the routine interactive decision-making ofgovernment ministers,diplomats, national and international administrators, and national andinternational judges

7.100 Such ideas directly conflict with other ideas whose social power

we have come to understand through many centuries ofEuropeansocial philosophising and through the last two centuries ofintense livedsocial experience They run directly counter to the constitutional psy-chologies ofthe people and peoples ofEurope which have been dis-cussed above They are ideas which wholly misconceive the nature ofthe self-constituting (ideal, real and legal) of our societies They areideas which come from the shared consciousness of a rootless class, theclass oftechnocrats, whose job it is to manage the public realms ofoursocieties abstractly and instrumentally and professionally, rather thanthrough moral and political and emotional commitment Such peo-ple have been allowed to determine the revolutionary reconstituting ofEuropean society

7.101 Against such ideas we must insist on other ideas The constituting ofa society is the social self-constituting ofhuman con-

self-sciousness What is called the economy ofa society is simply that part

of such self-constituting which is the socialising of human effort and

human desire So-called democracy is that part ofsuch self-constituting

which is the socialising ofthe human will The self-constituting ofthemost dynamic form of society, that is to say, democratic-capitalist soci-ety, is an inextricable integrating of consciousness, effort, desire and will.7.102 To unravel the historical process by which technocratic falla-cies came to dominate and to impede the process ofEurope’s reunifyingrequires an understanding ofthe developmental relationship between

the real constituting ofour societies, during the period which we have called inter-statal Europe, and the idealisation ofthat process in the idea- complexes known as democracy,capitalism and the state (in its internal

and external manifestations)

7.103 It was no coincidence that Jean-Jacques Rousseau and AdamSmith both proposed, almost simultaneously, new ways ofimagining thereal-constitution processes which would later be ideally constituted in

the social theories which came to be known as democracy and capitalism.

And it was no coincidence that they did so at the very time when oursocieties had brought to full consciousness such powerful ways of im-agining their social totality The ideal-real-legal interaction ofthetwo – democracy-capitalism/society-nation-state – has been the storyofthe amazing development ofour societies over the last two centuries.

Rousseau’s general will and Smith’s invisible hand were metaphors

ofwon-derful explanatory power, but they were far more than metaphors – andthey were close analogues ofeach other.63 Their hypothesis was that it

is possible to aggregate human action socially, to aggregate the infiniteparticularity of human willing and human effort – and, most wonder-

fully of all, such aggregating can produce what we may call surplus social

effect, an output that is much more than the sum ofthe inputs They had

apparently constructed ideally an engine ofunlimited social progress,ensuring ever-increasing human well-being through the universalised

forms of law and wealth.

7.104 It turned out that democracy and capitalism involved a sale transformation of society, a re-constituting of society The nine-teenth century found a new instrument for social self-reconstituting, a

whole-novum organum which was a very old instrument reconceived, namely,

the public realm ofsociety, the res publica The ancient public realm,

which had been the personal property ofkings and ofone self-servingoligarchy after another, became the means of revolutionary social trans-formation The public realm provided a superstructure within whichsociety could be reconstituted, redistributing all forms of social power,including economic power (especially property-power), political power(especially over the legislative process), and psychic power (over the

63 ‘[T]he rulers well know that the General Will is always on the side which is most favourable

to the public interest, that is to say, most equitable; so that it is needful only to act justly, to be

certain offollowing the General Will.’ J.-J Rousseau, Discourse on Political Economy, in The

Social Contract and Discourses (tr G D H Cole; London, J M Dent & Sons; 1973), pp 296–7.

‘As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital

in the support ofdomestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be ofthe greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part ofhis intention.’ A Smith,

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), bk iv, ch 2 On what

German writers call respectively das Problem J.-J Rousseau (individualist or collectivist?) and das Problem Adam Smith (is a Smithian-capitalist economy natural or artificial?), see

E Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (tr P Gay; Bloomington, Indiana sity Press; 1954), and J Viner, ‘Adam Smith and laissez faire’, in The Long View and the Short

Univer-(Glencoe, The Free Press; 1958), pp 213–45.

contents ofthe public mind).64The public-realm superstructure came

to be ref erred to as the state, another ancien r´egime form reformed.657.105 The ancient constitutional psychologies adjusted themselves

to these developments, seeing the superstructural public realm as the

governing of society as the republican will ofthe nation, as the constituting ofa people as state (In Germany and Japan in the period

self-up to 1914, it proved possible for the constitutional needs of capitalism

to be met by technocratic rather than by democratic forms And we seenow in various countries outside Europe a form of social transformation

which might be called state capitalism.)

