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"Globalization and
Identity" The
Topical Significance of Masaryk’s Philosophical and Political Contribution
to the Idea of European Integration By Miloslav
Bednár
The last year as well as the current year are important for the Czech
Republic from the international point of view primarily due to its
admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in March and
the embarassed, at present considerably nervous preparation for the
forthcoming membership in European Union which is meanwhile
preliminarily envisaged in the course of the first decade of the advancing
twenty-first century and the third millennium.
The parallel turn of the century and the millennium incites to
broad-minded balancing and long-range reflections whose increasing number
can easily lead - in the present time of a giddy development of
communication technologies - to oversaturation and the following
indifference to the sense of presented ideas. The most weighty reason for
a sceptical circumpection concerning the reflections on the occasion of
the turn of eras is probably represented by the obvious fact that a
numerical turning-point which is determined in such a way need not after
all mean and on principle generally does not mean a real historical turn
which results from much weightier reason as a rule. In what period do
we then actually live and what can the aproaching future of the new
century and millennium bring to us? Can
such a question be answered by the explication of ideas and conduct
of the most significant modern Czech philosopher and statesman who became
a statesman particularly with regard to the fact that in 1918 - as
philosopher - he founded and then built up the nowadays markedly
diminished state which became a free and democratic state again almost ten
years ago? Anyhow, we should intensively attempt to conceive such
reflections not only because of the fact that this change of eras is the
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Masaryk’s birth at the same time.
Both the fundamental starting points of problems and the objectives
of Masaryk’s philosophical ideas and conduct are primarily topical up to
the present time, i.e. for a simple reason. Those fundamental ranges of
problems have not yet been solved because their democratic
solution, attempted by Masaryk, is a task for centuries and millennia. It
is basically the matter of primary sense of a modern historical turn to
democracy when several traditional modern democracies have
meanwhile developed for a few centuries only while undemocratic state
establishments have had several millennia for their development, as
Masaryk has always stressed. As a matter of fact, this means that the religious
and philosophical foundations of modern democratic traditions have
stabilized only exceptionally up to the present time and always in an
unfinished way. A drastic practical evidence of the lack of democratic
integrity of our time is the so far unaverted intrinsic exposure to danger
for modern democratic civilization by totalitarian movements and régimes
whose violent onset stamped the human history with a so far unknown seal
of systematic mass criminality, i.e. in the now closing twentieth
century.
On the other hand, Masaryk took over, developed in broader
political connexions and applied Palacký’s view of two main principles
of the world history which had grown up in the Czech philosophical
tradition and has just now in fact become a popular conceptual equipment
under the complex title of globalization and globality. The concept of globalization
indicates the world-wide impact of events anywhere in the world with
regard to the rapid growth of world communication interlinkage and
interdependence. The concept of globality denotes a substantial
enlargement of human possibilities and activities which follows from
globalization. For instance, this is the matter of extending commercial
and many communication activities for the period of 24 hours daily in one
place by means of the world-wide electronic information interconnection.
It was František Palacký and in his spirit Tomáš G. Masaryk who took
into account such a historical development when they concentrated on the
problem ranges of world centralization in
contradistinction to the reactive law of polarization in Palacký,
or the appurtanance, and subsequently a possible harmonizing of trends of
centralization and autonomization in Masaryk.[1]
The present densely interconnected and at the same time considerably
unpeaceful and dangerous world thus principially corresponds with
Masaryk’s philosophy of history and the hence deduced opinion on the
development of world civilization.
In our present situation it is evidently worth while to attempt to
estimate the possibilities and obstacles of the present transatlantic and
European integration orientation of the Czech Republic from the standpoint
of Masaryk’s philosophical and political contribution to these key
problem ranges of today. By way of introduction it is necessary to mention
the inseparability of both presented great strategical themes which is
neglected as a rule. The integration of the non-communist part of Europe
would not have occurred after World War II if this project had not been
brought to life in 1946 by the American foreign policy in close
cooperation with the most significant British statesman of the twentieth
century Winston Churchill. The very birth of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization in April 1949 was, is and will embody the inseparability
of European democratic peace from the key world-wide significance of
American democracy. Due to the fact that European Union came into the
world as a result of long-term efforts at preventing the recurrence of an
all-European and world-wide war catastrophe on a democratic basis, one
cannot separate its existence and future from its condition of the
possibility of life safety which is inherent in the existence of NATO.
