Cultural and Social Modernization in Central and Eastern Europe: Resurrecting Civil Society Radim Marada Sociology 760 Coutse description: The course introduces students into the topic of transition from one type of political and economic regime (state sociahsm) to another (parliamentary democracy and capitalism). It does so within the context of a theory of social and cultural modernization, while specifically focusing on the modernization (de-modernization, re-modernization) processes in the sphere of public life and civic engagement. The concepts of civil society and generational conflict are central to our discussion, and the perspective of analysis is sociological. The course concentrates upon everyday cultural forms, social interactions and experience, rather than institutions and political ideas. One of the goals of the course is to inform students about the character of everyday life during state sociahsm, and thus cultivate their historical sensitivity, i.e., sensitivity to the peculiar interplay between institutional discontinuities and social or cultural continuities. In this respect, the generational perspective of analysis will be particularly useful. Examples will be taken from the Central European national contexts (Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, East Germany), and tentative comparisons will be made in order to stress some differences among these countries and their recent social histories. Requirements for classes: Knowledge of assigned texts, position paper on each assigned text, active participation in class discussions. to' Final exam: Essay on a chosen topic (must be consulted with the teacher), 1.400 to 1.600 words; will be assigned individually on or before April 24, deadline for submission is May 17 (detailed information will be given to students during the semester, but not later than on April 24). Performance in classes (seminar discussions) will be taken into account for the final grade-Time and location The classes will take place once in a fortnight on Tuesdays from 10.00 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. (starting from 20th February) at the Faculty of Social Studies in AVC room. Teacheg responsible fbf the course Radim řVIarada Tel: 549 495 025 e-mail: marada@fss.sniHii.cs 1 .5 concept of civil society..........................................................................................6 Jeffrey C. Alexander: "Civil Society I, II, III: Constructing an Empirical Concept from Normative Controversies and Historical Transformations"..............................................................................................................................7 Bryan Turner: "Outline of a Theory of Citizenship"............................................................................................................................12 ÍONS...........................................................................................25 concept oi civii society....................................................................................................................26 JeanL. Cohen and Andrew Arato: "The Contemporary Revival of Civil Society"..........................................................................27 society and democratic transitions: Shifting meanings of civil society in the transition process,..........................53 Radim Marada: "Civil Society: Adventures of the Concept before and after 1989".........................................................................54 2 Block III: HERITAGE OF THE FAST.................................................................................................................................................66 5. Forms of opposition before 1989: dissents^ grey zones, islands of positive deviation...........................................................67 • Vaclav Havel: "Anti-Political Politics"......................................................................................................................................................68 6. State socialism and civil society (was there any?)..........................................................................................................................76 • Michal Buchowski: "The shifting meanings of civil and civic society in Poland".............................................................................77 Block IV: CIVIL SOCIETY AFTER 1989: civic culture..................................................................................................................87 7. Social and cultural sources of public engagement.........................................................................................................................88 © Melanie Tatur: "Why is There No Women's Movement in Eastern Europe?".................................................................................89 • Piotr Sztompka: "Mistrusting Civility: Predicament of a Post-Communist Society"........................................................................95 8. Civic or ethnic: traumatic memory3 re-bitth of nations, and generational experience skills...........................................105 • Outhwaite, William and Ray, Larry: "Modernity, Memory, and Postcommunism". In: Outhwaite, William and Ray, Larry. 2005. Social Theory and Postcommunism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 176-196.............................................106 Block V: NEW" GENERATIONS: Revolution and Nostalgia..................................................................................................119 9. Revolution and Emerging Generational Conflict.........................................................................................................................120 © Radim Marada: "Social Construction of Youth and Formation of Generational Awareness after 1989" (in: Petr Mareš [ ed.]: Soáety, reproduction and Contemporary Challenges, Brno: Barrister & Principal, 2004, pp. 149-169)... 121 10. Nostalgia through consumption...............................................................................................................................142 • Jonathan Bach: "The Taste Remains: Consumption, (N)ostalgia, and the Production of East Germany (In: Public Culture 2002,14(3): pp. 545-556)..........................................................................................................143 Block VI: RESUMÉ........................................................................................................................156 11.-12. Post-Communist Modernization & Make-Up Session.......................................................................................................157 • TBA 4 I I I I I I I I I I I Jeffrey C, Alexander: "Civil Society I, II, III: Constructing an Empirical Concept from Normative Controversies and Historical Transformations" In: J.C. Alexander [ed.]: Real Civil Societies: Dilemmas of Institutionalization. London: SAGE Publications 1998, pp. 1-12 Bryan Turner: "Outline of a Theory of Citizenship" In: Chantal Mouffe [ed.]: Dimensions of Radical Democracy. London: Verso 1992, pp. 33-62 6 Introduction Civil Society I, II, III: Constructing an Empirical Concept from Normative Controversies and Historical Transformations Jeffrey C. Alexander In 1990, when I first returned to Eastern Europe after the fall of the old regimes, I submitted a short essay to the Hungarian political weekly Valosog about the shock of encountering 'real' as opposed to 'ideal' civil society. Quoting briefly from that piece, which evidently was never published, can provide a bít of Tiistoricaľ atmosphere for the theoretical remarks which follow. just when intellectuals in Poland and Hungary were celebrating the return of civil society as an ideal, they have encountered it as a social fact. It's like a cold shower the morning after. Almost single-handedly, Eastern European intellectuals reintroduced 'civil society' to contemporary social theory. Until they started talking and writing about it, it had been considered a quaint and conservative notion, thoroughly obsolete. Locke thought the civil realm necessary for freedom, of both the political and economic kind; the American Founding Fathers and Tocqueville alike believed that the independence of this realm formed the basis for everything good and right. Once industrial displaced commercial capitalism, however, civil society took on a different, decidedly more ambiguous hue. Marx criticized it as merely formally free: 'civility' allowed privacy and selfish greed. Progressive intellectuals since then have wanted to eliminate civil society and set up a substantively good (read socialist and public) society in its place. Eastern European intellectuals experienced that effort to create the good society first hand; they wanted to return to formal freedoms instead. To find a theory that embraced liberty without social guilt, they returned to the 18th century, when civil society was conceived in a positive way. It was with these old fashioned ideas that the anti-communist revolutions were led, by intellectuals who made alliance with the few charismatic figures they could find. They articulated the inchoate frustrations of their nations, creating the 'people' in the very process of making the revolution in their name. Now that they have carved out a civil society, however, intellectuals are not at all sure they want it. Neither are the charismatic leaders or the 'people' themselves. They are learning that civil society means more than civilian and anti-military. It also means citified, not only civil and cordial but also capitalist, thoroughly bourgeois. Kant translated civil society as Bürgerliche Gesellschaft. Literally, this meant a burgher, citydweller's society; it was also a synonym for the capitalist middle class. In these new civil societies, market relations have assumed central importance. Pragmatic bargaining and the pushing and shoving of done deals are the orders of the day. Respecting formal rules, not pursuing some Utopian conception of the good, is what holds such a society together. In postcommunist societies, it is about all one can hope for today, or have any right to expect. In this real civil society, intellectuals, charismatic leaders, and even 'the people' themselves may soon be out of a job. When the intellectuals of Eastern Europe came to power, they thought they could have it all — enlightenment, capitalism, and democracy itself. The practical task of social reconstruction makes these social ideals difficult for the intellectuals to sustain. The Utopian ideology they bring to their task, however, reduces even further the possibility of success .. . In the good old bad days, opposition intellectuals coined the term 'real socialism' to dramatize how socialism in practice departed from the dream. It is time to start talking about 'real civil society'. (Alexander, 1990) Virtually every important concept in the social sciences is the result of a striking kind of secularization process, a process that takes an idea from practical experiences, from the often overwhelming pressures of moral, economic, and political conflicts, to the intellectual world of conceptual disputation, paradigm dispute, research program, and empirical debate. Even after they have made this transition, of course, such concepts retain significant moral and political associations, and they remain highly disputed. What has changed is the terrain in which they are discussed, compromised, and struggled over. The intellectual field, after all, has a very distinctive specificity of its own. We can recognize how this process resulted in the creation of such apparently 'classical' social science concepts as class, status, race, party, religion, and sect. More recently, we can observe a similar process of secularization with the emergence of concepts like gender, sexuality, and identity. The subject of the present volume is a concept, civil society, that is undergoing 'secularization' at the very moment we write. For a second time this idea has emerged into intellectual discourse from the ongoing tumult of social and political life. Once again, it must be conceptually refined so that it can be subject to more disciplined moral disputation and empirical social science. The contributors to this volume push this secularization process forward in varied and important ways. In this introduction, I will try to do my part, suggesting that civil society has been conceived in three ideal-typical forms which have succeeded each other in historical time. After situating these ideal types historically, and evaluating them theoretically, I will introduce an analytical model of the relationship between civil society and the otiier kinds of institutional spheres which compose society. I will suggest that only by understanding the 'boundary relations' between civil and uncivil spheres can we convert civil societ}- from a normative into a 'real' concept which can be studied in a social scientific way, Civil Society í: incliisiveness as Sacralization It is well known that in its modem, post-medieval, post-Hobbesian form, 'civil society' entered into social understanding only in the late seventeenth century, -with the writings of figures like "Locke and Harrington (see Seligman, 1993). Developed subsequently by the Scottish, moralists, especially Ferguson and Smith, bj Rousseau, and by Hegel; arid perhaps employed energetically for the last time by Tocqueville, 'civil society' was an inclusive, umbrella-like concept referring to a plethora of institutions outside the state. Definitely it included the capitalist market and its institutions, but it also denoted what Tocquevilie called Voluntary religion" (non-established Protestant covenantal denominations), private and public associations and organizations, all forms of cooperative social relationships that created bonds of trust, public opinion, legal rights and institutions, and political parties. It is vital to see that in this first period of its modern under standing, dvE society I (CSI) was endowed with a distinctively moral and ethical force. As Hirschman (1977) has shown in The Passions and ths Interests, the civilizing qualities associated with civil society most definitely extended to the capitalist market itself, with its bargaining, its trading, its circulating commodities and money, its shopkeepers and its private property. Identified by such terms as k doux commerce, the processes and institutions of the capitalist market were benignly conceived — at least by the progressive thinkers of the day — as helping to produce qualities associated with international peace, domestic tranquility, and increasingly democratic participation. Capitalism was understood as producing self-discipline and individual responsibility. It was helping to create a social system antithetical to the vainglorious aristocratic one, where knightly ethics emphasized individual prowress through feats of grandeur, typically of a military kind, and ascriptive status hierarchies were maintained by hegemonic force. Hirschman shows, for example, that Montesquieu can be understood as providing high ethical praise for capitalism in its early phase. Benjamin Franklin's famous and influential Autobiography, self-regard and identifying public virtue with the discipline and propriety of market life, might be said to provide an equally important example of a more popular, more bourgeois, but perhaps not less literary kind. The decidedly positive moral and ethical tone attributed to market society underwent a dramatic transformation in the early middle of the nineteenth century. The development of capitalism's industrial phase made Mandeville's famous fable of capitalism's bee-like cooperation seem completely passé. As Hirschman tells this story, the pejorative association of capitalism with inhumane instrumentality, domination, and exploitation Srst emerged among radical British political economists like Hodgkins in the 1820s and 1830s. Marx encountered this Mankhean literature in the early 1840s and he provided it with a systematic economic and sociological theory. His voice, while by far the most important in theoretical terms, was in historical terms only one voice among many. The emerging hatred of capitalism, its identification with all the evils of feudal domination and worse, was expressed among a wide and growing chorus of Utopians, socialists, and republicans. It is noteworthy that the new industrial capitalists and their liberal economic spokesmen did not shy away from this new view' of capitalism as an anti-social force. Brandishing the doctrine of laissez-faire in a rather anti-Smithean way, their motto seemed to be, 'society be damned!' There exists no better representation of this growing self-understanding of the antagonism between an evil, egoistical 'market' on the one hand, and 'society' in the moral and collective sense on the other, than Polanyi's The Great Transformation (1957), a book which- served in the post-war period to perpetuate the very theoretical misunderstandings I am problematizing here. Civil Society II: ReductioBisia as Profanation In social theory this dramatic transformation of the moral and social identity of market capitalism had fateful effects on the concept of civil society. As Keane (1988) was the first to point out, the connotations of this fecund concept now became drastically narrowed- Shorn of its cooperative, democratic, associative, and public ties, this second version of civil society (CSII) came to be pejoratively associated with market capitalism alone. Marx's writings between 1842 and 1845 reflect and crystallize this reduction in a remarkably clear and influential way. Not only is civil society now simply a field for the play of egoistical, purely private interests, but it is now treated as a superstructure, a legal and political arena produced as camouflage for the domination of commodities and the capitalist class. For Marx, industrial capitalism seemed only to consist of markets, the groups formed by markets, and states. Society in the collective and moral sense was dissolving. Only the submerged and repressed cooperative ties established by working class production, Marx believed, could provide the basis for collectively binding social organization. It is not surprising that in this social and intellectual situation, in the middle of the nineteenth century, civil society as an important concept in social theory shordy disappeared. If it was no mote than an epiphenomenon of capitalism, it was no longer necessary, either intellectually or socially. In the context of the ravages of early industrial capitalism, social and intellectual attention shifted to the state. Substantive rather than formal equality became the order of the day. Issues of democratic participation and liberty, once conceived as inherentiy connected to equality in its other forms, became less important. Strong state theories emerged, among radicals and conservatives, and bureaucratic regulation appeared as the only counterbalance to the instabilities and inhumanities of market life. In the newly emerging social sciences, mobilit)-, poverty, and class conflict become the primär}7 topics of research and theory. In social and political philosophy, utilitarian and contract theories assumed prominence, along with the neo-Kantian emphasis on justice In terms of formal rationality and proceduralism at the expense of ethical investigations into the requirements of the good life. The legacy of this century-long distortion of the capitalism/civil society relationship has had regrettable effects. Identifying society with the market, ideologists for the right have argued that the effective functioning of capitalism depends on the dissolution of social controls. Secure in the knowledge that civil society is the private market, that economic processes by themselves will produce tie institutions necessary to promote democracy and mutual respect, they have disbanded public institutions that helped crystallize social solidarity outside the marketplace without moral qualms. Yet if, for the right, the capitalism/civil-society identification suggested abolishing society, for the left it suggested abolishing markets and private property itself. If civility and cooperation were perverted and distorted by capitalism, the latter would have to be abolished for the former to be restored. In this task, the big state became the principal ally of the left, and progressive movements became associated not only with equality but with stifling and often authoritarian bureaucratic control. In the last decade, as is well known, revolutionary social and cultural events have created the circumstances for a renewed intellectual engagement with civil society. Big state theory has lost its prestige, economically with the falling productivity of command economies, morally and politically with tne decline of state communism and bureaucratic authoritarian regimes. Within social science there is now more interest in informal ties, intimate relationships, trust, cultural and symbolic processes, and the institutions of public Hfe. In political and moral philosophy, there has been a return not only to democratic theory but - under the influence of renewed interest in Aristotle, Hegel, and pragmatism - to hermeneutical investigations into the lifeworld ties of local culture and community. Civil Society III: Analytical Differentiation as Realism These theoretical developments, and the social processes they inform and reflect, have allowed us to understand civil society in a clearer mannet than before. More precise and more specific than the all-inclusive umbrella idea of CSI, more general and inclusive than the narrowly reductionist association of CSII, there is growing recognition of, and interest in, civil society as a sphere that is analytically independent of - and, to varying degrees, empirically differentiated from - not only the state and the market but other social spheres as well. With the emerging understanding provided by civil society III (CSIII), it is more cleat than ever before that earlier conceptions mistakenly linked not only individualism (its emergence) but also the collective sense of social obligation (its decline) with market society. Individualism (see, for example, Taylor, 1989) has a long history in Western societies, as a moral force, an institutional fact, and a set of interactional practices. It has a non-economic background in the cultural legacy of I I I I Christianity, with its emphasis on the immortal soul, conscience, and confession, in Renaissance self-fashioning; in the Reformation's new emphasis on the individual relation to God; in the Enlightenment's deification of individual reason; in Romanticism's restoration of expressive individuality. Institutions that reward and model individuality can be traced back to English legal guarantees for private property in the eleventh century; to the medieval parliaments that distinguished the specificity of Western feudalism; to the newly independent cities that emerged in late medieval times and played such a powerful historical role until the emergence of absolutist states. The economic practices of market capitalism, in other words, did not invent moral (or immoral) individualism. They should be viewed, rather, as marking a new specification and institutionalization of it, along with other newly emerging forms of social organization, such as religious sect activity, mass parliamentary democracy, and romantic love. Just as individualism in its moral and expressive forms preceded, survived, and, indeed, surrounded the instrumental, self-otiented individualism institutionalized in capitalist market life, so did the existence of 'society'. As Margaret Somers (1993) has shown, civil ties and die enforcement of obligations to a community of others were part of the fundamental structure of many British towns centuries before the « appearance of contemporary capitalist life. The notion of a 'people' rooted in ■ common lineage, of the community as an ethnos, formed the early basis for an ™ ethically binding, particularist conception of nationhood from at least the fifteenth century, as the writings of Liah Greenfield (1992) and Rogers Brubaker (1996) suggest. The egoistical, impersonal, and morally irresponsible practices of early industrial capitalism were not checked by some kind of 'protectionist' movement that grew mysteriously out of nowhere, as Polanyi seems to argue in his description of the reaction to 'market society'. To the contrary, this protectionist movement, acting in the name of 'society', emerged precisely because there already existed strongly institutionalized and culturally mandated reservoirs of non-market, non-individualistic force in Western social life. It was from these sources that, as Patrick Joyce (1991) has most recently shown, there emerged protests against capitalism on behalf of 'the people'. As this brief historical discussion suggests, civil society and capitalism must be conceptualized in fundamentally different terms. Civil society should be conceived (Alexander, 1997) as a solidary sphere in which a certain kind of universalizing community comes gradually to be defined and to some degree enforced. To the degree this solidary community exists, it is exhibited by 'public opinion', possesses its own cultural codes and narratives in a democratic idiom, is patterned by a set of peculiar institutions, most notably legal and journalistic ones, and is visible in historically distinctive sets of interactional practices like civility, equality, criticism, and respect. This kind of civil community can never exist as such; it can exist only 'to one degree or another'. One reason is tiiat it is always interconnected with, and interpenetrated by, other more and less differentiated spheres which have their own I I I criteria of justice and their own system of rewards. There is no reason to privilege any one of these non-civil spheres over any other.1 The economy, the state, religion, science, the family - each differentiated sphere of activity is a defining characteristic of modem and postmodern societies. We are no more a capitalist society than we are a bureaucratic, secular, rational one, or indeed a civil one. Rather than try to reduce the contemporary social system to the identity of one of its spheres, I would suggest that we acknowledge social differentiation both as a fact and as a process and that we study the boundary relationships between spheres. The contributors to this volume share my particular interest in the boundary relations between what might be called the civil and non-civil spheres. I believe, in fact, that the social history of 'capitalism' can be illuminated in precisely these terms. Boundaries between Civil and Non-Civil Spheres: The 'Capitalism' Problem Revisited One can speak of civil and non-civil boundary relationships in terms of facilitating inputs, destructive intrusions, and civil repairs. Boundary tensions can seriously distort civil society, threatening the very possibility for an effective and democratic social life. These distorting forces are destructive intrusions; in the face of them, the actors and institutions of civil society can make repairs by seeking to regulate and reform what happens in such non-civil spheres. Yet such subsystem interpenetration can also go the other way. Some of the goods and the social forms produced by other spheres actually facilitate the realization of a more civil life. Conservative theorists and politicians, not to mention the elites in these non-civil spheres themselves, are inclined to emphasize the facilitating inputs of non-civil spheres to the creation of a good social life. Those on the liberal and radical left are more inclined to emphasize the destructive intrusions that these interpenetrations entail, and the repairs that must be made as a result. Neither side of this argument can be ignored in the effort to theorize the relation between civil society and other kinds of social institutions in a general way. That the economic sphere in its capitalist form facilitates the construction of a civil society in important ways is a historical and sociological fact that should not be denied. When an economy is structured by markets, behavior is encouraged that is independent, rational, and self-controlled. It was for this reason that the early intellectuals of capitalism, from Montesquieu to Adam Smith, hailed market society as a calming and civilizing antidote to the militaristic glories of aristocratic life. It is in part for this same reason that societies which have recendy exited from communism have staked their emerging democracies on the construction of market societies in turn. Yet, quite apart from markets, industrialization itself can be seen in a positive vein. By creating an enormous supply of cheap and widely available material media, mass production lessens the invidious distinctions of status markers that separated rich and poor in more restricted economies. It becomes increasingly possible for masses of people to express their individualit;'', their autonomy, and dieir equality- through consumption and, in so doing, to partake of the common symbolic inheritance of cultural life. Facilitating inputs are produced from the production side as well. As Marx was among the first to point out, the complex forms of teamwork and cooperation that are demanded in productive enterprises can be considered forms of socialization, in which persons learn to respect and trust their fellow partners in the civil sphere. In so far as the capitalist economy supplies the civil sphere with facilities like independence, self-control, rationality, equality, self-realization, cooperation, and trust, the boundary relations between these two spheres are frictionless; structural differentiation thus seems to produce integration and individuation in turn. It is clear to all but the most die-hard free marketers, however, that an industrializing, market economy also has put roadblocks in the way of civil society. In the everyday language of social science, these blockages are expressed purely in terms of economic inequalities, that is, as class divisions, housing differentials, dual labor markets, poverty, and unemployment. These facts only become crystallized in social terms - as social problems produced by the dynamics of public opinion and social movements (Alexander, 1996) — because they are viewed as destructive intrusions into the civil realm. Economic criteria are, as it were, interfering with civil ones. The stratification of economic products, both human and material, narrows and polarizes civil society. It provides a broad field for the 'discourse of repression' (see Chapter 6), which pollutes and degrades economic failure. Despite the fact that there is no inherent relationship between failure to achieve distinction in the economic realm and failure to sustain expectations in civil society ~ the lack of connection being the very point of the construction of an independent civil realm — this connection is continually made. If you are poor, you are often thought to be irrational, dependent, and lazy, not only in the economy but in society as such. The relative asymmetry of resources that is inherent in economic life, in other words, becomes translated into projections about civil competence and incompetence. It is often difficult for actors without economic achievement or wealth to communicate effectively in the civil sphere, to receive full respect from its regulatory institutions, and to interact with other, more economically successful people in a fully civil way (Sennett and Cobb, 1972). Finally, material power as such, power garnered only in the economic realm, too often becomes an immediate and effective basis for civil claims (see Walter, 1983). Despite the fact that the professionalization of journalism has separated ownership and effective editorial control, through their power to purchase newspapers as private property, capitalists of different political stripes can and do fundamentally alter some of the communicative institutions that are central to civil society. Yet to the degree that civil society exists as an independent force, economically underprivileged actors have dual memberships. They are not just unsuccessful or dominated members of the capitalist economy; they have the ability to make claims for respect and power on the basis of their only partially realized membership in the civil realm. On the basis of the implied universalism of solidarity in civil society, moreover, they believe these claims should find a response. They broadcast appeals through the communicative institutions of civil society; organize such social movements demanding socialism or simply economic justice through its networks and public spaces; and create voluntary organizations, such as trade unions, that demand fairness and freedom of expression to wage employees. Sometimes they employ their space in civil society to confront economic institutions and elites directly, winning concessions in face-to-face negotiations. At other times, they make use of regulatory institutions, like law and the franchise, to force the state to intervene in economic life on their behalf. While these efforts at repairs often fail, they often succeed in institutionalizing Vorkers' rights'. In this situation, civil criteria might be said to have entered directly into the economic, capitalist sphere. Dangerous working conditions are prohibited; discrimination in labor markets is outlawed; arbitrary economic authority is curtailed; unemployment is controlled and humanized; wealth itself is redistributed according to criteria that are antithetical to those of a strictly economic kind. The kinds of tense and permeable boundary relationships I have described here cannot be conceptualized if capitalism and civil society are conflated with one another — as they are in CSI and II. Only if these realms are separated analytically can we gain some empirical purchase not only on the wrenching economic strains of the last two centuries but on the extraordinary 'repairs' that have been made to the social fabric in response. There is no doubt, indeed, that in the boundary relations of capitalist economy and civil society the interplay of facilitating input, destructive intrusions, and repairs will continue in the future. In the process, new economically related civil issues, workplace democracy for example (Bobbio, 1987), will become the focus of public spotlight. Non-Economic Boundary Relations between Civil and Uncivil Spheres I have tried to separate civil society and capitalism, however, not only better to conceptualize economic strains but to challenge the identification of 'capitalism' with 'society', that is, to challenge the very notion that the society we live in can be understood under the rubric of capitalism. Markets are not, after all, the only threats, or even the worst threats, that have been levied against democratic civil life. Each of the other non-civil spheres has also fundamentally undermined civil society in different times and different ways. In Catholic countries, Jews and Protestants have often been construed as uncivil and prevented from fully entering the civil life. For most of the history of civil societies, patriarchal power in the family transferred directly into the lack of civil status for women. Scientific and professional power has empowered experts and excluded ordinary persons from full participation in vital civil discussions. Political oligarchies, whether in private organizations or in national governments themselves, have used secrecy and manipulation to deprive members of civil society of access to information about crucial decisions affecting their collective life. The racial and ethic structuring of primordial communities has distorted civil societ}' in terrible ways. In fact, the identification of capitalism and civil society is just one example of the reductive and circumscribing conflation of civil: society with a particular kind of non-civil realm. Indeed, in the, course of Western history the anti-civil intrusions I have referred to above have been so destructive that the social movements organized for repair, and the theorists who articulate their demands, have sometimes come to believe that these blockages are intrinsic to civil society itself. Socialists have argued that civil society is essentially and irrevocably bourgeois; that, as long as there are markets and private property, participants in the economic realm can never be treated in a respectful and egalitarian way. In a homologous manner, radical fernimsts have argued that civil societies are inherently patriarchal, that the very idea of a civil society is impossible to realize in a society that has families which allow men to dominate women. Zionists, similarly, have argued that European societies are fundamentally antisemitic. Black nationalists have claimed that racism is essential, and that the civil realm in white setder societies will always, and necessarily, exclude blacks. On the basis of arguments I have presented here, I would suggest that these radical arguments for emancipation from civil society are neither empirically accurate nor morally compelling. They generalize from particular historical instances of highly distorted and oppressive boundary relations, drawing the illegitimate conclusion that the civil sphere must always be distorted in this particular way. On this faulty basis, they project Utopian societies, communism for example, which deny the necessity for a universalistic civil sphere, Utopian projects which claim to abolish boundary conflicts altogether. What they really deny, however, is the pluralism, complexity, and inevitably conflict-ridden nature of democratic social life. The separation of capitalism and civil society points, then, to the need to recognize the relative autonomy that exists between civil society and other kinds of social spheres, a relative autonomy which sometimes manifests itself in highly destructive interpenetrations but can also allow highly effective repairs. In: J. C. Alexander (ed.): Esa/ Civil Sodeties: Dilemmas of Institutionalization. London: SAGE Publications 1998, pp 142. Outline of a Theory of Citizenship* Bryan Turner Citizenship as Participation With the development of a world economic recession and the emergence of monetarist«; politics, the threat to the welfare state has become a central topic of social science debate in the 1980s. This attack on the principles of public welfare is directly associated with the emergence of the New Right and the dominance of Thatcherism in British politics, but the parameters of this issue are in fact global. From a sociological perspective, these changes in political orientation and the creation of monetarist perspectives in social policy may, however, be treated as symptoms of a fundamental change in the politics of industrial societies, namely the break-up of corporatism and the collapse of the reformist consensus which dominated the postwar period of social reconstruction. The break-up of the corporatist consensus may be furthermore linked to radical reorganizations on global capitalism which some authors now regard as an entirely new stage in the development of world capitalism, leading to the disorganization of capitalism, or to the end of organized capitalism. These structural reorganizations in world capitalism and the demise of government commitment to welfare expansion have had profound implications for social science research and teaching, producing a greater emphasis on interdisciplinary and applied research as a defence of the welfare state. While radical sociologists in the 1960s were often influenced by the critical work of Louis Althusser (1971), for whom the provision of welfare and the existence of health-care institutions were merely facets of the ideological state apparatus, in the crisis of the 1980s, critical theorists have returned to the questions of distributive justice, (individual rights and notions of equality as the basis for social reconstruction and social reform. While the notion of abstract human rights (possibly in association with some commitment to natural law) no longer commands widespread intellectual support, it is clear that the institution of definite 'rights' is an essential feature in the protection of public space as an arena of * A version of this article was first given as a public lecture to the West European Studies Programme, University of Pittsburgh in 1989. I am grateful to the participants for their commentary. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article for Sodology for their recommendations. My original interest in the whole issue of citizenship was fostered by Dr Karen Lane's unpublished thesis "Broadcasting Democracy and localism, University of Adelaide 1988. This research was originally undertaken while I was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Bielefield University, West Germany 1987-88. legitimate debate. The secular institution of rights cannot, therefore, be separated from the question of democracy, and the infrastructure of democracy is a fundamental, if limited, restraint on the employment of coercive force. It is 'the democratic apparatus, which prevents the agencies of power, law and knowledge From fusing into a single leading organ' (Lefort 1988: 29). In this outline of a theory of citizenship, it is argued that the current attempt to defend the principles of welfare in fact requires a far deeper sociological, historical and philosophical enquiry into the character of social membership and political participation, namely an enquiry into the extent and characteristics of modern social citizenship. This enquiry should have the theoretical goal of attempting to achieve a synthesis in the levels of analysis between the individual citizen, the organization of social rights and the institutional context of democracy. This renewed interest in the issue of social participation and citizenship rights has, in turn, resulted, at the theoretical level, in a revival of interest in the works of T. H. Marshall (1963, 1965, 1981) which provides an important point of departure for any debate about the contemporary complexities of the relationship between citizenship entitlements and the economic structure of capitalist society. Marshall's Account of Citizenship In the United States Marshall was particularly influential on the work of T. Parsons, R. Bendix and S.M. Lipset, but his sociology of citizenship is perhaps only now being adequately recognized and discussed in Britain. In America Marshall's work was developed as a framework for the analysis of ethnic problems and race relations, whereas in Britain Marshall's work originally developed and flourished in the context of post-war social reconstruction and as a social justification for an extension of state provision in the area of national welfare. While Marshall's analysis of citizenship is well known, it will be valuable here to outline briefly the three dimensions ,of citizenship which he considered in his original work. Marshall, whose intellectual roots were in the liberal tradition of James Mill and J.S. Mill, elaborated a specifically social version of the individuaHstic ideas of English liberalism. One theoretical and moral weakness of the liberal tradition was its failure to address directly the problem of social inequality in relationship to individual freedoms. At the heart of Marshall's account of citizenship lies the contradiction between the formal political equality of the franchise and the persistence of extensive social and economic inequality, ultimately rooted in the character of the capitalist marketplace and the existence of private property. Marshall proposed the extension of citizenship as the principal political means for resolving, or at least containing, those contradictions. The initial idea for his theory of citizenship was developed in 'Citizenship and social class' in 1949 (Marshall 1963). It was further developed in SoáaľPolity (Marshall 1965), where he addressed the question of the evolution of welfare policies in Britain between approximately 1890 and 1945 as a specific example of the growth of social rights. However, his famous contribution to the analysis of social policy contained no explicit statement of his theory of social citizenship. Finally, he proposed a theory of capitalist society as a 'hyphenated society' in The Right to We fare and Other Essays (Marshall 1981) in which there are inevitable tensions between a capitalist economy, a welfare state and the requirements of the modem state. Marshall was thus primarily concerned with the social-welfare history of Britain between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries in terms of the growth of citizenship as expressed in three dimensions, namely, the civil, the political and the social. Marshall argued that in the eighteenth century there had been a significant development of civil rights which were mainly targeted at the legal status and civil rights of individuals; and these rights were to be defended through a system of formal law courts. Civil rights were concerned with such basic issues as the freedom of speech, rights to a fair trial and equal access to the legal system. Secondly, Marshall noted an important growth in political rights in the nineteenth century as an outcome of working-class struggle for political equality in terms of greater access to the parliamentary process. In this area, political citizenship required the development of electoral rights and wider access to political institutions for the articulation of interests. In the British case, this involved the emergence of political rights which were associated with the secret ballot box, the creation of new political parties and the expansion of the franchise. Finally, he drew attention in the twentieth century to the expansion of social rights which were the basis of claims for welfare and which established entitlements to social security in periods of unemployment, sickness and distress. Thus, corresponding to the three basic arenas of social rights (the civil, political and the social, we find three central institutions of contemporary society (the law courts, parliament and the welfare system). Marshall's final theorization of this issue conceptualized capitalism as a dynamic system in which the constant clash between citizenship and social class determined the character of political and social life. These tensions were summarized in his notion of the hyphenated society, that is a social system in which there were perpetual tensions between the need for economic profitability, the taxation requirements of the modern state and the rights of citizens to welfare provision. While Marshall's theory proved influential in the development of American social theory in the area of race relations and in the development of British sociology in the analysis of the welfare system, Marshall has been continuously criticized for certain (alleged problems in his theoretical analysis of rights. For example, Anthony Giddens (1982) has criticized Marshall for developing an evolutionary perspective on the historical emergence of citizenship in which social rights appear to be the effect of a broad and imminent development within societ)'. Marshall was also criticized for failing to consider the wider social context within which welfare policy developed in Britain, particularly in war-time and post-war reconstruction. Giddens also noted that citizenship rights are not a unified, homogeneous set of social arrangements. The liberal rights, which were the outcome of bourgeois struggles, cannot be compared with the claims to welfare which were developed by socialism and other forms of working-class action. Whereas liberal rights to the parliamentary process tend to confirm and reaffirm the social and political dominance of private property over labour, welfare rights are, at least in principle, a potential challenge to the very functioning of capitalism as an economic system. Therefore, there is no necessary similarity between liberal bourgeois rights in the nineteenth century and socialist demands for equality in the twentieth century. There is furthermore no necessary parallel or even development of different rights. For example, while civil rights may be developed in capitalism, political citizenship may often be denied. Marshall was also criticized for perceiving the historical emergence of citizenship as an irreversible process within contemporary society, whereas the experience of the last fifteen years, following the oil crisis of 1973, shows that welfare-state rights are clearly reversible and not to be taken for granted. On these grounds Marshall has also been criticized by writers who regard Marshall's underlying value system as essentially complacent and conservative. Marshall was also challenged for failing to perceive that additional social rights might be developed in the area of culture, where citizenship could be regarded as a claim upon a national cultural system, and these cultural claims might be further associated with the educational revolution of the twentieth century with the emergence of mass education and the university system of the post-war period. While the argument that the university system expressed the cultural expansion of citizenship has become associated with Talcott Parsons, in fact the link between democracy and higher education was also fundamental to the American pragmatist tradition ■which was grounded in Dewey's view of mind. Although there are clearly problems in Marshall's theory, I suggest that Marshall has often been criticized on the wrong grounds, and at least some criticisms of Marshall are based upon a misunderstanding of the original texts. Marshall was, for example, clearly aware of the broad social and military context within which welfare rights have developed, because he saw war-time conditions in Britain as providing favourable circumstances for the successful claim for welfare rights and provisions. Furthermore, it is not clear that Marshall's theory in fact requires an evolutionary perspective, assuming the irreversibility of claims against the state; Marshall saw the contingent importance of war-time circumstances on the development of social policy. It is clear however that political rights are of a very different order from economic rights, since in many respects the development of citizenship in capitalist societies stopped, as it were, at the factory gates. Democracy did not develop fully into economic democracy, although experiences between societies (in terms of workers' participation and control are clearly variable. Giddens is clearly wrong to suggest that Marshall treated civil and social rights as equivalent, or as having the same integrative functions. Marshall specifically argued that, whereas individualistic civil rights directly corresponded to cthe individualistic phase of capitalism', the social rights of trade unionism were 'even more anomalous, because they did not seek or obtain incorporation' (Marshall 1963: 103). There was, however, an unresolved issue at the centre of Marshall's theory, namely that it is not clear whether social rights are in a relation of tension, opposition or contradiction to the economic basis of capitalist societies. Although these criticisms are important, I would like to identify some rather different criticisms of Marshall in order to suggest a more elaborate version of his original scheme. Any theory of citizenship must also produce a theory of the state, and this aspect of Marshall's work was the most underdeveloped. In Marshall's scheme it is impHcidy the state which provides the principal element in the maintenance and development of social rights, being the political instrument through which various political movements seek some redress of their circumstances through the legitimization of their claims against society. Furthermore, Marshall failed to develop an economic sociology which would provide some explanation of how the resources which are necessary for welfare are to be generated and subsequently redistributed by the state to claimants in terms of health provision and general welfare institutions. In considering these aspects of Marshall's theory, it is important to put a particular emphasis on the notion of social struggles as the central motor of the drive for citizenship. Marshall failed to emphasize the idea that historically the growth of social citizenship has been typically the outcome of violence or threats of violence, bringing the state into the social arena as a stabilizer of the social system. Although a number of writers on citizenship have drawn attention to the function of mass wars in promoting successful claims to democratic participation, it is necessary to have a broader notion of 'struggle' as a critical aspect of the historic growth of citizenship. This emphasis provides the context within which we can begin to see the real importance of new social movements for social change. However, Barbalet (1988: 103) has correctly pointed out that the institutionalization of social rights also requires new political, legal and administrative practices which may have been only indirectly related to these social movements. We can further elaborate the Marshall scheme by adopting a notion from Parsons (1966), namely that the development of citizenship involves a transition from societies based upon ascriptive criteria to societies based upon achievement criteria, a transition which also involves a shift from particularistic to universalistic values. Thus the emergence of the modern citizen requires the constitution of an abstract political subject no longer formally confined by the particularities of birth, ethnicity or gender. Parsons, following Max Weber's work on the city (1966), thought that Christianity had made possible the separation of the political and social, while also developing a notion of social relations which were independent of ethnicity and which treated faith, or abstract consciousness, as the ultimate source of community in modern societies (Parsons 1963). It is possible to regard the differentiation of the political and the social as the Parsonian version of the classical separation of the' state from civil society (Berger 1986: 75). We can suggest therefore that the historical development of citizenship requires certain universalistic notions of the subject, the erosion of particularistic kinship systems in favour of an urban environment which can probably only flourish in the context, initially, of the autonomous city. Citizenship is, as it were, pushed along by the development of social conflicts and social struggles within such a political and cultural arena, as social groups compete with each other over access to resources. Such a theory of citizenship also requires a notion of the state as that institution which is caught in the contradictions between property rights and political freedoms. Finally, the possibilities of citizenship in contemporary societies are, or have been, enhanced by the problems of war-rime conditions in which subordinate groups can make more effective claims against the state. This emphasis on the importance of mass war as a primary factor in social change is an important criticism of the conventional 'society-centred' perspective of both classical sociology and Marxism. Although the welfare system was clearly expanded in Britain in the post-war period of reformism and reconstruction, there has been both a political attack on the welfare state and considerable institutional demolition of welfare institutions with the rise of Thatcherism and the spread of global recession since 1973. The causes of these changes are yet to be fully analysed, but the decline of the welfare system may be associated with the historical decline of the organized working-class and class-based communities. The spatial reorganization of working-class communities under conditions of disorganized capitalism also makes the articulation of interests far more problematic, and these changes are also associated with the erosion of neo-corporatism and the class deatignment of traditional political alliances with the restructuring of capitalism and the emergence of new social movements. With the growth of global capitalism, the state is no longer able to mediate between private property owners and the working class, because its economic autonomy is constrained by international agreements and institutions such that 'local' political decisions by the state may have very adverse consequences for the value of its currency within the international money markets. The problem with Marshall's theory is that it is not longer relevant to a period of disorganized capitalism. The British state, in fact, has very little scope for manoeuvre: while capital operates on a global scale, labour tends to operate within a local national market, articulating its interests in terms of a national interest group. Marshall's theory assumed some form of nation-state autonomy in which governments were relatively immune from pressures within the world-system of capitalist nations. Marshall's theory was initially focused on the British case, but a general theory of citizenship, as the crucial feature of modern political life, has to take a comparative and historical perspective on the question of citizenship tights, because the character of citizenship varies systematically between different societies. The emergence of citizenship is a feature of the very different and specific histories of democratic politics in western societies, but a genuinely historical analysis of citizenship would be concerned with, not only the Greek and Roman legacy, but with problematic comparisons between western and non-western traditions. Ruling Class Strategies? A particularly important and systematic criticism of Marshall's theory of citizenship has been developed by Michael Mann (1987), who attacks the ethnocentric specificity and evolutionism of the Marshallian perspective. The problem is that, while Marshall's scheme may fit the English example, it is historically and comparatively inappropriate for other societies. It may be the case that England is the exception rather than the rule. Mann (1987: 340) notes that Marshall's argument is entirely about Great Britain. There is not a single mention of any other country. Did Marshall regard Britain as typical of the capitalist West as a whole? In fact, it would be more accurate to say that the Marshallian version of the theory of citizenship is entirely about England, since he takes for granted the socio-political unity of Great Britain (Turner 1986b: 46). The question of citizenship within the British state cannot be analysed historically without reference to the erosion of the cultural and political autonomy of the Celtic fringe. As Anthony Smith (1986) argues, the creation of citizenship within the Gesellschaft-like political space of the modern state may well require the subordination, or even eradication, of Gemelnschafi like membership within an ethnic primary group (or Ethnié). However, Mann's comment on the Anglophile character of Marshall's theory is merely the pretext for a more important exercise, namely the development of a comparative framework for the historical elaboration of five strategies of citizenship (liberal, reformist, authoritarian monarchist, fascist and authoritarian socialist). Having divided the ' regimes of pre-indus trial Europe into two ideal-types (absolute monarchies and constitutional regimes), Mann proceeds to inquire into how the traditional regimes developed strategies to cope politically first with the bourgeoisie and secondly with the urban working class during the period of industrial capitalist development. Britain provides the principal example of a Hberal strategy. The state retained a liberal character and the working class was successfully incorporated through the welfare state which 'meshes into, rather than replaces, private market and insurance schemes' (Mann 1987: 343). Under the impact of trade union struggle and class conflict in the nineteenth century, Britain eventually moved from a liberal to a reformist solution. The United States and Switzerland are also examples of a Hberal strategy7, but social citizenship remained under-developed in both. However, their buoyant economies have permitted their citizens to insure themselves against personal hardship. By contrast, in France, Spain, Italy and Scandinavia, the development of citizenship was bitterly disputed by monarchical and clerical reactionaries, and the absolutist legacy remained (with the exception of France) largely unchaHenged, until the modern period. Germany, Austria, Russia and japan provide examples of an authoritarian monarchist strategy. While these absolutist regimes initially resisted the citizenship claims of both bourgeoisie and proletariat, they were eventually forced to modernize their poHties. Wilheknine Germany enjoyed the most successful strategy of poHtical and economic development, which resulted in the bourgeoisie, and to some extent the proletariat, being 'negatively incorporated' into the system via a superficial development of poHtical citizenship. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany provide Mann with two illustrations of authoritarian sociahst and fascist strategies. Although neither system provided comprehensive civil and poHtical rights, there was a significant development of social citizenship. In Germany, policies of full employment and pubHc works programmes were combined with another objective: rearmament. In the Soviet Union, a programme of social citizenship for all existed alongside substantial social inequaHties in the shadow economy and the black market. Both systems, while prodaiming powerful legitimating ideologies, had to depend on an extensive apparatus of violence and repression. However, while German fascism was very unstable, the Soviet system was more successful in domesticating its labour force by converting the trade unions into 'a-poHtical welfare state organizations' (Mann 1987: 350). Mann's treatment of citizenship represents, not only a major theoretical advance over the MarshalHan paradigm, but also an important contribution to our understanding of the historical processes of citizenship formation. However, Mann's theory appears to be weak on three crucial issues, and this debate with Mann's ruling-strategy thesis then provides the context in which I wish further to elaborate an alternative to, or at least a modification of, Mann's theory. The first criticism is that, because Mann perceives the origin of citizenship as a strategy of class relationships in which the state has a major role to play in creating social stabiHty, he fails to consider the questions of aboriginaHty, ethnicity and nationaHsm in the formation of modern citizenship. As I have already noted following Smith (1986), the creation of citizenship within the poHtical boundaries of the modem nation-state has typically involved or required the subordination or incorporation of ethnic minorities and/or aboriginals. This incorporation may be achieved by the relatively painless process of the cultural melting pot, or it may be brought about by more violent means. Citizenship in societies like Canada, New Zealand and Australia has, as its dark underside, the 'modernization' of aboriginal communities. The debate about citizenship in the United States cannot take place without an analysis of the historical impact of the black South on American civil society, and yet Mann curiously ignores the issue of racial orders. Any further development of Mann's account of citizenship would have to examine social stratification in terms which are not class-reductionist, and his laudable attempt to provide a historical treatment of different types of ruling class strategies should be extended to include an analysis of the white-settler societies. My second critical observation is that, while Mann (1987: 340) warns us that 'tradition matters', he completely neglects the impact of organized Christianity and Christian culture on the structuring of private/ public spaces, and how the typically negative evaluation of the political in mainstream Christian theology continues to place an individualistic brake on the expansion of active political citizenship. I have argued elsewhere (Turner 1986b: 16) that both Christianity and Islam contributed to the development of citizenship by providing a uníversalistíc discourse of political space (the City of God and the Household of Islam) which challenged ethnicity and kinship as the primordial ties of the societal community. However, Christianity also produced an important limitation on the emergence of an active view of the citizen as a carrier of rights. Christianity has emerged in the modern period as a radical threat to authoritarian or reactionary regimes (Poland, Soviet Union, South Africa or some Latin American states) in only exceptional circumstances, and specifically where alternative means of legitimate protest have been destroyed. In these circumstances, Christian theology often requires considerable revision and redirection. The Protestant Reformation provided an ideology of rebellion against Catholic hegemony and papal authority, and, partly through the development of vernacular versions of the Bible, established a cultural basis for the eruption of the nation-state. However, once in power, the Protestant churches were forced to turn to the local nation-state or to regional authorities for secular (that is, military) support of the faith. In theory, of course, the reformed churches regarded the state as a necessary evil, but in practice they came, not only to depend on secular political support, but also provided an ideology of'godly rule'. The churches required; however reluctantly, state power for the subordination of antinomianism, and in return they offered a theory of passive, obedient citizenship. In his Institution de la ^Religion chrétienne, Calvin was at pains to emphasize the Christian obligation to obey the laws of the land and to respect government, since the aim of the state was to create peace and stability during our miserable, but happily brief, sojourn on earth (Calvin 1939: 197ff). The effect of Protestant doctrine was to create a private sphere (of devotional religious practice, the subjectivity of the individual conscience, the privatized confessional and familial practices) in which the moral education of the individual was to be achieved, and a public world of the state and the market place, which was th$ realm of necessity, while religion through the institutionalized means of grace monitored the interior subjectivity of the individual, the state through the institutionalized means of violence regulated public space. This division did noť provide an environment which was congenial to the full development of a view of the citizen as an active and responsible member of the public arena. Mann's revision of the Marshallian version of liberal citizenship does not have a perspective on these religio-cultural variations in the constitution of political space. Of course, the churches were not merely the vehicles for Christian cultural beliefs towards the political: they materially influenced the ways in which public space was shared. For example, Colin Crouch (1986) has provided an important comparative framework for understanding the ,interaction between state and religion in the formation of European states. He distinguishes between: (1) secular liberalism versus Catholic corporatism (in the French Republic; (2) hegemonic Catholic corporatism (Portugal and Spain in which as a result the liberal tradition was very marginal); (3) Protestant neutrality (Denmark, Norway, Sweden); (4) consodationism (The Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium) in which the public affairs of civil society are organized separately for and by the different communities. Crouch argues that these traditional patterns for 'sharing public space' had long-term implications for modern politics. Thus, It is important to distinguish this organic, Catholic fascism from the secular Nazism of Germany. This was made dramatically clear by Austrian history following the Anschluss, when the whole edifice of Jlustrofascbismus and its corporatism was abolished and replaced by the Nazi system, based on the Fiibrerprinyp rather than corporatism. But the abiding, specifically Austrian tradition remained corporatist and space-sharing. (Crouch 1986: 186). Again, any understanding of the issue of citizenship in a society like Israel would have to depend on an historical account of the settlement between religion and politics during the period of state formation. My final (and possibly most important) criticism of Mann concerns the notion of a 'ruling-class strategy'. Mann can only conceive of citizenship being handed down from above (for example, by the state) such that rights are passive. Thus, citizenship is a strategy which brings about some degree of amelioration of social conflict and which is therefore a major contribution to social integration. Such a view of citizenship from above precludes, or restricts, any analysis of citizenship from below as a consequence of social struggles over resources. Because Mann concentrates on strategies from above, he cannot adequately appreciate the revolutionary implications of the oppositional character of rights. Is it possible that Mann regards the demands of millenarian Fifth Monarchy Men, incendiarist peasants, revolutionary republicans of the French Revolution, or radical Chartists as always capable of being successfully assimilated into the system by the calming oils of citizenship I find Engels's view in Anti'Dühring more historically plausible: in the same way bourgeois demands For equality were accompanied by proletarian demands for equality. From the moment when the bourgeois demand for the abolition of class privileges was put forward alongside it appeared the proletarian demand for the abolition of classes themselves — at first in religious form, leaning towards primitive Christianity, and later drawing support from the bourgeois equalitarian theories themselves. (Engels 1959: 146-7) There is an important distinction here. In ideal-typical terms, and as a heuristic device for the development of theory, we can either regard rights as privileges handed down from above in return for pragmatic cooperation (Mann's thesis), or we can regard rights as the outcome of radical struggle by subordinate groups for benefits (Engels's thesis). There are in fact two related difficulties. The first is Mann's negation of rights from below, and the second is that, because the only important categories in and philosophical problem. The problems of justifying on rational grounds the existence of slavery came to dominate much of the central issues of classical philosophy. Of course, the class structure of the ancient world was far more complex than a simple division between slave and non-slave. In early republican Rome, the major social division was between the patricians and the plebians; the patrician class was constituted by large landowners who had the rights to function politically and to hold office, playing a major role in the formation and direction of the army. The plebian class was composed primarily of landless tenants, who were forced to work patrician property and were excluded from entry into political life. Through the operation of credit relations, a plebian debtor would often be forced into the status of a debt-slave. As the Roman Empire developed, these divisions in society became more precisely determined and defined, creating an enduring division between the lower classes (the humiliores) and the privileged class (the honestiores). Within this social context, the notion of citizenship rights had very circumscribed significance, being the status of (rational) property owners who had certain public duties and responsibilities within the city-state. It would be wrong of course to imagine that the notion of citizenship remained historically static. There was, for example, a definite decline in the moral weight and importance of political commitment to the polls after its initial Socratic formulation. The Cynics and the Epicureans tended to give greater importance to the idea of individual autonomy and moral development rather than to the more collective virtues of Aristotelian philosophy. It was the Stoics who reformulated a notion of civic obligation. Thus Marcus Aurelius (121-80 AD) argued that our membership of (and therefore our citizenship in) a common political community was a necessary outcome of the fact that human beings qua humans have a common rational faculty, but his idea of political involvement represented a 'weary loyality' (Sabine 1963: 174) towards his status in society. Eventually the Stoical values of discipline, frugality and industry reflected the changing political reality of the Roman Empire, whose size, social differentiation and bureaucratic complexity no longer corresponded to the moral idea of the polls as an ethical association. While Cicero (106-43 BC) had attempted to translate the ancient Greek conceptions of civic virtue and public obligation to the polis into a new rhetoric which would be adequate to the changing conditions of Roman society, in the world of later Roman absolutism, philosophers like Seneca (4 BC-65 AD) could at best offer comfort to the citizen and in his De dementia beg rulers like Nero to rule with mercy. The citizen-legion which had been the basis, not only of Roman military power, but an essential basis of social solidarity had broken down. Thus, 'in place of the value of citizenship there is a common equality shared by all sorts and conditions of men; and in place of the state as a positive agency of human perfection there is a coercive power that struggles ineffectually to make an earthly life tolerable' (Sabine 1963: 179-80). The problem in late Roman antiquity was how to combine an abstract notion of universal citizenship with strong political commitment, that is how to overcome political disengagement by citizenship (Wolin 1961: 77-8). These tensions in the classical world between the heavenly city of rational beings and the earthly city of self-interested men, and between the moral development of the individual and the need for political duty in the public sphere became in large measure also part of the Christian legacy within which political life was ethically dubious. The term for citizen was derived in classical times from civitas, giving rise in Roman times to the notion of a ávitatus. This etymological origin provided eventually the French term átoyen from áté, namely an ensemble of citizens enjoying limited rights within a city context. Thus in French we find in the twelfth century the notion of citeaine and eventually in the thirteenth century the notion of comáúsn. A. átoyen was the 'habitant dune cite, dune vine, d'un pays fibre; qui aime son pays' (Nodíer 1866: 145). A citizen was 'brave, honnéte'. It is interesting to note that in the Social Contract of 1762, J.