Monday, August 30, 2010

The EU: its virtues and vices

Ilya Somin (The Volokh Conspiracy):
The Future of the European Union

This is one of the better summaries of the whole EU project, to my mind.  On the side of virtue, Somin points out the free movement of goods, services, and people throughout the ancient and varied national homelands of Europe -- a huge and amazing accomplishment all by itself. As Somin says, "the establishment of free trade and freedom of movement throughout Europe are two of the greatest advances of freedom in the recent history of the Western world".

On the side of vice, Somin is also correct to point to the "variety of regulatory and redistributive initiatives", giving rise to, and bound up in, immense layers of bureaucracy. No doubt some of that is a consequence of trying to protect various established elites or power centers from the trade winds that a free market engenders, but much is also the result of trying to overlay a market with command and control. That can be done, of course, since every country does so, but in Europe, to a greater extent than elsewhere, we see a real confusion of two distinct systems of decision-making, and two views of basic fairness. The result is contradiction, ineffeciency, injustice, and instability.

One other point should be raised -- it's not a vice, but it is at least a potential problem: the definition and security of the EU's borders. Borders matter, even for super-states, because they define the boundaries of the state's ability to establish and protect the freedoms of its citizens -- if they can be crossed with impunity, that ability is increasingly weakened, and a reappearance of old nationalisms becomes a predictable reaction, as we're seeing. There are lessons there for both sides of the Atlantic.

12 comments:

  1. As Somin says, "the establishment of free trade and freedom of movement throughout Europe are two of the greatest advances of freedom in the recent history of the Western world".

    The removal of the Berlin Wall probably qualifies as a good thing--but that's not to say it was an unqualified good. There were many negatives to the collapse of socialism; eastern Germans still are recovering from the loss of jobs, however meagre or industrial those jobs may have been (and they weren't exactly welcomed in west germany). Farther east the Russian mafia has steadily grown in power, and religious orthodoxy has also returned.

    Strip away the european veneer, and Somin and the Volokh gang do not sound so unlike a Glenn Beck or a Limbaugh huckstering for free enterprise.

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  2. Strip away the european veneer, and Somin and the Volokh gang do not sound so unlike a Glenn Beck or a Limbaugh huckstering for free enterprise.

    Yeah, or even with the European veneer. But you say that like it's a bad thing!?

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  3. The Volokh wiseguys sell Freedom itself, Metamorf. That would seem to include free enterprise itself, by definition--tho usually the libertarian Freedom chant usually doesn't mean free to sell cars, or computers, or condos, etc: they mean they have an innate right to open a casino, or machine gun store..or brothel. They seem fairly secularist, however--for better or worse.

    Beck's no secularist, however. He not only pitches corporate capitalism, he....attempts (as even Douthat has noted) to bring converts into the Mormon church, or LDS, or teachings of Moroni, or whatever they call it today. Indeed Beck insists that Jesus and Moroni, Old Testament and LDS patriarchs, and George Washington were in agreement on the necessity of the...Win-Win handshake (or secret handshake, as it were).

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  4. But as I said before, J, it takes all kinds -- Volokh wiseguys, Beck, George Washington, Limbaugh, Mormons, atheists, etc. And they can sell cars, computers, condos, gambling, machine guns, sex, etc. I'm not saying there aren't some people and/or sales goods I may approve or disapprove of more than others, but an overriding political issue of our time, as I see it, is to find ways to move that sort of approval out of the hands of the state and into the hands of people and their individual moral and personal judgments. And in the interests of furthering that objective, we'll need a broad coalition -- including all the above types. As for (real) racists and nazis, on the other hand -- they fit more appropriately with the statists.

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  5. As for (real) racists and nazis, on the other hand -- they fit more appropriately with the statists.

    That's sort of the Goldberg libertarian pseudo-logic applied, metamorf. According to Goldbergism, nazis favor statism, and...therefore nazis are leftists (many were vegetarian too, as G-berg notes), which is to say statist-leftists such as stalinists are nazis too, and the extreme left was the same as the extreme right! Nyet. Besides, the rightist libertarians may not care for any regulations on "free trade" or taxes of any sort, but they definitely want a State--a state with a very powerful military.

    Even Aynnie Rand, bless her black, greedy heart, was enough of an authentic anti-statist to denounce DoD spending (and reportedly protested US military involvement in Nam, for a few moments at least--it was costing us an arm and leg!). Miss Rand also disliked the Falwell types who supported Ronnie Raygun, and would not have approved the Glenn Beck sort of mormon-evangelical coalition, whatsoever.

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  6. Ah, Goldberg! Good of you to mention him, J. It's a commonplace that statists, at their extremes, begin to merge, but Goldberg I thought was onto something a little different -- namely, that since the early years of the last century liberalism has lost its way and morphed into a movement that fuses a class-war populism with an elitist, technocratic appeal, all of which bears a striking resemblance to Mussolini-style fascism, however surprising or counter-intuitive that may be.

    As for your other points -- yes, libertarians aren't anarchists as a rule, and recognize the need for a state, with a powerful enough military to be able to defend itself in a dangerous world. I'd have agreed with Rand, though, in opposing the Vietnam war -- it was too mixed up with the tail end of colonialism -- but not in her tendency to exclude everyone not perfectly aligned with her own opinions. That said, I'd make a distinction between somebody like Falwell and somebody like Beck.

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  7. namely, that since the early years of the last century liberalism has lost its way and morphed into a movement that fuses a class-war populism with an elitist, technocratic appeal, all of which bears a striking resemblance to Mussolini-style fascism

    Goldberg's claim borders on the ridiculous. The rednecks ...and your GOP-libertarian cronies are the strong-arm types. There are strong-arm Demos, or unionists perhaps, but they're in the minority.

