European decline as therapeutic paradox

For years European intellectuals like Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, among many others, have stressed the refrain: “We need to develop an ability of common political decision at the level of the Union.” 

The euro version of the Neoliberal Dogma, namely the Maastricht monetarist engine has been producing effects on social life: reduction of wages, cuts of social spending, but the only seemed to be a Big Leap in the creation of the political Union.

At the end of the day it seems that the Europhile intellectuals have got what they have been asking for. The new thing coming out from the Euro crisis of Spring 2010 is actually this: for the first time the Euro entity is acting in a coordinated way. Unfortunately, however, the outcome is a consolidation of the monetarist rules and a political enforcement of the financial domination of European society. 

Politics takes the lead only in order to assess that only finance is at the lead of the Union. 

Welfare State institutions have been under attack for thirty years: full employment, labor rights, social security, retirement, public school, public transportation - all this has been reduced, worsened, destroyed. What next? More of the same: further downsizing of the salary of public workers, further postponement of the retirement age. No respect for society’s needs, no respect for the rights of workers. 

Thatcher said thirty years ago that there is no such thing as society. That sounds nowadays as a self fulfilling prophecy. Society is in fact dissolving, leaving space to a jungle where everybody is fighting against everybody. 

After the Greek crisis the monetarist dogma has been strongly reinforced, as if more poison could act as an antidote. Reducing the demand will lead to recession, and the only result will be further concentration of capital in the hands of the financial class, and  further impoverishment of labor.

This is the paradoxical result of the collapse of Neoliberal politics: its confirmation and consolidation.

After the collapse of the American financial system the abandonment or at least the attenuation of Neoliberal politics was expected, and seemed possible a process of redistribution of wealth aimed to increase the demand. Not at all. Thanks to the crisis American society has been further robbed in favor of big finance, and now Europe is following the same dynamic, with a sort of mathematical ferocity.

Any chance of stopping this crazy race? A social explosion is possible, because next months in some Euro countries life conditions will become unbearable. But labor precarity and the decomposition of social solidarity may open the way to a frightening outcome: ethnic civil war on continental scale, and dismantling of the Union, which would unleash the worst instincts of the nations.

The roots of this situation are not to be found only in the will of the European political class, but mainly in the lack of imagination of the society as a whole. Other solutions seem to be unimaginable, as Neoliberal monetarism has been transformed into a religious dogma. 

Behind the apparent imperturbability of euro bureaucracy one can perceive a vibration of panic, and the reason is not difficult to grasp.

During the last thirty years the only universal value has been competition, whose only criterion is this: increase productivity while reducing labor costs. Well, if this is the game, Europe cannot win. How long will it take to reduce European salary to the level of an Indian worker, a Chinese, or a Vietnamese? It’s going to take too much time and too much violence and blood. This is why financial markets are distrusting the Euro: if the standard is capital gain, and profit and competition the European decline is granted.

The question is: who says that this is the only one standard and the political criterion of choice? Bateson would define the European disease in terms of double bind, or contradictory injunction. 

Neoliberal dogma is prescribing to the European society to compete, and simultaneously is prescribing the destruction of the structures constituting the cultural and productive condition of its wealth. The Neoliberal idea of wealth is more and more forwarding social misery. And this will not make Europe competitive on the global scene. 

In case of double binds Bateson suggests a paradoxical outcome. And the paradoxical solution could be this: don’t be afraid of decline. Decline, De-Growth, and dis-investment from the competition frenzy is the paradoxical way. 

Let us bet on richness of culture, on richness of high quality shared consumption, let’s try de-privatization of services and increase of salary. Let us bet on basic income as a condition for a relaxed and happy life, which may lead to solidarity and innovation.

 Maastricht standards are not a law of nature, they are the result of a human decision, a linguistic convention. A linguistic gesture may dissolve that trap.