-J. Rousseau complained that it was a common mistake to confuse 'townsman' with 'citizen'. He asserted that 'houses make a town, but citizens make a city' (Rousseau 1973: 175). In English, the notion of a citizen can be detected in the medieval concept of citizen, but at least in the sixteenth century this term was interchangeable with the notion denizen (deinsein). This limited notion of the citizen as simply the inhabitant of a city was both extensive and continuous. Bailey's Dictionary says tersely that a citizen is 'a Freeman of a City' (1757). Brown's Dictionary of the Hoy Bible gives us more fully 'one that has the freedom of trade and other privileges belonging to a city' (1851: 241). It was thus common to regard the inhabitants of a city as citizens, while outsiders beyond the city walls were 'subjects'. The notion of the city and the historical evolution of autonomous cities played a critical role in the development of philosophical thought about freedom, individuality and civility. Weber thought this constellation was unique to the West: 'only in the Occident is found the concept r of citizen (avis Romanus, citoyen, bourgeois) because only in the Occident again are there cities in the specific sense' (Weber 1966: 233). The issue of citizenship was consequently an important issue in his' view of the unique character of Western rationalism. These terms were, also closely related to ideas about civility and civilization. To leave the' countryside in order to enter the city was typically connected with the process of civilization; to become urban was to 'citizenize' the person. The city emerged as a topic in social philosophy with very contradictory meanings. Whereas Voltaire thought that the city was the core of individual freedoms which challenged the false hierarchies of traditional rural society, by the beginning of the nineteenth century the city came to be more frequently seen as the great centre of social corruption and moral decadence. In German social thought, there emerged in the nineteenth century a strong nostalgia for country life and rural practices. This romantic nostalgia crystallized around the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft in the work of Ferdinand Tönnies (1887), although Tönnies himself did not share necessarily this conservative commitment to the Mann's theory are ultimately the Marxist categories of class, capitalism as a mode, of production, the state and geopolitics, he cannot deal theoretically with the peace movement, feminism, Solidarity, the Green Movement, animal liberation or struggles for children's rights as genuine or important contributions to historical change — at least such movements do not figure in his account. While the cooperation of these movements rather than the satisfaction of their demands may be a common outcome, this is not always, or inevitably, the outcome. Furthermore, failure to satisfy demands within the welfare state creates conditions for new social movements which then become dependent on the state for the satisfaction of needs. Mann's analytical framework appears to preclude any such consideration of the impact of new social movements on the expansion of citizenship from below. By combining these two aspects of citizenship (the private/public-' division, and the above/below distinction), we can develop a heuristic typology of four political contexts for the institutionalization or creation of citizenship rights: Citizenship Below Above Revolutionary context Passive democracy liberal pluralism Plebiscitary authoritarianism Public Space Private Space Revolutionary citizenship combines demands from below with an emphasis on the public arena, regarding the private world of the individual with suspicion. However revolutionary struggles for democratic rights often end in forms of public terror. Where revolutionary citizenship collapses into totalitarianism, I'imaginairs social (the social imaginary) results in the idea of Teople-as-One, the idea of society as such, bearing the knowledge of itself, transparent and homogeneous' (Lefort 1986: 305). In. Kberal pluralism, while interest group formation typically leads to movements for rights from below, the revolutionary thrust of social protest may be contained by a continuing emphasis on the rights of the individual for privatized dissent. The classical liberal view of politics insisted on diversity and freedom of private opinion against the threat of uniformity of belief. Hence, j.S. Mill in his essay 'On Liberty' in 1859 expressed the fear that the spread of mass opinion would mean that Europe was 'decidedly advancing towards the Chinese ideal of making all people alike' (Mill 1962: 130). I These forms of democratic citizenship may be contrasted with citizenship rights from above in which the citizen is a mere subject rather than an active bearer of effective claims against society via the state. Passive democracy recognizes the legitimate function of representative institutions, the courts and a welfare state system, but there is no established tradition of struggles for citizenship rights. For the reasons which are outlined in Mann's argument, citizenship remains a strategy for the regulation and institutionalization of class conflicts by public or governmental agencies rather than a set of practices which articulate popular demands for participation. Finally, we can identify an authoritarian form of democracy from above in which the state manages public space, inviting the citizens periodically to select a leader, who is then no longer responsible on a daily basis to the electorate. Private life emerges as a sanctuary from state regulation and, in the Germany described by Max Weber and Carl Schmitt, the private offered one possible, if fragile, shelter from the obrigkeitliche Willkur (arbitrariness of the authorities). This politico-cultural complex was the historical case of leader-democrary (Btihrerdsmokratii). This typology is regarded here as a mechanism for transcending the limitations of Marshall's theory of citizenship. Although Marshall distinguished between various types of citizenship rights (civil, political and social), he did not develop any view of active or passive citizenship. While agreeing with Mann's argument that we need a comparative perspective on citizenship in different historical contexts, Mann's thesis is limited by the (largely implicit) Marxist paradigm in which citizenship is merely a strategy of dominant towards subordinate classes. Hence Mann does not consider social movements, which are not necessarily or directly tied to class, as social forces, which contribute to the expansion of social rights. In order to elaborate this alternative typology, I shall proceed by an examination of the etymological and cultural roots of the concept of citizenship in order to emphasize the argument that citizenship does not have a unitary character. I I I I I I I Historically the concept of citizenship is bound up with the development of the city-state in the classical world of Rome and Greece. In the ancient v world, the city-state was a public arena for rational, free men which functioned as a collective insurance against external threats, and internal dispute. In classical Greek and Roman societies, the dominant classes depended extensively upon slave labour for both direct production and domestic services. Thus, the dominant class was an urban population of free, legally constituted, citizens who nevertheless depended on the exploitation of B large agrarian estates by slave labour. Since these slaves were often acquired by H military conquest, every free-bom citizen was threatened by the possibility of servitude and loss of status. Because the full rights of citizenship were conferred upon _ members of the polis who had a right to speak and to govern, there was an ideological I need to explain and to legitimize the subordinate status of women, adult slaves and ■ children; the homosexual subordination of young men was therefore an acute legal I 'organic' community. However the whole problem of the melancholy return to nature and the development of bourgeois inwardness (Innerlichkeit) and loneliness (Einsamkeit) has to be located much earlier in eighteenth-century romanticism. In Germany the radical humanists generated an ideal vision of the Greek city-state as a major alternative to the urban society which was developing alongside capitalism. Thus Schiller, Fichte and Hölderlin merged the features of the Greek polis with those of the medieval town to create an image of burgher culture as an alternative to the emerging industrial cities of Germany. We can therefore identify a rather significant distinction between the emerging concept of citizenship in Germany and the more revolutionary idea of citizenship which had developed in France out of the French Revolution. In the German philosophical tradition, the notion of social rights and citizenship was closely connected with the development of the idea of civil society (die bürgliche Gesellschaft), Within the German conception of civil society, a citizen was any individual who had left the family context in order to enter the public arena which was dominated by economic competition and was contrasted with the state as that institution which was the historical embodiment of reason. In this German tradition the idea of the citizen was therefore necessarily tied to the idea of the burger, and civil society was in a sense merely burgerdom. In German this concept of burgerdom goes back to the fifteenth and sixteenth century, when the notion of burgership embraced the inhabitants of a burgh who enjoyed certain privileges and immunities. The Bürgertum (bourgeoisie) was a product of the city who, through training and education, achieved a civilized mastery of emotions; the result was a new status group, the Bildungsbürgertum (Martin 1969: 138-45). In social German philosophy, Hegel's concept of civil society was adopted from the Scottish Enlightenment in which writers like Adam Ferguson in An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) and John Millar in Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Sodety (1771) had attempted to provide a systematic view of the social development of human societies towards more complex systems. Both Ferguson and Millar were concerned to understand the development of a sharp contrast between the 'rude' society of the Highlands and the civilized and sophisticated world of the urban civilization of Edinburgh and Glasgow. For Ferguson, it was the ownership of private property which produced the crucial division between savagery and barbarism, but he feared that the egoism of commercial civilization could destroy the bonds of civil society. In the work of Hegel, civil society was that terrain lying between the family and the political relations of the state, where the state resolved the struggles and contradictions of conflicting interests providing a higher and more universal expression of the particularities of society. Against Hegel, Marx and Engels (1965) in The German Ideology of 1845 came to see civil society as the real 'theatre of all history' such that the state became merely an epiphenomenon of more basic social processes. For Marx the citizen of bourgeois theory was merely an abstract subject which disguised the real conflicts lying in the basic structures of society. Therefore, Marx in the debate on the Jewish Question1 saw the political emancipation of the Jewish community as a rather superficial and partial historical development in the absence of a genuine reorganization of the socio-economic structure of society as such. While Marx was highly critical of the abstract notion of bourgeois rights and civil society, the notion of civil society survived in critical theory through the writing of Antonio Gramsci (1971), who formulated the interconnections between the state, society and economy in terms of a set of contrasts between consent and coercion, private and public life. For Gramsci, civil society was not simply the domain of individual wills but a system of institutions and organization which had the potential for developing freedom in a system of consent; Gramsci came to believe that the state could play an important part in developing this self-regulation of civil society. In Germany the absence of a successful radical bourgeois revolution and the development of capitalism from above, via Bismarckian legislation, created a social context in which the conditions for the development of a full and dynamic notion of citizenship were limited, giving rise therefore to the rather restricted conceptions of burghership as the main carrier of rights. The absence of a successful bourgeois-liberal revolution and the continuing political dominance of the Junker class created an underdeveloped civil or public realm. This political structure was reinforced and legitimized by Lutheranism, which sanctified the state as both the representative of the Volksgemeinschaft and as the guardian of the privatized individual. The private realm of the individual and the family assumed enormous ethical and educational significance over and against the public. As the state emerged as the moral guardian of the people, it is easy to see how the state acquired extensive social prestige and powers over civil society. Because Lutheranism failed to offer a normative basis for dissent, the bourgeoisie were, by the end of the nineteenth century, committed to an ideology which supported the state in a context where parliamentary authority was clearly lacking. Sovereignty rested in the law and the state, not in elected assemblies. The result was that "Nineteenth century German liberalism implicitly accepted the subordination of the individual to the moral expectations of the Volk, while Gustav Schmoller, for example, was lavish in praise of the unification and rationalization of control by bureaucratization' (Lee 1988: 34). In the political life of twentieth-century Germany, the impact of the First World War, military defeat and the weakness of the Weimar Republic created an environment in which totalitarian solutions were canvassed. Carl Schmitt's view that it was not the responsibility of the state to enter into consensual agreements with an electorate, but to take bold and firm actions against its enemies was a natural consequence of these developments. To be free, from the point of view of the individual citizen, was to serve the state. A Typology of Citizenship These comparisons between different histories of citizenship in Europe suggest a model of citizenship development in terms of two dimensions. The first dimension is the passive-active contrast depending on whether citizenship grew from above or below.1 In the German tradition, citizenship stands in a passive relationship to the state because it is primarily an effect of state action. It is important to note that this distinction is in fact fundamental to the western tradition and can be located in medieval political philosophy, where there were two opposed views of citizenship. In the descending view, the king is all-powerful and the subject is the recipient of privileges. In the ascending view, a free man was a citizen, an active bearer of rights. In the northern city-states of Italy, the Roman law facilitated the adoption of a populist notion of citizenship; the result was that the populo came to be regarded as an aggregate of citizens who possessed some degree of autonomous sovereignty. The second dimension is the tension between a private realm of the individual and the family in relationship to the public arena of political action. In the German case, an emphasis on the private (the family, religion, and individual ethical development) was combined with a view of the state as the only source of public authority. This typology allows us to contrast Germany with other historical trajectories. The contrast between the English and the German traditions of political participation would appear to be very considerable. It was Weber of course who drew attention to the historically important contrast between constitutional law in the Roman continental system and the English judge-made law within the common law tradition. Weber argued that continental constitutionalism provided better safeguards for the individual, but he underestimated the importance of the common law tradition in providing precisely a common basis for rights. The struggle against the absolutist state in England had lead to the execution of die king, an expansion of parliamentary authority, the defence of the Enghsh common law tradition and the assertion of individual religious rights. Of course, it has long been held that the English tradition 1 The active and passive notion of citizenship can be identified in medieval legal and political philosophy where it was the product of two contrasted views of sovereign power, namely whether the king was seen as primus inter pares or whether the king was regarded as the separate and exclusive source of legitimate power. These two views therefore pinpointed au essential and permanent conflict within a feudal system between centralized and decentralized power, which involved a struggle over the monopolization of the means of violence (Giddens 1985: 53-60). In this article, however, the idea of citizenship from above through the state or from below via more localized, participatory, civil institutions is derived from Lash and Urry (1987: 4-16). Within this framework, just as one can speak about the historical organization of capitalism as a socioeconomic system as a whole from above (for example, Germany) or from below (such as Britain), so one might analyse the historical structuring of politics (through the formation of citizenship) within the same paradigm. This particular perspective on citizenship is also dependent on Claus Offe's analysis of capitalism in terms of the tensions between economic and political functions (Offe 1985), but this article, at least by implication, is also an attempt to translate the historical sociology of Barrington Moore (1966) into a political sociology of citizenship. Finally, my treatment of the private/public dimension has been influenced by Charles Maier's Changing boundaries of the Poätical (1988). of individual rights in fact supported an unequal and rigid class structure. Effective social rights resided in individual rights to property, thereby excluding the majority of the population from real social and political participation. The absence of a land army and the state's dependence on a navy, the early demilitarization of the English aristocracy and the incorporation of the urban merchants into the elite contributed to English gradualism. After the demobilization of the new model army, two royal guard units were retained for primarily ceremonial duties. The British army was not modernized until the late nineteenth century. The monarch could no longer mtimidate parliament. A more important point is that the constitutional settlement of 1688 created the British citizen as the British subject, that is a legal personality whose indelible social rights are constituted by a monarch sitting in parliament. The notion of citizen-as-subject indicates clearly the relatively extensive notion of social rights but also the passive character of British civil institutions. The defeat of absolutism in the settlement of 1688 left behind a core of institutions (the Crown, the Church, the House of Lords and traditional attitudes about the family and private life) which continued to dominate British life until the destructive force of the First and Second World Wars brought British culture eventually and reluctantly into the modern world. By contrast with both the English and German cases, the French conception of citizenship was the consequence of a long historical struggle to break the legal and political monopoly of a court society within a social system which was rigidly divided in terms of estates. The very violence of this social transformation resulted in a highly articulate conception of active citizenship in the revolutionary struggles of the eighteenth century. The old myth that the king represented, combined and integrated the multiplicity of orders, groups and estates had become transparent during the political conflicts of the eighteenth century. Revolutionary political theories, acting against the absolutist conception of sovereignty, followed Rousseau in conceptualizing society as a collection of individuals whose existence would be represented through the general will in popular parliamentary institutions. What bound Frenchmen together into a common nation was again the concept of citizenship. Frenchmen had ceased to be merely subjects of the sovereign and had become instead common citizens of a national entity. There are therefore two parallel movements whereby a state is transformed into a nation at the same time that subjects are transformed into citizens. The differences between the French and English revolutionary traditions may be summarized in two contrasted views of citizenship by Rousseau and Burke. For Rousseau in The Soáal Contract the viability of citizenship required the destruction of all particular intervening institutions which separated the citizen from the state. By contrast, Burke in Refactions on the Revolution in France in 1790 argued that the essence of citizenship was the continuity of local groups, particular institutions and regional associations between the sovereign power of the general will and the individual. For Burke an organized civil society must have hierarchy, order, regulation and constraint; its hierarchical character precluded the very possibility of 'the rights of man'. Finally, the American case represents another variation on the history of western citizenship. The American example shared with the French a strong rejection of centralized power, adopting also the discourse of the rights of man and privileges of independent citizens. The Boston Tea Parry was a symbolically significant expression of the idea 'no taxation without representation'. The radical nature of the 'democratic revolution' in America struck observers like Alexis de Tocqueville with great force; he came to regard America as the first macro-experiment in democracy in modern history. For de Tocqueville, the democratic foundation of the nation was explained by the absence of aristocracy, the frontier, and the exclusion of an established church. Although there was a radical tradition of citizenship expressed in the idea of an independent militia, American democracy nevertheless continued to exist alongside a divisive racist and exploitative South. In addition America's welfare state was late to develop and provided very inadequate forms of social citizenship and participation for the majority of the population. This weak tradition of citizenship in welfare terms has been explained by the very strength of American individualism, and by the checks and balances of the federal system; American citizenship was expressed in terms of localism versus centralism, thereby limiting the development of a genuinely national programme of welfare rights. To some extent, the dominance of individualism and the value of personal success have meant that the 'public arena' is typically understood in terms of individual involvement in local voluntary associations. Americans liave difficulty relating this ideal image to the large-scale forces and institutions shaping their lives' (Bellah et al. 1985: 199. The political is seen as morally suspect. This cultural analysis of American individualism would not therefore contradict Mann's analysis. On the contrary, they may be regarded as complementary. In America, the articulation of sectional interests through democratic institutions constrains the emergence of class-based politics. The point of this historical sketch has been partly to provide a critique of the monolithic and unified conception of citizenship in Marshall and partly to offer a sociological model of citizenship along two axes, namely public and private definitions of moral activity in terms of the creation of a public space of political activity, and active and passive forms of citizenship in terms of whether the citizen is conceptualized as merely a subject of an absolute authority or as an active political agent. We can now indicate how this ideal-typical construction might be applied to specific cases: Citizenship Below Above Revolutionary French tradition Passive English case American liberalism German fascism In France, a revolutionary conception of active citizenship was combined with an attack on the private space of the family, religion and privacy. In a passive democracy, citizenship is handed down from above and the citizen appears as a mere subject (the English case under the seventeenth-century settlement. In a liberal democratic solution, positive democracy emphasizes participation, but this is often contained by a continuing emphasis on privacy and the sacredness of individual opinion. In plebiscitary democracy, the individual citizen is submerged in the sacredness of the state which permits minimal participation in terms of the election of leaders, while again family life is given priority in the arena of personal ethical development. While revolutionary democracy may collapse into totalitarianism, plebiscitary democracy degenerates into fascism. In totalitarian democracy, the 'stare, in pushing egalitarianism to the extreme, closes off the private sphere from influencing the course of political affairs' (Prager 1985: 187) The Geopolitics of Citizenship Following the work of Barrington Moore (1966), the different routes towards modem polities have distinctive consequences for the character of citizenship. Füstorically, the presence of a successful bourgeois revolution in the development of politically modern systems was a significant ingredient in estabHshing parliamentary democracy and its associated civil rights. The revolutionary conflicts against aristocratic privilege in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789 have been important in the establishment of the notions of sovereignty and citizenship, representation and social contract, and in the development of the concept of public opinion as significant in the shaping of political life. If a successful revolutionary conflict against aristocratic powers is at least one aspect of the historical emergence of democratic citizenship, then the failure of a liberal bourgeois struggle (as in Germany in 1848) provides one aspect of the peculiarly bureaucratic, authoritarian character of political life in Germany under the aristocratic dominance of the Junkers. While Moore's primary orientation to the issue of the origins of democracy involved the historical relationship between lords and peasants in the development of modem societies, recent approaches to democracy (and by implication citizenship) have been more concerned with the implications of geopolitics for long-term constitutional change. Thus contemporary democratic politics owes a great deal to the military victories of the 'Anglo-Saxon5 powers, but in the future, because of nuclear armaments, 'the war-assisted pattern of change' (Mann 1987: 352) will not be an option. However, if we examine a much longer period of western history, then we can also see that in early modern Europe the pattern of constitutionalism (parliamentary assemblies, city-state immunities, village councils, and so forth) represented an important foundation for later democratic movements. However, societies which were threatened by massive international military assaults were often converted from constitutionalism to military-bureaucratic absolutism. Brian Downing (1988) has shown how the different military histories of Brandenburg-Prussia, England, Sweden and The Netherlands were important in the survival or destruction of early forms of constitutionalism. Thus, Downing is able to criticize Moore on two grounds, namely his failure to acknowledge early developments in democratic participation and the role of warfare in creating conditions of authoritarian rule. Downing* s thesis does however confirm the importance of gradualism in English democratic history (in combination with the role of common law, demilitarization and island isolation) as the basis for (passive) citizenship. These historical accounts of the geopolitics of citizenship are compatible with the typology which has been developed in this argument, because the notion of democracy from above or from below is simply one version of Moore's perspective on the rise of modem democracies. In addition, mass warfare has, in the modern period, created conditions whereby there can be political mobilization to claim rights or to seek the satisfaction of rights through state mediation (Turner 1986b: 67-78). The principal addition to these comparative studies of the history of citizenship in this article is the argument that the ways in which public space is culturally organized (in relation to notions of individualism, privatism and the ethical status of the domestic) also has important implications for whether the private is seen as an area of deprivation or an arena of moral fulfilment. In classical societies, the private was definitely a space of necessity and privation, whereas in modern societies with an emphasis on achievement orientation in public competition for material success, the private is seen as the space of personal leisure and enhancement. If we regard the historical emergence of the public as in fact the emergence of the political, then the structural relationship between the private and the public, and their cultural meanings, is an essential component in any understanding of the relationships between totalitarianism and democracy. The transfer of sovereignty from the body of the king to the body politic of citizens is thus a major turning point in the history of western democracies, because it indicates a major expansion of political space, indeed the creation of political spaces. The revolutionary conflicts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gave rise to an expanded notion of political participation and membership. The development of the concept of the political citizen was an important adjunct to the historical development of the nation-state as the principal political unit of contemporary political life. The failure of absolutism and the survival of constitutionalism created a niche for the gradual development of parliamentary rights and political participation. Marshall's work was important therefore in providing a theoretical perspective on a broader and deeper conception of social membership as expressed through the idea of a welfare state being itself the embodiment of certain social rights and claims. Citizenship became a form of entitlement. Conclusion: The Globalization of Citizenship While the notion of citizenship continues to provide a normative basis for the defence of the welfare state, certain crucial changes in the organization of global systems have rendered some aspects of the notion of citizenship redundant and obsolete. The contemporary world is structured by two contradictory social processes. On the one hand, there are powerful pressures towards regional autonomy and localism and, on the other, there is a stronger notion of globalism and global political responsibilities. The concept of citizenship is therefore still in a process of change and development. We do not possess the conceptual apparatus to express the idea of global membership, and in this context a specifically national identity appears anachronistic. Indeed the uncertainty of the global context may produce strong political reactions asserting the normative authority of the local and the national over the global and international. The analysis of citizenship has in recent years become a pressing theoretical issue, given the problems which face the welfare state in a period of economic recession. However, the problem of citizenship is in fact not confined merely to a question of the normative basis of welfare provision; its province is global. It includes, on the one hand, the international consequences of perestroika and glasnost in the Soviet Union, and, on the other, the implications of medical technology for the definition of what will count as a human subject/citizen. While Marshall's aim in formulating a theory of citizenship was by contrast rather modest in its focus (to understand the tensions in Britain between capitalism and social rights), his statement of the issues has proved to be extremely fruitful in sociology and political science. - The limitations of Marshall's approach, however, are equally obvious. His framework is now widely regarded as evolutionary, analytically vague and ethnocentric. Mann's treatment of citizenship in a comparative and historical context as a 'ruling class strategy' indicates a number of important directions by which the Marshallian framework might be expanded, elaborated and finally transcended. My commentary here on different types of citizenship could be regarded as compatible, therefore, with the spirit of Mann's critique in the sense that only a historical sociology of citizenship can take us out of the Anglophile orbit of the Marshallian view. It has also been argued that Mann's thesis fails to deal with revolutionary conceptions of citizenship, with cultural variations in the definition of public space, and with the problem of status as opposed to class in the formation of citizenship. For example, Mann appears to regard gender, age 'and race vas variables which are irrelevant in the historical emergence of citizenship. Since Mann (1986: 222) has declared status to be 'that most vacuous of sociological terms', this absence is hardly surprising, and yet it can be argued that status is an essential concept for the analysis of modern problems of citizenship (Turner 1988). In this article I have been concerned with two dimensions which I believe are missing in Mann's attempt to go beyond Marshall, namely the private/public division in western cultures, and the issue of passive and active versions of citizenship. However, any further development of the theory of citizenship will have to deal more fundamentally with societies in which the struggle over citizenship necessarily involves problems of national identity and state formation in a context of multiculturalism and ethnic pluralism. The societies on which this article has largely concentrated — France, Germany, England, the Netherlands and colonial America — were relatively homogeneous in ethnic terms during their period of national formation. With the exception of North America, these societies had no internal problem of aboriginality. The question of citizenship was less complicated therefore by questions of ethnic minorities, ethnic pluralism and cultural melting pots; it is partly for this reason that Mann's neglect of ethnicity is not an issue in the societies which he has chosen for debate, but ethnic migration has been critical (indeed crucial) in other contests such as in South Africa, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand (Turner 1986b: 64-84). We may in conclusion indicate two possible lines of theoretical development of the (western) notion of citizenship. The first would be the conditions under which citizenship can be formed in societies which are, as it were, constituted by the problems of ethnic complexity (such as Brazil), and the second would be an analysis of the problems which face the development of global citizenship as the political counter-part of the world economy. References Althusser, L., Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays, New Left Books, London 1971. Barbalet, J.M., Citizenship, Open University Press, Milton Keynes 1988. Bellah, R., Madsen, F., Sullivan, W.M., Swidler, A. and Tiptop, S.M., Habits of the Heart, individualism and commitment in American Life, Harper & Row, New York 1985. Berger, P.L., The Capitalist Revolution, Basic Books, New York 1986. Brown, J., A Dictionary of the Holy Bible, Blackie, Glasgow 1851. Calvin, j., Institution de la Religion Chrétienne, Volume 4, Societě les Belles Lettres, Paris 1939. Crouch, C, 'Sharing Public Space: states and organized interests in Western Europe', in Hall, A., ed. States in History, Basis Blackwell, Oxford 1986. Downing, B.M., 'Constitutionalism, Warfare and Political Change in Early Modem Europe', Theory and Society 17, 1988, pp. 1-56. Engels, F., Anti-Dührinq, Foreign Publishing House, Moscow 1959. Giddens, A., Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory, Macmillan, London 1982. Giddens, A., The Nation-State and Violence, Volume Two: A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Polity Press, Oxford 1985. Gramsci, A., Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New Left Books, London 1971. Lash, S. and Urry,J., The End of Organized Capitalism, Polity Press, Oxford 1987. Lee, W.R., Ticonoraic Development and the State in Nineteenth-century Germany', Economic History Review 41, 1988, pp. 346-67, Lefort, C, The Political Forms of Modern Society, Polity Press, Oxford 1986. Lefort, C, Democracy and Political Theory, Polity Press, Oxford 1988. Mann, M., The Sources of Social Power, Volume 1. A history of power from the beginning to A.D. 1760, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986. Maier C. S., ed., Changing Boundaries of the Political, essays on the evolving balance between the state and society, public and private, in Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988. Mann, M. 'Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship', Sociology 21,1987, pp. 339-54. Marshall, T.H., Sociology at the Crossroads, Heinemann Educational Books, London 1963. Marshall, T.H., Social Policy in the Twentieth Century, Hutchinson, London 1965. Marshall, T.H., The Right to Welfare and Other Essays, Heinemann Educational Books, London 1981. Martin, A. von, 'Bürgertum', in Bernsdorf, W., ed., Wörterbuch der Soziologie, Ferdinand Enkeverlag, Stuttgart 1969. Mill, J.S., Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, Dent, London 1962. Moore, B., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern Word, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1966- Nodier, C, Dictionnaire Universel de la Langue franfaise (fifteenth edition), Pierre Joseph Rey, Paris 1866. Offe, C, Disorganized Capitalism, Polity Press, Oxford 1985. Offe, C, 'Democracy against the Welfare State? Structural foundation of neo-conservative political opportunities', Political Theory X, t987, pp. 501-37. Parsons, T, 'Christianity and Modern Industrial Society1, in E.A. Tiryakian, ed-, Sociological Theory, Values and Sociocultural Change, Essays in Honor of Pitrim A. Sorokin, Free Press, New York 1963. Parsons, T, Sodetiss, Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs 196. Parsons, T., The System of Modern Sorieties, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs 1971. Parsons, T. and Clark, K.B., eds, The Negro American, Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1966. Prager, J., 'Totalitarian and Liberal Democracy: two types of modern political orders', in Alexander, J.C., ed. Neofunctionalism, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills 1985. Rousseau, J.-J., The Social Contract and Discourses, Dent, London 1973. Sabine, GM., A History of Political Theory, Harrap, London 1963. Smith, A. D-, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1986. Tommes, F., Community and Assodation, Michigan State University Press, Michigan (1887) 1957. Turner, B.S., 'State, Civil Society and National Development: the Scottish problem', Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sodology 20, 1984, pp. 161-82. Turner, B.S., Equality, Ellis Horwood, Chicester, and Tavistock, London 1986a. Turner, B.S., Citizenship and Capitalism: The Debate over Reformism, Allen and Unwire, London 19866. Turner, B.S., Status, Open University Press, Milton Keynes 1988. Weber, M., The City, Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois 1966. Wohn, S.S., Politics and Vision, continuity and innovation in western political thought, Harrap, London 1961. In: Chantal Mouffe (ed.): Dimensions of Radical Democracy. London: Verso 1992, pp. 33-62. 24 I I I I I I I I 25 I I 3. Contemporary revival of the concept of civil society 6 March • Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato: "The Contemporary Revival of Civil Society" In: Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato: Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1992, pp. 29-82 26 The Contemporary Revival of Civil Society JeanL. Cohen and Andrew Arato Phrases involving the resurrection, reemergence, rebirth, reconstruction, or renaissance of civil society are heard repeatedly today. These terms, indicating the continuity of an emerging political paradigm with essential trends of early modernity, are misleading in one important respect: They refer not only to something modern but also to something significantly new. A simple chronology derived in part from Karl Polänyi might, in an extremely preliminary way, indicate what is at stake. According to Polanyi, during most of the nineteenth century, forces representing the capitalist self-regulating market economy were on the offensive, claiming an identity with the liberal society that was in the process of emancipating itself from the absolutist and paternalistic state. Polanyi, however, rightly stressed that in the late nineteenth century and through much of the twentieth century a reversal had taken place. Now, elites representing the logic and goals of the modem state were successfully claiming to express the interests of a heterogeneous set of social groups and tendencies resisting and challenging the destructive trends of capitalist market society. Not even Polanyi, however, foresaw that the statist phase would also have its limits. For a period of more than a decade and a half now, citizen initiatives, associations, and movements have increasingly oriented themselves toward the defense and expansion of a variously described societal realm, the forms and projects of which are clearly distinguished from statism. Two crucial ambiguities remain from the orientation "society against the state." First, while increasingly significant groupings of collective actors reject any representation of their program in terms of communitarianism, others continue to defend an idealized Gemeinschaft or premodem network of communities, traditional solidarities, and collectives against modernity itself. Second, there are various neoconservative, neoliberal, and libertarian initiatives (rarely movements, but with significant force behind them) that identify "society" with market economy. Both of these trends are regressive versions of antistaüsm. The first wishes to retreat behind the modem state, thus eliminating an essential precondition of modernity itself; the second wishes "to repeat the already failed experiment with the fully self-regulated market economy of classical capitalism. There is no chance of the first trend registering even temporary successes, although it will continue to have a role within most social movements. The second trend, wherever successful, threatens to transform history into oscillation between economic liberalism and paternalist statism. We believe there are today important elements of a third project for retrieving the category of civil society from the tradition of classical political theory. These involve attempts to thematize a program that seeks to represent the values and interests of » social autonomy in face of both the modern state and the capitalist economy, without H falling into a new traditionalism. Beyond the antinomies of state and market, public and private, Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft, and, as we shall show, reform and revolution, the idea of the defense and the democratization of civil society is the best way to characterize the really new, common strand of contemporary forms of self-organization and self-constitution. Problems of self-reflection and self-understanding within the movements and the initiatives themselves sometimes prevent them from clearly recognizing their own difference with communaHsm or libertarianism. At best the difference represents a stake that must be internally contested. Behind the many ambiguities of meaning tied up with the concept of civil society stand such conflicts. In company with many participants, our book takes a clear stand in these conflicts on behalf of a modern civil society capable of preserving its autonomy and forms of solidarity in face of the modern economy as well as the state. Such a project emerges from contexts of social and political conflicts themselves. In this chapter we present the idea by examining several discourses that have revived the category of civil society (albeit in different versions) in order to critically interpret the political contexts of East and West, North and South. Without aiming at a complete presentation of all related views within each context, we deliberately stress perspectives in each that can be compared with those in the other contexts. We shall attempt to identify the common strands, the alternative models, the significant differences as well as the conceptual unclarities in these forms of interpretation and self-interpretation. The rest of this book will, we hope, contribute to the further development of the discourse of civil society and thereby benefit the actors and interpreters we present in this chapter. I I I I I The Polish Democratic Opposition The opposition of civil society and state made its most dramatic return in East Europe, particularly in the ideology of the Polish opposition from 1976 to the advent of early Solidarity and beyond. The juxtapositions are well known: society against the state, nation against state, social order against political system, pays reel against pays legal or « officiel, public life against the state, private life against public power, etc. The idea was ■ always the protection and/or self-organization of social life in the face of the ™ totalitarian or authoritarian state. Adam Michnik provided the theoretical elaboration of this conception under the heading of "new evolutionism."1 He also discovered the H historical conditions of its possibility: the failure of a potentially total revolution from ■ below (Hungary in 1956), and the demise of a process of reform from above ! Even if in an essayistic, not explicitly theoretical style. See, in particular, Adam Michnik, "A New Evolutionism," in letters from Prison and Other Essays (Berkeley. University of California Press, 1985). I (Czechoslovakia in 1968).2 Michnik drew two lessons from these defeats. First, the transformation of the Soviet-type system of East Central Europe was possible only within limits whose thresholds were the alliance system (threatened in Hungary in 1956) and the confirmation of the control of state institutions by a Soviet-type Communist party (challenged in different forms both in Hungary and in Czechoslovakia in 1968). Second, neither revolution from below nor reform from above would work as the strategy for achieving what was in fact possible. The point of view of civil society in this context aims at a twofold reorientation. First, the juxtaposition of society against the state indicates not only the battielines but also a shift concerning the target of democratization, from the whole social system to society outside of state institutions proper. Thus, while the conception surely implies a pushing back of the state-administrative forms of penetration from various dimensions of social life, it has, nevertheless, the idea of self-limitation built into it from the start: The leading role of the party in the (albeit shrinking) state sphere will not be challenged. Second, the conception also indicates that the agent or the subject of the transformation must be an independent or rather a self-organizing society aiming not at social revolution but at structural reform achieved as a result of organized pressure from below. These two aspects are brought together by the term "self-limiting revolution" coined by Jacek Kuron in the period of Solidarity. At that time, the new conception truly came into its own, showing its formidable powers in promoting the self-understanding of new types of social actors. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the "new evolutionism" or the "self-limiting revolution" represented both a strategic and a normative break with the revolutionary tradition whose logic was understood to be undemocratic and inconsistent with the self-organization of society.3 All major revolutions from the French to the Russian and the Chinese not only demobilized the social forces on which they originally depended but also established dictatorial conditions that were meant to block the reemergence of such forces at their very root for as long as possible. The project of "self-limiting revolution" has, of course, the opposite goal: the construction from below of a highly articulated, organized, autonomous, and mobilizable civil society. Leaving aside for now the overall theoretical cogency of the conception, we must note some serious ambiguities in its elaboration in the milieu of the Polish democratic opposition.4 Are the terms "society" and "civil society" the same? After all, they both refer to a plurality of forms of independent groups (associations, institutions, collectives, interest representations) as well as forms of independent public opinion 2 The latter are in principle also potentially unlimited because of the dramatic internal democratization of the ruling party. 3 Michnik, Letters from Prison, 86, 88, 95. 4 A. Arato, "The Democratic Theory of the Polish Opposition: Normative Intentions and Strategic Ambiguities," Working Papers of'the Helen Kellogg Institute (Notre Dame, 1984). and communication. Put another way, how can civil society be both the agent of social transformation and its result? One could, of course, try to resolve the difficulty by distinguishing between society and civil society. The latter would represent a version of the former, institutionalized by legal mechanisms or rights, as in the Gdansk and subsequent agreements of August and September 1980.5 But the ambiguity would remain, because "rights" in an authoritarian state-socialist setting flack of independent courts; lack of a clear, unambiguous legal code; lack of an organized legal profession) are easily revocable not only in principle but also in a political practice that depends on constant demonstration of this revocability. Moreover, institutional continuity can apparently be achieved by public enlightenment and self-organization even without rights, as witnessed by the durability and growth of autonomous forms of culture in the twelve year period after 1976.6 Another set of conceptual difficulties revolves around the interpretation of the notion of society, of social self-organization in a supposedly totalitarian setting. Here one view (Michnik) stressed the obliteration of all social solidarities and the resulting social atomization, except for carefully defined institutional complexes (the church) or historical periods (1956, 1970-71, and after 1976). Another position,.more consistent with the theory of the new evolutionism, insisted on the failure of totalitarianism, whatever its intentions, to truly atomize society, or to completely disorganize families, face-to-face groups, and cultural networks.7 This position, however, would have required the working out of a paradigm to- replace the totalitarianism thesis as the theoretical framework of the "new evolutionism," something never actually attempted. More serious in principle is the lack of clarity regarding the type of civil society that is to be constructed or reconstructed. The conceptual confusion derives above all from a common unwillingness to take an openly critical attitude toward the liberal model of civil society, despite participation in a solidaristic workers' movement that is, in many respects, incompatible with this model. In the 1980s more and more people (e.g., KroL Spievak, the editors of xJespublicd) came to champion a version of the liberal model, based on economic individualism and freedoms of property and enterprise as the central rights. Even within the milieu of those close to Solidarity in its first great period (1980-81), there were disagreements over the various conceptions of civil society. Cultural models (Wojcicki) were counterposed to political conceptions (the Committee for the Defense of Workers, or KOR), on the one hand, while the level of democracy needed in popular movements and institutions was hotly debated, on the other. Whereas it was generally recognized that the new civil society was to be 5 Michnik, letters from Prison, 111, 124. 6 Ibid., 77. 7 R Wojcicki, "The Reconstruction of Society," Telos, no. 47 (Spring 1981): 98-104. pluralistic,8 the need for a single, all-encompassing organization to respond to the interest of this plurality was temporarily accepted.9 But once such an organization emerged and managed to survive in the face of "totalitarian" power, could its unitary and all-encompassing tendency be easily disposed of? Formulating a dualistic civil society and state framework proved even more difficult, especially in practical politics. Was civil society, as represented by Solidarity, to be entirely apolitical, disinterested in "power," or was it to be expanded as a self-governing republic making a state in the old sense more or less superfluous? Sometimes aspects of each conception are to be found even in the same author.10 Would a self-coordinating system of society not negate the idea of self-limitation if the party-state were left only as a representative of Soviet power, in charge of military, police, and foreign policy and partially converted into an expert bureaucracy?11 If, on the other hand, the dualistic conception requires institutional mechanisms of compromise between societal organizations and party-state institutions, does the idea of building a hybrid system based on a new type of society next to an unreformed party-state make sense? And if a reform of official institutions, especially the party itself, must be hoped for and even promoted, if party pragmatists could be looked upon as partners even if not allies, could the much insisted-upon independent identity of the social movement be maintained?12 What would be the point of this if on many issues party pragmatists and sectors of the movement are closer to one another than potentially different elements of the antistate opposition? It is insufficient to reply that only an organized society, conscious of its identity, is capable of compromise, for just this unity tended to demobilize potential partners in the party. The deep identity problems of the ruling party could hardly be solved in the face of an organized society successfully reclaiming all legitimacy. Without a new party identity, party pragmatists lost all freedom of action. And for the party leadership, without legitimacy, the only freedom of action left was the exercise of raw sovereign power.13 Many of the difficulties touched upon here pointed toward the failure to rebuild civil society or at least a stable version of it. Yet the failure itself produced a new set 8 "Not to Lure the Wolves out of the Woods: An Interview with jacek Kuron," Telos, no. 47 (Spring 1981): 93-97. 9 This is done critically by some, enthusiastically by others. Touraine's distinction between a social movement (unified) and a movement for the reconstruction of (pluralistic) society helps to depict the ambiguity involved. See A. Tourajne et al., Solidarity. Poland 1980-1981 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 10 Compare, for example, Michnik, Letters from Prison, 89-90,129, and 158. 11 See the interview with Jacek Kuron cited in note 8, 12 Michnik, Letters from Prison, 146-147. 13 For extensive analyses of the problems of reconstructing civil society in the first Solidarity period, 1980-1981, see A. Arato "Civil Society against the State: Poland 1980-1981" Telos, no. 47 (Spring 1981): 23-47, and "Empire vs. Civü Society: Poland 1981-1982," Telos, no. 50 (Winter 1981-1982): 19-48. of social relations that could again be reinterpreted in terms of a new model of opposition between state and society. Thus in the context of the failure of "normalization," the original "new evolutionist" conception remained the basic form of orientation for theorist-activists such as Michnik. Undoubtedly the fact that it was now the turn of the martial law state to practice (reluctant) self-limitation reinvigorated the idea that an independent society could somehow be defended. "Independent civil society" was not, according to Michnik, annihilated. "Instead of resembling a Communist system after victorious pacification, this situation resembles a democracy after a military coup d'etat."14 Despite the reappearance of martial metaphors such as "a dramatic wrestling match between the totalitarian power and a society searching for a way to attain autonomy" and "the stationary war between an organized civil society and the power apparatus,"15 the new situation was nevertheless one that indicated the coming into its own of the cultural model of independent society. The major independent activities were publishing, lecturing, discussing, and teaching. For several years, the hope seems to have been the building of the moral bases of democratic structures and practices, i.e., a democratic political culture. While the army-state seemed powerless against these trends, it was rather successful in marginalizing its major political opponent: underground Solidarity. The latter, however, linked to the mechanisms of independent culture, continued to survive and play a role. Nevertheless, in this context, the democratic opposition moving within the paradigm of civil society had to face the question of how and when the survival and even the dramatic expansion of an independent culture, more and more pluralized ideologically, could be a foundation for the reemergeace of aboveground political organizations capable of making effective demands. The regime's inability to deal with the same economic crisis that was used in 1980-81 to help erode the resistance of the population provided new opportunities for the opposition. The strategy to restore the regime's legitimacy through a relatively free referendum, and thereby to recover freedom of action to impose an austerity program, failed in 1987 in the face of an only partially organized opposition. In this context and that of the strike movements during the spring and summer of 1988, it became clear that the regime needed partners to be able to initiate significant policy, and that only a reconstituted Solidarity could command sufficiently wide loyalty to become a credible partner. From the point of view of Solidarity's leadership, given the economic crisis and the prospects of simultaneously weakening both regime and opposition in a continuing process of polarization, it would certainly have been counterproductive not to promote and utilize reforms from above, as long these involved real gains in 14 Michnik, Letters from Prison, 81. 15 Ibid., 57, 79. institutionalizing a genuine civil society.16 After the negotiated "resolution" of the second strike wave, the issue seems to have been the following: Could the regime yield enough concessions that would be adequate tradeoffs for legitimizing the deep austerity measures required for successful economic reform? While such concessions even minimally had to involve legalizing elements of civil society, it was not at all clear that a version sufficiently democratic for the population and still acceptable to elements of the regime could be found. It was not clear, furthermore, whether the minimum unity of a society with different interests and increasingly differentiated ideologies could be maintained even in an emergency situation in which there were no longer any alternatives other than radical change or social decay. But could radical change still be conceptualized within the framework of opposing civil society to the state?1 ^ The Ideology of the "Second Left" in France It is not only under authoritarian regimes that the problem of democratization gets posed in terms of the reconstruction of civil society. The category was revived in France in the mid-1970s as a prime referent for democratic projects on the part of significant groups of intellectuals and a variety of collective actors.17 Of course it was here that the critique of totalitarianism and sympathy for East European dissidence had the greatest intellectual importance.18 And here, too, totalitarianism was defined as 16 The leadership of Solidarity entered negotiations with the goal of relegalizing the union movement. Very much in the spirit of the civil-society-oriented strategy of August 1980, it wanted to avoid all power-sharing arrangements that might lead to responsibility without genuine power. That Solidarity should accept one-third of the seats in the lower house, to be filled by means of a controlled election, was the regime's price for legalizing the union, while the formula of a freeiy elected upper chamber was the compromise around which the opponents agreed. The actual results were not anticipated by any of the participants. Among other things, they implied a shift of Solidarity's strategy and part of its identity toward political society. 16a 17 Among the most relevant authors are Claude Lefort, Andre Gorz, Alain Touraine, Jacques Juilliard, Pierre Rosanvallon, and Patrick Viveret. They are all intellectuals for whom 1968 was an important turning point in Left politics, from which they drew democratic and liberal rather than authoritarian consequences. To various extents, they were associated with the CFDT trade union and the Rocardian wing of the Socialist party of the 1970s. The not particularly fortunate term "second Left" has been applied to this trend by its advocates, while their opponents referred to them at times as the "American Left" presumably because of their emphasis on the new social movements and on civil society. For a history of the CFDT, see Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman, La deuxiemegauche (Paris: Editions Ramsay, 1982). 13 It may be worth a separate study to determine why. We would stress the continued importance in the 1970s of an unreconstructed Communist party and the general presence of a statist-Jacobin political culture as distinguishing France from other Western European countries. Obviously, the struggle over the heritage of May 1968 also played an important role, the absorption of independent social life of "civil society" by the party/state, involving the replacement of all social ties fay statized relations. It seems clear that the French "discourse" of civil society derived from a sympathetic understanding of developments in the East. But could a category so derived be made applicable to a Western capitalist society with a multiparty parliamentary state? In France three arguments have been used to justify this theoretical move. First, and most like the East, the political culture of the French left (and not only the Communist party) is seen as deeply connected to the totalitarian phenomenon, i.e., a statist political culture deriving from an idea of revolution based on the fantasy of a society without division or conflict.19 Paradoxically, a left that represents in its very existence societal diversity, conflict, and opposition denies just these presuppositions while hoping to use the state as the instrument of progress and as the agent of the creation of the good society beyond conflict. Second, the actual role of the centralized, modern state in French political life is traditionally greater than in most Western democracies. With a good deal of exaggeration, one could speak here of a "totalitarian" statist tendency suppressing many dimensions of an independent "civil society."20 Third and finally, recalling the thesis of Herbert Marcuse, or its more sophisticated French counterpart in the writings of Cornelius Castotiadis in the 1950s and early 1960s, one might also claim -again with significant exaggeration — that "capitalism has become more 'totalitarian,' engulfing all spheres of social activity under the single dimension of economic activity."21 The last two theses concerning the state and capitalism converge in another thesis asserting that all autonomous social solidarity is destroyed under the impact of the aclministrative penetration of society by the (capitalist) welfare state. Of course, this line of argument does not theoretically assimilate France to a paradigm derived from the analysis of the East. P. Rosanvallon and P. Viveret warn us that even the three theses taken together do not add up to a conception of capitalist democracies as totalitarian in the sense of Marcuse. But the limitation turns into an advantage: Whereas in the East, in fully totalitarian society, no internal opposition is allegedly possible, the totalitarian trends of French society can be met head on by countertrends involving the reconstruction of civiland politicalsociety. as did the efforts of the Socialist party to define itself against the dominant left tradition in France. 19 Pierre Rosanvallon and Patrick Viveret, Pour une nouvelk culture politique (Paris: Seuil, 1977), 22-24. 20 Ibid., 7, 129. The point, first argued by Tocqueville, was taken up by pluralist political theory in the 1960s to account for French exceptionalism and the existence of radical movements in France. 2> Ibid., 112. It is noteworthy that the French discussion has preserved a three-part Tocquevillian distinction among civil society, political society, and state. Civil society is defined in terms of social associations cutting across class relations: neighborhood groups, networks of mutual aid, locally based structures providing collective service.22 More dynamically, civil society is seen as the space of social experimentation for the development of new forms of life, new types of solidarity, and social relations of cooperation and work.23 Political society, on the other hand, is understood as the space in which the autonomy of groups and the articulation of conflict among them are defended and the discussion and debate of collective choices occur.24 The concept of political society thus includes the public sphere as its major dimension, but, given the stress on conflict (and negotiation and compromise), it is not entirely reducible to it. Nor are civil and political society to be reduced to one another. To eliminate political society in the conception, or to treat it as civil, is to juxtapose civil society rigidly to the state. This alternative is variously (and somewhat confusingly) described by Viveret and Rosanvallon as a choice among liberalism, apolitical and Utopian anarchism, or corporatism as alternatives to statism.23 Without political mediations, however, the integrity of civil society in face of the state cannot be indefinitely stabilized; the model prefigures a new statist outcome. However, to defend and extend only political society, to seek to politicize all civil structures themselves, leads to an overpoliticized democratic or autogestionaire (self-management) utopianism of'which political anarchism and council Communism have been the representative historical conceptions. It is, however, doubtful that the forms of self-organization of political society can be maintained without the protection and development of independent but apolitical forms of solidarity, interaction, and group life. The rigid conceptual division of civil and political society is difficult to maintain in the specific form in which it is used in the French discussion. Solidarity and conflict, as well as structures of public communication, are to be found on both sides of the divide. Politically, however, the distinction makes good sense because it implies a reorientation of democratic politics away from the state to society without promoting the overpoliticization of society. Thus the exact translation of the revolutionär}' tradition into the language of democratic theory is avoided: Viveret and Rosanvallon attempt to think both democratization and the self-limitation of democracy. In other words, core components of the liberal model of civil society as the sphere of private, voluntary association secured by rights are retained in a model that also includes the "democratic" dimensions of publicity and political influence of nonprofessional actors, i.e., citizens.26 22 Pierre Rosanvallon, La crise de ľEtat-prowdence, revised edition (Paris: Seuil, 1981), 117. 23 Rosanvallon and Viveret, Pourune nouvelle culturepoätique, 113ff. 2* Ibid., 103,129. 25 Ibid., 129-130. 2<5 Ibid., 97-98. The point, however, is not simply to recommend a move (typical of social democracy) from revolution to democratic reformism. Both poles of the old duality, revolution or reform, oriented themselves through a structure of demands to the state27 and to a society understood in terms of a class dichotomy. The reorientation to civil and political society relocates the locus of democratization from the state to society and understands the latter in terms of groups, associations, and public spaces primarily. As Claude Lefort argued, the actors the strategy banks upon are not classes but social movements constituted in civil society.28 These attain a political status in the conception of Viveret and Rosanvallon through the mediations made available in political society: the reconstruction of political parties (replacing the no longer ideological catchall party) and the renewal of public forums of discussion and debate (ending the hegemony of the established media and of political communication that has been reduced to measuring nonpublic opinion, i.e., polls). The conception of Viveret and Rosanvallon was designed to promote the self-understanding of one dimension of the French left: the so-called "second left" -oriented to the Rocard group of the 1970s in the Socialist party and to the CFDT labor union. As the original conception was further developed, the reconstruction of civil society received an even more central role in terms of the political history of the period in which the watershed was the Socialist party's coming to power. Civil society's integrity had to be preserved now even in the face of a socialist controlled state and political society. Logically, however, since political society was understood in terms of mediation between civil society and state, its reorganization presupposed the rebuilding of more fundamental social ties. One strong strand in the then triumphant French socialism could be easily understood to endanger exactly this level through its connection to a Keynesian form of sialism. As Pierre Rosanvallon has forcefully argued, the welfare state disorganizes above all social networks, associations, and solidarities, replacing these by state-administrative relations. Not only has the welfare state in the countries of its highest development proved to be an increasingly inefficient and ineffective strategy of societal steering; more importantly, its earlier success has implied a veritable crisis of solidarity replacing forms of mutuality, self-help, and lateral cooperation by systemically organized functions. Thus, the reification of human relations in the context of social statism fully matches the effects of the capitalist market economy; a civii-society-otiented program must therefore represent not only a third way between social statism and neoliberalism but a way qualitatively different from the other two, which, despite their opposition, are seen as resembling each other in their effects on solidarity relations. What is extremely vague in the analysis is the nature of the civil-society-based alternative, beyond the demand for a "thicker civil society" involving the creation of 27 Ibid.,112; see also Claude Lefort, "Politics and Human Rights " in The Political'Forms of Modern Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986), 266. 28 Lefort, "Politics and Human Rights." new networks, new forms of intermediation and association, as the sources of local and face-to-face solidarity. Evidently such a general premise is compatible with very different forms of civil society. Rosanvallon notes the failure of the communitarianisrn of the 1960s and 1970s and seeks to avoid a corporatist version of the return to society.29 He is, however, skeptical concerning the very possibility of a theoretical answer to the problem of reconciling individual autonomy and new spontaneous forms of solidarity, i.e., concerning a model beyond statism, neoliberalism, corporatism, and communitarianism. In general, he convincingly asserts a complementary relation between a (nonregressive) reduction of demands on the welfare state and the building of new forms of sociability. His list concerning the latter, however, is limited. He notes the existence and importance of new forms of privately based collective service and of underground forms of nonmarket, non-state-oriented structures of economic Hfe,30 but he understands these as only the first and most primitive forms of what is required. The need for new types of socially generated legal structures, neither statist nor individualist, is powerfully asserted, but we find out little about the nature of such law or its relationship to existing private and public law. The projects of building new social norms, new cultural identities, and a new public sphere are vaguely postulated, but we do not find out much about the relationship of new social actors (movements) to any of these. Moreover, there is some serious ambiguity here about the relation of solidarity and conflict in constructing a new form of sociability. The analysis is more convincing in its treatment of the problem of compromise. Rosanvallon postulates the need for compromise (1) with capitalist entrepreneurs (exchanging rationality and mobility in the use of capital for self-management and free time), (2) with the bureaucratic state (exchanging reduction of demands for the recognition of forms of autonomous collective services), and (3) within society itself, involving die construction of new, democratic forms of public debate, negotiation, and interest aggregation. It remains unclear, though, how the two post welfare-state, post-Keynesian, post-social-democratic projects mentioned, regulation by self-management and intrasocial regulation, would have a fundamental effect capable of generating the force behind those forms of compromise. The relationship of these projects, presumably representing political (self-management) and civil (intrasocial regulation) society, respectively, is highly unclear. Here political society is introduced not so much as a political rearticulation of civil society but rather as a competing model altogether. But the notion of political society oscillating between public discussion and self-management shows its problematic nature, since the latter notion threatens to assimilate political society to the world of work or, at best, to industrial democracy. Correspondingly, the idea of intrasocial regulation oscillating between individuahstic and solidaristic conceptions of civil society threatens to surrender part 29 Rosanvallon, La crise de 1'Ětat providence, 120-121, 136. 