THE HEALTH OF NATIONS Part 6 pot

the cr is is of european const itut ional ism 213

dialect ofGerman, which would eventually come to dominate and as￾similate the Norman French ofthe latest (and last) occupying class. And

ifwe were cousins ofthose tribes who would come to identify themselves

as Germans, those tribes were cousins, or closer, ofthe tribes who would

come to identify themselves as French. And the proto-Germans would

get rid ofthe Slav tribes from what would one day become the territory

ofthe German Democratic Republic. And the proto-French would go

beyond the Somme and then beyond the Loire and frenchify the sur￾vivors ofthe Romanisation ofGaul, and so link up with the Lombards

who had moved from northern Europe to become the proto-Italians

in conjunction with the aboriginal Romanised tribes ofItaly, including

tribes in southern Italy who had been colonised by the Greeks . . . and so

on and on.

7.85 The expression multinational Europe (1100–1500) reminds us

that it took manic efforts on the part of kings and their servants, and

the spilling ofmuch blood, to make these motley tribes believe that they

were a nation, genetically and/or generically distinct from neighbour￾ing nations, to separate the royal property ofone so-called nation from

another, to combine highly effective subordinate social systems (feudal

estates, the dioceses ofbishops, city-states, free towns) into centralised

power-systems. When French kings were kings ofEngland and English

kings were also kings ofFrance, what was England, what was France?

British kings continued to bear the title ‘King ofFrance’ long after they

had ceased to control any part ofFrance. Multinational Europe also re￾minds us that it is only ideologically motivated historiography that has

monopolised the historical imagination ofthe people with its stories

ofthe antics ofkings and emperors and soldiers, whereas the central

social activity was, as it always had been, economic, that is, the transfor￾mation of labour and desire into goods and services to which different

economic agents attach differential but commensurable value. It is the

international character oftrade in the High Middle Ages, the cosmopoli￾tanism ofthe towns, and the development ofan international business

consciousness which should attract our attention and admiration, as

it should have attracted the gratitude and not merely the greed ofthe

holders ofultimate political power.

7.86 The expression social Europe (1500–1800) reminds us ofa very

striking thing, the most important pattern ofall – that, after 1453 (the

sack ofConstantinople and the end ofthe eastern (Byzantine) empire),

214 european soc iety and its law

the people ofEurope rediscovered the most important kind ofEuropean

unity, a unity ofconsciousness in the very period which is convention￾ally presented as the period during which Europe decomposed into a

modified state ofnature wherein the leading politico-military actors

were conceived as being ‘in the posture ofgladiators’ (to borrow an

expression used by Hobbes) in relation to each other.

7.87 Social Europe saw a great new flowering ofa shared European

consciousness, a consciousness which had been preserved, almost mirac￾ulously, in unbroken succession from ancient Greece and Rome. Even

in the darkest days oftribal Europe, when the lamp ofcivilised society

burned low, the light ofthe mind burned steadily in the monasteries,

those common organisations ofthe spirit, to be handed on to their intel￾lectual heirs, the universities, in the twelfth century. It was the Church

ofRome which had carried a most significant part ofthe intellectual, so￾cial and even political legacy ofthe ancient world through tribal Europe

into multinational Europe. And then, in the period ofsocial Europe,

the European spirit manifested itself luxuriantly in the fine arts, mu￾sic, literature, the law and social institutions, philosophy, humanistic

scholarship, the natural sciences, technology, agriculture. Social Europe

was a European Union ofthe Mind, a single market ofconsciousness,

with free movement ofartists and intellectuals, ofintellectual capital, of

the products ofhand and brain. Renaissance humanism, the scientific

revolution, the enlightenment ofthe eighteenth century, Romanticism,

the industrial revolution, the political revolutions after 1776 – they were

all the work ofthe wonderful unity-in-diversity ofthe European mind.

7.88 Social Europe also reminds us that, ever since the period of

tribal Europe, we Europeans have been capable oflayered loyalty – loy￾alty to family, village, guild and other social corporations, town, es￾tate, province, nation, the Pope, the Emperor – loyalty to our religion,

to Europe (in relation to non-Europe), to the City ofGod as well as

the City ofMan. Each loyalty has seemed perfectly compatible with

all the others. Some ofus, from ancient Greece onwards, have even

claimed to be cosmopolitans, members ofthe international society of

the whole human race, the society ofall societies. As Europeans acquired

an ever-increasing sense oftheir own individuality during the period

ofsocial Europe, that new personal self-awareness included an ever￾increasing awareness ofthe complex and multiple and ever-changing

social parameters ofour personal identity, the social subjectivity ofour

personal subjectivity.

the cr is is of european const itut ional ism 215

7.89 And social Europe reminds us that, even among the degenerate

controllers ofthe public realms ofthe nations, there were signs ofprac￾tical socialising. We think ofHugo de Groot (Grotius) as the prophet of

universal international law. But he, and his great Spanish predecessors,

can also be seen in their specifically European context, as voices in a

new politico-military wilderness, the voice ofold Europe recalling the

integrity ofold Europe’s values, values ofsociality and rationality, in the

face ofthe terrible challenges ofa new political world in Europe, ofa

new-old world outside Europe.

