Euro Paradise Lost - Road to the Middle Class

IN THE WAKE of the French “Non!” and Dutch “Nee!” to the EU constitution, every scribbler is beside himself. It’s the end of the European project, the end of the Euro, and the end of the “social model.” It’s the end of Europe itself!

It is certainly the end of something. Let us call it the End of the Garden of Social Eden.

It all started a century or more ago when the members of the European educated elite took a look at the emerging global economy, and they were shocked. Everywhere they looked they saw chaos, overcrowding, greed, and want. Something had to be done, wrote Britain’s Fabians. Instead of the wasteful competition of the global capitalist economy, we needed rational planning, worked out by “rational factual socialist argument.” Or failing that, offered the Germans, French, and Russians, who lacked the refinements of Anglo-Saxon self-government, Revolution! Everyone agreed we needed to empower disinterested experts to run the world.

To save the world the educated class would need political power—not for the sake of power, you understand, for these were disinterested experts—but for the altruistic purpose of ending the scandal of want in the midst of wealth. The new class would provide education, social insurance, and pensions out of the ill-gotten wealth of capitalist exploiters. They would protect the people from the law of the economic jungle.

Now, a century later, the Europeans are awash in expert-led social benefits and the French are voting down the EU constitution because they are afraid—of globalization! They suspect that their educated elite is about to toss them into the jungle of capitalisme sauvage and terminate the comforts of the European “social model.” What went wrong?

Who would know better than the postmodernists? It is all about power, they tell us. The “narrative” of every governing class is all about justifying its power. Deconstruct the “narrative” of the educated class of its disinterested altruism, of the social model, of helping people, or of rational factual socialist argument and what you will have left is power.

Let us try another narrative.

And Satan took the educated class up unto an exceeding high mountain and showed it all the nations of the earth in an instant. “You could be reformers,” he said, “better than all the crude businessmen and crooked politicians of the world. You could clean up this mess. You could do good.”

It was the temptation of the educated class.

The educated class came down from the mountain, and the first thing it saw was the working class, then just getting the vote. “Tell you what, lads,” said the educated class confidentially over beer and sandwiches, “if you vote for us we could give you better wages, shorter hours, better working conditions, pensions, health care, and free education for your children—and no globalization. Just sign here.”

It was a tempting offer, although not quite what the working class had in mind. They already had their own labor unions to protect against exploiting employers, and they were really proud of the friendly societies and fraternal organizations in which, without the assistance of experts, they had built a social safety net with benefits that ranged from life insurance to sick pay and pre-paid health plans. They were already literate and sent their children to school, even most of the poor. But hey, who could argue with free?

But there was a catch. There always is. The working class would not get to run the bright new institutions built for their benefit. Better let me drive, said the educated class, elbowing the workers out of the way.

Now, finally, the grandchildren of the old European working class have tired of the experts: the bossiness, the patronizing, the corruption and self-dealing that is epitomized by the unelected, unresponsive, unaccountable European Union and its centralizing bureaucracies.

But the Europeans have only themselves to blame. The sturdy working class of a thousand leftist hagiographies could have refused the offer of tax-paid help and kindly educated experts. They could have said, no thanks, we’ll keep our friendly societies and our labor unions, thank you very much, and we’ll run them ourselves without government money and without meddling middle-class activists. But they didn’t.

Pretty soon the Europeans are going to be pitched out of the social model’s Garden of Eden into the cold cruel world after all, forced to compete head-to-head with billions of energetic Eastern Europeans, South Asians, and Chinese. But cheer up Euro-Adam-and-Eve:

Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

How satisfying can life be in the permanent adolescence of Euro-Eden? Get out and live a little!

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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