30 See André Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class (Boston: South End Press, 1982). of what has been achieved: the critique of the statist logic of individualism. While the protection of individual rights has its legitimate place in the normative conception of a modern civil society, just as industrial democracy can be reconceived in a way perhaps analogous to a democratic political society,31 the moments that need to be stressed in the context of the critique of the statizing and economization of society, as Rosanvallon recognizes, are solidarity and publicity. Unfortunately, it is their all too crucial relation that is left underdetermined by the tradition of French analysis we associate with the term "the second left." It may very well be the case that the eventual emergence of forms of neoliberalism in this milieu can be traced among other things to the theoretical weakness of the original conception, i.e., to the difficulty of formulating adequate concepts of civil and political society and their relationship. A Theory for the West German Greens A direct intellectual relationship to "antitotalitarian" or antiauthoritarian struggles for democracy is not entirely indispensable for interpreting the politics of Western democracies in terms of the category of civil society. A good case in point is West Germany, where, unlike France, the Eastern dissidents have had only a slight and ambiguous impact. There was also no need here to differentiate radical politics from that of an authoritarian mass party in the Leninist mold. To be sure, even in West Germany one could insist upon some impact of the thought of the French "second left" (especially through the writings of Gorz), and one could also stress the statist-authoritarian and even repressive political culture of the German Social Democratic Party.32 Nevertheless, in our judgment two related developments, common to all the Western democracies including the United States, link the German rediscovery of civil society to the somewhat earlier one in France: the crisis of the welfare state, and the emergence of a neoconservative critique of "social statism." The welfare state has often been understood not only as a mechanism of the repoliticization of the economy but also as a dissolution of the sharp boundaries between state and society. However, the crisis of the welfare state raises doubts concerning the continued effectiveness and legitimacy of state intervention into the capitalist economy as well as into the various spheres of civil society: the family, schools, cultural institutions, etc. As a whole series of radical left writers of the 1970s indicated, state intervention in the capitalist economy creates insoluble fiscal and administrative problems in the long run, while political intervention on behalf of the capitalist economy (especially in the context of decreasing effectiveness) is not easily legitimated in the context of democratic norms.33 These projections turned out to be 31 See chapter 9. 32 Claus Offe and Volker Gransow, "Political Culture and Social Democratic Administration," in Offe, Contradictions of the Welfare State (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984). 33 In particular, James O'Connor, Jürgen Habermas, and Claus Offe. devastatingly accurate and were in fact taken up by conservative opponents of the welfare state under headings such as decline of productivity, profit squee2e, dissolution of tradition and authority, and ungovernability.34 However, the original political alternative proposed by some of the same radical writers, a democratic statism that would exploit the repoliticization of economy and society but break its link with the private accumulation of capital, was abandoned just around the time when the diagnosis concerning the end of the welfare-state-guaranteed processes of growth was confirmed. In Germany, at least, the reason for this surprising development in the self-understanding of one key writer, Claus Offe, was the emergence of two distinct programs of society against the state: the challenges to the welfare state by neoconservatives and by the new social movements. What the two trends have in common are many aspects of an economic analysis of what went wrong with the welfare state. More importantiy, each challenge was ready to move beyond a critique connected to inefficiency and dysfunction to develop a distinct, normatively based critique exploring the negative consequences of the welfare state, even at its most successful. Leaving the economic analysis to the side,35 the two programs of civil society against the state that emerged offer sharp contrasts. The neoconservative analysis stresses the erosion of authority as a result of the political manipulation of the nonpolitical spheres of society, leading to the introduction of conflict and controversy into the very sources of legitimacy. Authority can be refurbished, accordingly, only if uncontestable economic, moral, and cognitive standards are restored. Civil society is to be restored in this program, but its restoration is understood not only as a defense against the state but also, more importandy, against politics. The neoconservatives thus have in mind a model of depoliticized civil society.36 In this interpretation of neoconservatism, the stress is on their identifying the freedom of civil society with that of the market. What remains outside the market must be reintegrated through a conservative retraditionalized cultural model and lifeworld that itself will help to integrate market society. However, it is also evident that their model seeks to strengthen the state, specifically an authoritarian version of it.37 The boundaries of state and society are to be redrawn in their model in order to provide for a smaller but stronger state streamlined for fewer but far more effective and authoritarian forms of action. Despite explicitly aiming at such an outcome, the neoconservatives have managed to channel and focus a good deal of antiauthoritarian political sentiment produced by the various consequences of the welfare state for different spheres of life. 34 Michel Crozier et al., eds., The Crisis of Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 1975). 35 See Offe, Contradictions, chapters 2, 6, and 8 36 Claus Offe, "The New Social Movements: Challenging the Boundaries of Institutional Politics," SocialResearch 52, no. 4 (1985): 819-820. 37 Offe, Contradictions, 289-290. An alternative program for the restoration of civil society, according to Claus Offe, must begin by recognizing that "social statism" or "welfare statism" did indeed have disastrous consequences for whole strata, for forms of Efe, for forms of participation, solidarity, and autonomy. Here his analysis duplicates those of French "second left" critics of statism. The program of the new social movements for the reconstitution of civil society that Offe calls one of nonstatist socialism38 makes no concessions to economic privatism or to statist authoritarianism. This program seeks to politicize the institutions of civil society in ways that are not constrained by the. channels of representative-bureaucratic political institutions, and thereby reconstitutes a civil society that is no longer dependent upon ever more regulation, control, and intervention. In order to emancipate itself from the state, civil society itself— its institutions of work, production, distribution, family relations, relations with nature, its very standards of rationality and progress — must be politicized through practices that belong to an intermediate sphere between "private" pursuits and concerns, on the one side, and institutional, state-sanctioned modes of politics, on the other.39 Two not entirely consistent features of this conception need to be stressed. Behind it lies a defense of modem but postmaterial values inherited from the new left of the 1960s that contrast participation, autonomy, and solidarity with consumption, efficiency, and growth. Thus the model of civil society here is that of a culturally defined framework of the social, to be distinguished from economic and political models. On the other side, however, is a model of a civil society inherited from the antiauthoritarian dimension of the Marxian tradition, involving a democratization mainly of the world of work. This model is one that French writers tended to call that of political society, and Offe's defense, unlike theirs, separates the case for political and civil society in terms of alternative and opposed left and neoconservative scenarios. Civil society in the sense of Hosanvallon and Viveret is here identified with the private, and correlatively anything not left to the private is to be politicized. Moreover, the new "political" society is understood by Offe to represent a model of democracy alternative to the institutions of liberal democracy, even if it remains unclear whether we are to see the two as opposed or potentially complementary. The program for the restoration of civil society that Offe represents has, to a greater extent than that of the writers of the French second left, preserved its links to the classical Marxian conception that places political economy within civil society. The model of politicized civil society recapitulates Marx's early stress on the reinterpretation of political democracy and everyday life. Even more important, Offe 38 ibid., 250. 35 Offe, "The New Social Movements," 820. operates within the terms of the Marxian critique of liberal democracy. In his conception, liberal democracy represents a mediation between state and civil society that is in our time on the verge of failure. Here civil society, however, means capitalist bourgeois society, and liberal democracy (a particular version of "political society") is identified also as a mediating principle between two supposed incompatibles, capitalism and democracy.40 Following Macpherson, Offe points to the competitive party system as the specific mechanism that accomplishes mediation between state and civil society, reconciling democracy and capitalism in the process. Along with the crisis of the welfare state, however, the major contemporary institution of the competitive party system, the catchall party, has entered into crisis: it never could (unlike its forerunners) generate collective identities, and in a zero-sum society it can decreasingly satisfy the interests of its diverse constituency when this happens. The conflict between democratic legitimacy and nondemocratic economic order can be resolved in one of two "extxainstitutional" directions,41 one (representing governing elites) antidemocratic; the other (representing ordinary citizens) radical democratic. Neocorporatism represents the first type of solution for the articulation and resolution of conflict outside liberal democratic channels. With private organizations taking on public functions, Offe depicts neocorporatism as a higher degree of fusion between state and society, public and private, than state interventionism itself.42 This idea parallels the view of Viveret and Rosanvallon, according to whom neocorporatism means the disappearance of political society as such, i.e., all mediations between civil society and state stabilizing their differentiation. The radical democratic "extrainstitutional" solution for the failure of liberal democracy has the opposite consequence: redifferentiation rather than fusion. The revitalization of political society or of a political version of civil society in the form of citizen initiatives and social movements represents a renewed model for the differentiation of state and society. Offe variously and somewhat inconsistently depicts this option as a response either to the failure of the party system or to the success (but exclusionary tendencies) of neocorporatism. In either case, however, we can speak of the reconstitution of civil (or political) society outside an established institutional 40 Offe, Contradictions, 182-183. This argument is older than the other two already quoted and preserves something of the democratic statism of Offe's earlier position. The state is regarded here as democratic to the extent that it is based on universal suffrage; and, curiously enough, Uberal democratic institutions somehow make it less democratic. This position is identical to that of Carl Schmitt. Another version of Offe's argument that makes liberal democracy the "bridge" between citizen and state does not have this implication. See Contradictions, 163ff 41 This conflict could in principle be resolved, as some distinctly antidemocratic liberals think, by reinforcing the elitist side of elite democracy to produce a "restoration of authority." Given existing democratic standards of legitimation, however, it is not at all clear that such a solution is possible without the introduction of dictatorships capable of eliminating, for a time, an excess of parliamentary and extraparliaraentary demands. 42 Claus Offe, Disorganized Capitalism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 224-226. framework that has threatened the disappearance of all independent forms of social life. The bases on which (political) civil society is reconstituted, if a fusion between the spheres of state and society has already occurred, remains unclear in this analysis.43 Since no revolutionary rupture is being contemplated, one must somehow discover the foundations of the new independent structures in the old society on the level of norms and/or nonstatized forms of association.44 Offe's model of the reconstitution of civil society is more emphatically movement-centered than the other two forms of analysis we have so far depicted. Social movements play a major role in all of them, but only in Offe's model is there a shift of emphasis toward movement politics from two directions: nonpoUtical associations, institutions, forms of life on the one hand, and liberal democratic, parliamentary politics on the other. While the issue may be one of stress rather than omission, the relationship of a political version of civil society to its nonpolitical associational substratum is hardly explored (though without this the origin of movements cannot be thematized), while that of the two paradigms of politics is explored only in an inconclusive way. Along with the realist faction of the Greens, Offe, of course, presupposes in practical politics the complementarity of party and movement forms of organization, of parliamentary and grass-roots forms of politics. His earlier critique of liberal democracy, however, oscillated between a conception that asserted an outright contradiction between liberalism and democracy and another positing liberal democracy as a deficient democratic bridge between the will of citizens and the state. Both versions still leave the way open to the secret hope of the classical Marxian theory: a political society embodying all economic and political powers in a single institutional framework.45 Such a utopia beyond the dualism of state and civil society needs no bridge between the two poles, least of all a liberal democratic one. Under the impact of the new self-limitation of contemporary social movements, which seek to limit but not abolish the existing version of the modern state, Offe no longer seems to hold this particular Utopian view. His critique of majority rule46 allows him to thematize the relationship between the "extrainstitutional" political impulse of the new social movements and the need for constitutional change within the structure of liberal democracy. Since this critique is actually aimed at the centralized forms of majority rule represented by the Uberal democratic nation state, Offe proposes to supplement majority rule not so much with the classical Uberal forms of the protection of minorities as with various federal, decentralized, quasi-aristocratic (in the sense of self- 43 This is repeatedly asserted by Offe himself; see, e.g., Contradictions; 250 44 See chapters 9 and 10. We believe that the significant overlap between the categories of Hfeworld and civil society supplies the key to this problem, especially in a three-part model of state-economy-civil society. 45 Offe, Contradictions, 246. 46 See Offe, Disorganized Capitalism, chap. 9. interest associations, autonomous agencies, local government, and church life.54 According to a third line of interpretation, the "resurrection of civil society" that pushes the democratization process forward is possible in either case, with or without surviving forms of recognized association, with or without memories of earlier mass mobilization.55 As Francisco Weffort from Brazil puts it, "we want a civil society, we need to defend ourselves from the monstrous state in front of us. This means that if it does not exist, we need to invent it. If it is small, we need to enlarge it. ... In a word we want civil society because we want freedom."50 In this interpretation, which recalls arguments made in Poland, the social foundations for civil society, starting with family and friends and continuing with the church, never disappeared in any of the southern dictatorships. The strategy of "inventing" and "enlarging" is favored by the fact that bureaucratic-authodtarian regimes never manage to solve their problems of legitimacy.57 The constitution or reconstitution of elements of civil society, indirectly promoted by reducing both fear and the costs of autonomous activity, becomes a means to address these fundamental problems.58 While this effort from above is always expected to stay within careful limits, it cannot amount to a complete farce if the goal of legitimacy is to be attained, and the elements of actual democratization that are established in this way are by definition unpredictable and cannot be kept within any given predefined limits.59 It is still unclear, however, what difference the state of development of civil society under authoritarian rule makes in terms of the process of transition or the stability and character of the outcome. It seems likely that the character of a mobilized civil society itself is affected by the alternative patterns: more homogeneous where no previous structures existed or were preserved, more pluralistic and structured where civil 54 Schmitter, "Introduction to Southern European Transitions," 6-7; G. Pasquino, "The Demise of the First Fascist Regime and Italy's Transition to Democracy: 1943-1948," and N. Diamandouros, "Regime Change and the Prospects for Democracy in Greece: 1974-1983," in Transitions, vol. 1, 46, 58, and 154; M. A. Garreton, "The Political Evolution of the Chilean Military Regime and Problems of the Transition to Democracy" in Transitions, vol. 2, 116-117; O'Donnell and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions," 21-22. The Southern European examples do not, of course, fit the model of bureaucratic authoritarianism developed by O'Donnell. 55 O'Donnell and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions," 55. 56 F. Weffort, "Why Democracy?," in Alfred Stepán, ed., Democratizing Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 349. 57 This point is relevant to the elitist-authoritarian dreams of "Northern" neoconservatives as well, many of whom were strong supporters of the bureaucratic-authoritarian-liberal dictatorships of the "South," as, for example, in Chile. 58 G. O'Donnell, "Tensions in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State and the Problem of Democracy," in D. Collier, ed., The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 313ff., and F. H. Cardoso, "Associated-Dependent Development and Democratic Theory," in Stepán, ed., Democratizing Brazil, 312ff. 59 O'Donnell, "Tensions in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State," 317. society did not have to be created after a high degree of atomization. And this difference has many potential consequences. It may be helpful to distinguish, in relation to transitions, processes of initiation, consolidation, and completion. The exact role of civil society in the process of initiating the transition remains in some dispute. The dominant thesis stresses, on the basis of much comparative data, that the beginning is primarily a function of internal splits in the authoritarian regime, although all analysts concede that if such a split leads to an "opening" onto liberalization, the resurrection of civil society cannot be easily contained and will play an important role in all succeeding steps.00 However, some interpreters seem to argue that where mobilization plays a role in the end of an authoritarian regime, the whole process of the "overthrow" or "self-dissolution" from the very beginning is very much a function of the regime's relationship to civil society.61 The notion that the problem of legitimation is the Achilles heel of the post-1945 authoritarian regimes62 seems to imply that the instability of the regimes and the impetus for liberalization should be sought in the relationship of the rulers to groups and opinion outside of them. The features of civil society are as important to potential rollbacks, in particular military coups, as to the process of initiation and acceleration. While some analysts fear overmobilization as a pretext for coups and a motivation for reunification of the ruling elites, the dominant position seems to stress the costs of a conflict with mobilized civil society as a deterrent to hard-liners that reformers can use.63 One might add here that not only the level of mobilization but that of structure formation is important because it is easier to suppress a society without deep organizational roots than a highly articulated one, even if the former is superficially mobilized. Equally important is the issue of whether or not the pressure of civil society, once mobilized, is capable of pushing to the end a process of transition to democratic politics. It seems obvious that an evolutionary strategy involves important negotiating and bargaining processes with those authoritarian rulers who are able and willing to moderate their rule, while at a later stage any transition to democracy must involve organization for elections. It is not obvious in either of these contexts, however, how civic associations, social movements, grass-roots organizations, or even media of communication can substitute for the differentiation of a political element capable of 60 O'Donnell and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions," 48. 61 Diamandouros, "Regime Change and Prospects for Democracy in Greece," 154. Again, the Greek case involves a somewhat different type of regime. 62 O'Donnell and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions," 15. 63 In the same sentence, O'DonneE and Schmitter argue that "the relative absence of this upsurge reduces the likelihood of coup-induced regression" and "where 'power is with the people' or 'people are in the streets' the promoters of such coups are likely to hesitate before the prospect of provoking civil war" ("Tentative Conclusions," 55). elective bodies of those most concerned), and elsewhere also functional representative forms. Of course, all of these supplementary forms of democracy would have to rely on some form of majority rule. What remains unclear about the analysis is again the problem of the relation of the two political societies, this time the centralized and the supplementary ones, and, in particular, how the official., institutional, centralized form is to be transformed or at least made receptive to and capable of being inßuencedhy the other forms. While the suggestion to make majority rule reflexive about its own boundaries through a reinstitutionalization of the pouvoir constituent is important, this (still vague and possibly impractical) proposal bypasses the question of the structure of parliamentary, party democracy. We are left with the impression (also present in some of the other analyses we have presented) that while liberal democracy is admittedly dangerous for the autonomy of a political version of civil society, because of its depoliticizing tendencies, civil society cannot in the long run be instimtionaHzed without some of the structural possibilities that, in the West at least, are carried by liberal democracy. Civil Society in the Transition from Latin American Dictatorships The concept of civil society has also emerged under several irbureaucratic-authoritarian" regimes as a key term in the self-understanding of democratic actors as well as an important variable in the analysis of the transition to democracy.47 This discussion has been the richest, most open-ended, and most synthetic among the ones so far discussed. We can, of course, only trace forms of discourse that we believe indicate the beginnings of a new political culture; it is beyond our competence to integrate this discourse into the diverse political and social contexts involved. Nevertheless, we are struck by the remarkable unity of the discussion and by its parallels with developments elsewhere. The main concern of Latin American theorists and their collaborators has been the transition from a new type of military bureaucratic authoritarian rule: First, involving a period of "liberalization" (defined as the restoration and/or extension of individual and group rights); and second,, a stage of "democratization" (understood in terms of the establishment of a citizenship principle based on at least a "procedural minimum" of participation). But these transitions are seen as strongly dependent on the "resurrection of civil society."48 Here, civil society stands for a network of groups and associations between (in some versions, including) families and face-to-face groups on one side and outright state organizations on the other, mediating between individual and state, private and public. Different from clan, clique, cabal, and clientele, the associations of civil society have themselves a public, civic quality related both to "a 47 Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rulei 4 volumes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1986). 48 . O'Donnell and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies," in Transitions^ vol. 4, 48ff recognized right to exist" and the ability "to openly deliberate about . . . common affairs and publicly act in defense of justifiable interests."49 Others significantly add the notion of self-expression to that of the representation of interests, and they propose to include movements along with recognized associations in the concept.50 It is. often suggested that the "resurrection" of civil society culminates in the highly mobilized and concentrated form of "mass mobilization" and "popular upsurge," in which the various layers and strata of civil society develop, if temporarily, a single collective identity. The category of mass is misleading here for two reasons. First, the analysts tell us that in liberalized authoritarian states, civil society typically comes into motion in distinct and successive layers: intellectual groups, middle-class organizations, human rights organizations, professional associations, movements of industrial workers, etc. (not necessarily in this order).51 Even in contexts of high mobilization, in the recent transitions to democracy the different groups, associations, and organizations do not coalesce into one mass, as was characteristic of the earlier "populisms" that often led to dictatorships. Second, the forums of resurrected civil society are typically "public" as against "mass," ranging from intellectual discussions in universities, bookstores, cafes, etc., to popular forms of association and assembly, which together represent new contexts in which "the exercise and learning of citizenship can flourish in deliberations about issues of everyday concern."52 High levels of mobilization against recent dictatorships typically used rather than bypassed these public forms. This is understandable, since after the authoritarian reduction of public discussion to state-controlled, restricted "codes and terms," the restoration of this sphere achieved high significance, for a while at least making the simplifications involved in populist discourse less attractive. All the same, the distinctions between higher and lower levels of mobilization, as well as between unified and more particularized collective identities in civil society, remain important. Leaving aside some differences among the relevant authors concerning the very meaning and the relative importance of the concept of civil society, some important puzzles and ambiguities characterize the whole line of analysis. According to an interpretation characteristic of the most repressive regimes, such as Argentina, authoritarian regimes atomize, depoliticize, and privatize society, creating a purely manipulated and controlled public sphere.53 According to another, in some contexts at least (such as Brazil), civil society or its residues survive authoritarian rule in forms of I 49 Schmitter, "An Introduction to Southern European Transitions from Authoritarian Rule," in Transitions, vol. 1, 6-7. 50 Alfred Stepán, rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 3-4. 51 O'Donnell and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions," 49-52. 52 Ibid., 51, 53. 53 Ibid., 48. I I I I I I I interest associations, autonomous agencies, local government, and church life.54 According to a third line of interpretation, the "resurrection of civil society" that pushes the democratization process forward is possible in either case, with or without surviving forms of recognized association, with or without memories of earlier mass mobilization.55 As Francisco Weffort from Brazil puts it, "we want a civil society, we need to defend ourselves from the monstrous state in front of us. This means that if it does not exist, we need to invent it. If it is small, we need to enlarge it. ... In a word we want civil society because we want freedom."56 In this interpretation, which recalls arguments made in Poland, the social foundations for civil society, starting with family and friends and continuing with the church, never disappeared in any of the southern dictatorships. The strategy of "inventing" and "enlarging" is favored by the fact that bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes never manage to solve their problems of legitimacy.57 The constitution or reconstitution of elements of civil society, indirecdy promoted by reducing both fear and the costs of autonomous activity, becomes a means to address these fundamental problems.58 While this effort from above is always expected to stay within, careful limits, it cannot amount to a complete farce if the goal of legitimacy is to be attained, and the elements of actual democratization that are established in this way are by definition unpredictable and cannot be kept within any given predefined limits.59 It is still unclear, however, what difference the state of development of civil society under authoritarian rule makes in terms of the process of transition or the stability and character of the outcome. It seems likely that the character of a mobilized civil society itself is affected by the alternative patterns: more homogeneous where no previous structures existed or were preserved, more pluralistic and structured where civil 54 Schmitter, "Introduction to Southern European Transitions," 6-7; G. Pasquino, "The Demise of the First Fascist Regime and Italy's Transition to Democracy: 1943-1948," and N. Diamandouros, "Regime Change and the Prospects for Democracy in Greece: 1974-1983," in Transitions, vol 1, 46, 58, and 154; M. A. Garreton, "The Political Evolution of the Chilean Military Regime and Problems of the Transition to Democracy" in Transitions, vol. 2, 116-117; O'Donneil and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions," 21-22. The Southern European examples do not, of course, fit the model of bureaucratic authoritarianism developed by O'Donneil. 55 O'Donneil and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions," 55. 50 F. Weffort, "Why Democracy?," in Alfred Stepán, ed., Democratizing Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 349. 57 This point is relevant to the elitist-authoritarian dreams of "Northern" neoconservatives as well, many of whom were strong supporters of the bureaucratic-audioritarian-iiberal dictatorships of the "South," as, for example, in Chile. 58 G. O'Donneil, "Tensions in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State and the Problem of Democracy," in D. Collier, ed., The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 313ff., and F. H. Cardoso, "Associated-Dependent Development and Democratic Theory," in Stepán, ed., Democratizing Brazil, 312ff. 59 O'Donneil, "Tensions in the Bureaucratic Authoritarian State," 317. society did not have to be created after a high degree of atomization. And this difference has many potential consequences. It may be helpful to distinguish, in relation to transitions, processes of initiation, consolidation, and completion. The exact role of civil society in the process of initiating the transition remains in some dispute. The dominant thesis stresses, on the basis of much comparative data, that the beginning is primarily a function of internal splits in the authoritarian regime, although all analysts concede that if such a split leads to an "opening" onto liberalization, the resurrection of civil society cannot be easily contained and will play an important role in all succeeding steps.60 However, some interpreters seem to argue that where mobilization plays a role in the end of an authoritarian regime, the whole process of the "overthrow" or "self-dissolution" from the very beginning is very much a function of the regime's relationship to civil society.61 The notion that the problem of legitimation is the Achilles heel of the post-1945 authoritarian regimes62 seems to imply that the instability of the regimes and the impetus for liberalization should be sought in the relationship of the rulers to groups and opinion outside of them. The features of civil society are as important to potential roEbacks, in particular military coups, as to the process of initiation and acceleration. While some analysts fear overmobilization as a pretext for coups and a motivation for reunification of the ruling elites, the dominant position seems to stress the costs of a conflict with mobilized civil society as a deterrent to hard-liners that reformers can use.63 One might add here that not only the level of mobilization but that of structure formation is important because it is easier to suppress a society without deep organizational roots than a highly articulated one, even i( the former is superficially mobilized. Equally important is the issue of whether or not the pressure of civil society, once mobilized, is capable of pushing to the end a process of transition to democratic politics. It seems obvious that an evolutionary strategy involves important negotiating and bargaining processes with those authoritarian rulers who are able and willing to moderate their rule, while at a later stage any transition to democracy must involve organization for elections. It is not obvious in either of these contexts, however, how civic associations, social movements, grass-roots organizations, or even media of communication can substitute for the differentiation of a political element capable of 60 O'Donneil and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions," 48. 61 Diamandouros, "Regime Change and Prospects for Democracy in Greece," 154. Again, the Greek case involves a somewhat different type of regime. 62 O'Donneil and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions," 15. 63 In the same sentence, O'Donneil and Schmitter argue that "the relative absence of this upsurge reduces the likelihood of coup-induced regression" and "where 'power is with the people' or 'people are in the streets' the promoters of such coups axe likely to hesitate before the prospect of provoking civil war" ("Tentative Conclusions," 55). Strategie considerations. In fact, a strategy from below on its own has nowhere succeeded. Aside from ideologies of reform from above, two forms of discourse are available to participants seeking to understand the place of political organizations in the transition from authoritarian rule; one is dialectical and the other more analytical. According to the former, since bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes suppress or seriously deform all types of mediation between the private sphere and the state (including popular organizations as well as institutions for political citizenship), the task of democratization is primarily to reconstitute these.64 Indeed, the dialectical version of the discourse of civil society often comes to identify democratization with the reconstitution of these mediations. In this version, the political actors capable of interposing themselves between society and state emerge from the process of organizing new social associations and movements as their organic continuation. But in their search for legitimacy^ the regimes themselves often initiate the process of reconstituting mediations beyond the semipolitical, state-constituted "bureaucratic tings or clusters" of "social interests" that have failed as effective replacements for -societal pressure groups.05 As a result, those in opposition find themselves having to choose between "the imbecility" of refusing degrees of social autonomy simply because they are offered or even accepted by governments and "the opportunism" of accepting limited autonomy too quickly, entering into a predetermined and coopting game without testing the actual possibilities of democratization.66 One option beyond these two seems to be the attempt to organize and defend the new sphere of civil society not as mediation but as an end in itself, as in itself poUticah "If politics was to have a new meaning, a new sphere of freedom for political action had to be developed. For political Brazil, civil society, previously either ignored or seen as an inert mass, began to signify that sphere of freedom."67 From this point of view, it is natural to treat even political parties and associations as undifferentiated parts of the heterogeneous field of self-organization.68 In an extreme antipolitical version in Brazil, combining the views of "lay anarchism and Catholic solidarity thought," parties are to be more feared than trusted because of their propensity to enter the game of the state. 04 O'Donnell, "Tensions in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State," 287ff. In this essay, O'Donnell calls only the private sphere "civil society," using an earlier Marxian terminology that he soon abandoned. The analysis itself, stressing mediations as the voice of an otherwise silent civil society, already breaks with the Marxian conceptualization of the whole problem, turning in an implicitly Hegelian direction. 65 Cardoso, "On the Characterization of Authoritarian Regimes In Latin America," in Collier, ed., The'New Authoritarianism\ 37, 43-44. 66 O'Donnell, "Tensions in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State," 317. 67 Weffort, !IWhy Democracy?," 329. 68 Cardoso, "Associated-Dependent Development and Democratic Theory," 319. He righdy calls this a return to a different conception, although he misleadingly equates "a Latin conception of civil society" with political society. To the extent that self-organization had to be complemented by policies and legislative measures, these were to be achieved by movements of direct participation organized around single issues of intense concern to their own constituencies.69 In the face of intact authoritarian power, however, a high level of mobilization without mediations, symbolized by the figure of civil society as "the political celebrity of the abertura"1® could have demobilizing consequences. Unable to go beyond polarization, civil society can defeat state initiatives without generating a comprehensive alternative of its own. As in the cases of both Brazil and Chile, fear of the regime can easily be replaced by society's fear of itself, fear of the consequences of its own impotent power.71 Both in theory and in practice, a second strategy comes to stress the need for an orientation to political society to complete the transition to democracy. This strategy is intellectually analytical in that it does not see the institutions of political society — parties, electoral mechanisms, forms of bargaining, and legislatures - as either parts or as organic continuations of the processes of the self-organization of civil society.72 While it seems misleading to identify civil society primarily with liberalization, and political society primarily with democratization, it is certainly tight to insist that "full democratic transition must involve political society."73 Without political society, neither the necessary negotiation for transition nor the mechanisms of societal control of postauthoritarian states can be established. This has been shown through analyses of elections and political parties. In those dictatorships where electoral mechanisms were maintained, even if greatly restricted, it has been possible to channel social pressure in the direction of substantial, if gradual, political change ("decompression"),74 even in the contest of an intact authoritarian order that has not been weakened from the outside. This was the case in Brazil. Similarly, the continued, if restricted, existence of political parties represented in several countries, from Brazil to Uruguay and (most recently) Chile, the natural focal point for negotiated transitions.75 Indeed, parties and elections represented opportunities for the ů9 Ibid., 313-314, and Stepán, Bethinking Military Pontics, 5. 70 Stepán, Rethinking Military Politics. 71 This point was made by Juan Corradi in a lecture to the Democracy Seminar at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in the spring of 1987. 72 Stepán, Rethinking Military Politics, 3-5. 73 Compare pages 5 and 6 of Stepán's book. Both as a target of democratization and as an agent for pushing this process forward, civil society is indispensable in a wider view that Stepán himself elsewhere presupposes. See his "Paths Toward Redemocratization: Theoretical and Comparative Considerations," in O'Donnell and Schmitter, eds., Transitions, vol. 3, 78-79. Compare also pages ix and xi in the introduction to Democratizing Brazil 74 B. Lamounier, "Authoritarian Brazil Revisited: The Impact of Elections on the Abertura," in Stepán, ed., Democratizing Brasil, 55. 75 Stepán, "Paths Toward Redemocratization," 79-81; O'Donnell and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions," 37-39. remobilization of civil society in several contexts where phenomena of demobilization occurred after failures of early challenges against authoritarian rule.76 Wherever it has been possible, the activation of political society seems to have been the key to avoiding polarized, zero-sum, or even negative-sum confrontations between organized civil societies and authoritarian regimes that have maintained some continuity with the past.77 Whatever its necessity, the turn to political sodety has potentially demobilising consequences with respect to civil sodety, as many participants and observers have noted. In this context, Cardoso jusdy calls attention to the double nature of political parties: Their mediating role is made possible by, but cannot overcome, the contradictions within them of movement and administration, of participation and elitism, of democratic norm and strategic calculation.78 At two points, however, the elitist, administrative, and strategic side may dominate: pacts and elections. Often possible and necessary as "undemocratic" halfway stations, pacts are rightly stressed by many as important means of avoiding violence and its risks in the transition to democracy.79 It does not seem completely justified, though, to claim that, where they are possible, pacts between the parties of the opposition and elements of the regime are also desirable, especially when it is a little too quickly admitted that they are as a rule exclusionary, nonpublic, and aimed at drastically curtailing conflict in the political system. Their violation of the norms of democracy80 can have long-term negative consequences for a political culture. With this said, it should perhaps be added that pacts in which certain interests of the existing rulers are guaranteed have different possible. consequences for civil society, depending on their timing. Coming early in a process of transition, pacts can secure elements of liberalization, making possible the reconstitution of civil society. In this case, with the emergence of new actors and the activation of public spaces, the chances are good that the initial pact will eventually be swept aside.81 If a pact comes late, however, after the resurrection and possibly the upsurge of civil society, and especially if it guarantees power positions to all contracting parties, including some of the opposition, its very aim involves an exclusion and demobilization that maybe successful for a long period. Often the consequence is a revival of populism rather than processes of further democratization. 70 Cardoso, "Associated-Dependent Development," 45f£; Lamounier, "Authoritarian Brazil Revisited," 63. 77 Stepán, "State Power and the Strength of Civil Society in the Southern Cone of Latin America," in Peter Evans et al., eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Universit;' Press, 1985). 78 Cardoso, "Associated-Dependent Development," 319-320. All interpreters of the German Greens have noticed the same problem. See chapter 10. 79 O'Donneil and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions," 37ff. so Ibid., 42. 81 Ibid., 42, 47. The only "late" pacts that seem to avoid this trajectory are those in which oppositional groupings ask for no concessions for themselves but only for society as a whole. Above all, pacts that arrange elections and electoral rules can have this character. But elections, even when they themselves do not incorporate strongly exclusionary rules, can be ambiguous from the point of view of mobilizing civil society. Several analysts ask the partially rhetorical question, Why should ruling elites agree to elections that are likely to abolish their rule? The answer given is that these elites expect to channel politics "away from the ebullience of civil society" and perhaps even to win elections by dividing the opposition and being rewarded by the electorate.82 When elections are only gradually decontrolled, as in Brazil, the hope is to slow down the rate of change while still achieving procedural legitimacy. The hopes of victory and legitimacy are generally frustrated, but not those of demobilization and, where pertinent, gradualism.83 The move to electoral parties with their less intense, more inclusive, more abstract form of political identification and their lower degree of direct participation tends to devalue and replace movements and associations with their more particular, but also, more intense and participatory, forms of organization. Although this depends on the specific electoral rules enacted, the tendency of modern elections is to reduce the number of political parties capable of effectively participating in elections. In turn, and especially in periods of uneasy transition, potentially successful parties will often restrain movements of civil society that might jeopardize the outcome or even the possibility of elections.84 The major parties, moreover, share a common interest in obtaining a larger than representative share of votes for forces close to the authoritarian regime, to avoid an overly great victory for the opposition.85 Thus, it can be said not only of the processes leading to unrestricted electoral contests that end dictatorships but also of the elections themselves that they are implicit negotiations between regimes and oppositional parties that provide space and time to "redefine their respective roles."86 And while the weak legitimacy and the plebiscitary possibilities of partially restricted elections can indeed lead to societal mobilization and to learning processes outside the official framework, the liberal democratic legitimacy of open confrontation provides much less of a chance for such an outcome. It is possible that where civil society is underdeveloped and passive, or is in the process of contraction, elections might draw otherwise uninvolved strata into organized politics; in the context of a highly mobilized civil society, the reverse may 82 Ibid., 57-58. 83 Lamounier, "Authoritarian Brazil Revisited," 55. 84 O'DonneO and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions," 58-59. 85 Ibid., 62. 86 Lamounier, "Authoritarian Brazil Revisited," 69, 71. 87 Ibid., 62-63. very well occur, with parties turning out to be "not only, or not so much, agents of mobilization as instruments of social and political control."88 There is little doubt after the experience of several countries that the highest level of a mobilized civil society cannot be maintained for long.89 But is civil society equivalent to such mobilization? Is it not a mark of its weakness that it can exist in some countries only in this form? There is some serious theoretical uncertainty concerning what comes or can come after demobilization. The question is whether there is anything left of a "resurrected civil society" after selective repression, co-optation, manipulation, internal conflicts, fatigue, disillusionment, and the channeling of opposition into the party and electoral systems take their toil and demobilize "the popular upsurge."90 Here one interpretation stresses depoliticization, reprivatization, and the emergence of political ghettoes, which together will endanger democratic consolidation and weaken the society's ability to resist renewed authoritarianism. The idea that in some countries, notably Chile and Uruguay,91 an overdeveloped system of parties contributes to a dependent and underdeveloped civil society is more consistent with this line of argument than is the stress in the case of other countries on the survival of civic associational life even under authoritarianism. If one identifies demobilization with the atomization of civil society, it is hard to see how one can speak of a transition to democracy rather than a return to cycles of democracy and dictatorship, neither of which can be stabilized, in part because of the cycles of politicization and depoliticization of civil society within each form of rule. The idea of finally leaving the cycle92 must therefore point beyond the alternative of a fully mobilized and fully depolitidzed and privatized civil society. Logically, at least, the demobilization of a popular upsurge is not necessarily the end of a politically relevant civil society. Nor is it necessary that everything learned in previous cycles be forgotten. In this context, it is significant that some interpreters see the emergence of a new form of differentiation between de facto societal pluralism and democratic pluralism as a change in values, as the transformation of the collective identity of groups and institutions.93 The former type of pluralism has been present in most of the societies in question, but the latter has been a product only of the recent struggles against authoritarian regimes that have led to the replacement of the imagery of the via revoluáonaria by democratic ideologies.54 After the failure of illusory 88 Ibid., 58. 89 O'Donnell and Schmitter, "Tentative Conclusions " 26, 55-56. 90 Cf. A. Hicschman Shifting Involvements (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). 91 See Garreton, "The Political Evolution of the Chilean Military Regime;" also, C. G. Gillespie, "Uruguay's Transition from Collegial Military-Technocratic Rule," in Transitions, vol 2. 92 O'Donnell, "Introduction to the Latin American Cases," in Transitions, vol. 3,15-17. 53 Ibid. 94 Norbert Lechner, "De la revolution ä la democratic (íe debat intdlectuel en Amérique du Sud)," Esprit (July 1986): 1-13; Robert Barros "The Left and Democracy: Recent Debates in Latin America," Teios (Summer 1986): 49-70; Jose Casanova, "Never Again," unpublished ms. revolutions and the experience of dictatorships, democracy came to be increasingly viewed as an end in itself rather than a means for the realization of sectoral interests.95 But for it to become an end also for nonelite groups, a reorientation to civil society had to and actually did occur. "The discovery of the value of democracy is inseparable, within the opposition, from the discovery of civil society as a political space."96 The question inevitably arises, What will happen to the value of democracy as the space of civil society shrinks to the benefit of political society? Actually, one should distinguish three possibilities: (1) a civil society that loses its value for social actors with the restoration of democracy, a process in which political society has come to play the major role; (2) an overpoHticized civil society that implicitly, on behalf of various of its sectors, seeks to abolish societal plurality itself and/or devalues mediations between itself and the state; and (3) a civil society that has become reflexive to itself through its self-thematization and self-normalization, as well as its self-limitation vis-ä-vis political society. The self-reflexive model of civil society involves not only the idea of the self-limitation of civil society but also its own strengthening. This has consequences for both civil and political society. The model is incompatible with the liberal-individualistic concept of civil society that implies both its full depoliticization and its dependence on the forces of the market economy: "the social inequality and the fragility of the individual before business and the bureaucracy." Cardoso proposes an alternative combining the radical democratic stress on collective subjectivity and self-organization (without, however, abandoning individual rights) and a reform democratic acceptance of the necessity of the state. This "dualistic" synthesis leads to the start, admittedly needing further development, of a proposal for greater social responsibility on the part of the management of firms and the bureaucracy, with increasing public control over their processes. Without this, civil society remains defenseless and "private in the strict sense of the word."97 . This redefinition of the relationship of state and civil society in a democracy yet to be created alters the model of political society as well, and along with it that of political parties. Their task now becomes building "movable bridges on both sides of the antinomy."98 The idea is not well enough explained in terms of the notion of "countering the widespread idea that the parties are 'unauthentic' and incapable of serving as a filter for the aspirations of the electorate."99 What seems to be involved instead is the rejection of a choice between the elitist and the radical-democratic, between the strategic and the normative-democratic dimensions of the ambivalence of modern parties. Rather, it seems to be this ambivalence made conscious that could I 55 Weffort, "Why Democracy?," 332-333, 335-337. 5e Ibid, 345. 57 Cardoso, "Associated-Dependent Development," 323-324. 9B Ibid., 319. 99 Ibid., 321. I I I I I I I allow both the sensitizing of civil society to the need for strategic considerations and the introduction of elements of democratic decision making into state and firm.100 Sketchy as it may be, Cardoso's outline for the development of democratic theory has several virtues. It is a model of the goal of transition that does not lose sight of the preconditions of consolidating democracy and remobilizing in its defense. It corresponds well to the institutional requirements for O'Donnelľs notion of building a civil-society-based democratic political culture. Finally, the model points beyond restricting democracy to the political sphere (i.e., beyond elite democracy or elite pluralism) to the possibility of exiting the historical cycle in away that allows the issue of "more democracy" to be raised without being a subterfuge for a dictatorship of the left or the pretext of the dictatorship of the right. Revisiting Eastern Europe in the Late 1980s As indicated above, the rediscovery of civil society in Poland was the product of two negative learning experiences: the failure of total, revolutionary change from below (Hungary in 1956) and of comprehensive reform from above (Czechoslovakia in 1968). Polish reformers decided that a radical change of society was still possible if a third route was followed- This would have two components: The agent would be organized society "from below," and the target would be civil society rather than the state, within a program of self-limitation. Note that by its own standards the new strategy was itself open to the test of new learning experiences. After the repression of Solidarity in December of 1981, the question inevitably arose of whether the third and seemingly last route had also been proved impossible in Soviet-type societies. (Apparently last on the basis of a dualistic conception that rigidly juxtaposes state and civil society.) Within Poland the dualistic formulation has been subjected to stringent critique by Jadwiga Staniszkis. Here we will outline and expand her general line of attack: 1. The polarization of society vs. the state in Poland is connected to a political history in which three foreign imperial governments represented the state. 2. Polish culture survived the age of partitions by preserving its own traditions, mentalities, practices, system of education, and religion in isolation from the state (s). loo We aj-e referring here to the development of forms of political and economic society that are open to the influence of civil society. For many years, our own ideas on this topic have been close to the model worked out by Cardoso. See "Social Movements, Civil Society and the Problem of Sovereignty," Praxis International A, no. 5 (October 1985): 266-283; "Civil Society and Social Theory," Thesis Eleven, no. 21 (1988): 40-64; "Politics and the Reconstruction of Civil Society," in Axel Honneth et al., eds. Zuriscbetibetracbtungen im Pro^essder Aufklärung. Jürgen Habermas %um 60. Geburtstag (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,l989 ). For our present conception, see chapters 9 and 10. 3. The strategy was, however, always a purely defensive one and is not suited for real social change. 4. The post-totalitarian state is more subde and penetrating, more invisible and corrupting, than the openly repressive states of the past. Thus the isolation of state and society is in principle not possible. 5. The unity of society is illusory on the empirical level, and a populist and solidarist uniformity imposed on society (allegedly the case during the sixteen months of Solidarity) is undesirable. 6. The unity of the party-state is also illusory and, from a strategic point of view, hardly desirable. The notion of inherent opposition between society and state makes it impossible to exploit internal cleavages and tensions in state and party. Reformist attempts from above and within the ruling structure must then be taken as a priori illusory, and compromise can be understood only as strategic, i.e., in principle unstable. Party oppositions are continually driven back into the party. 7. Popular mobilization and conflict under the aegis of the dualistic conception can amount only to ritualized forms of channeling opposition; they will not be able to produce any significant change in the existing system.101 Staniszkis was wrong about the mobilizing power of the dichotomous conception of society against the state. Indeed, the conception was in many respects self-realizing: While Solidarity was legal (1980-1981), Polish society was at least tendentially organized around the fault lines of the dichotomy of civil society and (party) state, despite conflicts within each pole of the duality. In retrospect, however, one implication of Staniszkis's analysis was fulfilled: The dichotomous conception reinforced a type of polarization in which compromise solutions became impossible, however much desired by the sector of Solidarity led by Lech Walesa. For compromise one needs partners, presumably reformists, and also (political) institutions of mediation. In a context of radical polarization, actively sought by sectors of the regime but favored by Solidarity's ideology, neither . could emerge. The normatively and affectively successful dualistic conception of the original project of the self-liberation of civil society was thus part of the constellation that led to strategic failure. In the 1980s this project was, amazingly enough, not only not abandoned but extended to two other countries: Hungary and the Soviet Union. Two reasons, aside from that of the inherent normative validity of the basic ideas, were responsible. One was geopolitical: Important shifts had occurred in the international economic and political environments in which the project had originally led to stalemate. The other 101 j. Staniszkis, "On Some Contradictions of Socialist Society," Soviet Studies (April 1979): 184-186; Poland's Self-limiting evolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 36-67, 144-145. See also the partially overlapping criticism by A. Arato, "The Democratic Theory of the Polish Opposition: Normative Intentions and Strategic Ambiguities," Working Papers of the Helen Kellogg Institute (Notre Dame, 1984), which aims at the reconstruction — not, as Staniszkis, the abandonment - of the theory of civil societ;'. was theoretical, involving an expansion of the original framework by introducing the category of political society. The change in the international environment followed from the crisis of the Soviet model of economic development both on the periphery and even in the center of the imperial system. The Soviet Union had exhausted the possibilities of extensive development based on continuous expansion of the resources of raw materials and labor and was being decisively challenged by the threat of unlimited technological-military competition with the United States, a competition the Soviet Union could not win.102 Aside from economics, the new situation was marked by three new processes: the failure of normalization in Poland, the emergence of reformism from above in the Soviet Union, and the beginning of the crisis of Kadarist consolidation in Hungary. The reference to the Soviet Union already indicates that, given the change of environment, the strategy of reform from below as well as from above has made a comeback, despite the expectations of Polish oppositionists in the late 1970s under the influence of the Czech experience and the atmosphere of the Brezhnev era. Remarkably, the strategy of reform from above, initiated by segments of the ruling party, was now complemented by another one: the reconstruction of independent civil society. Indeed, it is this complementarity that was often seen as the mark of the difference between radical reform and mere reform. According to this line of thought, attempted changes in the Soviet economy failed in the past because (1) they targeted only the economy, (2) they did not go far enough even in relation to the economy, and (3) their only agent was the ruling institution above, excluding all forces from below.103 All these points belong together. Assuming that the goal was first and foremost an economic reform that went "far enough" to work, elite reformers now argued that this is possible only if other areas of tife were transformed and other actors than the party-state participated in the overall project. In effect, the claim is 102 The Soviet Union was the ultimate guarantor of the availability of key material resources in the periphery, despite their noneconomic (irrational and wasteful) utilization. This guarantee was mutually harmful. For the basic model, see J. Kornai, Contradictions and Dilemmas (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986); for analyses of the crises of the model, see G. Markus, "Planning the Crisis: Remarks on the Economic System of Soviet-type Societies," Praxis International 1, no. 3 (October 1981): 240-257; T. Bauer, "From Cycles to Crisis?: Recent Developments in East European Planned Economies and the Theory of Investment Crisis," in A. Arato and F. Feher, eds., Crisis and Re/on» (Transaction Books, forthcoming). On the exhaustion of the resource constraint model and its consequences, see J. Kis, "Forr a viläg," Besnelo, no. 26 (1989): 5-12. The first important theoretical article that spoke of the beginning of a "general economic crisis" of the Soviet bloc was published in 1982 by T. Bauer; it was translated as "The Second Economic Reform and Ownership Relations," Eastern European Economics 23, nos. 1-2 (1984). 103 Lecture at the New School, February 22, 1988, reported by the New York Times, February 28, 1988. Also see A. Nove, "What's Happening in Moscow," National Interest (Summer, 1987). I that civil society is a part of the environment needed for a new type of economic coordination that could not be created without movements for, and in, civil society. The thesis applied not only to the system inherited from the conservative Brezhnev era by the Gorbachev team, where even the formal abolition of the command structure would require the mobilization of pressure outside the ruling apparatus. It applied as well to the reformed Kadarist system, whose successes were due more to partial privatization than to the transformation of the command system into one of informal bureaucratic controls.104 From the writings of Hungarian economists, legal scholars, political scientists, and sociologists it becomes clear why civil society was implicated on two levels in what was supposedly required for "radical reform." First, we have learned that the introduction of reforms exclusively from above cannot, because of conservative-bureaucratic resistance, be formulated or implemented in a sufficiently consistent manner.105 Nor is such a process protected against rollbacks initiated by bureaucratic counterattacks in contexts of even minor leadership realignments. Thus, independent actors are needed for more consistent and determined pursuit of economic reform. However, since social movements are not likely to be the agents of economic reforms (because of the sacrifices involved), political trade-offs for movements (unions, forms of industrial democracy, ability to strike) and the institutionalization of collective economic actors (legality of interest representations, new forms of property) are necessary.106 Second, both the relevant trade-offs and the institutionalization of actors point to laws, rights, and associations of interest representation. These features of civil society are also needed to counter spontaneous reJnvasion or repenetration of the economy, freed from the prerogatives of direct economic command, by informal, extralegal types of bureaucratic regulation that reinforce the weaknesses of the inherited "economy of shortage."107 Laws and rights consistently formulated and made entirely public are needed, along with independent courts and judicial procedures, to provide predictability and regularity for economic actors and to protect them against the discretionary power of the existing apparatus operating through legal inconsistencies and the gaps and loopholes within the law.108 But laws and rights alone would be powerless against administrations whose practice is to bypass all formal regulation through their control of the execution and implementation of the laws. They must be backed up by established interest associations and an open public sphere. These are 104 See, above all, J. Kornai, "The Hungarian Reform Process: Visions, Hopes, and Realities," Journal of Economic Literature 24 (December 1986): 1687-1737. 105 T. Bauer, "A mäsodik gazdasägi reform és a tulajdonviszonyok," Mo%go VUäg (November 1982): 17-42. 106 Bauer saw this issue most clearly, at least in 1982. 107 Komai, "The Hungarian Reform Process." 108 Tamás Särközy, Ga^dasägpolitika, S^eroe^etretids^er, Jogpolitika (Budapest: Kossuth könyvkiado, 1987). I I I I I I I I I I also needed to provide a counterweight against the already established, monopolistic lobbies (themselves rooted partly in the apparatus and partly in the moderately decentralized structures of industry) that now control the bargaining processes involving investment, subsidies, tax exemptions, and even prices and that reinforce the resource-constrained and built-in wasteful character of the economy of shortage. When the reconstitution of civil society was promoted as a component of reform from above, especially in the Soviet Union, it was supposed to stay within carefully defined limits. The only institutions of civil society that were to be reconstituted were those most relevant to economic rationality; the independent actors were to accomplish only the strictiy necessary tasks. But both aims were self-contradictory. Economic laws and rights become such only in the context of Rechtsstaatlichkeit (constitutionalism), with far more general implications. Associations genuinely competent to exert open economic pressure are also able and motivated to address other social and political issues. A public sphere that allow criticism of economic waste, corruption, and resistance to change cannot easily be prevented from taking up other issues. All these departures presuppose the reduction of fear in society, and the reduction of fear becomes the stimulus, for new departures. Finally, movements that can be easily restrained cannot play an important role in overcoming resistance to reform, while those that can play such a role cannot be controlled and are unpredictable. The constant fluctuation in the Soviet Union between measures that lead forward and those that revive past practices, between democratization and authoritarian centralization, is best explained in these terms. The regime wants radical reform, it unleashes and even prods the revival of civil society, but it also wants to press its prerogative to determine the limits of what can and cannot be changed, including the structure and dynamics of civil society itself. Nevertheless, the process of social mobilization and the building of'at least some dimensions of what the actors themselves call civil society continues amidst the fluctuation. The level of societal self-organization today would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago. But it is not at all clear that the result will be radical reform rather than hopeless polarization and stalemate.109 If the pathology of reform from above is that it replaces a formal command system with one of informal bureaucratic regulation, the step to civil society supplies only the necessary but not the sufficient condition of its cure. As the Poles discovered, even an organized and mobilized civil society cannot, especially in the context of self-limitation, act direcdy on an unchanged party-state and overcome the resistance of a political-economic apparatus whose last major stronghold becomes the unreconstructed bureaucratic economy. This was the lesson that inspired those who imported the Polish project of radical reform into Hungary, especially after martial law. Key elements of the Hungarian 109 Worse, this could be only one of the several unmediated polarizations that can occur within Soviet society, along with those between nationalities and center, as well as nationalist and democratic forces within the Russian center itself, and perhaps elsewhere as well. opposition110 reformulated the program in terms of a radical minimalism, that nevertheless implied that changes in society must be complemented by necessary, if less radical, change in the party-state sphere. At first, this meant redefining as rights the elements of already conceded openness and differentiation in Hungarian society and redefining the discretionary state (Massnahmenstaaf) as an authoritarian Rechtsstaat that is self-limiting, at least with respect to the rights it grants. The second version, developed at the time of increasing crisis and some success in involving intellectuals in oppositional activity, proposed to independent social forces that they demand pluralism in the sphere of private law (civil society) and a fully developed Rechtsstaatlichkeit in the sphere of public law.111 Finally, in 1987, at the time when the foundations of the Kadarist system were already cracking, a detailed model of radical reform was proposed. Appearing under the name Social Contract, this involved the restoration of civil society in all its dimensions and a reform of the political system to include elements of genuine parliamentarism, a responsible government, and a reconstruction of the place and role of the Communist party that would preserve some of its prerogatives, but only within a framework of constitutional legality. It is the structure, rather than the exact formula, that is important to us, for it represented a call for discussion, negotiation, and compromise. The partisans of the Sodal Contract approach attempted to reconstruct the dualistic project inherited from Poland in terms of a model linking the radical reconstruction of civil society with a less radical but nevertheless principled reform of the political sphere. The idea was not to abandon the goal of parliamentary democracy but to combine two different rates of change, one in civil society and one in the state sphere, in a mutually reinforcing way, and to provide at the same time the necessary change of "environment" for institutionalizing a genuine market economy. The Social Contract retained an important link to the Polish politics of the "new evolutionism" by maintaining, against other approaches of the time that still addressed the regime or its reformist elements112 that groups, associations, and indeed movements outside the official institutions would have the primary task of pushing the reforms through. In Hungary, though, the idea was paradoxical, given the absence of anything resembling the Polish level of societal self-organization.113 110 In particular, J. Kis and the editors of Besnelo. See Kis, "Gondolatok a közeijövöröi" (Thoughts about the near future), Besnelo, no. 3 (June 1982): 7-27. 111 J. Kis, "Korlätakikrôl és lehetösegeinkröl" (About our limits and possibilities), 'm.A.Monoň Tanacsko^äs (an underground publication), 1985. 112 See the collective work "Fordulat és reform" (Turning point and reform) and M. Bihari, "Reform és democracia," both in Medvetänc, no. 2 (Budapest, 1987): 5-129, 165-225. 