Fifteen Eighty Four

We live in the times of profound pessimism about the future. Where have the hope and optimism go? And how is Europe, and its political leaders, trying to create new grounds for optimism? In Europe, the earlier receipt for some time was the European Green Deal. Today, it has been replaced by a “Draghi Deal”, which nudges Europe to mimic the US model of development. But are any of those doing the work? Are they getting people behind the project of building a better future — instead of pushing them to see the phantasy of the glorious past as the only option on the table?

The Turning Point

The turning point on the (mostly) ‘good vibes’ of my youth in the 90s and 2000s was the 2008 great financial crisis. While the crisis exposed the limits of the until-then largely accepted neoliberal receipt of prosperity that aimed to ‘lift all boats’ via deregulation, privatisation, liberalisation and globalization, the governing institutions didn’t seem intent on acting on that. Instead, they doubled down on privatisation of power and resources, bailing out banks and financial institutions, while making those who have profited the least from the financial bonanza of the previous years pay for it, via austerity. This course of action has had many consequences. But perhaps the most dangerous one is that it gradually eroded the trust in the institutions of liberal democracy themselves, as those have manifestly failed to fulfill an important task: to transcend neoliberalism and articulate and gradually institute a new path to prosperity that could chart a good future, while providing credible responses to various crises that Europe faces.

Prosperity as a Social Glue in Democratic Societies

As I argue in my recent book Reimagining Prosperity: Toward a New Imaginary of Law and Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, open access), such broadly shared vision of prosperity is fundamental in any democratic society. It generates trust that “we” collectively (individuals, institutions, society) know how to get into a better future, and most people also can see themselves participating in the making of that future. Imaginaries of prosperity are the anchor of social belonging in pluralist democratic societies, uniting people of various worldviews, identities and proveniences around a project of a building better future.

Integration via Identity: An Alternative?

The failure to articulate a new, more credible vision of prosperity post 2008 can be attributed to a combination of vested interests and complacent political and technocratic institutions. But this failure threatens to shatter western democracies because it has created an ideological vacuum that is currently being filled by political forces that place identity, usually along ethno-nationalist or religious fundamentalist lines, in the centre of social belonging and politics.

Societies constituted around such shared identity (whether they self-identify as illiberal democracies, theocracies, or similar), however, do not cherish pluralism, contestation, criticism or the rule of law that are held dear in democratic societies. Namely, these constitutional values create an uncontrolled source of resistance to anyone in power: a challenge that theocracies, autocratic regimes and self-proclaimed ‘illiberal democracies’ try to undermine and eventually eliminate.

The EU’s Special Relation to Prosperity

The ongoing displacement of prosperity as a main anchor of societal integration and democratic politics is the existential threat also for the EU. EU politics cannot become identitarian in the same way as Dutch, Italian or Croatian politics could. The EU is too diverse to develop its own ethnonationalist identity, especially in competition with 27 other ethnonationalist stories that have a far longer history and stickiness. At the same time, in contrast with what some may think, the EU also can be ‘used’ by the coalition of identitarian political projects for their own political purposes only in a rather limited way, because EU action requires Europeanising power and outlook – a nonstarter for the far and extreme right actors. At most, such political forces can unite to prevent the EU action, rendering it obsolete over time.

For the EU itself, if it is to live up to its historic task to preserve peace and prosperity in Europe, the only path forward is to move beyond neoliberal vision of prosperity. To do so, its political leaders have to be able to tune in and articulate a credible and prosperous future, in which most people can see themselves meaningfully and actively participating. That is also where the optimism will come from: people understanding how to participate in the making of the future.

Prosperity, not “Competitivness”!

Over the past couple of years, the EU has hesitantly realised a need to shift its route of prosperity. The main outcome was the European Green Deal, which proclaims the need to change the ways in which we ‘produce and consume’. In the field of consumption, ecodesign, industrial policy and corporate governance, which I study in the book, the EU has increasingly accepted that it needs to shape markets and steer innovation, while taking some more responsibility for the distributive outcomes.

