An old German philosopher and the impotence of Europe
The most influential thinker on the Continent is Jürgen Habermas. Indeed, he might be called the Brussels philosopherlaureate. It is said he is the favourite guru of both Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Schröder. His advocacy of an EU constitution, and his peculiar way of arguing, are perhaps responsible for the prolixity, obscurities and confusion of that disastrous document. He has written many books, some of great length and, having found them impenetrable, I took the opportunity earlier this summer of sampling the man himself when he gave a lecture at London University. Could Habermas the speaker produce the illumination which as a writer he so signally fails to create?
Alas, no. I am reminded of the foolish judge who, after F.E. Smith had opened his case in a lengthy speech, remarked, ‘I have read your case, Mr Smith, and am no wiser now than I was when I started.’ ‘Possibly not, My Lord, but far better informed.’ In this case the old pedant conveyed neither light nor information. His subject was ‘Religion in the Public Sphere’. After one hour of verbal gobbledygook, I emerged, near-spinning, and asked my companions, ‘What did he say?’ ‘No idea.’ I half grasped a few fragments, i.e., that there is no difference morally between American evangelicals and Muslim suicide bombers, and that people who believe in God are outside the realm of civilised discourse. Indeed, I think he said that such discourse was in practice confined to himself and those who agreed with him. But I could not be sure of anything, since he mumbled and gobbled his words. True, he was lecturing in English, not his mother tongue. But he had a written text. Unfortunately, he often lowered his voice to a whisper, or turned away from the mike, or interjected lengthy observations in an undertone.
The great theme of this savant’s life is the need to communicate (see his magnum opus, The Theory of Communicative Action, two volumes, translated 1984–85 and published by the Beacon Press, Boston, Mass). That being so, you might think he would make some tiny attempt to learn how to give a lecture. As it is, he is even worse than Sartre in his old age. Of course, Habermas is old too, though actually he is a year younger than I am, being born in 1929. I would be happy to give him an elementary lesson on the art of public speaking. But, needless to say, he is unaware of how bad a speaker he is, by English standards. If there was one thing his talk conveyed, it was an attitude of overwhelming arrogance.
Habermas believes that the capitalist system is oppressive, and that politics must be used to mitigate this oppression and bring everyone into the ‘civilised discourse’ that produces benevolent political solutions to the capitalist problem. How anyone who takes this line can allow himself to be identified with the Brussels system, which is incorrigibly elitist and based upon the principle of excluding the vast majority from decisionmaking, or even voicing an opinion, is a mystery. But it is clear from Habermas’s writing that he does not understand capitalism or how the market system works. Nor is this surprising, since he does not seem to have read any economist since Marx, and as Marx completely misunderstood the capitalist system, even in the comparatively primitive form which existed in his day, it is not surprising that a philosopher whose grasp of economics is mainly derived from Marx talks nonsense about the market, or ‘late capitalism’ as Habermas habitually calls it.
‘Ideas have consequences,’ as Mill remarked, and bad ideas have calamitous consequences. Russia, a country rich in the earth’s goods, whose growth-rate in the years 1900 to 1914 was the highest in the world, sought to apply Marx’s economic ideas over 75 years, at a human cost of more than 20 million murdered souls, and ended up miserable, poor and chaotic. That should cause no surprise whatsoever. Nor should we be surprised that the EU inner core, where ideas similar to those expounded by Habermas and his friends have prevailed for the last quarter-century, now has chronic low growth, high unemployment, low investment, poor or stagnant productivity and all-pervasive human discontent.
In terms of communicating with people and involving them in decision-making, the market is far more efficient than politics, certainly as understood outside the Anglosphere. The truth is almost precisely the opposite to that darkly and dodderingly expounded by old Habermas. This point is powerfully argued by Michael Wohlgemuth, ‘The Communicative Character of Capitalistic Competition: A Hayekian Response to the Habermasian Challenge’, in the current issue of the Independent Review (anyone unfamiliar with this excellent publication can obtain it from 100 Swan Way, Oakland, California 94621–1428; tel: 001 510 632 1366, fax 001 510 568 6040). It is indeed a vital principle of the market that it is essentially a system for conveying up-to-date and accurate information about supplies and prices everywhere in the world, whereas governments, the apex of the political system, are notoriously secretive and mendacious. It is worth remembering, too, that whereas we vote in a political system only every few years, we vote in a market system, with our purses, every day of our lives.
The Habermas theme of communication, bogus as it is, has been taken up in a pretentious manner by the French and German governments in their opposition to President Bush’s policy in Iraq. The argument of Chirac and Schröder is that it is better to talk, argue and negotiate with tyrants like Saddam and Muslim terrorists than to invade their countries and impose our values. By choosing war, Bush placed himself outside the realm of ‘civilised discourse’, to use the Habermasian formula.
There is a good, ironic joke here. Between the mid-17th and mid-19th centuries, first the French, then the German, government caused more wars, invaded more sovereign countries and occupied and oppressed more territories and peoples than any other two countries in the entire history of humanity. Only now, in their geriatric impotence, when they no longer possess the resources and will to practise aggression, have they developed a passion for negotiation. They are like a couple of reformed alcoholics self-righteously lecturing the rest of us on the virtues of total abstinence. Old Habermas makes a suitably comic bearleader in this parade of pious humbug.
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