It was above all the founder of Czechoslovak democratic state T. G.
Masaryk who apparently understood the inseparability of European
democratic integration and peace from the union with American democracy as
it had historically developed into the federal political formation of the
United States of America and became a decisive world power in the course
of World War I. We should remind ourselves and others by full right that
the development of Euro-Atlantic alliance jointly with the integration of
the democratic part of Europe after World War II and their all-European
spreading after the victory of democracies in the cold war confirmed the
truthfulness of Masaryk’s opinions concerning the European,
Euro-American and world development in the direction of democratic
civilization.
In the contexts of Masaryk’s reflections on the democratically
based European unity and its Atlantic dimension there arise well-founded
critical objections concerning the topical state of European integration.
The present form of European Union is a result of the prevalent procedure
which led to its origin. Two continental big powers: France and Germany
put themselves through as the main factors of integration steps in the
European democratic space which was secured by the United States of
America. A peaceful surmounting of their long-term modern hostility could
have become a condition for the origin of the United States of Europe
already at the end of the twenties on the basis of the so-called
Briand’s initiative in whose background there was Masaryk’s effective
support of the Pan-European movement of the Czechoslovak citizen Richard
Coudenhove-Kalergi.[2]
At the beginning of the fifties one succeeded in realizing this old
intention by the foundation of the Community of Coal and Steel and
by the political cooperation of both European big powers which was
connected with this fact. This achievement started some gradual,
particularly economically and commercially oriented steps which culminated
with the origin of European Union in the nineties and with the
establishment of European Monetary Union on January 1, 1999; the latter
encompasses eleven economically relatively more developed countries out of
the present fifteen member States.
The aim of a thus realized integration procedure which should be
gradually joined by the Czech Republic as well consists in the rise of
a European superstate. The political union of Europe should be reached by
means of economic integration. Such origin of a state is unique in the
history. As a matter of fact, the states originate and cease to exist as a
consequence of perspicuous political will. Political will is always an
expression of strong moral conviction which is spiritual by its nature.
The European Union appears in this light as a result of a very peculiar
way of action whose outcome is an atypical political formation with a
so far unclarified political and still less spiritual perspective.
Its basic feature consists in the above-mentioned meditation of
political will by the will to secure economic advantages. In this way
the conception of European Union principally differs both from Masaryk’s
conception of the origin of the United States of Europe during World War I
as well as at the beginning of the First Czechoslovak Republic and from
the well-known Churchill’s Zurich broadcast appeal concerning the
establishment of the United States of Europe from September 1946.
According to Masaryk a really democratic European unity must grow out of a
change of the entire spirituality of Europe, not only of a mere
transformation of the European map. The leading principle of this basic
European change must be represented by “true equality - in the internal
sphere just like in the external sphere - an equality affecting every
citizen and every nation”.[3]
Churchill’s decisive principle of efforts at establishing the United
States of Europe which he understands as the decision of European citizens
to act according to justice and not injustice also corresponds with
it. At the same time Churchill stressed that only thus the Europeans
would be able to live a life which is worth while to be lived [4].
The main reason of the origin of such an essential difference which
appears distinctly between Masaryk’s initial conception of the United
States of Europe and the conception which has prevailed during the gradual
origin of the present European Union is a weighty shift of starting
points from a morally self-confident, deliberately provident democratism
to a refuge in the central management of Europe, based on economic
profitableness for fear of the recurrence of a war catastrophe. In
other words, the cause of political will which has arisen in this way does
not consist in spiritual equanimity on the basis of a carefully considered
conception of European justice but in the fear of threat. One can
thus rightly characterize the main reason of French-German
political reconciliation after World War II which has become and still is
a leading moving factor of the gradual origin of European Union. An
evidently half-hearted reason is concerned where the all-European
prospective moral foundation of political will necessarily pulls
the shorter end. Masaryk would denote such a starting point of European
policy as semi-education and dilettantism. The political restoration
of the ominous materialistic-centralistic tradition of French and German
liberalism which prevails in the construction and present form of the
institutions of European Union obviously contributes to such a
characterization. Here one speaks in a rightfully euphemistic way about a
“democratic deficit” which is to be cured by a chronically postponed
reform of European institutions. As a matter of fact, the institutions of
European Union do not yet observe that initial democratic principle of the
distribution, balance and mutual control of institutional political
powers. In other words, the individual member States of Europen Union
are administered in a much more democratic way than European Union for
which they resign or intend to resign to their state sovereignty. The
democratic principles of justice which are quite appropriately required
from European Union also concern the position of equal rights for large
and smaller states. In this sphere there still exists a relatively
just order which should be changed by the reform of European institutions
with regard to the increasing pressure of European big powers exerted for
a change to their benefit. As known, it is the very reform of the
institutions of European Union which conditions its enlargement by some
post-communist democracies inclusive of the Czech Republic.
