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- [00:01]
A
All right, as people drift back in, let us begin our final session of the day. We have a treat for the concluding session special. We have Professor Zygmunt Bauman with us. Zygmunt is the emeritus professor of Sociology in the University of Leeds, where I happen to know there is also the Zygmunt Baumann center for Critical Theory. He's well known, I hope to all of you. If not, then you have the treat of reading his many books before you. He's going to speak on reflections on the moral fallout of the great seminal catastrophe of the 20th century. And then we'll have questions. Zygma.
- [00:55]
B
I am tremendously pleased and tremendously grateful to you, Mr. Chairman and Professor Bobbitt for reminding us of the link, very close link, I would say, intimate link between the 30 years long war of European nations waged on the planetary stage and another 30 years long war of European religions. Well, great war, but waged locally in Europe. There is indeed very intimate link between them. And forgetting about it would diminish our understanding of the long shadow cast by the First World War. Because this long shadow is a reflection of a bigger shadow. Very, very old shadow, 300 years old indeed. And what is even more important, shadow which is still covering our reality. And we don't know what eventually it from this darkness or semi darkness will emerge. Well, thanks to Professor Bobbitt and our chairman, my task is very simplified. The same way as European philosophy, according to Whitehead is a collection of footnotes to Plato. My presentation will be collection of footnotes to. To Kalhoun and Bobbitt. The issue was already introduced. Well, indeed I suggest that 1913 in Europe was a culmination or if you prefer, last act and perhaps and hopefully beginning of the academy of the 300 years long process started in 1648 in Minster and Osnabruck in Germany. And a process which consisted in the entrenchment, establishment entrenchment of the principle of. Of territorial sovereignty. Territorial sovereignty which became about the basis of organization of human cohabitation on earth. Territorial sovereignty promoted, invented all European continent and then transported to the rest of the world through the long process of colonialism, imperialism, but remaining basically European invention only now being put in action in other continents, in some of them anyway, in some regions of the world. In fact, we need to go even beyond 1648-1555, wherein Augsburg also in Germany, gathered representatives of the ruling dynasties of Europe in order to find a formula, magic formula, which will put the end to religious wars devastating European continent. Particularly its western and central part. And they invented, in 1555, they invented the famous formula quius regio eius religio, which in very loose, but I think correct translation to English means whoever rules, decides in which God his subject should believe. That is what happened in 1555. There was a hope that we put the end to bloodletting and the serious of epidemic diseases which devastated European population. Allegedly German speaking part of Europe lost 50% of its population during that. And ladies and gentlemen, if you read the documents of time, they are strikingly similar to what could be written by the residents of Europe. And not only Europe, because I repeat that war was waged on the planetary stage, written in between 39, 1939 and 45. I will quote you just one such document written by. It's taken from a family Bible in a Swabian village. We live like animals, eating bark and grass. No one could have imagined that anything like this would happen to us. Many people say that there is no God. Well, it could be written between 39 and 45, very similar events, but at the same time as in our own experience during our life, at least my life. You are younger than me, but I remember it. I think that the first appeal to humanism didn't work properly. And as you know, it took some. One more war, one more war in order really to think and to be accepted as something inevitable which needs to be put into operation. And such a war in that time happened. It's strikingly similar. 300 years ago, almost to the dot between 1617 and 1648, very little different. Enumeration of the years, there was another 30 years long great war of European nations. And only after that, in Munster and Osnabruck and other delegations from other delegations from ruling dynasties of Europe got together and decided to do something to impose the formula quius regio es religio or everybody else. History repeats itself. But it's not just a repetition. It is. One is the cause, the other is the effect. The effect came to life to us and still is coming to light because we don't pay enough attention to it. I think now, 300 years later, And I repeat what collects them these two events, it is the beginning and the culmination point, culmination point of the long process of entrenchment of the principle of. Total sovereignty. Well, both worlds were devastating. One under the banners of religion, different religions. The other they waged under the banners of the nation's right to, well, establish their superiority and fight back and put in their right place. The smaller and the weaker nations. Nationalism could be of different kinds. In more Recent times, in 19th century, there were two fighting each other. Conceptions of patriotism nationalism, one connected with the name of Treitske in Germany. That was the fight for survival. Defeaters survive, the unfit have to give room to them. Question of Lebensraum, room for expansion, and so on. The other was the version of Macchini Macini, proclaiming the emergence of the modern nations and modern national identification, connected that with the great chance of humans to replace. To replace the mutual warfare, mutual suspicion, mutual intolerance, with some sort of a rational