The New Old World [Hardcover]

Perry Anderson, Professor of History and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, has produced a brilliant study of the EU, the organisation which poses the greatest threat to us in Britain today. He displays, as usual, his peerless acuity and huge range of reference.

This book includes superb surveys of France, Germany, Italy, Cyprus and Turkey, but not of Britain. Anderson explains grandly, "I do not regret the omission of Britain, whose history since the fall of Thatcher has been of little moment." (It was not a `fall' - we pushed her out.) He refers to `England' three pages later, then to Britain again, then to the UK, a slippage whose uncharacteristic uncertainty betrays his disdain for its object.

He shows that the EU had no democratic foundations. Jean Monnet, the `father of Europe', was an international financier, never elected to anything. Now the EU `more and more openly flouts the popular will'.

Anderson rightly cites last year's fall in EU election turnout, to 43 per cent, as evidence that the EU `wants even a modicum of popular credibility'. Yet he inconsistently writes of US elections that high abstention rates are `the surest sign of popular contentment with society as it is'.

Anderson observes sensibly of Le Pen's Front National, "Immigration is a minority phenomenon, virtually by definition, as war between the classes was not. In consequence, xenophobic responses to it, however ugly, have little power of political multiplication. Aron, who had witnessed the rise of Nazism in Germany and knew what he was talking about, understood this from the start, criticizing panicky over-estimations of the Front, In effect, from the mid-eighties onwards its electoral scores oscillated within a fixed range, never dropping much below a national average of 10 per cent and never rising above 15 per cent." There is no need to obsess about the far tinier BNP.

On the EU's economic policies, he quotes EU-enthusiast Andrew Moravcsik: "the EU is overwhelmingly about the promotion of free markets. Its primary interest group support comes from multinational firms, not least US ones." And, "The EU is basically about business." Its Constitution makes a `highly competitive' market `free of distortions' a legal obligation, wrecking a `social Europe'.

Inside monetary union, "The historic commitments ... to full employment and social services ... cease to have any further institutional purchase." Growth suffers too. Before the euro started in 1999, growth was 2.4 per cent a year, after, 2.1 per cent. Non-euro EU members grew faster than euro members. Eurozone income per head rose more slowly than in the previous decade, while productivity growth halved.

Anderson points out that British governments always sought a wider EU, wanting to use the `vast reserve armies of cheap labour in the East, exerting downward pressure on wage costs in the West'. He shows the EU's embrace of capitalism, its contempt for democracy and its failure to create either a European society or a common culture.

He ends the book with the feeblest of forecasts - "But it remains unlikely that time and contradiction have come to a halt." He is brilliant at tracing intellectuals' responses to problems, but not at engaging with the problems or proposing solutions.

This book is a collection of essays with the European Union as its common theme. Many of them have already appeared in the London Review of Books (LRB), and it was there that I first experienced the insight of this incredibly well-read and perceptive author. An excellent review in the Guardian convinced me that it was worth purchasing, despite already having kept some of the LRB essays. In his foreword, he sets out the reasons for writing the essays and for the omissions in the subjects and countries covered. He notes that, "Although composed over a decade ... I have reworked them relatively little, preferring to let them stand as testimonies of the time, as well as reflections on it."

If one had to focus on a single theme to encapsulate the varied strands brought out in this collection of essays, then I think the author does this in the foreword when he says, "However unprecedented it may be historically, the EU is unquestionably a polity ... Yet in the life of the states that belong to it, politics ... continues to be overwhelmingly internal." The book's cover symbolically features a rendition of `Narcissus Contemplating His Reflection'.

The book's ten chapters are arranged in four parts: the first looks at the European Union itself; the second at its core players - France, Germany, Italy; the third at the complexities of a modern-day Eastern Question (Cyprus & Turkey); and the last at an up-to-date review of past and future visions. Anderson does not wear his leftwing political beliefs too overtly on his sleeve in this book. In fact, I think he displays admirable objectivity on many occasions, but sometimes he cannot help himself, for instance describing New Labour as "the tawdriest regime in post-war British history."

