Constructing Social Europe

Europe fell first to Planning by Plutocrats then to her knees

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/reviews/constructing-social-europe/

Constructing is reviewed in this link. I wish to say that I am not a hammer but since I am after Gabriel Marcel reading Ellul and just finished reading Illusions of Freedom, a book which examines the opinions and ideas of two t-Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk living in the United States, and Jacques Ellul, a French Protestant. Contemporaries, they never met or corresponded with each other, but their critique of the influence that technology was beginning to have on the human condition is strikingly similar. Both Merton and Ellul drew upon the ideas of others in formulating their worldview, to include Karl Barth, Søren Kierkegaard, Aldous Huxley, and Karl Marx.

Jeffrey Shaw examines the influence that these other philosophers had on Merton and Ellul as they formulated their own ideas on technology's impact on freedom. Tracing the similarities, and in some cases the differences, between their critiques of technology and the idea that progress is always to be seen as something inherently good, one finds that they bring a unique perspective to the debate and offer readers an alternative avenue for reflecting on the meaning of technology and its impact on our lives in the twenty-first century.

The curious and interesting deeply sympathetic reading both Ellul and Merton had for Marx is not really well explored and ought to be. For I do not think it is Karl Marx economic philosopher who is read at all by many but Karl Marx the Evangelical Rabbi who preaches workers redeemed from things to men by the Gospel of Labor. Ellul naturally saw in Marxism the same Technique governing the West. Merton more optimistic had a hope but later in life he too (during the Vietnam War) leaned closer to Ellul of how Technique triumphs.

In the review above a fact jumps out which I wish to call attention to-Sicco Mansholt, who served as President of the European Commission in 1972–73, while openly advocating for a break from capitalism. A member of the Dutch Labour Party and the long-serving first European Commissioner for Agriculture—he played a major role in creating the Common Agricultural Policy—Mansholt was increasingly influenced by more radical left ideas from 1968. He was fond of quoting Herbert Marcuse, and argued that there needed to be a “second Marx” and “new,” “modern socialism” that did not restrict itself to correcting capitalism. Mansholt was also influenced by warnings of the Club of Rome about the devastating potential consequences of continued economic growth, and argued for what we might today call a form of degrowth. He called for coordinated action to manage resource scarcity, challenge the power of multinationals, and tackle environmental pollution; a transition away from economic policy based around growing gross national product in rich countries; and redistribution of resources in favor of the global South. He saw a strengthening of the European Community’s competences as playing a central role in this process, even suggesting the need for EC-level “nationalizations.” 

The most common policy proposals generally did not go as far as this, although they became more concrete and ambitious as the 1970s progressed. They included the coordination and planning of macroeconomic policy and public investment on an EC level, “upward harmonization” of social and labor standards, the expansion of EC-level funds, EC-level workplace protections, and representation in company boards, greater participation of social partners in EC decision-making, collective bargaining at an EC level, common environmental regulations, EC-wide reductions in working time, EC-wide interventions to control prices, a common EC energy policy, new controls over capital flows, and control over and worker participation in multinational companies. The development of this policy agenda took place in conjunction with efforts to improve the organizational cooperation and policy coordination of left parties and unions on an EC level. 

In a context of Cold War détente and criticism of the US spreading into more mainstream elements of social democracy, the idea that Europe, possibly in alliance with the non-aligned movement of the global South, could support a “third force” alternative to the United States and Soviet Union also became more popular. It is not clear from Andry’s book how exactly this was meant to have worked in practice, and how these ideas would have come to terms with western Europe’s own dominant and often neocolonial position within the international economic hierarchy. 

in presenting the naked lunch Lingering Sanity is enabling the taste of the reader to come into play.   As an information chef I am not the best at what I do, no no no, I am the only one who does what I do.

https://ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity