Following Kant, they see Auschwitz as the ultimate expression of that barbarism, that brutal debasement of humanity, which is national particularism.
From this point of view, the death camps provide the ultimate proof of the evil of permitting nations to decide for themselves how to dispose of the military power in their possession. The obvious conclusion is that it was wrong to give the German nation this power of life and death.
If such evil is to be prevented from happening again and again, the answer must be in the dismantling of Germany and the other national states of Europe, and the yoking together of all the European peoples under a single international government: Eliminate the national state once and for all, and you have sealed off that dark road to Auschwitz.
The slow-motion, train-wreck of European crises unfolding since 2005, with France's non and the Netherland's nee, is culminating in two events a week (or two) apart: next week the mother of all parliaments will hold a debate and vote on The Withdrawal Agreement between the EU and UK. The other is the Hungarian government's decision to force a departure of Central European University (CEU) alongside the "Hungarian governmentʼs crackdown on academic freedom, including a government ban on gender studies programs, forced suspension of research related to migration, and punitive tax measures."
I have decided to contextualize these political events with a quote from (my sometime co-author), Yoram Hazony, a fierce critic of the EU. I find it useful to do so because often (not always) critics see the true nature of an institution or change better than a friend of the status quo. In his book, Hazony treats the EU as a (modern) cosmopolitan empire to be contrasted with the nation-state, whose legitimacy and virtues Hazony defends. The particular quoted passage is part of an argument in which Hazony tries to make the case that the same set of facts can be viewed differently depending on the contrasting paradigm (empire vs nation) one embraces/inhabits.* (Obviously, the argument is, in part, in the service of a vindication of Zionism--but that vindication does not concern me here.)
What Hazony gets right is that at bottom the EU is a moral project, even a Kantian one centered on (recall) Kant's liberal faith (not his ethics) and Kant's embrace of (recall) Hobbesian self-limitation.+ It's not only a moral project; it started out as a means to prevent another major war between Germany and France (recall this post on the 1951 Paris Declaration), and it quickly became preoccupied with economic matters. But even so, in the proposed "closer union" of the Treaty of Rome, "peace" is explicitly coupled with "liberty." This is important, because while (as I argued) the EU was grounded in considerable mistrust of national, parliamentary democracy, it's anti-democratic modes of operation are designed to safeguard liberties. Left-wing critics of the EU (recall this post on so-called Lexiters) think the previous sentence is code for an exclusive defense of private property and the advocacy of a neoliberal agenda. I don't think such critics are all wrong about this, but the point of defending private property and markets is to advance an agenda not just of economic growth, but also the flourishing of peoples and individuals, to safe-guard them from harms and cruelty, and to allow each of us creatively to make independent choices that will develop whole new ways of living.
In his book, Hazony acutely diagnoses the risks of homogenization and imposition that tempts every imperial center. What he misses is that the EU is unlike any other empire in it being grounded in principles of non-violence. These principles were made possible due to the fact that for all of its history so far the EU operates in the context of Pax Americana--most EU member states are protectorates of the US. (That is, as empires go the EU is not quite independent.) Hazony misses this because he is primarily focused on the way ultimately (Germany led) EU law supersedes domestic law. But during the last few years nobody in the EU has contested the right of the British to leave the EU, except other UK citizens and EU residents living in the UK.
An empire with a true right to exit is a historical novelty. This is only intelligible, I think, because at bottom the EU is committed to non-violence and liberty. (Hazony by contrast, sees the EU as focused on, like all consolidated empires, peace and prosperity.) My claim here is not ad hoc. The UK's long road to Brexit has been paved by innumerable number of opt-outs. Each of these opt-outs represent an acknowledgment of the liberty of the member states (and their inhabitants) to be free to chart their own course(s).**
Of course, there is a limit to such freedom and May's Withdrawal Agreement represents it. It expresses the unequal power between the much stronger EU and the weaker UK (which on paper is still one of the five great powers with a veto in the security council and an independent nuclear arsenal). In return for being able to say 'we have left the EU' (such symbols matter) and to continue to have market access (in goods) to the EU, the UK has agreed to a status that provides it with less political influence in the EU today and not much new freedom to maneuver in the future. Somewhat ironically a project (Brexit) that was intended to deliver freedom, ends up reducing freedoms: to be a rule-taker is to be subject to empire. The debate in the Commons will be fascinating because there are no good choices for the (rather unimpressive) British political class.
Hazony's error about the nature of the EU can be forgiven because it's easy to miss that the EU is a moral enterprise because the EU's political elites fail to defend it; its judges and leading technocrats routinely fail to defend freedom of religion, academic freedoms, the right to asylum, press freedoms, the rule of law in member states, and the rights of (say) Roma. In that light, the departure of CEU from Hungary is not an isolated incident. ++ But it represents a more general lack of belief in the EU as shared, moral enterprise.***
Now, one may well think that as long as the EU prevents a new war between France and Germany, such a moral enterprise is dispensable. But we're one or two national elections away such that the all the important EU players will have an instrumental or rejectionist understanding of the EU. The rejectionists take heart from the defeat of CEU and the possibility of a genuine Brexit, which will remove the key guardian of liberal values from the EU. Before you think my alarmism is premature, consider the fact that (recall) unemployment is low and we're nearing the end of a a long economic growth cycle fueled by low interest rates; EU rejectionist and neo-fascist parties are polling between 10-35% across Europe, including in countries with no serious fascist tradition. As Stefan Kolev noted to me recently, who seriously believes those forces will be contained during the next economic crisis?
*Obviously, there are contrasting meta-paradigms about to what degree a paradigm involves a choice (e.g. Carnap) or represents the weight of tradition (say, e.g., Oakeshot).
+Of course, (recall this post) there are other, more reactionary intellectual sources than Wilson (recall) and Hayek (recall) for the EU (both clearly indebted to Kant). I am indebted to Annette Freyberg-Inan for conceptualizing the EU as a moral project.
**These opt-outs have proven to be fatal because they encouraged the irresponsible behavior of the political elites of the UK to treat the EU as a la carte menu rather than a joint project.
++One wonders how long it will stay in Vienna--Austria is increasingly fond of fundamentally illiberal political parties.
***What follows from my analysis is the need to re-imagine the EU as a moral project that can appeal to the better, cosmopolitan instincts of Europe's young. My own, belated view is this requires the marriage of liberal cosmopolitanism with a green, future oriented ideology. But about that some other time. This note is indebted to remarks by Erwin Dekker.
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