Despite the occasional lapse into jargon-soaked sentences - "sustained polemics against neo-functionalist overestimation of the importance of federalist conceptions" - the majority of the text is highly readable, so long as you have English (and French) dictionaries to hand. (Anyone for opuscule, apothegm, chatoyant, vaticinations?) There are equally some nice turns of phrase and truisms: when describing expansion into Eastern Europe, for instance, Anderson has the US "laying down NATO lights on the runway for subsequent descent by the EU." Or how about, "Where there is sport, infantilism is rarely far away"?

There is much reference to political theorists and their works, which the author often uses as a foil to his own reasoning; and there is much reference to the twentieth-century political history of many of the states covered. Whilst this may sound daunting to the general reader interested in the EU, I found the issues discussed a welcome challenge, allowing me to build upon my knowledge of these countries (France, Germany, Spain, Turkey) and to delve deeper into their political psyches.

I made copious pertinent notes whilst reading this book, but space prevents me from giving the deeper review I would have liked of each chapter, so what follows might appear sketchy rather than considered. The first chapter - `Origins' - examines how and why the EU came into being. Written in 1995, it speculates on the effects of the Euro, a re-united Germany, and expansion to the East. This is followed by `Outcomes' (2007) where Anderson revisits these three issues and gauges their success: "In short: regnant in this Union is not democracy, and not welfare, but capital." In a depressing end, Anderson demonstrates the EU's subservience to US aims. Chapter three - `Theories' (2007) - reviews leading academic literature by political scientists. Personally, writing as a pro-European, there are glittering gems amongst the general malaise.

Chapters four, five, and six cover France (2004 & 2009), Germany (1998 & 2009), and Italy (2002 & 2008) respectively. Anderson considers France since 1968 as being "sunk in the long post-partum depression of a still-born revolution" (like 1848?); and in Germany, "The equilibrium of the West German system of old ... was broken. A series of torsions had twisted its components apart"; whilst Italy is marked by the fact that it escaped the root and branch deconstruction of fascist offices and personnel that Germany was forced to endure after the war.

The question of Cyprus (2007) - "one inconspicuous thorn, amid the bouquets" of EU enlargement - is given the same deep and broad treatment, in a detailed, candid and lucid history of the Cyprus problem. The British and the Greeks bear much responsibility, according to Anderson. He argues on principles rather than practicalities here, but he is right to declare that a resolution of the problem can only come from within rather than being imposed from without. (It should be noted that after initial publication in the LRB, more than a whole page was given over to letters in response, including one from David Hannay, correcting Anderson's interpretations.)

The essay on Turkey (2008) is equally detailed, again demonstrating the author's scope by cross-referencing events and organisations in this EU-hopeful with those in Egypt, Argentina, Burma, and Mexico. On balance, Anderson argues that Turkey should eventually be admitted, but is aware of "intractable difficulties" with the occupation of northern Cyprus, the treatment of minorities, and recognition of the Armenian genocide.

The two final chapters are new. `Antecedents' is a highly interesting essay tracing the ancestry of the European idea from medieval times up to the Schuman Plan. Meanwhile, `Prognoses' brings us up-to-date with the crash and the end of the Bush administration, but before the crowning of Rompuy and Ashton. Anderson also explores extra-EU immigration, especially from the Islamic world: "ethno-religious tensions have displaced class antagonisms".

Is there any other British writer that comes close to Anderson's breadth and depth of knowledge on these subjects. Sure, we have writers that are extremely knowledgeable about the politics of one European country, but Anderson's scope is equally deeply profound. There is a deeper analysis of national and supra-national ways of thinking than one could ever pick up from a daily broadsheet or monthly magazine. He is also witty in his cutting remarks about cultural icons. In short, despite minor quibbles, this book is a triumph.

The index is good but not perfect, but it is pleasing to see the publisher using footnotes rather than endnotes.