A not negligible problematic element within European Union is also
represented by the political movement of European regional particularism
which tries to weaken the statehood of individual European democracies by
stressing the importance of European regions to the benefit of the
centrally administered policy of regional interests which extends beyond
the natural state borders. Here, for instance, apart from the natural
humanitarian, economic and cultural needs, the German endeavor to weaken
the state independence particularly of the Czech Republic and Poland is
reflected; it has been traditionally inspired by the big-power position of
Germany and it has also pushed through by the Chancellor Kohl until
recently, i.e. after 1989 by means of evoking artificial problems and
reviving politically the postwar transfer of the German population out of
both territories according to the Potsdam Agreement of the Allies. This
was going on in spite of the fact that such a political activity
apparently endangers the foundations of European peace.
It is a maximally characteristic feature that European Union which
originated for fear of war and on the basis of markedly economically
conceived arguments after the introduction of European Monetary Union
falls economically behind American economy, resp. the relatively recently
arisen North American Free Trade Agreement, in an ever more
perspicuous way; for the time being it has not been able and up to now it
is far from being able to master the Yugoslav Civil War which has been
proceeding since the beginning of the nineties, the Irish problem, if not
the war focus in the Near and Middle East. These warning facts are a natural
consequence of half-hearted, unfinished foundations on which the
present European Union is based.
It is an indisputable fact that the forthcoming membership of the
Czech Republic in European Union will considerably contribute to a
democratic reform of the rule of law, general state of law, a more
civilized functioning of state administration, self-government, the
introduction of more consistent liberally economic practices in our
country and its much easier acces to the large market of European Union.
This essential relative improvement of our present affairs which are
behind in many ways will nevertheless mean on the other hand that we will
become a part of a supranational European formation which is based on
unstable foundations and whose economy is falling behind the economically
most significant North American economic association in an ever more
conspicuous way.
This state of affairs is accompanied by another fact which deserves
to be critically and responsibly thought over from the point of view of
the Czech Masaryk’s tradition of European unity as a part of the world
civilization, particularly the Atlantic democratic civilization. In this
place I have in mind the contemporary provincial European isolationism
in the form of anti-Americanism. This is the matter of a phenomenon
which is closely connected with the European course and consequences of
World War II. It is a characteristic feature that the European
anti-Americanism is spread apart from Germany particularly in those
European countries which either were
on the German side during World War II or were occupied by Germany and
whose democratically immature élites voluntarily collaborated with the
occupational Nazi power to a considerable extent. For instance, France
moreover represents an example of such a country in an extreme form whose
long-term unsatisfied big-power aspirations turn against the key role of
American democracy in the European and world history after World War II in
a markedly pointed and evidently uncritical way. The unmastered moral
history of European continental powers and its chronic pathological
compensation in relation to the United States of America manifests itself
as a rule by uncritical efforts at a foreign-policy alliance with Russia
whose present state and future are much nearer, particularly recently, to
the peril of European democracy than to the intensification of European
democratic unity, inclusive of equality of rights of small and large
European states.
The explicitly provincial character of anti-Americanism of European
Union casts doubt on the very sense of its gradual origin and future
existence in a dangerous way. If the continental democratic Europe does
not thoroughly realize that what was the Mediterranean Sea for Roman
civilization this is the Atlantic Ocean for democratic Europe and America,
i.e. a vital connecting centre of the history of European democratic
spirit and not its boundary, then our continent can soon find itself on
the point of destruction. With regard to the not incidental fact that T.
G. Masaryk devised and published the Washington Declaration of Independence
of the free democratic Czechoslovak state[5]
on the basis of decisive significance of the Euro-Atlantic democratic
alliance for the future of European freedom and democracy, the Czech
Republic which avows the tradition of Masaryk’s Czechoslovakia should
not watch indifferently the present dangerous trends in European Union
with a superficial explanation that so far it waits for its full
membership jointly with further candidates and that it does not want to
make the mighty neighbour angry. For the very reason that we want to
become a full-value member State of European Union, we should worry
about its future in an open political way already nowadays and not only
speak but also act accordingly.
