1.6 - Krizan, Mojmir - «Civil Society» and the Modernization of Soviet Type Societies (EN)

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Civil Society and the Modernization of Soviet Type Societies

Civil Society and the Modernization of Soviet Type Societies

by Mojmir Krian

Source:

PRAXIS International (PRAXIS International), issue: 1 / 1987, pages: 90-110, on www.ceeol.com.
http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.dibido.eu/bookdetails.aspx?bookID=d1bdefd8-6d05-473d-baba-ef37a525117ahttp://www.ceeol.com/


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CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE MODERNIZATIONOF SOVIET TYPE SOCIETIES

by Mojmir Krian

Das grte Problem fr die Menschengattung, zu dessen Auflsung die Naturihn zwingt, ist die Erreichung einer allgemein das Recht verwaltenden brger-lichen Gesellschaft.Immanuel Kant: Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbrgerlicherAbsicht, 5. Satz.

Introduction

In the course of the decades after the systematic disillusionment concerningall varieties of existing socio-economic systems calling themselves socialist,the utopia of a unifield and harmonious society in the universe of thenormative socialist discourse has been abandoned. This was paralleled by therecognition of the unavoidability of divisions also in a, as yet nonexistent,socialist society, i.e. of the correctness of the thesis that differentiation of the

spheres of social life as well as those of their symbolic representations (spheresof discourse) are constitutive of the modern age. These developmentsmanifested themselves in the recognition of the necessity of some alienationand reification in the society and the acceptance of dichotomies such asstate/society, council democracy/parliamentary representation, elite/mass etc. The following discussion of the concept of civil society has to beseen in this context.

Ambiguities of the concept of civil society

History of the concept

Originally, civil society denoted a politically constituted community offree and equal men, founded on natural law (Aristotle1 and Stoa) orconstituted according to the theological prototype of the civitas dei2. Theseparation of civil society from the sphere of political power (state,sovereignty), characteristic of the modern age, is due to the necessity to solvetwo problems that became acute at its onset. One of them was the crumblingof all hitherto recognized institutions that guaranteed the integrity of societal

life, so that a secular institution invested with sovereign political power had tobe constituted for that purpose. The second was the recognition of the utmostsocial importance of economic activities and definition of a sphere in whichthese activities are protected from political interference. Henceforth civilsociety denotes the sphere of free (economic and other) interaction of equal


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Praxis International 91

citizens, who delegate the task of securing the cohesion of society to thepolitical sphere. To that extent the modern meaning of civil society isinseparable from the concept of privacy. It was primarily Marx critique of

capitalism and its identification with the existing forms of civil society (in itsmeaning of brgerliche Gesellschaft) that obscured the existence of as yetunexplored emancipatory potentialities of the concept. Correspondingly,Marxism-Leninism has accepted the notion of citizen in the sense ofpossessing the citizenship of a state and also the adjective civil in somereduced form but neither bourgeois society nor civil society in meaningstranscending the condemned capitalist relations of production.

Elements of civil society0

The concept of civil society, as developed during the last few centuries,implies several elements, the important of which are:

- The principle that all humans are free and equal persons;- The principle of legality, implying universally valid laws which define the

sphere of freedom of every individual;- Freedom to express ones own needs, interests and intentions and to try to

persuade others of the correctness of ones own views. The institutionalguarantee for this is the public sphere;

- Freedom to pursue ones own interests, in the frame of existing laws, alone

or together with others, i.e. freedom of coalition;- Recognition of frequently highly disparate interests of social groups andindividuals and institutionalization of mechanisms of their mediation;

- Existence of mechanisms which stabilize the relationship between civilsociety and the state and therefore offer to the society a certain amount ofsecurity from state penetration. These mechanisms can be formal or informal,include verbal influence, democratic election of representatives, forms ofself-government etc.

- Legally defined freedom of acqusition and disposal of property.Generally, and having in mind numerous historical transformations of the

meaning of the concept, it can be defined as the sphere of activityencompassing economic, political and cultural kinds of human behaviourfalling outside the field of the official, though sometimes sanctioned by theofficial.3

Disparate developmental potentialities of civil society

A synoptic analysis of the developmental potentialities contained in theenumerated elements of a civil society can easily show that they are not alwaysreconcilable. Agnes Heller writes in this connection of the internal logic

(dynamics) of the categories of a social system, which enables her to use thecategory of contradiction for incompatible social developments.4 It is notdifficult to discern several such potentialities:

- The principle of individuation, the modern manifestation of what Kantcalled unsocial sociability of men threatens the ultimate victory of the

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Praxis International92

unsocial, unless checked by the principle of legality which takes care ofconservation of at least formalized social relationships;

- The principle of free public communication and coalition promises the

homogenization of society based on rational discourse in the search forconsensus and compromise. Such discourse is compatible only with democra-tic mechanisms of influencing the political sovereign;

- Personal autonomy and freedom of property can, in the economic sphere,result in free exchange of commodities, including labor power and money. Thecompetition on the market, especially in combination with the industrial wayof production, stimulates economic and, in its consequence, social differenti-ation, i.e. formation of social classes, primarily those of the rich, educated andpowerful vs. the poor, uneducated and powerless. In the sphere of hier-archically organized industrial production, there is no formal equality of thecapital owners and the wage earners.

The disparateness (contradiction) of these potentialities is easily seen: (1)the unlimited individuation vs. the unification and homogenization throughdiscourse, (2) this unification vs. the reckless competition on the market, (3)the formation of social classes implying different life chances vs. the principleof equality, (4) hierarchy and specialization in industrial production vs. therequirements implied in democratic publicity and plurality etc. are irreconcil-able with each other.

