The European Dream in times of crisis
Reflections on a debate between economist and political activist Jeremy Rifkin, famous for his 2004 book “The European Dream; How Europe’s vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream”, and Rajeev Bhargava, political scientist and Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi. The encounter was chaired by Mia Doornaert, columnist with the Flemish De Standaard newspaper.
Taking up more than an hour of the speaking time, Jeremy Rifkin started off the debate arguing that his 2004 book is, in fact, in no way outdated but more timely than ever. Its continuous importance stems from the fact that the current financial and economic crisis is a global one and thus does not only affect Europe or undermines her position in the world. In contrary, today’s economic climate and search for growing markets provides the continent with a chance to pursue its dream even more targeted. With the US taking up place 19 of 21 OECD states to rank in income disparity, the old American Dream, according to Rifkin, is circling downward the importance spiral as fast as it did six years ago. On the other hand, the European Union spearheaded by Germany – of whose leader, Angela Merkel, Rifkin spoke favourably more than once – makes serious efforts in battling climate change and thus generating employment through the means of researching sustainable energy and applying this research in its own energy system. Here essentially, by focussing very much on green energy as his base argument, Rifkin saw the importance of his book, in that its message to build a society based on cooperation and a sustainable economic vision is more urgent than ever. Thus, what he calls the “technical revolution”, or third revolution, of the communications sector in which we currently find ourselves, needs to be pursued “more aggressively” because Europe needs to ensure it is “flagship for the world to follow”. Even in times of austerity, it is vital that “one does not compromise the EU” because in his view in EU policies is where the necessary growth lies. In order to most efficiently apply these policies and thus reach growth and build a new society, business must happen on regional level. Given the EU’s structure to work on all levels and consequently subsidies local businesses, this was a point Rifkin very much stressed: “continentalisation” will be “the name of the game” during the third revolution.
Due to time constraints arising from mismanagement on part of both Rifkin and an un-interfering moderator, Bhargava was left with only 20 minutes to respond to Rifkin’s main points rather than lay out some of his own ideas. He ended up only punctuating arguments Rifkin made and thus being unstructured lost his train of thought on more than one occasion. Critically, he urged Rifkin and the audience not to be too Euro-centric and Western-focussed “once again” but also take into account the “numerous ways of thinking” that come from the direction of Asia or India. Europe should not assume that only one region would lead the world and it should not expect other countries “to just follow”. He told Rifkin that “I found some self-glorification in your book” and only to assume other people do not have a “mind of their own” meant ignoring what else is out there. Harvesting laughter on this occasion, the debate then turned in Rifkin’s favour having seen him putting Bhargava on the spot to have not read “any of my work” and pointing out that after all his theory is called “a dream” and that it stems from the tradition seen on many occasions in Europe “to do things differently”. Bringing the debate back on track, Mia Doornaert pointed out the obvious: that Rifkin after all does speak in front of a European audience in times of crises.
Questions from the audience taken at the end were few and rightly pointed out that issues as direct democracy and its lack within the EU structure or concepts as basic income in times of changes to our understanding of work were not addressed at all. Rifkin responded elaborating on the latter point that the question of how to pay for this shift towards a new working sector will not come over night but setting up and implementing a new energy system and its infrastructure will take “up to two generations” and after that he foresees a shift of workers to the third, not-for-profit and civil society sector.
In conclusion, for readers of the European Dream not much new could be discovered apart from Jeremy Rifkin speaking live does indeed make him stand out as an activist. Rajeev Bhargava made some valuable points about the focus of Rifkin’s involvement but was unfortunately not able to elaborate further on the way countries like India or thriving nations in South-East Asia are taking. Finally, as hopeful as the European Dream theses sound, an aftertaste of wishful thinking remains given that the EU’s former grand Lisbon strategy fell far short of its aims of paving the way or even implementing “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”.
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Written by Rebecca Weicht
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