7.106 The superstructural public realms recognised each other

ex-ternally – recognition even became a technical term ofinternational law –

so that, regardless of the status of the state internally within the differentsocieties and ofthe extreme practical inequality among the states, theycould treat each other as so-called sovereign equals, since each seemed to

be performing a similar social-structural function The status in statu, to adapt Metternich’s formula, could also be a status ex statu.66Their moreromantic apologists could even suppose that the states together formed

a sort ofinter-statal society.67And it was soon found that the age-old

ruling-class game known as diplomacy could still be played according to

the old rules, as a game among the controllers ofthe new public realms

And the age-old aspiration known as international law could continue

to perform its old-regime function, marginally controlling the externalactivity ofthe new state-machines, reconciling piecemeal their so-called

interests.

7.107 The immense increase in the aggregate energy ofthe regime societies gave great force to what has been referred to above ascompetitive nationalism There was a new way ofincreasing the relativepower ofthe social totality – not by war, colonisation or annexation, but

new-by increasing the organisational efficiency of society, and new-by ing its aggregate wealth The most dynamic new-regime societies had

increas-64 The ‘public mind’ is the collective consciousness ofa society which functions in the same way as the consciousness ofindividual human beings from which it emerges and to which

it returns to modify the contents of individual consciousness The nature and the role of the public mind are considered in ch 4 above.

65 Once again, it is de Tocqueville who offers a fascinating exploration of the origins, in ancien

r´egime France, ofsuch a repositioning of‘the state’ A de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (1856) (tr S Gilbert; Garden City, Doubleday Anchor Books; 1955),

pt 3, ch 3.

66 See text at fn 70 below.

67 H Bull, The Anarchical Society: a Study of Order in World Politics (London, Macmillan; 1977).

become vast wealth-machines The pursuit ofexternal power throughwealth is the continuation ofwar by other means The peoples ofEurope

were conscripted into a set ofcompeting lev´ees en masse in time ofwar

and a set ofpermanent working armies in time ofpeace (with reservearmies of(unemployed) labour, to borrow Marx’s metaphor) The twoso-called World Wars ofthe twentieth century were wars made by thecontrollers ofthe national wealth-machines, by the nations within ournations Europe’s social progress was bought at the expense ofEurope’ssocial unity And the consequence was a twentieth century whose first

halfwas spent in war among the new competing state wealth-machines,

and whose second half has been spent in a feverish collective effort bythe controllers ofthe public realms to overcome their past, by seeking

to create a self-transcending status ex statu, the European Union.

7.108 The making ofthe European Union, as an external hegemonicpublic realm, reflects the social hegemony which the national publicrealms had accumulated over the last two centuries, the self-creatingofthe state as intra-societal superpower That process had reached its

natural limit with the development ofthe mixed economy after 1929 Not

content with having made capitalism possible by providing its necessarypolitical, social, economic and legal conditions, the public realm became

a master ofthe so-called economy, that is to say, the socialising ofhuman

effort and desire The public realm became a direct economic actor(especially through state-owned enterprises), and it became the managerofall managers (in the management ofthe macro-economy) and throughfine-tuning ofthe micro-economy (anti-trust law, consumer protection,etc.)

7.109 After 1945, the public realms, which had caused such scribable suffering and destruction, rehabilitated themselves by organ-ising yet another reconstituting ofour societies And it was from thatreconstituting that the European Economic Community was born, asuperstructural reconstituting through the forming of a communal ex-

inde-ternal capitalist economy It was, ironically, the beginning ofthe end of

statist hegemonism The European Community dawned in the dusk ofthe world which had made it.68

7.110 Over recent decades we have begun to reconstitute ourselvesideally, that is to say, in terms ofthe ideas by which we organise our

68 The Austrian dissent to the classical and neo-classical economic orthodoxy had been asserted in the 1930s with the work ofLudwig Mises and Friedrich von Hayek Joseph

re-Schumpeter’s History of Economic Analysis had been published in 1954.

lives Our societies are changing, as we renegotiate the terms and

con-ditions ofour sociality The public mind can no longer be managed by

the controllers ofthe public realm Our nations are being reconceived,

as the people reconsider the various sources oftheir personal identity

The nature and the function of the state (in the internal sense) is now an

open question, following extensive redistribution of the economic and

administrative functions of government The process known as

global-isation has put in question the system ofmanagement oftransnational

phenomena through inter-statal activity Democracy, as an idea and an ideal, is being tested against its practical manifestations Capitalism, as

an idea and an ideal, is being tested against its practical effects

7.111 It is the equivocal achievement ofthe European Communitythat it has succeeded in surviving from one new age into another Toredeem it and to perfect European Union will require an unprecedentedeffort of our long-accumulated constitutional wisdom

Making the future

7.112 What, then, must we do?69

7.113 We must first dispose ofthree courses ofaction which,strangely and embarrassingly, are precisely the three courses ofactionwhich are available at the present time