Solutions of the problem of disparate tendenciesThese practical and theoretical difficulties motivated social thinkers to look

for solutions for some or all of the above mentioned incompatibilities.Generally, the theoretical constructions they offered tended in two directions.One was to give priority to individualism and free exchange on the market andfind ways by which members of society can secure their economic and otherindependence. This liberal socio-economic structure has been combined withpolitical systems ranging from absolute monarchy to anarchy. Alterna-tively, priority has been given to the harmonization of social relations, having

in mind their inextricability, i.e. the untenability of the liberal construction.Here the principal theoretical quest was concerned with methods of prevent-ion and mechanisms of solution of social conflicts. The proposals for solutionranged from Campanellas La Citta del Sole, to Rousseaus volontgnrale and Marxs communist utopia to the electronic-age-idea ofincorporating society into an encompassing, computerized feed-back system ofobservation of behaviour for the purpose of preventive control and eliminationof crime and deviance.5

As can easily be seen, in both cases the solution of the tensions of civilsociety is identical with its abolition as a sphere structurally and institutionally

opposed to the state. In the first case, something like Adam Smiths invisiblehand, steering the system of perfect liberty, reduces the state to the functionof a night watchman or, if human rationality is judged rather optimistically,makes it entirely superfluous. As a result, civil society as a structureseparated from the state makes no more sense. In the second case, the


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conceptual and institutional differentiation between civil society and statedisappears in the all-encompassing unity of a harmonious and self-transparentsocietal organization.

Capitalism as a contradictory system in the above sense

Parliamentary democracy combined with capitalist economy and an indus-trial mode of production constitute a socio-economic system in which thecontradictions of civil society have not been solved. Moreover, it can

justifiably be maintained that the dynamics of capitalist societies is dueprecisely to these contradictions: to the striving for individual success andreadiness to compete on the market, to the freedom of disposition of capitaland its ability to expand by exploitation of the labor force, to the democraticpolitical structure enabling the citizens to elect and control the ruling elites, tothe public discourse forcing its participants to rationalize their arguments andbehaviour etc. Still, many social critics did not consider the overwhelmingsuccess of capitalism as a social benefit which compensates for shortcomingslike unjust distribution of material and cultural wealth, deprivation of menfrom the development of their many-sided capabilities etc. Among them, themost important was Karl Marx.

Marx and Marxism-Leninism

Marx critique of civil society and capitalism

Marxs critique of existing forms of civil society (brgerliche Gesellschaft)and capitalist economy is undoubtedly normatively and methodologicallyanchored in the Enlightenment.6 The highest value and formal method-ological principle of the enlightenment is human reason. Relying on philo-sophy as the highest form of national activity, Marx dedicated hislife-work to the search for the answer to the question of how reason could beimplemented into human society and for the proof that such a development

will indeed occur. He saw correctly that the historical context of the genesis ofthe normative impetus of reason, namely the economic interest of theexpanding bourgeois class, does not imply the limitation of the emancipativepotentialities of the enlightenment to the protection of these interests, asoccured in reality in capitalist societies, but, on the contrary, requires such aselection of the elements of enlightenment, which would transform the societyto a locus of human emancipation.

Interpretations of the universality claims of reason

The enlighted reason pretends to be universalizable; thus, it claimsuniversalization in the society. Universalization means that to all persons areascribed the ability of rational thinking, and that all objects of that thinkingare supposed to be accessible to reason. This universality claim can beinterpreted in two ways. The first possible interpretation is a holistic one: it


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optimistically postulates the ability of reason to penetrate all its objects, toform its knowledge into a totality, and to let all thinking individualsparticipate in that totality, thereby harmonizing their behaviour and

constituting a conflictless society. The second interpretation is a pluralisticone. It sees the contradictory results of the efforts of humanity to understandits world not as a transitory stage of (scientific) development, but as animmanent characteristics (or shortcoming) of human thinking. Beyond it, andas a consequence, it recognizes the possibility and even unavoidability ofdisharmony in the thinking of different individuals, which nonetheless has tobe recognized as rational.

Consequences of Marx adoption of the holistic concept of reason.

Unfortunately, due to his hegelianism and enlightenment optimism, Marxadopted the first interpretation of the universality claim of reason as thenormative standpoint of his critique. Moreover, being also here a Hegelian, hegave to his theory the structure of a philosophy of history. So it suggesteda to a large extent predetermined course of history towards communism,whose harmony and self-transparency are due to the rationality ofthinking and acting of all members of society. In communism, all conflicts anddivisions would be abolished; the most important of them Marx saw in thedivision between state and civil society and in the alienation of the egoistic

bourgeois individuals from each other as a consequence of the privateproperty in the means of production. The abolishment of private propertythrough the conquest of political power by the proletariat as the executor ofthe historical project of bringing about communism (dictatorship of theproletariat) appeared therefore as a sufficient condition for the solution of allsocial conflicts and abolishment of all injustice. His thinking along the schemebase/superstructure stimulated his conviction that the abolition of capitalistrelationships in the economic sphere is a sufficient condition for the harmoni-zation of all social relationships. Identifying capitalism with alienation andinjustice and looking forward to communist revolution as a kind of epochal

catharsis, he failed to positively account for the emancipatory elements andpotentialities in both the existing forms of civil society and even capitalisteconomy and the theoretical contents of the concept itself. His goal was thehuman society in which there are no classes, no market and correspondingalienated contractual relationships, and in which material and culturalabundance bring about the harmonious social structure in which the freedevelopment of each individual is the condition for free development of all.7

Thus, the floor was open for the subsequent ideologization of Marx theoriesinto what was later called Marxism-Leninism.

MarxismLeninism

Among the various theoretical approaches towards the so-called realexisting socialism, modernization theory can claim the highest degree ofplausibility. According to it, Marxism-Leninism is a political ideology whose


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historical function is the liberation of Russia from its, at least economicallyand culturally, semi-colonial status and the search of an independent way ofmodernization. Marx theories, beside many other potentials for ideologiz-

ation due to a number of inconsistencies and simplifications, offered twoelements which made them very attractive in view of such a project: theradical critique of capitalism which seemed to justify the rejection of all itssocial insitutions with the exception of industrialism, and the eschatologicalpromise that if all elements of bourgeois society are annihilated, economicdevelopment in the form of industrialization will be a sufficient condition forthe realization of communist society. In last analysis the hope of thebolsheviks was that the elimination of the existing culture and instit-utionalized social relationships determining the alienated existence of man willmake the way free for the unfolding of his essence, his hitherto hiddenpotentialities of altruism, rationality, solidarity, creativity, striving for socialharmony, extreme learning capabilities etc.8