115 Even in Poland, where the negotiations of early 1989 achieved a compromise formula with an astonishing resemblance to that of the Social Contract, it cannot be said that this happened merely as a result of overwhelming grass-roots pressure, which in fact had led to stalemate earlier. While the strike movements of 1988 were important, they were far weaker than those of 1980, and yet (against the intentions of the Solidarity leadership) they achieved a much more Oddly enough, the political results in Hungary turned out to be more radical than in Poland. Indeed, after the removal of Kadar in May 1988, the Hungarian Communist party made a number of rapid concessions: a de facto open public sphere, a law of association and right to strike, and a law that allowed the formation of parties, though not initially as electoral organizations. Moreover, by February 1989 the party conceded the need for early competitive and unrestricted elections, and in june 1989 it entered into negotiations concerning electoral rules and procedures with eight or nine protoparty formations represented by "the roundtable of the opposition." There are two ways of reading the logic of these changes. The first (F. Köszeg) takes the point of view of the fledgling organizations of independent society and points to the inner dissolution of the ruling party (due to economic crisis as well as the destabilizing effects of the Soviet hands-off policy) that made it too weak to resist even a relatively small degree of social pressure. Certainly the thesis seems to be confirmed by the history of several key concessions, which began with proposals intending merely co-optation, continued with intense public criticism, and ended with the regime backing down.114 But this reading does not leave enough room for an important actor outside the opposition, namely the reform groupings within the party, which played an active role in several of the same concessions. The second reading (J. Kis) sought to correct this underestimation by stressing the attempt on the part of the increasingly dominant reformist faction to and legitimate, viable partners in society for instituting economic reforms along with new austerity programs. The search for partners might itself have led only to an attempted co-optation of the social forces in formation, but the necessity of viable partners, given the decline of the regime's legitimacy, required genuinely independent entities operating in an open, competitive political terrain.115 In this analysis, the search for partners led the regime, or its dominant faction, to the opening of the space for the emergence of political society. comprehensive result. This consisted not only in a (re) legalization of the union but also in elections that were to a significant extent freely contested, opening up the way in June 1989 to a "plebescirary" defeat of the Communist party, an upper house controlled by Solidarity, and a combined legislature in which the opposition could veto all legislation as well as the ruling party's choice of a president of the republic. The result was, unexpectedly to all concerned, the formation of a Solidarity-led governmental coalition. 114 See L. Bruszt, "On the Road to a Constitutional State?," unpublished ms, 1989. 115 Kis, "Forr a viläg," and also his "Avisszaszämläläs megkezdödött," Beszelö, no. 27 (1989). Kis argues that in Poland, where a powerful social organization already existed, its viability as a partner was not sacrificed (despite challenges from below) even if it accepted constraints on the processes of political competition. In Hungary, however, where the new organizations could become genuinely popular only in the context of open elections, all such restriction would have jeopardized the potential partners and also made them useless from the point of view of Communist reformers. It is instructive to compare this situation to the 1980-1981 period in Poland. Then it was Solidarity that sought a "historic compromise" with the regime, unsuccessfully, involving the creation of institutions of mediation.110 Its own polaristic conception, and the regime's belief in the possibility of "normalization" and in its powers to enact economic reform, played major roles in the failure of compromise. Perhaps at that time, as opposed to 1988, Solidarity, having behind it all of society, was so strong that the regime could not allow it any genuine role in the making of policy. By 1990 important elements of the old regimes themselves both in Hungary and Poland had accepted the idea of far-reaching compromise with relatively weaker opponents, and this involved the creation of institutions of mediation that required the participation of independent actors. For this reason, they turned to the actors of civil society, actively promoting their transformation and in the process stimulating the emergence and consolidation of political agents (they hoped) without any (or weakened) roots in civil society. To make such a change in the existing pattern of oppositional politics worthwhile, competitive political procedures leading to elections were conceded. Given the risks of elections for the survival of the established regimes, the elites that reluctantiy opted for this process sought their own survival by introducing elements of restriction into the compromise (Poland) or by taking up roles as members of the new political society in formation (Hungary).117 Our interest is not in the correctness of such calculations but in the effects on civil society of the turn to political society. Four ideal types of significant change operate in East Europe today: reform, radical reform from below (or the "new evolution"), political transition to a new system, and what has been recendy called "revolution."118 116 See Arato, "Civil Society against the State" and "Empire vs. Civil Society." in We would certainly hesitate to derive the actions of the reformist leaders and their group from the project of wider elites to conserve or convert their existing economic powers into new ownership and control arrangements. Compare E. Hankiss's excellent book, Kekt-európai alternativäk (Budapest; Kozgazdasägi és jogi kiadó, 1989), 300 and chap, 9. The relevant conversion for a small political elite is a political one: from a party state to a successful electoral and even presidential party. The failure of this conversion in Hungary does not prove that it was not the most important motivation of the leading reformers, or that other forms of (apparently) more successful economic conversion belonged to the motivation of the leadership at all. Within the context of the transition, and the anticipation of a different set of economic rules, largely unorganized economic elites had an opportunity to undertake decentralized efforts of conversion that became a reason not to resist the pattern of transition, even if they could have done so. The same criticisms apply to the somewhat different analysis of E. Szalai, "Elites and System Change in Hungary," Praxis InternationalTO, nos. 1-2 (April-July 1990): 74-79. Szalai focuses on a somewhat different elite with different political alliances and, unlike Hankiss, does not believe that a system so transformed could possibly yield a functioning market economy. See also her essay "Az uj elite" (The new elite), Besnelo, no. 27 (1989). 118 In some cases, some of these are combined. Many now use the term "revolution" to describe all except the first option, reform from above. While definitions are always subject to historical drift, we believe that "revolution" is not the most fortunate choice in the case of Each has its actors, its pathologies, and its potential form of self-correction. Each takes up a different dimension of the problem of civil society. The strategy of reform, still dominant in the Soviet Union, has as its agents modernising state actors. The pathology of this path is that it replaces formal bureaucratic discretion with its informal variants, which do not on the whole improve economic functioning and, as in the current Soviet case, may actually weaken it. The imagined corrective is the turn to civil society, which would involve in the reform process collective actors (groups, associations, movements, and publics) outside the state sphere. In the Soviet Union, even the turn to the electoral mechanisms typical of political society bypassed and for a while even blocked the emergence of independent political actors, though it helped the self-organization and mobilization of informal actors of civil society. Thus the elections of early 1989, and the contradictory and inconsistent sessions of the Congress of Peoples' Deputies,119 tended to lead not to mediation but to a form of mobilization that is already polarizing and will turn out to be more so as the economic reform continues to stagnate. In the absence of both violent repression and parliamentary mediation, the conflicts will more and more take place in the streets. Polarization, as we have seen in Poland, is the specific pathology of the turn to civil society and its actors, in spite of the dramatic consequences of this turn for societal learning processes and, specifically, for the building of a democratic political culture. Linked to polarization in Poland has been an over unification of civil society in which a single movement has been the vehicle for heterogeneous and even competing social Poland, Hungary, and the Soviet Union, for at least three reasons: (1 ) the necessarily self-limiting, gradual nature of the process that all actors have in mind, not only for decreasingly important geopolitical reasons but for reasons of principle as well; (2) the rejection by most relevant actors of the state-strengthening logic of modern revolutions, first discovered by Tocqueville; and (3) the important continuities of East European movements with movements in the West and especially the South that seek to go beyond the alternative of reform and revolution, at least in the traditional sense of these terms. The counterargument is based on a single model: the Hungarian revolution of 1956. The differences between the democratic opposition, with its 13-year history prior to 1989, and the movement against an unreconstructed Stalinist regime are obvious, even if today, after other important changes have been achieved, many of the goals of 1956 are again on the agenda. (Not all, though. There is no talk now, for example, of radical industrial democracy.) The 1956 uprising, like all great revolutions, did not have a self-limiting character; rather, it had aspects of a civil war, precisely what today's movements desperately seek to avoid. For this reason, neither the "peaceful revolution" in East Germany nor the "velvet revolution" in Czechoslovakia should be understood as a nonviolent version of the model of 1956. Interestingly enough, it is still an open question whether these "revolutions" represent more or less radical models of democratization than the nonrevolutionary Polish and Hungarian paths. See A. Arato, "Revolution, Civil Society and Democracy,"PftööJInternationally, nos. 1-2 (April-July 1990): 24-38. 119 We have in mind the remarkable openness of its debates, on the one side, and, on the other, the continued control of the process, especially the selection of the Supreme Soviet (the actual legislature) first by the conservative apparatus and later by Gorbachev's small group of officials. interests and identities, somewhat blocking (even if against the intentions of the participants) the emergence of societal and, later, political pluralism. In a nationally divided society such as the Soviet Union, a second form of polarization — between competing ethnic or national groups, or between democratic and national movements — has been an even more negative consequence of a civil-socieiy-oriented strategy.120 In this context, the emergence of political groupings capable of negotiation, compromise, and genuine parliamentarism represents a small hope for mediation, which can work only if the institutional means are found to link them to the deepening lines of social conflict involving national, economic, and political issues. The question is how the increasingly mobilized groups of civil society will be able to manage their conflicts with the regime and each other. In this contest, there does not seem to be an alternative to the rule of law and multiparty parliamentarism other than an increasingly destructive polarization that, in the Russian center of the crumbling impérium, could eventually take either the form of a stalemate between societal forces and a state they cannot overthrow or a clash between democratic and conservative-nationalist movements, or even a combination of these outcomes.121 120 We consider nationalist mobilization, especially of the particularist, aggressive variety, to be a pathology of civil society. In Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, its origins are complex and, aside from the legitimate national and ethnic grievances of minorities and colonized peoples, reflect the following elements: (1) The insufficient and superficial processes of modernization of communist regimes, which could suppress traditional practices, symbols, and ideologies but could not effectively transform them. (2) The increasing utilization, with the decline of Marxist-Leninist forms of legitimation, of nationalist and historicist forms of self-presentation and self-justification. (3) The growing insecurity and economic decline of the period of transition, which makes the defense of material interests increasingly precarious. Even those most adversely affected by the changes find it difficult to oppose them to the extent that they are prerequisites for dismantling hated regimes. There is, as a result, a tendency to mobilize around symbolic rather than material issues, identity rather than interest. (4) The fact that an appeal to a self-organizing civil society implies the general possibility of constructing new identities, but only for those capable of intensive participation in the life of organizations and associations. For those not so involved, the reconstruction of civil society and its associations seems to be only a program of atomization, all the more precarious in the context of declining state paternalism. The appeals to national identity and nationalist mobilization compensate these strata by the hope of "illusory community." ni When written, our text could not anticipate several important developments. Viable parliamentary mediations have now emerged in the Soviet Union, but only on the level of the republics, including astonishingly enough the Russian Federal Socialist Republic. This situation, reflecting the development of a multiplicity of civil societies, one for each republic, does not in itself solve the problem of mediation on the level of the whole society or avoid the dangers of (multiple) polarization. It only displaces it to one between republican governments supported by their own civil societies and a central government whose internal structure does not provide for sufficient mediations. Worse, the failure of agreement (hopefully temporary) concerning economic reform between central and republican governments now reproduces the same structure of conflict on the economic level as well, reinforcing the political and cultural lines of In Poland and Hungary, the supposed corrective for polarization has already been promoted in the form of the turn to political society. This implies that the agents of the process of transition will increasingly be the actors of political society, at least initially including the reformists in the Communist party. Does this model have its own potential pathologies, and if it does, what are its correctives? As we have seen in the case of Latin American transitions, one of several reasons governmental elites turn to or revive political society is to help demobilize civil society. They do this both to protect themselves and the transition from an excess of economic demands and to exclude from the political process actors and forms of mobilization that could lead to their own exclusion. While the elites of the old ruling parties, or rather their reformist parts, do not have the social support to become actors of civil society (with the very questionable exception of trade union bureaucracies), they hope that by self-conversion into electoral parties with social democratic ideologies they can become actors in the new political society. Thus, clearly, the turn to political society has as its pathology the demobilization of civil society and the failure to replace its mobilized forms by institutionalized ones. This is a serious matter in Eastern Europe, where atomization and the disruption of social ties, solidarities, and associations far surpassed anything under even the recent bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes, and where civil society seems to exist for the moment only in a mobilized form whose contribution to the restoration of social integration has been limited. For this reason a constellation that bypasses institution building in civil society would be highly unfavorable for the development of a democratic political culture, and conversely, where this type of culture continues to develop, it could lead to serious legitimation problems for new political elites. The attempts by the reformist elements of the old elites to depoíiticize and even fragment civil society are quite understandable. For them, the issue involves not only maintaining their free hand at making economic policy but also their survival as a political force. The root of the difficulty goes deeper, of course, and may have to do with basic tendencies linked to modern political society composed of parties and parliaments. Arising from civil society and preserving some of the marks of their origin, and having resisted the label "party," the new leading parties of Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia have nevertheless given rise to expectations that they would be able to resist the "oligarchic" tendencies of modern political parties.122 They division. Unless institutions of mediation, involving genuine constitutionalism and a parliamentarism that incorporates in a convincing manner a federal or confederal structure, are created, the possible outcomes are few and all extremely precarious. (Note added fall 1991.) 122 See, e.g., Z. Bujak, "West of Centre," East European Reporter 4, no. 3 (Autumn/Winter 1990). This position is not uncontested. In Czechoslovakia, J. Urban has forcefully argued for the conversion of Civil Forum into a party of the West European type. See "The Crisis of Civil Forum," Uncaptive Minds 3, no. 4 (August-October 1990). This issue cuts across other ideological divides. In Hungary, for example, the SzDSz is more comfortable with the are nevertheless (or as a result) often criticized for replacing one elite rule by another, for disregarding civil initiatives and social movements and even intensifying state controls over local government and the public sphere, and for bypassing social consultation before making major economic decisions.123 Significantly, attempts to refute such charges by reference to parliamentary sovereignty have only led to new charges of parliamentary absolutism and even the exaggerated accusation of multiparty dictatorship. Even if an elite democracy in which popular participation is restricted to periodic votes is not the ideal of the major elements of many of the parties and groups involved, the present context in many respects points in this direction. Once again, the requirements of economic transition, which some rigidiry in terms of a nonsolidaristLc, individuaHst version of civil (i.e., bourgeois) society, are in part responsible.124 In Hungary even more than in Poland, such trends are reinforced by conceptions of parliamentary sovereignty based on the so-called Westminster model, which are present in all of the major parties. But will a population used to social guarantees easily accept the legitimacy of decisions involving new austerity merely on the basis of the arrangements of elites, irrespective of their formal possession of an electoral mandate? There is ample experience from the history of Latin American populisms that it will not, election or no election. There is a danger that populism, which has strong roots in Eastern Europe, will be the response to elitism on the part of demobilized or undeveloped, semiatomized, vmsolidaristic civil societies. Some Comparisons and Some Problems It would be illegitimate to try equating the projects just surveyed. The models of civil society that have emerged in these differing contexts have shown important variations. Indeed, there are obvious difficulties with any single interpretive framework that seeks to interrogate the meaning of, and provide orientations for, these varying constellations of structure and history. Yet a theoretical framework that can anchor what is in the end a common discussion across boundaries is indispensable. A false unification would provide only illusory solutions, and we must "modern" party form; the FIDESZ seems less so. Within the ruling MDF on the right, both positions seem to be represented. 123 Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, "The Changing Face of Civil Society in Eastern Europe," unpublished ms. (1990). For the Hungarian case, see F. Miszlivetz, 'The Injuries of East Central Europe: Is the Auto-therapy of Civil Society Possible?" unpublished ms. (1990); for the Czech case, see the interview with Ladislav Hejdanek published as "Democracy without Opposition Is Nonsense," East European Reporter 4, no. 3 (Autumn/Winter 1990): 96. For a general theoretical assessment, see Arato "Revolution, Civil Society, and Democracy." 124 G. M. Tamas has defended this perspective in several places. See, e.g., "Glemp biboros into szava," Ekt és irodalom 33, no. 36 (September 1989). There are important sectors in all three leading parties as well as many economists and economic policy makers who hold the same position. therefore explore the whole range of discourses available today. Before doing so, however, we should at least justify our presentation of the different projects for reconstructing civil society as a single set, beyond the obvious use of the same terminology in different contexts. We shall do this in two steps. First, we argue for a common intellectual background on the level of the circulation of forms of discourse. In the milieu of critical social thought, there is noticeable today a post-Marxist intellectual turn, producing a discussion of civil society that is truly international. Second, we present two intellectual positions, related to the crisis of Marxism but not reducible to it, that are shared by social actors in the four political contexts, as our "case studies" demonstrate. These are (1) critique of the state and (2) the desire to go beyond the alternative of reform and revolution, in the classical sense of these terms. The crisis of Marxism is a worldwide phenomenon today, for a variety of local and global reasons. In the advanced capitalist countries, the continuing inability of Marxist theory to explain the relative stability and repeated reconstruction of the existing system is one major reason. Another is the decisive end to the era when it seemed possible (not to mention desirable) for the working class - or any other single social stratum or grouping — to play the role of the global subject of social change. In Latin America, the decisive factor was Marxism's association with a revolutionary road that not only failed to produce any kind of socialist commonwealth but also directly and in some cases deliberately contributed to the end of liberal democracy and the rise of right wing dictatorships. Where so-called socialist revolutions succeeded, the results axe hardly such as to inspire imitation. The Soviet model in the East, in the hour of its fall, is now almost universally recognized as inefficient and dehumanizing. This development, reflected in the actions and intellectual views of dissidents, has discredited in advance the goals of most Western and Southern Communist or ultraleft groupings that have inherited the mantle of Marxism. Significantly, Marxian theories and forms of analyses have repeatedly failed in their attempts to understand the structure of Soviet-type societies and to outline plausible orientations for actors seeking to transform them.125 It has always been possible, of course, to move from Marxism to any position from liberalism and neoconservatism to religious fundamentalism. But if one desires to 125 See the analyses of the best of these theories in the following articles by A. Arato: "Autoritärer Sozialismus and die Frankfurter Schule," in A. Hónneth and A. Wellmer, eds., Die Frankfurter Schule and die Folgen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1986); "Bahro's Alternative: from Western to Eastern Marxism," a review of U. Wolter, ed., Bahn: Critical Responses, Telos, no. 48 (Summer 1981): 153-168; "Critical Sociology and Authoritarian State Socialism," in D. Held and J. Thompson, eds., Habermas: Critical Debates (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982); "Immanent Critique and Authoritarian Socialism," Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 7, nos, 1-2 {Winter-Spring 1983): 146-162; "The Budapest School and Actually Existing Socialism," Theory and Society, no. 16 (1987); "Facing Russia: Castoriadis and Soviet Society," Reme europšenne des sciences sociales 37, no. 86: 269-291. avoid replacing a Marxist dogmatism by an anti-Marxist one, if one refuses to exchange apologetics for one form of domination with that for another, one has to grant the possibility that Marx did establish some critical vantage points that cannot be abandoned as long as capitalist societ;' persists. In many cases, this means reinterpreting or reconstructing some of his major concepts, leading to theoretical projects going far beyond the normative and analytical implications of any version of the classical Marxian theory, including the neo-MarxÍsms of Lukács, Gramsci, and the older Frankfurt school. It is these theoretical projects that we wish to describe under the heading of post-Maracism.12<> A common position of all post-Marxisms, in spite of different terminologies, is a revision of Marx's identification of civil and bourgeois society as well as his various political projects aiming at the reunification of state and society.127 Post-Marxists not only register, as did Gramsci,128 the durability of civil society under capitalist democracies and the consequent implausibility of revolution in the classical Marxian sense, but maintain the normative desirability of the preservation of civil society. Yet post-Marxism can be distinguished from all neoliberalisms (which in their own way also identify civil and bourgeois society) by their attempts to thematize the radical democratic or radical pluralist transformation of existing versions of civil society. We maintain that the concept of civil society, as our various sources so far have used it, belongs to the intellectual world and even political culture of post-Marxism (and perhaps of "post-Gramscianism"). The contemporary discourse of civil society was internationally disseminated, at least initially, by the circulation of post-Marxist ideas. The wide reception of such a concept for the first time in our recent history, allowing for a dialogue between social critics East and West, North and South, has been possible because of shared problems and projects among those contexts. Two such problems/projects can be found in the sources we have cited already. First and foremost, there is the critique of the state and the search for a "poststatist" politics. The inability of Soviet-type regimes, Latin American dictatorships, and even welfare states to solve all or some key social problems, and the undesirability of the solutions that have emerged, is ihematized in all the relevant sources. There was a time when the answer to similar diagnoses was a more rational state — a dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., of the left rather than the right - or (in the case of the welfare state) simply more state, "nationalizing" more spheres of life. It seems that after our recent experiences with dictatorships, nationalizations of big industries, and the consequences of the penetration of social life by central bureaucracies, none of the 126 See A. Arato, "Marxism in East Europe," in Tom Bottomore, ed., Dictionary of Marxism (Oxford: Blackwell,1983), and "Marxism," inj. Eatwell et al., eds., The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics (London: Macmillan, 1987). 127 See jean L. Cohen, Class and Civil Society. The Limits of Marx's Critical Theory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982). 123 See chapter 3. old answers can carry their earlier weight. It is increasingly impossible to regard the state as either a passive synthesis of a plurality of social forces or a neutral instrument in the hands of whatever class holds the socially dominant position or manages to have its party elected to governmental power. "Bringing the state back in" should mean recognizing that the modern state has its own logic and that it constitutes an independent constellation of interests.129 Contrary to the spirit of the great nineteenth-century rebellion against the self-regulating capitalist market economy, the state cannot be a neutral medium through which society can act upon itself in a self-reflective fashion.130 Second, the alternative of reform or revolution has been discredited because both reformist and revolutionary parties have had a share in our present crises. All of our case studies reveal, explicitly or implicitly, the same renunciation of the utopia of revolution, of the dream of a single, imposed model of the good society that breaks completely with the present, mat is beyond conflict and division. Such a model is not compatible even in principle with any modern notion of democracy. At the same time, what the case studies express is more than merely incremental reform; at the very least, structural or radical reformism is implied. Yet even these terms coined by A. Gorz131 do net exhaust what is at stake. Revolution and reform are both today widely understood in terms of (and condemned for) their statist logic, and the idea of somehow combining them, as the term "radical reformism" still suggests, now becomes unacceptable. The term "new evolutionism" is too vague to serve as a replacement, but either "self-limiting revolution" or "self-limiting radicalism" seems appropriate. The idea here, worked out by analysts as diverse as J. Kuron, A. Gorz, N. Bobbio, and J. Habermas, is that the object of radical reconstruction and also its (multiple, nonunified) subjects shift from the state to society. Correspondingly, with regard to the existing structures of state (and, in the West, capitaHst) economies, a new kind of self-limitation would have to be and even ought to be practiced. This idea survives in the two temporalities of change referring to state and civil societ;', as proposed by Sadal Contract, and even in the turn to political society that implies a consciously nonrevolutionary slowing down of the rate of change through negotiations and elections. In a Western version, the same idea is expressed quite well by Rosanvallon's juxtaposition of the rebuilding of civil society with necessary compromises on the structures of the state and the economy. Civil society can help change those structures but must not abolish all aspects of their autonomous operation. Interestingly enough, it is in the most anti-Marxist of our three constellations, Eastern Europe, that the term "revolution" is most often used to indicate transition 129 See Evans et al, eds., Bnnging the State Back In. 130 See Jürgen Habermas, "The New Obscurity," in The New Conservatism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989). 131 See André Gorz, Strategy for lutbor (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967). I from authoritarian rule. It must be said, however, that the sense of the term differs from those established by the French and Russian revolutions. The search for the perfect and transparent society associated with these revolutions is explicitly rejected as state-strengthening and even unavoidably terroristic. Some authors redefine the term in a more conservative sense, seeking to preserve still existing (or imagined) older political cultures or traditions threatened by Sovietization, or conserving someone else's tradition (e.g., classical liberalism).132 Others, building on the single case of the defeated Hungarian Revolution of 1956, seek to understand the transitions in the making as a pure "political revolution" leading to the establishment of a new form of democratic sovereignty, a novus ordo seckmmP3 The first of these lines of thought, in part returning to the premodern notion of revolution as an attempt to reestablish a previous state of affairs, tends to miss what is genuinely new in the present day projects of transformation. It can lend credence to views referring to "restoration" or "counterrevolution." The second misses their explicitly self-limiting and evolutionary character. This has been repeatedly manifested in the search for compromise and transitional solutions and the deliberate acceptance of the slowing down of the rate of change. Amazingly enough, given the nature of the previous regimes, their successors seek neither a general personal expropriation of the members of earlier elites nor their total exclusion from political or professional activity. Indeed, these options are avoided in a reflective and conscious manner even in the face of repeated efforts to convert powers of the past into those of the future. The self-limiting revolution avoids the total destruction of its enemy, which would 132 G. M. Tamas represents diis perspective, albeit elaborating it in terms of the idea of a "bloodless and legal" revolution that would be combined eventually with "reform" from above after the constitution of a legitimate form of power. Opposing any idea of "social revolution," his conception deliberately leaves open the possibility that present-day power holders will convert their power into economic ownership. See "Tájkép csata elött" (Landscape before battle), E/et e's irodalom, August 4, 1989, and his speech to a public meeting of the SzDSz reported in S%abadľ)emokraták} nos. 4-5 (1989). 133 This position has been articulated by Agnes Heller and Ferenc Feher at various meetings and conferences but, to our knowledge, not yet in published form. They define political revolution as a break in the structure of sovereignty, as the replacement either of one sovereign or one form of sovereignty by another. Even the second, more convincing, version is both too wide and too narrow to describe the changes in most of the East European countries: Too wide because it neglects the continuities in the structure of political rule that are only gradually eliminated (in particular, the rule of old parliaments and the ruling party in the pouvoir constituant and the continued validity of the inherited legal system); too narrow because the transformations imply a wholesale change of systems and are not at all restricted to the sphere of the political. Interestingly enough, their definition best corresponds to the most violent and least radical case, namely, Rumania. I I I I I I I I I inevitably mean putting itself into the place of the sovereign,134 thereby depriving society of its self-organization and self-defense. The term "self-limiting revolution" (as well as its partial synonyms, "peaceful" and "velvet" revolution) avoids the weaknesses of both the ideas of "conservative" and "popular" revolution. Instead of retreating behind the modern meaning of "revolution" or repeating its totalizing thrust, this idea extends the self-reflexive and self-critical discourse of modernity to its most important political concept, namely, revolution.135 We have already noted that the more or less common posture of antistatist, self-limiting revolution that we discover in our diverse sources is not expressed in terms of a single categorical framework or a single model for reconstructing civil society. At times we find several variants are proposed within a single cultural-political context, and of course the projects vary even more signiftcandy across contexts. The common core of all the interpretations, though, is the concept of civil society, or rather some of the components of this concept. All agree that civil society represents a sphere other than and even opposed to the state. All include, almost always unsystematically, some combination of networks of legal protection, voluntary associations, and forms of independent public expression. A very few conceptions seem to include families and informal groups. Some include movements and even equate civil society with the presence of social movements; others (such as that of the Polish writer Wojcicki) exclude and even fear this possibility as a form of unacceptable politidzation. In the texts concerning the four political projects, however, we have found no comprehensive treatment of the relation among the categories of civil society or, for that matter, of the nexus between civil society as movement and as institution. But there is no question that the stresses in the various contexts and texts are often quite 134 In a brilliant paper, which appeared too late to be incorporated into our argument, Ulrich Preuss has shown that the East European revolutions break with Carl Schmitt's model of sovereignty, which was in his view established by the French Revolution, especially in its Rousseauian-Jacobin self-interpretation ("The Influence of Carl Schmitt on the Legal Discourse of the Federal Republic of Germany," paper presented at a conference on the "Challenge of Carl Schmitt and Democratic Theory," spring 1990, Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, New York). i35 Admittedly, a rather old-fashioned use of the term revolution has now emerged in some countries, such as Hungary. This combines elements of premodem usage (return, restoration) with elements of the revolutionary semantics first invented by the Jacobins and their allies, in order to compensate for a deficit of democratic legitimacy rooted in civil society. The movement wing of the MDF that (primarily but not exclusively) pushes this usage is unfortunately forced by the logic of the position to invent enemies as well as to seek retroactive, extralegal retribution. Fortunately, appeals based on revolutionary semantics seem to find Htde response in a context that is still "postrevolutionary" in the sense of our notion of self-limitation. We would be foolish, however, to deny the possible dangers in revolutionary demagogy as the economic situation worsens before it can improve. Walesa's rise as the champion of a right hoping to "accelerate" change is ample warning in this context. different, even if Htt3e has been added to (or explicitly subtracted from) the classical list of laws, associations, and publics.136 There are two major issues that produce important shifts in categorial frameworks. First, should the economy be included or excluded from the concept of civil society (the Hegelian vs. the Gramscian model)? And second, should one seek to differentiate civil and political society (the Tocquevillian vs. the Hegelian model)? Neoliberals arid residually neo-Marxist writers tend to agree on including the economic sphere within civil society, albeit for opposite reasons. The former, whether in the West or now increasingly in the East, reaffirm the identity of the civil and the bourgeois, fear a model of rights in which property is not in the primary position, and reject the politicization of society and the formation of social movements that would demand economic redistribution from the state. While legitimately concerned about the consequences of the link between populism and statism, this intellectual tendency forgets the destructive effects of the self-regulating market on the cultural fabric of society, described so well by Karí Polányi. Those in Eastern Europe who forget this lesson because of their hatred of all forms of state interventionism seek in effect to rejoin Europe not as it is today, facing ecological and social problems generated by the capitalist economy, but as it once was, inviting the repetition of already known disasters. The second approach, the residually Marxist one typified by André Gorz and to an extent even by Claus Offe, presupposes these destructive effects but does not sufficiendy consider the disastrous results of eliminating economic rationality in the process of politicizing production and distribution. While neoliberals reduce civil society to economic society, neo-Marxists either reduce the future (postcapitalist) economy to political society or propose, in the manner of Utopian socialists, some kind of socially reembedded economy. In Gorz's Farewell to the Working Class, these two recipes are combined. In the (to us, preferable) realist Green formula of Offe and his colleagues, an economic sphere based on reciprocity, mutuality, and self-activity (ßigenarbeif) is combined with a macroeconomically steered but nevertheless genuine market economy. In this formula, economic activities in the substantive sense are (at least in part) included in civil society, but economy as a formal process is outside of it137 When civil society in the shape of a social movement is in the process of organizing and institutionalizing itself, however, few authors argue for its unity or even continuity with economic society. There is no question of such reductionism, for example, in the writings of Michnik and Kuron. Instead, they have consistently argued 13ů See chapter 2. Of course, what has been added by some (including ourselves) is families and movements. 137 For the distinction, see Polänyi's great essay, "The Economy as an Instituted Process," in G. Dalton, ed., Primitive, Archaic and Modem Economies. The Essays of Karl Polänyi (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968). for the autonomy of legal structures, free associations, and genuine public life conceived in terms of the promise of a solidaristic civil society. Undoubtedly the fact that a minor chord in their argument is the liberation of the economy from state controls played a major role here. Beyond the utopia of the complete democratization of production that Kuron still proposed in the mid-1960s, the writers of the Polish democratic opposition are forced to face the harsh reality that only the restoration of the market, beyond any model of social reembedding, could master the Polish crisis and produce a viable, modern economy. Even if industrial democracy plays a role in their proposals, it is recognized that this must be made compatible with the needs of expert management operating in an environment that allows rational calculation. Understandably, in the East European context, the harmful effects of a fully autonomous capitalist market economy on social solidarity, denied by neoliberal writers, was not directly thematized by the main authors of the democratic opposition. Nevertheless, the Solidarity movement, because of its social nature as well as its ties to a Catholic syndicalist tradition, has been to an extent sensitive to just these dangers. Significandy, the intellectual and political journey made by Latin American writers like O'Donnell and Cardoso is in many respects similar to that of Kuron and Michnik. As late as 1918, O'Donnell still used "civil society" in the neo-Mantian sense of bourgeois society. The mediations he then proposed between civil society and the state (nation, pueblo, and citizenship) corresponded only to the underdeveloped structure of societies plagued by cycles of populist unification and authoritarian atomization. Under the impact of new forms of self-organization and struggles for democracy in the next decade, O'Donnell and P. Schmitter fully changed their terminology and began to use "civil society" to describe a sphere between economy and state, characterized above all by associations and publics. The failure of populist-authoritarian efforts, moreover, led to the rejection of the reverse subsumption, that of the economy by social or political institutions. In Cardoso's subtle analysis, the role of industrial democracy seems to be to establish vantage points of social control without impairing economic rationality. On the whole, in neither Latin America nor Eastern Europe has the "interface" of civil society and market economy been adequately analyzed.138 Such an analysis, 138 Recently, defenders of civil society in Hungary have stressed the plurality of forms of property within the process of privatization as the dimension through which civil society can gain a foothold within the new economic society in formation. See the latest essays in E. Szälai, Ga^daság és hatalom (Budapest: Aula Kiado, 1990), which represent the best treatment of this question from the point of view of democratic theory as well as stringent economic analysis. In our view, property may have a role to play for civil society's relation to economic society that is analogous to the role political parties play with respect to political society. Private property as well as political organizations achieve only differentiation from civil society, while genuinely pluralistic forms of property as well as democratic parties are required to gain a mediating foothold of the civil in the economic and the political. Without such mediations, civil society becomes bourgeois and atomized, while democracy becomes elite. I 139 See chapter 6 and A. Arato, "Civil Society, History, and Socialism: Reply to John Keane," Praxis Internationale, nos. 1-2 (April July 1989): 133-152. I however, is a precondition for any really serious conceptual alternative to the dangers of economic liberalism and the false promises of Utopian socialism.139 Without such an alternative, one can expect more vacillation between market and state as agents of liberation and renewed neglect of the destructive effects of both on social solidarity and individual autonomy. Equally important is the division of opinion on the interface between civil society and state. The French writers we have described tend to consider civil and political society as two spheres, the second mediating the relations of the first with the state. In this conception, both civil and political society must be reconstructed to preserve and renew the foundations of associational life and to be able to make those effective visa-vis the state. In most of the East European analyses coming from the democratic _ opposition, and in at least some Latin American writers (e.g., F. Weffort), the category fl of civil society includes and subsumes the levels of its political mediations. Finally, in ™ yet other models, the two categories "civil" and "political" appear more as alternatives of the type of civil society that is desirable or possible. In the writings of Clans Offe, for example, the choice seems to be between neoconservative (depoliticized) or radical democratic (political) civil society. In the argument of O'Donnell and Schmitter, there is a succession of temporal phases, with depohticized civil society representing the normal phase that can survive even authoritarian rule, while political civil society is only the exceptional phase of mobilization or upsurge. Here the cycle of types of civil society represents another version of the political cycle of authoritarian and democratic regimes. The move from demobilized to mobilized civil society implies the end of the authoritarian regime; demobilized civil society, implies first the stabilization of democracy and only eventually the possibility of a return of dictatorship. Even in some Eastern European analyses, a choice between unpolitical and political interpretations has been proposed (in Poland, by Catholic intellectuals) to highlight the alternative of antipolitics in a society deeply tired of previous forms of politicization. Assuming for the moment that the stark alternative between political and civil society is a function of either undesirable political polarization, in which the neoconservatives have had the initiative, or an equally undesirable cycle, we are still left with two competing models that express the need to combine prepolitical levels of social life with political forms that can provide for public life outside the framework of public political authority, i.e., the state. These involve, on the one hand, a model of civil society that includes a political public sphere among its categories and, on the other hand, a framework v^thin which civil and political society are clearly differentiated. To some extent, the choice is a question of inherited intellectual traditions. The German tradition stemming from Hegel and Marx represented a culmination of the differentiation of the classical topos of political or citizen society I I I I I I I into state and depoliticized civil society. This tradition has room for mediations between civil society and state ■within each domain but not for an independent domain between them with distinct institutions and dynamics. In contrast, the French tradition derived from Tocqueville never totally dissolved the old category of political society but instead established it alongside civil society and state. Finally, and most confusingly, the Italian tradition going back to Gramsci uses all three terms but tends to identify political society with the state, echoing the traditional premodem usage. Current political requirements are equally important in the choice between the two types of categorization. In both Latin America and Eastern Europe, the juxtaposition of civil society and state was a conceptually dualistic outcome of a period of societal self-organization that led to polarization between democratic and authoritarian forces. Independent society was strong enough to survive and even to challenge the legitimacy of the authoritarian state. But it was not strong enough to compel genuine compromise or to secure a transition beyond authoritarian rule. With the emergence of real possibilities of negotiation and compromise, and even agreement, concerning the dismantling of authoritarian governments in favor of electoral scenarios, the category of civil society seemed to many writers (Cardoso, Kis, Stepán) to be unsuitable to depict the organized social forces entering into processes of political exchange with state actors. This led to the resurrection of the category of political society (or its stand-ins) even where the influence of Hegel, Marx, and Gramsci was strong. Some writers offer normative reasons for the shift, insisting that the turn to political society allows a desirable pluralization of the opposition, whose location on the level of civil society is said to involve monoEtbic unification within the one great movement of society.140 140 This is the point of view of J. Kis. The idea of a multilevel civil society, including its political "mediations," could in principle satisfy the intellectual needs of a period of turning to politics in the more traditional sense. While it is true that the partisans of civil society often stress a "horizontal" model, placing all associations and organizations on the same level, the 'vertical" dimension of the concept of political society is present in the old Hegelian idea of mediation. However, in principle at least, it is just as possible for a civil society divided by alternative interests and identities to be pluralistically organized as for a political society to become monolithic. To be sure, with civil society taking on the function of political society in the face of a hostile and more or less unified authoritarian state, as in Poland, the constandy predicted pluralization of civil society never really developed beyond its beginnings. But here the pluralization of political society even in its parliamentary form also seems to have been surprisingly delayed. One may see the reason for this in a political society that has developed as the political mediation of a unified civil society. On the other hand, the premature overpluralization of political society - as in Hungary, where the project of transition is more consensual than it would seem from the political conflicts - can have the unfortunate consequence of further contributing to the demobilization of a society disgusted by needless aggression and demagogy in politics. Thus, the choice between the two frameworks cannot rest on intellectual history, current political requirements, or even their combination; it presupposes additional systematic considerations that we shall outline later in this book. For now, we note only that a choice of either approach has been insufficiently motivated thus far. In particular, the structures and forms of action that would correspond to civil as distinct from political society have not been systematically analyzed by those who presuppose the sharp differentiation of these two domains. To make their case, defenders of differentiation would have to have recourse to something like the old distinctions of movements and elites, as well as of influence and power, to flesh out the difference between the "civil" and the "political." This they may not wish to do, however, for tacit normative or ideological reasons. Indeed, the two frameworks seem to have different relations to analytical and normative considerations. From an analytical point of view, the distinction between civil and political society helps to avoid the sort of reductionism that assumes that political activities with a strategic dimension are easily generated by societal associations and movements or are somehow unnecessary. Paradoxically, an undifferentiated concept of civil society gives us a stark choice between the depoliticization of society (where the political is assigned to the state) and its overpoliticization (where all dimensions of civil society are held to be political or are to be politicized). The distinction between the civil and the political, on the other hand, highlights the fact that neither of these domains is automatically reconstituted when the other is. Indeed, there could even be opposition and conflict between the requirements of the two projects. From a normative point of view, treating political society as a mediation within a many-leveled civil society has the possible advantage of establishing the priority of nonstrategic domains of solidarity, association, and communication. Differentiating the civil and the political seems to put the domains on an equal normative footing. While this latter approach does not make the reconstitution of civil society an automatic function of the existence and activity of political organizations, it nevertheless tends to relieve the actors of political society from the normative burden of having to build or fortify civil institutions that may limit their own freedom of action. This is a serious problem, because although the actors of civil society seem to learn by their failures that they cannot achieve their own goals without recourse to political society, the reverse is unfortunately not the case, as the history of elite democracies shows.141 It is only in the long run that the viability of a democratic 141 Cf. G. M. Tamas's attack on independent societal self-organization in XJncaptive Minds. Such calls for a new statism in the form of parliamentary absolutism are heard in both of the leading Hungarian parties; the opinion of I. Csurka on the independence of the press, which he hopes to replace by party political control through de facto parliamentary power, represents the same point of view. In both cases, the argument is based on a recognition that societal organization political society may depend on the depth of its roots in independent, prepolitical associations and publics. Given the complementary normative and analytical advantages of the two conceptions, one treating political society as mediation and the other stressing analytical differentiation of the civil and the political, we propose to use both conceptions and at times to combine them. We believe that this is appropriate because our methodology combines hermeneutic and analytical approaches. The issue of the relationship between civil and political society is connected to the question of the locus of democratization. All of our relevant sources view liberal democracy as a necessary condition for bringing the modern state under societal control. They also assume that liberal democracy is incompatible with a democratic pyramid whose base is direct participation. They have, moreover, broken with the old dream of abolishing the state. Nevertheless, in the West this new emphasis tends to be coupled with an old one: awareness of the elitist character of contemporary liberal democracies. This set of positions, together with a certain deemphasis (though not abandonment) of the idea of industrial democracy, has led many authors in the West to shift the project of "democratizing" elite democracy from the state to civil society.142 In the program of the Greens, as represented by Offe, this change has also been articulated on the organizational level, in the attempt to combine party-based with movement-oriented strategies. In general, those who seek to democratize civil society understand this domain as comprised of movements as well as institutions. This has been also true of Eastern Europe and Latin America, where movements have tended to be far more global and comprehensive than in the West. Under dictatorships, though, there was something constrained and artificial in the shift of the project of democratization to civil society: The sphere of the state (not to mention the economy) and of potential parliamentary mediation was placed off limits not by normative choice but by strategic necessity. The long-range goal of parliamentary democracy was as a rule affirmed, with the exception of those appealing to a different (deficient or superior, as the case may be) political culture and tradition. When the crisis of the regimes made this a possible short-term goal, for many the project of democratization shifted to political society. Some authors even tried to juxtapose "liberalization," oriented to civil society, and "democratization," whose locus was to represents power and the claim that the only legitimate power is one that is an outcome of national elections. 142 This differs from the pluralist correction of Schumpeterian elite democracy in one crucial respect. While Dahl et al. tried to include civil society and its "influence" on political society within their conception of elite democracy, they counted on a general demobilization of civil society, an absence of social movements, a syndrome of civil privatism, consensus with a minimum degree of participation within civil society, and a restriction of participation to one specific form, namely, interest group pressure. be primarily political society.143 In Eastern Europe, the elite theoretical understanding of Western European liberal democracy was either forgotten or abandoned in favor of a civics textbook version. The revival of economic liberalism also increased suspicion of societal organizations capable of making demands on new political elites that might translate into unacceptable economic costs. Many who seek to restrict democratization attack social organizations such as Solidarity for being undemocratic. Some hold that societal democratization inhibits the creation of a truly modem state capable of effective decision making.144 There are, of course, countervailing tendencies rooted in the movement character of the Polish and also, in part, the Hungarian opposition. There is a tendency to articulate, more in practice than in theory, a duahstic strategy that sees the different forms of democracy and democratization in civil and political society as complementary, each indispensable for a project of "more democracy." Cardoso, in Latin America, has come the closest to articulating such a program explicitly. Initially, at least, the dualism of union and party in which the victorious Solidarity movement articulated itself favored a similar formulation. Even after the split of this movement-party, the two new organizations that have emerged, the liberal-democratic ROAD (Civic Movement-Democratic Action) and the right-wing Center Platform, seem to share this dual heritage, as do all the dynamic new organizations of Hungary (MDF, SzDSZ, Fidesz) and Czechoslovakia (Civic Forum; Public Against Violence). The organizational models of these new political "parties," none of which is formally named as such, have at least initially brought them close to the duahstic model sought, generally unsuccessfully, by some of the new social movements of the West, especially the Greens. Today's trend nevertheless is to professionalize and "partify" the new parties. Some still talk, though, of developing more complex ties to the forms of civil society within the framework of increasing differentiation from them. Such ties would presuppose both a programmatic openness of the political to the civil and a sufficient strengthening of the latter to allow it to function in institutionalized forms. What is needed, in other words, are programs that not only establish an ongoing process of political exchange with organizations and initiatives outside the party political sphere but also strengthen civil society with respect to the new economic society in formation.145 Only such a program could offer something genuinely new with respect 143 . See Stepán, Hßthmking Military Politics, and the introduction to Stepán, ed., Democratizing Brazil. This argument is inconsistent, since even if the instituíionalÍ2ation of civil society represented only the results of liberalization, the movements of civil society would be important in the emergence of political society itself as well as in the overall process of democratization. 144 Tamas, "Tájkép csata elött." 145 In this context, Cardoso's stress on industrial democracy finds many parallels in East European sources, which hope furthermore to institutionalize social autonomy above all through the development of a genuinely pluralistic structure of private property, including not only private ownership in the narrow sense but also ownership by employees, nonprofit to present models of Western politics, thereby transcending the bad choice of either economic liberalism and elite democracy or direct democratic fundamentalism. But even if such a new civil-society-oriented strategy whose roots can be discovered in the varieties of political discourse explored here were to emerge, it is not yet clear why it should be preferred to a renewed liberalism (very much on the rise) or a radical egalitarian democracy (at the moment on the decline). And if it could be shown to be normatively preferable to those options, it may well be the case that more complex theoretical considerations would show precisely what is attractive about the politics of civil society is incompatible with the development of modernity. To examine these issues with sufficient seriousness, we now take our leave of the discussions of contemporary actors and turn to theoretical reconstruction and critique of the concept of civil society. JeanL. Cohen and Andrew Arato: Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1992, pp. 29-82 organizations, and local government as well as ordinary citizens participating in new mutual funds. Such devices are important not only for normative reasons coming from democratic theory, but also as the best ways to achieve a necessary speeding up of the privatization and demonopoiization of East European economies. See Szalai, Ga^dasäg és hatalom. 52 Civil Society: Adveatutes of the Concept before and after 1989* Radim Maroda* Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno Abstract: Respecting the perspective that 'civil society' has recently been revived not by academics as a purely theoretical concept but rather by social and political actors as a practical political idea, the article seeks to follow the metamorphoses that the idea's content and meaning have undergone in changing historical circumstances over the past two decades, especially as reflected in the Czech (and Slovak) discussion. In a historical sequence, it identifies three different political and social contexts that have endowed the idea with specific contents and meanings, and it distinguishes these as three major stages of the metamorphoses. It labels the stages as 'moral defence before the state' (before 1989), 'mobilising the polity' (1989-1991), and 'balancing the state's institutional arrangement' (since 1994). As it is the last meaning that is contested today in the Czech discussion, some typical problematic points of this case are raised. Finally, a way is suggested in which critical social theory could reflect upon some deficits of the notion of civil society as employed today, so that the latter can still be retained as a normative idea. Ctgcb SoäokgcalReview, 1997, Vol. 5 (No. 1:3-22) Whether or not we deem the terra 'civil society' adequate for labelling certain social and political practices in our contemporary societies, the fact is that it has been frequently employed by theorists and poEtical actors over the past decade. We can even say — without much exaggeration — that the revitalisation of the idea of civil society has become one of the most significant events in reflecting on what is at stake in public life today. The story is well-known. Initiated by the shifting trends in social and political participation in the West - especially in connection with the rise of "new social movements" in the 1970s - the revitalisation process was accelerated by the historical events of transitions from authoritarian to democratic regimes of political rule in Latin America and East Central Europe.1 ' This work has been supported by the Research Support Scheme of the Higher Education Support Programme, grant No.: 90/1995. " Direct all correspondence to: PhDr. ing. Radim Marada, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Sociology, Arne Nováka 1,660 88 Bmo, Czech Republic, phone + 420 5 41 32 12 58. 1 For a detailed account of the concept's revival in this ver}' context see for example Chapter 1.1 of [Cohen and Arato 1992]. The variety of historical (social-political) contexts within which this event has taken place suggests that the concept of civil society has not been endowed with just one fixed meaning. At the same time, the names of those who have come to participate in the theoretical revival of the concept in the West — ranging from Norberto Bobbio and John Keane, through Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen, Michael Walzer and Charles Taylor, to Edward ShiUs and Daniel Bell2 - indicate that the notion in question has been appropriated by more than one theoretical tradition. This also testifies to both the concept's attraction as well as its elasticity. It is the latter quality -i.e. the concept's elasticity (though understood in specific ways) - that I want to focus on in what follows. Regardless of the historical or theoretical contexts from which the concept of civil society draws its meaning and content, the concept's recent usage bears one common feature. It is at the same time both a descriptive term and a normative idea. It reflects the character of a certain social and political practice, serving as a conceptual means of its theoretical analysis, and it is employed as a criterion of acceptability or desirability of that practice. In other words, it evokes not only something that in a way already exists, but also something which is worth mamtaining and nurturing — something which is wanted, and which is often wanted on a larger scale, more perfectly, on more solid ground.3 As such, the notion of civil society — an intellectual heritage of early modernity has not been brought back into the game by a purely academic concern with the history of ideas. As noted above, its reappearance occurred in intimate relation to concrete social and political struggles: as their theoretical reflection and self reflection by participating actors. It is the character of our time alone and the tasks we face in public life that seem to give us reasons to resuscitate the classical concept of modern political and social philosophy. My intention here is not, however, to present our contemporary situation as catching up with what has been lost in the course of historical time from the original modern promise (the promise of enlightenment).4 What I want to stress here is that the character of our time has made it possible for the concept of civil society to 2 Recent literature on civil society has already grown abundant. With reference to these authors, see for example jBobbio 1988, Keane 1988b, Cohen and Arato 1992, Walzer 1992, Taylor 1990, Bdi 1988, Shills 1991]. 3 It is the strong normative connotations that distinguishes the concept of civil society from an ideal type in Max Weber's sense. Its normativity does not however preclude the term from becoming a useful means of theoretical analysis of concrete social and political practices. It rather works as a barrier to reaching a basic agreement on what civil society actually represents. It renders the term a politically contested idea. This shifts the concept to a somewhat different position compared to that in which we today find concepts like the state, capitalism, family, science, religion, bureaucracy, the market and others. 4 This is how Jürgen Habermas interprets the political changes of 1989 in East Central Europe. See (Habermas 1990a, b|. appear as a vivid idea and become a mobilising political slogan. It has often been through this very concept that political and social actors have tended to understand and interpret their public conduct i.e. goals they seek and ways to achieve them, conflicts in which they are involved, attitudes they take to various public issues, and so forth.5 Yet, as I attempt to show here, different historical contexts attach the concept of civil society to specific patterns of public conduct in different manners. As each context determines the practical stakes of civil society, the latter's descriptions also require specific languages in order to correspond with the historically specific experience of social actors. In other words, filling the phrase civil society with some content and especially determining the ways in which it is employed as an interpretative means is not a purely intellectual or theoretical business. The concrete historical circumstances of the action that is to be interpreted also play a significant role here. The recent East Central European experience provides us with good evidence of this. Speaking of the fate of the idea of civil society in this region - with particular attention paid to the Czechoslovak and Czech case — we may observe a three-stage metamorphosis which the idea's meaning has undergone over the last decade or so. In the following, I will attempt to provide the basic characteristics of each of these three stages, presenting the major differences among them as they have been reflected in the changing styles of theoretical language. Civil society as a sphere of authentic conduct This notion was first reinvented in connection with the activities of either semi-independent movements, such as the Polish 'Solidarity,' or the dissident movement, as with former Czechoslovakia's Charter 77. More precisely, the concept had already been used for some time within the Polish context before it was appropriated by the Czechoslovak dissident writers. And even then it did not acquire as central a position in the self reflection of the Czechoslovak opposition movement as it did for the Polish one (represented, besides Solidarity, especially by the Committee in Defence of Workers KOR). This was not just a matter of literary taste or preference. It also reflected some differences in the situations in which these two movements found themselves, and which affected their activities in styles and objectives. Jacques Rupnik [1992], tracing the change in character of the reform movement in East-Central European countries after 1968, labels the change as a shift from Marxist revisionism to the idea of civil society. Definitively parting company with Marxism and the leading communist parties as prospective agents of democratic political reforms, the former reformists joined other opponents of the regimes, and the thus- 5 I discuss the idea of civil society as a cognitive and normative symbol in a more detailed way in my article [Marada 1996]. The study presented here draws on that article and it develops some ideas outlined there. formed dissent started to practice "the 'anti-politics' of emancipation of civil society by its own potential" [Ibid.: 239, 240]. At this point, Rupnik speaks for the Central European region as one whole. Yet at other places he also observes the varying actual historical circumstances that determined the different stakes of the opposition movements in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, in the late 1970s and the 1980s. In short, while in especially the Polish case the concept of civil society was bound to Adam Miclmik's idea of 'new evolutionism', a moral conception of citizenship became the horizontal vision of the Czechoslovak dissent. New evolutionism meant a gradual self organisation of society - no longer under the guidance of an enlightened avantgarde but on the ground of shared experience of deprived common interests or rights. This kind of living experience was to mobilise a spontaneous co-operative social practice. In Czechoslovakia, however, there was rather the tendency to formulate the problem on the individual level. What was at stake was the possibility and capacity of an individual to act and speak in concert with his or her own conscience and will.6 This appeal went in both directions: it was addressed to the state authorities as well as the social actors themselves. For it was recognised that the sphere of moral public conduct had shrunk to the extent to which the regime had succeeded in corrupting people's conscience and will. The major batde line between the bureaucratised state and most of society was not marked by outright oppression, which could have kept the moral realms of good and evil or right and wrong distinct and effective. Neither was it based on any cleat class division, though many may have profited from their positions within the system. The bureaucratic-ideological colonisation of society, the tatter's inclusion into the former, was more effectively achieved through a network of non-violent sanctions formal and informal — that made loyal and docile public conduct normal and void of moral meaning. What was the dominant issue in the appeal of civil society, then, was the revitalisation of the moral dimension of citizenship, rather than an instrumentally understood and politically relevant public activism. Charter 77 never gained the character of a mass movement, despite its initial ambition of rousing up the normalised society from apathy, docile resignation, and disinterested servility to the regime. Even though its activity was never suppressed completely, it was from the very beginning safely isolated from the wider social environment. It started its career with the silent sympathies of society, on the one side, and officially advertised counter-acts — for example, denouncing petitions from artists or workers — arranged and enforced by the political authorities, on the other side. This basic feature - i.e. secret sympathy and manifest distance - accompanied the movement's existence almost continually until November 1989. It was only in ů The initial declaration of Charter 77 also focused predominantly on basic individual civil rights such as freedom of speech, religious faith, freedom of conscience, freedom from fear, the right to choose one's profession, etc. I I I I I I I I I I I I 1988, the year of the 20th anniversary of the Soviet invasion, when the isolated oppositional activities were joined by a remarkable, though still limited move from outside.7 Vaclav Havel's essay 'Anti-Political Politics18 (1984) - which has often been referred to as a literary example of striving for civil society in this situation — targeted the very schizophrenia that marked people's attitudes to the dissident movement, and which affected, to various extents, public behaviour in general. In his essay, Havel addresses the demoralising effects of such a loyalty game,' in which both sides knew that it was just a game. The ritualisation of the manifestations of loyalty to the regime - which were incorporated in various kinds of social practices, ways of behaviour and speaking - made them devoid of any deeper moral commitment they could possibly express. By the same virtue, however, the immorality of these seemingly innocent rituals of loyalty to the 'bad' regime disappeared from sight as well, which made it easier for people to practice them. The rituals became individual tools to cope with and get rid of the fatal burden of the political environment, in order to save at least some space for 'normal private life.' In other words, public behaviour largely lost its moral dimension, and became almost purely instrumental in the above sense. Havel places this kind of behaviour in contrast to action, the rationality or rightness of which is to be measured by values of humanity and truth and not by calculated bureaucratic efficiency or ideological correctness. His appeal demonstrates the sense in which the 'anti-political' spirit of the idea of citizenship coalesced with the moral appeal the idea was to convey before 1989. Havel finds a space for moral conduct outside politics as understood in the conventional sense of the word, i.e. as exercised by the state authorities. This space outside state politics, however, was not to be imagined as an area distinct and separated from it, to be entered and left by individuals. It was to be created by the kind of conduct that applies to itself the above mentioned criteria of rightness alone. In this sense Havel insists in his essay that "we need first and foremost to help ourselves" pbid.: 391]. It was a task for every single person to look for and test possible enclaves in everyday conduct in which these criteria could be employed. In 7 The petition 'A Few Sentences' - calling on the regime authorities to respect basic human rights — was perhaps the most remarkable oppositional action of this time. Initiated by dissident circles, it became big enough to make the regime reluctant to persecute the petitioners, yet the number of the latter still remained not much more than 10,000. The large majority of sympathisers once again confined themselves to discussing the growing list of famous people (mostly artists) - announced regularly by Radio Free Europe - who had signed the petition. As a matter of fact, the signatures of famous personalities alone made this action attractive (which is not the same value as outright support or mobilising for action) as well as keeping the regime back from a radical repressive response. Some educational and appealing effect, however, can hardly be denied either. 