berlin journal 22

8/10/2019 Berlin Journal 22

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In this issue:

Peter L. Lindseth

Michael Ignatieff

Elizabeth Povinelli

Richard Deming

Karen Russell

David Remnick

Katherine Boo

Daniel Hobbins

Nicholas Eberstadt

Michael Geyer

Charles Bright

A Magazine from the American Academy in Berlin|Number Twenty-Two | Spring 2012

THE BERLIN JOURNAL


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WE ARE GRATEFUL TO

Alfred Freiherr von Oppenheim-Stiftung

im Stifterverband fr die Deutsche Wissenschaft

FOR ITS

GENEROUS SUPPORT OF

THE BERLIN JOURNAL

AND THE

AMERICAN ACADEMY IN BERLIN.


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Spring 2012 | Number Twenty-Two | The Berlin Journal

|

1

CONTENTSThe Berlin Journal | Number Twenty-Two | Spring 2012

04 Of the Peoplepeter l. lindseth,by way of AbrahamLincoln, examines democracy and theEurozone, and how even those Europeanswho favor integration may have difficul-ties experiencing it as their own.

08 Politics for Hard Times

michael ignatieffspeaks to the chal-lenges facing progressive politics in anage of austerity; namely, persuading themajority who are doing well that theirfuture depends on doing somethingabout the large and growing minority whoare doing badly.

14 Emergence and Exitelizabeth povinellitheorizes neolib-eralisms collapse, the concurrent rise ofradically new forms of social governance,and the increasingly multi-polar nature ofthe global economic engine.

18 On Lonelinessrichard demingruminates on modernisolation through the lens of horror filmsand offers two of his latest poems.

N1 On the Waterfront

The American Academys newsletter,with the latest on fellows, alumni, andtrustees, as well as recent events at theHans Arnhold Center

25 The Sponge Divers of New Kalymnoskaren russellgrants a sneak peek ather new fiction and describes the eerienature of authorial intuition.

29 Journalism as Literaturedavid remnick, joseph lelyveld,and katherine boodiscuss the novel-istic tendencies of narrative reportage.

32 The Worlds First Media Revolutiondaniel hobbinsreveals the oft-ignoredorigins of print, and how, contrary tomost historians assumptions, a risingdemand for books came before, not after,Gutenbergs famous invention.

36 Waning Crescent

nicholas eberstadtexplains thedecline in fertilit y rates, traditional mar-riage patterns, and living arrangementscurrently sweeping the Muslim world.

40 A World in Processcharles bright and michael geyerchat about their first encounters withglobalism, the curiously brief heyday ofWestern empires in the twentieth century,and the urgency of re-narrating modernglobal history.

COURTESYSPRTHMAGERS

,BERLIN/L

ONDON

ANTHONY MCCALL, YOU AND I, HORIZONTAL, 2006, INSTALLATION VIEW

Untangling the EU Crisis Setting the Record StraightSounding the Depths

This issue was generously underwritten by Academy chairman A. Michael Hoffman, to whom we are very grateful.


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2 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty-Two | Spring 2012

DIRECTORS NOTE

Devotions depths

Richard Holbrooke wasnt interested in foreign

policy; he was consumed by it, writes Jacob Heilbrunn

in a New York Times review of The Unquiet American,

a new collection of essays on the late diplomat and Academy

founder. In this issue of the Berlin Journal, we offer a selection

of articles from authors who are similarly anti-dabbling in

their devotions, whose work reveals the deepest of dedications.

Katherine Boo, who spent four years in the slums of

Mumbai researching her latest book, Behind the Beautiful

Forevers, describes her impatience with the self-congratulatory

tendencies of narrative nonfiction; Michael Ignatieff argues

for a progressive response to the financial crisis; and Karen

Russell depicts a diving community whose greed drives a good

man to invent bad technology.

Everything was better last year, says one of Russells char-

acters during an initiation ceremony. The cake, the boys. The

mothers looked good last year, what happened? Everybodys

fatter this year! Everybodys choking to death on this foul cake!

While the austerity measures challenging the stability of

the EU have meant less, not more, cake, Russells ornery char-

acter serves as a chorus for a segment of the West whose confi-

dence, pre-crisis, was unflagging. In an interview, global his-

torians Michael Geyer and Charles Bright offer insights into

the origins of such blind spots. Elizabeth Povinelli predicts the

collapse of neoliberalism, and Peter Lindseth suggests that a

little demoscould go a long way in re-unify ing the EU.

And yet, as spring slowly warms Wannsees waters, this

issue of theJournal also acknowledges the surprise and relief,

each year, of a gentler season. Richard Deming points out the

counterintuitively communal quality of loneliness; Nicholas

Eberstadt reveals an unexpected study about plummeting

birth rates in the Muslim world; and Daniel Hobbins suggests

that it was a demand for books that inspired the rise of the

printing press, rather than the reverse.

This spring is also the Academys first under the helm of

its new chairman, A. Michael Hoffman, who draws upon a

substantial record of achievement in the financial world and a

lifelong championing of non-profit organizations in the arts,

academia, and international relations. As we look forward to

growing with his guidance, we also take a moment to acknowl-

edge the immeasurable contributions of our trustees over the

past fourteen years, who have shown much wisdom, passion,

and perseverance in building an institution from scratch. G.S. and B.L.S.

THE BERLIN JOURNAL

A magazine from the Hans Arnhold

Center published by the American

Academy in Berlin

Number Twenty-Two Spring 2012

PUBLISHERGary Smith

EDITOR Brittani Sonnenberg

IMAGE EDITOR

R. Jay Magill Jr.

ADVERTISING Berit Ebert

DESIGN Susanna Dulkinys &

Edenspiekermann

www.edenspiekermann.com

PRINTED BY Ruksaldruck, Berlin

Copyright 2012

The American Academy in Berlin

ISSN 1610-6490

Cover: Jenny Holzer,

TOP SECRET 21, 2012, Jenny Holzer,

member Artists Rights Society (ARS),

NY/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012, Photo:Jens Ziehe, Courtesy Sprth Magers

Berlin/London

THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

IN BERLIN

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Gary Smith

DEAN OF FELLOWS & PROGRAMS

Pamela Rosenberg

CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE

OFFICER

Andrew J. White

Am Sandwerder 1719

14109 Berlin

Tel. (49 30)80 48 3-0

Fax (49 30)80 48 3-111

www.americanacademy.de

14 East 60th Street, Suite 604

New York, NY 10022

Tel. (1)212 588-1755

Fax (1)212 588-1758

FOUNDERRichard C. Holbrooke

HONORARY CHAIRMEN Thomas L. Farmer, Henry A. Kissinger,

Richard von Weizscker

CHAIRMAN A. Michael Hoffman

VICE CHAIR Gahl Hodges Burt

TREASURER Andrew J. White

SECRETARY John C. Kornblum

TRUSTEES Barbara Balaj, John P. Birkelund, Manfred Bischoff, Stephen B.

Burbank, Gahl Hodges Burt, Caroline Walker Bynum, Mathias Dpfner, NiallFerguson, Marina Kellen French, Michael E. Geyer, Hans-Michael Giesen,

Richard K. Goeltz, C. Boyden Gray, Vartan Gregorian, Andrew S. Gundlach,

Helga Haub, A. Michael Hoffman, Stefan von Holtzbrinck, Wolfgang

Ischinger, Josef Joffe, Michael Klein, John C. Kornblum, Regine Leibinger,

Lawrence Lessig, Wolfgang Malchow, Nina von Maltzahn, Wolfgang

Mayrhuber, Julie Mehretu, Christopher von Oppenheim, Jeffery A. Rosen,

Volker Schlndorff, Peter Y. Solmssen, Kurt Viermetz, Pauline Yu

HONORARY TRUSTEE Klaus Wowereit (ex officio)

CHAIRMAN EMERITUS Karl M. von der Heyden

TRUSTEES EMERITI Diethard Breipohl, Gerhard Casper,

Norman Pearlstine, Fritz Stern

IN GERMANY

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OF THE PEOPLEDemocracy, the Eurozone,and Lincolns threshold criterion

By Peter L. Lindseth

In a recent speech at Humboldt

University, Herman Van Rompuy, presi-

dent of the European Council, noted how

the Eurozone crisis had seemingly forced

national leaders to take center stage in

the EU. For many observers, this has raised

fears of a renationalization of European

politics. Van Rompuy, however, preferred

to look on the bright side. This was all

indicative, he said, of the deepening of

the Europeanization of national political

life. He quoted Chancellor Merkel in this

regard: In this crisis we have reached a

whole new level of cooperation; we have

arrived at a sort of European home affairs.