Very soon after the October revolution it became clear that the destructionnot only of capitalist economy, but also of all alienated institutions of civilsociety did not result in the expected preestablished harmony of communistsociety. However, both the utopian communist project and the interest toexert uncontrolled revolutionary power over a society largely resting onpremodern traditions, prevented the bolsheviks from making a step backgreater than the one made by Lenin when he introduced the New Economic

Policy. Communism promised a de-differentiation, because Marx identifieddifferentiation with alienation. The Bolsheviks succeeded in shaking upexisting social structures at immense economic and human costs, and toestablish new differentiations and hierarchies. De-differentiation impliesde-institutionalization. The Bolsheviks destroyed the existing institutionsbased on tradition and law and tried to establish social relationships on thelevel of the life-world of the members of society. The result was aninconsistent, disfunctional and spontaneous institutionalization, lacking legalguarantees and allowing the build-up of a totalitarian control over society.De-differentiation, as seen by the Bolsheviks, also implied the elimination of

all spheres of free public discourse and the unquestionable domination of theonly true ideology the extant version of Marxism-Leninism. Marx specu-lated on a proletarian party, the communists being its vanguard part. Alreadyin 1902 Lenin developed the theory of a party declaring itself to be a vanguardof the proletariat and at the same time declaring the proletariat to have, atbest, a trade-unionist consciousness, being unable to understand the historicalproject of communism and therefore being obliged to accept the leading roleof the party. With that theorem, Lenin in reality gave up the universalityclaim of reason as postulated by the enlightenment. The binding of reason to afuture state of society, radically opposing the present one, limits the attribute

of rationality only to the representatives of this future in the present anddeclares the majority of the population to be unable to exercise autonomousrational thinking. The result of all these revolutionary transformations wasthat direct political power was left in the hands of a single party paralysing allinitiatives of society, henceforth degraded to an irrational object of manipulation.


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Relevance of civil society for soviet type societies

The political history of Russia and some other East European countries

facilitated the implementation of a MarxistLeninist order of rule: thetraditionally strong state tended itself to promote modernization, confrontedby the nonexistence of free towns, the weak bourgeoisie and a permanenteconomic and military pressure from the West. Except in a few cases and forshort periods of time, society did not succeed to delimit itself from the state.In some cases, the resistance to the one-party-rule turned out to be a processof learning about the possibilities of gradual emancipation from the (post-)totalitarian state, especially about the emancipatory potential of civil society.9

A number of reasons, accelerating this learning process, particularly in thecase of critical intellectuals and some strata of the workers, can be quoted:

Political reasons

- In the political realm, it was primarily Stalinist terror with his show trials,extermination politics, near-extinction of cultural life and reduction of the

workers to slaves of the state which pointed to the importance of legallimitation of the power of the state. In contrast to the USSR, the stalinistperiod in Eastern Europe was too short to successfully eliminate all elementsof and knowledge about civil society. This allowed a reconstitution of acrippled civil society during the thaw-period.

- The soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 demonstrated the futility ofhopes for a reform from above, which arose in the 50s during the period ofthaw.

- The period of detente, the strengthening of Eurocommunism and theresults of the Helsinki conference 19731975 awakened new hopes andstimulated discussion on the relation of human rights and socialism and on thecompatibility of Marxism-Leninism with institutions compatible with theserights.10 The arguments in this discussion were located between the emphaticdefense of the ideality of Marx communist utopia and a strict denial ofreconcilabilty of human rights with Marx critique of bourgeois society.11

Taking into account the experience of recent years, this discussion resulted inthe conclusion that a tendentially totalitarian political power not only willnever grant human rights to the population on the basis of a humanisticallymotivated free decision, but, beyond that, that these rights cannot be realizedin the frame of the existing one-party-systems without the institutionalizationof civil society, i.e. its strict institutional separation from the party-state,

which amounts to an institutionally guaranteed detotalitarization.- On the other hand, it was clear that the state as the central integrative

institution was necessary, and that the one-party-rule in East Europeancountries cannot be changed as long as the Soviet Union is not ready to

tolerate such a change. The task was then to conceive a political structure inwhich foreign policy and the executive function remain in the hands of theparty-state, and a sphere of freedom institutionalized apart from it.

- The tendency of militarization of one-party-rule, e.g. Poland andRomania, that is, the readiness to openly rely on the disposable means of


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military violence to preserve the power of the ruling group, can in aconservative and deideologized period enlarge the space for the detotalitariz-ation of power as well. In such a case, several reasons for conservation of the

totalitarian character of the power of the state lose their importance, e.g.:revolution from above, mobilization of the masses for an accelerated indus-trialization, political penetration of the economy in order to secure anon-military form of domination etc.

- The Polish experience of 1980/81, where the first social organizationindependent of the one-party-state immediately was transformed into anorganizational base comprising nearly the whole society trying to limit stateinfluence and constitute a sphere for autonomous social activities. As Baumanhas noted: the historical novelty of Polish events consists perhaps above all inthe fact that for the first time a process leading from an absolutist state to theseparation of civil society from the state is both carried out and led by the

workers.12

Socio-cultural reasons

- On the socio-cultural level attention was focused on the system of privilegesthat developed in favor of the new ruling group. The association withpremodern societies came to mind. In these, political and economic power

were not separated, so that economic decisions were always dependent on

political considerations, and thus the possibility for economic activity as wellas the sharing of social wealth were a political privilege. Bourgeois revolutionsliberated the economy from direct political intervention and legalized civilsociety as the sphere of competition of free and equal economic subjects. Thereoccurence, in soviet type societies, of the dependence of the economy onpolitics and the corresponding system of privileges could not but reactualizethe same old questions and, in the first approximation, suggest the old liberalanswers to them, stressing the importance of the institutionalization of a civilsociety

- The tendentially totalitarian pressure on the population to adapt its

behaviour to the requirements of the ruling group resulted not in itsatomization, but in a withdrawal of identification and life energy from theofficial institutions and defense of a private sphere of freedom (family,friends), in which cultural identity is preserved and some non-alienatedeconomic activities are possible. This reduced private civil society turnedout to be the social base of the constitution of free trade unions in Poland thesocial ties did not have to be reconstituted, but only more complex socialstructures reestablished on the base of the existing elementary ones.13

- Because of the attempts to destroy traditional culture, the population ofEastern Europe turns to traditional foci of identity like nation, religion,

family. On the other hand, partly as a reaction to the neurotic relationship ofthe ruling party to the West, it is fascinated by modern western culture notonly in the realm of consumer goods, but also concerning its social dynamics.