The book reveals an author, professor of History at UCLA, with powerful and incisive intellect, erudite, who conducted meticulous research to generate it;apparently the author is multilingual for invariably in his footnotes cites the sources in their original language be it French, German or Italian while he intersperses the text with phrases in the preceding languages plus Latin;the book is multifaceted in that the evolution of the Union and individual countries are viewed and treated from a historical, political, economic, social and cultural perspective;particularly gratifying is the professional integrity and courage of the author as evidenced by his presentation of inconvenient truths and stark realities about the Union with clarity and directness instead of resorting to evasions and euphemisms;finally the picture that emerges for the Union is bleak rather than rosy in that among other there is a glaring democratic deficit in its supranational institutions e.g the Commission, in that the EU in its whole evolutionary process was the product of political elites rather than its people while disregard or even contempt of the popular opinion is evidenced among other in the referenda for the constitution.

The book is composed of successive essays, the first looks at the past and present of the Union, as it was conceived by its founders, and modified by their successors. The second part moves to the national level. It looks at the three principal countries of the original six that signed the Treaty of Rome:France, Germany and Italy. The third looks at Cyprus and Turkey, extreme opposites of size:Cyprus with less than a million, Turkey with over seventy million. The relationship between the two poses the most explosive immediate item on the agenda of EU enlargement. A concluding part informs that Europe as a concept coincided with the Enlightenment while preceded by the concept of Christendom. Also in this part are presented the idea of balance of power, the vitality of Europe arising from both antagonism and common culture and thoughts of a federal Europe some of them prescient.

The post-war era to the present is divided in two periods with respect to economic growth and welfare. The first started as early as 1945 and lasted till at least 1967 and was marked by an unprecedented boom with defining characteristics the rapid growth, high employment and evolving welfare. The characteristic of the second period is the neo-liberal ascendancy. This is historically defined by two great changes of regime. In the eighties the arrival of the Thatcher and Reagan governments, the international deregulation of financial markets and the privatization of industries and services that followed it in the West. The second at the turn of the ninety saw the collapse of communism in the Soviet block, followed by the extension eastwards of the West. The second period culminated in the present financial crisis, the worst since the great depression of 1929.

The principal forces behind the process of European integration were:the central aim of the federalist circle round Monnet to create a European order that would be immune to the catastrophic nationalist wars that had twice devastated the continent, in 1914-18 and 1939-45. The basic objective of the United States to create a strong European bulwark against the Soviet Union, as a means to victory in the Cold War. The key French goal to tie Germany in a strategic compact leaving Paris primus inter pares west of the Elbe. The major German concern to return to the rank of an established power and keep the prospect open for reunification.

The sequence of evolutionary steps towards European integration comprised:the Schuman plan of 1950, which created the Coal and Steel Community in 1951;the Treaty of Rome in 1957;the creation of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Luxemburg compromise in the sixties;the European Monetary System in the seventies;the Single European Act of the eighties;and the Treaty of Maastricht in the nineties. There is a shadow over the legacy of Maastricht, the Stability Pact, which was supposed to secure that fiscal indiscipline at national level would not undermine monetary vigour at supranational level. With devaluation now barred, this had a devastating effect on Greece but the whole Southern tier of the EU does not fare much better.

The supranational Institutions of the EU comprise the Commission, Council, the European Court and the European Parliament. And we have here a huge democratic deficit.

It is the Commission alone - the EU's unelected executive - that can propose the laws on which the Council and (more notionally) the Parliament deliberates. The violation of constitutional powers in this dual authority - a bureaucracy vested with the monopoly of legislative initiative - is flagrant. Alongside this hybrid executive, moreover, is an independent judiciary, the European Court, capable of rulings discomfiting any national government.

A glaring example of contempt of public opinion was the ratification of the Constitution. When the Constitution was rejected in France and Holland, the only that held a referendum on it - both founder members of the Six - it was relabelled the Lisbon Treaty, and when that was rejected in Ireland the only country to submit it to a popular judgement, its voters were told they must reverse the decision. The operative maxim of the EU has become Brecht's dictum:in case of a setback, the government should dissolve the people and select a new one.

I have to caution that the book is not suited to the casual reader due to the density of the text and - on occasion - a daunting vocabulary, the latter remarked by another reviewer. But to the serious reader the book is intellectually stimulating and deeply gratifying.