Social Europe

  • EU Forward Project
  • YouTube
  • Podcast
  • Books
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Why The Anti-National Revolution Is Coming

Robert Shiller 22nd September 2016

Robert Shiller

Robert J Shiller

For the past several centuries, the world has experienced a sequence of intellectual revolutions against oppression of one sort or another. These revolutions operate in the minds of humans and are spread – eventually to most of the world – not by war (which tends to involve multiple causes), but by language and communications technology. Ultimately, the ideas they advance – unlike the causes of war – become noncontroversial.

I think the next such revolution, likely sometime in the twenty-first century, will challenge the economic implications of the nation-state. It will focus on the injustice that follows from the fact that, entirely by chance, some are born in poor countries and others in rich countries. As more people work for multinational firms and meet and get to know more people from other countries, our sense of justice is being affected.

This is hardly unprecedented. In his book 1688: The First Modern Revolution, the historian Steven Pincus argues convincingly that the so-called “Glorious Revolution” is best thought of not in terms of the overthrow of a Catholic king by parliamentarians in England, but as the beginning of a worldwide revolution in justice. Don’t think battlefields. Think, instead, of the coffeehouses with free, shared newspapers that became popular around then – places for complex communications. Even as it happened, the Glorious Revolution clearly marked the beginning of a worldwide appreciation of the legitimacy of groups that do not share the “ideological unity” demanded by a strong king.

Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense, a huge bestseller in the Thirteen Colonies when it was published in January 1776, marked another such revolution, which was not identical with the Revolutionary War against Britain that began later that year (and had multiple causes). The reach of Common Sense is immeasurable, because it wasn’t just sold but was also read aloud at churches and meetings. The idea that hereditary monarchs were somehow spiritually superior to the rest of us was decisively rejected. Most of the world today, including Britain, agrees.

The same could be said of the gradual abolition of slavery, which was mostly achieved not by war, but by an emerging popular recognition of its cruelty and injustice. The 1848 uprisings around Europe were substantially a protest against voting laws that limited voting to only a minority of men: property holders or aristocrats. Women’s suffrage followed soon after. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we have seen civil rights extended to racial and sexual minorities.

All of the past “justice revolutions” have stemmed from improved communications. Oppression thrives on distance, on not actually meeting or seeing the oppressed.

The next revolution will not abolish the consequences of place of birth, but the privileges of nationhood will be tempered. While the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment around the world today seems to point in the opposite direction, the sense of injustice will be amplified as communications continue to grow. Ultimately, recognition of wrong will wreak big changes.

For now, this recognition still faces strong competition from patriotic impulses, rooted in a social contract among nationals who have paid taxes over the years or performed military service to build or defend what they saw as exclusively theirs. Allowing unlimited immigration would seem to violate this contract.

But the most important steps to address birthplace injustice probably will not target immigration. Instead, they will focus on fostering economic freedom.

In 1948, Paul A. Samuelson’s “factor-price equalization theorem” lucidly showed that under conditions of unlimited free trade without transportation costs (and with other idealized assumptions), market forces would equalize the prices of all factors of production, including the wage rate for any standardized kind of labor, around the world. In a perfect world, people don’t have to move to another country to get a higher wage. Ultimately, they need only be able to participate in producing output that is sold internationally.

As technology reduces the cost of transportation and communications to near the vanishing point, achieving this equalization is increasingly feasible. But getting there requires removing old barriers and preventing the erection of new ones.

Recent free-trade agreements under discussion, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, have suffered setbacks as interest groups attempt to bend them to their own aims. But, ultimately, we need – and probably will get – even better such agreements.

To achieve factor-price equalization, people need a stable base for a real lifetime career connected to a country in which they do not physically reside. We also need to protect the losers to foreign trade in our existing nation-states. Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) traces its roots in the United States back to 1974. Canada experimented in 1995 with an Earnings Supplement Project. The European Globalization Adjustment Fund, started in 2006, has a tiny annual budget of €150 million ($168.6 million). US President Barack Obama has proposed to expand the TAA program. But, so far, this has meant little more than experiments or proposals.

Ultimately, the next revolution will likely stem from daily interactions on computer monitors with foreigners whom we can see are intelligent, decent people – people who happen, through no choice of their own, to be living in poverty. This should lead to better trade agreements, which presuppose the eventual development of orders of magnitude more social insurance to protect people within a country during the transition to a more just global economy.

Copyright: Project Syndicate 2016 The Coming Anti-National Revolution

Robert Shiller

Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University and Chief Economist at MacroMarkets LLC, is co-author, with George Akerlof, of Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism.