This conflict of tradition and modernity can be, if not solved, at leastmitigated only in the frame of a modern civil society.


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- The modern requirement of rationalization of social life, implying thesolution of its conflicts and constitution of new forms of social integration,could be fulfilled only by giving to the society a higher degree of autonomy

versus both the state and the economy. Moreover, the historical experiencewith monism and dedifferentiation, and deinstitutionalization as their conse-quence, have even promoted the understanding of the advantages ofimpersonal, i.e. alienated institutions and mechanisms, e.g. of the free marketas a central institution of civil society: their equitableness and universalityexclude privilege, as a form of personal and/or particular relationship.

- The expanding corruption is a fundamental mechanism that allows for asphere of freedom incompatible with the totalitarian principle. It enables thebribers, potentially (if not actually) the whole population, to buy someindependence from the ruling oligarchy. At the same time the bribedaccumulate wealth, which makes them more independent from the corpora-tive structure of the ruling group. Not clearly separable from the system ofcorruption are the black market and the second economy as a genuinelyeconomic phenomenon enabling a large fraction of the population to a free,albeit illegal and permanentaly threatened form of economic activity.14

Economic reasons

- Economic considerations point to the same direction. The hitherto

dominant so called extensive industrialization has reached its limits,especially in the fact of the accelerated technological development of westerncapitalism. In all East European countries there is a decline or stagnation ineconomic efficiency, necessitating experiments of implementation of neweconomic mechanisms. Their aim is to stimulate economically relevantinitiatives from below without allowing the development of an autonomy ofsociety threatening the power monopoly of the party. It has not yet beengenerally realized that this can be achieved only by defining a protectedsphere where such initiatives can develop free from political interference i.e. by the institutionalization of a state-free sphere at least in the economic

realm.15

Consequences of the learning process

The process of learning due to the enumerated experiences and insights wasaccompanied, in intellectual circles, by the gradual abandonment first ofMarxism-Leninism, second of hopes in the ability of the ruling communistparties to implement reforms which would make life in East Europeancountries at least as attractive as that in western capitalism (in Poland thesehopes were bound to the idea of revisionism; in Chechoslovakia to

socialism with a human face; in Hungary, Kadarism is still not consideredto be a hopeless case), and third of classical Marxism and its allegedlynon-ideological interpretations.16 In other words, East European intellectualshave realized that the normative content of the enlightenment goes beyond notonly the ideological project of Marxism-Leninism, but also excludes the


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marxism monistic idea of Aufhebung of all contradictions of a non-traditional society in the harmonious and transparent communism.

The majority of the population, not having at their disposal the intellectual

instruments of comprehension of the authoritarian political system anddisillusioning social reality, preferred to withdraw from public life, to buy anondisturbed private one of moderate welfare by formal participation in theprescribed political rituals, and, to some extent, to accept cultural regressionin the forms of partial disintegration of personality and reduction of theconceptual and semantic competence, especially as far as political questionsare concerned.17

The problem of a socialist civil society

Reasons of preference of a socialist civil societyThe requirement for the implementation of some form of civil society in

soviet type societies originated from circles with different foci of identifica-tion: religious, nationalist of various colours, emphatically bourgeois, neo-and post-marxist etc. The majority of them had nevertheless one thing incommon: the concept of civil society they had in mind was not the traditionalone, as developed in bourgeois societies. There are several reasons why thislatter concept is unacceptable for East Europe:

- The conflicting developmental potentialities contained in the different

elements of the traditional concept, once they have been theoreticallyrecognized, have to be eliminated before a new attempt of social implement-ation of civil society is made.

- A large number of oppositional intellectuals, stemming from a marxisttradition, felt that socialism as a regulative idea should not be abandoned inspite of the disillusionment with both Marxism-Leninism and classicalmarxism.

- Important elements of the experience of the working populations in soviettype societies have been a social security and employment guaranteed by thestate and no personal property of means of production in conjunction with

latent possibilities of implementation of elements of self-government. Areturn of capitalist relations of production was therefore not very attractive.The historical experience of the Solidarity-movement in Poland is anexample where the workers wanted at the same time to avoid questioning ofthe socialist character of the system to result from the intended compromise

with the political power, and to define a sphere of freedom for citizens asidefrom that power.

Conclusion: necessity of a socialist civil society

Therefore, the reconstruction of civil society in soviet type societiesbecomes an original project: it requires not only the political effort to reducethe sphere of influence of the party-state, but also a theoretical effort toconceive what might be called the socialist civil society in opposition tothe traditional one, which promotes the development of capitalist relations of


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production, and which therefore may be called bourgeois civil society. Thesolution of these theoretical and practical problems would then be relevant notonly for the East, but for the West as well.

Genesis of the concept

Theoretical thinking about the problem of conceptualization of civil societyaside from the capitalist mode of production was stimulated by the events inPoland 1980/81. In that context, the difference in connotations between civilsociety and its german translation, brgerliche Gesellschaft has beenthematized. The marxist critique of capitalism changed the original meaningof the latter. Increasingly, the centre of gravity of its meaning became thecapitalist mode of production, i.e. it denoted either the political and economicconstitution of western capitalism or civil society including the freedom ofcapitalist property. In english, this meaning is carried by the concept ofbourgeois society. The proposal was to transpose this difference into thegerman discourse by introducing Zivilgesellschaft as a concept equivalent tocivil society and not semantically bound to a capitalist economy.18 Howeveruseful, this differentiation is not satisfactory becasue the two concepts are notexclusive of each other. Therefore the concept of a post-bourgeois civilsociety was proposed, i.e. a civil society whose integrating institutions arenot derived primarily from the interest of the citizens in economic freedom in

the sense of capitalist enterprise, but based on the priority of non-materialistvalues.19 Explicitly, socialist and pluralist civil society is mentioned in J.Cohens analysis of the status of the concept of civil society in Marxian criticaltheory.20