negotiation. And the idea was that in the world divided between nation, that really may happen. Everybody will be a winner. There will be no winners, undefeated. Everybody will be better off simply by peaceful cooperation, economic exchange with its neighbors and also taking some care of their interests, mutual care of the interest of the other side as a principle, theoretical principle, from there to the political and diplomatic practice. Of course, as we all know, there's a very, very great distance. But nevertheless, this accent, let us not forget it was present also in the negotiation which led eventually to the Westphalian settlement in Winster and Osnabruck. There were two different interpretations of it. For example, Cardinal Mazarin in France and Courbet, the minister of the French government, thought that the river Rhine should be not so much a border between two autonomous and mutually disliking countries, but it could be a corridor corridor uniting them. Well, there's nothing completely senseless in it, because as you know, every border, whether you like it or not, plays two different roles. It separates, but also organizes border traffic. They are leaking from one side to the other. There is a point of contact and point of separation at the same time. However, in the course of time, I think that Raichka concept roughly emerged victorious. And the interpretation of kuyusragyo ayushradikyo has been generally accepted, generally accepted as meaning you take care of yourself, we will take care of ourselves, and otherwise we have nothing more common. Keep your place, which is according to you, and don't try to go beyond it. The idea is still with us. The idea is still with us. Woodrow Wilson was frequently and rightly mentioned in this morning debate, but what he actually introduced, as you know, was the League of Nation. And Article 10 of League of Nation, League Covenant, so called, says that it is bound to preserve as against external aggression, the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all member states. And if you try, if you start to castigate Woodrow Wilson for not presaging the outcomes of such an idea then remember as well that when the Convention gathered after the Second World War, when the results were already clear cut in the Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, our fathers put the exacerbated the prohibition made by Wilson saying that it is prohibited to use force to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state. Now it flies in the face of the actual situation here, our situation. A situation which seems to be by all means irreversible. We can't go back from the fact that we are all now globally interdependent. Interdependent nation state, as Benjamin Barber recently reminded us, were made in order to service the case of autonomy and independence and better or worse, but they acquitted themselves from that job for a better or worse purpose. However, they are singularly incapable of servicing the condition of interdependence in which we are all now. They didn't elaborate and they did much to prevent elaborating the means, the tools, the institutional instruments which can successfully deal with. With inter human relationship, interstate relationship, international relationship, other conditions of irrevocable mutual dependency. The problem of trans territorial sovereignty is still with us. We are still acting under the jurisdiction of United nations with its statutes which say what I moment ago told you about. It is true that after the end of Second World War there were people just like Bazini, like Turbo and Mazarion, which derived different conclusions from the experience of the Second World War. Jacques Baritain, for example, in 1921, 1951, sorry, recommended to efface the word sovereignty from our vocabulary. Certainly very dangerous concept, very dangerous concept leading to unpredictable consequences. Sometimes and very often gory consequences, devastating consequences. And we should forget about this concept which faced the historical exam. Bernard Jouvenel six years later 57. Well, he was not so outworn, so resolutely against the idea of national sovereignty. But he pointed out that according to the ruler the right to define. To define the moral principles, the ethical code of society is completely unjustified as it cannot be cleaned of the danger, potential danger it contains. Therefore, he was considering the ways in which the question of morality should be removed from the jurisdiction of the state or these political institutions. And consider the need, the need of the opinion of the citizenship, opinion of the citizenship as the only legitimate source of. Of the purposes which I represent, which representatives elected by them pursue. Now, as you very well know, the history took different direction. Citizen was either replaced by consumer or. Or rather identify. Re. Identify reinterpreted as a consumer of state services, not as A producer, not as an author, not as an actor. Actor is a combination of two nouns, actor and author, both author and actor. The person responsible for shaping up the mindset, the attitude, the worldview of the nation, the shape of the roles promulgated by elected representatives, and who is at the same time responsible for putting these principles into life, into practice. Well, there were two voices, not very many. And I must make a public admission, public confession. I am at the end, far end of my life at the moment. Probably it won't change already. The mystery which awaited me all the time and still awaits me and probably I am dead, is how to make words flesh, how to establish the bridge, the connection, the transformation, the recycling apparatus which transforms good idea in good deeds. At least in this case it was Jacques Barrettin, Bernard de Juvel. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. We are still in the grips of the principle of territorial sovereignty. In the situation in which neither capitals, neither, nor finances, nor ideas, information, economy, trade, international terrorism, arms trade and so on, are no longer territorial, they are global. And we are completely hopeless and hapless because we haven't developed a single really well acting institution which can cope with this new situation. I like to use this concept instead of interregnum. Interregnum means that all the ways of doing things properly don't work any longer properly, but the new ways likely to deal properly with these issues are still on the drawing board or in experimental laboratory. But that's actually the situation we are. We haven't done away with the inheritance of the past. Our objections to it are normally very poorly or very wobbly ground settled, and therefore we are not clear about the future of our cohabitation on earth. I like to bring to your attention, recently published by Michael Ignatieff, article in the Republic. What he says, I like to quote exactly from him. The article is kind, is called Sovereign Equality and Moral Disagreement. And what she says there is that sovereignty is back. Our debates about the global economic crisis keep returning to the problem of sovereign debt and the need for sovereign guarantees to reassure the market. We keep hoping that somewhere, Sometime in the downward spiral of deleveraging and disillusion, there will be an authority, a sovereign, to take charge and put an end to our anxiety. This longing for an authority after years of market follies runs very deep. And he's right. Well, you know, Sigmund Freud long ago pointed out that the whole civilizing process is the matter of choosing, of trading off, exchanging being between two equally essential values of humanity which can't be disposed of we need both of them, namely security and freedom. It seems to be. I suggest it's just a very vague idea, but it seems to be that if you remember Hegelian triad, the thesis antithesis and synthesis, we are now looking for a synthesis between two different things. First of all, there was a concern, above all concern with the issue of security being secured against the foreign invaders, against people who want to introduce their ideas with a sword in their hand, devastating worlds we swallow, and so on at the expense of the freedom of the subject. Because you are from now on prohibited to have your own ideas about God and with further historical development, also other ideas, not only about God. That's why I said that the period between the first and the Second World War was the period of the extreme extension of this priority of security over freedom. Now, after that we had a period of fight for freedom, individual freedom, freedom of self assertion, freedom of self identification. Identities were proclaimed to be for grabs, but at a price. At a price of producing what I call individual de jure, but not individuals, de facto people charged with full responsibility for their fate, but not given military means to actually influence that faith, to make it more akin to their own preferences, their own wishes. The result is deregulation. Deregulation which goes on for several dozens of years. We deregulate everything in the same way as the state, which was called when I was a student, administrative bureaucratic state, state bureaucratic state and similar names. Now deregulated, which means it got rid of most of its function, which was originally expected to perform. Now we are. That was the antithesis, according to Hegel. Hegel would say antithesis to the first thesis, which was that the security is above everything else and everything else is worthy of being sacrificed for its in its name. Then there was antithesis, when every definition from outside every setting of constraints, of regulations and so on was considered as an act of oppression. Now we are looking for synthesis. Synthesis which will take the good part of each one of Hades and antithesis, but cleaning them at the same time from parts which are unprepossessing and undesirable. Whether it is possible or not. That's a very big question on which I frankly admit I have no good answer. No good answer. Because, well, to start with, future doesn't exist. And when it starts existing, it is already present, not future. So predicting the future is, I think, an idol phenomenon. And I look back on my own life, it looks like a cemetery of prediction. So the same situation today. Same situation today. What Michael Ignatieff says and why I Quote to you, I will make another quotation. The paradoxical conclusion, he says, of all of this is that we want individuals to face less oppression, violence and fear in this world. If you want it, we should wish for stronger sovereigns, not weaker ones. By stronger, he says, I mean more capable, more responsible and more legitimate. If you want human rights to be anchored in the world, we cannot want their enforcement to depend on international institutions or NGOs. We want them anchored in the actual practice of sovereign states. It sounds very beautiful, really. He adds to that, if you want markets that deliver jobs, income, security to the people of the world, we want sovereigns with the coercive capacity to force market actors to take responsibility for their risks. As I say, there's nothing adds, nothing to add, nothing to detract from that. It's a beautiful idea. With one, however, reservations that the fight between two values, security and freedom, goes on probably since the beginning of humanity on earth. Problem is that two values are equally indispensable. You can't imagine, you can't describe a decent, satisfying life without both of them present. But on the other hand, you can't get more security without sacrificing more of your freedom. And you can get more freedom without sacrificing much of your security. That is the somber truth. There is no philosophy we can actually deny the reality of this dilemma. So we