Science & Tech Quote by Jacques Delors

Delors is selling Europe as pragmatism with a conscience: let markets do the calculating, let politics do the cushioning. The line about “no computer in the world” is a deliberate techno-metaphor from a pre-Internet era when “information processing” sounded like hard science, not ideology. It borrows authority from systems engineering to smuggle in a very specific claim: that price signals are not just useful but epistemically superior to planning. In one stroke, he turns an old argument about capitalism versus central control into an argument about bandwidth.

The subtext is less laissez-faire than it first appears. Delors, the architect of much of the EU’s late-20th-century integration, isn’t praising markets to abandon the social model; he’s building a firewall for it. By grounding Europe’s economic legitimacy in market coordination, he reassures skeptics that the European project won’t drift back toward state socialism. That reassurance mattered in the shadow of the Cold War’s endgame, when “planning” was becoming synonymous with stagnation and political repression. His phrasing also flatters a cross-border Europe: markets are naturally transnational, while bureaucracies are stubbornly national.

The cleverness is in what he leaves unsaid. If the market is the best “computer,” then policy becomes a matter of setting parameters, not picking winners. That frames redistribution, labor protections, and public services as compatible add-ons rather than obstacles. It’s a rhetorical judo move: accept the market’s supremacy in allocating information so you can argue, with less resistance, for Europe’s distinctive promise - not to replace capitalism, but to civilize it.