Definition of socialist civil society

In relation to these attempts of conceptualization the question ariseswhether post-bourgeois in this context can be identified with socialist andpluralist. Apparently not, because a post-materialist attitude towards the

sphere of production is compatible with extreme individualism and nar-cissism, combined with difficulties of communication beyond the limit of aninstitutionalized rational discourse a phenomenon very well known in therich societies of the capitalist West. On the other hand, the term socialism,however negatively burdened by the historical experience of the real existingsocialism, is inseparable from the idea of solidarity of the members of societyand of their association in various kinds of communities, excluding egoismand narcissism, especially in those located beyond the economic sphere. Insocialism, the free and creative unfolding of the capabilities of everyindividual is the condition for material and cultural nourishing of all, and the

members of a socialist society know that the other human being is the highestbeing and the only one providing a sense to their lives. This can be consideredas the differentia specifica of the socialist civil society as one possiblecategory of post-bourgeois civil society, the latter including other alterna-tives too. Then, socialist civil society would be charactarized by institutions


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and values of a post-materialist kind promoting diverse forms of solidarycommunities, including enough free space outside of the (legal) institutionsfor spontaneous forms of communal life.

Theoretical and practical problems

The formulation of the differentia specifica of a concept does not imply thatall connected theoretical and practical problems are solved. In the case of thesocialist civil society they seem to be especially numerous. Some of themare:

- In the political realm, the criteria of division between the state and civilsociety have to be reformulated and corresponding new institutions imple-mented. The experience with the tendency of real existing socialism toetatize the whole society suggests that the sphere of direct political influenceshould be defined rather restrictively and that the institutional delimitationsshould be made clearly recognizable. The state certainly has to offer theinstitutional frame of mediation of those conflicting interests which could notbe mediated on the level of pluralist institutions of society, to include centralrepresentative institutions (parliament) in which universally valid laws can bediscussed and voted for, to guarantee the constitution and the observation ofthese laws, i.e. to dispose of the means of coercion, to be the carrier of socialpolicy, i.e. to offer protection to socially and economically threatened persons

and to steer the economy. On the other hand , members of society have to befree to constitute associations based on diverse particular interests, organiz-ations which represent these interests towards the rest of society, i.e. politicalparties on local and global levels, and communities based on particular valuesand life-styles which more or less strongly delimit themselves from other suchgroups, nonetheless staying in the frame of the universally valid laws andthose values, which constitute the consensual basis of the integrity of thesociety.21 Also, freedom of economic activity has to be guaranteed, includingproduction for the market by individuals and groups and even the free choiceof the status of a dependent, entirely heteronomous worker.22

Institutional mediation of state and society

- Beside the clear delimitation of competences and spheres of influence ofstate and society, the question of the institutional form of representation ofsociety on the state level has to be solved. The main principle here has to bethat single individuals and those institutionalized groups which are of centralimportance for the constitution of social identity of their members have to berepresented. Of course, preceding the institutionalization, a general consensuson the question of which groups offer such central foci of identity has to be

reached. It is reasonable to presume that the form of representation willdepend on the interests represented and on the size and inner structure of thegroups. For example, single individuals and nations as nonorganized groupscan be represented only through free elections of representatives with a freemandate. On the other hand, territorial political organizations of a smaller size


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and economic enterprises can be represented by delegates who are, at leastpartially, subject to the imperative mandate.23 Also, some mechanisms forrepresentation of minorities have be found and institutional safeguards of

tolerance implemented. After some sort of basic consensus and democraticconstitution have been established, the optimum combination of representa-tive and council elements has to be found by trial and error. Because of lack ofexperience, the present discussion on this subject is highly controversial.24

Prevention of concentration of economic power

- In the economic sphere, some combination of market and planning will beunavoidable: planning on the level of single enterprises, market mechanismsdefining the conditions of exchange among them, and indicative centralplanning on the state level, implemented only by indirect means of economicpolicy, i.e. by changing only the marginal conditions of the market exchange.

The as yet unsolved problem is the simultaneous effectiveness of mechanismsguaranteeing economic efficiency as necessary condition for social welfare andthose preventing the constitution of centers of economic power and itspossible consequences: domination of their particularistic interest in stateorganizations and possible reconstitution of capitalism. Its solution canprobably be approached by accepting a relatively low level of unemploymentcombined with a progressive income taxing and predominance of represent-

ation of the weaker, i.e. middle and low social strata in the political sphere.

Problem of ownership and economic reproduction

- New solutions of the property question will have to be looked for if bothcapitalist and marxist-leninist relations of production are to be avoided. Atfirst glance it seems easy to replace state ownership of all means of productionby group ownership by declaring the working collectives as owners of theirfactories. As the case of Yugoslavia shows, the attempt to legally define acouncil system can encounter unsurmountable obstacles if the concept of

ownership is not clarified beforehand. Present attempts in the Sovjet bloc toretain the concept of state ownership and define the members of theenterprises as collective managers of state property are not promising as longas the problem of stimulation of extended economic reproduction is notsolved. In other words, the concept of ownership (or of the disposition of themeans of production) has to be redefined in such a way that efficientproduction and rational reproduction of the means of production is secured. Itseems that best results are reached if investment decisions are made by factorymanagements because they are directly involved in production and marketing.

The problem of prevention of concentration of wealth and power in the hands

of a minority could possibly be solved by defining the members as formalowners of the means of production which they use, enabling them to act asemployers towards new employees with the restriction that these have to bepaid the same salaries and, after they have worked in the same factory for adefined period of time, obtain the same rights of ownership as the old


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members of the enterprise. Leaving the collective would thus be connected withresponsibilities of a capital owner: leaving the collective in situations wherethe work of the departing member is needed would be possible only under the

condition that the corresponding share in capital is not paid out, because suchsituations usually correspond to phases of prosperity and the capitalobjectified in means of production is not arbitrarily divisible. Conversely, if acollective wanted to get rid of one of its members, it would have obligationstoward him which go beyond the obligation of paying him his share ofcommon capital.25

Plurality of subcultures and communities

- It is imaginable that even the proposed changes of relations in theeconomic sphere would not eliminate mechanisms promoting the formation ofsocial classes. In order to prevent their domination, social structures andinstitutions are required which further the constitution of social relations andcommunities across the (potential) class limits. One of them is culturalpluralism; its central value is openness for cultural or, more precisely,subcultural differences, the ability to realize that they arise along qualitativelydifferent variables, and that each of these variables can serve as a base for theconstitution of communities. From this perspective class cleavages appear

partly as a result of a behaviour whose ideal presupposition is that the societyis divided into several classes clearly delimited along almost all of the relevant

variables. Secondly, pluralism as value is inseparable from tolerance and amoderate cultural relativism. These, again, are conditions for the readiness toaccept other (sub)cultures and to communicate and get acquainted with them,find the similarities and differences, advantages and disadvantages, to imple-ment corrections and look for new syntheses, in short, to assure what may becalled a dynamic interaction and development of culture(s).