are, I think, standing in front of a choice, choice between, not a new choice, but the same choice as our predecessors, our ancestors confronted only under different untried, yet unexplored yet circumstances of. Of the global interdependence. Well, it is the choice between. Well, not choice. Sorry, you can choose here, but it is the attempt to make. To strike a right balance between the two values. Right balance. So that what results is an endurable, acceptable life, life not exceedingly miserable. It is the fight, I repeat, between security and freedom, or to recall unduly forgotten opposition suggested by Victor Turner, the great anthropologist of 20th century, between structure and antistructure, which are both present in every aggregate of humans in every society, in every community, which are in a hush ribbed relationship. They attract each other, they need each other. At the same time they are opposing each other and make the life of the other more difficult than otherwise it would be. So I leave you, ladies and gentlemen. I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Chairman, perhaps you hope that I bring some answers. But I'm bringing all the questions.
- [35:06]
A
I'm tempted to reduce the usual formula, reverse the usual formula and ask the audience if you have answers, since we Received questions, but we will accept either questions or answers at this point. Bernard.
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C
Thank you very much. That was sort of inspiring, partly because you inspired me that it is very difficult to have an answer. And I like to be confirmed in my pessimism. I'm not sure whether you're pessimistic. I usually am. But you say it in the end, you say that what it is, is that we have to strike the right balance. We have to make a choice, we have to strike the right balance. That is what we have to do in the end. And it seems to me that this is the kind of relationship which we possibly have with our partners as well, and possibly you have with yours and possibly have had with yours in the past. What you usually have to sort this out is a marriage guidance service. Now, are we actually looking for some kind of international marriage guidance service? Because nevertheless, we are still requiring some kind of accepted institution which helps us to. To negotiate this balance. We're still requiring something outside us to assist us in this process of coming together. And so I'm not sure that we get the answer because it then becomes a recursive problem.
- [36:51]
B
Well, I would say that Shreya. Yes, I would aware that the fact that something is very difficult or even impossible is not an argument for not trying. Well, even if impossible, but it is imperative, it is absolutely necessary. You have to go trying. And that's actually what our European Union does. I think that Europe has a new world role to play. The new role of avant garde, probably much more prepossessing, much more pleasant than the avant garde role which Europe played in 19th century or 20th century. Namely, we are experimenting in Europe in such a way which can reconcile the apparently opposite tasks. Namely, on the one hand, the more security for national identity, the more well established identity, separate, autonomous identity of nation. On the other hand. Well, on the other hand, acting for the common good of something of bigger totality or bigger totality. Mind you, it's not the first time we go. We live in. In such a situation. In 19th century, at beginning of 19th century, beginning of revolution, it was very much the same story. Until then, in ancien regime, the power was limited to locality. And then during 19th century, in an uphill struggle, very, very severe struggle, the newly emerging, emerging totality, namely nation or state, tried to establish itself on the top of went very far. It resulted in good deal of centralization, of condensation of power on the top of society, far away from the life ordinary people. It still is the fact people more and more protest against feeling that political elite in their own nation speaks different language than the language which could express their real problems. So there is a gap between the two. But I think that on the other hand we have at the moment voices, for example, like Benjamin Barber. I wonder whether, you know, his last book, which is the question sentence is a question mark if the mayors ruled the world. What he's saying is that he goes all the hog, so to speak. He said that nation states are bankrupt. Nation states fulfill their historical role and you can't start building planetary cohabitation from institutions of nation state because they are made in order to prevent it. Precisely prevented. Benjamin Barber places his hopes very controversial issue. But isn't our condition controversial? It is. So his controversial idea is that the starting point, and probably also the performer of the role will be cities. Already, for the first time in history of human humanity, majority of humans live in cities. So it is not a question of minority dictating majority. And most of them who live in cities, live in very big cities. According to Benjamin Barber, cities can communicate with each other without constraints suffered by the elected government of territorial states. And well, he even speaks there about world Parliament of mayors, World Parliament of mayors which will not be making laws, but which will share experiences. Because the problems of living in big cities are the same in Kinshasa, in London, that were all facing the same type of ideas. And if one city finds solution to them, everybody else will follow on their own will and be very grateful on the way that is picture of resolving the issue. But you will probably admit you agree that not just Benjamin Barber, but most of us desperately looks now for alternative ways of doing things because we stopped believing that the government will deliver. Sorry.
