I read the other day with great interest, as I always do, the opinion of the distinguished professor Valentin Naumescu in his article “Is the wheel of History spinning? Why is the West losing ground to Russia and China? The West vs West war”. He expressed concern and, clearly, frustration about the radicalization and polarization of the Western public opinion which weakens liberal and capitalist societies for the benefit of countries having chosen a different political and economic path.
In his attempt to find the culprits for these negative developments, I believe that he pointed in the wrong direction. The end paragraph of his post sums up our difference in perspective:
„The battle for political temperance and balance in the Euro-Atlantic democracies seems, I was saying, lost. One extreme feeds the other. The triumph of the middle class and the West during the “golden age” of capitalism and liberal democracies in the aftermath of 1945 lay precisely in temperance, decency, tolerance, openness, avoiding extremes and ideological radicalism of any description as they are all traps which will sooner or later lead to major, bitter disillusions. All ideological experimentations and radicalization, history shows, have come to the same sticky end.”
Actually, the triumph of the middle class in the post-war decades is now a thing of the past. Statistical data clearly show an economic polarization process within Western societies which has resulted in a thinner middle class, particularly after the crisis. Temperance, decency and avoiding the extremes that the professor mentions were the very consequences of decades of prosperity that capitalism offered after the war. That also was a time when the West confronted enemies waiting for the political and economic cracks to open wide. That also was a time with extremist parties or groups funded by the Soviet Union, except that back then they lacked the popular momentum and stayed on the fringes of the society which was happy with the incumbent political elites providing the prosperity clearly superior to the communist regimes.
What has happened since? Has the West gone haywire? Have they got bored with the good life, as analysts suggest? I believe that the reason is relatively straightforward and hence more frustrating. The political and economic elites strayed from the public agenda as the need to use the thriving lives of their citizens to demonstrate the superiority of capitalism against communism was no longer there. Taking also advantage of the amazing opportunities globalization created for capital holders they started to pursue their own wealth and agenda.
Let`s be honest. Capitalism is not an end in itself. It is meant to be the most efficient conduit for societal wealth by optimum and preferably ethical allocation of resources. Ethics, however, seems to have faded along the way, mainly in the years following the crisis, when, let us remember, the people responsible for it received kingly rewards for their major blunders at the helm of major financial institutions. And people footed the bill. Is this type of capitalism wise?
Given all this we may be well advised to discriminate between capitalism after the war and after the crisis. Hopefully that would put at ease the minds of those of us who are still marked by the communist experience and see criticism of the current capitalist trends as a “neo-Marxist” approach. This is taking it too far and would absurdly place Bill Gates and the Economist, to name a few, in the neo-Marxist camp. Let`s be clear, the alternative to capitalism as it stands today is not socialism, but capitalism of a different kind which professes wealth distribution across the society on more ethical grounds by re-aligning economic and political elites` interest with the public interest. A return to the post-war virtues, if you will.
This is key since radicalization that got the professor and others so worried has not emerged out of nowhere. It is the built-up of frustration and anxiety over time which the elite, preoccupied with its own agenda or just stuck in an ivory tower, has been brushing aside over the past decade. Once the public realized that its aspirations were ignored by the mainstream parties and that the society moves against the general interest, yes public opinion did get radical. It did so in the United Kingdom, in Germany, in the United States. Should that come as a surprise? Should we be taken aback by the fact that on this ground of frustration ready to explode reasoned dialogue finds no place? That fishermen in troubled waters are ready to propose what people want to hear even ridiculous and completely counterproductive solutions?
What right do we from Romania have to proclaim political correctness and racial diversity when we do not know the first thing about having to deal with social and demographic changes that Western countries are faced with as a result of millions incoming asylum-seekers yet to be fully integrated into society and economy? Are they there as a result of the general will or public debate? No, but by the decision of political and economic elites with no serious democratic debate on the matter. Yes, it does create frustration and ultimately radicalization.
This major public concern was left almost completely out of the mainstream EU election campaigns in Western Europe to the same extent that the issue of economic polarization was non-existent. The endless speeches about deeper European integration answer concerns that simply do not exist. It is not integration that is the source of public anxiety, but their stagnant, or declining wealth. At the end of the day, whether we talk about Brexit or the rise of nationalist or extremist parties to power, the ground that feeds them are the same, only the symptoms differ. And as long as liberal elites remain short-sighted, the Western society will continue to stay polarized and weakened.
Reading that „nationalists and the protectors of national, ethnic, racial and religious identities revel in a sort of hormonal, xenophobic and aggressive neo-fascism” I rush back to the news. Are the Portuguese and Spanish people working in France and Germany being banished? Are the houses of Romanians in Spain and Italy being set on fire? Are the Turks in Germany being loaded into trucks and sent back home? Are the Chinatowns in the US and Western Europe being cleared away? What are we talking about in such harsh terms? About the aversion of a portion of the Western society against the immigrants coming from far and wide reluctant to integrate and changing the Western way of life and values? And it is deemed neo-fascist for that? The fact that Australia detains all immigrants arriving in boats on an over-populated island from where they are allowed entry only after an extremely selective process, turns it into a xenophobic country? What about Japan, with a clear anti-immigration policy, how should it be classified?
Further on I find out that „on the other hand, frenzical left winger politicians play excitedly the virtually anti-capitalist environmental card, as they more clearly define an environmental, hipster style and uncompromising neo-Marxism of absurd approaches”. I think there is a misunderstanding here. This is not about anti-capitalism. Nobody really defends North Korea as an environmentally-friendly behavior. It is rather about revisiting the economic model based on which humankind has been thriving in the last one hundred years at the expense of the environment. Maintaining it in the years to come cannot yield a radical change in our destructive ecological footprint. This is why we tend to suspect a hypocritical approach. What the leaders of the developed world have so far delivered is completely inconclusive and insufficient. Faced with forest disappearance, climate change and pollution, people have become more radical again out of frustration and outrage, and want to see a shift in the economic paradigm. Not in the political government!
And I think that this is to be welcomed and encouraged. Without strong pressure from the public opinion, political leaders will stay in their comfort zones, endorsed by economic elites. They continue to issue “indulgences” in the form of CO2 certificates to those wishing to see their sins of pollution expunged while refusing to pay the opportunity costs that other countries have to incur for keeping their tree cover intact. Indeed, capitalism itself would come with solutions, provided that the oxygen used up by polluters is treated as a commodity that deserves compensation.
„Those having thrived during the last two centuries on freedom, the Euro-Atlantic nations, have now naively turned against freedoms and towards restrictions and protection, forgetting the foundation of the success, wealth and dominance of the West”? On the contrary, professor, I believe that they would like to go back to the society that generated that wealth. Have you heard of mass rallies demanding a single party system, the dissolution of parliaments or reinstatement of Asian-style censorship? Nobody dreams of the autocratic regime standards that you are listing. The frustration and concern are first and foremost to do with economics and this is what got the snowball rolling. In the end, not the foreign powers erode the foundations of Western societies, but the short-sightedness of their mainstream elites which fail to understand or underestimate what is really going on. For the benefit of make-believe politicians.
Overestimating the power of the masses to spark spontaneous change and underplaying the responsibility and role of the elite is the pet assumption of the communist ideology. Let’s not allow the concern with the future of capitalism push us into this trap.
Have a nice weekend!
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