Europa ist Innenpolitik.

There can be no doubt that Europe has,

indeed, become domestic politics. Yet I

would argue that the Eurozone crisis has

merely accelerated a trend that began at

least twenty-five years ago, with the SingleEuropean Act (sea) of 1986, followed by

the Treaty of Maastricht of 1992. It is no

coincidence that concerns over Europes

purported democratic deficit began to

intensify at this time, because it was then

that increasing numbers of Europeans

became aware of how much regulatory

power had migrated to the supranational

level. Even though the EUs annual budget

would remain miniscule (no more than 1%

of total EU gdp), the EU would become a

prodigious producer of regulatory norms

with a major impact on domestic policy-

making in its member states.There was, however, a funda-

mental problem with this so-called

Europeanization of national political li fe.

Joschka Fischer, then Germanys foreign

minister, identified it in his own speech

at Humboldt in 2000: European gover-

nance has long been afflicted indeed,

is still afflicted by a broadly held sense

that integration is a largely bureaucratic

affair run by a faceless, soulless Eurocracy

in Brussels. No matter how much

European elites have struggled against

this perception, European citizens still

continue to experience the increasing

EUROPEAN GOVERNANCE HAS

LONG BEEN AFFLICTED BY A

BROADLY HELD SENSE THAT

INTEGRATION IS A LARGELY

BUREAUCRATIC AFFAIR RUN

BY A FACELESS, SOULLESS

EUROCRACY IN BRUSSELS.


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CARSTEN NICOLAI, PIONIER II, 2009. SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATION ON PIAZZA PLEBISCITO, NAPLES, ITALY


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Europeanization of domestic politics, if

not precisely as the negation of democ-

racy on the national level, then certainly

as the transfer of regulatory power to an

unaccountable, distant, and ultimately

foreign bureaucratic elite, dominated

by national executives. This distant elite

goes simply by the name Brussels or,

as the German writer Hans Magnus

Enzensberger put it in a Spiegel essay last

year, the sanftes Monster Brssel the

gentle monster that is Brussels.

The official response to this broad

political perception toward the EU, begin-ning with the se ain 1986 and continuing

with every subsequent treaty up to Lisbon

in 2009, has been to increase the role of

the elected European Parliament (EP) in

the supranational policy process. The aim

has been to reduce integrations so-called

democratic deficit, building on decisions

of the European Court of Justice (ecj) in

the 1980s. Very much in keeping with the

constitutionalist mindset the court had

established since the early 1960s, the ecj

declared that the EP was the expression of

the fundamental democratic principle that

the peoples [of Europe] should take part

in the exercise of [supranational] power

through the intermediary of a representa-

tive assembly.

We might call this par-

liamentary democratization

strategy, which has been a

fundamental feature of the understanding

of the EU as a kind of quasi-federal consti-

tutional polity. Alas, as subsequent events

have shown, this strategy has ultimatelyfailed to stem the negative perception of

the EU as fundamentally bureaucratic

and distant. This is due to the fact that the

strategy itself is based on a fundamental

misunderstanding of what democracy is,

as well as how true democratic legitimacy

is realized over time.

To frame the discussion, allow me to

do something not particularly innovative

by invoking L incolns classic formulation

from the Gett ysburg Address democ-

racy is government of the people, by the

people, [and] for the people. The effort

to democratize the EU has made sig-

munity gains this historically grounded

sense of democratic self-consciousness, it

has become a demos in the sense of

demos-kratia, or democracy.

In other words, democratic legitimacy

in the deepest sense depends not merely

on democracys inputs or outputs. Rather,

it ultimately depends on whether there

exists this crucial sense of historical iden-

tity between governing institutions and a

people self-conscious of itself as such. I

would argue that this sense of demos-legit-

imacy is not merely essential to democracy

but also to constitutionalism itself: it is

on the basis of this demos-legitimacy that

merely functional institutions of rule

(those that might otherwise possess input

and output legitimacy) are transformed

into genuinely constitutional ones,

because they have come to be understood

as the institutional expressions of the rightof the demos to rule itself.

As is well known today, the EU

is riddled with multiple demoi

across its various member states.

This creates a great deal of democratic and

constitutional legitimacy, unfortunately

not for the EU, but for national constitu-

tional bodies. (T here are exceptions, of

course, such as in Belgium, where the

coherence of the national demos is deeply

contested, thus undermining the legiti-

macy of national inst itutions.) But as is

broadly recognized throughout Europe,

the EU, as yet, lacks any single, over-

arching European demos. Without such

demos-legitimacy that is, without the

sense that European institutions are genu-

inely the peoples own, rather than some

distant bureaucratic construct Europe

will always have a great deal of difficulty

overcoming its democratic deficit, no mat-

ter how much input and output legitimacy

otherwise exists.

Indeed, the very idea of a democraticdeficit in the EU may itself reflect an elite

misapprehension of the nature of the prob-

lem. As my book Power and Legitimacy

describes in some detail, the problem in

the EU is not a democratic deficit, in the

sense of needing increased input legiti-

macy, but rather a democratic disconnect.

European institutions are generally per-

ceived as beyond the control of democratic

and constitutional bodies in a historical ly

recognizable sense, and this has a bearing

on the scope of authority that Europeans

believe supranational bodies can legiti-

mately exercise.

nificant achievements along the final two

of Lincolns dimensions. Government

by the people refers to what academics

call input legitimacy; that is, popular

participation, most importantly via elec-

tions (the European Parliament clearly

meets this criterion, as do other features

of the EU, like the new citizens initiative

in the Treaty of Lisbon). And, despite the

many woes of the current crisis, my sense

is the EU deserves significant credit in

terms of government for the people, or

what the German political scientist Fritz

Scharpf has famously called output legiti-macy. This can be measured not merely

in additional points added to net gdpas a

consequence of market integration (if not

of the common currency), but also by such

things as the removal of border controls;

the broadly shared respect for human

rights and the rule of law; as well as, per-

haps most importantly, the overall sense

of peaceful coexistence that integration

has brought to this historically troubled

continent. (Peace, after all, was the stated

aim of the Schuman Declaration in 1950.)

Thus, despite its current economic travai ls,

the EU has much to be proud of in terms of

output legitimacy as well.

So what, then, is the problem with the

EUs democratic legitimacy? I would say

the problem lies precisely in Lincolns

threshold criterion: government of the

people. This refers to the historical iden-

tity between a population and a set of gov-

erning institutions; that is, to the political-

cultural perception that the institutions

of government are genuinely the peoples

own, which they have historically consti-tuted for the purpose of self-government

over time. Europeans may favor integra-

tion for all sorts of instrumental reasons,

but they do not yet exper ience it as their

own.

This process of self-constitution is tied

to the historical sense of the existence of a

people itself, to the sense that there exists

a historically cohesive political community,

shaped by broadly shared historical memo-

ries, in which it is legitimate for the majori-

ty to rule over the minority in a democratic

sense (subject, of course, to the protection

of human rights). When a political com-

THE PROBLEM IN THE EU IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT,

IN THE SENSE OF NEEDING INCREASED INPUT LEGITIMACY,

BUT RATHER A DEMOCRATIC DISCONNECT.


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Sympathetic European commentators,

not to mention judges on the ecj, have

struggled for decades to reconceive the

nature of democracy and constitutional-

ism in the EU. They have come up with a

whole range of network-based theories

of transnational or cosmopolitan demo-

cratic and constitutional legitimacy in

order to dissociate these concepts from the

nation-state and thus bring supranational

governance within their conceptual ambit.

And yet the idea of the EU as democratic

and constitutional in its own right has

remained deeply suspect, at least when

measured against the perceived legitimacy

of institutions on the national level, with

all their many flaws.

