The Left, the Nation-State, and European Citizenship

...But this is not citizenship in any recognizable sense...

...second from the fact that in order to carry these projects through, socialists have needed to invoke the idea of the nation...

...But should we be describing politics in this vein as citizen politics at all...

...Although negotiations among political elites are increasingly carried out using English as a common language (French resistance to this practice seems finally to be crumbling), if we are looking toward a form of democratic politics in which the public at large is involved in political debate, we must recognize that such debate will necessarily be carried on in the vernacular language of each community...

...Europe can choose to expand, and there may be good political arguments for bringing the states of eastern Europe into the Union, but only at the cost of a loosening of the economic bonds that have developed among the members of the existing core...

...For present purposes there is no need to be more specific than this about the goals of the left...

...To say this is, let us be clear, not to condemn her...

...If asked who they are willing to fight to defend, or who they are willing to support by paying taxes, the answer given by people in each country is their fellow nationals...

...Could we see, for instance, the development of a Europe-wide practice of democratic citizenship...

...We need to ask similar questions about social justice on a European scale...

...In what sense is the Greenpeace activist a citizen...

...If this is a correct assessment of the current situation, what are the prospects of the European Union changing in such a way that it can accommodate the ideas of democracy and social justice that I sketched earlier...

...The distinctive aims of the left must, I believe, be promoted by strengthening citizenship and fighting for social justice primarily at the national level, through movements and parties organized at that level...

...The nationalist strain derives first from the fact that all socialist projects, whether communist or social democratic, have been national projects, in the sense that they have been undertaken by parties and movements working within national borders...

...I may not approve of, or sympathize with, the personal beliefs and values of the people in the next house or the next street, but because I see them as my compatriots, I feel a sense of responsibility toward them, and also a degree of confidence that if they are now benefiting from my contribution (as a taxpayer, say) they would be prepared to return the ben48 DISSENT / Summer 1998 efit if the roles were reversed and it was I who needed income support or medical care...

...Given that most of the people to whom they want to appeal, especially most members of the working class, have fairly strong nationalist sentiments, it makes sense to use those feelings constructively in building a socialist movement—or at least not to trample upon them overtly...

...Many would argue that the nation-state, whatever virtues it might have had until recently, is rapidly becoming obsolescent...

...Should parties of the left be more enthusiastic, or less enthusiastic, than parties of the right for transnational groupings like the EU as a matter of general principle, or is it simply a matter of assessing each proposal as it comes along...

...Conversely, in multinational states, where trust exists much more within the national groups than among them, politics tends to take the form of bargaining, and each decision is regarded as a victory or a defeat for the group that one belongs to...

...To DISSENT / Summer 1998 47 the extent that the public can be weaned away from its national prejudices toward a more cosmopolitan outlook, it should be...

...If political decisions are going to be made in a genuinely democratic way—through public discussion in which all sections of society have their voice heard—one crucial requirement is a sufficient degree of trust among the debating constituency...

...It is hard to see why the relatively prosperous citizens of Britain or France would be willing to supply the means to raise Poles or Hungarians to a position of near equality in the absence of a strong sense of mutual identification...

...But its reach should not be exaggerated...

...NEXT, WHAT about social justice...

...We want to live in societies in which there is a far greater degree of popular control over policy making, in which people are not simply asked to vote for representatives every four or five years, but have more direct input into the way those societies develop...

...The European Court has been careful to construe its remit quite narrowly so as not to challenge the right of member states to pursue different policies in areas such as health, education, and industrial relations according to national traditions and preferences...

...It may supplement, but it cannot replace, the form of citizenship that has emerged in national communities whose members seek to practice justice among themselves...

...Politically speaking, people continue overwhelmingly to think and act as members of national electorates...

...But what does this mean in practice...

...This can be seen only too clearly if we consider the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, where appeals to national solidarity and pride always played a central role in socialist propaganda, but even mild social democrats such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair pepper their speeches with references to "our nation" or "this great country of ours" as a way of inducing the audience to consider some small sacrifice of personal gain for the good of the whole...

