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Collective Bonapartism – Democracy in the European Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Hauke Brunkhorst

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My paper has two parts. In the first part I will outline an evolutionary model for analyzing the relation of democracy, cosmopolitanism and conflict. In the second part I will apply it to the case of European constitutionalization, and its failure.

Type
Special Section: Europe and the Lost Generation
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 15 , Issue 6 , 01 October 2014 , pp. 1177 - 1195
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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18 See, e.g., Dubiel, Helmut, Niemand ist frei von der Geschichte. Die nationalsozialistische Herrschaft in den Debatten des Deutschen Bundestages (1999).Google Scholar

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21 I am thankful for a controversial discussion with Rudolf Stichweh on this point at a conference that Marcelo Neves organized in Brasilia in September, 2013.Google Scholar

22 See https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/sounds/lyrics/international.htm. The German text refers directly to human rights: “Die Internationale erkämpft das Menschenrecht.” This translates in English into: “The Intenationale fights for human rights.” (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Internationale#Deutscher_Text_.28Emil_Luckhardt.2C_1910.29).Google Scholar

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26 Gould, Steven Jay, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory 26 (2002); Steven Jay Gould, A Developmental Constraint in Cerion, with Comments of the Definition and Interpretation of Constraint in Evolution, 43 Evolution 516, 517 (May, 1989). For an application to legal evolution, but without recognizing the normative character of constraints in the social evolution, see Marc Amstutz, Evolutorisches Wirtschaftsrecht 267-270 (2001).Google Scholar

27 See Brunkhorst, , supra note 17.Google Scholar

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32 Pauline Kleingeld has argued in a recent essay, in the middle of the last decade of the 18th century Kant became more radical, cosmopolitan, egalitarian and republican than in his earlier writings. Pauline Kleingeld, Kant, Conflict, and Colonialism (paper presented at John Cabot University (Conference on Cosmopolitanism and Conflict), Rome, Oct. 13, 2013). The reasons seem to be (1) theoretical and (2) historical. First, in that time Kant worked out the consequences of his theoretical and practical philosophy for a theory of public and republican law, and he developed his ever more republican but modern (hence individualistic) theory of popular sovereignty. See Ingeborg Maus, Zur Aufklärung der Demokratietheorie (1992). Second, only after the victory of the Jacobean troops over the reactionary European coalition (1792), and after Jacobean rule and the beheading of the king (1792-1794), it became historically evident all over Europe that a modern republican regime (that is no longer monarchic) was empirically possible. Therefore, only then, after the final triumph of the revolution, did it become evident that the French Revolution was a Sign of History (Geschichtszeichen) that never ever will be forgotten. This was due to Jacobean rule and the trial against citoyen Louis Capet, and despite the moral and legal injustice of the trial against the sovereign who counterfactually represented the people (in a provisional state of law).Google Scholar

33 Kant, , supra note 29, at 361.Google Scholar

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37 Id. at 97.Google Scholar

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39 Marx, , supra note 9, at 101.Google Scholar

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44 The functionalist language of reflection, copy, projection, recursion, system, code, program, and so on is philosophically problematic and philosophically much less advanced than those terms use in sociology. It still depends on the optical metaphor (see, e.g., Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1980)). In comparison the language of reciprocal, intersubjective and interactive understanding, of reciprocal role-taking and generalizing significant others that constitutes the social relation between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is much more compatible with modern pragmatist and linguistic philosophy (see Ernst Tugendhat, Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung (1979)).Google Scholar

45 See Brandom, Robert, Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing & Discursive Commitment (1994).Google Scholar

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49 I use European Union as a notion that covers both the former European Communities and the present European Union.Google Scholar

50 See Somek, , supra note 7. Even the present President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso of Portugal, owes his job to a late effect of the emancipation of Europe from fascism.Google Scholar

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53 Rossi, Ernesto & Spinelli, Altieri, Manifesto von Ventotene (August, 1941), available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/brussels/website/media/Basis/Geschichte/bis1950/Pdf/Manifest_Ventotene.pdf (Das Manifest bringt “den Kern einer Zeitdiagnose zum Ausdruck, die damals die meisten politischen Kräfte des antifaschistischen Widerstands teilten.” Kolja Möller, Die Europäische Sozialunion (April 24, 2012), available at http://www.europa-in-bremen.de/fileadmin/user_upload/henmue/pdfs/EUDEinladung20120202_Moeller.pdf. But see Altiero Spinelli: From Ventotene to the European Constitution (Menéndez ed., Arena Report 1/2007).Google Scholar