I should say that there are many benefits

to this sense of supranational constitution-

alism, notably in the protection of the indi-

vidual against the excesses of public power,wherever located. But there are also sig-

nificant risks, as the Eurozone crisis may

be sadly demonstrating. Constitutional

interpretations of integration wrongly

bracket out the no-demos problem and thus

effectively assume a degree of autonomous

legitimacy in supranational governance

that is fundamentally lacking (or at least is

still fundamentally in dispute).

This leads us, then, to the key point:

overestimating the legitimacy of European

institutions is not merely an error of aca-

demic analysis; rather, it can lead to even

more profound and dangerous errors

of institutional or policy design, as the

Eurozone crisis is demonstrating. As the

Italian political theorist Stefano Bartolini

presciently warned in 2005, in his book

Restructuring Europe, the risk of miscalcu-

lating the extent to which true legitimacy

surrounds the European institutions and

their decisions . . . may lead to the overes-

timating of the capacity of the EU to over-

come major economic and security cr ises.

The events of the last two years suggest

that the European Monetary Union (emu)

was built on just such an overestimation.

The common currency was not just flawed

economically (although economists never

tire of pointing out that the countries of

the Eurozone and certainly Germany

unclear how stable the resulting institu-

tional settlement would be. One might call

the resulting regime a political union, but

its underlying socio-cu ltural and socio-

political foundations would be tenuous.

Does this mean there is no legitimacy for

further integration? Of course not. But

when contemplating further steps in inte-

gration, Europeans must always be honest

with themselves about this key question:

legitimate for what?

In a system where democratic and con-

stitutional legitimacy remains fundamen-

tally national, but significant normative

power is increasingly supranationalized, it

must be recognized that there are limits to

the EUs legitimacy, as the Eurozone crisis

is unfortunately indicating. Integration is

good for certain things but not others. It

might be very good for harmonizing regu-

latory standards across borders. But dena-

tionalizing tax ing and spending power to

any significant degree, as some argue is

the only way to solve the Eurozone crisis,

may yet prove a step too far.

Despite the many efforts to

create a version of constitutional-

ism beyond the state in the EU, the

current crisis is a further manifestation of

a still basic fact in Europe: government of

the people is still wedded to the nation-

state in crucial respects. How long that

will last, I cannot say. But the Eurozone

crisis seems to be reminding us of an

insight stressed by the French philosopher

Ernest Renan in his famous lecture What

is a Nation? in 1882, something arguably

still true despite all that has changed inthe intervening century and a quarter. The

current crisis reminds us that, in extremis,

national institutions in Europe are still

looked upon, in terms of political culture,

as a guarantee of liberty in a collective,

constitutional sense, something that

would be lost if [Europe] had only one law

and only one master.

Peter L. Lindseth is the Olimpiad S.

Ioffe Professor of International and

Comparative Law at the University

of Connecticut and the spring 2012

Daimler Fellow at the Academy.

and Greece do not constitute what they

call an optimal currency area). Rather, it

was also flawed constitutionally, in terms

of its lack of a foundation in demos-legit-

imacy. Given the downside risks that the

Eurozone crisis is now revealing, the adop-

tion of the euro presupposed a degree of

centralized political power and legitimacy

most importantly relating to shared tax-

ing and borrowing authority (Eurobonds)

that the EU, or rather the Eurozone coun-

tries collect ively, simply lack.

In his speech at Humboldt,

President Van Rompuy continually

pointed out the fact that total debt lev-

els and the general fiscal position of the

Eurozone as a whole were actually pretty

decent, at least as compared to, say, the

United States or Britain. The problem with

this claim is that the Eurozone as a whole,aside from the fact that it shares a common

currency, along with some common insti-

tutions like the European Central Bank, is

otherwise a statistical ar tifact with no real

political existence of its own. It certainly

lacks shared taxing or borrowing authority

that might take advantage of the overall

sound position of the Eurozone as a

whole (for example, via Eurobonds).

So why not just more Europe? Why

not just solve the problem by creating the

long-sought political union to match the

currency union? The answer is simply

stated, even if its manifestat ions are com-

plex: no demos. European elites cannot

simply wave the political-cultural magic

wand and create the necessary sense

of democratic and constitutional self-

consciousness across national borders that

constructing such a union would demand.

To do so without the requisite demos-

legitimacy the sense of government of

the people would be the institutional

equivalent of pouring good money after

bad. At this point in Europes history, it

cannot get from here to there.

The functional demands of this crisis

may yet force Europeans to attempt to

supranationalize some of its member

states debts, at least if it wants the com-

mon currency to surv ive. But it is quite

OVERESTIMATING THE LEGITIMACY OF EUROPEAN INSTITUTIONS IS

NOT MERELY AN ERROR OF ACADEMIC ANALYSIS; IT CAN LEAD TO EVEN

MORE PROFOUND AND DANGEROUS ERRORS OF INSTITUTIONAL OR

POLICY DESIGN, AS THE EUROZONE CRISIS IS DEMONSTRATING.

THE ANSWER IS SIMPLY STATED,

EVEN IF ITS MANIFESTATIONS ARE

COMPLEX: NO DEMOS.


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As I writ e, Europes leaders are

gathering to try to save the com-

mon currency yet again. They have

failed before, and failure this time may put

into question the destination a continent

gave itself after 1945. Instead of progresstowards ever closer union, we must now

envisage the possible break-up of the euro,

the re-emergence of border controls, and

the bubbling up of a politics of resent-

ment and recrimination that could end in

conflict between classes and even between

nations.

The strategic, economic, and social

future of a continent is at stake. The

European project was supposed to guaran-

tee the future of Europe by creating a single

market of a size to rival the Chinese and the

Americans. A strong euro and a strong pan-

European economy in turn would sustain

the European welfare state as an alternative

to the American and Chinese social models.

A continent integrated from Ireland to the

borders of Russia would consign to the past

the divisions of the Cold War. The euro cri-

sis puts all of these dreams at risk.

We can see now, in hindsight, that a

common currency required a common

fiscal and budgetary regime to constrain

sovereign imprudence and political

fecklessness. Yet instead of locking in acommon fiscal discipline from the begin-

ning, European governments tried to have

the best of both worlds, monetary union

without loss of economic sovereignty. Both

weak and strong states then exploited the

euro to pass their problems onto their

neighbors. Strong states like France and

Germany evaded their Maastricht commit-

ment to keep their debt at three percent of

gdp, while weaker ones like Greece, Italy,

Portugal, Spain, and Ireland went on bor-

rowing sprees, convinced that the Eurozone

would bail them out and that rising asset

prices would cover their fiscal deficits.

Instead of transcending sovereignty, the

European Union systematized the transfer

of moral hazard from weaker to stronger

sovereigns. But the bond markets are sig-

naling that a limit has now been reached.

The burdens of debt in weak economiesare so large that no European institution

can pay them except by printing money,

which frightens any European, especially a

German, with memories of what inflation

did to Weimar democracy.

There is a solution: to confer veto powers

over national budgets to European institu-

tions in return for European guarantees on

the sovereign debts of all states. But this

requires both strong and weak to surren-

der economic sovereignty, and it requires

European electorates to transfer power

upward to technocrats. The economic prob-

lem can be solved but only at some consid-

erable cost to European democracy.

Europes democratic heritage can sur-

vive upward transfer of fiscal and monetarypolicy only if other powers are transferred

downward to the people through devolution

and only if European institutions remain

accountable to a pan-European electorate.

Right now, neither Brussels

nor national parliaments are in

charge. It is the markets that are

dictating terms to European democracy.

Already the bond market is charging inter-

est rates for government debt that wil l

make it impossible for them to dig them-

selves out of their hole without intervention

from the ec band the im f. Sovereigns cant

get credit from the markets, and business

credit is drying up. The continent faces a

credit crunch and, if its leaders dont act

quickly, years of recession.

Political solutions arewithin reach in

the form of fiscal and monetary union butthere may no longer be time enough for

the politicians. Economic solutions also lie

within reach, but they have been left so late

that Europe faces a lost decade of declin-

ing productivity, unemployment, and

stagnation.

Crisis, as all politicians know, is an

opportunity to be seized. Let us hope

Europe will seize its last chance. The deep-

er question is why Europe and Europeans

failed to act so far. Why has a concerted

political response taken so long? One

might have thought that a threat of system-

ic risk to all would coalesce the political will

to act in common. Not so.