Public sphere

- The norm of plurality is closely linked to the topic of public sphere. It hasto be institutionalized, besides the mechanisms of political representation andthe executive apparatus of the state, as a medium for direct and impersonalhorizontal and vertical communication. Due to the existence of mass media,primarily television, which are at present suitable primarily for a one-waycommunication from the centre to the periphery which excludes dialogue, thereconstruction of the public sphere should concentrate primarily on the

promotion of horizontal communication among different groups of society.Yet even mass media can play an important positive role in the process offormation of a democratic political culture if they are not used only forpropaganda but give some insights into the political process and therebyreduce its arcane character.


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Justice

It goes without saying that a socialist civil society can be instituted and

upheld only in connection with an independent judiciary and a modern systemof law. In this area a civil law has to be developed with the centre of gravity inthe social, and not in the economic sphere.

Definition of the role of the party

A specific problem of all soviet type societies is the political method ofconfining the ruling partys influence and the redefinition of its political statusand function. As Polish experience has shown, even after its total delegitim-ation and destruction of mechanisms of active implementation of policies, the

ruling group is ready to obstruct all attempts to reform existing institutionsand power relations if it fears that its power and privileges could be seriouslyimpeded. East European reformist movements, intending to reconstruct civilsociety, have therefore not only to define their own claims, but at the sametime shape the functions and the range of power of the party apparatus in sucha way that it can be accepted both by the big brother in Moscow and by thelocal Nomenklatura. Evidently this will include external policies, executivefunctions, ideology production and some sort of veto-right as far as therestoration of capitalist relationships in the economy is concerned.

The problem of council democracy

The topic of a socialist civil society cannot be discussed withoutmentioning the theories of council democracy. From the standpoint oftheoretical interest of this article, the most important question concerning thisform of democracy is the institutional extension of the council system. If it isconfined to relatively small groups mediated by the market in the economicsphere, by publicity and various forms of interaction and association in thesocio-cultural, and representative state institutions in the political sphere, no

problems must arise and self-management can be welcomed as a veryimportant form of democracy. Things appear to be entirely different if allspheres of social life have to be mediated and integrated by the same principleof council democracy, including several levels and several intertwined hier-archies of councils, interconnected by the principle of delegation, thedelegates being subject to the imperative mandate, and excluding suchalienated mechanisms as the market and political parties. Here a number ofimportant objections can be formulated:

Complexity and intransparency of the system

An encompassing system of councils becomes too complicated because of itsmultiple horizontal and vertical divisions. In the vertical dimension, severallevels of delegation are necessary between the bottom and the top of thehierarchy. The effective democratic influence of the population on the peak of


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the pyramid becomes thereby virtually impossible. Moreover, several suchpyramids can turn out to be necessary, each for a different type of interest.Hierarchies are imaginable around the interests of production, around those

of consumption, some territorially bound interests, education, justice etc. Thehorizontal communication among them then also becomes almost impossible.

The reaction can be only the tendency to evade the legal institutions andprocedures and replace them by unofficial ones resulting in the totalopaqueness of the process of decision-making.

Centrifugal tendencies

The monism of such a council system is founded on the premise that theacting of all participants is guided by the norm of searching for the common orgeneral interest and trying to implement it. A more realistic supposition is thatin each individual there is a conflict between the general and his particularinterest. Bourgeois political theory takes this into account by differentiatingbetween bourgeois and citoyen and by requiring separate institutionalizationof the political and the social sphere. Lacking these two spheres, actors in amonistic self-management system are in a permanent dilemma whether to actas bourgeois or as citoyen. It is not surprising to find that they give priority totheir particular interests. This is especially true when conditions of materialscarcity are dominant. The council system then becomes a locus of centrifugal

tendencies requiring additional institutions for social integration.

Personal privileges

The system of personal relations and unofficial decision-making tendsto be distorted into a system of privileges and corruption compared to

which the injustices due to the alienated mechanisms of the market appearquite moderate. Thus, this kind of distortion, made possible by anonalienated power structure based on personal and other informal rela-tionships, makes evident the advantages of such alienated systems as for

example a (relatively) free market or an independent judiciary: they are justin the sense that their laws and mechanisms are impersonally applied, i.e.are universalistic.

Constitution of oligarchies

In modern complex societies it is virtually impossible to eliminatebureaucratic administration. Even under optimal conditions broadlyeducated population, its participation in self-management, institutionalizedmechanisms for prevention of constitution of hierarchies of power and

privilege (like rotation of offices and salaries not exceeding the average) thesystem is not immunised against Michels famous iron law of oligarchy,especially on the informal level. Moreover, the unofficial lines of decision-making and the centrifugal tendencies will favour the uncontrolled extensionof central political power into all spheres of social life. The danger then arises


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that the society is etatised, or even a totalitarian role established, rather thanthe state reintegrated into the society.

Division of powers

The interpretation of the institution of the division of powers as asuperfluous relic of the revolutionary struggle of the new bourgeois classagainst the feudal order fails to realize that checks and balances are a veryefficient means to control and confine central power.

Political parties

Since no political parties or lobbies are provided, it is unclear how politicalideas and interests can be systematically integrated, formulated andpromoted. Here the statement of the totalitarianism-theory seems to beconfirmed: an atomized society corresponds to a monistic political system.Especially bad is the situation of minorities, who have little chance to findsome representation on the central level.