These steps are hardly sufficient, however, to create a broadly shared vision of prosperity. The programme has centered on the environmental aspects over social ones, making distributive choices that weighted more on people than the capital. But even more importantly, the programme has articulated a very narrow and largely technocratic vision of the technologies of the future. Today’s revival of neoliberal prosperity in Draghi’s report, which advocates de-regulating the tech sector and pumping public funds into private enterprise without conditionalities, in the name of a discredited understanding of ‘competitiveness’, are bound to only repeat the mistakes of the post-2008 period. The suggestion that Europe ought to mimic USA’s growth model, which reserves productivity gains to the hand of the few and produces 19^th century levels of inequality and the worst social outcomes in the developed world, will grow extremism far quicker than productivity.

What Could a Prosperous Europe Look Like?

Today, one may be quick to associate prosperity with consumption: bigger cars, more clothes, newfangled gadgets, fancier holidays. But if one asks the people, it becomes clear that the grounds of the dissatisfaction at present is hardly the lack of access to luxury goods, but instead the lack of access to basic material, social and institutional goods. People want housing, good care, the conditions to start a family and engage in meaningful social relations, well-functioning, responsive and non-corrupt institutions, less cutthroat economic competition, more agency in and over their lives and, finally, a livable planet. These are goods that neoliberal prosperity has made increasingly unavailable, or available only to those with large resources. The new imaginary of prosperity will have to chart how people can access basic goods today and in future, while also making clear how people can participate in the making of that prosperous future.

Looking at the work done at the EU, the member states as well as the demands of social and political actors, this is a sketch of what prosperous Europe looks like. People have broad access to good public transport networks, digital infrastructures, excellent education and high quality healthcare. Companies share more of value generated with their workers, be it due to strong labour rights, good minimum wage and empowered trade unions, while reserving more of their profits for innovation and transition. Housing is accessible and affordable, through a strongly regulated rental market, broader set of tenures, and enabling cooperative housing initiatives. Consumers can buy long lasting, durable goods that can be easily repaired. The generational industrial transition that Europe is facing today is met with transition to more diverse ownership forms such as employee or steward ownership, in order to preserve local jobs, capacity for innovation and regional development. More generally, there is a broader diversity in the ownership of the economy that fosters resilience and shared prosperity. Europe’s energy system is based on decentralized ownership, broad participation and long-term resilience. And people have more time to enjoy their family, friends, communities and leisure, not having to compensate for failing social relations by mindless consumption or digital addictions.

How to Get People Behind? On the Missing Link between Prosperity and Innovation

Perhaps the most underappreciated element the current EU vision of prosperity is that it does not show how people can participate in the making of the prosperous future. The imaginary of prosperity cannot reserve interesting lives only to oligarchs, scientists or programmers, mimicking the US model of development as Draghi suggests. Instead, Europe has to expand what it understands socio-technological futures to be, and chart how a broad range of people can participate in the making of that future.

There is no lack of what the world needs, beyond virtual phantasies. We need a broad range of better, greener, circular products, goods, services, social innovations, infrastructures, processes and know-how — all of which can be developed by a broad range of people working with their hands and their heads. To unlock this creative potential, it will take a different approach to industrial policy: focusing on relative security of existence on the one hand and fostering less hierarchical organisational cultures on the other. We should start by ensuring good labour and living conditions; fostering less hierarchical and more ‘start-up’ like organisational cultures; providing a diversity of company forms that enable better distribution of value and agency; enabling collective agency in relation to energy and housing provision, and so forth. Such an organisation of economy is also likely to become more dynamic despite demographic challenges, since it taps into the creative energies of a far broader range of people.

This is also, in contradiction to Draghi’s Deal, an actual path to long-term competitiveness. If European competitors focus mainly on one sector, the information and communication sector, Europe should adopt a double strategy of providing save European digital infrastructures (cloud services, social media networks etc.) to support the innovation in a range of goods, services, infrastructures and know-how that that can sustain prosperous lives and prosperous economies. That is also where our competitive advantage should be. And such a more inclusive vision of prosperity will also inspire a broader range of people to want to meaningfully contribute, through interesting work, to the building of a better future, rather than getting lost in the phantasies of the better past.