Years of growth concealed the real

problem the growing inequality between

nations, classes, and regions in Europe.

As long as European economies were all

growing, increasing inequality could be

contained. As soon as the economy stopped

growing, inequality and resentment at

other peoples better fortune or their fool-

ishness made a coordinated response to the

common crisis more difficult.

It has taken me a long time to appre-

ciate something my father, a Russian

immigrant to Canada who came of age

in the Depression, once told me about hard

times. When I asked him what it was like

in the Dirty Thirties, he said that if you had

a job it was like being on a train: you were

in the heated parlor car up front while the

unemployed were in the unheated freight

cars at the back.

So it is today.

When the unlamented Silvio Berlusconi

was asked how serious the economic cr isis

POLITICS

FOR HARD TIMESWho pays for austerity?

By Michael Ignatieff

RIGHT NOW, NEITHER BRUSSELS

NOR NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS ARE

IN CHARGE. IT IS THE MARKETS

THAT ARE DICTATING TERMS TO

EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY.


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CLAUS GOEDICKE, PFLASTER(FROM THE SERIES SOME THINGS), 2008, INKJET PRINT, 59,4 X 42 CM

C

LAUSGOEDICKE

,COURTESYGALERIEM

BOCHUM

,GERMANY


12/68


world. Resource economies like Canada

and Australia are dependent on Chinese

demand for commodities. Cash-rich com-

panies in the developed world are depen-

dent on the outsourcing opportunities

and the consumer markets in developing

nations. Already the outlines of a new divi-

sion of labor are emerging. When demand

returns in Europe and North America, jobs

may not come back for the mil lions of mid-

dle class North Americans and Europeans

who grew up working in manufacturing

and services.

In an economic crisis, everyone is in

a flight from risk to security, but no, we

are not all in this together. Because we

are not, we are lining up behind radically

different political solutions. In the United

States, the Republicans defend austerity

and deficit cutting to push the costs ofrecession onto the vulnerable, with tax

cuts designed to render the new inequality

permanent. This solution class warfare if

there ever was appeals, paradoxical ly, to

those who may pay the price for it: private

sector workers who feel that their taxes

are being wasted bailing out big banks

and sustaining inefficient public sector

jobs. The Democrats want to protect pub-

lic services and the public sector through

tax increases on the rich. This appeals to

workers who either work for government

or are dependent on public services. Each

party s approach to the cr isis is not so much

a solution as an attempt to entrench the

privileges of the groups that support them

politically.

Everywhere the crisis pits those who

have some security whether it be highincome or protected public service jobs

against those who do not have secure

pensions, employment, or prospects.

Progressive politics in an age of austerity

comes down to this: persuading the major-

ity who are doing well whether they are

nations, classes, or regions that their

future depends on doing something about

the large and growing minority, of weaker

states, poorer regions, and lower income

groups who are doing badly. A progressive

politics will have to show that if we are to

get out of recession, we will have to stick

together. This will not be easy.

Germany is a case in point.

As a result of high labor productivity

and the welfare states automatic stabiliz-

ers, Germany has managed the crisis better

than its European neighbors. Now it feels

punished for its success by being asked to

bail out the weaker brethren on the south-

ern periphery.

The German political discourse on its

southern partners recalls what Victorian

political economists used to say about the

undeserving poor: your bad habits are

to blame for your misfortune. Until you

become frugal, efficient, and abstemious,

the Germans tell their neighbors, there will

be no Eurobonds, no bailouts, no interest

rate socialism, no transfer union.

But Germany is discovering what the

rich and strong eventually have to learn:

the weak can bring you down. Weak states,

in a currency union, can destroy the eco-nomic prospects of the strong.

If the bad news is that a recession pits

strong against weak, rich against poor,

the good news is that eventually the rich

whether they be nations, regions, or

classes discover that their own prosperity

will be threatened unless they help those

left behind.

This is the deeper logic behind German

moves towards further European inte-

gration: the strong are discovering their

interdependence on the weak, and the weak

are accepting that they have to live within

disciplines prescribed by the st rong. Even

now, it is possible to think this lesson can

be learned in time.

If inequality is the chief feature of the

recession, as well as the chief obstacle to

political action to dig us out, the questionfor progressives is what to do about it. After

all, what defines a progressive politics,

whether of a liberal or a social democratic

variety, is not merely a moral concern

for the disadvantaged, but the economic

insight that growth requires equity in order

to be sustainable. What then are the strate-

gies that combine equity and growth and

get us all out of this cr isis?

Here we need to understand some para-

doxes. The most serious market fai lure

since the Great Depression has not engen-

dered a crisis of faith in markets, sti ll less a

return to Rooseveltian big government or

was in Italy, he replied, What cr isis? The

restaurants in Milan were full. The egre-

gious Italian had a point.

The patrons filling the Milanese restau-

rants do not feel the pain. If you are one of

the fortunate few with cash in hand, you

can spend and it costs nothing to borrow. In

a recessionary economy, cash and liquidity

are king and these monarchs confer their

favors on the fortunate alone. Retai lers

catering to the wealthy have never done so

well. The cash-rich have not only escaped

the crisis but gained an increasing share of

national wealth.

They are not the only ones who have

been insulated from hard times. Unionized

workers in the public sector are better pro-

tected than non-unionized workers in the

private sector. Native-born are less likely

to be let go than immigrants. Skilled fare

better than unskilled, educated better thanuneducated.

Germans are better off than Greeks,

northern Europe is better off than south-

ern. It is agreeable for Germans to indulge

their schadenfreude and ressentiment

towards their feckless southern partners,

but these emotions may have blinded

German voters to their true interest: deci-

sive action to federate Europe and save the

euro.

Just as the recession creates winners

and losers and fragments political consen-

sus within Europe, it also is creating new

winners and losers in the global economy

at large. Just ask Brazilians. Crisis what

crisis? They have never had it so good. Just

ask Canadians. Their unemployment rate

is two percent below the Americans. Their

banks a heavily regulated oligopoly did

not fall for the sub-prime scam. In my

country, the full burden of hard times falls

squarely on a few shoulders: young people

without post-secondary education, older

workers in declining resource and mining

sectors, recent immigrants, and aborigi-nals. The guilty secret about recessionary

times is that hard times for the few actually

mean cheap money and rising house prices

for the many.

Yet even those who have held on to their

jobs fear for the future, and in political

terms, this produces a flight to security

and retrenchment. Even the economi-

cally secure understand that this reces-

sion is not just a slump in demand but a

restructur ing of the global economy. We

are living through the first economic

recession in which the developing world

is gaining at the expense of the developed

WE ARE LIVING THROUGH THE FIRST ECONOMIC RECESSION

IN WHICH THE DEVELOPING WORLD IS GAINING AT THE EXPENSE

OF THE DEVELOPED WORLD.


13/68


|

11

economic insecurity among the haves does

not engender solidarity towards those who

have not. It engenders a political flight from

equity towards retrenchment.

It is commonly said that Occupy Wall

Street has changed the conversation, placed

inequality back on the political agenda

and improved the prospects for progres-

sive politics. Im not so sure. The slogan

of Occupy Wall Street, We are the 99 per-

cent, encourages the illusion that we are

all in it together, us against a tiny them.

But we are not all in this together. If we

were, liberals and progressives would be

winning the political arguments. But we

are not. Conservatives are winning because

they promise stability to those who are win-

ning. They also indulge those who want to

punish the losers.

That much-used phrase moral hazard

has become a powerful alibi for a politicsof resentment. As an example, one of the

chief reasons why the American economy

remains mired in recession is that millions

of homeowners either cannot pay their

mortgages or are walking away from mort-

gages on property that will never be worth

more than their initial investment. A fed-

eral program to reduce interest payments

or write down a port ion of these mortgages

would get the housing market functioning

again and stimulate consumption among

distressed homeowners. Such a measure

would help Main Street, instead of Wall

Street, and would be no more expensive

than aid to the big banks.

Interestingly, it is just as unpopular as

measures to help bankers. Your mortgage

is not my problem was one of the signs

visible at a recent Tea Party rally in the US.

A retributive politics, that refuses assis-

tance to indebted mortgage holders on the

grounds of moral hazard, wi ll only prolong

recession. Yet retr ibutive politics is more

popular than a politics of equality.

