Читать книгу Why Europe Should Become a Republic! - Ulrike Guérot - Страница 9

‘The Utopians are particularly fond of mental pleasures,

which they consider to be of the highest importance,

and which they associate with virtuous behaviour

and a clear conscience ...

Of course, they believe in enjoying food, drink, and so forth;

but purely in the interests of health, for they don't regard such

things as very pleasant in themselves —

only as ways of resisting the onset of disease.

A sensible person, they say, prefers staying healthy to taking

medicine, and would rather feel well and cheerful

than have people comforting him.’

Thomas More, Utopia

‘No idea is a good one

which does not seem wholly illusory at the outset.’

Albert Einstein

‘Only if that which is can be changed

is that which is not everything’

Theodor W. Adorno

500 years ago, Thomas More published his description of Utopia, the story of a fictional island where peace and social justice prevail. Utopia became a symbol and embodiment of an imaginary social order, and the impulse behind numerous social innovations and the desire to create together a better future. Europe today needs that kind of utopia, because the EU is broken. Europe, however, remains an unfinished task. Within this dialectic lies the opportunity for a different Europe. Whatever happens on the continent of Europe over the next few years, we can neither leave this continent nor cordon it off, and nor do we want to. Exits, walls and borders are not the answer. What is happening before our eyes is the dissolution of the Europe of the founding fathers: the end of ‘the united states of Europe’ based on the concept of the nation state. So we have to come up with a new concept for Europe – and one that delivers a European lifestyle as close as possible (in a kind of ‘post-modern remake’) to that described in the quotation from Thomas More above. We need a shiny new social utopia.¹ And perhaps in today’s Europe we have the wealth and the means necessary, which weren’t available in the past. What is needed is a fundamental re-thinking of Europe on the basis of the so-called MAYA principle used by futurologists: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable!

So let’s imagine we were able to run a coarse comb over the continent of Europe. The national borders would simply catch in the teeth of the comb; those thick, annoying strands would be pulled away. The citizens of the European regions and cities would create a brand new Europe: decentralised, regional, post-national, parliamentary, democratic, sustainable and socially just. A political and institutional system that would enable just the kind of society Thomas More once dreamed of – a society in which modern forms of mental pleasure, virtuous behaviour and health were regarded as central shared aims. The post-national European democracy outlined here would be a network of European regions and cities under the protective roof of a European Republic in which all European citizens would be politically equal. This utopia describes a Copernican Revolution in Europe,² in which the United States of Europe becomes the European Republic.

This utopia also includes some reflections on what a political community on the continent of Europe might look like. It goes without saying that these reflections remain at the level of abstract sketches. My purpose is to develop a conceptual framework for a coherent project of European integration beyond the nation state and in line with Europe’s shared intellectual and cultural heritage. Our task is to revitalise this common heritage and to bring it forward into the post-modern era.

I choose the term ‘republic’ advisedly. It is the oldest term in the history of political thought for the foundation of a political community. The republic is the quintessence of our common European intellectual heritage. It is from this term that I derive the concept of a democratic Europe which is based on two principles: the political equality of its citizens and the networked, transnational, European character of its governance. The utopia of a European Republic entails the institutional, territorial and economic re-ordering of Europe in the interests of the common good – that is, the res publica.

The utopia described here is not a rigid construct. It is understood as something relational, something in process, and something transitive; that is, as an ongoing form of interdependent, networked, developmental thinking. We have no need for yet another story of European federalisation or centralisation; rather, the aim of this book is to capture here, in its diverse wholeness, the idea that the essence of Europe is without borders. The aim is a granular and collaborative model of Europe accessible for the Many – not a grand historical or institutional project for the few; the topology of a holistic European entity, which remains to be created in all its details, contingencies and modalities by the Many themselves. This approach is in accordance with the many theories of ‘co-leadership’, ‘co-creation’, ‘creative innovation’ and ‘cognitive networks’, with ‘swarm intelligence’ and with ‘central place theory’, all of which express the idea of connectivity and proceed from the assumption that innovation can only arise out of the connectedness and collaboration of many individuals.³

I divide the ‘Many’ into five social groups and tendencies, and I hope that my utopia will be especially relevant to these five. The number five is special in many respects. Depending on how they are classified, Europe is one of five continents. Plato’s geometry identifies five shapes or ‘solids’. Aristotle distinguishes five senses; in Christian tradition, Jesus suffered five wounds during the Crucifixion; Islam is based on five pillars. There are five elements in the Tao tradition. The first five books of the Hebrew Bible are known as the Pentateuch, and the fifth, Deuteronomy, is sometimes known as the Book of Love; and five is held to be the number of the Goddess of Love, Venus. The number five seems to encompass and unify all the elements, including Love. And that is what we need for Europe today!

But who are the ‘Many’, the five social groups and tendencies who make up my – illustrative, and by no means exclusive – target audience, with whom I hope the utopia of a European Republic will resonate, and who then might possibly help to bring it about? They are, first and foremost, the European citizens of today’s European regions and cities – whether settled, nomadic or hypermobile – who constitute the social basis for the European Republic. They represent European civic and civil society and the principle of decentralisation, and thus all the new and modern concepts of sustainability, electromobility, distributed generation, new spatial planning, sustainable agriculture, Slow Food, and so on. Chapters 7 and 8, on the new political and territorial order for Europe, are for them. Secondly, all those who are involved in thinking about the new economy, about cooperatives, the post-growth society, basic income or new forms of the commons. Chapter 9, about a new economic order for Europe – something that is necessarily implied by the reference to the common good inherent in the concept of a republic – is for them. Third, the young people of Europe, for whom we need to create plenty of new space in Europe (Chapter 11). Fourth, with a conspiratorial wink: women. Because the Europe of tomorrow will also, and above all, be a girl thing – won’t it? (Chapter 10) Fifth, finally, the experts and professors in constitutional law, because in Chapter 6 I try to examine the concept of the republic and to set it apart from the neoliberalism which prevails today, an attempt which should be of interest to specialists in the history of European constitutional law. My use of the term ‘we’ throughout is intended inclusively, to represent the Many who I hope will enjoy this book.

These five, therefore – the regions and their people, the post-growthists, the young people of Europe, the women and the constitutionalists – represent all those who could now set to work and create the European Republic as a historical subject. For this utopia – as I have said already – is not something already finished, but only an idea. The ‘Many’ have to join in and work on it. The ‘Many’ are all of us. Because as sovereign citizens – if we ever actually become truly sovereign – at any given moment we hold the future of the continent of Europe, and of its role in the world, in our own hands.