One of my recent essays said something like “European democracy is more robust than American democracy” — and soon enough, I received a number of angry tweets (from people who hadn’t read it, natch). What about Poland and Austria! Le Pen?!! My god!! The gall!!

So. Let us think about it. Do you see a tiny number of Nazis running Europe — like they do America? Just today I read about a professor who was jailed for giving immigrants food. That, friends, is fascism — a Gestapo being born before our unbelieving eyes. Do you see racial supremacists occupying the highest posts in the land — reshaping all its laws and norms? Of course not.

The hardest is thing is often to see what is right before our blind eyes. So let us try, just for a moment, to imbibe the lesson that modernity is trying to teach us in this troubled age.

The American Dream is over. This is the age of the European Dream.

What do I mean? First let me discuss it, then I will give you all the qualifications that you need, for no doubt, many of you already object. Europe is the sick man of the world! It is a place full of unemployment and idle, lazy people, cry the American economists. Is it?

In most of Europe — Scandinavia, core Europe, whether Germany, France, or Holland, even in countries that have been historical laggards, like Spain, people now enjoy the highest living standards in human history, ever, period. Even Italians — maligned as the caricatures of misgovernance — live half a decade longer than Americans. Europeans live longer, better, richer, saner, healthier, fuller lives — than Americans, than the rest of the world, compared to what might have been expected just a few short decades ago, when those very countries lay in ruins, and most importantly. In the eyes of history, Europe is something like human society’s most improbable but greatest success.

How did they do it? Well, that is also the story of why America didn’t do it. America chose a social contract based on extreme capitalism. It came to be called neoliberalism. The central belief was that markets are the one single solution for every kind of social issue, challenge, or problem. Now, if that strikes you today as, well, silly, fair enough — just transport yourself back a few decades to Cold War paranoia, and then post Cold War utopianism.

If these mighty weapons called markets were so strong that they had defeated that evil empire, the Soviet Union — then how could they not be Holy Grails that would fix everything? And so as soon as the Berlin Wall fell, markets were set free across that poor, benighted land called America. Healthcare? Markets! Media? Markets? Finance, education, transport? Markets! Energy and water? Markets, markets, markets!

Now the effects of all this were as ruinous as any thinking person might have suggested — and many did. Markets corrode trust and norms and values. In the absence of rules to keep them competitive, they cannot do much but become monopolies and maximize profits — and that cut-throat predatory behaviour soon comes to be lionized as desirable and noble. Yet in many cases, markets simply cannot work at all — for example, when people’s lives are at stake, or when they don’t have information, or when there’s no reason for capitalists to seek a profit to begin with. But the fact is that most of the things our lives depend most on — healthcare, media, finance, energy, water — meet one, if not all three, of these criteria.

So here America is. Still trying to use what it imagines are Holy Grails, markets, to solve everything — which means that public investment can never happen, because it is the opposite of markets. But markets are not Holy Grails. They are just another kind of tool, and one that is not suited to all a society’s tasks. And so people’s lives are simply falling apart — and as they do, so is their democracy, as people turn to strongmen to fix their problems and soothe their wounds. Soon, they will live a decade shorter than Europeans — and those short lives will be full of endless work, misinformation, junk food and media and education, no savings, no retirement, little happiness: Americans will never realize themselves to nearly the same degree that Europeans do.

What did Europe do differently? Well, the striking thing is this. Though European countries are very different culturally and even socially, they converged on something like very much the same social contract.

Great public institutions — think of the BBC, the NHS, or France’s pension system — would provide the basics of life. Healthcare, media, retirement, finance, transport, and so on. These public goods allowed Europeans not to have spend through the nose for decent lives — and so they built savings. Having saved, they could then go on investing in these institutions — further elevating and expanding their qualities of life. Whether Germany, Spain, France, Holland, Scandinavia — the details differ, but the features of the social contract are more or less the same.

And so was the other side of the social contract — the role of capitalism. Unlike in the US, capitalism wasn’t fetishized. It was viewed more realistically. It was there to provide the luxuries of life — not the necessities. So it was put to work to make things like fine champagne and high end industrial goods, cars etcetera, and fashion, which are all things at which Europe now excels. But even there, it was carefully integrated with non-profit-maximizing, but what we might say are restraining mechanisms: to make fine food in Europe, you are generally certified by coops or nonprofits or governmental bodies. The idea was not to let quality descend to the lowest common denominator — and that, too, worked, because Europe provides many, many more high-end goods than America does.

So Europe’s social contract is more successful in all ways, not just one. It’s socialism works better, giving people the basics of life, at vastly higher qualities. But it’s capitalism works better, too. How can that be?

Think healthcare. Having a baby costs $30K in the US — but in Europe, it’s free. And, strikingly, its capitalism works better, too. The US might have made Amazons and Googles and Facebooks and Walmarts — but the price is dead-end low-wage labour for an entire nation. So by focusing instead on quality instead of quantity, on keeping capitalism working where it works best — at luxuries, not necessities — European capitalism, too, works better. It’s fairer, it’s cleaner, and most importantly, it yields actual benefits to people’s lives. Think of a BMW or an Hermes — they employ skilled people in real careers, not neoserfs slaving away in Amazon warehouses serving a tiny number of ultra-rich Facebook investors.

European capitalism and socialism developed into complements, each buttressing the other. They are often in tension, of course — just like a building’s arch is. Still, together, these once-opposed systems lift lives higher than either did alone — and that is the great lesson of the last century.

The European social contract works because socialism and capitalism do not compete much — each is focused where it works best. But in America, the social contract never developed this way — socialism and capitalism are thought to be substitutes, not complements, thing which compete with one another, so they are never allowed to support one another. And because capitalism maximizes profits, which should rain down on the huddled masses, what need is there for any social institutions, investment, ideas? And that is how America fell while Europe rose.

Now. Those qualifications I promised you. Even Europe is making basic mistakes of management — foolish forcing austerity on the periphery, which threatens the future of the very dream I have discussed, by driving its fascist movements — when investment is free, because interest rates are negative.

So none of this means Europe is perfect or destined for glory or beyond criticism. It doesn’t mean Europe doesn’t and won’t have extremism, bigotry, sexism, racism, greed, fear, and delusion. Of course not. So nor does it mean every European country — there will always be dark spots in any society, and they will usually be in the periphery. Therefore none of the above means Europe is above the iron laws of socioeconomics. Here’s another example: even in Germany, the depressed East has sent Neo-Nazis to the Bundestag. Big mistake, right?

So no society is above history or human folly. The question we must ask is only this. Who has gotten a dream right — a vision worth aspiring to? Remembering that even though it will always be full of mistakes, riddles with holes, tattered at the edges, we are not seeking perfection, only the least imperfection. Then we are a little wise — and that wisdom gives us courage and grace. Otherwise, seeking perfection, we end up just like America: unable to think clearly at all, seeking Holy Grails to worship, instead of slowly doing the difficult work of improving human societies.

Umair

January 2018