Equally paradoxical is the resistance of

lower income groups to a politics of equal-

ity that aims at redist ribution of income

and progressive taxation. There is anger,yes, at the unprecedented percentage of

national income that the top one percent

of earners have secured for themselves

over the past thirt y years. But even unprec-

edented inequality of income continues to

be widely accepted. Top earners argue that

their incomes are returns on effort, sala-

Keynesian demand management. It has not

created a tidal wave in favor of higher taxa-

tion for the rich, tougher regulation of capi-

talist enterprise, and more generous social

protection for the unemployed. On the

contrary, left-wing governments in Spain,

Greece, and Ireland have been driven from

office, and the popular mood is towards

conservative austerity and retrenchment.

In Canada, in the federal elec tion of May

2011, the Liberal Party and I ran on a pro-

gram to freeze corporate tax cuts, eliminate

tax loopholes that benefit the super-rich,invest in education, and support family care

for the majority. It was a fiscally responsible,

socially progressive program and we were

rewarded with the worst electoral result

in generations. I may not have been the

best possible messenger but notice that the

message also met with failure. Pervasive

PfizerDeutschlandGmbH

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Our commitment to enhancing the quality of life at every

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Germany, for example, Pfizer volunteers serve as reading

mentors at a Berlin primary school. We also support organi-

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PERVASIVE ECONOMIC IN

SECURITY AMONG THE

HAVES DOES NOT ENGENDER

SOLIDARITY TOWARDS THOSE

WHO HAVE NOT.


14/68


servatives to persuade them that increased

taxation of the few today will be followed by

increased taxation on the many tomorrow.

P

rogressives should not sulk in

their tents, believing that we are los-

ing these arguments simply because

the other side is more cunning or betterfunded. The fact is that disparities in

income themselves, especially those that

are rewards for skill, innovation, and effort

do not seem morally problematic to most

people. A progressive politics that attacks

income inequality itself simply looks like a

politics of envy to the very people it needs

to convince.

A progressive politics ought, I would

argue, to make clear that income inequality

in itself is not the issue, but rather inequal-

ity that inflicts harm to those less fortunate.

A company president who takes home sub-

stantial personal compensation in base sal-

ary plus bonuses tied to performance while

providing employment to thousands of

people, together with dividends to investors,

small and large, ought not to be a morally

problematic figure for a progressive politics.

The company president whose compensa-

tion package does not include any penal-

ties for failure, and whose risk-taking and

profit-seeking exposes his employees to

bankruptcy, while ruining investors and

sending shock waves throughout the rest of

the economy is another matter entirely.

There is overwhelming public support for

government that protects ordinary citizens,

as well as their jobs and savings, from the

predatory risk-taking of the few. Nothing has

so weakened faith in government than gov-

ernments failure to do so. Government can-

not and should not protect or compensate

individuals and firms from market bets that

go bad. But it should be there to protect pop-ulations at large from systemic risks. This

function of government opens up an oppor-

tunity a progressive politics must now seize.

It is time for us to bother with the detail of

firm level regulation regulating executive

pay, reforming corporate governance so that

boards protect share holders and employees

against systemic risk, measures to force

those who trade large volumes in the market

to have skin in the game, personal liabili-

ties that can be called in when their bets fail.

Instead of fulminating against free mar-

kets, a progressive politics should be argu-

ing that what we need are markets that are

actual ly free. Many of the worst excesses of

the age of greed occurred in markets thatwere anything but free, anything but trans-

parent, markets riven by fraud, corruption,

insider trading, and toxic products that dif-

fused risk and made it systemic.

A progressive politics has almost forgot-

ten its long-standing emphasis on the role

of government in promoting free market

competition. We need more, not less, com-

petition in the market, and that means gov-

ernments prepared to use their anti-trust,

anti-monopoly functions going forward to

dismantle institutions that have become

too big to fail and whose failure may

expose the whole economy to calamity.

ried benefits that come from working long

hours and taking large risks. Moreover,

outsized incomes are justified when they

are the result of innovations that create

benefits and jobs for society at large. This

may be true, though it is worth noting that

the storied achievements of Steve Jobs are

pressed into service to justify incomes fromthose in finance and speculat ion whose

public benefit is, to say the least, equivocal.

Clawing back some of these gains, through

progressive taxation, it is claimed, would

harm the many while eliminating valuable

incentives for the few. The fact that one

of the worlds most successful investors,

Warren Buffett, has refuted the claim has

not silenced those who persist in making it.

The interesting political fact is that

these arguments by the privileged few are

persuasive to the unprivileged many. The

latter may earn less, but they have aspira-

tions to earn more. It is easy work for con-

INSTEAD OF FULMINATING

AGAINST FREE MARKETS,

A PROGRESSIVE POLITICS SHOULD

BE ARGUING THAT WHAT WE

NEED ARE MARKETS THAT ARE

ACTUALLY FREE.

CLAUS GOEDICKE, SCHUHE, FROM THE SERIES SOME THINGS, 2010, C-PRINT


15/68


|

13

Higher taxation of the rich has an impor-

tant place in a progressive politics but the

right rationale for it needs to be restated. We

do not tax the r ich to punish them for their

success, or to use them as a cash cow to fund

social programs. We tax the rich so that they

pay a fair portion of the public goods that

account for so much of their private returns.

Indeed, the most effective political rationale

for higher taxation on those who can afford

it is to reduce taxation on those who can

least afford it. A progressive taxation policy

is one that should be revenue neutral, i .e. it

increases burdens on those who can carry

them and reduces it for those who cannot.

A free-market progressivism wants to

reduce taxes on the hard-pressed middle

class, but it can also reduce taxes by reduc-

ing the proliferating tax expenditures in

the form of rebates, credits, and reduc-

tions in favor of simple across-the-boardcuts. This gets the government out of the

incentive business and leaves individuals

more free to determine what incentives to

give themselves.

If we want a politics of equality, we need

to understand also that public discontent is

not just focused on the top one percent of

private income earners. It is also focused

on inequality between public and private

sector workers, between those who receive

their income through tax revenue and those

who do not. Look at the relative success

that US state governors have had in attack-

ing public sector unions and their pension

entitlements. A progressive response has

to focus both on protecting essential public

services and the workers who provide them,

while also reducing the inequality between

public sector and private sector pension,

redundancy, and holiday entitlements.

We should remember that welfare states

create inequalities of their own, and these

may get worse in a new age of austerity. If

we dont understand this, we wil l end up

with a progressive politics that thinks itis attacking inequality, when it is in fact

defending privilege, the pensions of public

sector workers, the tenure of publicly fund-

ed professors, the subsidies of artistic and

creative sectors against private sec tor work-

ers, small business owners, immigrants

without social protection, and other groups

who do not benefit equally or in the same

way from the welfare state.

The primal political batt le in the years

ahead will be over who pays for auster-

ity: the publicly protected or the privately

exposed. A progressive politics that does

not understand why retrenchment is

necessary does not understand the public

finances of Europe or anywhere else. For

decades European governments have been

borrowing more than they could afford

to sustain the welfare state. The vaunted

European social model was funded on cred-

it, and a progressive politics cannot rally

support behind the defense of the welfare

state unless it simultaneously embraces the

need for reform.

Reform means taking on substantial

interests public sector unions and pow-

erful professions like doctors, teachers,

and nurses, who all perform vital public

work that must continue but who must

reform their practices, shed some of their

privileges, and become more efficient if

the public goods they provide are to remain

sustainable.

Progressives must think through the

necessary fiscal regime that al lows us tosafeguard equality of opportunity for all,

while maintaining fiscal balance and a

level of taxation that doesnt lead to a capi-

tal strike. Yes, a capital strike is possible.

In a global economy, welfare states must

be tax-competitive: your own companies

can always build Mercedes and Audis

somewhere else. If they move production

offshore, you can kiss your welfare state

goodbye.

In the face of a g lobal division of labor,

a progressive politics that slips into protec-

tionism and defense of declining industries

condemns itself to the margins of politics.

The only way forward is to invest in people,

training, and education, from early child-

hood right through retirement. In an era

of declining demographics and rising skill

levels for all well-paying jobs, a progressive

growth strategy has to bet everything onsustained investment in education for all.

