On the realignment of Western values
Writing for Project Syndicate in an article titled The West Is Not Dying, but It Is Working on It, Yanis Varoufakis provides a commentary on the West’s hypocritical treatment of its own vaunted values.
Western power is as strong as ever. What has changed is that the combination of socialism for financiers, collapsing prospects for the bottom 50%, and the surrender of our minds to Big Tech has given rise to overweening Western elites with little use for the last century’s value system.
The gist of Yanis’ position is that the power elite benefited from the liberalism of the previous century. They saw it as the means to the end of perpetuating Western hegemony. As the times are changing, so is this unscrupulous establishment adapting to a new order in which those very values are no longer considered expedient, let alone sacrosanct. The narrative is plausible, especially once we account for the obvious imperialistic initiatives of Western powers over the previous decades as well as the ones currently unfolding on the ever-shifting battlefronts. Still, I think Yanis follows a line of reasoning that undermines his own vision for a better world.
If all the values that find currency in any given social order are but the polite facade of a potentially brutal regime, then must we not also question the leftist worldview Yanis represents? Why would those precepts be any different? Could we not formulate the same narrative of ruling elites pulling the strings about, say, Russian imperialism and how it transmogrified from Tsarism, to Sovietism, to Putinism? Where is this pristine leftist milieu where all people believe exactly in what they preach and do not deviate from it one iota? There is no such place and no such agents of action, because we are always dealing with human beings who labour under imperfect circumstances. Sometimes we fight for our principles, while at others we circumvent them due to how inconvenient they are under the prevailing conditions. This does not mean that nobody believes in anything but their parochial agenda, but only that the institution of any one set of laudable goals as the basis of our politics remains a work-in-progress.
We know from history that societies go through ups and downs. A golden age leaves a dark age in its wake, only for something new to rise again. It keeps happening and will continue to happen for as long as imperfect humans make their own rules. This does not prevent us from trying to work with what we have and to pursue loftier goals.
Being Greek, Yanis is familiar with the age-old adage of our people ουδέν κακόν αμιγές καλού (“no bad not intermixed with good”), which loosely translates as “there is no pure evil in the world, as anything bad is mixed together with some good”. The inverse is true as well. This is what politics is. In our times, there are those among us who are genuine democrats and others who only care about setting up their own dominion, as well as many other persuasions. What we experience as quotidian political affairs is the process of reconciling such competing tendencies within the heteroclite whole that is modern society. Instead of an elite pulling the strings, we have multiple actors operating at different levels with whatever is available at their disposal.
The inchoate point in the article of Yanis is that the West thinks as a singular entity. We know this cannot be the case by a mere cursory view of the main ideas that dominate public discourse. In any given issue, there are multiple perspectives. On the demographic front, our societies are increasingly ethnically and racially diverse. Only a few years ago Americans were upbeat about the totemic issues of LGBT rights and Black Lives Matter, among others. This time around there is a completely different focus. Is it because the underlying issues are resolved one way or another? Or maybe they remain unresolved and there is still much more to witness on these and other fronts? Put differently, we cannot assume that Trumpism is the new normal for the rest of time or that the recrudescent far-right extremism is inexorable.
Let us turn our attention to the European Union, the supranational polity encompassing Yanis and myself. It is in many ways a clumsy attempt at Europe-wide federalism, riddled with inefficient policy-making and supported by incomplete legal-institutional arrangements. Furthermore, it is a project that hardcodes neoliberalism in key areas of economic governance. Still, the EU represents something valuable, as enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union:
The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.
This is the principle: the set of beliefs we aspire towards. Does this mean that everybody in the EU is a bona fide tolerant progressive? Of course not! Does it also suggest that there are no imperialistic powers in our midst? We know they exist and are as influential as ever. Yet, the issue is not whether we can establish a blissful angelic world. Let angels deal with that project. The human reality shall remain messy. As such, the pragmatic consideration is whether we already have something which, on the balance, is worth fighting for. It is not pure and it cannot be pure according to the wisdom of the aforementioned Greek adage. What we have in Europe must give us hope. It serves as a guide for action; for the possibility of enacting thoroughgoing reform along the lines it foreshadows.
Consider the popular pro-EU protests in our neighbourhood. Some of those involved may be foreign agents bent on controlling the situation. Though we cannot dismiss every person as a mere pawn in a contest of competing imperialisms. There are many who genuinely believe that the European Union represents something more benign that its alternatives, all things considered. Should we not acknowledge this possibility, we will fail to chart a course of programmatic action. Instead, we will resort to an admittedly clever albeit self-defeating nihilism where, basically, everything remotely idealistic is but the pretext for a rising authoritarianism.
I do not share the outlook of Yanis Varoufakis because, at heart, I remain optimistic about our collective prospects. Though my optimism is of the pragmatic sort, as encapsulated in the saying of my ancestors. We will continue to suffer and to fail miserably when all we expect is purity of outcome. Learn to appreciate what you have and ready yourself to work for its betterment.