The essay first highlights certain basic features of the attitude of the European immigrant countries towards the new (migrant) ethnic minorities in their midst, the attitude that at the same time is indicative of the existence of various forms of ethnicity in the development of the European nation-states. The differences in the individual "national responses" regarding the existence of new ethnic communities reflect these differences in the understanding of the ethnic/national identity of individual countries. The author then goes on to deal more specifically with the presence of the Muslim population in West-European countries, the population that - perhaps more than any other group of "aliens" - is torn between the Westeuropean practice of ethnic and increasingly cultural discrimination, and a belief in liberalism and pluralism. ln connection with this, the role of Islam and the "Muslim" identity in the Muslim communities in West- European countries is analyzed. (SOI : PM: S. 108)
In numerous European countries, majority nations and national minorities that live in them, aware of the complexity of relations between majorities and minorities in the ethnic sense, and the ensuing dangers, have engaged in mutual accommodation and compromise, thus fashioning certain models of coexistence. Constitutional provisions of European states prove that there is no single model of the recognition of the rights of national minorities. Still, European states may be divided into three groups. The first group includes those states which advocate the constitutional principle of the integral nation and refuse to recognize any other ethnic origin of their citizens. The second group comprises those states which do not divide its ethnic communities into majority and minority ones, which practically means that they do not recognize the category of the national minority; they protect the ethnic identity of their members by dividing their equal citizens by the languages they use. The third group includes those countries which recognize the notion of the majority nation and national minorities. This group has elaborated the provisions regarding the rights of national minorities, particularly the protection of their national, cultural, religious and linguistic identity, with major differences in the scope of individual rights. (SOI : PM: S. 84)
This article firstly focuses on the initial recognition, in the final period of the second Yugoslavia, of the existence of social inequalities, as the first serious symptoms of abandoning the ideology of social equality and socialism as a whole. Moreover, the nationalist mobilization was used as a lever for restoration of capitalism as a typical class society. After that it briefly outlines two post-war periods of structuring social opportunities in societies in the West, and partly also in the East. The first period is designated primarily by egalitarian tendencies, which is manifest in increased popularity of critical and radical trends in social sciences. The second period, which still lasts, is quite opposite in orientation, and this is, in turn, manifest in ever greater relevance of social Darwinism as a discursive foundation of a series of sciences. The next, and largest, part of the article is dedicated to an attempt at explaining the permanence of social inequalities, and the author stresses the inexhaustible character of Rousseau's question regarding the origin of social inequalities. In the present-day quest for an answer to that question, certain similarities are noticeable between (neo) evolutionism and (neo) Marxism. Although Marx himself stressed the correspondence of his conception of class struggles in history with Darwin's conception of struggles for survival in nature, but also took into account the differences (between natural evolution and human history), the conclusion on the identity of their conceptions imposes itself through observations about the constant defeat of the proletariat in age-long struggles against the oppressors, which continue to this very day in the epoch of neo-liberal global capitalism. Reflecting on possibilities of a generally different outcome in the struggles for a more just society, the author finds that there are two interrelated prerequisites to their existence. The first has to do with connecting the theory and practice of liberalism and socialism with the aim of establishing a balance between the mechanisms of individual freedom and competition on the one hand, and social sensitivity or solidarity on the other. The second prerequisite is the construction of a world democratic state. Its political interest and scope of governing would neutralize the key concept (and self-reproduction mechanism) of social Darwinism -- inclusive fitness. Quite simply, the latter means to favour "one's own" group while humiliating or excluding the other. In a society with a globally ruling government, the division between "one's own" and "somebody else's" parts of the world -- the boundaries of which are nowadays all too often shifted to and fro as a consequence of the erratic character of expansion and contraction of the market and the breaking out of conflagrations of war, producing a permanent Hobbesian "state of nature" -- would make way for wisdom of governing and for work of all for the benefit of all. Adapted from the source document.