7.90 So what changed after 1800, to make inter-statal Europe, the

Europe ofthe triumphant Public Realms? What made Hegel’s essay of

1802 on the reconstituting ofGermany so prophetic? What has led so

many Europeans to believe that inter-statal Europe is Europe’s natural

and settled state? How is it that the European mind has produced the

European Union that we know, a misbegotten and anachronistic prod￾uct ofinter-statal Europe, ofone uncharacteristic phase ofEuropean

history, standing in the way ofa true European reunifying, ofanother

self-surpassing achievement of the great and ancient tradition of

Europe’s unity-in-diversity?

7.91 We can offer a rudimentary explanation of the complex his￾torical process by which such a thing came about. We can begin to find

our way into the heart ofEurope’s darkness. What we find is that the

European Union is a product ofa particular developmental process in

the most dynamic European societies, a process which enabled the state

(in its internal sense) to acquire an ideal, real and legal hegemony

over the other totalising complexes ofsociety (especially society and

nation and economy) and to acquire an external hegemony over all other

transnational phenomena (the internal state externalised to become the

state ofso-called international relations and international law).

7.92 But the social hegemony ofstatism has passed its apogee, and

all the totalising social concepts are undergoing radical reconceiving.

We will be obliged to conclude that the European Union, in its present

and potential state, is an exotic relic ofa fading social order, like the

late-medieval Church ofRome or the latter-day Holy Roman Empire.

7.93 Alexis de Tocqueville’s discussions ofthe American and French

Revolutions are among the greatest achievements ofhuman self￾contemplating. Among his many powerful and prophetic insights was

the idea that the new kind ofdemocracy had within it the seeds ofto￾talitarianism, to use a modern word which he did not use. He quotes

216 european soc iety and its law

a warning uttered by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison

in 1789: ‘The tyranny ofthe legislature is really the danger most to be

feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of

the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.’60

7.94 De Tocqueville said that, as the number ofpublic officials in￾creases, ‘they form a nation within each nation’ and that governments

would come more and more to act ‘as ifthey thought themselves respon￾sible for the actions and private condition of their subjects . . . [while]

private individuals grow more and more apt to look upon the supreme

power in the same light’.61

7.95 And so it happened: the controllers ofthe public realm came to

be a nation within each nation, a social class with its own class-interests,

and then, as they began to identify with each other transnationally, a

transnational class with its own class-interests. And the European Union

is the product oftheir ideals and their ambitions. European Union is the

partial integrating of the public realms ofEurope by the controllers of

the public realms ofEurope. (The public realm is that part ofthe total

social process ofa society which consists in the exercise ofthose social

powers which have been conferred by society to serve the public interest

ofthat society.)

Ideas and illusions

7.96 The form of the constituting of the European Union has been

determined and profoundly distorted by certain peculiar characteristics

ofthe minds ofthe controllers ofthe public realms, idea-complexes that

we may call technocratic fallacies.

60 A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (tr. H. Reeve; New York, Schocken Books; 1961), i,

p. 318. 61 Ibid., ii, pp. 323–4, 336–7. Aristotle had foreseen the tyrannical potentiality of democracy.

In what he called a monarchical democracy, the people become monarchical, one ruler

composed ofmany persons. ‘Hence such a democracy is the exact counterpart oftyranny

among monarchies; its general character is exactly the same. Both lord it over the better class

ofcitizen and the resolutions ofthe one are the directives ofthe other; the tyrant’s flatterer

is the people’s demagogue, each exercising influence in his sphere, flatterers on tyrants,

demagogues on this type ofpopular body. They are able to do this primarily because they

bring every question before the popular assembly, whose decrees can supersede the written

laws. This greatly enhances their personal power because, while the people rule over all, they

rule over the people’s opinion, since the majority follow their lead.’ Aristotle, The Politics,

iv.4 (tr. T. A. Sinclair; Harmondsworth, Penguin; 1962), p. 160.