Equality of opportunity is the key to future

growth and the core response of govern-

ment to the employment challenges thrown

up by a new global economy is to invest in

education for all.

So lets have an economics equal to our

ethics, an economics of austerity harnessed

to an ethical conviction that a competitive

economy absolutely requires that everyone

gets an equal star t by way of education and

equal help when fate befalls us, whether

it be i llness, or unemployment, or misfor-

tune we cannot master on our own.

A Social Democrat is perhaps more

trusting of the state than a liberal like

myself. It would be good for a progressive

politics to demystify the state and the val-

ues of social compassion it is supposed to

incarnate. Twenty-five years ago, in The

Needs of Strangers, I argued that the welfare

state did not express solidarity and compas-

sion so much as confiscate and bureaucra-

tize it. We administered solidarity in the

welfare state. We did not live it or express it

ourselves.

We need to understand this now,

since the welfare state needs more than

a defense in an age of austerity; it needs

reform: empowerment of compassion

rather than its bureaucratization, decen-

tralization of decision-making rather than

centralization, market disciplines and

competition to contain costs, a service

ethos that treats people as citizens not asnumbers. A progressive does not want to

end up defending the state. A progressive

wants to end up promoting a common life

and equal opportunity for all.

Let us end with this idea of a com-

mon life: the infrastructure of public

goods roads, schools, libraries, hos-

pitals, training institutes, public transport

that taxpayers accept to provide because

they understand that private welfare

depends critically on an equal structure

of public goods. These goods express the

value of the equal worth of citizens, their

right to benefit in common from facilities

that each pays for, according to their ability.

Let us understand the crucial role that

public goods play in sustaining equal

opportunity for al l, and let us also under-

stand how important equal opportunity isfor growth. How are economies supposed

to grow if societies entrench forms of

inequality that convince mil lions of people

new immigrants, ethnic minorities, and

working-class people that the economic

game is over for them before it star ts?

Michael Ignatieff teaches human

rights and international politics at the

University of Toronto and is a former

leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

This essay is adapted from a speech

delivered by Ignatieff at the Einstein

Forum on December 8, 2011.

THE WELFARE STATE NEEDS MORE THAN A DEFENSE

IN AN AGE OF AUSTERITY; IT NEEDS REFORM.


16/68


EMERGENCE AND EXITThe collapse of neoliberal multiculturalism

By Elizabeth Povinelli


17/68


|

15

H

ow do the financial crisis of

2008 and the ongoing manage-

ment of the euro crisis bear wit-ness to the emergence of a new phase in

European and Anglo-American liberal gov-

ernance? How do these cr ises help us grasp

what liberal governance has been and what

it may be becoming? And, perhaps more

cryptically, whereit has been? Where are

the geopolitical conditions of liberal gover-

nance to be found? Are they found within

the internal social and cultural logics of

Europe and Anglo-America its Judeo-

Christian her itage? If so, can liberal gover-

nance return to its traditions and remake

the European and Anglo-American world

as Other to others? Or is liberal governance

otherwise to itself, such that this separation

is a dangerous and futile fantasy?

These are clearly huge social, historical,and philosophical questions. This much

we can say with some certainty: in the

immediate wake of the 2008 financial

crisis, it looked as if liberal governance was

heading for a significant reconfiguration.

An earlier economic crisis had aided the

ascendency of neoliberalism. In order to

dismantle key components of Keynesian

liberalism, neoliberal advocates, such as

Reagan and Thatcher and their advisers,

took advantage of, and deepened, a crisis

in capitalism (stagflation) in the context of

what seemed to be a robust alternative to

capitalism (the apparently robust commu-WILLIAM CORDOVA, RUBBER, 2006, PENCIL ON PAPER, 135,5 X 179 CM

Cour

tesy

ARNDTBer

linan

dthear

tis

t

MORE INVESTED THAN SOVIET

CITIZENS IN CREATING FAMILIES

DURING THE WAR, GERMANS

HAD MORE TO LOSE.


18/68


nist system). But although the conceptual

underpinnings of neoliberalism were

explicitly opposed to Keynesianism, they

were not a return to the prelapsarian world

of Adam Smiths laissez-faire capitalism,

no matter how often Smith was placed

on the neoliberal pedestal. As I put it in

Economies of Abandonment, neoliberalism

sought to free the market from the con-

fines of the market. And as Amartya Sen

noted in a New York Review of Booksessay,

Smith never thought that the principles

of the market should become universal

principles of human moral sentiment

and behavior. Indeed, Theory of Moral

Sentimentsseems to make the case that in

order for the invisible hand of the market

to operate effectively and efficiently, lib-

eralism must preserve distinct domains

where citizens cultivate non-selfish senti-

ments. The result of collapsing all socialdomains into a single market logic was

captured in the opening scene of The Iron

Lady, in which Margaret T hatcher, played

by Meryl Streep, is roughly pushed aside in

a convenience store. The extreme neoliber-

alist is literally run over by neoliberalism.

But by the 1990s, even the gov-

erning left in the US (Clinton) and

England (Blair) had embraced what

John Gray of the New Statesmancalled

the debt-fuelled free market as the

imperative[s] of democracy . . . destined

to spread universally. It is not surprising,

then, that many public commenters saw

the public humiliation of a befuddled Alan

Greenspan before the US Congress as the

symbolic nail in this ideological formation.

Greenspans shock sounded the death knell

of neoliberalism as a specific conceptual

and practical relationship between capital

markets and liberal governments. Surely

some new way of organizing the states rela-

tionship to markets was on the horizon.

If 2008 spelled the seeming demise

of neoliberalism, on its heels was the

demise of state multiculturalism. Some

forty years af ter 1968, the term we use

to summarize the effect of a longer set of

anticolonial and anti-capitalist struggles of

militant new social movements, the liberal

governance of social difference in a nation-

al and international framework was under

extreme stress.

T

o understand what was at stake,

we need to remember that state mul-

ticulturalism (the liberal politics of

recognition) was not the goal of mil itant

social movements or anti-imperialist move-

ments. State multiculturalism was the

response of liberal governance to the threat

these movements posed to its fundamental

principles. It was a politics oriented toward

inclusion, not revolution. It was a multi-

culturalism whose final horizon remained

the basic principles of liberalism. Thus

in his influential essay The Politics of

Recognition, Charles Taylor placed enor-

mous emphasis on the moral worth of rec-

ognizing the cultural and social difference

even as he placed a limit on the transforma-

tive potential of this difference. The chal-

lenge he notes, is how to deal with the

substantial numbers of people who are citi-

zens and also belong to a culture that calls

into question our philosophical boundaries.

The challenge is to deal with their sense

of marginalization without compromising

our basic principles. The desire of these

marginalized people to be recognized by

us, and our desire to recognize the worth

of other cultures where such worth was

proven worthy was supposedly the rou

that would thicken the social stew. (Taylor

is clear that the assumption of worth

must be then followed by an assessment

of cultures. If this assessment was not

part of the dynamics of recognition, then

recognition would be a hollow gesture.)Like Alan Greenspan, who based an entire

career on the view of rational self-interest

as underlying market function only to find

himself shocked by the irrationality of self-

interest, so Cameron, Merkel, and Sarkozy

in Europe, and Howard in Australia, stood

astounded that rather than the desire for

recognition, many marginalized com-

munities desired nothing more than to be

left alone.

If we want to know what liberal gover-

nance is becoming we need to understand

what it seems or seemed to be exit-

ing. In the wake of 2008 and a series of

announcements about the failure of state

multiculturalism, liberal governance

seemed to be exiting a nearly fifty-year

twining of neoliberalism and multicul-

turalism as the solution to two aspects of

liberal governance that were in crisis from

the 1960s through the 1970s: economic

markets and social dif ference. But, in

hindsight, it is unclear how this twining

manifests itself. Let s look closer at the neo-

liberal ascendency of the market as the sole

bearer of social evaluation. Celebrations of

the democratic spring in North Africa have

occurred almost simultaneously with glob-

al pundits lauding the ability of so-called

technocratic governments demanded by

the financial markets to bypass the demo-

cratic function in Italy and Greece. And in

China, the supposed inevitable merging

of liberal market and liberal governance

remains a receding horizon even as its eco-

nomic power suggests new possibilities of

capital governance. What if we are witness-

ing the final recession of democracy as the

necessary sibling of neoliberal markets?