For the sake of a stable democratic future of European Union and
its just organization it would be undoubtedly natural to strengthen the
European relations to the United States which would surpass the
obligations resulting from the membership of many European democracies in
NATO. The anxiety about the future orientation of particularly the
continental member States of European Union and the doubts about their
allied reliability within the framework of NATO led the United States -
apart from other strategic reasons aimed at a long-term stability of the
democratic organization of Europe - to the initiation of NATO’s present
enlargement by Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. These three
countries are considered because of their prior position among the post-communist
democracies de facto in Masaryk’s spirit as a long-term effective
counterbalance of the short-sighted centralistic isolationism of
West-European continental powers and the meanwhile unfathomable Russia.
The Czech Republic should deserve such confidence by means of her
effective conduct in the interest of an all-European democratic
perspective. For this reason, the Czech Republic should attempt at its
affiliation with the North American Free Trade Agreement which could
possibly concern some other post-communist democracies and thus reduce the
problematic isolationist tendency of European Union in the interest of its
long-term democratic solidarity even after its planned enlargement.
Masaryk rendered the unrepeatable nature of Europe in a quite
precise way from which there must necessarily follow European democratic
integration as a variety of European nations and state formations which
has been formed for millennia. For this reason it is naturally apt to
proceed from it in the formation of European democratic unity and not from
the unnaturally uniform centralist doctrine. Masaryk speaks
therefore about a loose federalization of Europe[6]
but not a confederation. It is hence evident that in a naturally arisen,
loose European federation there should exist a common European cement
which would constantly prevent confederational splitting, that disastrous
and destructive anarchy of sovereignties. Such a cement should be
obviously represented by the share of religiously and philosophically
constituted ecumenical principles as well as those of ethical and
political conduct. The creation of such a fundamental European
consensus which would be closely related with the American consensus of
democratic state idea and its permanent
mission is by its roots a European, freely arisen and implemented task for
an apparently longer time horizon than is the first decade of the
forthcoming century and millennium. It will not be the provincial European
isolationism but precisely on the contrary the culturally civilizational,
political and economic intensification of solidarity of the spiritually
arisen core of Euro-Atlantic civilization which will decisively help
to attain this goal.
The Czech affinity with such a view on a just democratic future of
European integration is given by the origin and history of the Czech state
idea which led to the rise of the first European reformation in the
territory of our state. It was the reformatory, democratically
prospective milieu of the freedom of individual, spiritual and moral conscience
wherefrom the idea of religious tolerance, civil freedoms and rights had
its origin as a foundation of modern democracy and of its American form
on a democratically religious basis which originated and was
established explicitly in this way and by which European democracy was
three times saved in the course of the disastrous twentieth century. Here
lies the real original source of the idea of a democratic and just
European integration. The Czech Republic should interpretationally link up
only to this source if it does not wish to be unfaithful to the
traditionally Czech line of thought and conduct for whose revolutionarily
modern formulation we owe thanks to T. G. Masaryk whose significance as a
philosopher and by the same token the founder of the Czechoslovak
democratic state state is worth remembering. [1] Cf. F. Palacký, Úvahy a projevy(Reflections and Speeche), Melantrich, Praha 1977, pp. 343-344; cf. T.G. Msaryk a Edvard Beneš, Otevřít Rusko Evropě (To Open Russia to Europe), H&H, Praha 1992, pp. 18-19 [2] Cf. R. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Ein Leben fürEuropa (A Life for Europe), Kiepenheuer &Witsch, Köln 1966, p.119;cf. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Der grösste Europäer(The Greatest European), Paneuropa, Wien-Zürich, vol. XI,1935, No. 3, p. 68 [3] Cf. T.G. Masaryk, Sub Specie Aeternitatis, The New Europe, vol. I., No. 10. pp. 300-305, Dec. 21, 1916 [4] Cf., Coudenhove-Kalergi, Ein Leben für Europa (A Life for Europe), p. 286 [5] Cf. Declaration of Independence of the Czechoslovak Nation by Its Provisional Government, New York, The Marchbanks Press, October 1918 [6] Cf. T.G. Masaryk, Světová revoluce (The World Revolution), Orbis a Čin, Praha 1930, p. 503
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