Harvard University Press Advertisement

Social Europe Ad - Promoting European social policies

We need your help.

Support Social Europe for less than €5 per month and help keep our content freely accessible to everyone. Your support empowers independent publishing and drives the conversations that matter. Thank you very much!

Social Europe Membership

Click here to become a member

Most Recent Articles

u421983462 041df6feef0a 3 Universities Under Siege: A Global Reckoning for Higher EducationManuel Muñiz
u4219836ab582 af42 4743 a271 a4f423d1926d 0 How Trade Unions Can Champion Solidarity in Europe’s Migration DebateNeva Löw
u421983467298feb62884 0 The Weak Strongman: How Trump’s Presidency Emboldens America’s EnemiesTimothy Snyder
u4201 af20 c4807b0e1724 3 Ballots or Bans: How Should Democracies Respond to Extremists?Katharina Pistor
u421983c824 240f 477c bc69 697bf625cb93 1 Mind the Gap: Can Europe Afford Its Green and Digital Future?Viktor Skyrman

Most Popular Articles

u4219834647f 0894ae7ca865 3 Europe’s Businesses Face a Quiet Takeover as US Investors CapitaliseTej Gonza and Timothée Duverger
u4219834674930082ba55 0 Portugal’s Political Earthquake: Centrist Grip Crumbles, Right AscendsEmanuel Ferreira
u421983467e58be8 81f2 4326 80f2 d452cfe9031e 1 “The Universities Are the Enemy”: Why Europe Must Act NowBartosz Rydliński
u42198346761805ea24 2 Trump’s ‘Golden Era’ Fades as European Allies Face Harsh New RealityFerenc Németh and Peter Kreko
startupsgovernment e1744799195663 Governments Are Not StartupsMariana Mazzucato
u421986cbef 2549 4e0c b6c4 b5bb01362b52 0 American SuicideJoschka Fischer
u42198346769d6584 1580 41fe 8c7d 3b9398aa5ec5 1 Why Trump Keeps Winning: The Truth No One AdmitsBo Rothstein
u421983467 a350a084 b098 4970 9834 739dc11b73a5 1 America Is About to Become the Next BrexitJ Bradford DeLong
u4219834676ba1b3a2 b4e1 4c79 960b 6770c60533fa 1 The End of the ‘West’ and Europe’s FutureGuillaume Duval
u421983462e c2ec 4dd2 90a4 b9cfb6856465 1 The Transatlantic Alliance Is Dying—What Comes Next for Europe?Frank Hoffer

S&D Group in the European Parliament advertisement

Cohesion Policy

S&D Position Paper on Cohesion Policy post-2027: a resilient future for European territorial equity”,

Cohesion Policy aims to promote harmonious development and reduce economic, social and territorial disparities between the regions of the Union, and the backwardness of the least favoured regions with a particular focus on rural areas, areas affected by industrial transition and regions suffering from severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps, such as outermost regions, regions with very low population density, islands, cross-border and mountain regions.

READ THE FULL POSITION PAPER HERE

ETUI advertisement

HESA Magazine Cover

What kind of impact is artificial intelligence (AI) having, or likely to have, on the way we work and the conditions we work under? Discover the latest issue of HesaMag, the ETUI’s health and safety magazine, which considers this question from many angles.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Ageing workforce
How are minimum wage levels changing in Europe?

In a new Eurofound Talks podcast episode, host Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound expert Carlos Vacas Soriano about recent changes to minimum wages in Europe and their implications.

Listeners can delve into the intricacies of Europe's minimum wage dynamics and the driving factors behind these shifts. The conversation also highlights the broader effects of minimum wage changes on income inequality and gender equality.

Listen to the episode for free. Also make sure to subscribe to Eurofound Talks so you don’t miss an episode!

LISTEN NOW

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Spring Issues

The Spring issue of The Progressive Post is out!


Since President Trump’s inauguration, the US – hitherto the cornerstone of Western security – is destabilising the world order it helped to build. The US security umbrella is apparently closing on Europe, Ukraine finds itself less and less protected, and the traditional defender of free trade is now shutting the door to foreign goods, sending stock markets on a rollercoaster. How will the European Union respond to this dramatic landscape change? .


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss European defence strategies, assess how the US president's recent announcements will impact international trade and explore the risks  and opportunities that algorithms pose for workers.


READ THE MAGAZINE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Social Europe

Our Mission

Team

Article Submission

Advertisements

Membership

Social Europe Archives

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Miscellaneous

RSS Feed

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641