“Europe? What’s the number?” Henry Kissinger is said to have quipped in 1977, referring to Europeans’ inability to speak with a united voice on foreign policy. Less than thirty years later, in his new book The European Dream, American social thinker Jeremy Rifkin argues that the Europeans are not only getting a line installed soon, but that their way of life is the ascending counterpart to an American Dream long tired and spent.
The American Dream, according to Rifkin, is the synergy of 18th century Enlightenment philosophy with a frontier mindset. The former values getting ahead through hard work; the latter emphasizes autonomy and reason over entitlement. It has brought Americans unprecedented wealth and power. Yet growing inequality, decline in social mobility, and Americans’ propensity for “amusing themselves to death” are now undermining the dream.
Rifkin argues that in a globalized world, decentralized networks of nations are better adapted to a globalized world than individual nation-states going it alone. Jaded by centuries of fratricide, European nations have forged a transnational government that is slowly assuming state-like powers. Besides launching a single currency, they are currently ratifying a European Constitution, which will create the post of European Foreign Minister, among other things.
Now encompassing 25 countries and 455 million people, the European Union has the largest economy in the world. Europeans also enjoy a higher quality of life: they average six weeks’ vacation time per year; in 2000, Americans worked an average of 1,877 hours while the French worked only 1,562 hours. Europeans work to live rather than live to work, Rifkin crows.
At his best, Rifkin weaves insightful historical narratives. In one chapter, he describes the evolution of the modern individual out of the communal life of medieval times over the space of only 15 generations. In another, he traces America’s penchant for property back to the mid-19th century, when the U.S. government opened up more than 10 per cent of the country’s landmass to whoever would farm it.
At his worst, however, Rifkin descends into a long-winded assembly of buzz-words: “When the density of human activity leaps from a regional geographic plane to a global electronic field and from mimetic, linear, discrete exchanges to continuous novelty, feedback and flow, hierarchical command-and-control mechanisms become too slow to govern activity.” He repeatedly asserts the importance of “deep play” to Europe, but its meaning is never clear.
Most glaringly, Rifkin gives short shrift to the crisis of legitimacy besetting the EU. The European Constitution is not valid until approved by all member states, 11 of which will hold referendums to decide. In the last elections to the EU Parliament only 46 per cent of the electorate showed, the lowest turnout to date. Europeans are also becoming frustrated with arcane EU regulations issued from Brussels-imagine the rage of Dutch window cleaners when they discovered the length of their ladders exceeded EU safety regulations.
Rifkin’s starry-eyed appraisal of the European Dream seems to stem from his fondness for Europe and a willingness to gloss over many of its shortcomings. If only the Europeans were as forgiving in their assessments of themselves.