8 [Have! 1988]. The original Czech tide of this essay written in 1984 is Tolitics and Conscience' [see Havel 1990: 41-59]. the anti-political everyday dimension, Havel concludes, "it is becoming evident that politics by no means need remain the affair of professionals (...)." [Ibid.: 398].9 What Havel also alludes to in this phrase, though somehow unwittingly, is a peculiar poHticisation of everyday life under and by the communist regime. In this world, even seemingly innocent personal choices — like artistic taste, dressing, lifestyle, circles of friends, religious faith, withdrawal from public life, and so on — might be interpreted in political terms, i.e. as an expression of one's attitude towards the regime. One did not have to make the effort to attach political meaning to one's behaviour. The political environment itself did the job10 — not systematically and in an ideologically consistent way, but selectively and instrumentally. Thus the schizophrenia at the level of individual conduct and attitudes found its parallel in the way the state gained the loyalty of citizens. On the one side, no sincere ideological commitment was really expected to underpin the manifestations of loyalty, on the other side, the door was still kept open for exercising effective pressure against any individual. Paradoxically, the situation that allowed for the political interpretation of one's behaviour also provided a relatively safer space for the expression of political resistance. One. did not have to be explicit in one's opposition to the regime. It could be expressed in other, more implicit ways. The famous grocer from Havel's Power of the Powerless could always defend himself before the authorities by saying that he had just forgotten to put the communist symbols in his shop window. He might not have avoided some troubles by acting this way, and he could have hardly repeated this omission next time without getting into more serious trouble. The point is, however, that while his inner motive for not expressing symbolic support to the regime could be authentic without necessarily leading to an open conflict with the authorities, an authentic explanation of his act could already mean an existential threat.11 Quarrels with bureaucratic authorities over the interpretation of one's behaviour was a common conflict experienced by people who at the same time did not explicitly express their opposition to the regime, but who did not behave exactly as was expected. Ironically, this sometimes made ignoring formal manifestations of loyalty -i.e. authentic behaviour — easier for those who were on more friendly terms with these authorities or their representatives. My intention is not to ironise the concept of authenticity. What I seek to point out is some of the ambivalence that it contains. In the situation described above, people 9 "I favour politics as practical morality, as service to the truth, as essentially human and humanly measured care for our fellow-humans" [Ibid.: 397], 10 This is a rather too impersonal view. It was of course real people who were able and did assign political meaning to other people's conduct. Perhaps the capacity to assign political meaning to other people's action was one of the social signs of the presence of power relations. 11 It must have been a tough job for the political interpreters to decipher the real motives of a toyshop merchant in Brno who in 1986, following the rule, put the slogan in his shop window saying "We Greet the Delegates of the Regional Conference of the Communist Party' — leaving this surrounded by dozens of teddy bears. could feel as if they were not succumbing to the impersonal power of the regime — as if they were not playing its game — in more than just one dimension of their public conduct. If they felt the need to express their disloyalty, they tended to do it either indirectly (i.e. implicitly in the above sense) or negatively (i.e. they abstained from expressing loyalty, rather than expressed thek disloyalty). What is even more important is that in both cases they did it in individual ways.12 Generally, then, in order to retain some degree of moral integrity, people sought to avoid public situations in which they were forced to express their attitude to the regime clearly and explicitly. As this was not always possible, people had to calculate the costs of a stricdy authentic, moral stance in this kind of situation. It not only could put one into open opposition to the communist state. It also threatened to exclude one from society in a significant sense.13 This shows how the poliücisation of society contributed not to its uniting but to its segmentation. It was difficult for Charter 77 to cross its borders and spread the spirit of civil society14 in a wider social environment. In a sense, these were two societies with two somewhat different moral codes. This is not to say that the openly and uncompromisingly resistant stance, represented by the dissident movement, was completely alien and impenetrable for the rest of society. It was just inappropriate for their world, if this world of relative security without public freedom was not to be destroyed completely. Charter 77's status was that of a moral memento, rather than of a leading or mobilising force. Standing often as moral idols, the dissidents remained in a sense as much removed from ordinary people as the members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.15 12 Individual acts expose the actor's motives to political interpretation much less than acting in concert with other people. This sociological tenet was felt strongly, if intuitively, by people. 13 This tanged from troubles with finding jobs (dissidents were typically isolated from society as window-cleaners, stokers, etc.) to imprisonment as a permanent physical exclusion. 14 It was for example Jan Urban who saw an 'element of civil society' in Charter 77, as well as in the PoHsh KOR [Urban 1990]. 15 Petr Pithart and Ludvík Vaculík were two outstanding figures of the Czechoslovak dissent who critically pointed to the centrifugal effects of the maxímaUst moral appeal launched by Charter 77. The sense of moral elitism, aroused by this appeal, separated and effectively isolated the dissident movement from the rest of society. The strict moral code of the dissident world stood as a barrier between this world and the sympathetic outside one. Later in the 1980s, nevertheless, there were attempts at a somehow more differentiated view of Czechoslovak society. Martin Bútora [Bútora, Krivý and Szomolányiová 1990] coined the term 'islands of positive deviation' for activities that escaped normality by their independence — both organisational and moral — of the regime. Even though this term was to cover a wider spectrum of activities than only those by Charter 77 (like ecological or artistic), the term 'deviation' is symptomatic and was not chosen accidentally. The activities described by this term did not deviate from rules posed by the regime. The term pointed to the status these activities had in a wider society however respected or even admired they might have been by the majority of the population. The bureaucratization and ideologisation of everyday public life forced people to look for a sphere of authentic conduct outside this space. Whether they played the regime's game and took a disengaged part in manifestations of loyalty or were reluctant do so, in any case they largely found the space for authenticity in their private lives. Havel's life-world - the sphere of concrete experience and personal responsibility, and the sought after equivalent of a truly civil society — did not expand into public life. On the contrary, the sphere of practised morality shrank to the sphere of intimate relations and the whole concept of morality was radically 'privatised.' Dichotomies such as good and bad, right and wrong, truth and lies were, more than elsewhere, recognisable in and applicable to intimate personal relations on the one hand, and/or they became a matter of the internal spiritual life of a person, on the other. Ironically, as Ludvík Vaculík has pointed out, the peculiar consequence of this atmosphere was that the heroic moral stances of the narrow circle of dissidents were deprived of their public status, and were perceived "still more as just their personal business" [Vaculík 1990: 30]. Civil society as a way of political democratisation What was especially at stake at the first stage was - should we employ the language of space — a certain minimal level of independence of and protection from the all-penetrating state (acuiiimstrative--ideological machinery). The simple distinction between the state and (civil) society was central. The two poles were to be strictly distinguished and set against one another in order to gain or defend a protected public space for state-independent activities. The idea of civil society in relation to the state stood for an essentially defensive project. This changed radically after the political break of 1989. Unlike Czechoslovak oppositional activities before 1989, the Polish Solidarity movement can be seen as a transitional case. Already before 1989, this movement bore some elements of the kind of open political engagement that marks the second stage in my sketch of metamorphoses of the idea of civil society.16 But it was not before 1989 that the idea, as it entered a quite different political constellation, definitely acquired a completely new meaning. While refering to civil society before 1989 meant seeking protection from the state, now the state alone — the thoroughly disturbed political and ideological power structure — was to be penetrated by something like 'public spirit' Jiřina Siklová [1990] added another segment to those two social worlds — the 'grey zone.' She saw the 'grey zone' as a growing and socially heterogeneous segment of the population that still may have played the 'loyalty game' but which was also close to the dissent by its attitudes, and which, most importantly, was still more interested in a regime change as it could not consummate its non-political skills. Similarly Ivo Možný [1990] provides a sociological explanation of the 1989 political change by pointing out the interest of a widening segment of population in withering away the politic and economic regime that prevented it from realising its social, cultural, and also economic capital. ,ů For a more detailed account see [Marada 1996: 45, note 7]. I I I I I I I I I supplied by the whole of society. Now the civilised politics was to be conducted within and through the conventional political institutions of the state. The new phase came along with the establishment of the leading revolutionary agent - Civic Forum/Public Against Violence17 - and its rapidly growing political role in the first months following November 1989. The Forum's spokesmen also tended to present Civic Forum as an institutional base or agent of civil society — as the broadest possible ground on which various opinions were to be discussed and refined as to how to shape the new political life of the country.18 Within this context - i.e. as bound to institutions like Civic Forum — the concept of civil society became radically politicised: civil society turned into a catchword for a truly political democratisation. It is an interesting lesson to trace the transition of Civic Forum from the originally rather (ideologically and organisationally) amorphous political subject to a set of distinct political platforms, out of which several independent political parties eventually arose. In general, the event of the rise and fall of Civil Forum replants the discourse of civil society from the language of authenticity, moral autonomy and integrity, politics as conscience, the struggle for basic human rights and freedoms, political manipulation of public space, mechanisms of resistance (against the regime) or escape (to privacy), to the language of sovereignty, decision-making, legitimacy, representation, political mobilisation and participation, organization and communication (or strategic and communicative action). Inspired especially by the Polish development from the early 1980s (the experience of Solidarity and KOR) and by Gorbacov's reforms in Soviet Union in the second half of the decade, the Czechoslovak oppositional movement before 1989 - however paralysed in its actional potential - did not completely neglect the question of prospective strategic behaviour in the case of a fundamental political upheaval. Yet in November 1989, Civic Forum was not established according to a detailed strategic plan, neither did it arise out of an intensive and co-ordinated organisational effort. It emerged rather spontaneously as a response to events that had gradually revealed a growing willingness of ever larger parts of the population to stand up openly to the ever weaker (i.e. paralysed or inactive in its repressive functions) regime. In the West, Civic Forum has sometimes been mistaken for Charter 77 or taken as its successor. Yet although there were many people connected with Charter 77 who played an important role in forming Civic Forum, the two institutions were linked rather loosely to one another. No doubt there was a strategic reason behind diminishing this linkage. It had to do with the legacy of the exclusive character or 17 The Public Against Violence was formed as Civic Forum's Slovak equivalent and closest partner. Their common or co-ordinated activity from the first months after November 1989 was later replaced by shifts towards greater independence of one another. Here I will concentrate upon the Czech part of this dual body. 18 This strategy was in a sense natural, regarding the lack of procedural (legal) legitimacy as well as of political experience on the part of the new political leadership. position within society that Charter 77 had acquired before 1989. This legacy could have represented a barrier to the mobilisation of a massive and active support in this situation that posed new challenges before the opposition movement. Openness was one of the most important imperatives of the new movement, and the way in which Civic Forum came into being corresponded to this imperative.19 Upon the declaration of a group of intellectuals in a small Prague theatre, Civic Forum, as it came into being, had nothing of a formally organised institution but its name. It had no members, only acting sympathisers. The spontaneous and informal way in which the first Civic Forum had arisen became a pattern for the emergence of hundreds or thousands local Civic Forums. They were not established by any predetermined rules, only by acting in certain ways under the same label. And everyone could sympathise, everyone could act under that label, at least in principle. Members of the Communist Party were often quite active in establishing and working for local Civic Forums, whatever the reasons they did it for. There were no rules or pre-set binding criteria for the selection and adoption of Civic Forum's members. There was no formally established higher authority with the power of excluding those deemed unsuitable. In theory, even the Central Committee of the Communist Party could form its own Civic Forum, however absurd this may sound. In the first months after November 1989, there emerged a symptomatic confusion: the movement was understood and labelled both in the singular, as the Civic Forum, and in the plural, as Civic Forums. This confusion reflected a double role the movement was to play in that period. It stood as a spontaneously acknowledged representation of popular opposition in the face of the political representation of the decaying regime; and it was a shield and ground for the mobilisation of active popular participation in and support for the revolutionary changes. It was especially the latter function that rendered the movement the paramount agent of a politically activized civil society. The proponents of the idea of radical democracy found here an empirical example, however imperfect, of their visions. Those who tend to equate the notion of civil society with the republican ideal of active citizenship in the political sense often go back to Hannah Arendťs praise of self organised bodies of concerted action which periodically emerge at revolutionary times. In her On Rbw/uíwíi,20 Arendt finds these kinds of activities in self appointed councils as agents of autonomous collective action, among which the elements of hierarchy and formal organisation are largely suppressed. At the same time, however, she points out that these typical fruits of great revolutions are later regularly replaced by another kind of collective body: political parties as large bureaucratic and hierarchical organisations. At this point, she expresses the basic polarity that marked 19 The word Torum' in the movement's name was to symbolise this very openness. It was not chosen accidentally. The movement was to stand as a platform open to all who wanted to speak and act as sovereign citizens in confrontation with the state power. 20 Hannah Arendt [ 1965]; esp. the chapter The Revolutionary Tradition and its Lost Treasure'. the manner in which the notion of civil society was understood in the post-revolutionary period: civil society was no longer pitted against the alienated state as a whole but against the particular institution of the political party. And the former was contrasted with the latter not just as a parallel sphere or way of public conduct but as a viable substitute for the party in its very political functions.21 What was at stake was the way in which the political process itself — i.e. the state and its decision-making procedures — was to be organised. The conflict between the movement (as an agent of civil society) and the political party contains a fundamental ambivalence that affected the character and practice of Civic Forum from the very beginning of its existence. The two mutually related dimensions of this ambivalence have already been mentioned: besides the confusion about the unity or plurality of the movement, it was especially the tension between representation and participation as two sorts of political functions for which the movement was to provide a ground. "The conflict between the two systems, the parties and the councils, came to the fore in all twentieth-century revolutions. The issue at stake was representation versus action and participation. The councils were organs of action, the revolutionary parties were organs of representation (...)." [Arendt 1965: 277]. The problem was that Civic Forum found itself in a position in which the Forum was expected to act simultaneously as both the systems that Arendt contrasts with one another. The movement's dual character brought about practical difficulties that stimulated its gradual shift towards a hierarchically organised large-scale organisation of the party type. In the initial phase of the formation of local initiatives, for example, there were cases that two competing Civic Forums were formed in one and the same place. The problem of authenticity came back into the game in a quite different context. Later we saw that the same thing could happen to established political parties as well. But in the early post-revolutionary period, there was no higher body to decide authoritatively which of the competing Forums — which activity or which persons — were more authentic than the other. Needless to stress how such conflicts undermined trust in and legitimacy of the movement that at the same time sought to represent the main stream of the revolutionary process at the national level. Here the sense of unity had to be maintained, all the more so given the fact that before the June 1990 parliamentary elections Civic Forum could not rely on any legally anchored democratic legitimacy. Moreover, the spontaneous implicit but strongly-felt unity and popular support for the representatives of Civic Forum in play at the end of 1989, gradually lost its intensity as the first controversial issues emerged before the reconstructed executive and legislative bodies in Spring 1990. It became necessary to 21 This is why we cannot introduce here Cohen's and Arato's well elaborated conception of civil society [Cohen and Arato 1992] as a corresponding theoretical account. For all its explicit radical democratic inspiration, this conception is grounded in a more differentiated picture of society, and it retains a legitimate room for institutions of political parties as weD. set clear rules as to who was to represent the movement even at lower levels. Especially so if stable and efficient channels of communication and co-operation were to be established between the local and the national levels of the movement.22 In Arendt's text, we can also read about the main 'external' circumstance that makes the replacement of local self organised bodies of collective action by large-scale bureaucratic institutions of political parties virtually unavoidable in modern societies. She reminds us that modern politics has its core at the state level. The latter is where the most important decision-making processes take place and political power finds its locus. Political problems are typically formulated as problems of the state: be it legislation or international politics, social policy or the administration of the economy. Thus "the spectacular success of the party system and the no-less spectacular failure of the council system were both due to the rise of the nation-state, which elevated the one and crushed the other (...)." [Arendt 1965: 251]. In short, when the revolutionary upheaval was over, it was still more difficult to find a proper field of action for local Civic Forums as autonomous political agents. The network of established Forums followed the pattern of political organisation characteristic of the former regime. They gathered and were organised predominandy at places of work: factories, offices, schools, and so on. Before 1989, it was the workplace that was not only the locus of social integration, but also the major arena and basic level of political integration and control. Therefore, this way of organising Civic Forums seemed natural at the end of 1989, as it was here where the closest agencies of the old regime's political power were to be faced. The institutional establishment of the Civic Forum movement thus in a sense protracted the tradition of a systematic politicisation of the workplace practised by the previous regime. Once the old political structures at places of work had been abolished, however, the existence of these Civic Forums largely lost their raison d'etre. Moreover, as the depoliticisation and privatisation of the economy soon became one of the major objectives of the transformation, the existence of local Forums came into conflict with the very substance of the central Forum's politics.23 The more the practice of Civic Forum at the state level acquired the character of a party activity (with an intensive factional life), the more it became difficult to retain the existence of local Civic Forums in their privileged positions. It was impossible for just one part of the country's political scene to have its own exclusive agents as paramount organs of 22 JiH Honajzer [1996: 40] points to the troubles with nominating delegates at and for the movement's conferences in the situation where there was no formal membership and the selection of representatives was thus exposed to possible manipulations from 'outside'. 23 Illustrative enough in this respect was the controversy between representatives of local Civic Forums in the district of Hodonín and the prime minister of the Czech government and leading figure of the national Civic Forum Petr Pithart, in 1991. The former felt helpless in face of the old communist functionaries taking high positions in the local economy but they had no longer the power to effectively impede this trend. Pithart, when asked for help, simply referred them to the legal framework that was to be respected. popular power at the local level. Thus even before the central Civic Forum was transformed into several political parties in early 1991, local Forums began to give way to conventional institutions such as trade unions (in representing social and economic interests) and newly elected or appointed local governments (in administering the public life of local communities). As a matter of fact, local Civic Forums had never fully replaced these institutions. They just formed parallel power structures at the local level, and they took them over to various extents. Even Arendt did not expect that a movement-type body could stand as an organ of truly democratic participatory politics at the national level. Practical difficulties with non-transparent opinion formation and articulation as well as complicated and heavy-going mechanisms of decision-making in and through such large-scale organisations are obvious. We need not share Arendťs harsh criticism of mass social movements as proto-totalitarian in order to be able to detect some of the practical troubles in Civic Forum's political functioning. Founded on the idea of wide consensus, for example, the movement never developed efficient mechanisms of reconciling internal conflicts. Therefore the formation of different factions within the movement — quite natural as the country's transformation required fundamental and also specific political conceptions — did not stimulate discussion. At the top level, it rather brought about the political style of factional conspiracy instead of that of open discussion. As Civic Forum played the role of political opposition to itself, every open conflict also effectively weakened the movement in relation to external political competitors, and was therefore felt as a threat. This is not to say that the split of Civic Forum in the beginning of 1991 was unavoidable. Yet keeping these difficulties in mind makes the movement's transformation into several independent political parties more understandable. No doubt this split was a crucial step and major event in changing the character of political life in the country. The paradox of a state-built civil society As soon as a competitive party system was established, and representative parliamentary democracy was taken as a model for normal politics, a new ground was to be sought for the idea of civil society. Now a new boundary between the state and civil society was to be drawn, and a new meaning and role for both in their mutual relationship was to be found. Although the latest metamorphosis of the notion of civil society took a more gradual path than the previous one, there still exists a distinct event we can refer to as the point of full inception of the new stage. It was Václav Haveľs 1994 New Year's speech" as President of the country, in which he accelerated the new phase of discussion as for what civil society is, why we need it, and how to get it. Having admitted that the basic institutions of parliamentary democracy and the market economy had already been established, he pleaded — under the slogan of civil society — for political support for institutions that should mediate not only between these two spheres, but especially between each of them on the one side, and society on the other. Havel's plea for civil society was explicitly directed to two specific areas of institutionalised public activity for which he sought political support: first, the so-called third or non-profit sector; and second, the local level of public ačhxiinistration. Somewhat later, higher bodies of competence for corporate institutions such as professional chambers, associations, and trade unions were sought, constituting another component of his plea for a more developed civil society. Soon these three issues - reflecting the practical problems faced in shaping the character of the state and society — became among the major clashing points of recent political discussion. Along with them, political stances have been refined and their ideological backgrounds revealed.24 Moving in this direction, on the other hand, the conceptual framework that characterized the previous stage was modified and enriched by the language of functional differentiation and mediation of interests. Of course, Havel was not the first in the Czech political discussion to promote the above-mentioned institutional spheres and their development. They already had their proponents before he came up with his appeal. He only put these demands on common ground by connecting them clearly and explicitly to the vision of building a viable civil society. As an intellectual and political authority, Havel has played an important role in rendering civil society a catchword for these demands which are often raised in political terms - a catchword that in the course of time has been adopted by a large number of proponents. Out of the three spheres — i.e. the non-profit sector, local administration, and unions or professional chambers — it is the first one that has gradually acquired a prominent place as an institutional core and representative of civil society. Unsurprisingly, it is at least intuitively felt that it is here that the ethos of civil society may find a space more open to its expression and realisation than in the other two. More specifically, it is here that independent initiative and individual responsibility may better be allied with the sense of public good and civic competence, with associating freely for a common purpose, and still remain relatively shielded from instrumental and functional imperatives imposed by the political-legal-bureaucratic system, or from the constraints imposed by clashing partial interests of the polity. In the other two cases, it would not be difficult to point out the undesirable consequences or ignored aspects of the institutionalized activities in question. On the one side, one could highlight the inflation of bureaucratic practices that may 24 Even though Havel himself does not speak explicitly for any political party or doctrine, the major clash has obviously been between liberals, on the one side, and (neo-) corporatists or associationalists, on the other. The dispute has been closely tied to practical political issues, with arguments often representing stances of concrete political parties, yet it has also produced more theoretically-based reflections. Perhaps the most consistent theoretical defence of the corporatist and associationalist conception of civil society is [Samalik 1995]. accompany decentralisation of public administration; on the other side, problems could arise in the intervention of organised partial interests in the process of political decision-making, which could make the whole process even less transparent, leave out the unorganised and the weaker, and confuse the concept of political representation itself. To be sure, the sphere of non-profit social, cultural, educational, service-providing or productive activities is by no means completely free of these or similar dangers. In this case, however, the interactions and interdependences between, on the one hand, the character of given institutions, the goals they pursue, and the principles that are to guide their activities and, on the other hand, the constraining imperatives of the legal-bureaucratic system, are much more subtle and puzzling — but also more theoretically interesting by the same virtue. There are two aspects involved in the relation between the non-profit sector and its environment that particularly distinguish this sphere from the other two. First, the sphere claims independence from the state not only in respect to the state's refraining from intervention in the activities taking place within the sector, but also in the sense of the sphere's limited or complete lack of intervention in the process of political decision-making on any level. In short, this sphere is exposed much less than the other two to imperatives of the political system in the determination and pursuit of its goals. It may flourish in parallel to similar state-run activities without a permanent (if often latent) tug of war with the state regarding the competence for decision-making. Second, besides the state (the sphere of politics and administration) on 'the opposite side,' a new pole enters the game: the sphere of the market economy. In delineating the areas and character of the third sector's activity, a distinct line is to be drawn between the non-profit sphere and that of profit-oriented market activities and relations. It is on this distinction that the practical desirability of the third sector is based, as well as on its moral superiority. In Havel's appeal, we find both. On the one hand, he pleads for the support of public initiatives in areas that are commonly held to be beneficial for society, but which provide little or no profit as economic activities based on market relations (and in which the state often tends to be ineffective or even detrimental). On the other hand, he stresses the ethical dimension and educational role of these kinds of initiatives as expressive of and nurturing a sense of solidarity and mutual support. In this respect, too, we may remain with Havel's appeal as sufficiently representative for the whole discussion. He explicitly and consistently transplanted the idea of civil society into a new context within which it was to be discussed and contested. For now, I will leave aside the question of distinguishing non-profit and profit-oriented activities as guided by two different moral codes.23 This is not to suggest, however, that the moral aspects of the distinction are of no or only little importance. Yet it is equally important to realise that the problem cannot be reduced to its moral dimension. For reducing the distinction to a mere moral judgement would amount to For a thorough contemporary discussion of this problem see [Wolfe 1989]. I limiting the possible use of the idea of civil society as a specifically political appeal — i.e. either as an appeal addressed to political actors or as connected to a certain political programme. One has to formulate the question of civil society as a question of state politics in order to be able to employ the idea of civil society' as a political appeal. And it was in his 1994 New Year's speech that Havel clearly demonstrated that he was no longer content with the role of mere ethical authority, launching moral appeals that may be politically relevant but still remain neutral to practical political alternatives at hand. His speech carried an unambiguous message concerning concrete steps he wanted to see taken by the legislative and executive political representation of the state. In this way, the locus of the struggle for civil society was replanted into the political arena. In other words, the prospect of building civil society has become a task for practical politics - i.e. a task for the state as represented by its legislative and executive bodies. The state comes back into the game through the back door, and it returns in a new role of constructor. It is no longer expected to retreat from certain areas of public life so as to empty some space for civil society. Now the state is asked to create the institutional (legal, material, etc.) space. It is necessary here to reiterate the peculiar consequences that the changes in contexts have had for understanding civil society's relation to its environment. At the first stage — before 1989 — civil society was expected to burst out and flourish naturally as soon as the state retreated from certain areas of social life. In the second phase — at the time of Civic Forum - civil society was even conceived of as something that was already present, and which only had to be given the opportunity to affect and thus democratise the political process of decision-making. At the present (third) stage, contrary to both previous stages, civil society stands for something that needs external (political) help to develop — as something that has to be nurtured and cultivated by the conscious and purposeful activity of political and administrative authorities, Assigning the task of establishing civil society to the state presupposes that it is sufficiently clear what civil society is, i.e. what kinds of practices and/or institutions represent or embody it. The point is that civil society may become an object of political 'constitutive' intervention only when understood in an accordingly specific way. Expecting an agent (the state) to purposefully influence the process of formation of civil society requires the ability to understand the latter in terms of institutions and/or practices that can be created or shaped or maintained by the purposeful activity of the state. In short, it is precisely the picture of civil society as institutionalised in a network of so-called "non-profit organisations (the third sector) that makes it possible to hold the state responsible for civil society and its development. In this regard, it is quite symptomatic that in the present Czech political debate about civil society the question of social movements is largely left out of the picture. The theme of the social movement as an institutionalised form of civil society occasionally arises when a movement's function of political mobilisation and its I I I I I I I I I intervention in the process of political decision-making are at issue. This is especially the case of the environmental movements. But we would hardly find the theme conceptualised in this way having in mind the function of social integration, the question of the self reflection and self understanding of social actors and practices.26 The willingness or ability to picture social movements in terms of the idea of civil society only when they present themselves as formal organisational structures, in explicit programmes, and through organised forms of collective action points to the tendency to instrumentalise the concept of civil society itself. What is more important here, however, is that movements seem to represent too diffuse social phenomena to be imagined as possible subjects of the state's politically 'constructive' intervention. In other words, the social movements are too independent in how they emerge and function - of that which the practical politics of the state can direcdy influence. Regarding this, we can even better come to see that focusing on the third sector as an institutional core of civil society corresponds to the tendency to understand civil society not so much in its political function as in its political origin. At the same time, however, it is the case of the non-profit, third sector that we can perhaps best document some blindspots in the vision of a state-built civil society. This is especially because the processes of bureaucratisation, legalisation' (Verrechtlichung), and monetarisation that accompany the third sector's expansion under the patronage of the state contrast stunningly with the ethos on which the sector is supposed and expected to be based.27 The problem - if we want to see it as a problem at all - is not just that the state becomes an arbiter in evaluating society's moral preferences by favouring (through legislative and economic means) one sort of activity and relatively disadvantaging others. The issue of the state as a moral agent might take us further into the political theory, and therefore it will be skipped here. Sociologists would rather address another kind of question: how the conception of a state-built civil society affects the picture of the latter in terms of what Robert Putnam [1993] calls institutional performance. Putnam studies the institutions of local administration in latter-day Italy, yet his conclusions undoubtedly bear relevance to the problem of third sector institutions as well. Instead of observing an educational effect of institutions of local democracy in those parts of Italy where civic culture has been rather underdeveloped, he finds there a maifunctioning system. It is also this finding that poses a serious 2Ü Here I am alluding to Alberto Melucci's understanding of social movements as practices, rather than as agents or characters [Melucti 1989, 1996]. In Cohen and Arato [1992], the distinction between what we may call the instrumental (political) and hermeneutical (social) aspects of the phenomenon of new social movements is described in terms of the difference between the 'politics of influence' and the 'politics of identity.' They, however, want to retain both as relevant for understanding social movements as institutional representatives of an updated idea of civil society. 27 I have focused more closely upon the paradoxes of a 'state-built civil society1 — with special attention to the third sector- in my article [Marada 1996]. challenge not just before social actors who act through the institutions of civil society, but also before social theory that should avoid appealing to one kind of institutional practice by criticising and looking for flaws in those spheres of action that are seen as the former's competitors. Civil society as challenge for social theory The basic dilemma we face is evident, and its formulation in political and social science has over time acquired the character of an evergreen: the development of the third, nonprofit sector is dependent on the state's active involvement, yet, at the same time, this involvement threatens to corrode the very ethos that is supposed to motivate the participating social actors. This especially applies to societies that find themselves in transition from one type of political-economic regime to another. Here the dilemma reveals its stakes with an increased clarity. The question is: what does this mean - first, for social and political actors, and second, for social and political theory? In my concluding remarks, I will try to point out the sense in which the practical consequences of the above-outlined situation for social conduct, on the one side, and critical theoretical reflection, on the other, are closely connected. The crucial question for social actors is the following: should they refrain from acting through institutions which are necessary for making their activity efficient and transparent to others but which force them at the same time to conform to imperatives incongruent with the ethos that motivates their action? A positive answer would find its ground in the kind of critical theory that dismisses not only bureaucracy and market economy but also positive law, technology, and science. The formal and instrumental character of these institutions, according to this way of thinking, conceals and effectively reproduces the oppressive character of modern society that functions through them. This radical tradition of critical theory — which found its first systematic expression in Marx and then among various sorts of his followers teaches us that every activity made effective through those institutions, regardless of its immediate impact, serves in the last instance to those who govern or profit from the system as a whole.28 In other words, the institutional system poses strict barriers to every action undertaken within it — however good and beneficial for society's members - which could upset the power relations maintained and 28 Thus not only prisons and the army but also hospitals and schools are seen as normalising and disciplining institutions, the media as fabricating unified public opinions and destroying independent critical thinking, social welfare policies as corrupting the disadvantageous and potentially dissatisfied, charity as a theatre making the poor grateful and healing the bad conscience of the rich, family as a reified structure reproducing gender inequalities as well as children's oppression, avant-garde art as diverting and dissolving the impetus to revolt, parliaments and trade unions as paralysing political opposition through its inclusion into the system, the judiciary and police as criminalising institutions, and human rights as a shield that separates individuals from each other and protects first of all those who profit from all this. reproduced by the former. In this view, the oppressive character of the system as a whole eventually reverses the general meaning of every institutionalised activity in favour of the relations of domination, and by this virtue devaluates every particular good. This certainly is not the kind of critical thinking that is advocated here. At the same time, however, I do not recommend abandoning completely the theoretical claim of perceiving particular activities as constitutive parts or functional elements of a wider societal and institutional context.25 Rather the claim is to be complemented by the attempt to distinguish between the moral and the institutional dimension of public conduct, and to reflect upon public conduct along this double track. Such an attempt should not only help us keep in mind that a certain portion of bureaucratic skills or economic calculation, observance of legal limits or reliance upon scientific information, (and even a certain degree of ideological simplification or hierarchical disciplinary organisation) - i.e. that which often makes public activity effective and transparent - are not by definition mutually exclusive with public conduct beneficial for society in moral terms. In other words, this view reminds us that acting within and through institutions does not necessarily make it impossible for social actors to act in a civilised manner and pursue goals that morally motivate their action. But it also should help us confront the institutional (bureaucratic, economic, ideological, organisational) costs with the moral value and public desirability of goals to be achieved in order to find a proper balance between these two sides in particular cases. In short, the task for civil society is not that some kinds of institutions be avoided or abolished altogether. It is only that public conduct cannot succumb to their instrumental and functional imperatives which would deprive such conduct of its ethos, making an empty routine of it in a similar way as happened to the capitalist economy in Max Weber's picture [Weber 1958]. It is in avoiding this very alternative that critical social theory may play an important role — first, as a means of critical analysis of certain kinds of social practices; second, as a theoretical self reflection of the participating actors. The tendency to employ the idea of civil society as a tool of political appeal against the supposedly competing spheres or kinds of action — may well lead to the confusion affecting the current Czech political discussion. One side of the dispute accentuates the moral ethos of the non-profit activities, whereas the other points out the instrumental aspects and functional defects of the institutions through which the activities are to be made effectual. The problem is that neither of the sides makes enough effort to distinguish between the ethical and institutional (instrumental and functional) aspects of the problem. The one side promotes a certain legal-economic form of public activity as embodying the sought-after ethos, the other challenges the 29 Disregard of the wider societal and institutional context of action would also deprive the political and social actors of the capacity to define in particular cases the public good or public interest. ethos's cogency by connecting it with the possibly malfunctional institutional structure. In this way, paradoxically, both sides contribute to discrediting the idea of civil society in one and the same direction. They expose it to the accusation of being a mere illusion that serves to shield the possibly imperfect practices of certain kinds of institutions, an ideological veil that idealises these kinds of institutions and protects them from critical assessment. The task of a critical assessment cannot be reasonably undertaken from the viewpoint of the theory of the state or that of the market. In a formal sense, a social theory based on the idea of civil society is in a similar position to those other two sorts of theories. Today it is — and it has perhaps always been — more theoretically fruitful to employ the idea of the market as a means of analysis and a measure of critique for the actual economic relations that we call the market, rather than using it as a protective shield that should defend the clumsy and heavy institutional scaffold of contemporary markets against other forms of social or economic activity. To take another, more concrete example: we do not have to accept Carl Schmitt's anti-democratic position to be able to appreciate his analytical strategy in criticising parliamentarism by confronting the original principles on which modern parliaments had been founded with the way they actually functioned in his time. He hastens to denounce an institution as soon as he realises that it no longer represents the ethos which once legitimised its establishment. Although in Schmitt's case we have reasons to suppose that he looks for and points out incongruities between the legitimising ethos and actual practice in order to (i.e. with the intention to) denounce the institution. This is certainly not the source of motivation recommended for the critical theorists of civil society. The idea of civil society — as a symbol of certain kinds of social or public sensitivity, attitudes, ways of acting and thinking, or moral reasoning - is not here to denounce the institutional base of the non-profit sector. Even less does it serve to denounce the institutions of the state or the market. The latter two occupy their own fields of action, where they operate according to their own imperatives and criteria of rationality. The idea of civil society as a sphere of civilised public conduct of free, moral, and rational individuals may (and perhaps should) pose limits to those spheres. But it is not an imperial vision. The fact that it is aware of its own limits testifies to its own civility. It best serves as a means of critical analysis of public action that is not primarily guided by political goals or economic calculation. As a means of critical analysis, it is designed to be applied to the sphere of civil society itself. Such an approach may take some illusions from social or political actors. But I do not believe it can disable what motivates them. Civil society is that kind of social life in which motivations do not stem from illusions but from rational and moral judgement. If we do not admit that this distinction - between illusions and rational-moral judgement is possible at all, we lose the very ground for the articulation of the idea of civil society itself. The symbol then becomes incomprehensible and useless, since it has no basis in a Nietzschean world which blurs that distinction. Therefore also critical theory based on the idea of civil society need not be afraid of nature, I I I I I I I I I I I I I which, according to Nietzsche's prophecy, will punish as the cruellest tyrant those who take illusions from people. RADIM MARADA teaches sodology at the Faculty of S odal Studies, Masaryk University Brno. He received his PhD. at the New School for S odal Studies in New York (1995). 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Walzer, M. 1992. "The Civil Society Argument." In Dimensions of Radical Democracy, ed. by C. Mouffe. London-New York: Verso. Weber, M. 1958. The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribners. Wolfe, A. 1989. Whose Keeper? S oäal S äence and Moral Obligation. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press. In: C^ech Soäoíogical Review. Praha: CAV 1997, pp. 3-22. I I I I I I I I I I Václav Havel: "Anti-Political Politics" In: John Keane [ed.]: Civil Society and the State. London: Verso 1993, pp. 381-398 i i i i i i 67 l l l Anti-Political Politics* Václav Havel As a boy, I lived for some time in the country and I clearly remember an experience from those days: I used to walk to school in a nearby village along a cart track through the fields and, on the way, see on the horizon a huge smokestack of some hurriedly built factory, in all likelihood in the service of war. It spewed dense smoke and scattered it across the sky. Each time I saw it, I had an intense sense of something profoundly wrong, of humans soiling the heavens. I have no idea whether there was something like a science of ecology in those days; if there was, I certainly knew nothing of it. That 'soiling of the heavens' nevertheless offended me spontaneously. It seemed to me that in so doing, humans are guilty of something, that they destroy something important, arbitrarily disrupting the natural order of things, and that such doings cannot go unpunished. Certainly, my revulsion was largely aesthetic; I knew nothing then of the noxious emissions which would one day devastate our forests, exterminate game and endanger the health of people. Were a medieval man suddenly to see something like a huge smokestack on the horizon - say, while out hunting - he would probably think it the work of the Devil and fall on his knees, to pray that he and his kin be saved. What is it, actually, that the world of a medieval peasant and that of a small boy have in common? Something substantive, I think. Both the boy and the peasant are rooted far more intensely in what some philosophers call the natural world, or 'life-world' [Lebensweli\ than most modern adults.™ They have not yet grown alienated from the world of their actual personal experience, the world which has its morning and its evening, its down {die earth) and its up (the heavens), where the sun rises daily in the east, traverses the sky and sets in the west, and where concepts like 'at home' and 'in foreign parts', good and evil, beauty and ugliness, near and far, duty and work, still mean something living and definite. They are still rooted in a world which knows the dividing line between all * Text of an address forwarded to the University of Toulouse in 1984, on the occasion of an honorary doctorate which, since he lacks a passport, he was unable to receive in person. Translated by E. Kohák and R. Scruton, amended by A.G. Brain. ** Editor's note: The concept of hebenswelt was first developed by Edmund Husserl, a Moravian-born philosopher, in Vie Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaßen and die transzendentale Phänomenologie (most of which was published in Belgrade in 1936). It refers to the horizon which is shared by all experiencing beings, but which recedes from their efforts to grasp or define it absolutely, even though through this Iifeworld they make judgements, reach decisions and engage in various other actions. that is intimately familiar and appropriately a subject of our concern and that which lies beyond this horizon, that before which we should bow down humbly because it partakes of a mystery. Our T attests primordially to that world and personally certifies it. This is the world of our Uved experience, a world to which we are not yet indifferent, since we are bound to it personally in our Love, hatred, respect, contempt, tradition, in our interests and in that pre-reflective meanmgfulness from which culture is born. It is the realm of our induplicable, inalienable and non-transferable joy and pain, a world in which, through which and for which we are somehow answerable, a world of personal responsibility. In this world, categories like justice, honour, treason, friendship, infidelity, courage or empathy have a wholly tangible content, relating to actual persons and actual life. At the basis of this world are values which are simply there, perennially, before we ever speak of them, before we reflect upon them and inquire about them. It owes its internal coherence to something like a 'pre-speculative' assumption that the world functions and is generally possible at all only because there is something beyond its horizon, something beyond or above it that might escape our understanding and our grasp but, for just that reason, grounds this world firmly, bestows order and measure upon it, and is the hidden source of all its rules, customs, commandments, prohibitions and norms. The natural world, in virtue of its very being, bears within it the presupposition of the Absolute which grounds, delimits, animates and directs it, and without which it would be untliinkable. This Absolute is something which we can only quietly respect; any attempt to spurn it, master it or replace it with something else appears, within the framework of the natural world, as an expression of hybňs for which humans must pay a heavy price, as did Don Juan and Faust. To me, personally, the smokestack soiling the heavens is not just a regrettable lapse of a technology that failed to include 'the ecological factor' in its calculation, one which can be corrected easily with the appropriate filter. To me it is more the symbol of an age which seeks to transcend the boundaries of the natural world and its norms and to make it into a merely private concern, a matter of subjective preference and private feeling, of the illusions, prejudices and whims of a 'mere' individual. It is a symbol of an epoch which denies the binding importance of personal experience.-including the experience of mystery and of the Absolute — and displaces the personally experienced Absolute as the measure of the world with a new, man-made absolute, devoid of mystery, free of the 'whims' of subjectivity and, as such, impersonal and inhuman. It is the absolute of so-called objectivity: the objective, rational cognition of the scientific model of the world. Modem science, constructing its universally valid image of the world, thus crashes through the bounds of the natural world, which it can understand only as a prison of prejudices, from which we must break out into the light of objective truth. The natural world appears to it as no more than an unfortunate leftover from our backward ancestors, a fantasy of their childish immaturity. With that, of course, it abolishes as mere fiction even the innermost foundation of our natural world: it kills God and takes His place on the vacant throne, so that henceforth it might be science which, as sole legitimate guardian, holds the order of being in its hand. For, after all, it is only science that rises above ail individual subjective truths and replaces them with a superior, trans-subjective, transpersonal truth, which is truly objective and universal. Modern humans, whose natural world has been conquered properly by science and technology, objects to the smoke from the smokestack only if the stench penetrates their apartment. In no case, though, do they take offence at it metaphysically, since they know that the factory to which the smokestack belongs manufactures things they need. As people of the technological era, they can conceive of a remedy only within the limits of technology - for instance, a catalytic scrubber fitted to the chimney. Lest you misunderstand, I am not proposing that humans abolish smokestacks or prohibit science or generally return to the Middle Ages. Besides, it is not accidental that some of the most profound discoveries of modern science render the myth of objectivity surprisingly problematic and, via a remarkable detour, return us to the human subject and his or her world. I wish no more than to consider, in a most general and admittedly schematic outline, the spiritual framework of modern civilization and the source of its present crisis. And although the primary focus of these reflections will be the political rather than the ecological aspect of this crisis, I might perhaps clarify my starting point with one more ecological example. For centuries, the basic component of European agriculture had been the family farm. In Czech, the older term for it was grunt - which itself is not without its etymological interest. The word, taken from the German Grund, actually means ground or foundation and, in Czech, acquired a peculiar semantic colouring. As the colloquial synonym for foundation it points out the 'groundedness' of the ground, its indubitable, traditional and pre-speculatively given authenticity. Certainly, the family farm was a source of endless and intensifying social conflict of all kinds. Still, we cannot deny it one thing: it was rooted in the nature of its place, appropriate, Harmonious, tested personally by generations of farmers and certified by the results of their husbandry. It also displayed a kind of optimal mutual proportionality in extent and kind of all that belonged to it: fields, meadows, bounds, woods, cattle, domestic animals, water, roads and so on. For centuries no farmer made it the topic of a scientific study. Nevertheless, it constituted a generally satisfactory economic and ecological system within which everything was bound together by a thousand threads of mutual and meaningful connection, guaranteeing its stability as well as the stability of the agricultural product. Unlike present-day 'agribusiness', the traditional family farm was energetically self sufficient. Although it was subject to common calamities, it was not guilty of them — unfavourable weather, cattle disease, wars and other catastrophes lay outside the farmer's province. Certainly, modern agricultural and social science could also improve agriculture in a thousand ways, increasing its productivity, reducing the amount of sheer drudgery, and eliminating the worst social inequalities. But this is possible only on the assumption that modernization, too, will be guided by a certain humility and respect for the mysterious order of nature and for the appropriateness which derives from it and which is intrinsic to the natural word of personal experience and responsibility. Modernization must not be simply a megalomaniac and brutal invasion by an impersonally objective Science, represented by a newly graduated agronomist or a bureaucrat in the service of the 'scientific world-view'. That, however, is exactly what happened to our country: our word for it was 'collectivization'. Like a tornado it raged through the Czechoslovak countryside thirty years ago, leaving no stone unturned. Among its consequences were, on the one hand, tens of thousands of lives devastated by prison, sacrificed on the altar of a scientific utopia; on the other hand, a certain diminution in the level of social conflict and the amount of drudgery in the countryside and a certain quantitative increase in agricultural productivity. That, though, is not why I mention it. My reason is different: thirty years after the tornado swept the traditional family farm off the face of the earth, scientists are amazed to discover what even a semi-literate farmer previously knew — that human beings must pay a heavy price for every attempt to abolish, radically, once and for all and without trace, that humbly respected boundary of the natural world, with its tradition of scrupulous personal acknowledgement. They must pay for the attempt to seize nature, to leave not a remnant of it in human hands, to ridicule its mysteries; they must pay for the attempt to abolish God and to play at being God. The price, in fact, fell due. With hedges ploughed under and woods cut down; wild birds have died out and, with them, a natural, unpaid protector of the crops against harmful insects. Huge unified Gelds have led inevitably to the annual loss of millions of cubic yards of topsoil that had taken centuries to accumulate; chemical fertilizers and pesticides have catastropbically poisoned all vegetable products, the earth and its waters. Heavy machinery systematically presses down the soil making it impenetrable to air and so infertile; cows in gigantic dairy farms suffer neuroses and lose their milk, while agriculture siphons off ever more energy from industry manufacture of machines, artificial fertilizers, rising transportation costs in an age of growing local specialization; and so on and on. In short, the prognoses are terrifying and no one knows what surprises coming years and decades might bring. It is, paradoxical: people in the age of science and technology live in the conviction that they can improve their lives, because they are able to grasp and exploit the complexity of nature and the general Laws of its functioning. Yet it is precisely these laws which, in the end, tragically catch up with them and get the better of them. Humans thought they could explain and conquer nature, yet the outcome is that they destroyed it and disinherited themselves from it. But what are the prospects for humans 'outside nature'? It is, after all, precisely the most recent leading sciences that are discovering that the human body is actually only a particularly busy intersection of billions of organic microbodies, of their complex mutual contacts and influences, together forming that incredible megaorganism we call 'the biosphere', in which our planet is blanketed. The fault is not one of science as such but of the arrogance of humankind in the age of science. Humans simply are not God, and playing God has cruel consequences. Humans have abolished the absolute horizon of their relations, denied their personal 'pre-objecttve' experience of the lived world, while relegating personal conscience and consciousness to the bathroom, as something so private that it is no one's business. We. have rejected our responsibility as a 'subjective illusion' and in its place installed what is now proving to be the most dangerous illusion of all: the, fiction of objectivity stripped of all that is concretely human, of a rational understanding of the cosmos, and of an abstract schema of a putative Tiistoricaí necessity'. As the apex of it all, we have constructed a vision of a purely scientifically calculable and technologically achievable 'universal welfare', demanding no more than that experimental institutes invent it while industrial and bureaucratic factories turn it into reality. The fact that millions of people will be sacrificed to this illusion in scientifically directed concentration camps is not something that concerns our 'modem person' unless by chance he or she lands behind barbed wire and is thrown back drastically upon his or her natural world. The phenomenon of empathy, after all, belongs with that abolished realm of personal prejudice which had to yield to Science, Objectivity, Historical Necessity, Technology, System and the "Apparat — and since they are impersonal, they cannot worry. They are abstract and anonymous, always utilitarian and, thus, also always innocent a priori. And what for the future? Who, personally, would care about it or even personally worry about it when matters concerning eternity are locked away in the bathroom, if not actually exiled into the realm of fairy tales? If a contemporary scientist thinks at all of what will be in two hundred years, he or she does so solely as a personally disinterested observer who, basically, could not care less whether he or she is doing research on the metabolism of the flea, on the radio signals of pulsars or on the global reserves of natural gas. And a modern politician? He or she has absolutely no reason to care, especially if it might interfere with his or her chances in an election, as long as he or she lives in a country where there are elections . . . The Czech philosopher Vaclav Bělohradský has persuasively developed the thought that the rationalist spirit of modern science, founded on abstract reason and on the presumption of impersonal objectivity, has, in addition^' to its father in the natural sciences, Galileo, a father in politics — Machiavelli, who first formulated, albeit with an undertone of malicious irony, a theory of politics as a rational technology of power.1 We could say that, for all the complex historical detours, the origin of the modern state and of modem political power may be sought precisely here, that is, in a moment when human reason is beginning once again to break free of humanity, of personal experience, personal conscience and personal responsibility and so also from the framework of the natural world, to which all responsibility had been uniquely 1 Václav Bělohradský, Kri^e Eschatologie Neosobnosti [The Crisis in the Eschato/ogp of the Impersonal London 1982. related as its absolute horizon. Just as the modern natural scientists set aside the actual human being as the subject of the lived experience of the world, so, ever more evidently, do both the modem state and modern politics. To be sure, this process of anonymization and depersonalization of power, and its reduction to a mere technology of rule and manipulation, has a thousand masks, variants and expressions. In one case, it is covert and inconspicuous while in another it is just the contrary, entirely overt; sometimes it sneaks up on us along subtle and devious paths, at other times it is brutally direct. Essentially, though, it is the same universal trend. It is the essential trait of all modem civilization, growing direcdy from its spiritual structure, rooted in it by a thousand tangled roots and inseparable even in thought from its technological nature, its mass characteristics and its consumer orientation. Rulers and leaders were once personalities in their own right, with a concrete human face, still in some sense personally responsible for their good and evil deeds -whether they had been installed by dynastic tradition, the will of the people, a victorious batde or by intrigue. But they have been replaced in modern times by the manager, the bureaucrat, the apparatchik — a professional ruler, manipulator and expert in the techniques of obfuscation, filling a depersonalized intersection of functional relations, a cog in the machinery of state caught up in a predetermined role. This professional ruler is an 'innocent' tool of an 'innocent' anonymous power, Legitimated by science, cybernetics, ideology, law, abstraction and objectivity - by everything, that is, except personal responsibility to human beings as persons and neighbours. A modern politician is transparent: behind his or her judicious mask and affected diction there is not a trace of a human being rooted in the natural order by loves, passions, interests, personal opinions, hatred, courage or cruelty. All that he or she, too, locks away in his or her private bathroom. If we glimpse anything at all behind the mask, it will be only a more or less competent power technician. System, ideology and apparat have deprived us — rulers as well as ruled - of our conscience, our natural understanding and natural speech and, with these, of our actual humanity. States grow ever more machine-like; people are transformed into casts of extras, as voters, producers, consumers, patients, tourists or soldiers. In politics, good and evil, categories of the natural world — and therefore obsolete remnants of the past ~ lose all absolute meaning; the sole method of politics is quantifiable success. Power is a priori innocent because it does not grow from a world in which words like guilt and innocence retain their meaning. This impersonal power has achieved its most complete expression so far in the totalitarian systems. As Bělohradský points out, the depersonalization of power and its conquest of human conscience and human speech have been linked successfully to an extra-European tradition of a 'cosmological' conception of the empire which identifies the empire as the sole true centre of the world, with the world as such, and considers the human as its exclusive property. But, as the totalitarian systems illustrate clearly, this does not mean that the modern impersonal power is itself an extra-European