The European Dream
Encyclopedia
Jeremy Rifkin
Jeremy Rifkin is an American economist, writer, public speaker, political advisor and activist. He is the founder and president of the Foundation On Economic Trends...
published in September 2004. Rifkin describes the emergence and evolution of the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
over the past five decades, as well as key differences between Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an and American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
values. He argues that the European Union, which he describes as the first truly postmodern
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
governing body, is already an economic superpower rivaling the U.S., and has the potential to become a full world superpower
Superpower
A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...
.
According to Rifkin, the "European Dream" is one in which individuals find security not through individual accumulation of wealth, but through connectivity, sustainable development
Sustainable development
Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use, that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come...
, and respect for human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
. Rifkin's concept of connectivity is displayed in the Dutch people's quest for gezelligheid (meaning a cozy, inclusive environment), as well as the social market theories that have dominated French and German economic planning since WWII. Rifkin argues that this model is better-suited to 21st century challenges than the "American Dream".
Rifkin explains Europe's opposition to the death penalty in a historical context; after losing so many lives to wars in the early and mid-20th century, Europe is opposed to state-sponsored killing as a matter of principle. He also discusses the European commitment to "deep play" a notion which is absent in the United States.
To support his thesis, Rifkin notes that in addition to the EU having more people and a greater Gross Domestic Product
Gross domestic product
Gross domestic product refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living....
than the U.S., the potential of the EU as an economic superpower is shown by having: 14/20 of the top banks in the world, 61 of the 140 of the top companies of the world as measure by the Global Fortune 500 (the U.S. has 50), a homicide rate that is 1/4 than in the U.S., the 18 most developed countries in Europe all have more broadly distributed wealth than the U.S. (the U.S. ranks 24th in the world), higher lifespan than the U.S., higher literacy rates than the U.S., and higher quality of life than the U.S. Also, Europeans provide 47% of all the humanitarian aid in the world, and are seen by Rifkin as being more effective in global economic market regulation, evidenced by the fact that the EU stopped the merger of General Electric and Honeywell, fined Microsoft for anti-trust, and blocked genetically modified food despite U.S. opposition.
Rifkin also draws a clear distinction between the "hard power" of the United States and the "soft power" of the European Union in the sphere of international relations. America has relied upon military strength and economic dominance to a greater degree than the EU. Conversely, Europe has combined its strength in the financial industry and economics generally with a commitment to humanitarian aid, economic assistance programs, trade deals, international institutions and patient, multilateral diplomacy. For many countries around the world this relative difference has resulted in widespread hostility towards American power and a relative willingness to cooperate with the European Union. Rifkin argues that "soft power" is thus able to win greater influence in the long term at considerably less expense. He notes however, that Europe has relied heavily upon American military assistance for its security, and that American post-war economic assistance was considerably important in the recovery of Western Europe and thereby indirectly expedited the establishment of the nascent EU institutions.
In South Korea this book made a huge sensation and enjoyed unexpected popularity, because Roh Moo-hyun
Roh Moo-hyun
Roh Moo-hyun GOM GCB was the 16th President of South Korea .Roh's pre-presidential political career was focused on human rights advocacy for student activists in South Korea. His electoral career later expanded to a focus on overcoming regionalism in South Korean politics, culminating in his...
, the former (16th, 2003~2008) Korean president, read the book, then inspired by the author's idea and briefly planned his version in Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
, all of which happened just before his death.
Criticism and commentary
The French philosopher Bernard StieglerBernard Stiegler
Bernard Stiegler is a French philosopher at Goldsmiths, University of London and at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne. In addition, he is Director of the , founder in 2005 of the political and cultural group, , and founder in 2010 of the philosophy school,...
is an admirer of Rifkin's work, referring in a recent essay on the future of Europe to The European Dream:
As Jeremy Rifkin’s recent work The European Dream suggests, the world expects a great deal from Europe, and Europe will not be able to constitute itself as a power unless it gives itself the means with which to respond to this demand. But, what is being asked of it? The world does not expect good intentions. It expects Europe to invent a new industrial model which is capable of interrupting the destructive process unleashed by the capture and unlimited exploitation of the libidinal energy of producers and consumers which will lead, in all domains, to a vast process of desublimation.
As this quotation already indicates, Stiegler argues that Rifkin, while recognizing the critical importance of Europe to the question of the global future, nevertheless does not penetrate to the crucial question, because he does not see the capturing and channelling of desire as the central destructive feature of contemporary capitalism. Rifkin fails to grasp that what consumer capitalism
Consumer capitalism
Consumer capitalism is a theoretical economic and political condition in which consumer demand is manipulated, in a deliberate and coordinated way, on a very large scale, through mass-marketing techniques, to the advantage of sellers....
destroys first of all is primordial narcissism, a narcissism which is the foundation of desire as such, and hence the foundation of all dreams (including the European dream) and all future (including the European future):
If we must rethink motivation or, in other words, desire, then we must rethink the incommensurable as the best, and define the best as that which aims at a consistency and, in this consistency, aims at multiple consistencies (to on pollakhos legetai), a different plane, one which is not reducible to the calculability of the finite (in other words, reducible to comparisons). However, just as there is no question of a Providence here, there is no question of calling that which is true in the other plane a simple dream. This other plane cannot be a dream, or at least not in Jeremy Rifkin’s sense of a dream—unless we make this dream the principle of all politics and economics—but then it would be necessary to elaborate a general libidinal economy, which would be very unevocative of Rifkin, who seems not to see the libido as an issue in the world of capitalism, even though he is American, and who in any case supports his arguments with the summary analyses of narcissism proposed by Christopher LaschChristopher LaschChristopher Lasch was a well-known American historian, moralist, and social critic....
. What Rifkin misses, along with Lasch, is that narcissism is the precondition of all dreams and all psyche, as the etymology of the word alone indicates.
See also
- Other books by Jeremy Rifkin:
- The End of WorkThe End of WorkThe End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era is a non-fiction book by American economist Jeremy Rifkin, published in 1995 by Putnam Publishing Group....
(1995) - The Empathic CivilizationThe Empathic CivilizationThe Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis is a 2010 non-fiction book written by Jeremy Rifkin. It connects the evolution of communication and energy development in civilizations with psychological and economic development in humans...
(2010)
- The End of Work
External links
- "The European Dream: The New Europe has its own Cultural Vision—and it may be Better Than Ours", an article on page seventy-six of the September, 2004 – October, 2004 issue of UtneUtne ReaderUtne Reader is an American bimonthly magazine. The magazine collects and reprints articles on politics, culture, and the environment from generally alternative media sources, including journals, newsletters, weeklies, zines, music and DVDs...
, copied from the book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream by Jeremy RifkinJeremy RifkinJeremy Rifkin is an American economist, writer, public speaker, political advisor and activist. He is the founder and president of the Foundation On Economic Trends... - http://www.foet.org/books/european-dream.html
- Constitution and Individuation by Bernard StieglerBernard StieglerBernard Stiegler is a French philosopher at Goldsmiths, University of London and at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne. In addition, he is Director of the , founder in 2005 of the political and cultural group, , and founder in 2010 of the philosophy school,...
- Book review by Stanley Hoffman
- Book review by Kirk McElhearn
- a discussion with Jeremy Rifkin in the European Parliament about the European Dream