...At the same time, it is important not to present these identities as though they were God given and eternal...

...Ordinary working people must be taxed, or pay into social-insurance schemes, to provide social services and income support for the unemployed...

...Once again there appears to be a tradeoff...

...This latter right has had some significance in forcing national governments to come into line with European practice in some areas...

...The state cannot challenge international capital and currency markets head on—or at least it will pay a very heavy price if it tries to do so—but there are many areas of policy in which a strong commitment to social justice can go hand in hand with creating conditions that will attract foreign investment and help the economy to remain competitive...

...In a technical sense it could be argued that European citizens enjoy political rights in the form of rights to elect MPs to the European Parliament...

...Collaboration with likeminded movements abroad is of course fine, and so is participation in transnational and international institutions, but we should avoid the error of thinking that membership in these bodies can somehow achieve socialist or social democratic aims that fail to win democratic support at home...

...If the cause is a good one, and she pursues it in a way that respects the rights of others (nonviolently, for instance), she may act heroically and well—many of us, I am sure, will feel this about the Greenpeace campaigns on nuclear testing and whaling...

...They also have the right to challenge national legislation or policy by bringing a case before the European Court of Justice...

...All this requires confidence in, and understanding of, those one disagrees with politically...

...The changing structure of the global economy means that only larger political units have any chance of controlling market outcomes...

...To bring the economies and welfare regimes of these states up to the point where they can properly be integrated into the European economy (with free movement of labor and so forth) would require redistribution of resources on a scale well beyond that so far attempted...

...Even if Europe cannot yet provide the sense of identity that nations can, does it not at least provide a transnational form of citizenship that might be a model for other parts of the world...

...Currently in Britain, the Labour Party under Tony Blair presents itself as markedly more Euro-friendly than the defeated Conservatives, but historically the two parties have not always aligned themselves in this way...

...DAVID MILLER teaches political theory at Nuffield College, Oxford...

...There is a wealth of evidence that shows that people are more willing to make such sacrifices the more closely they feel themselves tied to the likely beneficiaries of their actions...

...But Europe does not command loyalty in the ways that nation-states do...

...It is not accidental that left causes have been advanced furthest in communities that have combined a strong sense of national solidarity with effective political institutions: the Scandinavian social democracies are the clearest example...

...Equally, when a decision has been reached, those who find themselves in a minority—we cannot expect decisions to be unanimous—must be willing to comply with the outcome, knowing that their point of view has at least been taken seriously, and that on future occasions they may find themselves on the winning side...

...This is not simply a matter of taxing or expropriating the very rich...

...However, this DISSENT / Summer 1998 49 still leaves room for considerable variation in how these rights are defined...

...Take democracy first...

...I I ET'S BEGIN with the current situation...

...The same confused picture, with parties swapping positions over time, can be found in other EU member-states...

...To say this does not mean that we should be indifferent to the fate of human beings worldwide, but it does recognize that aspirations to social justice are linked to distinct communities whose members feel a special responsibility to one another...

...None of this should be taken as a root-andbranch argument against transnational federations or other forms of transnational governance...

...Equally, pressures from big business will in due course force the Conservative Party to moderate its present Euro-skeptic stance...

...Every system of social justice requires people to limit to some degree their pursuit of private advantage through the market system...

...There are no reasons of principle to embrace the nationstate as a unit of political mobilization...

...These are of course disputed, but among them we must surely count democracy and social justice...

...Marshall's classic account of citizenship as a common status uniting civil, political, and social rights, we find that to date at least only rights of the first kind are included...

...But that is an illusion, and Tony Blair, if he did succumb to it, will soon be disabused...

...Psychological studies of justice, for instance, show that people are more likely to afford equal treatment to others with whom they share a common identity or common values...

...So these debates will remain opaque to those who speak a different language, and instead of a European public opinion, which might form the basis of a Europewide form of democracy, the best we can hope for are separate bodies of public opinion that could then be fed into elite negotiations at the European level...

...For democratic decision making to work successfully, each participating group must be willing to listen to opposing points of view and be willing to moderate its own demands in order to reach a compromise that everyone can accept...

...Only the Norwegians have remained determinedly autonomous...

...Faced with this apparent conflict between socialist internationalism and the practical significance of national loyalties, many on the left have responded by saying that the socialist invocation of nationhood is simply a matter of political realism...

...What interests me is the way in which these aims are linked to something like the nationstate in its familiar form...

...The evidence suggests that people's sense of their responsibilities does not extend to having their tax revenues used to support poorer citizens in other nation-states...

...At present some redistribution does take place between richer and poorer European states, but this is a result of regional and other policies negotiated between elites in Brussels, and most people remain unaware of the transfers unless they happen to be the direct beneficiaries...

...Many studies have shown how the national divisions that now exist were generated historically, sometimes from above by political leaders anxious to consolidate newly formed states, sometimes from below by minority ethnic groups seeking to escape from the clutches of governments controlled by the majority...

...It would be hard to claim that European social citizenship exists in any concrete sense...

...This common response seems to me badly mistaken...

...As for social citizenship, rights to health, education, social security, pensions, and so forth remain under the control of national governments, subject only to such common standards as are imposed by the European treaties and enforced by the Court of Justice...

...The left should welcome the forging of friendly bonds between erstwhile adversaries such as has occurred 50 DISSENT / Summer 1998 within the European Union, but it should not move too quickly to dismantle or marginalize the nation-state...

...This is a large issue, and all I can do is signal my agreement with those who argue that states still have more freedom in their economic and social policies than strong globalization theses would suggest...

...The internationalist strain stems philosophically from the Marxist belief (like most Marxist beliefs not held in its crude form by Marx himself) that national divisions are created artificially by the capitalist class to divide the proletariat, and politically from the belief that socialism in one country could never be a feasible possibility...

...However, knowledge of and interest in the doings of this parliament remain minimal among ordinary voters, and European elections are fought very largely by national parties on national issues...

...But is it a realistic hope, and should the left be supporting moves in this direction...

...DISSENT / Summer 1998 51...

...It has often been pointed out that the economic costs to the former West Germany of German reunification were only tolerable because of the powerful feelings of pan-German national identity that came to the fore in those dramatic moments when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down...

...There seems to be a simple trade-off here: the wider the scope of citizenship is drawn, and the more publics it therefore has to embrace, the weaker its democratic credentials become...

...To see why, we need to think about the values underlying the political projects of the left...

...This certainly is the hope of some European leaders today...

...Both parties have been divided between pro- and anti-Europeans, but until the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, enthusiasm for the European project ran higher among the Conservatives...

...Everyone must comply with fair, nondiscriminatory rules for job appointments and promotions...

...The fact that groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have been able to unite activists across borders has led some commentators to argue that we are witnessing the emergence of new forms of citizenship that are not tied to any geographical location, not even such a broad location as Europe...

...George Bernard Shaw once said that if you wanted to rebel against high-heeled shoes, you should take care to do it in a very smart hat...

...As Michael Lind has argued ("In Defense of Liberal Nationalism," Foreign Affairs, May-June 1994), prospects for democracy of any kind are fragile in these circumstances, and the more radical form of democracy is clearly a non-starter...

...AS THE European Union (EU) moves steadily toward fuller political integration in the form of the single European currency, attitudes on the left toward projects of supranational governance remain ambivalent...

...So there is a gap between citizens' sense of social justice and what is actually happening on the ground, a gap that, if my earlier argument is correct, will not be bridged unless a common sense of European identity emerges that transcends national borders...

...On the Labour left, membership in the European Economic Community (as it was called then) was seen as imposing a straitjacket of economic orthodoxy on the policies of national governments, and although this point of view has become heretical under New Labour, we can expect to see it expressed more often as the debate about whether to join the single currency heats up...

...THIS PROBLEM is likely to get far worse if and when the European Union is enlarged to include those central and east European states that are currently in the process of applying for membership...

...From this point of view, nationhood is a very important source of common identity, particularly in societies that are sharply divided along lines of race, ethnicity, religion, or lifestyle...

...One serious obstacle to this, as Tony Judt has emphasized in his book A Grand Illusion, is the continuing existence of language divisions among the peoples of Europe...

...And we also want to live in societies in which the huge resource inequalities generated by capitalist markets are combated by public action, whether this takes the form of redistribution through social security and the welfare state or more radically through new forms of economic organization (employeeownership schemes, for instance) that alter the primary distribution of income in the direction of greater equality...

...But our question is whether the distinctive values of the left are promoted when political decisions are removed from the competence of existing nation-states and transferred to larger units, and my argument has been that the causes of democracy and social justice are unlikely to be advanced...

...Europe has sometimes looked like that to Labour supporters in Britain, particularly during the Thatcher years: if only we were fully paid-up members of the European club, somehow that would safeguard cherished social democratic programs against the ravages of domestic politics...

...Can we say any more here...

...He is the author of On Nationality and is working on a new book on social justice...

...So there is no group of fellow citizens with whom she is committed to seeking grounds of agreement...

...As Richard Rorty has argued, programs to help disadvantaged minorities in the inner cities sound much more persuasive when presented as programs to help "our fellow Americans" rather than simply "our fellow human beings...

...If we look to the socialist tradition for inspiration, we find that it contains strong currents both of nationalism and internationalism...

...It does not involve democratic debate with others with different interests and views...

...If we look at European citizenship in the light of T.H...

...Attitudes to the general idea of European unity are broadly positive— though views about the European Union as an institution are more divided, with majorities in some countries saying that on balance they would be better out than in...

...There is no determinate community with which she identifies politically, and no one, except perhaps other members of her group, with whom she stands in relations of reciprocity...

...Certainly European citizenship exists in a legal sense...

...Linking states together by such institutions serves important values, most obviously the peaceful resolution of international conflicts...

...Trust of this kind is much more likely to exist among people who share a common national identity, speak a common language, and have overlapping cultural values...

...So if the left continues to value democracy and social justice, as it surely must, it must also acknowledge that the pursuit of these goals presupposes national communities in which mutual trust stems from a shared identity...

...The Scandinavian example cuts both ways: with some reluctance, both Denmark and Sweden felt impelled to join the European Community, despite its defects in terms of inequality and high levels of unemployment, feeling that their economies were too exposed to the forces of international trade and investment if they stayed outside...

...What can motivate people to make the sacrifices that social justice requires, whether this takes the form of supporting parties that promise redistribution, or simply behaving in a fair way in their everyday lives...

...UNQUESTIONABLY there are some problems —global environmental problems, for instance—that cannot be solved by nation-states acting independently of one another...

...Providing, at public expense, the education and training needed to create a skilled and flexible workforce is one obvious example...

...But that is the beginning and the end of the matter...

...We cannot expect the ordinary citizens of Italy, Denmark, or Greece to conduct their political discussions using English, or any other second language for that matter...

...A united Europe is seen as a useful arrangement that provides benefits like freer travel and greater access to jobs and markets, but it does not generate a sense of emotional identification...

...It's fairly clear that for people across Europe the nation remains their primary focus of political identity and allegiance...

...European citizens enjoy some rights that are not available to outsiders, for example, the rights to travel freely across borders within Europe, and to work and study in other European countries...

...If confronted by individuals who do not share her commitment to the cause, she must either convert them or oppose them by whatever means she has at her disposal...

...So this raises the possibility that nations in their present form might be superseded by larger units—in the European context, the possibility that Europe itself might come to serve as a source of identity and citizenship that overrides existing national allegiances...

...How should we think about this question...