Problem of education

Proponents of council democracy suggest that no special education is

necessary for the participation in self-management bodies or even for politicalleadership. At best, a broad general education is required. However, thedecision-making in complex societies requires long experience and in mostcases an academic education, in the optimal case directly connected with thesphere of concern. None of these conditions is fulfilled in the case of workersin workers councils. The reference to professional advisory groups whichelaborate possible consequences of various alternatives is not satisfactory: thereis no reason to presume that these professionals will not try to extend theirinfluence and power if the methods of their work are entirely obscure to themembers of the council. This kind of backstage power, in distinction to

professional and formally institutionalized decision-making, carries no formalresponsibilities for its consequences.

Problem of exclusion

On the lowest level, the council system always faces the problem that manymembers of society are not ready or able to participate in it. They are then notonly excluded from the council system, but unable to influence the decision-making process in any way. From the standpoint of this group of people, theformal election of ruling elites in any case seems preferable.

One-man-one-vote

The complicated structure of councils on different levels and in differentspheres of social life regularly injures the democratic principles according to


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which, as far as affairs of common interest are concerned, every individual hasto dispose of the same number of votes, and all representatives have torepresent approximately the same number of voters.26

Economic disaster

Being without or with only rudimentary market mechanisms and burdenedwith underdeveloped civil law (contractualism), the global council system hasto rely on diffuse agreements and is therefore lacking an effective economicmechanism. Therefore it is faced with the alternative of returning to thecentral material planning or acquiescing with economic anarchy, autarchictendencies of small territorial units, inefficient investments, constitution ofillegal markets, return to distribution mechanisms based on barter, etc.

These problems and experiences have made it today virtually impossible todefend such a monistic global system of self-management. Even the mostpersistent proponents of council democracy have in the meantime acceptedthe premise that there is a difference between particular and general interestsand recognized the advantages of a mixed system of institutions, combiningelements of council and representative democracy and including socialpluralism and many elements of a socialist civil society.27

Conclusions and prospects

Both in the case of Marx implicit idea of communism as a de-differentiatedand de-institutionalized harmonious and transparent society, and in the caseof theoreticians of the institutions of an encompassing system of councildemocracy, we find an idea of social monism that overloads those participatingin the resulting social structures. In the first case they have to overlook allimportant events and processes in the whole society. In the second case theymust additionally overlook the complicated institutional structure of thecouncil system. These issues can be reduced to a tolerable level withoutquestioning the regulative ideas of socialism and democracy only by

abandoning the monistic utopia and institutionalizing civil society as thesphere where rational action is possible and recognized as such within anarrower horizon as a rule that of the life-world. From this perspective, thefirst task becomes the solution of the problems of constitution of a socialistcivil society. Historically, the concept of civil society is inseparable from thegenesis of the idea of socialism: very soon it was realized that the existence ofthe poor threatens the system of social norms which guarantee legal securityand thereby the freedom of civil society. In other words: just the politicaltheory of civil society posed the class question, i.e. pointed to the social factthat class cleavages could have fatal consequences for the stability of civil

society, and that their elimination or at least controlled reduction is theconditio sine qua non of its preservation notwithstanding the fact that freecompetition tends to reproduce old and produce new divisions and differen-ces. From this particular perspective, arguing for a socialist civil societyappears to be identical as arguing for civil society simpliciter. Thus, the


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solution of the problem of constitution of a socialist civil society can beconsidered as the simultaneous solution of the problem of socialism and thatof civil society.

What are the prospects for a development in the indicated direction inpresent soviet type societies? As Fehr and Heller have recently argued,28 inthe USSR they are bad, whereas in middle-European countries economicliberalization is likely. It implies the reconstruction of some elements of civilsociety, in particular legality and some forms of freedom of individual (orgroup) economic initiative. Two questions concerning future developmentspresently cannot be answered. First, it is not yet clear in what direction andhow far economic liberalization will develop, i.e. how the chances ofdevelopment of a socialist civil society should be assessed. Second, it isdifficult to estimate the chances of realization of the liberal ideal in which thestate is the legitimate official political organization of the socialist civil society.

The case of Poland suggests a development towards the total delegitimation ofthe party-state and the resulting necessity of an alternative self-organization ofsociety. In such a situation, the best imaginable result would be a dualpolitical institutionalization, the existence of two competitive power centers,

whose relation could be stabilized only by strict division of competences andmutual recognition of legitimacy, including the fact that the successor of theold party-state structure is fully dependent on soviet hegemony. One

advantage of this structure would be the implied division of power andmechanisms of checks and balances. One of the disadvantages would be thedanger of destabilization in case of weakening of soviet imperial power, thedanger of the rise of new uncontrolled power structures in case that theparty-state collapses as a consequence of withdrawal of soviet hegemonicprotection, and the danger that the relationship of the party-state and theself-organized society develops into a kind of cold civil war because of the totaldelegitimation of the one-party-system. The question is still open whether thisnew kind of social compact has any chance of realization in soviet typesocieties both from the practical and from the theoretical point of view.

NOTES

1. Aristoteles: Politik, Mnchen DTV, 1973, 1252 b 30, 1253 a 24.2. Manfred Riedel: Gesellschaft, brgerliche, in: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Historisches Lexikon zur

politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, edited by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and ReinhartKoselleck, Vol. 2, Stuttgart, Klett, 1975, pp. 719800, pp. 719729.

3. Salvador Giner. The Withering Away of Civil Society? Praxis International, Vol. 5, No. 3, Oct. 1985,pp. 247267, p. 258.

4. Agnes Heller: A Theory of History, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982, pp. 2834.

5. Hans Magnus Enzensberger in Kursbuch No. 56, June 1979; Sebastian Cobler: Herold gegen alle,

Gesprche mit dem Prsidenten des Bundeskriminalamtes, Trans-Atlantik, No. 11, Nov. 1980, pp.2940; Friedrich Karl Fromme: Die Terroristen-Jagd hat ihn verfremdet, Frankfurter AllgemeineZeitung, 26. March 1981, p. 10.

6. The following argumentation is an abridged reproduction of my talk Modernisierung und

Avantgradeprinzip, given on April 3, 1986, in the framework of the seminar Politische Theorie und

politische Bildung in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, to be published.


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7. See also: M. Riedel (note 2), pp. 799800. An excellent critique of the utopian element in Marxthinking and its consequences gives Albrecht Wellmer in: Reason, Utopia and the Dialectic ofEnglightenment, Praxis Int., Vol. 3, No. 2, July 1983, pp. 83107.