affair. The truth is the very opposite: it was precisely Europe, and the European West, that provided and frequendy forced on the world all that today has become the basis of such power: natural science, rationalism, scientism, the Industrial Revolution, and revolution as such, as a kind of fanatical abstraction from the natural world. And k is Europe democratic Western Europe - which today stands bewildered in the face of this ambiguous export. The contemporary dilemma whether to yield to or resist this reverse expansionism of its erstwhile export — attests to this. Should rockets, now aimed at Europe thanks to its export of spiritual and technological potential, be countered by similar and better rockets, thereby demonstrating a determination to defend such values as Europe has Left, at the cost of entering into an utterly immoral game? Or should Europe retreat, hoping that the responsibility For the fate of the planet demonstrated thereby will infect, by its miraculous power, the rest of the world? In the relation of Western Europe to the totalitarian systems, I think that no error could be greater than the one looming largest - that of a failure to understand the totalitarian systems for what they ultimately are: a convex mirror of all modern civilization and a harsh, perhaps final call for a global recasting of that civilization's self understanding. If we ignore that, then it does not make any essential difference which form Europe's efforts will assume. It might be the form of taking the totalitarian systems, in the spirit of Europe's own rationalistic tradition, for some localised idiosyncratic attempt at achieving 'general welfare', to which only people of ill-will attribute expansionist tendencies. Or - in the spirit of the same rationalist tradition, though this time in the form of a Machiavellian conception of politics as the technology of power — it might perceive the totalitarian regimes as a purely external threat by expansionist neighbours, who can be driven back within acceptable bounds by an appropriate demonstration of power, without having to be considered more deeply. The first alternative is that of the person who reconciles him- or herself to the chimney belching smoke, even though that smoke is ugly and smelly, because in the end it serves a good end: the production of commonly needed goods. The second is that of the person who thinks that it is simply a matter of a technological.flaw which can be eliminated by technological means, such as a filter or a scrubber. The reality, I believe is unfortunately more serious. The chimney 'soiling the heavens' is not just a technologically corrigible design error, or a tax paid for a better tomorrow, but a symbol of a civilization which has renounced the Absolute, which ignores the natural world and disdains its imperatives. So, too, the totalitarian systems warn of something far more serious than Western rationalism is willing to admit. They are, most of all, a convex mirror of the inevitable consequences of rationalism, a grotesquely magnified image of its own deep tendencies, an extreme outcropping of its own development and an ominous product of its own expansion. They are a deeply informative reflection of its own crisis. Totalitarian regimes are not merely dangerous neighbours and, even less, some kind of an avantgarde of world progress. Alas, just the opposite; they are the avant-garde of a global crisis of this civilization, one which is European, then Euroamerican, and ultimately global. They are one of the possible futurological studies of the Western world, not in the sense that one day they will attack and conquer it but in a far deeper sense - that they illustrate graphically the possible consequences of the 'eschatology of the impersonal', as Belohradsky calls it. It is the total rule of a bloated, anonymously bureaucratic power, not yet irresponsible but already operating outside all conscience, a power grounded in an omnipresent ideological fiction which can rationalize anything without ever having to confront the truth. It is power as the omnipresent monopoly of control, repression and fear, a power which makes thought, morality and privacy a state monopoly and so dehumanizes them. It is a power which long ago has ceased to be the matter of a group of arbitrary rulers but which, rather, occupies and swallow's everyone, so that all should become integrated within it, at least through their silence. No one actually possesses such power since it is the power itself which possesses everyone; it is a monstrosity which is not guided by humans but which, on the contrary, drags all persons along with its 'objective' momentum objective in the sense of being cut off from all human standards, including human reason — to a terrifying, unknown future. Let me repeat: this totalitarian power is a great reminder to contemporary civilization. Perhaps somewhere there may be some generals who think that it would be best to dispatch such systems from the face of the earth and then all would be well. But that is no different from a plain girl trying to get rid of her plainness by smashing the mirror which reminds her of it. Such a 'final solution' is one of the typical dreams of impersonal reason capable, as the term 'final solution* reminds us graphically, of transforming its dreams into reality and thereby reality into a nightmare. Not only would it fail to resolve the crisis of the present world but, assuming anyone survived at all, it would only aggravate that crisis. By burdening the already heavy account of this civilization with further millions of dead, it would not block its essential tendency to totalize but, rather, would accelerate it. It would be a Pyrrhic victory, because the victors would emerge from such a conflict inevitably resembling their defeated opponents far more than anyone today is willing to admit or able to imagine, just a minor example of this: imagine what a huge Gulag Archipelago would have to be built in the West, in the name of country, democracy, progress and military discipline, to contain all who refused to take part in such an enterprise, whether out of naivete, principle, fear or ill-will! No evil has ever been eliminated by suppressing its symptoms. We need to address the cause itself. From time to time I have a chance to speak with various Western intellectuals who visit our country and decide to include a visit to a dissident on their itinerary. Some visit out of genuine interest, or a willingness to understand and to express solidarity; others simply out of curiosity: beside the Gothic and Baroque monuments, dissidents are apparendy the only thing of interest to a tourist in this uniformly dreary context. These conversations are usually instructive: I learn much and realize much. The questions most frequently asked are these: Do you think you can really change I I I I I I I I I I anything, when you are so few and have no influence at all? Are you opposed to socialism, or do you merely wish to improve it? Do you condemn or condone the deployment of the Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe? What can we do for you? What drives you to do what you are doing when all it brings you is persecution, prison — and no visible results? Would you want to see capitalism restored in your country? Those questions are well intended, growing out of a desire to understand and showing that those who ask do care about the world, about what it is and what it will be. Still, precisely these and similar questions reveal to me ever anew how deeply many Western intellectuals do not understand - and in some respects, cannot understand -just what is taking place here, what it is that we, the so-called 'dissidents', are striving for and, most of all, what is the overall meaning of our situation. Take, for instance, the question tWhat can we do for you?' A great deal, to be sure. The more support, interest and solidarity of free-thinking people in the world we enjoy, the less the danger of being arrested, and the greater the hope that ours will not be a voice crying in the wilderness. And yet somewhere deep within the question, there is a built-in misunderstanding. After all, in the last instance the point is not to help us, a handful of 'dissidents', to keep out of jail a bit more of the time. It is not even a question of helping these nations, Czechs and Slovaks, to live a bit better, a bit more freely. We need first and foremost to help ourselves. We have waited for the help of others far too often, depended on it far too much, and far too many times come to grief: either the promised help was withdrawn at the last moment or it turned into the very opposite of our expectations. In the deepest sense, something else is at stake: the salvation of us all, of myself and my interlocutors equally. Or is it not something that concerns us all equally? Are not my dim prospects or, conversely, my hopes, their dim prospects and hopes as well? Was not my imprisonment an affront on them and the deception to which they are subjected an attack on me as well? Is not the destruction of humans in Prague a destruction of human beings everywhere? Is not indifference to what is happening here, or even illusions about it, a preparation for the same kind of misery elsewhere? Is not their misery the precondition of ours? The point is not that some Czech dissident, as a person in distress, needs help. I could best help myself out of distress simply by ceasing to be a 'dissident'. The point is what those dissidents' flawed efforts and their fate tell us and mean; what they attest about the condition, destiny, opportunities and problems of the world; the respects in which they are or could be food for thought for others as well; for the way they see their and so our shared destiny; and in what ways they are a warning, a challenge, a danger or a lesson for those who visit us. Or the question about socialism and capitalism! I admit that it gives me a sense of emerging from the depths of the last century. It seems to me that these thoroughly ideological and many-times-mystified categories have long since been beside the point. The question is wholly other, deeper and equally relevant to all. Shall we, by whatever means, succeed in reconstituting the natural world as the true terrain of politics, rehabilitating the personal experience of human beings as the initial measure of things, placing morality above politics and responsibility above our desires, making human community meaningful, returning content to human speaking, reconstituting, as the focus of all social activity, the autonomous, integral and dignified human T, responsible for him — or herself because he or she is bound to something higher? It really is not all that important whether, by accident of domicile, we confront a Western manager or an Eastern bureaucrat in this very modest and yet globally crucial struggle against the momentum of impersonal power. If we can defend our humanity, then perhaps there is a hope of sorts that we shall also find some more meaningful ways of balancing our natural rights to participate in economic decision-making, and to a dignified social status, with the tried driving force of all work: human enterprise realized in authentic market transactions. However, as long as our humanity remains defenceless we shall not be saved by any technical or organizational trick designed to produce better economic functioning, just as no filter on a factory smokestack will prevent the general dehumanization. To what purpose a system functions is, after all, more important than how it does so. Might it not function quite smoothly, after all, in the service of total destruction? I speak in this way because, looking at the world from the perspective which fate allotted me, I cannot avoid the impression that many people in the West still understand Hide of what is actually at stake in our time. If, for instance, we take a second look at the two basic political alternatives between which Western intellectuals oscillate today, it becomes apparent that they are no more than two different ways of playing die same game, proferred by the anonymity of power. As such, they are no more than two diverse ways of moving toward the same global totalitarianism. One way of playing the game of anonymous reason is to keep on toying with the mystery of matter — 'playing God' - constantiy inventing and deploying weapons of mass destruction, all, of course, intended 'for the defence of democracy', but in effect degrading democracy to the 'uninhabitable fiction' which socialism has long since become on our side of Europe. The other form of the game of anonymous reason is the tempting vortex that draws into itself so many good and sincere people, the so-called 'struggle for peace'.2 Often I have the impression that this vortex has been designed and deployed by that same treacherous, all-pervasive impersonal power as a more poetic means of colonizing human consciousness. Please note that I have in mind impersonal power as a principle, globally, in all its instances, and not only in Moscow — which, if the truth 2 Editor's note: The background of Havel's important contributions to the trans-European dialogue within the peace movement are discussed in jan Kavan and Zdena Tomin, eds, Voices From Prague. Documents on Chechoslovakia and the Peace Movement. London 1983. His most important essay on the subject is Anatomy of a Reticence. East European Dissidents and the Peace Movement in the West, Stockholm 1985 and London 1987. be told, lacks the capability to organize something as widespread as the contemporary peace movement. Still, could there be a better way of rendering ineffectual in the world of rationalism and ideology an honest, free-thinking person, the chief threat to all anonymous power, than by offering him or her the simplest thesis possible, with all the apparent characteristics of a noble goal? Could you imagine something that would more effectively fire a just mind — preoccupying it, then occupying it and ultimately rendering it intellectually harmless - than the possibility of 'a struggle against war'? Is there a cleverer means than deceiving people with the illusion that they can prevent war if they interfere with the deployment of weapons (which will be deployed in any case)? It is hard to imagine an easier way to á totalitarianism of the human consciousness. The more obvious it becomes that the weapons will indeed be deployed, the more rapidly does the mind of a person who has totally identified with the goal of preventing such deployment becomes radicalized, fanaticized and in the end alienated from itself- So a person sent off on his or her way by the noblest of intentions Ends him- or herself, at the journey's end, precisely where anonymous powers needs to see him or her: in the rut of totalitarian thought, where he or she is not his or her own and where he or she surrenders individual reason and conscience for the sake of another 'uninhabitable fiction'! As long as that totalitarian goal is served, it is not important whether we call that fiction Tiuman well-being', 'socialism' or 'peace'. Certainly, from the standpoint of the defence and the interests of the Western world, it is not very good when someone says Tjetter red than dead'. Still, from the viewpoint of the global impersonal power, and as a boost to its devilish omnipresence, there could be nothing better. That slogan is an infallible sign that the speaker has given up his or her humanity. For he or she has given up the ability personally to guarantee something that transcends him or her and so even to sacrifice, in the extreme, life itself to that which makes Life meaningful. Patočka once wrote that a life not willing to sacrifice itself for what makes it meaningful is not worth living.3 It is exactly in the world of abandoned lives and just such a 'peace' - that is, under the humdrum conditions of 'everydayness' — that wars happen most easily. In such a world there is no moral barrier against them, no barrier guaranteed by the courage of supreme sacrifice. The door stands wide open for the irrational 'securing of our interests'. The absence of heroes who know what they are dying for is the first step on the way to the mounds of corpses of those who are then slaughtered like cattie. The slogan 'better red than dead' does not irritate me as an expression of surrender to the Soviet Union, but it terrifies me as an expression of the renunciation by Western people of any claim to a meaningful life and of their acceptance of impersonal power as such. For what the slogan really says is that nothing is worth giving one's life for. However, widiout the horizon of the highest sacrifice, all sacrifice becomes senseless. Then nothing is worth anything. Nothing means anything. The result is a philosophy 3 Jan Patočka, Kacířské Eseje, Munich 1980, translated as Essais héiitiques, Paris 1981. of sheer negation of our humanity. In the case of Soviet totalitarianism, such a philosophy does no more than offer a little political assistance. In the West, it direcdy creates totalitarianism. In short, I cannot overcome the impression that Western culture is threatened far more by itself than by SS-20 rockets. When a French leftist student told me, with a sincere glow in his eyes, that the Gulag was a tax paid for the ideals of socialism and that Solzhenitsyn is just a personally embittered man, he cast me into a deep gloom. Is Europe really incapable of learning from its own history? Can't that pleasant young man ever understand that even the most tempting project of 'general well-being' convicts itself of inhumanity the moment it demands a single involuntary death — that is, one which is not a conscious sacrifice of a life to its meaning? Is he really incapable of comprehending that until he finds himself incarcerated in some Soviet-style jail near Toulouse? Has latter-day newspeak so penetrated natural human speech that two people can no longer communicate even such a basic experience? I presume that after all these stringent criticisms, I am expected to explain just what I consider to be a meaningful alternative for Western humanity today, in the face of die political dilemmas of the contemporary world. As all I have said suggests, it seems to me that all of us, East and West, face one fundamental task from which all else should follow. That task is one of resisting -vigilantly, thoughtfully and attentively, but at the same time with total dedication, at every step and everywhere — the irrational momentum of anonymous, impersonal and inhuman power: the power of Ideologies., Systems, Apparats, Bureaucracy, Artificial languages and Political Slogans. We must resist its complex and wholly alienating pressure, whether it takes the form of consumption, advertising, repression, technology, or cliche - all of which are the blood brothers of fanaticism and the wellspring of totalitarian thought. We must draw our standards from our natural world, heedless of ridicule, and reaffirm its denied validity. We must honour with the hurnility of the wise the bounds of that natural world and the mystery which lies beyond them, admitting that there is something in the order of Being which evidently exceeds all our competence. We must relate constantly to the absolute horizon of our existence which, if we but will, we shall constantly rediscover and experience. Values _ and imperatives must become the starting point of all our actions, of all our personally ■ attested, openly contemplated and ideologically uncensored lived experience. We must ^ trust the voice of our conscience more than that of all the abstract speculations, while contriving no other responsibility than the one to which that voice calls us. We must ■ not be ashamed that we are capable of love, friendship, solidarity, sympathy and ■ tolerance. On the contrary: we must set these fundamental dimensions of our humanity free from their 'private' exile and accept them as the only genuine starting point of meaningful human community. I I I I I I I I I know all that sounds very general, very indefinite and very unrealistic, but I assure you that these apparently naive words stem from a very concrete and not always easy experience with the world and that, if I may say so, I know what I am talking about. The vanguard of impersonal power, which drags the world along its irrational path, lined with devastated nature and launching pads, is composed of the totalitarian regimes of our time. It is not possible to ignore them, to make excuses for them, to yield to them or to accept their way of playing the game, thereby becoming like them. I am convinced that we can face them best by studying them without prejudice, learning from them and resisting them by being radically different, with a difference born of a continuous struggle against the evil which they may embody most clearly, but which dwells everywhere and so even within each of us. That evil is endangered Less by rockets aimed at this or that state than by our own determination to negate it, by the return of humans to themselves and to their responsibility for the world. The best defence against totalitarianism is simply to drive it out of our own souls, our own circumstances, our own land: to banish it from contemporary humankind. The best help to all who suffer under totalitarian regimes is to confront the evil which a totalitarian system constitutes, from which it draws its strength, and on which its 'vanguard' is nourished. If there is nothing whose vanguard or extreme outcrop a totalitarian regime could be, it will also have no basis. A reaffirmed human responsibility is the most natural barrier to all irresponsibility. If, for instance, the spiritual and technological potential of the advanced world is spread truly responsibly, not solely under the pressure of a selfish interest in profits, we can prevent its irresponsible transformation into weapons of destruction. It surely makes much more sense to operate in the sphere of causes than simply to respond to their effects: otherwise, as a rule, the only possible response is to use equally immoral means. To follow that path means to continue spreading the evil of irresponsibility in the world, and so to produce precisely the poison on which totalitarianism feeds. I favour 'anti-political polities': that is, politics not as the technology of power and manipulation, of cybernetic rule over humans or as the art of the useful, but politics as one of the ways of seeking and achieving meaningful lives, of protecting them and serving them. I favour politics as practical morality, as service to the truth, as essentially human and humanly measured care for our fellow-humans. It is, I presume, an approach which, in this world, is extremely impractical and difficult to apply in daily life. Still, I know no better alternative. When I was tried and then serving my sentence, I experienced directly the importance and beneficial force of international solidarity. I shall never cease to .be grateful for all its expressions. Still, I do not think that we who seek to proclaim the truth under our conditions find ourselves in an asymmetrical position, or that it should be we alone who ask for help and expect it, without being able to offer help in the direction from which it also comes. I am convinced that what is called 'dissent' in the Soviet bloc is a specifically modern experience, the experience of life at the very ramparts of dehumanized power: As such, 'dissent' has the opportunity and even the duty to reflect on this experience, to testify to it and to pass it on to those fortunate enough not to have to undergo it. Thus we, too, have a certain opportunity to help in some ways those who help us, to help them in our deeply shared interest, in the interest of humankind. One such fundamental experience is that anti-political politics is possible and can be effective, even though by its very nature it cannot calculate its effect beforehand. That effect, to be sure, is of a wholly different nature from what the West considers political success. It is hidden, indirect, long-term and hard to measure. Often it exists only in the invisible realm of social consciousness, and therein it can be almost impossible to determine what value it assumes and to what extent, if any, it contributes to shaping social development. It is, however, becoming evident — and I think this is an experience of an essential and universal importance — that a single seemingly powerless person who dares to cry out the word of truth and to stand behind it with all his or her person and life, has, surprisingly, greater power, though formally disenfranchised, than do thousands of anonymous voters. It is becoming evident that even in today's world, and especially on this exposed rampart where the wind blows most sharply, it is possible to oppose personal experience and the natural world to 'innocent' power and to unmask its guilt, as the author of The Gulag Archipelago has done. It is becoming evident that truth and morality can provide a new starting point for politics and can, even today, have an undeniable political power. The warning voice of a single brave scientist, besieged somewhere in the provinces and terrorized by a goaded community, can be heard over continents and can address the conscience of the mighty of this world more clearly than can entire brigades of hired propagandists speaking to themselves. It is becoming evident that wholly personal categories like good and evil still have their unambiguous content and, under certain circumstances, are capable of shaking the seemingly unshakable power and its army of soldiers, policemen and bureaucrats. It is becoming evident that politics by no means need remain the affair of professionals and that one simple electrician, with his heart in the right place, honouring something that transcends him and free of fear, can influence the history of his nation. Yes, anti-political politics is possible. Politics 'from below'. Politics of people, not of the apparatus. Politics growing from the heart, not from a thesis. It is no accident that this hopeful experience has to be lived just here, on this grim battlement. In conditions of öurndrum 'everydayness', we have to descend to the very bottom of a well before we can see the stars. When Jan Patočka wrote about Charter 77, he used the term 'solidarity of the shaken'. He was thinking of those who dared resist impersonal power and confront it with the only thing at their disposal: their own humanity. Does not the perspective of a better future depend on something like an international community of the shaken which, ignoring state boundaries, political systems and power blocs, standing outside the high game of traditional politics, aspiring to no titles and appointments, will seek to make a real political force out of a phenomenon so ridiculed by the technicians of power - the phenomenon of human conscience? In: John Keane (ed.): Civil Soäety and the State. London: Verso 1993, pp. 381-398. I I I 2 I • Michal Buchowski: "The shifting meanings of civil and civic society in Poland" In: Chris Hann and I Elizabeth Dunn [eds.]: Civil society: Challenging western models. London: Routledge 1996, pp. 79-98 i i i i i i i i The shifting meanings of civil aad civic society in Poland Michal Buchoivski ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO CIVIL SOCIETY Chris Harm (1992, 1993, 1995) criticises the notion put forth by some western scholars and former Central European dissidents that there was no civil society in Central Europe during the communist period. Since scholars accepted the totalitarian model, the language of civil society appeared to be absent.1 However, civil society itself continued to thrive at the grass-roots level, although western intellectuals could not possibly have been aware of it. By comparing philosophical ideals and desired western patterns widi the communist reality (see Staniszkis 1989), Polish scholars also contributed to this image. As for the dissidents, they liked to imagine themselves as the 'heroic underdogs' opposing the totalitarian state. In effect, Harm asserts, scholars were mistaken in perceiving members of communist societies as atomised and unable to form an authentic civil society. This critique is entirely convincing. Harm also emphasises the many positive effects which the communist regime brought to the life of local Hungarian communities. Tázlár serves as an example of this wonderful story: It became well integrated into the national society and experienced unparalleled material prosperity as a result of reformist socialist policies' (Harm 1992: 163). He is well aware that all forms of association had to be licensed by the communist party, (see 1993: 78, 89), but this was of minor importance for ordinary people. Post-communist developments indicate Httie change at the village level as far as elections to the community or cooperative bodies are concerned (Harm 1993), and it was the parties associated with the new order that 'seemed to stand for the atomization of the society' (Harm 1992: 160). The results of recent elections, highly favourable for the postcommunists, suggest that many people miss the old system. If this is so, why is it that Central European societies wanted to change and have in fact changed their political regimes? In Hann's opinion, the turbulence of the transition has brought home to people the benefits of the previous order and today's deficiencies can help us to discover the reality of communist civil society. I can agree with him on this, while not fully accepting his overall view on the advantages of communism. Like him I will argue against the conventional opinion tiiat civil society was simply absent in Central 1 The concept was not in circulation at that time, at least as far as areas outside Western Europe are concerned. In Polish political dictionaries, such as the Political Dictionary published in New York in 1980 and reprinted without censorship in Poland, or that published five years later in London (Karpinski 1985), there is no entry under 'civil society'. Local relations of power, leadership, and routine activities were not yet seen in a civil society perspective. Europe before 1989. However, I shall challenge the view that nothing has really changed 'for the better' in this respect after 1989. Two crucial questions He behind my argument. First, how should civil society be defined in a context different from that of western democracy where the concept originated? Second, what kind of civil society is emerging in Central Europe in the post-communist period, and how it is related to the past order? The concept of civil society must be contextualised and operationalised if it is to be useful in anthropological work. Hence I shall consider how the meaning of civil society and the rationality of governing underwent changes in Poland before 1989, and how they have changed again in recent years. The central problem boils down to the connection between social reality and theoretical models of that reality. When philosophers write about civil society, they usually postulate an ideal, authentic democracy. Social scientists understand civil society rather differendy, mostly in terms of the organisation of its contents. Various, sometimes contradictory, aspects of civil society are seen as germane to its functioning. Political science usually regards individualism, a market-oriented economy and pluralism as indispensable, and the essence of civil society can also be seen in increasing differentiation, or in pluralistic normative integration. As Rau has put it, f[a] precondition for the existence of civil society is a normative consensus of its members' (1991a: 6).2 Individuals share some moral values and pursue their internalised goals via freely established institutions. These associations fill in the space between the family and the state. This creates two prototypical possibilities: either the interests of state and society converge, or they are in conflict. A major discrepancy between anthropologists' and political scientists' understandings of civil society seems to turn on the range of activities which falls into this category. Harm writes that 'a focus upon the presence or absence of organized interest groups and autonomous associations is completely inadequate for a diagnosis of the condition of society' (1992: 160). Casual groups formed, for example, for physical exercise, also contribute to social cohesion. Moreover, even actions ensuring individual or family well-being are soúal, since for pursuing their goals 'men and women combine in groups with kin and neighbours'. This is 'another level of cooperation based upon informal networks deeply embedded in the local community' which 'must be taken into account' (Harm 1992:161; see also White, this volume). This view diverges significantly from the standard definition given by political science. Drawing on Hegel's comprehension of civil society as Í \ a 'free association between individuals' Scruton writes that, when contrasted with the state, a civil society denotes 'forms of association which are spontaneous, customary, and in general not dependent upon law5 (1983: 66). This part of the definition easily accommodates an 2 Rau's argument is misleading in that it reifies both state and society as monolithic units, rather than viewing them as assemblies of diverse or even conflicting interests in a continuous process of 'fission' and 'fusion'. anthropological conception of civil society. However, Scruton goes on to insist that civil society be distinguished from society, 'the first denoting only those associations which also háve a political aspect, the second accepting ail association generally'. Many forms of association, such as self-help groups, sports' clubs, informal neighborhood groups, will fall outside this definition of civil society. My own experience exemplifies the point. As a teenager living in an agricultural research station in a small Polish village in the 1970s I was a member of the People's Sports' Clubs (Ladom Zespoly Sportom). Like many people of my age, I played soccer in a local league. Both the station and the nation-wide organisation financed our league, but no one much cared about the source of assistance. What mattered was the equipment we received and the possibility of travelling by van to our Sunday games. Our manager, both trainer and player, was a driver employed by the station. In other words, he was a perfectly ordinary person. I do not know if he was a member of any political party nor did it matter. Players never thought of their activities in political terms. Were we, as teenagers, building a civil society? I would maintain that we were, while most other social and political scientists would say we were not. Anthropologists, as students of life in small communities, tend to favour the expanded view of civil society. For them, the rudiments of civil society He in the fact that individuals form common-interest groups that are not necessarily overtly political. The meaning and range of the political domain cannot be precisely delineated. Heading in the same direction, Gellner claims that civil society . . . cannot simply be identified with the existence of plural institutions, capable of acting as a kind of countervailing force to the state ... It certainly specifies one element necessary for the existence of civil society, but it is not sufficient. (1991: 498) Foucault emphasises that every society 'exists within the state's unifying framework of legal regulations yet, at the same time, is a natural reality which is, in essential respects, inaccessible to centralized political power' (quoted in Burchell 1991: 140-1). He too maintains that attempts to define civil society and the state as two opposed, separate and timeless entities are misguided and schematic. Civil society is 'the correlate of a political technology of government'. It is a '"transactional reality", existing at the mutable interface of political power and everything which permanently outstrips its reach. Its contours are thus inherently variable and open to constant modification' (Foucault, quoted in Burchell 1991: 141). Following these thoughts, we may best understand civil society as a coin with political power on one side, and all that eludes it on the other. The discontinuity between the two sides is the effect of a dialectical tension, which will depend upon the historical and social context. Civil society is a means, a technology of governing and at the same time, a mode of exerting pressure on the power of state. I call this last aspect civic society: social institutions embedded within civil society capable of acting as a kind of countervailing force to the state. It further follows that we must be ready to relativiss the notion of civil society. Western theoretical concepts do not always fit different cultural contexts and there are limits to their usefulness. Politically oriented groups are not the only components of civil society, and western standards of what is or is not political do not apply everywhere. The meaning of civil society cannot be defined in terms of the opposition of society to the state, but should be seen as a dialectic of these two elements. The traditional Aristotelian view of the relation between the state and society, partially inherited by modem times, assumes their ideal unity. Classical modem versions of this relation, like the Hegelian or liberal models, make a clear distinction between them (see Cohen and Arato 1987: 309). Anthropological research prompts reservations. A kind of Aristotelian consolidation of politics and society can be seen in the Durkheimian ideal-typical society ruled by mechanical solidarity, where by definition political and other institutions of social life converge. To be more precise, they are not differentiated at all; they are implicit in social life. Dispersed political functions are performed alongside other functions by every member of the community. A society characterised by mechanical solidarity would simultaneously be a civic society. The communist states wanted to realise the Aristotelian ideal, but also the Hegelian ideal that the state would somehow overtake or merge with society. In theory, increasing democratization should have eliminated the dichotomy. A Soviet-type system of 'institutional pluralism' (Hough and Fainsod 1979) was presented as one 'in which the leadership and various sections of society were almost harmoniously involved in macrosocial processes' (Rau 1991a: 1). In this model, the communist party controlled the situation in multifarious ways. It represented society's interests through its pervasive presence, ranging from the central administration and array officer corps to student groups. Society's interests were also to be represented in parliament. However, its composition was always decided by an official body, in Poland called the National Unity Front (Front JednosciNárodu), made up of various corporate groups and parties which were, again, overseen by the ubiquitous party. 'Democratic centralism' preserved the activists' obedience to their party. The nomenklatura system ensured that only loyal people could hold the most significant posts in the system. This projected integration of the state and society became fully fictional. In the political dimension people were alienated from public affairs, while politicians became detached from human affairs since they merely transmitted the decisions of the party to the masses. In this way, even supposedly non-political institutions were converted into administrative organs. The integration of state and society was not achieved from the bottom up by means of vigorous civic society, but from the top down by means of the heavy hand of bureaucracy. This is a rough outline of the political situation in the communist period in Central Europe. The concept of civil society was predicated on this fundamental dualism between 'the authorities' and 'society'. With these theoretical and political constraints in mind, let us turn to the case of Poland. CrVIC SOCIETY IN «COMMUNIST POLAND' People following their own interests and forming groups contributed to social cohesion during the communist period in various ways. I shall give several examples in order to provide a sense of the scope and character of civic society in the recent past. First there were official associations, corporations, leagues, all created, and licensed by the state. They included many grassroots organisations, such as the Village Women Housekeepers' Association, people's sports' clubs, and volunteer fire brigades. Youth associations, the Polish Students' Association, Polish Scouts, and the Country Youth Association, as well as professional and liberal arts associations, also fall into this category. These organisations were supervised by the authorities and therefore had a political dimension. The political agendas of these groups had contradictory features. On the one hand, they were imposed by the state and all senior posts had to be approved by the party. On the other hand, Local or ordinary members were supposed to show respect for the authorities. At some level, the apolitical character of every such organisation ended: they were all designed as part of the huge project of 'organised society'. One might say that these types of associations were political at the top and non-political at the bottom: for an anthropologist they are certainly part of civil society. I suggest that, even if the political scientist overlooks them completely, they are also part of dvic society. Despite the grip of the party and restrictions on political expression within them, these groups provided a significant means for collective activity. Even though political aspects were ordinarily invisible or ignored, what mattered in subjective terms was the possibility of action and the promotion of private or group interests against the authorities. Many of these groups, especially professional organisations, transformed themselves into dissident bodies in the 1980s. Unoffidal civic society took various forms, including extended kin groups and informal interest groups. One of the goals of the Soviet state was to change human nature so that people would put their revolutionary obligations to the party above loyalty to their families or local groups (see Rau 1991b). However, homo sovieticus never fully developed. It proved impossible for any government in Central Europe to control every aspect of social Life. Family life remained private and was not thoroughly subverted by the state. Now, for most scholars, the family is something opposed to civic society rather than a part of it. Participation in family life is not fully voluntary and social roles are ascribed and not freely chosen. However, I maintain that in the context of authoritarian states, the family often fulfilled functions that in other societies are assumed by institutions outside it. In Poland, the family has been perceived as a sanctuary in a hostile sea of social relations (see Podgórecki 1987: 603; Tarkowska and Tarkowski 1988: 44). Several studies show that Poles have always put the family at the top of a hierarchy of values (Dobrowolska 1975: 260; Bednarski 1987: 85; Buchowski 1993: 64; Tyszka 1982: 152). A similar attitude still holds.3 In a context in which other forms of civility are reduced to the minimum, the family becomes a bulwark ;against totalitarianism. The nuclear family could easily be consolidated in the extended family and this conviction shaped economic, social and cultural life. In the 1980s, the extended family often functioned as an economic unit, with its members lending and borrowing money, usually to subsidise the young, running small enterprises, and so on. The formation of such family-based groups was conditioned by, among other things, the economy of permanent shortage. A complicated network of mutual services, tooted in tradition, was a spontaneous means of helping people to protect their standards of living (see Wedel 1986). This 'familycentrism', in turn, influenced customs and everyday actions. Participation in ä family-oriented social life strengthened existing ties and the focus on material interest: 'the pursuit of common economic goals required family solidarity, and this limited social contacts to family communities and extrafamilial interest groups' (Grad 1993: 88). These familial interests are sometimes characterised as 'amoral familism' (Tarkowska and Tarkowski 1988, following Banfield (1979)). Several negative effects of this kind of familism are indicated: there is 'an atomism and egoism of small groups'; 'internal ties frequently degenerate because of the rivalry of consumers caused by the economic shortages'; competition between micro-groups creates 'aggression, social pathology and all features of an "unfriendly society"' (Tarkowska and Tarkowski 1991: 104). Ethical dualism is said to impose a rigid morality and loyalty towards persons from the inner circle, and extreme ■ moral laxity towards everyone else. Moral relativity also meant double standards with regard to private versus state property.4 In the traditional village setting, familism was connected with neighbourhood mutual help and other traditional forms of local community cooperation (see Nagengast 1991: 175-96). In the 1980s, economic ties were often fortified by political factors, particularly in the cities. Martial law and the danger of persecution for unauthorised activity encouraged people to restrict their social ties to kin and close 3 According to the Centre for Social Opinion Studies polls carried out in November 1993, 71 per cent of Poles declared that a happy family was the most important value in their life, well ahead of a professional career or wealth (Tylko rodina 1993). These raw data need qualification. Family happiness is often understood as family welfare that is stricdy connected with individual career and financial success (cf. Buchowski 1993: 64-5, 69). Nevertheless the very high emphasis on the family as a source of values is significant in Poland. 4 I am describing several aspects of family ties in terms of 'amoral familism', but without wishing to endorse the moral overtones as laid down by political scientists. Perhaps all these relations should be viewed simply in terms of in-group versus out-group behaviour. friends. Quite often this kind of extended family integration had a political aspect. All in all, one can imagine Polish society in the 1980s as a whole composed of cross-cutting units based on extended families. These microstructures formed a network of tightly knit interest groups. There is no doubt that in many respects this edifice of society presented something which may be described as amoral familism, but this is not a justification for excluding diese family-oriented microstructures from the notion of civic society. Just as individuals are the key entities in civil and political-science models of civil society, so these informal group s were fundamental to civic society in Poland. As the Tarkowskis rightly noted (but overlooked in their analysis), under martial law these grass-roots 'direct ties constituted an alternative public sphere . . . rrjhis alternative sphere generated social integration. If served as a buffer against the economic crisis in Poland confronted during the 1980s' (Tarkowska and Tarkowski 1991: 104). Religious organisations were official, but usually not fully controlled by the party. The position of the Catholic church in Poland was unique in the whole socialist camp. History showed that 'the Catholic Church, with its special position within the Polish nation' was an organisation that the communists 'could neither destroy . . . nor use for their own purposes' (Piekalkiewicz 1991: 158). This church was in fact the only structure independent of official state institutions. The organisation itself presented a mighty power. At the end of the 1970s it consisted of 14,000 churches located in 7,000 parishes administered by about 20,000 priests fôj)c%nik Statystycvgty 1980: 27). The Catholic University of Lublin (the only non-state university behind the Iron Curtain) and other theological institutes and seminaries were centres of independent thought. Various religious activities were sponsored by the church, ranging from rosary circles and youth preaching groups to social-assistance associations. There was even token Catholic representation in the communist parliament through Znak (see Micewski 1978). Should such an enormous self-governed organisation be considered an element of civic society? I think so. The church had a stimulating effect throughout society. Deeply embedded in the national tradition and local community life, it represented the interests of various groups at different levels. The church not only maintained religious freedom but preserved elements of freedom of speech through its preaching. After martial law was imposed on 13 December 1981, the church structures became 'safe havens' for secular dissidents and independent cultural activity (see Weigel 1992). In other words, the church was itself a major organisation of civic society, and at the same time it provided an infrastructure for other independent groups. When other forms of non-authorised civic society were suppressed, the church became the most natural and convenient venue for the expression of society's feelings and organised activity. Finally, Poland also had politically independent organisations which engaged openly in social activity. The beginning of social protest in Poland can be traced back to June 1956 when workers in Poznan demanded 'freedom and bread'. A part of the ensuing 'October Thaw' was the development of workers' self-governments 80 (samon>c{dy robotnica?) in the industrial plants. Although these workers' organisations were quickly curtailed, later years saw further protests and numerous attempts at forming independent trade unions and political parties (see Karpinski 1989; Raina 1982). In 1976, the Workers' Defence Committee (Komitét Obrony Robotnikow, or KOR) was established to provide help for families of detained workers and to defend those brought before the courts. KOR was in fact the first autonomous non-religious organisation to achieve notable social impact (Lipski 1985). It aimed to build up autonomous social bonds and saw grass-roots associations as the most viable form of civic defence against totalitarianism. Without aspiring to power or threatening the socialist principles of the state, it set out to protect individual rights. Its ideas were put into practice a few years later by Solidarity, an organisation which had 10 million members in 1981. Officially a trade union, Solidarity was a movement which at the same time played the muitifaceted roles of political party and civic society structure (see Goodwyn 1991). Various organisations outside of party control were able to flourish under its umbrella. When the communists found out that attempts to control Solidarity were futile, they decided to crush it forcefully (see Hölzer 1983). But defeating Solidarity was not an easy task, and the changes in the collective consciousness after 1980-1 were irreversible. They added up to a disenchantment of the communist world (Buchowski 1991: 431, 433). The communist regime's lack of legitimacy was finally revealed, and people became aware of the power of organised groups. An entire independent society, with an underground press and mechanisms for distributing aid to the persecuted and their families, was consolidated in the 1980s. Eventually, the communist elite came to the conclusion that it was not possible to govern the country without social endorsement, and they entered the 'round-table talks' that led to the election of a non-communist government in 1989. These unauthorised political organisations meet most of the standard classical political definitions of civil society and they clearly meet my definition of civic society. Independent institutions arose to represent the interests of social groups towards the state. The legitimacy of the communists' power was openly challenged. Even when martial law was imposed, society was able to organise itself. While we should not overestimate the impact of anti-totalitarian groups on the entire society, neither should this be underestimated. If the social pressure had not been as strong as it was, the historical change would have never happened. Consequendy, claims denying the existence of civic society in communist Poland cannot be sustained. COMMUNIST GOVERNMENTALÍTYAND CIVIL SOCIETY In a situation in which the party aspired to control every aspect of life,' any activity that undermined official prerogatives was regarded as political. Solidarity was accused of trying to grab power, as distinct from simply strengthening civic society. Aware of the threat of external military intervention, moderate Solidarity leaders advocated a 'new evolutionism'. This was the idea that, even without changing political structures, it would still be possible to build an independent social edifice (see Michnik 1985). "New evolutionists' dreamed of a society organised lite villages in a feudal kingdom, in which localities paid taxes and tributes to the sovereign but remained independent in their internal affairs. They presupposed a 'reabsorption of state power by society5, as in the Paris Commune (Gordon 1991: 30). Some thought thereby to establish 'socialism with a human face'. This goal proved to be unrealistic because it clashed with the communist notion of governmentality. For Foucault, governmentality is: [tjhe ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target population, as its principal form of knowledge, political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security. (1991: 102) This aspect of governmentality can be called a mode of governing or a rationality of governing. Communist govemmentality can be characterised as a technique which relied on the state's power to control every possible aspect of life. Communists, as Leszek Nowak (1991) put it, wanted to become triple-lords, ruling over economicSj politics and culture. In other words, they 'fused the political, ideological and productive hierarchies into one single unified nomenklatura' (Gellner 1991: 495). This governmentality was marked by an implicit disregard for democratic procedures and social initiatives. Private property was limited and economic activity was controlled by the state. Cultural institutions were supervised by the ideologists and society was controlled at as many levels as possible. Various forms of force became popular tools. This was the essence of communist 'governmentality', as understood in the original Foucauldian sense. Here I would like to suggest another, derivative sense of governmentality. 'Governmentality' can be seen as a mentality of governing. Ruling elites devise and accustom themselves to a particular mode of governing. For several decades the Polish elites internalised the communist mode and made it a 'natural' form of political behaviour. For this reason, the abrupt attempt to change it shocked the beneficiaries of the system and provoked radical reaction. Military intervention was, in fact, a typical example of the party's governing mentality, a step they could always set in motion at times when their position was jeopardised. Society's task was to change both the mode and the mentality of goveming. By striving to expand a private sphere and its own independence, every society tries to 'discipline the state', as Foucault put it (Foucault 1972; cf. Gordon 1991: 27). The disciplining of the state varied considerably in each of the communist countries, but the most open and effective process of this kind took place in Poland. Eventually, as I we have seen, a breakthrough to democratisation and the possibility of more ■ developed forms of civic society was achieved. H The meaning of civil society in Poland in the 1980s changed as a result of these changes in the mode and mentality of governing. The use of force against civic society gave way to less rigid techniques (see Walicki 1991). In politics, the shift meant the recognition of independent social initiatives and of the necessity to cooperate with civic structures. Of course, perestroika helped in this process. As long as Solidarity claimed that it wanted only a limited revolution, the party practised controlled repression (see Smolař 1991: 178). However, the outcome went much further than anyone supposed. The party systematically withdrew from cultural and scientific life, and permitted pluralism in these domains. It shifted from a centralised state economy towards a free market with an increasing role for the private sector. Members of the nomenklatura, that is, those who had taken over state property in the late 1980s, were among the main beneficiaries of this process.5 These economic changes were not sufficient to allow the emergence of civil society in the political scientists' sense. Party control was still too pervasive. The core of the problem lay not in the articulation of group interests, but in the impossibility of forming groups united by economic, as distinct from merely symbolic, interests. The persistence of collective property and the revolutionary legitimacy of power prevented the formation of civil society in the true Hegelian sense (Staniszkis 1989: ch. 6). The ideology of the dissidents of this period may be called, following Piotr Ogrodzienski, an 'ethical civic society'. Its most conspicuous element was the focus on self-iimiting revolution, and it emphasised the ethical values of human rights, dignity, truth and openness. This ethical code, together with a common interest in undermining the existing political order, brought together the church and dissidents tending towards the left. A widespread perception of the pathological quality of everyday life justified this ethos and enabled it to receive wide social approval (Ogrodzienski 1991: 71-2). We should keep in mind, however, that in many respects this support was mostly symbolic, focused as it was around national symbols and symbolic values. It was never rooted in economic interests. In the end, only the nomenklatura was allowed to form an economically based civil society group. One could conclude that, by classical standards, a rather one-sided civil society existed in Poland. Most people, with the church and the Solidarity movement in the forefront, were interested in building civic society structures, while the party wanted to preserve the status quo and was not interested in changing the rationality of governing. There were no groups united by common economic interests, apart from a fragment of the nomenklatura. Most people used a simple binary classification: 'us', ordinary people, versus 'them', the rulers. However, dtis political science view needs I I I I I 5 As Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish leader in the 1980s, said proudly in front of the State Tribunal on 9 March 1994, 'more than 90 out of 100 of the richest Poles from the list compiled by the weekly Wprost started their [private] economic activity in those years [1980s]' (WZ: 1994). I to be supplemented by an anthropological perspective. Organised opposition to the authoritarian regime was a part of a larger whole. The vast range of social life which permanently eludes centralised political power continued to function. Family, extended family, informal groups, and various other forms of associations operated outside the reach of effective bureaucratic control. Although less visible and neglected by the regime, they constituted an integral part of the total social system. All of these forms too, along with dissident groups and the party, operated within a single political framework. The 'rulers' were necessarily influenced by society's behaviour. They may have been, in a sense, parasitic on the system, but in the end they too contributed to the vigorous expansion of a new civil society. CIVIL SOCIETY TODAY: EVOLUTION AFTER THE REVOLUTION After the peaceful collapse of communism, Poland embarked on a systemic transformation which affected most spheres of life, particularly the relation between the state and society. This meant a profound redefinition of the essence of civil society (see Smolař 1993). Politically, one form of ideological control was removed. No political party can now claim a right to control others. New areas of free activity and associational life have opened. These encompass charity, self-help and professional bodies, local self-government, religious organisations, and political parties.6 Economically, Poland, like other countries in the region, began to establish a market economy. The state has withdrawn further from direct intervention in the economic decisions of companies, including state-owned enterprises. The ownership structure has already changed substantially, and a plentiful class of new private entrepreneurs has emerged. Culturally, the old ideological restraints have been removed. No political pressure is exerted on artists or cultural activists and censorship has disappeared. In all these respects, the new Poland contrasts with the old communist governmentality. The nature of the state and the make-up of civil society have been transformed. Democratic freedom has enabled new relations to be formed between the state and its citizens. In this context, Harm's assertions that previous bonds have been shattered and social cohesion ruptured are misleading. There is plenty of evidence to show that new forms of autonomous civic activity have emerged. Thus, 60 per cent of the workforce outside of agriculture now work in the private sector; employees are organised into around 1,500 trade unions, 200 of which are national in scope (Wrabec 1993). More than 2 million private entrepreneurs have emerged, most of them from scratch, with their own employers' associations and clubs. The number of registered political parties has grown from 3 to 250, and 6 The case of ethnic-minority associations is instructive. Previously limited in their activity to a strictly controlled official cultural domain, they can now function more freely. The example of the pro-German minority in Silesia is probably the most conspicuous. In the past they were a politically sensitive group and therefore forced to remain silent. Now they have their own associations and representation in parliament (see Sakson 1991). religious groups too are mushrooming (cf. Urban 1994). Non-governmental organisations currently number about 15,000.7 Local government agencies combine with other initiatives to counteract the state administration and promote local self-government. All this is only one side of the picture. The same problem can be approached from a different angle. First, one can point to the inertia of those accustomed to the welfare state. This is visible among farmers, state farm agricultural workers and the employees of large industrial plant. Trade unions and many political groups caught the changing wind in their sails and the results of the 1993 elections, much more favourable to the Left, demonstrate this inertia (see Buchowski 1994b). Signs of social apathy can be also seen at the grass-roots level. In the quarter of Poznaň where I live, important decisions for local life are taken at general meetings. Attendance at these meetings in the communist past was minimal, but in 1989 my neighbours roused themselves. A group of the most active and wealthy among them took over control of the shopping centre from the nation-wide monopoly Spolem. Around 150 people would show up at meetings, fiercely discuss current affairs and contest for voluntary posts. In March 1994 I attended a meeting at which only thirty people were present. The atmosphere was nothing like that of five years before. According to survey data, in June 1992, 91 per cent of those questioned thought they could exercise no significant influence over the Life of the country in general, while 79 per cent thought the same about local community problems, and 60 per cent concerning their place of employment (Tarkowska 1993:100). A similar point can be made about political activity, with less than half of the electorate demonstrating any interest in politics. Election turn-out has never surpassed the relatively low level of 62 per cent attained m the watershed elections of 4 June 1989.8 After 1989 there was a rapid decline in the proportion of the population affiliated to a political party. The fall of communism brought a number of former dissidents to the fore as national political leaders and state officials. This phenomenon led Mastnak and de Candole to claim that the state and civil society have merged (Mastnak 1990; de 7 For example, one list of non-government and non-profit organisations compiled in 1993 totals 4,515 organisations, not including regional branches of nation-wide organisations (Zespóí 1993). A directory of non-government organisations focusing on social work lists 1,793 organisations (Informator 1993). 8 In elections to local government in May 1990, voter turn-out was 42 per cent; in the first round of presidential elections in September 1990 it was 61 per cent and in the second round it was 53 per cent; in the second parliamentary elections in October 1991 it was 43 per cent In the September 1993 parliamentary elections, the third held since 1989, voter turn-out was 51.5 per cent; and in the most recent local government elections, held on 19 June 1994, it was a mere 35.8 per cent. Candole 1991; cf. Cahalen's 1993 'government-in-waiting1 theory).9 According to these writers, the danger of a one-party state was looming again. These conjectures proved unfounded. Post-communist socialist parties are still active and in some countries, including Poland, they have won elections. Moreover, many of the grassroots associations which had previously appeared united under one banner did not in fact have a political agenda at all. Ecological issues, for example, had been politicised by the nature of the communist system. Now, these groups still exist, but outside the stricdy political domain. They remain active in influencing state policy, but not through directly engaging the state (Cahalen 1993). Moreover, as movements split into diverging factions, many prominent dissidents failed to act as 'government-in-waiting' members. Currently, with post-communists forming a coalition government, most of the former dissidents are in opposition. How should we interpret these conflicting tendencies, the demoralisation of political structures and an expanding sphere of civic activity on the one hand; and signs of social passivity on the other? Do we have a more 'civilised' society in Poland than we did before? A more meaningful and neutral question might be: what is the nature of the new rationality of governing? The answer has to be multilayered. The most visible change has occurred at the political level, where decentralisation of state power and freedom of civic activity have become the main principles of social life. New problems, such as unemployment, have prompted new forms of civic action. In this way, we can speak of the proliferation and increased differentiation of organised activity. However, mental and behavioural patterns from the past remain powerful. In welfare expectations and job habits, a reluctance to accept new forms of organised activity can be explained by the working of three related ingredients inherited from the past. It may in part be a reaction to the 'organised' model of social life imposed by the communists, it may also relate to dissatisfaction with the performance of the new political elite. Third, there remains the conviction that the family is still the only sphere that counts in realising one's aspirations. In this new context, familism can indeed be viewed as an obstacle to the new 'western' forms of civil society. The rejection of communism in 1989 did not imply support for a new order of the kind the post-Solidarity establishment had in mind. This massive endorsement was primarily symbolic (Ziolkowski 1993: 117). In otlier words, people's opposition to the old regime was built around symbolic national, civic and anti-communist values. Ethical civic society was anchored in the non-economic sphere. When communism had been defeated, the symbolic unifying factors quickly faded away. Simultaneously, shock therapy in the economy redefined or created social groups and differentiated their interests. The post-Solidarity political elite embarked upon a 'war at the top', and fragmented in a rather distasteful manner. The fragility of a purely symbolic society 9 Mastnak and de Candole's understanding of civil society is inadequate according to the criteria set forth here. The state and civic society are not two separate realities, and continuous relations develop between them. I 10 One example of this pattern was the boycott of a programme designed to allow local governments to take over state schools (see Kaczmarek and Wyszyňska 1993). An administrative reform expected to confer many rights on local elected authorities (the so called reformapoiviatowa), was planned for 1995, but was, in effect, postponed indefinitely (see Koral I was exhibited in the most recent parliamentary elections, in which parties advocating I strong anti-communist rhetoric were marginalised. However, this component has not ■ disappeared completely, and now, when postcommunist socialists are in power and social dissatisfaction continues, it may come to the fore again. The dissolution of the major past principle of civil society and economic reform have created a new constellation of interest groups, but it is still too early to say where this process of systemic changes will lead. Civil society's condition depends on the _ larger social, economic and cultural context. One might say that the construction of a H new civil society is in a state of becoming. This view corresponds to a widespread ™ perception of Central Europe as undergoing a rite of passage, as being between socialism and capitalism, betwixt authoritarianism and democracy (Bauman 1992: B 114-16; Buchowski 1994a: 140-1). Previous ethical principles consolidating society g against state power have become obsolete and new interest groups have emerged, integrated according to new principles. However, state employees still comprise a large portion of the workforce and their interests collide with the state in complex I ways. Symbolic values are no longer a moral sanction for protests, but new demands ■ are being addressed directly to the state itself. Many people do not want the state to withdraw from its paternalistic role. They would like to enjoy political freedom in a country where the state continues to provide fully for social welfare. Current problems with moulding new state-society relations can be seen as a struggle between two very different mentalities, and changing the mental attitude of learned helplessness' (Koralewicz and Ziolkowski 1990: 157) will take a long time. Post-Solidarity governments had a vision of civil society close to the western type, in which the role of the state is significandy reduced. However these politics clashed with an image of the function of the state as provider, coupled with the belief that the role of ordinary citizens is merely to demand, that had taken deep root under communism. In other words, post-Solidarity leaders' rationality of governing did not fit deeper habits of social apathy, particularly strong among the working class and in the countryside. The turbulence of the transition period caused discontent and further political upheavals. Its impact has been largely ignored by the wishful thinking of post-Solidarity politicians. Post-communist parties have gained votes with promises to implement more 'pro-social' economic policies, and there are signs that a more centralised rationality of governing is being restored. The state administration's prerogatives are being strengthened, a range of local government decisions is being restricted, and privatisation has been held back. The new authorities of the post-communist left are showing their old proclivity for strengthening central government administration.10 As I I I I I I I a result, all the existing, supposedly transitional structures are frozen. New social initiatives have been precipitated by economic and political developments, but many elements of the past persist and are being reinforced by die current authorities. In this sense, Poland, and maybe some other Central European countries, are no longer in a transition period. Poland sailed out on a journey but now finds itself adrift at sea. It commenced a rite of passage that will not now be consummated: the status predetermined by the 'western elders and wise men' will never be achieved. Perhaps. Poland is crossing uncharted waters, and will eventually end up in some exciting new location- But its present form of civil society remains a hybrid of old and new elements which, like that of the recent past, fails to fit any philosopher's model.11 1993). 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Wnuk-Lipinski (ed.), Grupy i me_^i spotec^ne w systéme monocentryc^nym ('Social Groups and Ties in the Mono-Centric System'), Warsaw: IFIS PAN. — (1991) 'Social disintegration in Poland: civil society or amoral farnilism?', Telos 89(3): 103-9. Tylko rodina (1993) 'Tylko rodzina' ('Only family'), Gameta Wyborc^a 294 (17 December). Tyszka, Z. (1982) Rodiny ivspólc^esne w Polsce ('Contemporary families in Poland'), Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Zwiazków Zawodowych. Urban, K. (1994) Mniejszosci religi/'ne w Polsce 1945-1991 ('Religious Minority Groups in Poland 1945-1991'), Cracow: Nomos. Walicki, A. (1991) 'From Stalinism to post-communist pluralism: the case of Poland', Nov Lefi Review 185: 92-121. Wasiutiriski, W. (ed.) (1980) Slownik Polityc^ny, New York: Instytut Romana Dmowskiego. WedelJ. (1986) The Private Poland, New York: Facts on File. Weigel, G. (1992) The Final Revolution: The Resistance of the Church and the Collapse of Communism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wrabec, P. (1993) 'Nasze drogie zwiazki' ('Our expensive trade unions'), Gameta Wyborc^a 217 (16 October). WZ (1994) "Dwa przedwojnia' ('Two pre-war times'), Gameta Wyborc^a 58 (10 March). Zespól (1993) ]awor 93: Informator o organisacjach po^arf^dowych n> Polsce ('Jawor 93: A Guidebook of Non-Governmental Organisations in Poland'), Warsaw: Fundusz Wspolpracy. Zíólkowski, M. (1993) 'Group interest and group consciousness in the process of system transformation: the case of the Polish intellegentsia', The Centennial Review 37(1): 115-34. In: Chris Harm and Elizabeth Dunn (eds.): Civil society: Challenging western models. London: Routledge 1996, pp. 79-98. @ @ *m 7. Social and cultural sources of public engagement 3 April • Melanie Tatur: ceWhy is There No Women's Movement in Eastern Europe?" In: Paul G. Lewis [ed,]: Democracy and Civil Society in Eastern Europe. New York: St Martin's Press 1992, pp. 61-75 © Piotr Sztompka: "Mistrusting Civility: Predicament of a Post-Communist Society" (in: J.C. Alexander [ed.]: Real Civil S odeties: Dilemmas of Institutionalization. London: SAGE Publications 1998, pp. 191-210.) 