(1) The first is nuclear fusion (or ‘enhanced co-operation’), the

prus-sianisation ofthe European Union, that is to say, the final rationalisationofthe Community system, among a limited number ofEuropean states,

so that it becomes a supplementary state-system, welded onto the tional constitutional systems, an endogenous communal constitutionalexo-skeleton (i.e secreted out from the national systems but shared ex-ternally among them all), in which the constitutional problems ofduallegal supremacy and dual democratic legitimacy would at last be facedand resolved Official Germany has seemed to support this line of action,

na-69 In his pre-revolutionary tract of1886, Tolstoy said: ‘In the matter with which I am engaged, what I had always thought has been confirmed, namely, that practice inevitably follows theory and, I will not say justifies it, but cannot be different, and that if I have understood

a matter about which I have thought, I cannot do it otherwise than as I understand it.’ He also said: ‘What constitutes the chief public evil the people suffer from – not in our country

alone – is the Government ’ L Tolstoy, What Then Must We Do? (tr A Maude; Bideford,

Green Books; 1991), pp 107, 163.

but ambivalently, in so far as it has ceased, at least for the time being,

to speak, or to speak openly, ofthe unavoidability ofpolitical union as a

concomitant ofeconomic and monetary union

(2) The second course ofaction is inertial evolution, the gradual

in-tensification ofthe system, supported, again ambivalently, by officialFrance It sees the development ofthe Union as having a natural mo-mentum, a sort of steerable self-evolution, from customs union to com-mon market to single market to economic and monetary union, andbeyond – each step seeming to be a more or less logical and ineluctableprogression from what has gone before, even at the price of the ever-increasing incoherence ofthe total constitutional system (the EU plusmember states)

(3) The third course ofaction is polyvalent diffusion, apparently

favou-red by official Britain It is the concertisation of the European Union,

under the slogan Forward to the Nineteenth Century, leading to an

intrinsi-cally external diplomatico-institutional system, or rather an incoherentset ofexternal systems ofunresolved constitutional character, but con-taining a repertory of useful forms of potential collective action.7.114 Nothing more need be said about the mutually incompatiblesecond and third solutions They are technocratic distortions oftheconstitutional psychologies ofthe two peoples – for France, the claim torepresent externally the natural social integrity ofthe people-as-nationthrough the rationalistic authority ofthe controllers ofthe public realm;for Britain, the claim to represent externally competing and unresolvedsocial interests through the self-determining activity of the controllersofthe public realm

7.115 But more must be said about the first solution, given theexceptional influence which the German government will have over thefuture of the European enterprise and given the evident rationality ofsuch an approach It is a solution which is also an emanation from thecomplex constitutional psychology ofthe German people, as it has de-veloped over the last two centuries, the powerful mixture of the psychol-

ogy of state and the psychology of nation, the first being the necessary

guarantee ofthe safety and well-being ofthe second

7.116 The history ofthe twentieth century in Europe compels allofus, including the German people, to think as lucidly and frankly aspossible about these matters To that end, we may call to mind threethings which may stand symbolically for many others

(1) At the time ofthe creation ofthe Zollverein in 1834, Austria found

itselfin much the same situation as Britain 120 years later It did not want

to be inside, but could it remain outside? Metternich wrote a dum for the Emperor, saying that, within the German Confederation,

Memoran-Prussia was creating a sort of state-within-a-state.

‘In the German Confederation there is arising a smaller subsidiary

union, a status in statu in the full sense of the term, which only too soon

accustoms itselfto achieve its own ends by its own machinery in the firstplace and will only pay attention to the objects and the machinery ofthe Confederation in so far as they are compatible with the former.’70(2) In 1916, the German government set up a working-group to con-sider the necessary conditions for the establishment of a Customs and

Economic Community with the countries ofCentral Europe (a

Zoll-und Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft), designed to keep those countries out of

the grip ofRussia, but avoiding their direct annexation by Germany

The German word Gemeinschaft is a word with an interesting history, unlike (at least until recently) the corresponding words (community and

communaut´e) in English and French.71

70 Quoted in W O Henderson, ‘ Prussia and the founding of the German Zollverein’ (fn 49

above), p 1,094.

71 For an account ofthese discussions, see W J Mommsen, Max Weber und die Deutsche

Politik: 1890–1920 (1959) (T ¨ubingen, J C B Mohr; 2nd edn, 1974), pp 223ff The idea

ofsuch a union had been mentioned in the September Programme (ofwar aims) of

8 September 1914 which had called for ‘the establishment of a Central European Customs and Economic Union under German leadership’ (p 236) In an aide-m ´ emoire

to the Austro-Hungarian government in November 1915, the German government

pro-posed a customs union (Zollbundniss) for the unification (Verschmelzung) ofthe whole area into an economic unity (Einheit) (p 232) One may say that the German government was

trying to reconcile four policy objectives: (1) to free the Central European countries from Russian control; (2) to constitute those countries as a buffer between Germany and Russia; (3) to increase Germany’s status as a European power; (4) to provide economic opportu- nities for German business The idea of an economic union was considered as a politically more acceptable way ofmeeting the demands ofthe German right and the military for direct

annexation (a Hegemonialstellung des Deutschen Reiches prim¨air durch indirekte Methoden,

in the words ofK Riezler, p 223).

The German word Gemeinschaft is associated, in particular, with the name ofF T ¨onnies:

Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887); Fundamental Concepts of Sociology: Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (tr C P Loomis; New York; 1940) The epistemological status ofT ¨onnies’ dis-

tinction has caused much confusion (to which he contributed) It is best regarded as not being prescriptive or judgemental, or a rationalisation ofempirical phenomena, but as something akin to what Weber would call an ideal-type, a heuristic which helps us to situate

and compare empirical phenomena Broadly speaking, Gemeinschaft is the idea ofa more natural, instinctive type ofcommunity, whereas Gesellschaft is the idea ofa more artificial

negotiated society But the distinction was caught up in the problem ofGerman national

(3) In his biography ofThomas Mann, the German author KlausHarpprecht has drawn attention to something which Mann wrote in1947: ‘in just fifty years [Germany] will, in spite of everything, haveall ofnon-Russian Europe in its pocket, as Hitler could already have hadeverything ifonly he had not been so impossible’.72Harpprecht himselfcomments that this is ‘a prophecy that one reads halfa century later withsomething ofa shiver’.

7.117 We must surely pay particular respect to the constitutionalpsychologies ofthose peoples ofEurope who have only recently recov-ered their identity and their dignity as nations and states after centuriesofabuse and oppression And there is a much wider consideration Animposed prussianising ofpart ofEurope, accompanied by various kindsofinertial and entropic reconstituting ofthe rest, including a sort ofcollective neo-colonialism in Central and Eastern Europe, will meanthe division ofEurope, a disunifying ofEurope Europe will become

an incoherent collection ofsub-unions lacking any historical, ethnic,psychic – or even geographical – reason to exist Their members maynot even be geographically contiguous to each other The sad unity-in-disunity ofthe Holy Roman Empire after 1648 will have been negated,but by a disunity-in-unity which could do to Europe the damage whichthat system did to Germany A bizarre and tragic outcome ofthirtycenturies ofEuropean self-constituting!

7.118 It follows from all the above that the self-constituting of asociety is an interaction between consciousness and history Historyproduces the practical and psychic circumstances which are constantlyre-formed by the work of consciousness.73Half-revolutions, which carry

self-consciousness after 1871 Was the German nation the coming-to-consciousness of a natural community or the imposition ofan artificial society upon rich and proud German diversity? Thus the distinction came to play a role similar to Hegel’s distinction between

state and civil society (a distinction which was, however, clearly capable ofhaving both

ra-tionalising and prescriptive significance).

In English, it is only recently that the word community has come to have a special icance (apart from its use in the title European Community), in connection with a commu- nitarian variant within Liberalism See generally F Dallmayr, From Contract to Community:

signif-Political Theory at the Crossroads (New York, M Dekker; 1978); D Bell, Communitarianism and its Critics (Oxford, Oxford University Press; 1993).

72K Harpprecht, Thomas Mann: Eine Biographie (Reinbeck, Rowohlt Verlag; 1995) p 1,663.

73 ‘Very fitly is man compared to a tree, whose roots are his thoughts, whose branches and

leaves his words, the fruit whereof are his works.’ R Allott, Wits Theater of the Little World

(London, N Ling; 1599), dedication.

within them the potentiality oftheir own negation, occur when theproducts ofhistorical consciousness are not adequately re-formed inthe consciousness ofthe people, in the public mind ofsociety.

7.119 The democratic legitimating ofconstitutional forms is notachieved by formalistic manipulation of intricate sub-systems, such

as the tragi-comic Article 189b (now renumbered as 251) ofthe ECTreaty Democratic legitimation is the interiorisation by the people of

the necessity of particular social forms, forms which produce

life-determining social products (legal, political, economic, administrative,psychic) It follows that European integration, if it is to survive andprosper as a revolutionary transforming of European society, must be

an interiorisation in the consciousness ofthe people and the peoples of

Europe ofthe necessity ofnew social forms ofEuropean society Necessity

in this context means that the social forms of European society must beseen as a necessary part of the self-identifying of the people and the peo-ples ofEurope and a necessary part oftheir socialising, that is to say, oftheir social self-constituting with a view to their survival and prospering

in the actual historical circumstance ofEurope and ofthe human world

in general

7.121 The first step must be the reintegration ofEurope’s ing into the historical consciousness ofEurope, into the ever-maturingconstitutional psychologies ofthe people and the peoples ofEurope Ithas been the purpose ofthe present study to make a contribution tothat process European integration must be understood in the light ofthirty centuries of Europe’s self-conscious self-constituting, of all that

reunify-we have thought and all that reunify-we have done, the good and the evil andthe indifferent, to organize our communal living

7.122 The second step must be the bringing back to consciousnessofa public mind ofEurope, ofa collective consciousness which canprocess the concepts, the ideals, the values, the purposes, the policies,

the priorities, the hopes and the fears of the people and the peoples ofEurope – that never-ending dialectical process ofcollective self-contemplating, self-correcting, self-perfecting which is the work of thepublic mind ofa society The work ofthe public mind is logically and

practically prior to the process known as politics, the process by which a

society struggles to determine the public interest and hence to determineits collective willing and acting, above all by the making oflaw

7.123 But it is not possible to organise a modern dynamic societywithout both a dynamic public mind and a dynamic politics The super-structure ofconspiring public realms must be surpassed by a supremestructure ofself-conceiving European society

7.124 The third step in the salvation ofEurope’s re-unifying must bethe instituting, at long last, ofa transcendental debate in the public mindofEurope about the idea and the ideal ofEuropean integration Such

a debate must include, as a primary constituent, discussion ofthe tionship ofthat idea and that ideal to the ideas and ideals which animateour other loyalties, especially loyalty to the very many nations and sub-nations (the peoples) ofEurope, each ofwhich has a peculiar history and

rela-a peculirela-ar self-consciousness Threla-at history rela-and threla-at self-consciousness

have been characterised by a variety ofvigorous emotions: pride,

patri-otism, altruism, courage – and their dark shadows To make a societystrong and, still more, to remake strong societies, a substantial emotionalinvestment must come from the people and the peoples whose lives arechanged thereby Without such an investment the reunified Europeansociety will never engage anything approaching the passionate mutu-

ality of society, the profound self-identifying of nation, or the rational self-perfecting of state.

7.125 It is a strange and sad fact that this European revolution, whichcould have been the latest and the greatest, has inspired no excitementwhatsoever in the public mind, even in the minds ofthe young, espe-cially in the minds ofthe young Hegel said ofthe French and GermanEnlightenments: ‘All thinking beings shared in the jubilation oftheepoch.’74The English poet Wordsworth said, ofthe period ofthe FrenchRevolution: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive But to be young wasvery Heaven!’75

74G W F Hegel The Philosophy of History (tr I Sibree; New York, Dover Publications; 1956),

p 447.

75W Wordsworth, The Prelude, bk xi.

7.126 One ofEdmund Burke’s many memorable sayings is: ‘To make

us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.’76Somehow we have

to awaken l’ˆame et la personne de l’Europe from its sad, self-induced sleep.

A proud and self-confident and lovable Europe – a unique civilisationamong the great ancient civilisations ofthe world – could, once more,yet again, energise itself, take a role of leadership and responsibility, asubstantial microcosm in the great reconstituting ofthe macrocosm ofall-humanity, a reconstituting which has already begun, and which willdominate the present century

7.127 The only power over power is the power ofideas We, thepeople ofEurope, must consider how we can use the power ofideas toactualise the unique potentiality ofEurope, to find a life-giving conceptofEuropean Union, so that Europe may play its proper part in the making

ofa new and better human world Seid umschlungen,Millionen.77

76 E Burke, Reflections (fn 6 above), p 75.

77 ‘Embrace, you millions.’ F Schiller, An die Freude (Ode to Joy), line 9.

The concept ofEuropean Union

Imagining the unimagined

The selfand the other: the dilemma ofidentity – The one and themany: the dilemma ofpower – Unity ofnature, plurality ofvalue:

the dilemma ofthe will – Justice and social

justice: the dilemma oforder – New citizens, old laws: thedilemma ofbecoming – Making the economic constitution – Theprecession effect – The macro–micro fault-line – European Union

as European society

The European Union lacks an idea of itself It is an unimagined nity In seeking to transcend a set of national societies,its potential devel- opment and even its survival are threatened if it cannot generate a self- consciousness within the public minds of its constituent societies and in the private minds of the human beings whose social self-constituting it determines.

commu-The process of European integration has been dominated by two of the paradigmatic forms of social self-constituting It has been the dialectical product of real-world struggles conducted,in particular,by the national governments and by the controllers of the national economies It has been the product of obsessive traditions of state-centred law and administration.

It has been weakly determined by values,purposes and ideals,the forms of a society’s ideal self-constituting.