8. This can easily be concluded from the utopian fragments in Lenins State and Revolution andTrotskys Literature and Revolution.

9. A concise description of this process of learning in the case of Polish intellectuals is given in: AndrewArato: Civil Society against the State: Poland 198081, Telos 47, Spring 1981, pp. 2347, pp.2729.

10. See for example six articles on the subject in Praxis Int., Vol. 1, No. 4, Jan. 1982.11. The latter in: Leszek Kolakowski:Marxism and Human Rights, Daedalus, Vol. 112, No. 4, Fall 1983,

pp. 8192.12. Zygmunt Bauman: On the Maturation of Socialism, Telos 47, Spring 1981, pp. 4854, p. 53.13. This argument is developed in: Kazimierz Wojcicki: The Reconstruction of Society, Telos 47, Spring

1981, pp. 98104.14. Ferenc Fehr, Agnes Heller: Are there Prospects for Change in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe,

Praxis Int., Vol. 5, No. 3, Oct. 1985, pp. 323332, p. 3256.15. It is not yet quite clear what Gorbatchev has in mind when he demands at the same time stimulation of

economic initiative in the society and strengthening of the mechanism of central planning. Possibly heprepares a gradual transition from material planning and direct command of economic organizationsto planning of global economic developments combined with indirect means of steering.

16. Beyond the growing scepticism about the relevance of Marx theories, including their praxis-philosophical interpretation, a further reason for the loss of interest in marxism by East Europeancritical intellectuals in the 60s and 70s was the realization that the ruling power elite does not thinkideologically and is not at all interested in marxist critique of its political system. An additional reason

was the refusal of large fractions of the population to think and speak in terms of the official ideology,including the narrative of classical Marxism. As representative of this process can be consideredLeszek Kolakowski. For details of this process see: Gyrgy Bence, Jnos Kis: On being a Marxist: a

Hungarian view, The Socialist Register, London Merlin Press, 1980, pp. 263277; Mihaly Vajda:Marxism and Eastern Europe A Sort of Letter to My Friends, in: Vajda: the State and Socialist, NewYork: St. Martins Press, 1981, pp. 79106; Vladimir Tismeanu: Critical Marxism and EasternEurope, Praxis Int., Vol. 3, No. 3, Oct. 1983, pp. 248261; Svetozar Stojanovi: Marxismus alsGesellschaftstheorie und Ideologie. berlegungen zur Krise des Marxismus, in: Ossip K. Flechtheim(ed.); Marx Heute, Hamburg, Hoffmann und Campe, 1983, pp. 253274; R. Fenchel, A.-J. Pietsch:Introduction, in: Fenchel, Pietsch (eds.): Polen 198082, Hannover SOAK, 1982, pp. 1618;Andrew Arato: Marxism in Eastern Europe, paper presented at the conference on Marxism,Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, April 1983.

17. An excellent analysis of this cultural regression in the case of Poland is delivered by Jadwiga Staniszkisin: On some Contradictions of Socialist Society: the Case of Poland, Soviet Studies, Vol. XXXI, No. 2,April 1979, pp. 167187, and: Pologne, la rvolution autolimite, Paris: Presses Universitaires deFrance, 1982, pp. 115148. General information on opposition in soviet type societies in middleEurope can be found in: Rudolf L. Tkes (ed.): Opposition in Eastern Europe, London: Macmillan,1979.

18. Reinhard Fenchel, Hans-Willi Weis: Staat, Partei, Gewerkschaft, Thesen zur Krisenentwicklung inPolen, Links, 12. Jg., Nov. 1980, No. 128, pp. 1818.

19. Andrew Arato, Jean Cohen: Social Movements, Civil Society and the Problem of Sovereignty, PraxisInt., Vol. 4, No. 3, Oct. 1984, pp. 266283.

20. Jean L. Cohen: Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory, Oxford: MartinRobertson, 1983, p 228.

21. See: Agnes Heller: The Dissatisfied Society, Praxis Int., Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 359370.22. Agnes Heller: The Great Republic, Praxis Int., Vol. 5, No. 1, April 1985, pp. 2334, p. 29, argues

stringently when from the postulated plurality of needs and ways of life she accepts the possibility thatsomeone opts for being employed by others and not to participate in the institutions of democratic

management of economy. It is not difficult to imagine the genesis of such a need: the situation of

heteronomous employment with a routine work will be attractive to all those who want to concentrate

their mental energies to other tasks, outside of the sphere of government of society and economy.

23. See on that subject Svetozar Stojanovi: Teze za reformu jugoslovenskog politikog sistema (Theses for


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reform of the yugoslav political system), lecture given to the study-group Man and System on

March 19, 1983, in Zagreb, Yugoslavia.

24. A good example of differences of views on the subject of the locus of the representation and definition

of particular and general interests has been given by A. Heller: The Great Republic (note 22) andMihailo Markovi: Democratic Socialism, Theory and Practice, Sussex: Harvester Press and St.Martins Press, 1982, pp. 126150. Heller sees the elections for parliamentary representatives as the

institution which enables every citizen to vote according to his personal preferences and egoistic

interests, whereas participation in self-management is always connected with some sort of group

pressure enforcing stronger consideration of the general interest. Markovi, on the contrary,

sketches a global system of self-management in which self-management bodies tend to promote

particular interests, whereas the general interest is defined in a parliamentary body of representatives

of individual citizens. The authors disagree also on the question of necessity of political parties and

directly elected parliamentary representation.

25. The discussion of these subjects would probably be facilitated by replacing the notion of private

property by the notion of disposition over the means of production and thereby eliminating somehistorically generated connotations of the former which hamper its free and rational use, especially the

fetishism of property characteristic for bourgeois societies and its anathematization by Marxism-

Leninism.

26. For this critique see e.g.: Udo Bermbach (ed.): Theorie and Praxis der direkten Demokratie, Texte undMaterialien zur Rte-Diskussion, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1973, Introduction, pp. 1332.

27. This is the case for example with Markovi (note 24).

2S. Fehr, Heller (note 14).

Documents

1.6 - Krizan, Mojmir - «Civil Society» and the Modernization of Soviet Type Societies (EN)