88 n Why is There No Women's Movement in Eastern Europe? Melanie Tatur INTRODUCTION The Women's Question* did not succeed in establishing a place for itself Poland during the 1980s, neither widiin the framework of the social sciences, relatively free as they were from a political straitjacket, nor within the social movements and political groupings that existed. Until well into die 1970s, against the background of an expanding employment system, a whole branch of research investigated women's qualifications, career patterns, the forms and conditions of women's employment, as well as changes in the division of labour within the household and the structure of the nuclear family, but such research retreated completely into the background from the beginning of the 1980s onwards. The family and its socialisation function became the focus of interest instead. The question of sexual relations within the family and within society generally was relegated unproblematically to a position of secondary importance after the reproduction of society and the transmission of cultural traditions. One exception was a report that appeared in the mid-1980s on the position of Polish women. It was perhaps characteristic that the initiative for this study originated from wpmen working in the field of health research.1 It does not inquire into the relevance of women's emancipation, but examines instead the level at which the physical health of women was threatened and the various dimensions of this threat. One must search in vain for any relevant beginnings of a women's movement in the reactivating and organising society of the 1970s, of the 1980/1 period or the 1980s. The official 'League of Polish Women', for whom the emancipation of women was a central tenet, in the economic sense at least, and who had assisted in this respect in legitimising the removal of laws and regulations protecting women, was s discredited body. New feminist initiatives in Poland are currently nowhere to be seen. On the contrary: conservative social demands are being raised, such as the return of women to the family, the re-estabhshment of the sanctified nature of the family, and a ban on abortion, demands which are articulated by religious movements within and on die fringes of the Catholic Church. In milder form, such demands do indeed find a high degree of resonance, particularly among younger women from the 1 See A. Bujwida (ed.), Kobieta Polska lat osimdýesiqtych (Warszawa:, 1988). educated middle strata; diat is, among groups who in the West would typically be supporters of the women's movement.2 This is by no means a peculiarity of Poland. The situation is similar in the societies within the Soviet Union which are currentiy crystallising into a new shape. Within the nationalist movement in Estonia there is a women's organisation; its professed aim, however, is greater respect for the family, greater numbers of children, and the demand that 'our men' perform their compulsory military service in dieir own country and not within die Soviet forces. One could try to find an explanation for the contrasting attitudes and aspirations of women in East and West in terms of the social situations of women and the historical background in each case. For Poland this would mean taking into consideration secure employment and the existence of careers for women in the feminised areas of the social services sector. Women are disadvantaged here, too, however, with respect to leadership positions, promotion opportunities and, above all, pay. In addition, being in employment does not as a rule guarantee a woman material independence on account of the generally low pay levels. But it must also be mentioned at this juncture that women are held in high esteem in Poland, something that has its origins in Polish tradition, and which is still made visible today in customs and rituals. Furthermore there has been a rapid detraditionalisation of patriarchal family structures; the partnership dimension within marriage has come to the fore as a consequence of women receiving training and taking employment, not to mention the emancipation, indeed the virtual ennobling, of women's sexuality. These changes are characterised by a certain ambivalence — here, too, the division of labour within the household and in the family occurs at die expense of the woman and at the cost of her career aspirations, and it is also women who bear the brunt of the costs of sexual liberation, for example in the form of alarmingly high rates of abortion. It could also be pointed out that there are differing perceptions of women's emancipation — in Eastern Europe as sometiiing ordered and forced on people 'from above' while in die West women advanced into the labour market and the public sphere generally, this being understood, however, as the successful outcome of women's own efforts. One could even be tempted to see a convergence between East and West in a 'post-modern' return to traditional values and bonds of community, a perspective 2 A small study from the 1980s among urban women established that, on being asked to decide between family and work 45 per cent of the women asked opted for their family and only 20 per cent for their profession. What was interesting is that, within the first group young women with secondary training and women in the age range of 31-40 years with university diplomas were over-represented. These women argued that, by giving more importance to their families they prove to be wiser than their mothers. See M. Pomorska Traca zawodowa i inne role spoleczne kobieť in A. Bujwida, Kobieta Polska, pp. 99-128. shared by groups within Polish sociology. In the process, however, it is forgotten that Eastern Europe does not question modernity ex post facto, but that it has recourse to pre-modern values and forms of integration which were not only perpetuated under the crust of the statist order, but which were also the analogy and support for the system, the structures of which were stabilised by forms of direct control, personal dependancies and the use of force, and which was pre-modern in this sense, irrespective of the claims it made for itself. I should like to avail myself of a different approach to comparing East and West. In the more than ten years that I have lived in Poland, I have been shocked and dismayed by the deep lack of understanding for my feminist formulation of questions and my provocative ideas, considering the degree to which women are 'objectively' disadvantaged, but have also got to know and understand the position taken by my Polish women friends. The key to such understanding was not the ambivalence of a partial emancipation from above, nor was it attributable to any cultural peculiarities. It was rather a question of obtaining an insight into the fundamentally different social contests in which women in East and West live. I would like to discuss this context and its relevance for the perceptions and aspirations of women, by outlining below three paradigms of the women's movement in the West and then, in a second section, confronting these with three paradigms of the crisis in Eastern European societies. In a final section I shall then endeavour to answer the question posed in the title of this chapter. One supposition underlying this approach to the question, 'Why is there no women's movement in Eastern Europe?' is that the origin of social movements is not to be explained in terms of a reflex reaction to 'objective' discrimination . and disadvantage, but rather that the question must be asked as to the conditions under which the perception of deprivation occurs. To relate this to the women's movement, this means: under which conditions are the positions of men and women understood to be comparable? The idea of comparability presupposes equality. My thesis Is this, equality of the sexes can only refer to social existence and to existence that is perceived as social. Wherever society fails to act to achieve social integration, or is out of equilibrium, or still being struggled over — as is the case in Eastern Europe — 'man' and 'woman' cannot be conceived of as social roles and socially defined areas of experience, and thus neither can any awareness develop of the degree of deprivation that is present. PARADIGMS OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT The women's movement is analysed in Western literature in terms of three paradigms:3 3 See S. Kontos, 'Modernisierung der Subsumtionspolitik. Die Frauenbewegung in den Theorien neuer sozialer Bewegungen1, in Feministische Studien, 1986/2 pp. 34-46. 1. as the continuation of the EnlightenmenJ:, as the extension and materialisation of civil rights; 2. as a social movement embodying the reaction to the colonialisation of women's experience; and 3. as the critique of patriarchal sexual relations, which are revealed as the foundation of bourgeois society and its liberties, irrespective of formally equal rights. 1. The 'old' women's movement is viewed as the prosecution of the claim for civil rights by and for women. Here it was a matter of the admission of women to the public sphere on an equal basis to men. Having achieved formal civil rights, the material realisation of these rights then became the central demand raised by women, whereby the main focus was on equality of opportunity in the labour market. Developing out of this perspective, the private sphere was then taken up: the unequal division of domestic labour and the asymmetry of sexual relationships. The perspective of the public sphere implied the application to the family and marriage of concepts and values that were drawn from that sphere, aiming thus at their social regulation. Demands such as wages for housework, concepts such as 'emotional labour' (Geßhlsarbeif), or contractual insurance against die risks of marriage, all aimed at modelling the private sphere on the ideal of just exchange, and at projecting family and marriage as institutions which, corresponding to the model of democratic society, based solidarity on a community of interest, complementing it with the postulate of self-realisation and die autonomy of the individual. This modernisation of interpersonal relationships harboured risks which, were quickly recognised by women themselves. Rationalised interpersonal relationships were experienced as 'kaput', while the struggle for autonomy frequently led to isolation and loneliness. It was precisely this destabilisation of personal ties, and the devaluation of the individual and the feeling of insecurity accompanying it, that became a new source of conflict. One of the strongest impressions I had on my return to Germany was some graffiti painted on a garage door in Bremen: 'Scheiss-Beziehungskram' (roughly translatable as 'All this crappy relationship stuff). 2. The women's movement is characterised as an example of an alternative social movement reacting to the suffering that such colonialisation of the 'life woňď(Lebens3s>eli) induces.4 The penetration into interpersonal relationships of the standards of rationality of a system that is no longer integrated normatively through the agency of values, but rather through media such as money and formal law, is not only destructive in its effects in this sphere, but also deprives the system of its normative anchoring and motivational foundations. The 'new' women's movement responds to this problem in a defensive manner but cannot solve, in the estimation of Jürgen Habermas, the correctly perceived problem by further modernisation, owing 4 See L. Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt:, 1985). to the traditionally romanticising and backward-looking quality of its categories and demands.5 The 'new' women's movement treats 'womanhood' as a culturally different mode of being, and no longer demands equal rights for equal individuals, but rather the right to womanhood and space for the articulation and realisation of the female identity. Corresponding to this is a new, higher valuation of the family and 'motherhood', but also tendencies towards self-imposed isolation, which are to be seen as the striving for space and shelter needed for the search for one's own identity. In feminist theory the discovery of a 'female' morality has become a central theme of interest.6 A 'female' morality is contrasted with a 'male' morality, the former relating to an ideal of responsibility, linked to concrete persons and oriented to contexts, as well as using inductive argumentation, the latter related to the ideal of the autonomous individual, oriented to norms and abstract principles, and using deductive argumentation. These moralities possess two correspondingly different concepts of solidarity. The autonomous 'male' individual subordinates himself to a form of solidarity that is to be institutionalised through the democratic formation of consensus with the aim of achieving a rational balance of interests, whereas, for the responsible 'female' individual, the integration of the individual into the network of bonds and obligations — solidarity — is part and parcel of human existence. The demand that Vomanhood' be accorded its due recognition and place in society is, from the viewpoint of this perspective, no longer to be understood only as a particular interest of women, but as being in the general interest of society as a whole, advocated and supported by the women's movement. 3. This claim is theoretically founded and freed from any romanticising looking backwards under the paradigm of patriarchal domination.7 The distinction between 'male' and 'female' morality is not explained biologically or, as Gilligan does, psychologically (referring to the specificity of the mother-child relationship), but sociologically, and in two dimensions. 'Firsdy, the formation of each of the two types of morality is attributed to gender-specific socialisation and life worlds. Womanhood is assigned the private, person-related sphere, while the public sphere, regulated through roles, is assigned to men. Secondly, the separation of the public and private spheres - including the gender-specific division of labour - is shown to be specific to bourgeois society, the freedom of the autonomous individual and the project of 'social solidarity' related to interests is, even in the conceptions of theoreticians, 5 Sec also S. Kontos, 'Subsumtionspolitik', and the discussion on the paper of Elisabeth Conradi in Feministisch Studien, 1989. 6 See C. Gilligan, Die andere Stimme. Lebenskonßkte und Moral der Frau (München/Zürich: 1984); A. Maihöfer, 'Ansätze zur Kritik des moralischen Universalismus. Zur moraltheoretischen Diskussion um GüÜgans Thesen zu einer "weiblichen" Moralauffassung5, in Feministische Studien, 1988/1, pp. 53-69. 7 See S. Kontos, 'Subsumtionspolitik'. equated with motherliness and self-sacrifice on the part of women. This provides the guarantee for the socialisation and emotional stability of the male, strategically-acting autonomous individual.8 The transcendence of these patriarchal sexual relations is aimed, in the search for a new compromise, not only at the emancipation of women and men. By openly displaying the female etiiics of responsibility as the reverse side of male instrumental reason, turning it into a social force in the process, the critique of patriarchy seeks to point out a theoretical alternative to the dialectics of enlightenment and to assist in establishing the project of a peaceful society. PARADIGMS OF SYSTEMIC CRISIS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN EASTERN EUROPE Three paradigms can also be distinguished for dealing with systemic crisis and social movements in Eastern Europe, with Poland and the Polish debate serving as our example here:9 1.. the self-defence of society against the state and 'civil society'; 2. the crisis of the statist order as the failure to regulate and integrate society; and 3. the collapse of the statist order 1. The democratic opposition of the 1970s, and Solidarity during the 1980/Í period, consciously understood the formation of social movements as the seIf defence of society against the totalitarian designs of the state. The struggle for civil rights, the building of autonomous organisations and an unofficial and authentic public presence were to be conducted from their refuges; that is, die informal networks of family and friends, and the cultural values and memories that are lived out and handed down there. The aim of this strategy, namely to create a 'civil society' (by which was meant the rule of law, independent public opinion and media, freedom of association and, last but not least, parliamentary democracy), could not for tactical and strategic reasons be striven for by direct action against the political system, owing to Poland's geopolitical situation. In the Üiinking of J. Kurori and A. IVfichnik, in particular, however, the amorphous social structure, itself a product of the centralisation of social relations in the state, was also a barrier to achieving political democracy. Social structures on which a pluralistic system could be established had first to be created. The strategy of the self-defence and self- 8 See M. Rumpf, Tim Erbe der Aufklärung. Imaginationen des "mütterlichen" in Max Horkheimers Schriften', in Feministische Studien, 1989/ 2, pp. 55-68. 9 See, for a more historical argumentation, M. Tatur 'Zur Dialektík der "civil society" in Polen', in R. Deppe, H. Dubiel and U. Rodel (eds), Demokratischer Umbruch in Osteuropa (Frankfurt:, 1990); M. Tatur Solidamoší als Modernisierungsbewegung. So^alstruktur und Konflikt in Polen (Frankfurt:, 1989). Organisation of society from below which characterised the policies of the opposition during the 1970s, and Solidarity in 1980/1, made allowance for this. At the same time, more or less explicitly and consciously, a new mode! for 'civil society' was conceived of: the civil society to be constituted was envisaged as a society of people who were citizens, riot owners of goods but servants of sodety, who constituted themselves not only as political but also as economic subjects in the project of socialising the state from below - including the socialisation of the centralised economy through self-administration. The displacement of 'civil society' from its economic basis and the social basis defined by it — private property and the exchange of goods — were not seen as problematic until the 1980s, and have proved only today to be a barrier to the conversion to political democracy. 2. In the social scientific analysis of the statist order and the social movements that were forming in opposition to it, the strict separation and opposition of 'society' and 'state' could not be upheld, nor could the assumption that there existed a clear initiative by society to defend itself. Structural characteristics of the system — the lack of any differentiation between state, society and economy, and the form of direct domination (the non-formalised 'leading role of the Party') and personal control (the nomenklatura) ~ conditioned the weakness of control exercised by a formally omnipotent centre. A form of social integration, described as 'phylogenetic' by the Polish sociologist W. Narojek, corresponded to rather than opposed these systemic structures, systemic techniques of integration and their inefficiency. The primary groups, circles of family and friends, and the moral norms and person-related loyalties that are lived out there, became the real and exclusive orientation for behaviour in a public order that was experienced as foreign and hostile, governed without rules or norms.10 Corresponding to this crisis of societal integration (Vergesellschaftung was the dichotomy between 'us' and 'them', 'people' and 'institutions', 'society' and 'power', a dichotomy that signalled the moral rejection of the dominant order at the end of the 1970s, and out of which the strategy of the 'self-defence of society' against the state developed. The distinction between the world of people and the world of institutions as a separation of life spheres in consciousness is not to be equated with the differentiation between the private and public spheres in bourgeois society. It was not only the family that was projected as the alternative to the public institutions, but also the person as opposed to the role. The 'retreat' into the private sphere therefore contains two elements: (1) a specific form of adaptation to the established order by repression of the social role in consciousness, a variety of schizophrenia in other words, and a personalising view of social relationships; (2) a real privatisation of the social role and instrumentalisation of position for private interests and private personal loyalties. 10 See W. Narojek, Stmkíiira společná w dohviadc^iúujednostki' (Warszawa: 1982), The lack of rationality on the part of die state organisations - die breaching of the legal regulatory system by nomenklatura and Party prerogative — were complemented from below by spontaneous processes of de-institutionalisation. The movement which opposed the state, and the process whereby social relations were being rendered increasingly anomic, established itself on the basis of pre-sodal identities and forms of integration: the cultural traditions and communities of family, networks of families, friends and circles of colleagues, and the national 'community of fate' as a 'confederation of families' (S. Nowak). 3. An extension of the concept of systemic crisis as a crisis of societal integration is the paradigm of the collapse of the statist order. In a different manner from die bourgeois revolutions, which released new structures which had already developed within the shell of the old order, the quasi-bourgeois revolutions in Eastern Europe reveal a social vacuum. There is a lack of economic subjects and structures, functioning institutions, social groups, crystallised and socially differentiated values, functioning rules and norms for living together socially. After the 'breakthrough' the new, democratically legitimised elites must therefore enter the state structures and check their accelerating collapse by building up social institutions. It is no coincidence that during the 1980s there was a development of social scientific interest in the social reactions to the burdens caused by the German occupation of Poland.11 The home and the family became at that time a microcosm for public opinion and communication, for production and the exchange of goods, this regression serving the physical survival of the people and the society. An analogous regression can be observed in the collapsing statist order. The increase in domestic production and the withdrawal to familial and friendship circles are an expression of this. Under the extreme pressure of the restructuring of society, which can only be viewed as a euphoric revolution from the distance of prosperous and functioning Western societies, but which for those affected signifies first and foremost a threat to all dimensions of their existence, this trend is sure to continue. WHY IS THERE NO WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN POLAND? I should like to answer this question in three stages, corresponding to the three pairs of paradigms I have presented above: 1. with reference to the differences in significance that material equality and formal rights posses in East and West; 2. with reference to the lack of differentiation between die private and public sphere that explains the phenomena of a Teminisation' of society; and 11 See P. Lukasiewicz, 'Funkcja domu w okiesie okupacji Niemieckiej1, in Kultura i Spolec^eňstwo, 1989/2, pp. 67-82. 3. referring to the contrast between die overefficient modern societies in the West and collapsing social order in the East. 1. While the women's movement pushes for the material realisation of the formal equality of rights which is institutionalised in bourgeois society, die struggle in Poland is for the securing oífortnal civil rights. The old order was able, right up to the 1970s, to legitimise itself on the basis of material equality (of people, not primarily of the sexes), equality of opportunity and high mobility within certain limits. When the channels of mobility were closed during die 1970s and the resources for egalitarian social policies dried up, the deprivation in the political sphere which had always been perceived became a central theme of conflict. By reforming the political system and suing for formal civil rights, die preconditions for the solution of material problems were to be created. The political character of the mechanisms of social status assignment, (distribution of income and career) was perceived as illegitimate, and in die process was translated into a'demand for the removal of control over the economy by the state. The disadvantaged position of women, which was just as obvious and which studies had documented, did not need to be treated as a central problem within this context, in which the aim was to achieve a more efficient social system.12 Any questioning of existing sexual relations ki the private, sphere was blocked in that the processes of community formation (Vergemeinschaftung} which produced 'society' as a political subject, in the form of Solidarity, are founded on the basis, of cultural tradition and the solidarity of the primary groups of family, friends, and colleagues. 2. The dichotomisation of the private and public sphere in consciousness hides in Poland die lack of the differentiation between the private and the soaal' spherejhat is typical for Western societies. The role of the state in the regulation of all social relationships coincides with the privatisation of roles within the state organisation. This can explain phenomena which can be described as feminisation' of society. By this is meant the orientation of men and women towards the family and the 'joys of family life'. Since the mid-1970s, studies on 'aims in life' have shown that a happy family life, recognition by die circle of friends, an adequate income and interesting work are to be found at the top of the hierarchy of values, and that high social position, social and political activity are not aims that are striven for.13 Surveys among youth have shown that less than one per cent reject marriage as an institution.14 12 See H. Domaňski, 'Zásady rekrutacji do stanowisk kierowniczych1, in Stud. Sol, 1986/3, pp. 155-78; H. Domanski, TDystrybucji dochodów w odzialach gospodarkľ, in Stud. Soc, 1985/1, pp. 219-40. 13 Again proved by E. Nasalska, Z. Sawinski, Trzemiany celów i dazeň zyciowych spoleczeiístwa polskiego w latách 1977-1986, ín Kultura i Spolec^eňstwo, 1989/1, pp. 169-83. u See Mlodepokolenie c^asu hy^ysu i reform. Polska Míod^iei 87 (Waiszawa:. 1988) p. 48. Analyses of parental aims in raising their children show a low incidence of gender-specific qualities.15 A dominance of 'female' context-relate v was evident, however. Education objectives of conformism as opposed to self-control did not crystallise around 'obedience' and 'self-determination', but in the syndrome pair 'being a "good pupil"' and 'responsibility'. In addition, a second syndrome pair was discovered, in which the moral-political attitude to the system and morally interpreted choice between adaptation and withdrawal are articulated, where 'success' stood in a polar opposition to 'honesty' and 'ability to get along with other people'. investigations into prestige show that the esteem in which people are held derives primarily from characteristics of personality and manner of behaviour as experienced in direct social intercourse, and only secondly from aspects of the social status of the person concerned.16 These characteristics and their rankings do not demonstrate any gender-specific characteristics. What is more, it is 'female' qualities that are most prevalent here, too. For both men and women, the criteria for the esteem in which a person is held are, in the first place, a positive attitude to people, warmth, sincerity, willingness to help and to make sacrifices, collegiality and solidarity, while second place is occupied by care of the family, the home, the children and the welfare of the husband/wife. (These two sets of characteristics comprise 46.4 per cent of all answers referring to men, and 49 per cent of all answers referring to women.) Following these are industriousness, honesty, righteousness and readiness to help, and friendship. Particularly 'male' characteristics such as character and strength of will, staying power, specialist know-how, efficiency or ambition are named neither for men nor for women to any relevant extent. The criteria for the esteem in which a colleague is held show that loyalty and solidarity with odier people, followed by work-related values, such as a sense of duty, discipline and ability to work with others, top the hierarchy of values -irrespective of whedier the colleague in question was a man or a woman. As far as the esteem criteria for a person as a member of the family are concerned, there is what appears (at first glance) to be an analogous picture, in that care for die welfare of the family, the children and the husband/wife make up half of all named criteria. Below this surface of common family-centredness, however, a clear gender-specific division of labour prevails: the woman is expected to be a good housekeeper and to provide additional family income, while the man is expected to secure the material existence of the family and help with the housework. Polish women (over 90 per cent of whom are gainfully employed) contribute 40-50 per cent of the family income.'7 The differing valuation of male and female employment is reflected in social reality in the fact that it is the woman that relegates 15 See j. Koralewicz-Zebik, 'Wartošci rodzicielskie a stratyfikacja spoleczna', in Stud. Soc, 1982/3, pp. 237-62. 16 See I. Reszke, Presti^'u spiwdóiv i osob (Wroclaw:, 1984). 17 This figure is given by A. Bujwida, Kobieía Polska, p. 13, taking into account the markedly lower incomes of women it seems very high. her career aspirations to a position of secondary importance, in the interest of the familial obligations that both value so highly.18 It is also the case, however, that the second job that the husband typically takes on to be able to make ends meet for the family frequently acts as a brake on career development in the narrower sense. The orientation to family and friends that has been revealed says nothing about the actual frequency of contacts with friends, or about the functioning of the family.19 What it does show, however, and that is the decisive aspect here, is that it is interpersonal relationships, and not social position and social role, that form the prism through which the individual sees his/her own person and social environment. The following hypothetical conclusions concerning sexual relations and the identity of women can be drawn from this: the general orientation, characteristic of the entire society, towards 'female' values such as responsibility and person-related and community-related solidarity, family centrism and context-related perception, does not by any means exclude the disadvantaging of women, but it prevents a polarisation between 'male' and 'female' life worlds, values, mentalities and moralities, and the extent to which they are differently valued socially. The woman may be 'objectively' disadvantaged, but she does not experience this disadvantage as discrimination, or as exclusion from a 'man's world'. The conflict relationship between men and women, as articulated by the women's movement in the West, is missing for yet another reason. It is a result of the perspective from within a certain social position: more precisely, the inequality of the sexes with respect to competition on the labour market and in the social sphere in the first place. This relationship of competition is the reason for a community of interest and an abstract solidarity among women based on this, which is expressed in the West in the form of spontaneous openness towards other women in general. From the perspective of die private sphere, which is characteristic of East European society, the man appears to the woman as a potential partner and the woman as a competitor for the abstract man. There is thus no basis here for community of interest and abstract solidarity among women. Another thing that is missing is the openness, arising from any consciousness of a shared situation, towards the 'sister' one does not know. That again does not signify that there would be no room for practical solidarity widi concrete women. The task in Western Europe is to forge links between die self-realisation of die autonomous individual and the social ethics of responsibility, particularly in view of an overeffective society that thoughtlessly uses up its own material, moral and social 18 See E. Tarkowska, 'Zróznícowanie stylów žycia w Polsce: pokolenie i pleč', in Kultura i Spokapňstm, 1985/2, pp. 55-73. i9 As an international survey of contacts in Eastern Europe [shows] Hungary being the example here - they are not necessarily more frequent. But they seem to have a greater importance; see F. I-Iöllinger, 'Famiiie und soziale Netzwerke in fortgeschrittenen Industriegesellschaften', in Sodale Welt, 1989/4, pp. 512-37. resources.20 This problem is taken up and integrated in the patriarchy thesis. In Eastern Europe people are suffering under a failed experiment of modern times, the consequences of which are social and economic regressions that represent existential threats. It is not self-realisation but security that is becoming die dominant need, and in a destroyed society it is friends, marriage and family that offer such security.21 Surveys investigating what is considered to be the ideal marriage and, family,,or the ideal partner, demonstrate this clearly. Even school-children view the family as a closed solidaristic community, as a place of refuge and as an alternative to society. Solidarity appears to be more important than love. The ideal partner - girls and boys do not differ in their wishes in this respect - is supposed to provide support, security, and repose. The greater significance attached to the 'home* the increase in domestic production,22 and the mental stress that women are more intensively exposed to than men, since care of the family is part of the woman's role,23 imply an increased 'exploitation' of women. But what does such a term signify within the context of Polish society? Women in Poland — and in Eastern Europe generally — were never in their history the of her side of the autonomous bourgeois individual, the side that safeguarded the necessary 'motherliness' for the development of the individual. Instead, they provided the backing and support for Polish freedom fighters. This liberation struggle was not related, however, to some idealised societal state in which, tacitly or explicitly, formally or informally, different standards applied for men and for women, and which for this reason were considered idealisations of 'male' freedom and rationality. The Polish liberation struggle was not and is not directed towards a Utopian vision of society and an abstract concept of freedom, but rather the protection of the Polish home and a way of life diat is understood as being common.24 In; Paul G. Lewis [ed.]: Democracy and civil Society in Eastern Europe. New York: St. Martin's Press 1992. pp. 61-75. 20 I am referring here to J. Berger, 'Modernitätsbegriffe und Modernitäskritik in der Soziologie', in Sociale Welt, 1988/3, pp. 224-36. 21 See H. Swida. 'Mlodziez Ucealna schvldu lat 70'. inj. Koralewícz. 22 See A. Wišniewski, 'Gospodarstwo domowe wobec kryzysu', in I.Palaszewska-Beimdel (ed.), Polskiegospodarstma domowe fyde codsgenne w krysysu (Warszawa, 1986) pp. 218-30. 23 See CBOS, Kondyga psychic^na ľolaków iv 1989, Kommunikat z badaň, Serwis informacyjny 1/1990, CBOS Warszawa 24 The pragmatic and defensive approach to the project of a 'civil society' in Poland I point out in M. Tatur, 'Zur Dialektík' Mistrusting Civility: Predicament of a Post-Communist Society PiotrS^tompka Trust as a Resource of Civil Society In one of the earliest comments on the anti-communist revolution of 1989 in Eastern-Central Europe, Ralf Dahrendorf suggested that the clock of transition runs at three different paces. 'The hour of the lawyer' is the shortest; legal changes may be enacted in months. 'The hour of the economist" is longer; dismantling command economies and establishing functioning markets must take years. But the longest is fthe hour of the citizen'; transforming ingrained habits, mental attitudes, cultural codes, value systems, pervasive discourses. This may take decades and presents the greatest challenge (Dahrendorf, 1990). The Insight that the quality of the citizens, the 'human factor', will ultimately be decisive in the battle for democracy, occurred a decade earlier to those 'organic intellectuals' (to use A. Gramsci's phrase) who allied themselves with political opposition in the 1980s. At that time^ the old and entirely forgotten sociological notion was dug out, revived and inserted into the mainstream of public discourse. It was the. concept of 'civil society'. The history of democratic opposition in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia may be written as the history of struggle for civil society, so fragile or almost entirely destroyed under the communist regime (Garton Ash, 1989: 194; 1990; Tismaneanu, 1992; Szacki, 1994:112). In the course of struggle and accompanying intellectual debates, the concept of civil society acquired three distinct meanings, attributable to the three theoretical traditions from which it was extracted. The first may be called the sociological concept, with antecedents in the classical theories of human groups, those of Ferdinand Tönnies or Georg Simmel (even though those authors did not use the term itself). Here civil society is the synonym for community {Gemeinschaß) or mezzo-structures — the intermediate sphere of human groups between the micro-level of the family, and tlie macro-level of the nation-state. From that perspective the main weakness of communist society was defined as the 'sociological vacuum, that exists between the level of the primary group and the level of the national society' (Nowak, 1981: 17). The same meaning of civil society may be found in recent sociological literature, when it is conceived as 'the totality of social institutions and associations, both formal and informal, that are not strictly production-oriented nor governmental or familial in character' (Rueschemeyer et al, 1992: 49). When the concept was used with this connotation the ideological message was clear: to overcome state monopoly, authoritarian control, totahtarian 'colonization of the Hfe-world' (Habermas, 1987). In this respect the struggle was highly successful. Long before 1989, there had appeared a dense network of unofficial, sometimes illegal, associations, discussion clubs, voluntary organizations, self-education groups, Trade unions, culminating in the social movement Solidarity. And since 1989, we have witnessed a true explosion of such intermediate bodies, now official, legitimate and recognized. Suffice it to mention that more than 100 political parties have registered in Poland since that date, some 20 of which entered the first democratically elected parliament. The foundations and odier non-governmental organizations (NGOs) number in the thousands- In this sense, the civil society was reconstituted, sometimes even overblown. It will take some time before it regains normal propositions. Yet certainly, the 'sociological vacuum' is no longer there. But there is another sense of the concept, which was also revived by Eastern European intellectuals. It is the economic concept, related to the classical heritage of Karl Marx and Max Weber. Here, civil society refers to the autonomous sphere of economic activities and relationships, the 'mode of production' rooted in private ownership, moved by entrepreneurial initiative, pervaded by rational calculation and aimed at individual profit. The actors operating in that sphere are labeled the 'bourgeois' in traditional language, or the 'middle class' in modem terminology. In the hands of democratic opposition, the ideological message implied by such a concept was to overcome die command economy centrally controlled by the state, and eliminate the privileged status of state property as the dominant mode of ownership. In this respect, too, the battle has been considerably successful. After 1989, individual, private property regained its full legitimacy: the policy of privatization has already transferred large chunks of state capital into private hands. There was an outburst of entrepreneurial activities, initially in the domain of small-scale trade, financial operations, and short-term investments, aimed at quick profit, but clearly evolving in the direction of serious, long-range ventures of larger scale. Just to mention some numbers, in Poland within two years about 88% of retail trade has been put into private hands, and more dian a half of GNP is already produced by the private sector. In 1993 the private sector accounted for 59% of employment, and taking into account an extensive 'gray sphere', around two-thirds of die population are employed outside the public sector (Poland, 1994:127). The market already exists, and a sizable middle class has emerged. Thus the civil society, in the second meaning of the term, has been at least pardy reconstituted. The picture becomes more complex when we move to the third meaning of die concept. This may be called the cultural concept, derived from the heritage of Alexis de Tocqueville and Antonio Gramsci. Here civil society indicates the domain of cultural pressupositions ingrained 'habits of the heart', values and norms, manners and more implicit understandings, frames and codes — shared by the members of society, and constraining (or facilitating) what they actually think and do. It is the sphere of Durkheimian 'social facts'. Robust civil society is synonymous with axiological consensus and developed emotional community, bound by the tight network of interpersonal loyalties, commitments, solidarities. It means mature public opinion and rich public life. It means the identification of citizens with public institutions, concern with common good, and respect for laws. In modem sociology, such a neo-Durkheimiam, culturalistic interpretation of civil society is put forward by Jeffrey C. Alexander:, 'Civil society is the arena of social solidarity that is defined in universalistic terms. It is the we-ness of a national community, the feeling of connectedness to one another that transcends particular commitments, loyalties, and interests and allows there to emerge a single thread of identity among otherwise disparate people' (1992: 2). The communist regime has never succeeded in fully destroying the civil society understood in this way (in the Polish case, one may even say that it stopped trying quite early, around 1956). But whatever remained of civil society was nevertheless pushed underground, became the 'civil society in conspiracy', directly opposed to the state and its institutions. Nowhere and never before has the opposition of civil society and the state, the people and the rulers, \ve' and 'them', been so clear-cut and radical. In the case of Poland the polarization was enhanced by a sequence of historical circumstances: more than a century (from 1794 to 1918) of partitions among neighboring foreign powers, then Nazi occupation (1939-45), and then Soviet domination (1945-89) — producing a strong stereotype of the state as something entirely alien, imposed and hostile. The idea of a nation, a cultural, linguistic or religious community rooted in sacred tradition, was opposed to the state, oppressive machinery of foreign domination. Instead of the hyphenated idea of a nation-state, we had two, not only separate, but mutually opposed concepts: the nation and the state. In the period after World War II, and particularly in recent decades, this strongly embedded archetype has produced a double effect. The first was an affirmation and idealization of the 'private'. Most of the people have retreated into the familial sphere, where they cherished and cultivated national traditions, went to church, and silently complained about the regime. It was their authentic civil society. Most of that was not a true social entity; it had only a virtual reality, existing in imagination, memories, thoughts and dreams. The hard reality required that most of the people had to enter the public sphere for professional, occupational, career reasons - and then, in public roles, they opportunistically played by the imposed rules, only to escape back as soon as possible, more or less ashamed, to their private, imaginary enclaves. The second, concomitant effect was the negation of the 'public'. Any deeper association with state institutions, politics, regime — like taking governmental office, accepting position in the parliament, enrolling in the ruling party — was considered as polluting, stigmatizing, sometimes akin to treason. Therefore those for whom passive withdrawal ('internal emigration') was not enough, and who wanted to participate in authentic political Kfe, had to constitute it outside official politics. The leaders of democratic opposition have couched characteristic notions: 'non-political politics1 (Konrád, 1984; Havel, 1988; 1989), 'parallel poliš' (Benda et al., 1988), 'alternative society', 'the power of the powerless' (Michnik, 1985), 'the strength of the weak' (Geremek, 1992). As Andrew Arato described the discourse characteristic for Polish oppositionists: 'one point unites them all: the viewpoint of civil society against the state - the desire to institutionalize and preserve the new level of social independence' (1981: 24). In the Polish case, the emergence of alternative society was facilitated by the Catholic Church, the only large-scale organization which managed to stay outside state control, and which provided ready-made organizational networks, the symbolic rallying point for anti-state sentiments, and even the buildings open for conspirational meetings and educational enterprises. The 'civil society in conspiracy', at the beginning restricted to narrow groups of activists, started to grow in the 1970s, and it exploded in the phenomenon of the massive social movement Solidarity in the 1980s. 'What Solidarity was able to provide, on a heroic scale, was the structure and practice of a social movement whose hallmarks were national mobilization and monolithic solidarity' (Kumar, 1992: 15). It strengthened the association of civil society with spontaneity, self-organization, massive activism, mobilization from below, autonomy and independence from the state, with a strong anti-étatist orientation. In conspiracy, in the period of struggle it had proved immensely successful. But then the glorious year 1989 came and civil society came out of conspiracy, entering die world of normal politics, its success preempted its continued viability. As Krishan Kumar puts it: The strengths of its period of opposition became the weaknesses of its period of rule, and of its relevance as a general model of civil society ... It has in any case proved impossible to depart too far from its basic conception of civil society: as an organization (or 'seif-organrzation') of society agaigstúie. state. (1992: 15-16). I wish to examine the hypothesis that the key to rebuilding robust civil society (in tlie cultural sense) is the restoration of trust in public institutions, public roles, and political elites, as well as in the viability of a new political and economic order. Trust is a powerful cultural resource, a precondition for proper and full utilization of oilier resources, like entrepreneurship, citizenship, and legalism, and for full exploitation of institutional opportunities provided by die emerging market, democratic polity and pluralistic thought (Sztompka, 1993). The Prolegomena to the Theory of Trust Socio-individual praxis is always oriented toward the future, and shaped in its course by anticipations of future relevant conditions. Such conditions may appear in two forms: as natural environment and social milieu. Natural and social environments threaten human agents with certain dangers and risks to which they have to adapt or respond. Thus, the future of society is always an area of complexity and uncertainty. Trust helps to reduce complexity and alleviate uncertainty (see Luhmann, 1979), by taking some aspects of the future for granted, 'bracketing them', and proceeding as if everything was simpler and more assured. Trust is the resource for dealing with the future. Trust deals in this manner primarily ..with socially generated aspects of the future, with the social environment of action. When we speak of the social environment we have in mind other people and their actions. People live and act in the world constituted of other people and their actions. The others - like ourselves - are free agents, and may take a variety of actions. Some of them will be beneficial for us, some will be harmful. We cannot know in advance which actions others will choose. There is always a risk that they will decide on harmful and not beneficial actions. The risk grows as potential partners become more numerous, heterogeneous, distant from ourselves - in short, when our social environment becomes more complex. 'In conditions of increasing social complexity man can and must develop more effective ways of reducing complexity1 (Luhmann, 1979: 8). Most often the risk produced by a complex environment is unavoidable, because to go on living we have to carry interactions nonetheless. So we make bets about future actions of others: we give or withdraw trust. I propose the following definition: trust is the bet on future contingent actions of others. This brief formula has a number of implications. First, trust refers to human actions and not to natural events. With reference to future natural events we express hope rather than trust. Compare two statements: 'I hope that the earthquake will not strike'; 'I trust the fire brigades to be well prepared for that eventuality.' Or another pair: 'I hope the weather will be fine'; 'I trust the meteorological forecast for tomorrow.' Hope describes our attitude towards events beyond human control, which neither we, nor apparently anybody, can influence, and to which people may only adapt once they occur. Trust describes our attitude towards events produced by human actions, and therefore at least potentially subject to our control, to the extent that we may monitor and influence the actions of others. To put it in more general terms, the concept of trust belongs to the agency-focused discourse, the concept of hope to the fate-focused discourse. Second, both trust and hope are directed towards uncertain events, i.e. those of which we do not have full cognitive grasp. We cannot seriously say 'I trust the sun will rise tomorrow', or 1 hope the night will come.' Common experience as well as astronomical knowledge convince us that those are certainties. Uncertainty of natural events implies impersonal dangers; uncertainty of social conditions produces humanly created risks. Trust is expressed in risky situations, hope in dangerous situations. Risk is a concept belonging to the discourse of agency, and danger to the discourse of fate. Third, the uncertainty of future social conditions derives from the contingent actions of others; it means actions in which they exercise freedom of choice. Trust expresses our expectation of some outcomes, among many options that others may have. If actions are not contingent, but fully enforced, coerced by other people or by myself, there is no place for trust. It would not be natural to say: £I trust my slave to serve me' (as if he had a choice), or 1 trust the convict to remain in prison' (as if there was another option). Fourth, the trust is vested in the actions of others. Normally I don't put trust into my own actions, I simply do them. It wouldn't sound natural to say 'I trust I will brush my teeth this evening' (because I will if I want). The exceptions are those conditions of affection, intoxication, incapability etc., when I lose control over my own will, and appear to myself as somebody else. This may be expressed in saying: 1 cannot trust myself not to hit him', or 'I cannot trust my driving today', or 'I trust I will be able to walk after that disease.' Here I myself become a quasi-other whose actions I endow with trust or distrust. Fifth, trust is a bet, and that means two things. On the one hand, it means the commitment through some actions of my own. I 'place a bet', I 'make a bet', by engaging in some activity: marrying a woman I trust, voting for a politician I trust, buying from a salesman I trust, lending to a partner I trust. On the other hand, trust means the expectation with certain probability that the actions of others will be beneficial for me: that my wife will take care of the household, that a politician will lead, that the salesman will not cheat me, that the debtor will be solvent. When expectation of beneficial actions is not joined by active commitment, by the 'bet', there is only confidence, and not trust. Confidence is the passive, detached estimation of beneficial outcomes, resulting from the actions of others: 'I have confidence that the politicians will somehow prevent nuclear war'; 'I have confidence that ecological catastrophe will somehow be averted.' Thus, confidence belongs to the family of concepts focused on fate, rather than agency. Sixth, the content of the bet may involve more or less demanding expectations. Trust implies that the others will be trustworthy, i.e. their future conduct will exhibit some combination of the following traits (ordered along growing strength of expectations): 1 regularity (orderliness, consistency, coherence, continuity, persistence), and not randomness or chaos 2 efficiency (competence, discipline, consequentiality, proper performance, effectiveness), and not futility or negligence (Barber, 1983) 3 reliability (rationality, integrity, e.g. considering arguments, honoring commitments, fulfilling obligations), and not voluntarism or irresponsibility 4 representativeness (acting on behalf of others, representing their interests), and not self-enhancement 5 fairness (applying universalistic criteria, equal standards, due process, meritocratic justice), and not particularistic bias (favoritism, nepotism) 6 accountability (subjection to some socially enforced standards, rules, patterns), and not arbitrariness 7 benevolence (disinterestedness, help, sympathy, generosity), and not egoism (Barber, 1983). Trust may be vested in various social objects, constructed at various levels of generality: 1 In the social order as such, or its particular form: 'America is a great society', ■Democracy is the only equitable regime.' This kind of trust may be called generalised. It provides the people with 'ontological security', i.e. 'confidence in the continuity of their self-identity and the constancy of surrounding social and material environments of action' (Giddens, 1990: 92). 2 In all the institutional segments of society, e.g. economy, science, education, medicine, justice, and the political system: 'The German economy works', 'The Swedish medical system is highly developed.' This kind of trust may be called segmental. 3 In expert systems, i.e. 'systems of technical accomplishment or professional expertise that organize large areas of the material and social environments in which we live today' (Giddens, 1990: 27), such as transportation, telecommunications, defense arrangements, financial markets, computer networks. The principles and mechanisms of their operation are opaque and cryptic for the average user. And yet, in our time we could hardly survive without using - and trusting — them. This form of trust may be called technological. 4 In concrete organizations, e.g. a particular government, corporation, university, hospital, court of law. This may be called organisational trust, and when it refers to political organizations government, police, army, legal system, parliament, civil service it is one form of the public trust. 5 In products, i.e. all kinds of goods satisfying various human needs. Trust in this case may refer in a general way to goods of a certain type ('corn flakes are healthy'), or to goods made in a certain country ('Japanese machines are highly dependable'), or in more concrete fashion to products of a certain firm (T buy IBM only"), or even creations of a specific author ('if this is by Le Carre it surely will be an exciting book'). Let us call it commerdaltrust. 6 In social roles performed by incumbents of specific positions, e.g. attorneys, judges, medical doctors, priests, and representatives of similar professions. Trust is granted here irrespective of concrete personal qualities, to all incumbents at a par. Thus it may be called positional trust. 7 In persons. Here trust depends on perceived individual competence, fairness, integrity, generosity and similar virtues. It reaches its peak in the case of persons considered as eminent, great heroic, ascribed with charisma. Let us refer to that primordial form of trust as personal. When the persons are public but are treated on their own, individual merits, as Mitterrand, Clinton, Walesa, and not just presidents, it is another form of public trust. When on the other hand we endow with trust of this type those persons present in our private individual micro-settings - friends, family members, co-workers, business partners etc — it will be a form of private trust. If in a given society trust is typically vested in one selected kind of object, we shall call it focused. For example, there are societies which exhibit considerable trust in the interpersonal, intimate, private relations, and have deep distrust in the more abstract institutions. But trust (or distrust) may also be diffused, occurring more or less consistently at all levels. Metaphorically, we speak about the climate or die atmosphere of trust, or distrust, pervading the whole society. If that happens, die consequences for the whole social life are very profound. Trust (or distrust), widely shared and manifested in all areas of social life, turns into a normative expectation, becomes embedded in a culture, and not only in individual attitudes. When the culture of trust or the culture of distrust appears, the people are constrained to exhibit trust or distrust in all their dealings, independent of individual convictions, and departures from such a cultural demand meet with a variety of sanctions. Social life does not allow for a vacuum. If trust decays, some other social mechanisms are apt to emerge as functional substitutes for trust, satisfying the universal needs for orderliness, predictability, efficiency, fairness etc. Some of them are clearly pathological. The first reaction is providentialism: the regression from the discourse of agency toward the discourse of fate. The supernatural or metaphysical forces — God, destiny, fate - are invoked as anchors of some spurious certainty. They are thought to take care of a situation about which nothing can be done, as it is entirely predetermined. For the people, it remains to Wit and see'. This Vague and generalized sense of [quasi] trust in distant events over which one has no control' (Giddens, 1990: 133) may bring some psychological consolation, repress 'anxiety, angst and dread', but at the social level it produces disastrous effects: passivism and stagnation. The second, quite perverse substitute for trust is corruption (Elster, 1989: 266). Spreading in a society, it provides some misleading sense of orderliness and predictability, some feeling of control over chaotic environment. Bribes provide a sense of control over decision-makers, and the guarantee of favorable decisions. 'Gifts' accepted by medical doctors, teachers, bosses are to guarantee tiieir favors or preferential treatment. The sane tissue of social bonds is replaced by the net of reciprocal favors, 'connections', barter, sick pseudo-Gemeinschafi'(Merton, 1968: 163) of bribe-givers and bribe-takers, the cynical world of mutual manipulation and exploitation (see Gambetta, 1988: 158-75 on the Italian mafia). The third mechanism is the overgrowth of vigilance, taking into private hands the direct supervision and control of others, whose competence or integrity is put into doubt, or whose accountability is seen as weak, owing to inefficiency or lax standards of enforcing agencies. If businessmen do not trust their partners, the handshake will no longer do. They will draw meticulous contracts, insist on bank guarantees, and count on litigation if partners breach trust. But enforcing agencies may themselves be distrusted. If die police force is judged as inept, private security agencies are employed. If banks cannot elicit debts, private debt collecting agencies appear, which occasionally resort to force. If medical doctors are not trusted, a patient will check diagnosis with a number of them. 'The fourth mechanism may be called ghettoi^ation, i.e. closing in, building unpenetrable boundaries around a group in an alien and Üireatening environment. The diffuse distrust in the wider society is compensated by strong loyalty to tribal, ethnic or familial groups, matched with xenophobia and hostility toward foreigners. People close themselves in ghettos of limited and intimate relationships, isolated and strictly separated from other groups, organizations and institutions. By cutting the external world off, they reduce some of its complexity and uncertainty. For example Polish emigrant groups in the US, arriving in the first half of the twentieth century, have never been able to assimilate and still tend to live in closed communities, cultivating traditions, religious faith, native language, customs. This may be explained by the culture of distrust arising in relatively uneducated, poverty stricken groups coming from preindustrial settings and finding themselves in an entirely new and alien social environment (see Thomas and Znaniecki, 1918-20). The fifth reaction may be called paternali^ation. When the 'culture of distrust' develops, with existential 'angst and dread' becoming unbearable, people start to dream about a father figure, a strong autocratic leader (Das Führer or II Duce), who would purge with an iron hand all distrustful ('suspicious', 'alien') persons, organizations and institutions, and who would restore, if necessary by force, the semblance of order, predictability and continuity in social life. When such a leader emerges he easily becomes a focus of blind, substitute trust. The sixth reaction may be called externali^ation of trust. In the climate of distrust against local politicians, institutions, products etc., people turn to foreign societies, and deposit their trust in their leaders, organizations or goods. By contrast, they are often blindly idealized, which is even easier because of the distance, the selective bias of the media, and tlie lack of direct contrary evidence. In this vein we believe in foreign economic aid or military assistance, the exceptional merits of American democracy or the unfailing quality of Japanese cars. The Syndrome of Distrust in Post-Communist Society Let us turn now to more concrete social realities, and apply these conceptual distinctions to the case of post-communist societies in Eastern-Central Europe. Endemic distrust, appearing at all levels and in all regions of social life, remains a reality six years after die fall of real socialism. Evidence for that can be sought in two directions. First we may examine some behavioral indicators, what people do or are I ready to do: more precisely, typical modes of actual or intended conduct, which I inferentially would signify a lack of trust. Second we may examine verbal indicators: ■ straightforward declarations, evaluations of various aspects of social life, elicited by surveys and opinion polls, in which various types of distrust find more direct ■ articulation. .The evidence refers exclusively to the case of Poland, but I suppose jjj similar tendencies could be spotted in other countries of postcommunist Europe. Perhaps the strongest behavioral indicator of generalized distrust in the viability of _ one's own society is the decision to emigrate. This is the clearest form of the 'exit H option' (Hirschman, 1970) which people take when life conditions become ™ unbearable and no improvement is in sight. The stream of refugees fleeing East Germany in 1989, or the 'boat people' escaping Haiti, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Cuba, or Mexicans slipping through the American border, show that those people have lost 'internal trust' in the political or economic system of their own society. At the same time, the functional substitute of 'external trust' develops: either in the vague, diffuse notion of 'the free world', 'the West' etc., or in the more specific idea of an intended, most attractive country of immigration (be it the US, Canada, Germany etc.). Now look at the Polish case. Long after 1989, when all previous political motivations are no longer present, a considerable stream of emigrants is still flowing out of Poland, coming especially from higher educated groups and professionals (doctors of medicine, engineers, artists, musicians, sportspeople etc.). In the American 'visa lottery' Poles consistenüy get the largest quotas, which indicates that the number of applicants is also die largest. And even more tellingly, survey data show that 29% of citizens, i.e. approximately one in three, seriously consider emigrating {(Zentral and 'Eastern Eurobarometer, March 1993). The phenomenon akin to emigration, just another variant of the 'exit option', is die withdrawal from participation in public life, and the escape into the closed, private world of the family, friendship circles, work groups, or-voluntary associations. In those 'ghettos' people find 'horizontal trust', compensating functionally for the lack of Vertical trust' in institutions. During the communist period it was referred to as 'internal exile'. But some symptoms of that seem to continue. One is electoral abstention. In the first democratic presidential elections in Poland, almost 50% of citizens chose to abstain; later in municipal elections the overall participation was around 34%, falling to 20% in cities. In die area of economic conduct it is characteristic how extended families or kinship networks are mobilized to provide capital or labor for entrepreneurial ventures. In a relatively poor country, it is quite striking how enormous amounts of money can be raised in philanthropic actions, as long as they are defined as spontaneous and private, and not run by the government. The same people who donate large sums to the 'Great Orchestra of Festive Help' (a nation-wide telethon to raise money for sick children will use all their wits to evade taxes. Pervasive distrust may alternatively be manifested by the 'voice option' rather dian the 'exit option'. Those who do not want to emigrate, or to become passive, take to I I I I I I I I I collective protest. Tlie number of protest events' is a good sign of public distrust. Of course this must be accompanied by some level of trust in the contesting groups or movements and their potential efficacy. Distrust in official politics is substituted functionally with trust in 'alternative politics' from below. The life of post-communist society is rich in protest events. In the case of Poland, we observe repeated waves of strikes, street demonstrations, protest rallies, marches, toad blockades, prolonged fastings, expressing generalized distrust in government or more specific distrust in concrete policies. Distrust may be spotted when we examine forms of behavior directed toward the more distant future. If the image of the future is unclear or negative we observe the presentist orientation: concern with the immediate moment, to the neglect of any deeper temporal horizon. Some authors refer to contemporary Poland as a 'waiting society', showing 'reluctance to plan and think of the future in a long time perspective' (Tarkowska, 1994: 64-6). Evidence of such attitudes is found when we turn to some prevailing types of economic behavior. One of them is conspicuous spending on consumer goods, to the neglect of investing. Most people are still reluctant to invest in private business; only 14% consider it seriously, and only 7% are ready to invest in stocks (Gameta Wyborc^a, 30 April 1994). But even among those who decide to invest a characteristic pattern appears. It is striking that most investments still go into trade, services, and financial operations, rather than production or construction (Poland, 1994: 125). This reflects the uncertainty about legal regulations, terms of trade, and consistency of economic policies. Another sign of economic distrust is to be found in saving decisions: 59% of the people declare that saving is entirely unreasonable (Gameta Wyborc^a, 18 October 1994). Among the minority of those who do save, foreign currency is still considered more dependable by a large segment of the population, in spite of low interest rates. Approximately 36% of all savings are put into foreign currency, most of that in US dollars and Deutschmarks {Gameta Wyborc%a3 3 April 1994), and 25% of Poles believe that saving in dollars is the best defense against inflation (CEBOS Bulletin, January 1994). This is another symptom of externalization of trust. If we look at consumer behavior, the externalization of trust becomes obvious. People consistently prefer foreign over local products, even of comparable quality, and even if local prices are lower. This refers equally to agricultural products, food, clothing, technical equipment, all the way up to automobiles. Institutional distrust in the economic area may be indicated by the typical behavior of investors on the stock exchange, a new institution in the Polish economy. Most investors completely disregard 'fundamental analysis' based on objective indicators of performance reported by the firms, using at most the 'technical analysis' of price curves, according to some fashionable magical recipes (lllliott waves' are particularly in vogue). Investors seem to rely on the wildest rumors, and exhibit pervasive suspicion of all official pronouncements, statistical data, and economic prognoses. In the area of services, the distrust in public institutions is glaring. If the choice is available, people most often prefer private over public services. When socialized, state-run medicine lost its monopoly, a large proportion of patients switched immediately to private doctors and their clinics, in spite of high expenses. More and more private schools at elementary and secondary level are draining students from public education, in spite of excessive tuition. This is slowly extending to the level of higher education, where even highly prestigious state universities are abandoned by some students in favor of new private establishments. The ruling assumption seems to be that the only dependable guarantee of good services is money. Generalized distrust in the social order and public safety is visible in the spread of all sorts of self-defense and protective measures. Vigilance develops as the functional substitute for trust. The sales of guns, gas pistols, personal alarms, the installation of hardened doors, specialized locks and other anti-theft devices at home and in cars, the training of guard dogs, have all grown into a flourishing business. There has been an eruption of private institutions and organizations, making up for the undependable operation of state agencies: private security guards, detective agencies, debt collectors etc. We also observe the growth of voluntary associations aimed at the defense of citizens against abuse: consumer groups, tenants associations, creditor groups, taxpayers' defense organizations and the like. Let us move now to direct opinions, evaluations, and projections, in which people verbally exhibit some measure of distrust. At the most general level, the best verbal indicator of trust is the appraisal of systemic reforms, their success up to now, and their future prospects. Unfortunately, only 29% of the citizens unconditionally approve reforms, while 56% declare distrust {Central and Eastern Eurobarometer, February 1993). In another poll 58% of the respondents appraise the current political and economic situation as deteriorating (Gameta Wyborc^a, 22 February 1994). When asked about more specific dimensions of reforms, only 32% declare that democracy is a good tiling, while 55% are dissatisfied widi democratic institutions {(Zentral and Eastern Eurobarometer, February 1993). Similarly, only 29% believe that privatization brings 'changes for the better' {Gameta Wyborc^a, 17 April 1994). When pressed about the concrete changes, which after all did take place, the respondents show a strikingly negativistic bias, perceiving mostly the dark side of reforms. As crucial changes, 93% indicate the growth of crime, 89% the appearance of economic rackets, 87% socioeconomic distance and growing polarization into rich and poor, 51% reduced social security and care for the needy, 62% weakened mutual sympathy and helping attitudes among the people (Gameta Wyborc^a, 17 June 1994). Another indicator of generalized trust is the comparison of the present socioeconomic situation with the past. Again, distrust clearly prevails. Asked about their own, personal condition, 53% feel that they are Living worse than before (Gameta Wyborc^a, 17 June 1994). Appraising the situation of others, around half of die respondents believe that people were generally more satisfied under real socialism. This surprising result is confirmed by three independent polls, estimating the percentages at 52%, 48%, and 54% (Gameta Wyborc^a, 28 June 1994). When thinking about their society in the future, people are even more pesssirnistic. Only 20% trust that the situation will improve, 32% expect a turn for the worse, and 36% hope that it will at least remain unchanged (Gameta Wyborc^a, 17 April 1994). More concretely, in respect of the overall economic situation, 62% believe that it will not improve {Central and Eastern Eurobarometer, February 1993), and 55% expect the cost of living to rise (CEBOS Bulletin, January 1994). A confirmation of distrust in the future is found in the list of problems that people worry about: 73% indicate the lack of prospects for their children as something that worries them most (CEBOS Bulletin, January 1993). Mote concrete institutional and positional distrust takes many forms. Politicians are treated with greatest suspicion; 87% of a nation-wide sample claim that they take care only of their own interests and careers, and neglect the public good (Gameta Wyborc^a, 11 July 1994). if anything gods wrong in society, 93% of the people declare that 'the politicians and bureaucrats are guilty' (Koralewicz and Ziolkowski, 1990: 62). Moreover, 48% see public administration as pervaded by corruption, and only 8% perceive corruption in private businesses (Gameta Wyborc^a, 19 March 1994). The veracity of those in high office is also doubted: 49% of citizens do not believe information given by the ministers (Gameta Wyborc^a, 25 March 1994), 60% are convinced that data on levels of inflation or GNP growth released by the state statistical office are false (CEBOS Bulletin, January 1994). Not much trust is attached to fiduciary responsibility (Barber, 1983) of government or administration: 70% believe that public bureaucracy is entirely insensitive towards human suffering and grievances (Poleszczuk, 1991: 76). Fairness and justice are found to be absent in public institutions: 71 % say that in state enterprises 'good work is not a method of enrichment' (Koralewicz and Ziolkowski, 1990: 55), and 72% believe that people advance not because of success in work but owing to 'connections' (Poleszczuk, 1991: 86). This extends to the courts of law: 79% claim that verdicts will not be the same for persons of different social status (1991: 88). The police are considered with the traditional lack of confidence, and hence public security is evaluated as very low: 56% of the people try to avoid going out after dark (Polityka, 14 May 1994) and 36% do not feel safe in the streets at all, day or night (CEBOS Bulletin, November 1993). To the question 'Is Poland an internally safe country?', 67% respond in the negative, and only 26% feel secure (Gameta Wyoorc^a, 21 March 1994). Even the Catholic Church, traditionally the most trusted of all public institutions, seems to be affected by the climate of distrust, especially when it takes a more political role: 54% disapprove of such an~extension of the Church's functions, and 70% would like the Church to limit its activities to the religious area (Gameta Wyborc^a, 10 May 1994). It seems as if any contact with the political domain is polluting. The mass media, even though much more independent and not linked directly to the state, do not fare much better. Apparently they have not yet regained trust, which was devastated by their instrumental role under real socialism: 48 % of the people still do not believe the TV, and 40% distrust the newspapers (Central and Eastern Eurabaromster, February 1993). The obverse side of the strong internal distrust in its many manifestations is the emphasis on external trust toward the West. It has been found that 49% of the people are aware of European integration treaties, and 48% declare a positive view of the European Union and its policies. As much as 80% would like Poland to join the European Union, and 43% opt for doing it immediately {Central and Eastern Eurobarometer, February 1993). The support for joining NATO is even stronger, as the result of pervasive external distrust toward Russia and other eastern neighbors of Poland. In the generalized climate of distrust, a vicious self-fulfilling mechanism starts to operate. To trust those who are deemed untrustworthy is clearly irrational. It is more rational to be distrustful in an environment devoid of trust. Those who manifest trust will not only lose in the game, but will be censured for stupidity, naivety, credulity, simple-mindedness. Cynicism, cheating, egoism, evasion of laws, outwitting the system, turn into virtues. And that cannot but lead to even deeper corrosion of trust* Toward the Recovery of Trust The main issue of policy is how to break that vicious, self-enhancing sequence, and how to reverse it. Directly targeting distrust by moralizing, preaching, convincing people of the benefits of trust is very limited in its effectiveness in a situation in which preachers are not trusted either. Thus the only viable policy is the indirect approach: consistent democratization and persistent improvement of democratic mechanisms. Restoration of trust must be brought about by consistent governmental policies. The, battle should be fought on six fronts. First, against tentativeness and for certainty. Consistency and irreversibility of pro-democratic policies must be safeguarded. They must be followed according to a clear pattern, blueprint or logic. They must document the unwavering, reform-oriented will of the authorities, by means of creating Jaits accomplis and pre-commitments. Hesitation, ad hoc reversals, slow downs on the democratic course must be avoided. People must feel that the authorities know what they are doing and where they are going, that they have a clear program and execute it persistently. The atmosphere of tentativeness, of trial and error, of another grand 'political experimenť must be eliminated, even if that provides the politicians with easy excuses for their failures. Jon Elster makes an excellent point: 'The very notion of "experimenting with reform" ' In the case of post-communist transition the speed of events clearly overtakes the publishing process. At the moment when this book comes out the diagnosis based on the data for the early nineties doesn't seem so gloomy anymore. There are already clear signs of the consistent recovery of trust, in all respects mentioned above. borders on incoherence, since the agents' knowledge that they are taking part in an experiment induces them to adopt a short time horizon that makes it less likely that the experiment will succeed' (1989: 176). Second, against arbitrariness and for accountability. The key to that is the rule of law, constitutionalism, judicial control, as well as the efficiency of enforcement agencies of all kinds. In legislation and application there must be no place for voluntarism, arbitrariness, ad hoc action, opportunistic stretching or modifying of laws. The immutable principles of the constitution must precisely define the foundations of social and political organization, and include provisions preventing easy amendments. It must have the air of eternit}'. The laws must be binding for all citizens irrespective of their status. Enforcement of laws and citizens' obligations must be rigorous and must not allow of exceptions. Strong measures must be taken against crime. Third, against insecurity and for personal rights. Fundamental rights of citizens have to be assured, and among them the right to private property. Consistent privatization and constitutional affirmation of private property are perhaps of key importance. Clear and precise financial laws, banking statutes, trading codes must safeguard the security of investments and economic transactions. Strict and consistent currency policies must restore the faith in local money. Fourth, against secret and for visibility and familiarity. Governmental actions must be made as open and transparent as possible. An efficient media policy aiming at that must be worked out and implemented. Pluralistic independent media and autonomous institutions for gathering statistical data, census offices, and reform watch centers must be developed. The politicians must be made more personal and familiar by disclosing some aspects of their private lives. Continuous polling, monitoring and reporting of public moods must become the rule. Survey results feed back to the public and eliminate the lack of awareness of the opinions of others, tlie pattern of 'pluralistic ignorance', so detrimental to trust. Fifth, against monocentrism and for pluralism. There is a need for consistent decentralization!; delegating competences to local authorities and providing local units with autonomy and self-rule. Only when people feel that some public issues really depend on them will they develop public responsibility and loyalty to institutions. 