Even as this dynamic between

democracy and market is being

played out, the governance of social

difference is increasingly an idiom for

the uneven global distributions resulting

from the financial cr isis. In Greece we

see German figureheads of the economic

bailout portrayed in the idiom of national

difference. In the US, the Supreme Court

is poised to dismantle the last of the affir-

mative action redoubts in higher educa-

tion, and Republicans are set to roll back

advances in feminist health and choice

through the demonization of the sexualrevolution. In France, Muslims; in England,

members of the African-Caribbean com-

munity; in Germany, Turks (and those

assigned to these groups through nothing

more then epidermal resemblance, as

recently seen in Germany through the so-

called Dner Kil lings) are now subject

to new experiments in liberal governance,

having not agreed to the denuding of com-

munity through the techniques of recogni-

tion. What these experiments will add up

to and how the experiments of a post-

neoliberal market will be tall ied remains

to be seen.

IF WE WANT TO KNOW WHAT

LIBERAL GOVERNANCE IS

BECOMING WE NEED TO

UNDERSTAND WHAT IT SEEMS

OR SEEMED TO BE EXITING.

WHAT IF WE ARE WITNESSING THE FINAL RECESSION OF DEMOCRACY

AS THE NECESSARY SIBLING OF NEOLIBERAL MARKETS?


19/68


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17

But one thing is abundantly clear: the

transformation of liberal governance does

not originate from Anglo-American or

European worlds. Many political scientists

like to narrate Western liberalism in such a

way that its logic emerges from the internal

civilizational dynamics of the West. And

yet, as I have suggested elsewhere, neolib-

eral economic theory was able to take root

in Britain and the US precisely because

stagnation gripped the Western economies

in the 1970s. The cause of this stagna-

tion was, at least in large part, due to the

Middle East oil embargo and the counter-

hegemonic power of the Soviet Union and

its sphere of influence. Moreover, state

multiculturalism was promoted as a means

of integrating national difference, not due

to liberalisms own internal dialectic. State

multiculturalism was a strategic response

to the sustained cr itique of Western impe-rialism and colonialism and their influence

on militant social movements. German

Chancellor Angela Merkel could attempt

to create an internal ly coherent Germany

and a Europe with Christ ian roots pro-

viding the difference of Western liberalism,

but these roots were always already react-

ing to their extension in other worlds. The

people Merkel lambasts as living among

Germans are living there because Europe

and the Anglo-American worlds were made

as a result of their living through and on

the material worlds of others.

In other words, if we wish to understand

the internal dynamics of liberal governance

in the West, we must look at its external

conditions. The authors of liberalisms

Other are outside liberalism. From the1960s through 2008, liberals could avoid

the somewhat unpleasant thought that they

were not the agents of history but the effect.

After all, the US was ascendant. West

Germany was testimony to the resilience

of liberal democracies. Japans threat faded

into series of lost decades. The South Asian

Tigers were tamed. And soon the Wall fell

and a series of pundits, most notoriously

Francis Fukuyama, announced the End of

History.

T

he West no longer has this

luxury. The global economic engine

is shifting and becoming multi-polar.

Social protests and massive youth unem-

ployment are the norm. Social dif ference

is being securitized as the US Congress

approves the use of drones over US cities.

The forms of liberal economic and social

governance emerging in the wake of the

collapse of neoliberal multiculturalism are

as likely to come from outside as they are

from within.

Elizabeth Povinelli is a professor of

anthropology and gender studies at

Columbia University and was the fall2011 German Transatlantic Program

Fellow at the American Academy.

MANY POLITICAL SCIENTISTS

LIKE TO NARRATE WESTERN

LIBERALISM IN SUCH A WAY

THAT ITS LOGIC EMERGES FROM

THE INTERNAL CIVILIZATIONAL

DYNAMICS OF THE WEST.

DOMBERT RECHTSANWLTE www.dombert.de

t g e ts ere c e

Abfallwirtschaftsrecht

Agrar-, Forst und Jagdrecht

Gesundheitsrecht

Kommunalrecht

Bauordnungs-, Bauplanungs-

und FachplanungsrechtRecht der Erneuerbaren Energien

Energiewirtschaftsrecht

Emissionshandelsrecht

Immissionsschutzgesetz

Recht der Infrastrukturund der ffentl. Daseinsvorsorge

Recht des ffentl. Dienstes

Schul-, Hochschul- und Prfungsrecht

Umweltrecht

Verfassungsrecht

Vergaberecht

Mangerstrae 26 14467 Potsdam Tel.: 0331 - 620 42 70 Fax: 0331 - 620 42 71 [email protected]

Prof. Dr. Matthias Dombert Janko Gener Dr. Margarete Mhl-Jckel, LL.M. (Harvard) Dr. Helmar Hentschke

Dr. Klaus Herrmann Dr. Jan Thiele Dr. Konstantin Krukowski Dr. Martin Jansen

Dombert Rechtsanwltesind bundesweit

ausschlielich in Fragen des Verwaltungs-

und Verfassungsrechts ttig.

Wir beraten private Unternehmen, Verbnde

und Kammern ebenso wie Landesregierungen,

Landkreise, Gemeinden und Zweckverbnde.

Wir sind Anwlte von Unternehmen der

Ernhrungs- und Lebensmittelindustrie, der

Energie- und Entsorgungswirtschaft und

sind fr Planungs- und Bautrger ttig, wie

fr Umwelt- und Gesundheitsbehrden.


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19

FOR JOHN LYSAKER

Horror films have the char-

acter of dreams. The cinematic

phantasmagorias hide those

secret faces we do not willingly or con-

sciously approach and yet carry within us

all the time. What we see in such films

is the mask projected by what we really

fear. The power of a horror film or the

best ones, anyway rarely comes from

the specific events depicted onscreen. Or

rather, it isnt literally what we see that is

so disturbing, but what deeper fears the

figures and events allegorize in the shad-

ow plays flitting and trembling before the

audiences eyes. Watching a horror movie

is a bit like the makeshift pinhole devices

people use to see an eclipse while avoiding

looking directly at the event. With a movie

one realizes that those unspeakable fears

are not merely ones own merely private

terrors; we see that others have these as

well. That means we need not feel so alone.

Joy we tend to share, but we often keep

quiet about what terrifies us. Watching a

horror film provides a means of sharingdarkness both literally and figuratively.

But what if the fear that we see enacted

onscreen is a projection of what, at its core,

is a profound, existential dread of loneli-

ness? What might that fear of loneliness

tell us about modern l ife, about how we

conceptualize who we are and how we

stand to others?

Although it first appeared in 1999, The

Sixth Sense, one of the most popular andlucrative horror movies ever made, has

remained lodged in the general conscious-

ness. There are any number of reasons why

it continues to linger, but I suggest it lies in

the specific anxiety that the film not only

represents, but also engages. Thus, the

horror of The Sixth Sense really has little to

do with the ghosts that appear onscreen

these might surprise from time to time,

but they arent that terrify ing. And unlike

The Exorcist orThe Omen, the theology or

metaphysics arent likely to be too unset-

tling or dredge up a latent dread of forces

beyond our control, to which we are none-

theless subject. Instead, the horror ofThe

Sixth Senseis born of the familiarity with

loneliness that the film represents. Beyond

that, perhaps the pervasive condition of

loneliness represented on the screen and

reflected back to the audience is not only

recognizable, but we are already lost within

its folds. This dread, this profound, creep-

ing fear is worth looking at.

The Sixth Sensebegins with trauma, a

trauma that the protagonist only learnsto recognize at the very end, and yet what

might be more harrowing is not that

moment of crisis, but rather the revela-

tion of what his life has become. Near the

beginning of the film, child psychologist

Malcolm Crowe (played by Bruce Wil lis)

is gunned down in his own home after

celebrating with his wife, Anna (Olivia

Williams), the fact that he had been given

a prestigious award in recognition of sig-nificant contributions to his field and to the

families and children in his care. Crowes

wife makes clear to her husband, and to the

audience, that the award means others had

noticed all the sacrifices Crowe had made,

putting everything after his work, even

their marr iage. Given the movies popular

success, I will not recount the plot in its

entirety, and it is sufficient to say that in the

midst of this celebration, the Crowes are

surprised by a former patient, now an adult,

who has broken into their home and who

is brandishing a pistol. The intruder fires

at Crowe, wounding him, and then shoots

himself. With the next scene the film

jumps to some later point in time whether

it be days, weeks, or years later, we cannot

say when Crowe is seated outside on abench reviewing his notes on a new case.

