The place of Europe in the global political economy

This is an ugly paper. It does not cover a well-defined problem area and it ignores all conventional rules usually prescribed to make a text an easy reading. The only excuse for this is that its topic - Europe - is in an ugly situation too. In most papers the goal to be reached is kept at a modest level, if it is mentioned at all. The goal of this paper is rather all-embracing: It starts by distinguishing the two old enemies: the racist vision of society and the humanist vision of society. So, before bringing Europe into focus the paper unveils its ground colour - humanism. To determine this starting point the text already has to stretch out into many transdisciplinary directions. Then Europe’s immediate past - which events brought it into its current situation? - is interpreted. The interpretation does not pretend that it can disentangle facts from speculative issues - no interpretation can, another ugly fact. But it tries hard to make sense. The following largest part of the paper works with metaphors to bring home an idea of the dangers Europeans are currently confronted with: Skylla and Charybdis. A wide variety of themes are touched upon. In the last chapter the unavoidable feeling that the free-wheeling arguments and metaphors left too many open ends is to be heeled by an explicit return to pragmatics: What should we do? And this - finally - is the necessary root of the ugliness of this paper: It was written years before the dust of theoretical and pragmatic battles was set to let a better hindsight get ground.