    Mussolini and the blackshirts were not really a leftist party: they had the support of the property owners, business men, and..the church/catholic clergy behind him. The poor italians, workers, laborers, were usually with the left (not always...). It wasn't populism, per se--

    The G-berg sorts make the bogus assumption that since the blackshirts (or...some nazis) opposed finance or usury that they upheld socialism, which was not case. That was catholic tradition--even Aristotle (and Il Duce was fond of the Caesar/roman imagery) had way back criticized usury. Correctly. As Ezra Pound realized, the blackshirts were in a sense arguing for Aristotelian tradition--a society of artisans, farmers, inventors, intellectuals, not financiers and businessmen.

    They supported a type of republicanism, tho...not of the US sort (and many italians hoped they would not join the nazis...). Their methods were of course rather crude, if not criminal...but then so are those of the Family Windsor, or GOP for that matter.

    I don't think a profound difference holds between the US repubs and Demos really. The d-Kos sorts might sound somewhat leftist at times, but the party itself is as controlled by corporations and ...deep pockets as is the GOP. Apple and unions may give millions to the Demos; Ford, or Exxon, etc gives millions to GOP. Both are bought and sold. That said, the religious right's a different and...smelly kettle of fish, but most Demos are sunday schoolers as well.

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  8. I don't think a profound difference holds between the US repubs and Demos really.

    No, there we agree, which is the reason party politics are only of limited interest. But you have to take what you can get, and as a general rule the D's are the party of Big Gov, the R's the party that resists such, so the R's get my nod. (Here in Canada, we have more explicitly labelled parties, and I'll generally go with the Conservatives as opposed to the Liberals, for similar reasons.)

    Back to liberal (small-l) fascism for a minute, the point isn't that it's some kind of carbon copy of the right wing Italian variant, but that it arose on the left at a similar time, out of similar regressive, even atavistic responses to modern industrial capitalism, displays a similar dependence on, and fondness for, the use of state power, and relies upon a cultural, academic, media, and corporate elite to maintain itself, even as its rhetoric appeals to populist resentment of anyone who might be better off. You don't see blackshirts in the street, it's true (SEIU purpleshirts and New Black Panthers notwithstanding). Think of a sort of fascism-lite, with a smiley face.

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  9. Back to liberal (small-l) fascism for a minute, the point isn't that it's some kind of carbon copy of the right wing Italian variant, but that it arose on the left at a similar time, out of similar regressive, even atavistic responses to modern industrial capitalism...

    The blackshirts did not arise on the "left," as in labor, poor, marginalized. That's G-berg's bogus historical assumption--there were real socialist groups as in marxist, etc. before WWI. Mussolini abandoned them early on. Check a wiki: italian, or euro politics for that matter, doesn't translate so easily into the typical US two-party categories (or Can.).

    Italian fascism arose mostly from ...like merchants, farmers, property owners: slightly similar to ...many libertarians in the USA!---many of whom detest the Fed, central banking etc. (or even...financiers). They hated communists, but they didn't care for capitalism either. That a few labor groups might have supported Mussolini doesn't change that (ie, the AFL-CIO in the USA hardly qualified as "leftist" until perhaps the 70s or so). The Falange, allies of the blackshirts, in Spain were similar, though they generally supported the royals--even Il Duce and his cronies put on a quasi-aristocratic act at times (as did the nazis).

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  10. The blackshirts did not arise on the "left," as in labor, poor, marginalized.

    No, read what you've just copied -- the blackshirts were the "right wing Italian variant". Liberal fascism is a left wing Western variant that arose at a similar time, taking the form, in the US at least, of "progressivism". Both variants, however, from their different starting points, appealed to the same atavistic collectivist impulse to immerse the individual in the group, whether that group is defined as the nation, the masses, the state, the people, etc.

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  11. Again, I don't think the usual conservative jargon fits. . Muss. was somewhat of a leftist only in his early years. He broke with the leftist socialists during WWI--actually was expelled I believe. He was a nationalist influenced by Machiavelli--hardly a collectivist--and Nietzsche (also a rightist, a few steps from nazi-ism), and did not agree with marxist class struggle. He later made pacts with the Vatican, implemented anti-semitic laws, and then finally joined the nazis as allies (tho....with some reluctance, and it's not apparent whether he knew the extent of nazi atrocities).

    G-berg thus seems to imply anti-communist nationalists are leftists: another ludicrous claim. Really, G-berg had his own political agenda, apart from his fairly absurd historical claim: first, he doesn't like catholics (or italians probably). And he doesn't approve of any sort of govt. intervention. He probably approves of the UK, the tories, and...Israel for that matter. So he concocts this odd little treatise where he can attack all of his enemies, sound somewhat scholarly, and support the neo-cons at the same time-- a rather clever move.

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  12. Yes, I've said a number of times now that Mussolini and his blackshirts were rightists, not leftists. Goldberg does make the claim that Hitler was a "man of the left" -- and produces some interesting evidence of that, at least in his early days -- but that's not relevant to what I'm suggesting. Which is that there are two variants or strains of what can broadly be termed fascism. The rightist variant had as its collectivist ideal the nation or fatherland; the leftist variant -- i.e., "progressive" liberalism -- had as its collectivist ideal the masses or workers; both looked upon the state as the means of realizing and empowering that ideal. And both variants were distinct from communism or left-wing socialism in their accommodation of, and dependence upon, a corporate and cultural elite to manage that collective.

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