Roberto Tamborini — Illiberal Liberalism: An Existential Threat to Europe

Greece is back to centre of European history, and there it stands like a paradigm. The way Europe deals with Greece reflects Europe’s own image like a mirror. Europe after the Greek crisis will no longer be the same as it was before.

In a fine essay on so-called “neoliberalism” published by the European Institute of LSE, the philosopher Simon Glendinning quotes a passage from Plato’s Republic where the governance in states is compared with captaincy on ships:

“Suppose the following to be the state of affairs on board a ship. The captain is larger and stronger than any of the crew, but a bit deaf and short-sighted, and similarly limited in seamanship. The crew are all quarrelling with each other about how to navigate the ship, each thinking he ought to be at the helm… They spend all their time milling round the captain and doing all they can to get him to give them the helm. If one faction is more successful than another, their rivals may kill them and throw them overboard, lay out the honest captain with drugs or drink or in some other way take control of the ship…. (Plato, The Republic, 488b, p. 282; in Glendinning, 2015, pp. 12-13).

Glendinning’s essay is worth reading not only because it digs deeper beyond the popular but vague notion of neoliberalism as “all that is bad in our world”, but also, indeed mainly, because it aims to show that “the history of efforts to realise the classical liberal conception of human flourishing – efforts to achieve the emancipation of rational subjectivity – have been subject to more than one neoliberal usurpation or coup by some faction or (as I will put it) community of ideas that wants to achieve hegemony” (pp. 12-13).

Furthermore, Glendinning locates the degeneration of this latest variant of liberalism into its opposite on the stage of contemporary Europe. In this perspective, this degenerative process is particularly harmful because it goes beyond the boundaries of a particular philosophy or social doctrine. The fact is that the foundational values of liberalism (though not each and all of its implications) are integral part of the re-construction of Europe after World War II.

If liberalism degenerates from inside, and if this goes unnoticed whether from inside or outside, the whole constellation of ideas and values on which Europe’s identity rests – let alone plans for a future and better Europe - are under threat of collapse. Here are some sparse, modest thoughts of a non-philosopher (from within the community of ideas of economists) on Europe under the threat of illiberal neoliberalism.

EconoMonitor
Illiberal Liberalism: An Existential Threat to Europe
Roberto Tamborini