Above all,the European Union has still not been able to resolve and scend the contradictory categories of democracy and diplomacy by installing

tran-an idea of the common interest of all-Europe within tran-and beyond all tions of national interest The value,the purpose and the ideal of common interest is a necessary part of the forming of the idea of a common identity and a common destiny.

concep-229

8.1 We, human beings and human societies, become what we think

we are Ifwe have conflicting ideas ofwhat we are, we become a puzzle

to ourselves and to others Ifwe have no clear idea ofwhat we are,

we become what circumstances make us Conceptual dissonance andconceptual drift have been characteristics of the life-story of the threesocieties (called European Communities) which are now contained in asociety called the European Union A member ofa select but ominousclass ofinternational social systems which also includes the Holy RomanEmpire1and the League ofNations,2the European Union is a paradox-

ical social form, namely, an unimagined community.3And, inadequatelyimagined, Europe’s latest half-revolution may yet become a member of

another unfortunate social class – the class of failed revolutions.4

1 The Holy Roman Empire was ‘neither holy nor Roman nor an empire’ Voltaire, Essai sur les

moeurs et l’esprit des nations (c.1756), ch 70 (Paris, Editions Garnier Fr `eres; 1963), i, p 683.

The shadowy Empire (Reich) evaporated when Francis II resigned the imperial title in 1806

and declared himselfEmperor ofAustria, after sixteen German states had left the Empire

to join the Napoleon-inspired Confederation of the Rhine In his own lively constitutional imagination, Napoleon, who crowned himselfin 1804 as ‘Emperor ofthe French’ (taking the crown from the hands of the Pope), was the true successor of the Frankish King Charlemagne, who had been crowned by the Pope as Emperor in the year 800, and whose kingdom had been divided following his death The East Frankish (German) King, Otto I, invaded Italy, took the title King ofItaly, and in 962 (the traditional date ofthe founding ofthe Holy Roman Empire) was crowned as Emperor in Rome by the Pope The Empire came to be called ‘Roman’ under his son, Otto II, ‘Holy’ in the twelfth century, and ‘of the German Nation’ in the fifteenth century The ghost of the old Empire returned in 1871 when, after the Prussian army had occupied Paris, the newly unified Germany was proclaimed, in the Palace ofVersailles, as a new German Empire, with the King ofPrussia taking the title of Emperor (without being crowned as such) The last German Emperor abdicated in 1918.

2 There is a fine example ofsemantic m´esentente cordiale in the fact that the English league of

nations (with indistinct echoes ofthe inter-city alliances ofancient Greece or the Hansa) was

also the French soci´et´e des nations (with overtones ofthe then-fashionable Durkheim and

Duguit and ideas ofsocial solidarity).

3 Benedict Anderson, in Imagined Communities Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nation-alism (London, Verso; 1983/1991), refrained from imposing any general structural theory

on his examination ofthe way in which societies, always and everywhere, have used a markable armoury ofimaginative and mind-manipulating techniques to establish subjective social identity A general inference from his study is that it evidently requires much skill and effort to make and maintain the subjective identity of a society.

re-4 Europe’s failed revolutions of the twentieth century (Russian, German and Italian) have deeply depressed the European spirit, by seeming to prove finally the lesson of1792 that fundamental social change, born ofa marriage ofideas and violence, must lead to chaos, corruption, terror and reaction For bitter accounts ofone such revolution by former be-

lievers, see A Koestler and others, The God that Failed Six Studies in Communism (London,

Hamish Hamilton; 1950) ‘The Soviet Union has deceived our fondest hopes and shown

us tragically in what treacherous quicksand an honest revolution can founder.’ A Gide, in

ibid., p 198.

8.2 To re-imagine European Union is to help the people and thepeoples ofEurope to choose to become what they are capable ofbeing.

We must create the constitutive idea and the revolutionary ideal of

‘European Union’ – to sustain, justify, control, surpass and perfect thehalf-revolutionary institutional structure currently known as ‘theEuropean Union’.5

The self and the other – the dilemma of identity

8.3 For self-imagining human beings and self-imagining human eties, the selfis an other The selfmakes itselfas it comes to know itself

soci-as an other And, for the self, the other is a self The self comes to knowitselfas a selfas it comes to know the other as another self Each selfandevery other are mutually self-constituting Such an abstract (Fichtean-Hegelian)6 conception ofthe making ofhuman identity is applicable,not least, to the history ofEurope – a 3,000-year drama ofthe self-constituting ofcountless selves in relation to countless others EuropeanUnion is the latest chapter, but presumably not the last chapter, in thatinteresting story A putative European public mind (European socialconsciousness) is constituting a putative European self, which is not

merely a multiple self formed from the far-from-putative selves of the subordinate societies ofEurope, but also a single other, a selfin its own

right, recognised by the far-from-putative public minds of those societiesand by the private minds oftheir members

8.4 Idealised (and controversially identified and explained) scale cultural patterns ofshared psychic experience have dominated anaccumulating pan-European self-consciousness, forming a shared cul-tural heritage, forming a communal psychic self, at least within theminds ofan internationalised elite – the intellectual and artistic glorythat was ancient Greece; the republican-military grandeur ofancient

large-5 This distinction based on the presence or absence ofthe definite article ‘the’ – in English and those other languages which permit ofsuch a contrast – expresses the fact that a society

is not merely a systematic structure ofsocial power but also a structure-system ofideas (a theory) about social power, the latter being represented by abstract words, that is to say, in the formula of medieval philosophy, by words of ‘the second intention’, words expressing ideas about ideas (cf the distinction between ‘law’ and ‘the law’).