- [42:23]
C
I think I like the idea of the experimentation. And I actually think it is rather interesting that we sit here in London School of Economics and talk about this, because this is an experimental and it is an iteration iterative process finding solutions, trying to learn things. It is an iterative process and that is perhaps what this organization is.
- [42:47]
B
Well, I believe I'm not playing the game of predictions for reasons briefly explained, but one prediction I can make that the rest of 21st century will be, willy nilly, whether you like it or not, dedicated to desperate experimental attempts to remarry power and politics. Because now they are living in divorce. Who has power is free from political control somewhere there in heaven, in cyberspace and so on. And on the other hand, the politics suffers constant deficit of power. And that's why it drops one after another its function and doesn't deliver. Not because Necessarily because politicians are corrupt or stupid, but simply they don't have power to do it.
- [43:49]
A
Let me get the conversation back out to the rest of the room. There was a question on the same side over there. Who had a hand? Somebody had a hand.
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B
No.
- [44:02]
A
All right, I'm going to take the opportunity to tell you why I think Benjamin Barber's wrong. It doesn't actually stem from World War I. So my idea that we'd get back to the theme of the conference isn't the point, but and to make it a short story rather than a long one, because I have a long list of reasons why I think he's wrong. Ben's analysis never considers the extent to which the context for what mayors can do is in fact provided by states. States. So imagining the freedom, the relative innovation, the high creativity of cities without considering some of the things cities don't have to do because states do them is I think, distorting of the picture. So they don't have to do the financial work that states do, military defense work that states do, some of the other things. So while being very interested in cities and very interested in creative solution finding, I think it's a sort of distorting idea to try to imagine the nation state out of the picture in a sense.
- [45:30]
B
Because I am convinced that I am unconvinced. I don't want a word of I am Islamic mind about it. Not just the question of Benjamin Barb, but take Jeremy Rivky, who is IBN More on the utopian side and says that already under this ice cold surface of bureaucratized politics there is a gathering wave. Gathering wave of what we call collaborative, collaborative commerce. Revolution is not his utopia. Such revolution, morphological revolution on the level, not on the totality of organism. Not taking Winter palace in Petrograd or sorry, St. Petersburg, but at the level of grass. It's already happening, he says. Well, I would laugh at it if not that. I remember my student years in London School of Economics.
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A
I've heard of it.
- [46:41]
B
Yes, quite well. I was preparing my habitation dissertation and it was on the topic of sociological analysis of the history of labor movement in Britain. And for that purpose I had to read archives of 19th century papers which I found in your library and which paper to take as if not Manchester Guardian. Manchester was the heart of industrial revolution in Britain, as you know. Much to my astonishment, I found plenty of information about one factory which was burned, one factory which was built, this sort of thing. But the idea of industrial revolution appeared for the first time in 1875 when it was almost over at the very end. Retrospective people really accepted that what they went through was not building of a factory or building a factory or a factory going bankrupt or a factory expanding, but it was industrial revolution. So one should be very careful with making far fetched, far reaching generalizations when being an insider or unfinished of unfinished process. Sure.
