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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 2 (October 2000)
By: Antero Leitzinger
January 1877 was a turning point in the history of political and economical liberalism. Until the New Year’s Day, Europe and North America had moved toward more freedom - most of the remaining restrictions on the import of iron in Germany were abolished on that date. In a few months, however, not only Germany but also Russia, Turkey, Austria, Italy, France, and the rest of the world started turning toward protectionism, social democracy, and vehement nationalism. In the USA, votes between presidential candidates Hayes and Tilden were still counted, but in the end, the - although only slightly - less liberal Hayes won the tightest competition ever.
It took quite a while, until Europe was as close to opening the borders between its national states as in that fateful year 1877. The low-point of liberalism was reached around summer 1938, when Stalin’s Russia was experiencing its Great Purges, and Hitler’s Germany was advancing apparently unchallenged in Central Europe. If we look for a previous low-point in the history of liberalism, we will arrive at summer 1815, the time of the Vienna Congress and restoration of an illiberal "ancien regime". Could history be repeating itself in a cycle of 123 years?
January 2000 may remain another crucial date in liberal historiography, a time of lost opportunities, the beginning of fateful setbacks. Not because of the Millennium celebrations - although they had great symbolic force - or because the presidency of the European Union switched from Finland to Portugal, but because of EU’s wavering in keeping up to the promises made to Turkey, and by EU’s complete failure of holding to the demands addressed to Russia. This incapability has been highlighted and the EU thoroughly humiliated by the ridiculous attempt to override the results of free elections and parliamentarian procedures in a democratic member state, Austria. Soon the Danes will vote against adopting the Euro, and step by step, the EU will loose its coherence, its chances for expansion, and its credibility as a political power.
Is this simple mathematics, or is someone to be blamed? Well, at least in several cases, the crucial point has been the amazing strategic incompetence of social democracy. In 1878, the Social Democrats preferred protectionism to free trade; in 1918, the Social Democrats were unable to defend democracy against communism in Russia and several East European countries; in Italy, Germany and Austria by 1938, the Social Democrats were wiped out by National Socialists; among others in Czechoslovakia by 1948, they were wiped out by the Communists in turn...and I would be too merciful if not mentioning their failure to catch initiative in Western Europe in 1968 or in Eastern Europe after 1988. Those digits ending up with a 7 or 8 seem to imply defeat, defection and tragedies for attempts to unite socialism with democracy.
Thus it may be no coincidence, that European countries mostly led by Social Democrats in a time like 2000 were trapped in a dead end. Turkey, despite all its progress and long traditions for western values, will be kept out of Europe, while Russia, with its nuclear blackmail and unconcealed disregard for human rights, will be continuously provided with endless EU subsidies, appeasement and diplomatic consideration. The result will be not only economic but also moral stagnation and devaluation. After a couple more years of Fischer, Dini & comrades, the EU will be left with nothing but justified contempt. It is sad, that such a good idea - the integration of free European nations in peace and unity - will fail because it was corrupted by Social Democrats, in whose hands almost anything is doomed to failure.
Our descendants will ask us, why we did not see ahead what was coming, and how the analogies between 1877, 1938, and 2000 could escape our attention. How could we not know or care about the genocide in Chechenia? It took two generations from 1877 to 1938, before even the hard-headest and soft-mindest Social Democrat had to recognize, that something went wrong. Another two generations worked it out, but just when we had reached the level of political understanding that existed 123 years ago, wev were pushed back downhill.
Up and down, up and down. Human history may be not so different from the processes of a heart or a pair of lungs.
Antero Leitzinger