6 ‘They [more than one consciousness] recognize themselves as mutually recognizing each other.’

G W F Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), § 184 (tr A V Miller; Oxford, Oxford

University Press; 1977), p 112.

Rome; the ambiguous hegemony ofthe medieval Roman Church; therevival ofa Byzantine version ofRoman law; the Italian-led cultural rev-olution from 1250 to 1520; the global projection of Europeanism, led bySpain and Portugal; the multinational politico-religious revolution ofthe sixteenth century; the multinational scientific and philosophical rev-

olution ofthe seventeenth century; the French-led cult ofsavoir-vivre in

the eighteenth century; the multinational eighteenth-century enment; the socio-economic revolution after 1770 led by Britain andFrance; German-led nineteenth-century academic intellectualism (thehuman sciences) and rationalistic public administration; the new globalprojection ofEuropeanism in nineteenth-century imperialism; the newscientific revolution after 1860

Enlight-8.5 Cultural diversity, cultural competition and cultural exchangehave been intensely enriching within European consciousness We recallthe universities ofthe Middle Ages, with teachers and students fromall over Europe And we think ofthe cultural travelling ofindividuals, a

‘grand tourism’, a ‘free movement’ of lively minds Such cultural tionalism affected the thinking of those whose thinking had importanteffects on European consciousness in general, and hence on the courseofEuropean history Cultural travelling, like other forms oftravel, couldhave both positive and negative effects on those who travelled, mind-broadening and mind-narrowing, often generating an unstable men-tal syndrome which we might call xenophobophilia Cultural travellersmight admire and detest foreign manners and ideas, sometimes both atthe same time, sometimes at different stages of the traveller’s personalintellectual development.7

transna-8.6 Like Babylonian and then Aramaic in the ancient world western Asia, a succession ofpragmatically determined internationallanguages – Greek, Latin, French, English – enabled elite to speak to

ofSouth-7 England was a particularly puzzling and irritating phenomenon for Continental observers,

a strange mixture ofbarbarous manners and advanced thinking For a vivid account of

French xenophobophilia, see J Texte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in

Literature A Study of the Literary Relations between France and England during the 18th Century

(tr J W Matthews; London, Duckworth & Co.; 1899) Voltaire’s complex and tious account ofhis impressions ofEngland, centring on the effect ofthe phenomenon of

tenden-‘liberty’ on all aspects of public life in England, was given, soon after his return to France,

in his Lettres philosophiques (1734) In La culture et la civilisation britanniques devant l’opinion

fran¸caise au XVIIIe si`ecle de la paix d’Utrecht aux Lettres philosophiques de Voltaire 1713–1734

(Philadelphia, 1948), G Bonno has suggested that other French observers had anticipated Voltaire’s impressions ofEngland.

elite across Europe’s political and linguistic frontiers, and across thespan of historical time Heroic efforts of creative Enlightenment philol-ogy managed to assemble most ofthe many European languages intolanguage-families, derived from an ‘Indo-European’ hypothetical

Ur-language, but linguistic diversity has been a permanent source of

diversity ofidentity It is commonly supposed that the character ofagiven language expresses the character ofa given people, reinforcing theidea ofa Lamarckian, ifnot Darwinian, biological basis for intenselyindividualised identities The legally imposed formal multilingualismofthe European Union affirms an historically determined heterogeneitywhich history also negates

8.7 Above all, throughout Europe’s three millennia, there has been

a fusing ofthe contemplative and creative consciousness ual Europeans into the European collective consciousness, the tran-

ofindivid-scendent European public mind Contemplative consciousness reflects

on the most general questions which present themselves to the humanmind – religious, philosophical and scientific questions Such questionspresent themselves as universal in character, calling for universal an-swers Although different nations have contributed in distinctive ways

to the making ofthe reflexive European public mind, that diversity hasbeen an enriching of a common project which overrides differencesoftime and place To understand the universal and perennial charac-ter ofcollective European philosophical consciousness,8 we need onlycall to mind a particular philosophical tradition – say, the (idealist)tradition which links Parmenides, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno,Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte and Hegel; or the (sceptical/empiricist) tradition which links Protagoras, Aristotle, Carneades,William ofOckham, Montaigne, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume,Kant and Hegel And the same could be demonstrated still more cogently

in the case ofreligious or scientific consciousness

8.8 The work of Europe’s creative consciousness has also been the

rich product ofartists travelling through time and across political andcultural frontiers We may think ofthe development ofoil-painting inEurope from a powerful union of Byzantine, Flemish and Italian skills

8 Hegel took the view that all philosophies are part ofone philosophy, the accumulating knowledge ofMind’ ‘They never have passed away, but all are affirmatively contained as

‘self-elements in a whole.’ G W F Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1831) (tr E S.