What we do not yet know is that Crowe is

now already dead. His new case, the one

he is reviewing, concerns a little boy who

we know the famous line sees dead

people. The boy, Cole (played by Haley Joel

Osment), will later tell Crowe that he sees

the dead everywhere, and their problem is

that they do not know they are dead. This

information will become poignant when

it is revealed in the movies final act that

Crowe is himself one of these revenants

lacking any realizat ion of what he has

become.

ON LONELINESSThe unbearable lightness of being alone

By Richard Deming

WATCHING A HORROR MOVIE IS A BIT LIKE THE MAKESHIFT

PINHOLE DEVICES PEOPLE USE TO SEE AN ECLIPSE WHILE

AVOIDING LOOKING DIRECTLY AT THE EVENT.

THE HORROR OFTHE SIXTH SENSE

IS BORN OF THE FAMILIARITY

WITH LONELINESS THAT

THE FILM REPRESENTS.


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Throughout the fil m, Cole

and Crowe ask each other what they

would most like to change about

their respective lives. Crowe poses this as

part of his methodology; Cole poses the

question to his interlocutor. Cole wishes

he did not see the dead; Crowe wishes he

and his wife could communicate. Even

as a ghostly counselor, however, Crowe

teaches Cole that he must listen to the

ghosts, as they crave acknowledgment.

Cole learns to listen to the dead, and as

a result they no longer attack him. He is

able to do the things that provide them

some measure of peace, as when he

delivers a videotape to a grieving father

of a murdered (by poison) little girl that

incriminates the girls own mother. Cole

not only speaks to the dead, he speaks for

them as well. At some level, we might see

Cole as embodying a form of wish fulfill-ment. Who wouldnt want to be able to

have some proxy who would deliver bad

news or confront people for us?

While the movie presents this as a

better existence for Cole, in reality he

is not given much choice. He can either

not listen to the dead and be attacked by

them and shunned by the living, or he

can devote his li fe how is this not a sac-

rifice? to undertake their affairs in order

to let them come to rest, a burden he can-

not rightly be said to have taken up on his

own. Cole becomes popular at school with

his new relationship to himself and to his

own burdens; he no longer avoids people

either living or dead. Is this a happy end-

ing? Cleary, it is meant to be, but the fact

that he has no real choice complicates that

happiness.

Coles insights into others, insights

that come with his acknowledging the

ghosts, lead him to suggest to Crowe a

method of how Crowe, who as yet still

hasnt discovered he is dead, might speak

with his wife. Cole suggests talking to herwhile she is asleep, presumably thereby

permeating the boundaries between

dreaming and wakefulness.

What makes Th e Sixt h Sense

something more than just a big-

budget version of a Hollywood

B movie is how it presents loneliness and

isolation as a source of horror. At first, lone-liness seems to be a generalized condition,

an atmosphere permeating everything that

happens. Throughout the movie, before it

is revealed that Crowe himself is actually a

ghost, we see a growing distance between

Crowe and his wife they do not speak,

never make eye contact, never touch. In

one poignant scene, he arrives late anddistracted to what seems to be an annual

visit to their restaurant, the spot where he

first proposed to Anna. He misses dinner

entirely and yet instead of dealing with the

significance of his being late, all he can talk

about is how the work with his patient Cole

is not going well. She gives absolutely no

response. Later, we discover why.

Such missed opportunities recur

throughout the film. Anna is often found

asleep in front of the television, the vid-

eotape of their wedding and reception

flickering on the screen. At one point, she

receives and begins to return romantic

Nat Meade builds upon historic painting genre and technique with modern references

drawn from television and other entertainment sources. His character studies deliver

quirky fellow humans with frailty and humor. If Edward Hopper is presenting a scene

that recalls a theatrical per formance, Meade says, my paintings recall a televised

Sunday afternoon movie. . . . My figures are sympathetic victims, victims of light and

shadow, as well as victims of a scenario that exists outside the captured moment.

Meade teaches drawing and painting at the graduate and undergraduate levels at the

Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

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21

intentions of a young man. These events

are all recontextualized when we discover

that the entire time Crowe is a ghost that

only Cole, and the audience, can see. This

revelation stuns not only Crowe, but theviewer as well. The moment Crowe real-

izes this, we are reminded in a voiceover

that Cole had said the dead do not real-

ize they are dead, because they only see

what they want or expect to see. This is

meant to be a comment about Crowe, of

course, but the implications extend past

the screen. Just as Crowe missed all the

signals, the audience has also missed

certain clues, in part because the silence

and emotional distance between Crowe

and his wife seem completely recogniz-

able. Their behavior serves, we think, as

evidence of any marriage that is disinte-

grating. Because the two partners cannot

or simply do not know how to communi-

cate, they lose the capacity to acknowledge

one another. Most viewers will perceive

the emotional distance throughout thefilm as being so familiar it need not be

questioned, so much so that the revelation

that Crowe was dead comes as a stun-

ning surprise. How could we miss the

cues? Perhaps because we are like Crowe

already; we see only what we expect . This

implies two things: 1) that such utter lack

of acknowledgment is a kind of death; 2)

we are each of us intimately knowledge-

able about how such distance looks and

feels; and 3) not only may things not be

what we take them for, we may not be who

we take ourselves to be. Crowes blindness

becomes our insight.

This identification betw een

Crowe and the viewer goes deep, and

this is where the horror comes forth.

That is to say, Crowes crisis is a shared

one. Crowe doubles the audience in another

way: just as he cannot directly engage the

living world, the audience cannot disturb

what happens onscreen. While it is true

that films often make viewers into voyeurs,

in this case, the members of the audience

are not peeping toms, but ghosts haunt-

ing a world we can watch but not take part

in, just like the ghosts Cole sees. In other

words, our loneliness, which is the mea-

sure of distance between ones self, sitting

there in a darkened theater or at home, and

the others that one sees despite the fact

that these others are, in this case, figures

onscreen becomes manifest in our rela-

tionship to the events we can observe and

have feelings about, yet cannot affect.It is important to think about how we

respond to Crowe and his disconnection

from his wife and from Coles mother

because this impacts how we think of the

ending of the film. Crowe is able to move on

once he has accepted that he is in fact dead;

he all but states as much. The movie clearly

offers what is supposed to be a sentimental

ending that resolves the tensions we have

just witnessed. And yet what kind of reso-

lution is this? Are we meant to think, Ah,

they werent unable to communicate their

feelings, he was just a ghost. It is too late to

really accept such a reading of the end since

the audience has to reckon with the fact

that the gulf between Crowe and his wife

looked just like an all too ordinary emotion-

al gulf. The loneliness that we have seen

and accepted all along, that alienation and

estrangement equated to a kind of death, isonly resolved when Crowe acknowledges

that there is nothing more that he can do

about it.

Ultimately w e could see

Crowes acknowledgement as an

acceptance of that which most

people continually deny as much as pos-

sible mortality. Crowe can move on when

he acknowledges that there is nothing he

can do about his being limited by the flesh.

In a sense he becomes cured of this denial

of his limitations, that which makes us

human something each of us wrestles

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CROWES BLINDNESS

BECOMES OUR INSIGHT.


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with or outright denies al l of the time. Yet,

the sentimentality of the ending doesnt

seem to offer real satisfaction. In part, the

ending is not consoling because Crowe

and his wife only acknowledge one another

and she not consciously because she is

asleep in order to move into further sepa-

ration. Just as the film ends, the audience

too is allowed to leave the haunted space of

the theater and return to the waking world.

Yet do we move back into the general con-

dition of estrangement from others that

we have just seen depicted? Crowe had to

die in order to acknowledge his condition,

to transform that isolation into a kind of

solitude. The choice, the movie could sug-

gest, might be ours. Will we be like Crowe

and accept our profound alienation? Or are

we meant to be like Cole and be mediators

between the estranged and the situations

that cause others such grief that they can

neither accept a given situation of loneli-

ness and separation or leave it? But again,

what is more

berlin journal 22

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