'Political systems that leave more decisions to the individual ... can generate more trust' (Elster, 1989: 180). Pluralism must also refer to political allegiances, consumer choices, cultural preferences. Tlie larger and more variable the field for trusting commitments, the stronger the mobilization for trust. Sixth, against ineptitude and for integrity of personnel. People arrive at judgments about die political, economic or other 'expert systems' and institutions by encountering their representatives: ministers and mayors, clerks and mailmen, bus conductors and airline hostesses, secretaries and teachers, doctors and nurses. All of them operate at 'access points' to the systems (Giddens, 1990: 90). Their demeanor may exude trust — when diey show professionalism, seriousness, competence, truthfulness, concern for others, readiness to help. On the other hand, any bad experiences at 'access points', any frustrating contacts - even when vicarious, dirough the media, and not personal - are immediately generalized to the whole system (1990: 90-1). Extensive training, meticulous screening, and highly selective recruitment to all positions of high social visibility including first of all the political offices - are prerequisites for generalized, institutional and positional trust. None of these policies is easy to implement. But one thing is certain: without political will and determination in this direction the crisis of trust diat we observe at present in post-communist societies will not be overcome. Note Several arguments and data presented in this chapter have been used by myself in two earlier articles: 'Vertrauen: Die Fehlende Ressource in der Postkomunistichen Gesellschaft', in B. Nedelmann (ed.), Kolner Zeitschrift für Soziologie and So^ialpsjchologie, Sonderheft 35/1995, September 1995, pp. 254-76; and 'Trust and Emerging Democracy: Lessons from Poland', International Sociology, 11 (1), March 1996: 372. References Alexander, J. C. (1992) 'Democracy and Civil Society'. Mimeo, UCLA, Los Angeles. Arato, A. (1981) 'Civil Society against the State: Poland 1980-81', Telos, 47: 237. Barber, B. (1983) The Logic and limits of Trust, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Benda, V. et al. (1988) 'Parallel Polis or an Independent Society in Central and Eastern Europe: An Inquiry', Social Research, 55 (1-2): 2116. CEBOS Bulletin, periodical of the Center for the Study of Social Opinions at Warsaw. Central and Eastern Euro barometer, Commission of the European Communities publication, Brussels. Dahrendorf, R. (1990) Betrachtungen über die devolution in Europa. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlag-Anstalt. Elster, J. (1989) Solomonic judgements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gambetta, D. (ed.) (1988) Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative delations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Garton Ash, T. (1989) The Uses of Adversity. New York: Random House. Garton Ash, T. (1990) We, the People: The Revolution of '89. Cambridge: Granta. Gameta Wyborc^a, a popular Polish daily edited by A. Michnik. Geremek, B. (1992) 'Civil Society and the Present Age', in The Idea of Civil Society. National Humanities Center, pp. 11-18. Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, J. (1987) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Havel, V. (1988) 'Sila bezsilnych' ('The Power of the Powerless'), in Thriller i inne eseje (Thriller and Other Essays). 'Warsaw: Nowa. pp. 92-7. Havel, V. (1989) Living in Truth. London: Faber and Faber. Hirschman, A. O. (1970) Exit, Voice, and Eqyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organisations, and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Konrád, G. (1984) Antipolitics. New York: Harcourt Brace jovanovich. Koralewicz, J. and Ziolkowski, M. (1990) Mentalnosc Polakow (Mentality of the Poles). Poznan: Nakom. Kumar, K. (1992) 'Civil Society: An Inquiry into the Usefulness of an Historical Term'. Mimeo, University of Kent at Canterbury. Luhmann, N. (1979) Trust and Power. New York: Wiley. Merton, R.K. (1968) Social Theory and Sodal Structure, 2nd rev. edn. New York: Free Press. Michnik, A. (1985) letters from Prison and Other Essays. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Nowak, S. (1981) 'A Polish Self-Portraiť, in Polish Perspectives. pp. 13-29. Poland (1994) Poland: An International Economic Keport 1993/1994. Warsaw: Warsaw School of Economics. Poleszczuk, A. (1991) 'Stosunki miedzyludzkie i zycie zbiorowe' (Interpersonal Relations and Collective Life'), in M. Marody (ed.), Co nam postalo \ tych lat (What Has Remained of Those Years). London: Anex. Polityka, a leading political weekly magazine in Poland. Rueschemeyer, D., Stephens, E.H. and Stephens, J. D. (1992) Capitalist Development and Democracy. Cambridge: Polity. Szacki, J. (1994) Liberalism po komuniymie {Liberalism after Communism). Krakow: Znak. Sztompka, P. (1993) 'Civilizational Incompetence: The Trap of Post-Communist Societies', Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 2: 85-95. Tarkowska, E. (1994) CA Waiting Society: The Temporal Dimension of Transformation in Poland', in A. Flis and P. Seel (eds), Social Time and Temporality. Krakow: Goethe Institut, pp. 57-71. Thomas, W.I. and Znaniecki, F. (1918-20) The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, vols. I-V. Boston: Badger. Tismaneanu, V. (1992) Reinventing Politics: Lastern Europe from Stalin to Havel. New York: Free Press. In: J. C. Alexander (ed.): Keal Civil Societies: Dilemmas of Institutionalization. London: SAGE Publications 1998, pp. 191-210. 104 J Outhwaite, William and Ray, Larry: "Modernity, Memory, and Postcommunism". In: Outhwaite, William and Ray, Larry. 2005. Social Theory andVostcommunism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 176-196 105 I I I I I I I I I I I I I I J Publishing © 2005 ty WiäJiftin OuíEiwaife and Uťŕy Ray BLAC&mt- PUBLISHING 350 Main ŠEťŕfit, Haiders, MA {£148-5020, USA 102 Cowky Road, Qrrard 0X4 1JFT UE. 550 SfrattsEon Sffíet, Caŕk&n., Ví«oť^ 30J3, Ao£»&ÍLa Tbe righf of WilHam Ümrswairesnd La Fry Rpy to be identified as rhe Amhors of [foss '^ftjrk bas been ass&ited in actoreSaíKe wit ste UK Copyíighi, iiwigns, and Pawuss Ä.« !?£&, Al( ngh« reserved. No prt of üus. jiüblkmon maj be reproduced, ssored m a retrieval system, or iLansmiEföd1 in finyiöim or by sny rssearts, elôcrxoiiic., media. iiícéI, jjhotocfipyinĚ., recording er oiiiettvise* except as peťstiitEoI by the UK. Cojsyrigbi» De&igat, and Parents Act l?SS> without the prior paerrus£!Dn of rhe ptubl Uiirt First p«bU$Si folk narratives, public íituaís, architecture and landscape education and culture} were placed under supervision auid direction, so the "struggle to remember becomes a form or opposition" (K. H Smieh 1996: 11 \. The end of communis™ was also a disintegration of official collective memory and die articulation of multiple unofficial narratives of commemoration (Baron 1997 j, However, the ways in which the past i$ recalled and the mobiäisadoií of the trauma associated with these cm have powerful and, as in the case of former Yugoslavia, destructive consequences. MODBiNTTC MEMORK AND POSľCOMMUNISM T 79 This chapíer explores the relationships between memory,, coifimejriaration, and pgstcomjnunism, in this context, memory has recently become a major theme in cultural studies and sociology. This äs not in ifcsejf a new topic in sociology, but whereas the older (Maunheimiíin) sociology ot knowledge regarded ideologies as an expression of particular social locations, in a globalised i reformation £ge such ideas seem reductionist. Globalization and the internet create potendaJ for multiple identities - cosmopolitan, local, and regional, Knowledge tiow inheres not in "consciousness" but (for example) in non-lineair texmslicy, discourses and electronic archives, film and video. -Gergeri (199-4) talks about the postmodern "mtiltiplirenia"' of memories that are exteriorised in print, film, photograph;, cinema - nos based on common experience' buř "parallel memory" (Lash 1999; 296), In web'based archives, the linearity of text and nawarive memory gives way to non-linearity in virtual time, offering multiple- levels arid entrances, simultaneous presence» and virtual "experience/ Thus between the societa^- of memory of the 1920s (e.g. Halbwadis 1991) and die presem lie the various postmodernist and cultural turns that frame our current understandings. As die idea or a subject that "possesses''1 memory has given way to one in which memory inheres in texts and archives, so has- the politics of memory taken on increased significance..2 Thôre is a contrast here between the typical "modern" forms of commemoration - with clear lines between public and private symbols of commemoration. - and more individual ist pos?- or Iste-modem forms of private appropriation of public histories dial resonate with roots genera! themes of individualization addressed by Beck and others. Nonetheless^ one insight from Halbwachs's work that we should keep in jsind is that while monumental space draws people together and "exudes tinielessness," its meanings wiíi shift according to contemporary concerns. Why has there been this recent resurgenceŕ One stimulus Sias been täte increase in disputed concepts of nationhood, which are crucial id many concern-poraxy conflicts, in the content of staře crisis. This resurgence of nationalism • has occurred in the postcommunist world in which issues of memory,, identity and Coming to terms with ihe past have been central There has, further, been new confrontation with the Holocaust, which had entered ambiguously íbeů official and popular memories of Eastern Europe (Misses! 2003). This hss coincided with a resurgence of "memory" controversies in Western societies and has contributed to renewed tiseoreĚšcd debate within rhe social sciences. While fot some, this revival of national and ethnic politics underlines she importance of shared culture and history in the creation of solidarity, for orhers, memory work is evidence or the simulated and dephless cnltitrô of poatroodeňaity. According to the latter view, the heroic monumentalise of high modernity - the public encoding and enforcement of collective versions of fife past ~ has given way to more privatized and pluraJisdc appropriation of memories and identities. These include the increased use of websites devoted to oomaneiao-raiiOii of genocide, and especially the Holocaust in the twentieth century*-1 With this i BÚ MODČANlTí, M£MOWľ, AND POJTOCMMUNlSM proliferation, "access" to memories that are defining for membership of ari identity group is detached from place and Community and bčtomes a form of private consumption. But these virtual and imagined communities {as. we noted in rlie previous chapter) do not necessarily enhance (he expansion of ethical civil society. Anthony Elliott (2003: 178) argues; The resuigeace of nationalism throughout Europe ... has been substantially bawd upon t..an unleashing of primordial sentiments and attachments at the local, regional, national or continental levels, exposing the fnctwed and dispersed structure of *hs imaginary bash oř intoltr* fliíci , , . as weil as the defensive rejection of ambivalence and uncertainty iQ she context of globalizations Tlie nation is a mnemonic community whos* raises ďůtre derives from boA remembering and forgetting, especially wbsxe ihe past poses a threat: ro the unity of the fiction. Thus memory and its appropriation have become central issues in societies emerging from the eesssure oř public memory and the survival of counterrflemories. While these counier-memoiies acted as a focus of resistance to official rewriting of history, they could also have deadly consequences - as in the Yugoslavian wars. Modernity and Commemoration In modern societies the transmission of collective memory is not a continuous process bos is subjeci co dislocation- One consequence oř modernity was to erase traditional forms of cultural transmission while generating a sense öf diependence on the past, especially through public memorials that engendered a distinctive form of memory and commemoration. Increasingly significant among these in the twentieth Century were war memorials. No longer living within memory embedded in communities* where memory installs remembrance within the sacred, modem forms oi memory are radically different to those experienced in archaic .societies {Misztal 2003: 196), Merging personal and collective identity and memory, monuments jeplaee the real site of memory, while shaping the. past involved struggle for supremacy (2005: 204). The differentiation of a specialised religious fields the gradual palatalization of institutions, cometsainidies, and systems, of religious thought coirespojid historically to che diíferentiacion of total social memory into a plurality of specialized circles of memory. Two cosjseqoesiies follow from this, First, rasmory becomes subject to 3 homogenizing process - mass communication and media image production lead to saturation and focus on a perpetual peesent. Second, there is increasing ŕVagňiíňtadon of memory lor individuals* and different social groups attempt ro construct iheir pa$ts in various ways* A familiar sociological trope is that modernization creates "social amnesia/' as a result of which the past becomes something to preserve and recover (Jacob]/ 3 975; Ko&elleclŕ 1985). Sociologists have often pointed to the transformation of time that occurs with industrialisation., wich reference in particular ro the effects MODEfthflTV, MEMORY AND POSTCOMMUIMISM 1 gtf of mechanized work processes on ihe rhythms of life (Thompson 1967). Calen-dricai time in premodtfli societies was cyclical and punctuated wirb festivals thai emphasised recurrence rather than linear time. These carried the risk oř disorder and of inverting (albeit temporarily) the roles of the powerful and powerless, for example the Lords of Misrule and the Harlequinade. Popular festivals -wese often parodies of established customs and institutions fspch as ihe mysteries of the Mass! which released social tensions and had the potential to threaten the powers that be. But this cyclical interruption of order with festive extravagance did not awk the taovement of tim,^ nor was it therefore invested with collective memory. Similarly, astrologieal time was heterogeneous, ■eyclicaä, and substantive, by contrast wieh the linear, empty, and disenchanted modern cosmos. By the sixteenth century, though^ European aristocracies were developing narratives of national memory — in England under the Tudors arose she idea of "God's Englishmen/ which, like the Old Testament choseß people,, claimed a ußique future and distinctive past. This may have initially penetrated little into popular consciousness^ but by the foliowrng century and especially after the Protestant ascendancy^ this translated into a national consciousness marked by festivals linked to themes of time and deliverance. These included November 5t Armada Day, and, after the Restoration, Royal Oak Day, although these festivals of national commemoration were subject to reinterpretation by the reigning powers fCressy 1994). Industrialization., along with the rapid pace or technological and commercial change, brought about a rupture of collective memory - the äíitergenerafional transmission of social knowledge and its relevance were dislocated by this social change. In this context the problem of social integration itself became a central topic of social and political reflection, and indeed a central theme in early sociology (Ray 1999b), Architecture, monuments, and public rituals played important roles in creating an external memory along with, for example, medals, postage stamps, statuary, and festivals fOlíck ůnd Rpbbiiis 199$}* Ozouf {19&8} argues that the first attempt to tie public festivals to a national calendar were she French revolutionary festivals, such as Bastille Day. These involved the transference of sacrality from religious to poliaca! objects - the tricolor cockades, liberty trees, rid liberty caps* and the goddess of liberty (Hunt 3990). The rupture or cultures of transmission brought about by political revolutions and' industrialism engendered a sense of detachment from the past. In the process, calendncaä úme was invested with progress and narrative,, as a shell througíi which events moved. The theme of deliverance - having been saved from foreign invasion or internal subversion - was supplemented by public riiuaSs grid festivals around monuments and memorials, punctuating the movement oi time as markers that looked back and forward. Nineteenth-century monumental architecture often hariced back to classical antiquity connoting a depth of time and distant origins. The Roman standard íor ä victory raonumers? was the triumphal arch - evident in modernist triuniphidisin, such as ihn Arc de 1 82 rvÉODEitNnY, MEMORY, ANO POSTCOMMUNlSM Triomphe in Paris and Maibie Arch jn London, But these were noi simply replicas of classical triumphal arches - within the Arc de Triomphe were inscribed she names of hundreds of Napoleon's generals, «kh the names of those who died in battle underlined; thws the status or the arch 3$ a .specifically war memorial was established. These were in pa« memorials to jrulers, but also saved to engender a sense of collective identity, while expressing aspirations of a Self-confident bourgeois order. Memory processes have been imagined and communicated through a variety of spatial and visual metaphors that construct art architecture of iatemai memory places (Haltam and Hockey 2001: 77}. Monumental solidity offered resistance to the possibility of everything melting, into air,, cieating. the appearance at least oř rimeJessness and solidity. The rise of nationalism was central to this process, since rapid social change and loss or cultural remembrance paved the way for new forms of imagined community (Anderson lP93).The anonymous collectivity of the nation -wai one way of treating a new sense oi connectedness to the past and hence a rooted-Bess m the pxefent. Nationalism further had an advantage over liberal notions of market and rigbts^based individualism in that the former invoked more affective and transmissible solidarities. Nationalist concepts of loyalty invoke communities of memory, in which identity is rooted in notions of shared traits (ethnicity, culture, language) through which the remembrance of the past is protected and becomes a political instrument (Smith IS^T}- In this sense, as Gellfter (1994: 107) noted, nationalism invokes both Gemeinschaft and Gaselkchaff - the impersonal binding of anonymous people that is achieved by appeal to common community and history. Landscape is central to nationalism, since territory becomes inscribed with history and temporality- Landscape is external - it is- a visible and palpable synthesis of time and space» a fusion Bakhtiri (1381) describes, as a "chrono-tope,".the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships. In this sense landscapes and monuments are chronotopes in which, time has been condensed in space symbolically arranged and ijuvesEed with myth and identity. This occurs b official commemorations, such as battlefields, monuments, and special days, bui is also vibrant lii unofficial practices- Yet these external memories requite coniinuous mobilization and enforcement, since monuments Caft become invisible and fade into the background. Much reinforcement or national identities äs "banal nationalism" (Billig. 15>?7), that is, the routine ways of instilling á shared Sense of the collective past inscribed into everyday events, such as saluting the flag- Even so,, banal monuments are not innocent since they aie often the sifes or conflict between competing í often incompatible) histories and unstable ia thai they are subject to competing meanings Add to this, though, the role of globalized technologies in creating and sustaining ^memory," and the process of their transmission identity is compter. Postmodernists tend to emphasise the fluidity of "memory* whik others seek to identify real site? of cultural transmission, Anthony Smith in particular has argued that she ancestral land links memory to destiny (Smith 1997}. By con- NfODERNITY, MĚMQfřV. AMD P05TCOMMUMI5M 183 trast to Ehe epbsnerality of "siemoryless" global culture, Smith (1996) argues, the "obstinate fact is that national cultures, like all cultures before the modem epoch, are particular, time-bound and expressive and their eclecticism operates within strict cultural constraints.** In particular he says, national cultures display a sens« of continuity across generations^ shared memories of specific events, and common destiny on the pstt or the collectivity. Smith implies that etímo-mcinories are the repository of a definable and stable group (similar to the older sociology of knowiedgi and ideology} but tnva issues are relevant to this, First, national identities are not stable and primordial, but unstable hybrids of conflicting passions* as "scraps, patches and rags of daily lire must be repeatedly tinned into the signs oi a national culture (Bhabha 1995: 297). Maintaining a persoual narrative chat instantiates and affirms a collective memory continually suppresses die irredeemably plural nature of modern identities* Second, an important issue here is how collective memories are transmitted, stored, mobilized, and made relevant to present concerns and projects. They axe never just "there," and the sources of modern identity lie in multiple histories, media, and archives that are subject to revision, mobilization, and recombination according to contemporary cultural shifts and politics. It is true that commonly shared pasts create a necessary component of identity and history, providing an answer to the question, "who are víc?" But this always seems to tdy, as Kapiaiski {1997) notes, on the question of *Vho we were,* and the existence o£ the group's collective identity also makes real a particular construction of the past. While Smith k right that the living transmission of cultural memory is an important component of national identity - it is also the case diae the existence of national groups construct collective memories so that there is a self-sustaining process of remembering and collective identity, if this line of argument is correct, then Smith may be exa^erasing the extent to which national-ethnic idemities are prknordially derived. Or at least, even if fragments of ethnic memories are primordial, their recombination may be mediated by electronic technologies, which impose their own siructure on the content (Feathers-tone 2G0O). This suggests that collective memory has undergone a transfomiatioA in. its mode of recall and representation. The meaning and appropriation of public sires of memory is subject m contestation and struggle, "Memory is soctai because every mesnory exists ttirotagh its relation with what has been shared wirh others; languagi, symbols,, events and social and cultural contexts' {MisztaJ ZQOSi 19). Memories are organised around places and things that imprint effect cm topography and space. However, in 3 period of increasingly postisational, diasporic identity* no single identity is given in definitely or in unchangeable form, A positive, if somewhat idealistic, view of this is that we witness both the privatization, and democratization of sites of memory, in she sense that the perception of material objects (such as monuments) can be personal and liberated hum ihe narratives embodied in them by the state. The old holidays and saonumenfs have lose much of tiieir power to commemorate-and forge a single vision of die past, but they 1S4 r.400ĚRNTY. MEMORY, Aha) PQSTCQMMUNISM remain places where groups wich different memories can communicate (Giilis 1994 i 20). Soviet Collective Memory and Counter-memory The Soviet Authorities were always sharply conscious of the need to control the transmission of collective historical consciousness (Baroii 1997). Soviet modern-ism cool: much further than in the West the atrempt to encode and embed its role m monumental forms. Public commemoration was inscribed in public holidays, ubiquitous statues of revolutionary leader^ especially Lenin, war memorials and commemorations, mausoleums for dead leaders - a kind of necro-charisma in which death conferred quasi-sacred revolutionary legitimacy. Mausoleums, statues, ritual reliviitg of past and glorious struggles were ubiquitous features or the Soviet landscape. Especially following World "Wat I[ {the Great Patriotic War) memorials were "indelibly inscribed into the Russian cultural landscape" [Bogorov ZÖ02), although their construction was dogged by controversy, illustrating thá contested nature of collectivised memory. "Who," asks Bogůrov (2G02).i "was to receive the main credit for the ultimate, if bloody, triumph? A new 'socialist human being1 forged by the trials of the Bolshevik read u (ion, alongside a new historic 'brotherhood of Ehe Soviet peoples'? Or die unbending strength of the Russian national character, fortified by fhe ancient hatred of alien invaders? Then where was the place for the omnipotent Party's 'leading Mid guiding role?' Or the military genius of Comrade Stalin?*' Critics and ar-Bolshevik p^st and used cultural references to Russian Orthodoxy merged with images of Stalin, firmly situated within the Russian imperial tradition. One example of these monuments is the Kainsumoľskak-Koľfsŕvaiä metro station, which features an entrance crowned with a cupola and a spire, bearing a resemblance to a huge &kkmt a Russian biighťs helmet. The station's major hall is dominated by a huge arched ceiling bearing eight mosaic panels. These depict the most celebrated moments from Russian military history. Each panel is centered around a certain historical rigure, starting, from prince (and a Russian Orthodox saint) Aleksandr Nevskii, famous for his victories orer the invaders of ehe German. Teutonic Order) and ending with Staíirss reviewing die Soviet troops which had vanquished Hitler's Germany {Bogorov 2002). In this monumental architecture a crocial shirr bsd occuried-from a Bolshevik to national-imperial mode of legitimation» This was to have lasting effect - since 1991 the celebrarion of Victor)' Day in Russia or May 9 has remained one of ihe most popular holidays and its associated rituals remain- a focus for the mythical narrative of nation- UODtRNnf, MÉMOftV, AMD rOsTCOWNiUNlSW 185 Gorbachev's reforms hesitantly and ambiguously began to allow critical evaluation of Soviet history and, most important, a confrontation with Stalinist genocide. Though initially attempting to create a regulated space for remembrance and vacillating between, promotion and. restraint of debate, glasnost allowed ehe articulation of non-official popular counter-memories such as Ten-gis Abuladze'e film Rňpentance (19§4)^ These then rapidly took the form of revived on recreated national and ethnic memories and identities. Th«? symbolic realm - public rituals and holidays, anthems and uniforms, monuments; and street names - that had been crucial to Soviet legitimation became a battleground in post-Soviet politics. Post-Soviet Russian politics have seen recurrent battles over the content of Russia's state anthem äňd flag, over burying Lenin's corpse and closing his mausoleum on Rett Square, and over the renaming of multiple locations stili carrying die names of former Soviet leaders. Underlying these ate fundamental questions of national identity - "what is Russia?** ''who is Russian?" which in turn reflect the fragility of Russian statehood. The war in Chechnya, numerous challenges of ethnic and regional separatism within -the Russian Federation, tense relations with neighboring Soviet successor 5tates? and real or perceived threats from abroad" all compounded1 to create a deep sense of national insecurity that permeates Russian society {Bogorov 2ÖÖ2), This in turn has led to an intense reexamination of Russian history, and each of the major compeeing forces on the political scene has offered its view of fhe historical canon. Competition among political elites for control over the sites guided their transformation from symbols of the Soviet Union into symbols of Russia. By co-opting certain monuments through transformation and commemorative maintenance political elites engaged in a symbolic dialogue with the public in an attempt to gain legitimacy (Forest and Johnson 2GG2), • This contestation has extended access postcommunist Europe. Kapralski {2001) points out that in the wake of the collapse or "official" commemorative activiries the field has opened for often-bitter conOiets, illustrated by che con-fliers, over rhetorical ownership of Auschwitz, The connection between landscape, national identify^ awd remembrance is illustrated by these posfcommunisc conflicts over Auschwitz, which serves as a framework for competing uational memories jKapralsfci 2ÖÖ1), Kapralski argues that for jews, Auschwitz symbolizes the Holocaust, the event that condensed a history of ami-Semitic persecution's,, and therefore is, a symbol of Jewish uniqueness in the face of andhifatioíi-Tbis is in a context in which she specifically Jewish significance of the site was largely dented during the communist period and the deaths of Jews de-emphasized in favor of the "Snuggle against Fascisms. It has- been suggested that fqr American and Western European Jews, going to Auschwitz involves passing through a secular ritual that confirms who they üre as jews (Kugelmass 1993; 419),. For the Poles* KapralsH claims., Auschwitz symbolizes the Polish tragedy daring World "War ils which was a condensed histoty of German attempts to subordinate and eventually destroy the Polish nation, Polish nationalists, denied the chance to express national identity freely outside state«designed channel ss 1B6 MODERNITA MEMÖJtY, AND POSTCOMMUťaSM redefine identity via (he mejnory oř Auschwitz- as a solely "Polish" place and a national-religious symbol These conflicts came to a head in the early 19903 with the dispute over the Carmelite nuns at the site who had appropriated a camp building and erected more than 100 crosses {Mimal 2ÖÖ3: 121-2), This resulted in a fittee-ik-yeai conflict amid accusations of the thrisťianizatíoíi of Auschwitz* which seemed doomed to remain unresolved- Although the convent ■was eventually moved outside the camp's boundary, a. largs wooden cross that had been erected it the height of the convent crisis in 1989 remained ať the site. Both sides have now agreed that the cross will remain in perpetuity and some Jewish groups find this strangely appropriate, Rather than merely a meraariaJ to the Polish victims of Auschwitz they regard the cross as a symbol of divine abandonment - in accordance with jesus's cry, "My God* my God, why hast Thou forsalíen me?" Thus its presence at Auschwitz may be seen as a lestiaiony w the absence of divine intervention which has $o exercised theologians $inte thfi Holocaust (Klein 2Ö01J. As the collapse of communist officii control on interpretation and commemoration of the past disappeared, such memorials have been subject to struggle* for appropriation, especially by peoples in. the past margin a ü zed in a pjocesi that asserts claims to contemporary national formation.0 Competing historical narratives and the commemoration of genocide are bitterly contested around landscape and monuments. Nationalism and Death Auschwitz is a powerful symbol, in many ways the ur-phenomenon not only of the Holocaust but of twentieth-ceatury genocide. Sites commemorating mass death arc especially potent since the rhetoric or national identity emerges particularly through the pathos of remembrance. But these meanings are never fixed and there is interplay between elite and popular uses of the monuments. Diverse social groups invoke the cůmmemorarive power of public objects and spaces such as war memorials, statues, and street names in different ways. Nationalism can be seen as a way of repairing the rupture in collective memory brought about by industrialization, but nationalism js linked to death in that the industfiaE age was par excellence the age of movement: or weapons» troops, and populations through time and space. It whs the age of mass "democratic" wars and armies» through which modernity's- war machine heralded the depletion or time and space (Virifio and Lotringer 1983: 5). With the erection of war memorials national identity appealed to a putative community of the living and the dead The commemoration ceremony oí Remembrance "they shall not grow old as we who arc left grow old" has the mnemonic effect oř summoning the presence of the absent, and inviting participants co join wish an imagined community Including, the living and the dead (Frijda 1997). The inscription of names on monuments speaks to a. transcendence of forgetting that is poignant and disturbing and links individuals to the nation across generations. The exter- MODKNiTV, řvSMOKť. AMD POSTCOMMUNISM 187 nalization of memories of mass death occurred particularly after World War I, though these had precursors in war cemeteries such as Gettysburg National Cemetery. The scale and scope of World War 1 had deprived survivors of the capacity for memory in, the sense of ceiatmg encompassing natratryts to account ím their experiences. Walter Benjamin (197^) claimed that the War was a cataclysm char had left people without conditions for tdling stories in that tactical and mechanical warfare, hyperinflation, the vast movements of population, and she scale of destruction wrested the events from tht? grasp of individual life hiseorie& Lowerohal atgues that memory's most set viewable reminder was landscape, and memorials and monuments locate the imagiiied oe EeíKieín-heíed past in the present landscape (Lovraithal 1979:104}. Winter (1999) believes that spatial memory [as distinguished from visual memory) transforms latent memory biso active {"rlash'bulbs lighting up") memory when an individual occupies a she associated widi a ritual or event. He further claims that warfare, particulaily in the twentieth century, is a time of dramatic and caique experiences* which leave dense memocy traces, both social and individual Witnesses of warfare, whether surviving soldiers, family members of those wounded or killed, surviving civilian victims, or their relatives, were all involved in. memory work - ihat is, in a public rehearsal of memories. They acted in order to fill in silence) to strsi^ie with grHs to offer something symbolically to the dead The effect was not tmt&ä&iA, but a particularly modern form of public memory that became a sacred exp?riínceř the purpose of which was no longer to marvel but io mourn (Laqueut 1994), These war memorials further reflected the rise of mass culture and democratization. Earlier war memorials* where they existed at all, had commemorated only officers and rapa! leaders. How each fallen soldier was commemorated by name, or at: least regiment^ in standardized Format without personalised inscriptions (o.g. Schwartz 1S*§2)T This was a form of official, public memoriaííZíStiofi thai was no longer unambiguously progressive. One purpose or the war memorial was to serve as the center of rituals or mourning which bind together the putative national community Ira a sense of collective wrong. But the silent, horror and pathos of World War í memorials* auch as Vimy Ridge near Arras in noííhem France, is open to various meanings. War grave commemoration has elided the unambiguous meaning of national sacrifice to admit to the possibility that this was meaning* less killing - emphasizing for example {ů$ at Vimy Ridge) the closeness of the German and Commonwealth lines,, separated year on year by a few meters Over (he years the landscape of the Western Front and the imagined landscape of sites rhae attracted travelers altered* The scenes of dfato and desimctioo m be found on the battlefields were^ as Lloyd says3 initially die centers of attraction for many travelers. When much, of the devastation and most of the wartime aspect of the battlefields was removed by reconstruction^ the travel objective shifted to the cemeteries and memorials built by die Allies, and the few staining battlefield sites. Increasingly for travelers she imagined landscape was _M_cpBNmcMaiotltt mD PQS1TOMUMBM perceived within the context oř í-h« • ■ * , , . „« r. . ^uLcxt ot the -war's wider meaning, which shifted be* tween, on the one band, concern tiW ,i« la j- . . i u j j - j _. W1,waj' «lat the horrors of War needed to be remem- bered and avoided to, on the otW * - - r . ľ , ŕ , T , , . "«lws An appreciation of the heroism and the sacrifices made. Lloyd shows how rh;. j;,CL u ««w»u diiu une -k»™ «: * ř i. i j *n"Mf tins dichotomy between two approaches to the ™nng of the landscape fcd to debate: did it sanity glorify cLy war or ™ * a ř^Z^^ the ^ ** fa *"*» » "* * *£ were confuted by a landscape ** denied ^ on, w ^ ^ d üs? rrou r ^^"^ *™ <* b^eid «^ in řhe i^s *as mat came so dominate bol h ehe a,-*,, i j i. • j ■ mm ^ -I»,«. ,11 j ™I„ uaJ alld rhe «nagined landscape during the 1920s and l?30s (Lloyd I99S- lOrWn t,, n L , , , , * „„„ . , j iw-l). It would be hard to aisue that the war TIT! C6meteIKS,'" Wird>- !**>& structures 'hat wm design «o < kto e . rm,or nafo«! K111mph wd lmsk ^ mťs horf Tfae ^ • ted. d.«asEsfu| a„d mappropr.a«, TJ,e commemorative knd^s I Wot|d War í were evoked ireauendy by Bri(ain.t interTOr peace bu, thesi Míní™ n0t ,7™"? «*»**»*"»«" consdomiy fei^ed t0 indicate mode« war's W,ty «W Waste (Heffernln 19^ A ^ J£l A debtor, of ř.cro,c death in pub|jc commemoriltion has been K . red by fallingmitary pamcpatum tate5 in most Westetn sodsties d ^ the technology,, of ma« death, which is no tarier labor-intensive. Mourning or Melancholia? We have stated to memorials en]bed within iandsc rf ; , d "(W-*« f process of n,^^,, k „^ ítt g Mríice Jf «aquttd historic wtogs. k may be öseW ,0 bear in mind Freud's diction betwffin mo™g - m^ory work t|,at »abl« .ecoftt.liaiior, ™h k» - alld SSrTSŕV h ÍS COn,in»*»y ««vlitad. b vital, imr^e, Md per- isssÄSÄsrr"iFreud WS4)- ^he,,r Ailj -j . "* "l" "' "vu «Ontlict in ihr gKKrcosiämurust world. Death ud saccule evok, powerful Iespons6s ^ .f fc Wit, í > ««M«ia that cantiot be expurgated. % have see« low th wrj, » which Mople member their P« are depenilalt a. that reknc.Bh.p to thelr «ra,„onityj uk ^^ of legirimarion, and tte "7;^ dKse- F"^'^«hs, memory^ «Wi, that úcmZ » ? rSub,«me (we «»hr mteractiotts with o*etS), it is amauI,d mwlá socai t*™ pomIS fruci as riraa(s and ^^ änd i( - sharrf ^ WOÍJEENltV, MfiMOEr, JUMD PQSTCOMMUNI5M 189 of irŕJiiories is associated with high levels of a(¥ec£) (Faezetal, I9?7i 153). These writers did not, hovrövec, address collective processes of communication (Conner-ion 198.9í 10)< Lyry (1998) has further shown how sfilf-identity and memory are redefined through the manipulation of personál and public photographic images, Bui {a& Lury also notes, 1?9S: 12) if is not the remembered so much as th< foigottei. that provides the key to "rewriting she soul--" Again, "rémŕňibering aňd forgetting are ,., locked together in a compiicated web as one group's enfran-chisenient requirťs anotheir's disenfranchisement** (Watson 1594:18). in partial-l&t, the notion of trauma provided the point ol entry into the "psychology of the soul* through which the forgotten could be therapeutically remembered (Hacking 1994). Commenting on Freuďs theory oi aggression, Alford {1.9?S: 71ft) argues that "■hatred is ego-structuring. It can define a self, connecting it to others, anchoring it in the world, which p.t the same time acting as a fortress. -. * Hatred creates history, a history that defines úvt self and provides if wish structure and meaning," Moreover, "loving recitarioň of harms suffered and revenge inflicted, constitutes fhe single most important* most comprehensible and most stable sense of identity.** If this argument is valid, then alongside the mannered interactions and civility; civilisation also shifts powerful and disturbing emotions aud experiences from the center of life to the periphery. In this process, public rituals and symbols of commemoration inscribe a collective narrative memory into individual life histories- Narrative emphasis on continuity and dfcvŕiGpinent leads to a unity of the self as a project with access to personal and collective memories. Tne connôCtioti Is made deafly in Russian between patnytjt' (memory) and psmyatnfk (monument), thus linking individual and collective levels of commemoration. Being a member of a national cammunicy often involves taking ownership of a public, historical narrative that typically'defines a degree of difference and sense of a nation beleaguered. In her interviews with survivors of the Latvian deportations of the 1940s, Vieda Skukans (1998) found that respondents often drew no temporaJ distinctions between the deaths of immediate family and historical events - such as rhe death of iNamijs, ä diirteentbcentury Latvian chieftain who resisted a German invasion. Personál loss is shaped by and is locared alongside teirtual memories adapted from sciiool history ůtiá literature lessons {Skultans 199& IS), Further terror does not necessarily destroy civilizatioiial values. Rather, witnesses to genocide say they cannot describe rhese experiences, and when they find their way inso narratives they arc no longer direct expressions of the past hut draw on Cultural resources to give the description? meaning (Skuitaus 1998: 22)7 An important contrast here lies in the way memcries are communicated and the dispositions to which coming so ferns with the past give ik$ - through mourning and memory-work or melancholia. One theme within the emergence of modern, post-tradisionai wotldviews has been what Habetroas (l9S9a: 335-7) calls the "Hnguistificatiofi of the sacred,* in vwhkh the *$pell*binditxg power of the sscred" is eroded by the collapse of binding worldvíews ! 90 MOO£RwTVr MEMCW, AND POSľCQMMWISM and by the argumentative functions of language. On a mote pratticai level, it is possible that open and reflexive discourse enables participants to confront the compiexitifiE and ambiguities of their identities and pasts in ways that diffuse violent emotions and effect reconciliation between antagonists. This at any rate is the idea behind practices of mediation and reparation and institutional processes such as the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. By contrast» many public coouncjnorative ceremonies close off any open or reflexive reconciliation of past grievances, Durkheim pointed out the extent to which sacred public rituals isaffiimed collective solidarity through commemorative rites that relive the mythical histoey of ancestors and sustain the vitality of bdieřs by rendering them present {Durkheim 1976: 37lff.f< One might imagine that modern values deny credence to die idea of life as a structure of celebrared recurrence, but actually eonnneinorarive rituals are dependent on calendrkal time that enables thč juxtaposition of profane time with the sacred return marked by anniversaries fCóitnerton 1.989: 64). Further, the sactfidness of public commemoration {such a$ Remembrance parades} \& dependent on a highly ritualized language in which stylized and stereotyped sequences of speech aces contrast with die lingpistification. of the sacred Commemorative speech does not admit any inteEtogatian of its discursive properties because its meanings are already coded in canonical monosemic forms fe.gh oaths, blessings, prayers, and liturgy) that bring into existence attitudes and emotions* Fot examplgj the words "they shall not grow old as we who are left gcow old" do not admit discssrsive iirceirogaiioft. listeners are not invited iq reflect ox* the benöfits of immortality within a putative national community, set against the cost of premature death on Ihe hattleSeid, The particular speech variant of commemorative and other public rituals is important because they therefore close off possibilities for the reflexive examination and juxtaposition of identities- A special but crucial case oř public commemoration is what Durkheim \l9?6z 404ff.J called ""sad celebrations," that is, piacular (expiatory, atoning) rites which fuse mourning and melancholy with sacrifice and violence, justifying Alford's "loving recitation of harms suffered and revenge inflicted." Their effect is to generate anger and the need to avenge the. dead and discharge collective pain, manifesting in real or ritual violence. Victims are sought Oöts-ide the group, especially among resident minorities "rsot protecied by sentiments of sympathy," and women, serve more frequently than men as objects of the crudest rites of mourning and as scapegoats. The context for piacular riEes is often a social crisis and she pressure to bear witness so sorrow, perplexity, pr-anger. Participant* imagine that outside are evil beings whose hostility can be appeased only by suffering. This piacuiar rites involve mourning, fasting* and weeping,, with obligations to slash or tear clothing and flesh, thereby restoring the group to the siate of unity preceding misfortune. The moce collective sentiments ase wouitKkd, as Dutkhrim syggeseed, the greater is the violence öf the response. MQDEflhiiTV; MEMQKtr, AND POSľCOMMUHISfct 191 Memory of Kosovo Polje Wt see something of this in the mobilization of Serbian national myths iu the late 1980s. Despite the efforts in pre- and postwar Yugoslavia to iashic-n a unified federal state, national counter-memories kept alive old hatreds in the papular consciousness, that were intensified by the experiences of war and occupation. In her account of travels in pcewai Yugoslavia, Rebecca We$t quotes her Serbian guide in "Old Serbia" {Kosovo) in the 1930s; We will stop at Gcacfcanitsa, the church ľ mid you of on the edge of Kosovo-Plain, bur 1 do not think you will understafsd it) because it is very persona! to «s Serbs, and that i& something you foreigners can never grasp. It is too difficult lor you, we are too rough and líto deep i&t yotir smoothness and your shallowness. (West 1982: 835} Naiionai identity is public (shared and reinforced through public affirmation and commemoration) yet private to the putative community of those who share the particular imagined historical memory. "Roughness* {Serbian suróvost* with connotations also of rodeo«» and brutality) is contrasted with the cosmopolitan superficiality of those who can never participate in the etbnic-cuteurai commit' nity. in this ca*e> where the traditional blessing for the newborn is ''Hail, little avenger of Kosovo' (Kaplan 199$: 38K one is born with the weight of unexpi-sfced desire for vengeance. From 1387 for two yearss Slobodan Milosevic had conducted a carefully orchestrated campaign of nationalist hysteria, focused on Kosovo bus widening gradually to confute up for Serb audiences an unholy alliance of Atbaniaas, . Slovenes, and Croats. Milosevic made the óOQeh attnivetsaify of the Sattle oí Kosovo in June 1989 the focal point of this "anti-biireaticfatic revolution* to displace political opponents within the Serbian ruling parry - especially Evan Stambohc (who was abducted and murdered in 2000). Milosevic's speech in june 19Ä9 invoked the "heroism" of 1389 in a theme of betrayal and lack of unity, linking the historic defeat at Kosovo, the German occupation in World War IIS and Serbia's weakness in the Yugoslav Fedemiffla. Now he claimed that Serbia was a victim or Albanian "fascists and secessionists* who threatened the Serbian nation -with "genocide." The nature of this ehíeat had been made dear in the 198É Serbian Memorandum, signed by 111 academics and artists complaining that the Albanians of Kosovo were pursuing a polity of "genocide" against Serbs. The thteoc of "genocide" was demographic - it claimed that the proportion or Serbs to Albanians in Kosovo -was rapidly declining - from 23 and $7 percent respectively in 1961 to 90 and 10 percent in "1991 {Serbian Academy of Atrs and Sciences 198tí). But this imagined threat of "genocide" tapped into and mobilized cultural memories of Serbian "sacrifice" and genocide in the past {Kamst 1991:185). , 92 MODíflNlTY, mtáORť, AND rOSTCOMtuHMSM A classically piacular ritual signaled die escalation of national mobilizations prior to the Yugoslavian civiJ war. This was the Serbian commemoration of the haitie or Kosovo Polje (Field of Black Birds) in 1389, where the last Serbian prince, LäzaĽ, was defeated by the Turkish Sultan Mural. Thai this defeat is celebrated in Serbian national narrative as a "holy and honorable sacrifice" illustrates an important point about national mythologies ~ defeats, because of their affective and sacrificial powej; may be more central than the "faked up glories and imagined pasts" of standard national rhetoric (Anderson 2^93), In Serbian legend the sacrifice of Lasar who (according to a Serbian poem) "chose a heavenly kingdom" was also 3 sacrifice for Christian Europe, allowing Italy and Germany eo survive. Tills became the cornerstone of modern Serbia's national mythology. The uprisings ai the beginning of the nineteenth century were represented as the revival of the Serbs' struggle against the Ottomans se the end of the fourteenth century, Through these poems and songs, modern Serbia claimed a vital continuity with a romanticised past as a means of underscoring its claims to disputed territory. Most of the songs contained starie moral messages (Qenny 1999i 11-12). Martyrdom became a theme in Serbian. propaganda, and the Serbian Net-wot k ía website maintained by tlie Serbian government) ckims that it would he wrong to claim that the defeat at Kosovo prevented Serb/a becoming a great nation. On the contrary *Jt was [defeat} chat made us a great nation, li is oujr Golgotha; but if is as the same time our moral resurrection" (-chirp:// www.srpska-mrcz3,cosn/>). As mentioned aboveT Milosevic made the 600th anniversary or the Eacde of Kosovo in June 19%9 the focal point or his "anti-bureau* crasic revolution." Demonstrations were organised throughout Serbia, Kosovo, and Vojvodina, which were among the opening moves in the war* The "coffin" {with the alleged remains of Lazar) toured every village in Serbia followed by huge black-clad crowds of wailing mourners. Serbian nationalists regard the autonomous province of Kosovo, with an Albanian-Islamic majority population, as . „ in the "heartland of our nation.* In the meadow of Gazimestan the monument to Lazar expresses vengeful sadness and defeat: Whosoever is a Stark and of Serbian birch And who do« noi coma to Kosovo PcSje to do battfe against the Turks Lst husi have neiiher a male noi a fetpsle offspring Lee him have no- ax>p. In cQitiemparary nationalise si'mbolism, "Albanians" in Kosovo and other Islamic minorities elsewhere in former Yugoslavia, especially Bosnia, have $ub° stituted for ^Tmks," In both the Serbian and Croatian national imaginations, the civil war was a replaying of ancient conflicts of west and east, European and Asiatic, "civilization*1 and "barbarism * The anniversary commemorations began the revolt against the Yugoslav Federation as nationalist violence triangulated throughout the country. The affect encoded in she Lazar memory informs contemporary discourses of violent MODERNnY. MEMORY, AMD POSTCOMMUřSSM 193 conflict. During the fighting in Kosovo early in 199% the Serbian Democratic Movement (nationalist and close to the Orthodox Church) claimed; 'We Serbs are a proud people who have endured throughout history — and srill our homeland suffers the agonies of wax. We respond with pride and courage. Never have we needed it more.... It is 3 courageous sacrifice. Before ehe Bsírie of Kosovo Prince Lazar told his gallant knights that it was better co die heroically than to live under Ehe enemy yoke. More than ever, we must hold Kosovy dear for all the world to see, for it is a sestamem to the courage of our people, {Serbia Information News^ March ly 1999} This and similar statements drew their meaning from the particular politics of memory in the Yugoslav Federation in which World War íl had been "memorized* through education and public discourse as a people's liberation war - a struggle of class rather than ethnic or national aspiration (Hoepken 1999). The language of socialism had not permitted an open discourse nor subjected Yugoslav history to unrestricted discussion. With the collapse of the Federation she Parry lost control of memory and secret histories of trauma and ethnic haired were opened np. Tliis coincided with a process of "recounting the dead" on all sides of the conflict prior ro the civil war. The history of German occupation and conflicts between the Croatian Ustastie and the Chetniks (Serbian partisans) had left largely suppressed historical memories of ma$$ slaughter. The collapse of Federal and communist rule wa$ accompanied by the uncovering of £$emi-} hidden massacres followed by new commemorative funerals, which provided a "supreme moment for transforming ritual into political theatre** {Hayden 1994: 172). Each subsequent antagonist in rhe civil war could mobilize die unexpiated trauma of suppressed memories. The communists were mass murderers {of Ustashas and Chetniks); the Croatian (fascist)' statu of 1941-5 was a murderer of Serbs; the Muslims were collaborators wirb Nazi genocide; while the new Croatian state under Tuöjman diminished che extent of Ustashe genocide, thus provoking further trauma-rage. All collective participants imagined themselves victims of unavenged historical wrongs that could be expiated only through the elimination of the enemy. The ensuing conflict took on the proportions of what René Girard (1?77J calls "violent contagion»" which was exterminatory and potentially unlimited. This arises, in his view, from an unresolved primal conflict. Mimetic desire to acquire the wholeness of die other (which is experienced, as a lack or incompleteness of oneself) leads to feud between incompatible rivals. By taking the other simultaneously as a model and obstacle they form "violent doubles" locked in mutual destruction- Violent doubles are characterized by incommensurable identities -to be X is to fear Y; to be Y is to rear X - locked in a feud in which 0115*3 enfranchisement requires another's disenfranchisemeat. This is resolved, temporarily, by sacrifice, where potentially violent doubles discharge miinetkally generated violence on to an arbitrary and innocent victim whom thsy scapegoat, by 194 MODĚRMtt MEM08V,ANDř05TCOMMUNlSM attributing to she- victim the violence they have just committed. The scapegoat mechanism establislies in-gmupfout-gĽoup differentiations that maintain the communities* structure and cohesion. This saxriřkial expulsion is the basis of all social order and ritual through which communities gain control over their violence. Myths bind communities aad symbolically discharge rage "while disguising the original sacrifice-murder. But a crisis in the social order» a sacrificial crisis,. can release the violent desires onos renounced. Tins is not the place for a detailed examination of this theory, which is dependent on a kind of Duikbeimian rewriting of Hegel's master-slave dialectic and makes too ubiquitous it claim to explain specific social conflicts. But it may illuminate the dynamics of bitter and intractable national conflicts in which both sides claim exclusive lights over identical social and territorial space» One excludes the othei; yet both share the same space and are destined to be en-emies, until the spiral of violent contagion can be broken» In the Yugoslav case, a patchwork of competing national identifies entered fields of struggle ovei incommensurable desires for national homelands. In a triadic pattern, minorities struggled with titular síätes for a national homeland thai was the goal of each» The Kcajiua Serbs* looking to incorporation in a Serbian homeland, resisted Croatia's nationalizing desire, while Milosevic insisted that Croatia could be independent only without Krajina. En Kosovo the Serbian minority, backed by the Seibäan army, resisted independence and the desire for unity with an Albanian homeland, as we have seen» The conflict in Bosnia was particularly exterminatory because it was a field of txutliiple doubles — Ser^CroaS, Islamic/ Serb., IslamicJOoat (Bmbaker 1995J, each struggling for incommensurable spaces. Our claim is that in order to understand this and similar ethnic conflicts we need to understand the processes of construction and mobilization of collective memory. The Kosovan conflict took place on a landscape of sacred territory, which was an object of mutttaliy exclusive desires for rectification of histotical wrongs» Both sides legitimated exterinbiasory desites with reference to historical memories. Kosovo was alternately the spiritual home of Serb Orthodoxy, marked by holy sites, monasteries, and forced evacuations, both following Prince Lasars- defeai and again led by Patriarch .Ar-sedje ill Camojevic in l£>90j or for teniufies populated predominantly by Albanians periodically subjected to Serbian genocide ^Ethnic cleansing" is not new to these landscapes-. In accounts from both sides» o&raraemoratiojns and ritual« demonstrate the loving recitation of harms suffered arid revenge inflicted. The- massacres and removals of Koso-vans by Serbs io 1999 had had many precedený such as th& expulsions of Albanians during the second Serbian-Ottoman war (i377-S).g Melancholia and grief, then* are of particular importance because they constitute the basis for the desire for vengeful justice. Grief and loss may prove to be significant in discourses authorizing violent actions. Unresolved grief does not allow accommodation or reconciliation but perpetuates stereotyped repetitions of thought and behavior. Further» state control and sanctification of national MODERNITY, MEMG&Y, AUO PQSTCOMMUMESM 195 rituals of remembering will both preclude open confrontation wiiÄ the past and encourage the formation of counteJMneniartes that likewise will not be discursively examined. In this way conflicts become intractable:, and an exterminatory violence results f tom friend/foe enmity in which the very/ presence of the other sustains yet threatens each identity. Nonetheless, we should note that fox both Durkfieim and Qrard (in different w'ays) piacular rites and mimetic scapegoats should operate to Goneaitt and limit violence. Bot they do not necessarily do so; on the contrary* they m&y act as catalysts and authorisations for further violence. In the examples cited above expiatory-sacrificial rituals were the prelude to violence that spilled out into communal desttactiveness^ Further, while the symbolic discharge of violence may serve to dissipate actual violence) the bc£de£ between the symbolic and the real is unstable, and under conditions of crisis the former may spili over into the latter.9 But whether violence is symbolically discharged (thereby being contained) or is real, is of critical importance» and we need to know how this line gets crossed. Rather than contain violence, the kinds or ritual memory discussed here generate an unstable process of national identity formation, which requites continual affirmation. National identity is not fixed or stable but is an unstable hybrid of conflicting passions, as "scraps, patches and rags of daily life mast be repeatedly turned into the signs of a national culture" {Bhabha 1995: 297). Maintaining a personal narrative that instantiates and affirms a collective memory continually suppresses tine irredeemably ptaral nature of modem identitjes-The more the mamtenance of a unisonant self is threatened by the presence of competing identities, the mote likely that inner conflicts will take the form of paranoid projections. PostcomíTĚUhísrrs m$ Collective Memory National memories are not only the repository of definable and stable groups. Rather, they are unstable and constructed as a hybrid of coiiBicting passions that are actively assembled into a narrative of "nationhood»* Attempting to maintain a personal narrative that instantiates and affirms & collective memory continually suppresses the irredeemably pluta! natisre of modern identities. The sources of modem ^identity" lie in multiple histories* media, and archives that are tsibject to revision, mobilisation, and reccnnbinasiön according to contemporary cttlustaj shifts and politics. In web-based archives, the linearity of text and narrative memory gives way to Ron-linearity in virtual time, offering multiple levels and entrances, simultaneous presence and virtual ^experiences" The public nature of archives changes with the proliferation of web-based archives that can be individually appropriated and consumed. Thus Smiths notion o( the enduring nature of national identities being to do with their cultural priority and depth' may already bt outdated. In a culture of "deöthlessness" and electronic archives, "memories.3* and identities can be constructed and. appropriated 196 MODERNITY, MEMORY, ANO P05TCQMMUN1SM individuaJisticaily widiin plural frames of interpretation. Against íhis background oř instability and reconstruction, nationalism k an allegory or irresolution, an expression of fear of (he transient nature or the nation (Ko&ket 1994). The postcomrcnini&E condition is one or increasing instability, with multiple forms of social identification and rethinking of a past that was often subject to official controls, in particular the collective memory of trauma, of counting tiie dead, and the construction of a narrative community with the dead,, can invest collective memories with a paihos that under cerrain circumstances legitimates expiatory violence. The Serbian case shows the potential for violent conflict following from the mobilizfttioD of cultural memories where these are the object of melancholic grief rather than memory-work. Various sides in the Yugoslavian civil war mobilised support among diasporic communities, particularly via the internet.10 A cnsdal factor in authorising violence, then, is the availability of languages of rationalisation and legitim a í ion, which draw on the affectively charged pathos oř collective loss. These may be inscribed into cultural memories in ritualized ways and therefore not be open to discursive examination, Iti response to social stress, such as state failure, piacular rituals expiate memories of collective injiiscice. These have the potential to spiral into a process of "disidenti-fication' between ethnic groups fcg. Serbs and Albanians), encouraged by campaigns to strengehen identifications within the population. The resulting "dysclvilmng" process gives rise to a society that is compartmentalized into areas where "peaceful" everyday life continues, and those, such as the camps, or the whole area of Kosovo, where extreme violence is perperrated against the targeted group. This is h'kdy ro be most severe where it involves unmediated mimetic conflicts between similar actors competing for an identical object, such as incompatible national homelands. These are extreme cases of routinized processes of commemoration and identity formation- Yet, at the same time, "memory* is becoming less officially and publicly jAAcrioiwd and more constructed and consumed in an individualized way. One consequence of this is die detachment of identity and pJace, as diasporic communities sustain national "belonging" via global systems of communication, In postcommtinism there are rhetorical battles for appropriation of representations and commemorations, whkh relate to wider issues, important among these is the way in whkh the heroic forms of commemoration associated with high modernity are increasingly underfninsd by more ambiguous manorial» and rituals of mourning. Postmodern and individualized forms of commemoration ate less stable and more contested as the media of ' commemoration are diversified ~ alongside public monumental spaces there are privatised and victual forms of memory and commenj oration. Á crucial issue for the formation of efril societies able to leam and mediate diversity, though, is its communicative structure. Whether ii takes the form of incantations of dosed quasi-sacred language, or of communicative communities able to subject identities iraid histories to reflexive examination will have crucial consequences for tíie We began this book with, the theme or ''being taken by surprise" by the fail of communism, and to open this concluding chapter it may be appropriate to review this and the other surprises of ths postcommunist transition« If ihe revolutions of 19S9 lacked a major theory, in the sense of an orienting doctrine, they have also not so far inspired fundamental retrospective theories such as Tocijutvilie provided for the French Revolution. There have been a number of interesting reflections, such as those by Dahrendorf (1990, 1997), Deppc et al. (1991), Beymc (1994), Futet (1995), Lěfort (1999), and Kumar {2G0l)s bur none of their authors would probably claim ro have drawn fundamental theoretical consequences from their analyses. Indeed, the theme of recuperation and return associated -with 1^89 by Habermas has proved to be applicable to postcoraiuunist social theory too -some of the major theoretical developments have involved return to issues and perspectives that had cotne to be sein as passé. The theory of civil society* for example, returned CO the cenier of debates about social integration and democratic constitutionalism along with cognate theories of social capital and networks. Another prime example is modernisation theory thatř although widely rejected hi the 1970s, has been defended by advocates such as Rostow and Upset as having been the oaly theory with a sufficiently large-scale grasp of social change to predict the end of comjnunism (Tiryakian 1991 J. At the samé time the end of communism has been "claimed" by many theories {e.g. postmodernism, globalization, reflexive modernization, complexity^ and neo-functionalism) as illustrating the view of social development they had had all along. Few theoretical developments, though» have attempted to conceptualize both the specificity of postcommunist configurations and how they instantia te yet challenge wider processes of social change. The revolutions of 1989 were relatively unexpected and took some fptlher unexpected direction«- We have already reföned to the relatively peaceful nature of the 1989 revolutions and of the po&t-29S9 scene in Europes with, of course» the tragic exception of Yugoslavia and the partial exception or Russia, The relative absence of violence could have been expeceed, in the • Radim Marada: "Social Construction of Youth and Formation of Generational Awareness after 1989" (in: Petr Mareš [ed.]: Soäety, Reproduction and Contemporary Challenges. Brno: Barrister & Principal, 2004, pp. 149-169) i i i i i i i i i i 120 I l I I I I I I I I I I I I I I 119 149 Radim Marada rimon to modem revolutions is the hopes they all invest in come. No matter what ideological direction a historical turn i in future generations is a reliable indicator of a revolution, elf provides a regime change with its proper historical a.kes using the word "revolution" possible and convincing. In rithout hope in new generations, there can hardly be talk of :rn sense, revolution does not mean simply an exchange he enactment of some institutional or legal amendments, Latic these may be. Revolution always entails an articulated ed for deep social and cultural transformation. Without 3 alter basic human conditions, we only have a reform or a revolutionary change requires more than just new slogans ional shuffling. It requires new people, as the revolutionary ;s, who have been socialized in the new environment and who Dredisposed to face its challenges appropriately. According to arf, in his reflections on the 1989 revolutions in East Central .es days, months, and perhaps years for politicians, lawyers,