9781844673124-frontcover

The New Old World

by Perry Anderson

1 discussion

“Insightful, combative and invigorating”—Nation
The New Old World looks at the history of the European Union, the core continental countries within it, and the issue of its further expansion into Asia. It opens with a consideration of the origins and outcomes of European integration since the Second World War, and how today's EU has been theorized across a range of contemporary disciplines. It then moves to more detailed accounts of political and cultural developments in the three principal states of the original Common Market–France, Germany and Italy. A third section explores the interrelated histories of Cyprus and Turkey that pose a leading geopolitical challenge to the Community. The book ends by tracing ideas of European unity from the Enlightenment to the present, and their bearing on the future of the Union. The New Old World offers a critical portrait of a continent now increasingly hailed as a moral and political example to the world at large.

Hardback, 561 pages

ISBN: 9781844673124

December 2009

$39.95 / £24.99

Other Editions

Ebook

ISBN: 9781844678068

December 2009

$25.99

Paperback, 592 pages

ISBN: 9781844677214

November 2011

$26.95 / £14.99 / $37.50CAN

Reviews

  • “A hugely ambitious and panoramic political book.”

    – Andy Beckett, Guardian

  • “As insightful, combative and invigorating as its illustrious predecessors.”

    – Mark Mazower, Nation

  • “Anderson is among the most insightful and policy-relevant analysts of modern Europe.”

    – Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs

  • “Fascinating.”

    – Dissent

  • “European pieties go under the knife.”

    – John Lloyd, Financial Times

  • “A magisterial view of the evolution of the European Union.”

    – Anne McElvoy, New Statesman

  • “Necessary reading for anyone seeking a critical understanding of the EU.”

    – Socialist Studies

  • “In the current climate of Euro-conformism reflected in (mostly technocratic and government-funded) conferences and symposia about the future of Europe and the European Union, Perry Anderson has attempted to open up a democratic, lively public debate about the political and economic directions European countries are taking.”

    – Mediations

  • “A scintillating display of fireworks.”

    – Times Higher Educational Supplement

  • “Vast and sometimes brilliant.”

    – Economist

  • “Engaging, but eccentric ... Anderson is perceptive, and scathing... with a wealth of argument and illustration.”

    – Spectator

Blog

View all related posts

Discussions

Begin a discussion about this book

  • A brilliant analysis, but no practical proposals.

    Perry Anderson 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 the falls in EU election turnout 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.  

    0 responses

Other books by Perry Anderson