- [48:13]
A
I think this is uncontestably true. Let me see if I can bring it back to World War I and ask you another question if I'm not hugging the floor. The idea of an industrial revolution was of course modeled on the idea of a political revolution and the French Revolution in particular, when it was introduced and introduced in a period at the end of the 19th century that continues on into the founding of the LSE. And Beatrice Webb's research for the 1909 Poor Law Commission, which is what yielded some of those archives here that you were able to work on. And I wonder if in the story of World War I, the story of the very development of state apparatus of not welfare states, but states that took on new kinds of responsibilities for the lives of their citizens, whether it's from Bismarckian Prussia or from other examples of this figures, that is we have a war which mobilizes citizens in different ways than previous wars for the most part. Is this like linked to the development of state power, engaging in a wider way in society than older notions of sovereigns and their engagement in society might have underwritten?
- [49:40]
B
Oh yeah, that's the difference between. That's the difference between that time and our present time. A fortunate difference really because the intellectual mindset at that time was really, as you just said, considering the ultimate taste of manhood, so to speak, war as a way to clean up society, as a way to bring more vigor, more lively, making the world more lively, more livable and also more attractive. Hannah, and except in member wrote about that she actually cataloged all sorts of statements made by other voice, tremendously intelligent and tremendously humane people who really believe that in order to make humans more human, you need a war. Among them there was Thomas Mann, whom the revere, and rightly so, as one of the great humanists, greatest humanists in history. So that is a problem I don't discern. Perhaps I don't read enough the similar outspoken, outspoken attitudes. Outspoken because mind you, if you take, if you pay attention not just the statements by great writers and philosophers, but if you take also the food with which we all are fed daily from early morning till late night by television, all this plays shown there, the theme of television dramas most profitable with Highest ratings but the most profitable part of mass media work, then you see that the situation didn't change that much. Take for example, the Big Brother or take the weakest league. Weakest league. What they are about, they are about the rehearsal, dress rehearsal of the cobbler ritual of exclusion, kicking people out. The lesson which flows from television screens in this case is very, very clear cut that after every week, week by week, someone must be excluded. That's a law of nature. There's no avoidance, that's a rule. So under these circumstances, what is your rational behavior about? Well, to make sure that he will be excluded, not me. But the exclusion is a law of nature, unavoidable, and it is just a fight of survival. Now, this sort of culture, culture is soaked with this sort of understanding of the word. It is either me or him. It is not far away from either us or them. So, you know, everything may follow indeed. John Horn.
- [53:12]
D
Thank you so much for your address. Can I just ask a question which does come back to the First World War and also to the connection that you drew between the two world wars in particular?
- [53:24]
A
Yes, I'll repeat for you, I had.
- [53:28]
B
A feeling.
- [53:31]
D
The question is about the relationship of the First World War and the Second World War and the definition of rights as a universal entity rather than something which is located in the national sovereignty that you were talking about. And my point is that while clearly you're right about the continued importance of national sovereignty, is it not the case that after the Second World War, with the UN Charter of Human Rights, the European Council, that we have a set of international rights which do not depend on the nation? And the problem of course with the League of Nations was that minority rights depended upon the nation. Is that a positive advance? Is the difficulty that we don't have an adequate instrument for implementing it? Or is there something wrong with the idea itself?
- [54:21]
B
It doesn't work properly. We are very, very. We have very poor experience in preventing without record. We have very negative experience in record in preventing the outbreak of wars. Please remember that only after Second World War the Woodrow Wilson idea of third determination reached Africa and Asia and faraway places. It was first tested and put into operation by U.S. europeans. And then like everything else in the colonial system, imperial system, travel travels all around the world. Now the same drama which Europe suffered on its own initiative in its own home in 1920th century are played elsewhere. Therefore we are somehow less concerned with that. But if you take a global view, situation is far from being pre processing. I don't remember exactly now where I who made this calculation, but I read a rather well documented study which shows that at the moment when we are sitting here in this room, there are 66 wars going on around the world. The only point is that about most of them we never hear, never hear. It's not interesting. Not increasing the selling power of newspapers, certainly not something which viewers of television would like to hear about. So it is the question of different perspective. What we were doing 100 years ago now moved far away. Probably in 100 years or so, if globalization goes on, if the balance of power in the world keeps changing like it is changing now, historians then would probably change the periodization on our history and say that nothing ended with the Second World War. It was just one stage of something going on global scale.
- [56:56]
A
Okay, any other questions or answers? All right, Sigmund, thank you. And everyone, thank you. It's been a very interesting day.