Haldane; London, Kegan Paul; 1892), pp 55, 37.

and traditions We may think ofthe development ofEuropean music as ahigh art-form, formed from a union of skills and traditions from all overEurope, ifespecially from Italy, France, Germany and Austria We maythink ofEuropean architecture, especially medieval Gothic architectureand then the revival ofGraeco-Roman architecture, flowing out fromFrance and Italy to provide a communal style ofhabitat for our commu-nal living We may think ofthe development ofthe play and the noveland the film as high art-forms, to which writers from so many parts ofEurope contributed, forms of collective self-contemplating which may

be seen as a continuation ofphilosophy by other (and more accessible)means

8.9 Finally, there have always been external others to help to tute the European self Ancient Greece could not fail to be exceptionally

consti-conscious ofthe ancient civilisations which had preceded it, some ofwhich co-existed with it Ancient Rome, at least as its history is tradi-tionally told, was never allowed to forget the other surviving civilisationsand the countless unRomanised and non-European ‘tribes’ which were apermanent, and ultimately disastrous, physical and psychic challenge toits very self-conscious self Medieval Christendom found a formidable

other in Islam, which seemed to be a challenge both to Christianity as a

religion and to Christendom as a social formation

8.10 As later medieval travellers ventured further from mainlandEurope, in particular to India and China, it became necessary to re-imagine Europe’s place in a physical and cultural world which far sur-passed it As European colonisers moved through the rest ofthe world,

a New World, it became necessary to re-imagine the nature and theresponsibility ofEuropeanism as an exportable cultural phenomenon

As most ofthe rest ofthe human world developed socially and litically, largely under European influence as a sort ofGreater Europe

po-or Europe-in-exile, it became necessary, most recently, to co-exist withglobal social phenomena which have seemed to pose a life-threateningchallenge, physical and economic and cultural, to old Europe as a whole.8.11 We may conclude that the magnetic attraction ofa sharedEuropean subjectivity has thus always been in dialectical opposition tothe attraction ofa particularising subjectivity – a European selfat work

as a self, and not merely as an other, within the self-constituting of vidual Europeans But there are two seriously complicating factors whensuch a thing comes to take its place in the self-constituting of European

indi-Union (1) It is a shared subjectivity largely confined to the minds ofsociety-members who have pan-European intellectual horizons – so that

it cannot simply be assumed to be present, actually or potentially, in theminds ofother sections ofthe population (2) It is a shared subjectivitywhich has always been used and abused within another dialectic ofso-

cial self-constituting, namely, that of the one and the many, the game of social power, where it has been invoked in order to promote resistance to

a Europe-threatening other, internal or external, and where it has been

denied in order to evoke loyalty to some particularising conformation

ofsocial power

The one and the many – the dilemma of power

8.12 Every society is a permanent reconciling ofits unity and its tiplicity Society transforms the natural power of its members (humanbeings and subordinate societies) into social power, through social struc-tures and systems Society-members retain their individual capacity towill and act, but society, by means ofsuch structures and systems, maycause their willing and acting to serve the common interest ofsociety.The many ofsociety are one, in so far as they will and act in society’scommon interest The one ofsociety is many, since it can only actualisethe common interest through its members, human beings and subordi-nate societies ofhuman beings with all their own particular interests.8.13 Edward Gibbon said that history is ‘little more than the register

mul-of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes mul-of mankind’.9It is certainly truethat any account ofEuropean history must include a pathetic story ofevery form of social pathology, the ‘internal diseases’ of society iden-tified by Thomas Hobbes, writing during the disorderly reordering ofEngland in the seventeenth century, not least ‘the insatiable appetite of

enlarging Dominion’ which he called bulimia.10But, on the other hand,

9E Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, i (1776), ch 3 (ed.

D Womersley; London, Allen Lane; 1994), p 102.

10T Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) (London, J M Dent & Sons (Everyman’s Library); 1914),

ch 29, p 177 Evelyn Waugh, describing the history ofan imaginary European country, says that it had suffered ‘every conceivable ill the body politic is heir to Dynastic wars, foreign invasion, disputed successions, revolting colonies, endemic syphilis, impoverished soil, masonic intrigues, revolutions, restorations, cabals, juntas, pronunciamentos, liber-

ations, constitutions, coups d’´etat, dictatorships, assassinations, agrarian reforms, popular

elections, foreign intervention, repudiation of loans, inflations of currency, trade unions,