54 But see Möller, supra note 53. Lutz Leisering hat ähnliche Beobachtungen generalisiert und gezeigt, daß der international welfarism der Entstehung des modernen Wohlfahrtsstaats vorhergegangen ist. See Lutz Leisering, Gibt es einen Weltwohlfahrtsstaat?, in Weltstaat und Weltstaatlichkeit 185 (Mathias Albert & Rudolf Stichweh eds., 2007). But see Ulrike Davy, The Rise of the Global “Social” - Origins and Transformations of Social Rights under UN Human Rights Law, 3 International Journal of Social Quality (2013). Die Bindung des Verfassungsgedankens an den Staat ist neueren Datums, unterschlägt aber die weit zurückreichende und auch noch für die Herausbildung von protodemokratischem National- (19. Jhd.) und demokratischem Sozialstaat (20. Jhd.) konstitutive Co-Evolution von kosmopolitischer und nationaler Konstitutionalisierung, wie neuere Studien zeigen. See Thornhill, supra note 51; Brunkhorst, The Co-evolution of Cosmopolitan and National Statehood -Preliminary Theoretical Considerations on the Historical Evolution of Constitutionalism, 47 Cooperation and Conflict 176 (2012); Brunkhorst, supra note 17.Google Scholar

55 Fossum, & Menéndez, supra note 51, at 80, 175. The only instance of a constitution of a founding member that made no declaration about Europe, the Constitution of Luxemburg, is of itself a revealing case. In this case, the Luxemburg Conseil d'Êtat decided in 1952 that the Constitution implicitly committed the representatives of the people to join the European Coal and Steel Community, and to strive for further European unification. It is argued that, even if the constitution of Luxemburg did not contain anything vaguely resembling a proto-European clause, the Conseil d'Êtat constructed its fundamental law along very similar lines. When reviewing the constitutionality of the Treaty establishing the Coal and Steel Community, the Conseil affirmed that Luxembourg, not only could, but also should, renounce certain sovereign powers if the public good so required. See Report on the 1952 judgment of the Conseil d'Êtat. Google Scholar

56 German Ordoliberals already in the early 1930s had “hijacked” the idea of an economic constitution from the political left, from Hugo Sinzheimer and Franz Neumann. See Kaarlo Tuori, Multi-Dimensionality of European Constitutionalism: The Many Constitutions of Europe, in The Many Constitutions of Europe 3, 16 (Kaarlo Tuori ed., 2010). The hijacking was organized by Franz Böhm.Google Scholar

57 See Streeck, Wolfgang, Zum Verhältnis von sozialer Gerechtigkeit und Marktgerechtigkeit 8 (unpublished e-manuscript of a lecture, Verona September 20, 2012).Google Scholar

58 Ernst-Joachim Mestmäcker, Einführung, in Wettbewerb und Monopolrecht 5, 9 (Franz Böhm ed.) (author's translation). The same argument seems to fit the present crisis. See Mestmäcker, Ordnungspolitische Grundlagen einer politischen Union, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Nov. 9, 2012), at 12. In the same way Milton Friedman and the Chicago School argues that the main threat to political and economic freedom “arises out of democratic politics” and must be “defeated by political action.” See Gabriel A. Amond, Capitalism and Democracy, 24 Political Science and Politics 467 (September 1991).Google Scholar

59 Thanks to Willis Guerra Filho for this hint (in a discussion on a conference “Problemas Juridicos e Constitucionais da Sociedale Mundial,” Brasilia, September 18, 2013). For comparative points of view (investment law, Latin-America), see David Schneidermann, Compensating for Democracy's “Defects”: The Case of International Investment Law (paper given at the Workshop Conflict-Law Constituionalism v. Authoritarian Managerialism, Loccum October 7, 2013).Google Scholar

60 See Crouch, Colin, The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism (2011); Harm Scheppel, Free Movement of Capital and so called “Finacialism” (paper given at the Workshop Conflict-Law Constitutionalism v. Authoritarian Managerialism, Loccum October 7, 2013).Google Scholar

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80 Streeck, Wolfgang, Crises of Democratic Capitalism, 51 New Left Review 71 (2011). As a consequence, popular sovereignty has been fragmented and marginalized, beyond and within the national state, see Thore Prien, Fragmentierte Volkssouveränität (2010).Google Scholar

81 See Streek, Wolfgang & Mertens, Daniel, Politik im Defizit. Austerität als fiskalpolitisches Regime, MPIfG Discussion Papers 10/5, Köln 2010.Google Scholar

82 But now a European public exists, and we can observe first changes of opinion that are going in the direction of the following last sentence. See Paul Statham & Hans-Jörg Trenz, Understanding the Mechanisms of EU Politicization: Lessons from the Euro-zone Crisis (electronic paper, Kopenhagen 2013).Google Scholar

83 For early observations, see Hauke Brunkhorst, Zwischen internationaler Klassenherrschaft und egalitärer Konstitutionalisierung – Europas zweite Chance, in Anarchie der kommunikativen Freiheit 32-25 (2007).Google Scholar