keep on truckin'

What is Civil Society?

I. History/Background

During the classical period, the concept was used as a synonym for "the good society" and as seen as indistinguishable from the state.

Socrates thought that conflict within society should be resolved through public argument using 'dialectic', a form of rational dialogue to uncover truth.

for him, this was imperative to ensure 'civility' in the polis and 'good life' for the people

Plato's ideal state: a just society where people dedicate themselves to a common good, practice civic virtues of wisdom, courage, moderation and justice, and perform the occupational role to which they are best suited.

for him, the duty of the 'Philosopher king' was to look after people in civility

Aristotle thought the polis was an 'association of associations' that enables citizens to share in the virtuous task of ruling and being ruled.

his koinonia politike = political community

The concept of societas civilis is Roman and was introduced by Cicero.

The political discourse in the classical period, places importance on the idea of a ‘good society’ in ensuring peace and order among the people. The philosophers in the classical period did not make any distinction between the state and society. Rather they held that the state represented the civil form of society and ‘civility’ represented the requirement of good citizenship.^[2] Moreover, they held that human beings are inherently rational so that they can collectively shape the nature of the society they belong to. In addition, human beings have the capacity to voluntarily gather for the common cause and maintain peace in society. By holding this view, we can say that classical political thinkers endorsed the genesis of civil society in its original sense.

The Middle Ages saw major changes in the topics discussed by political philosiphers. Due to the unique political arrangements of feudalism, the concept of classical civil society practically disappeared from mainstream discussion. Instead conversation was dominated by problems of just war, a preoccupation that would last until the end of Renaissance.

The Thirty Years' War and the subsequent Treaty of Westphalia heralded the birth of the sovereign states system. The Treaty endorsed states as territorially-based political units having sovereignty. As a result, the monarchs were able to exert control domestically by emasculating the feudal lords and to stop relying on the latter for armed troops.^[4] Hencefore, monarchs could form national armies and deploy a professional bureaucracy and fiscal departments, which enabled them to maintain direct control and supreme authority over their subjects. In order to meet administrative expenditures, monarchs controlled the economy. This gave birth to absolutism.^[5] Until the mid-eighteenth century, absolutism was the hallmark of Europe.^[5]

The absolutist nature of the state was disputed in the Enlightenment period.^[6] As a natural consequence of Renaissance, Humanism, and the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment thinkers raised fundamental questions such as “What legitimacy does heredity confer?”, “Why are governments instituted?”, “Why should some human beings have more basic rights than others?”, and so on. These questions led them to make certain assumptions about the nature of the human mind, the sources of political and moral authority, the reasons behind absolutism, and how to move beyond absolutism.

The Enlightenment thinkers believed in the inherent goodness of the human mind. They opposed the alliance between the state and the Church as the enemy of human progress and well-being because the coercive apparatus of the state curbed individual liberty and the Church legitimated monarchs by positing the theory of divine origin. Therefore, both were deemed to be against the will of the people.

Thomas Hobbes underlined the need of a powerful state to maintain civility in society. For Hobbes, human beings are motivated by self-interests (Graham 1997:23). Moreover, these self-interests are often contradictory in nature. Therefore, in state of nature, there was a condition of a war of all against all. In such a situation, life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (Ibid: 25). Upon realizing the danger of anarchy, human beings became aware of the need of a mechanism to protect them. As far as Hobbes was concerned, rationality and self-interests persuaded human beings to combine in agreement, to surrender sovereignty to a common power (Kaviraj 2001:289). Hobbes called this common power, state, Leviathan.

The social contract theory of Thomas Hobbes set forth two types of relationship. One was vertical, between the Leviathan and the people; therefore, the latter submitted themselves to the former. The second system was the realm of horizontal relationship among the people. In that system, people, under the surveillance of Leviathan, were compelled to limit their natural rights in a way that would not harm the rights of others. The first system denotes the state and the second represents civil society. In Hobbes’s paradigm, the formation of the civil society led to the formation of government, state, and laws. Therefore, in his view, the state is imperative to sustain civility among men. Thus, Hobbes’s concepts of the ‘state of nature’ and the ‘sovereignty of the state’ led to the later germination of realism that defined the nature of the relationship between the state and civil society.

John Locke had a similar concept to Hobbes about the political condition in England. It was the period of the Glorious Revolution, marked by the struggle between the divine right of the Crown and the political rights of Parliament. This influenced Locke to forge a social contract theory of a limited state and a powerful society. In Locke’s view, human beings led also an unpeaceful life in the state of nature. However, it could be maintained at the sub-optimal level in the absence of a sufficient system (Brown 2001:73). From that major concern, people gathered together to sign a contract and constituted a common public authority. Nevertheless, Locke held that the consolidation of political power can be turned into autocracy, if it is not brought under reliable restrictions (Kaviraj 2001:291). Therefore, Locke set forth two treaties on government with reciprocal obligations. In the first treaty, people submit themselves to the common public authority. This authority has the power to enact and maintain laws. The second treaty contains the limitations of authority, i. e., the state has no power to threaten the basic rights of human beings. As far as Locke was concerned, the basic rights of human beings are the preservation of life, liberty and property. Moreover, he held that the state must operate within the bounds of civil and natural laws.

Modern history

G.W.F. Hegel completely changed the meaning of civil society, giving rise to a modern liberal understanding of it as a form of market society as opposed to institutions of modernnation-state.^[7] Unlike his predecessors, the leading thinker of the Romanticism considered civil society as a separate realm, a "system of needs", that stood for the satisfaction of individual interests and private property. Hegel held that civil society had emerged at the particular period of capitalism and served its interests: individual rights and private property (Dhanagare 2001:169). Hence, he used the German term "bürgerliche Gesellschaft" to denote civil society as "civilian society" - a sphere regulated by the civil code.^[7] For Hegel, civil society manifests contradictory forces. Being the realm of capitalist interests, there is a possibility of conflicts and inequalities within it. Therefore, the constant surveillance of the state is imperative to sustain moral order in society. Hegel considered the state as the highest form of ethical life. Therefore, the political state has the capacity and authority to correct the faults of civil society. Alexis de Tocqueville, after comparing despotic France and democratic America, contested Hegel, putting weight on the system of civilian and political associations as a counterbalance to both liberal individualism and centralization of the state. Hence, Hegel's perception of social reality was followed in general by Tocqueville who distinguished between political society and civil society.^[7]

This was the theme taken further by Karl Marx. For Marx, civil society was the ‘base’ where productive forces and social relations were taking place, whereas political society was the 'superstructure'.^[7] Agreeing with the link between capitalism and civil society, Marx held that the latter represents the interests of the bourgeoisie (Edwards 2004:10). Therefore, the state as superstructure also represents the interests of the dominant class; under capitalism, it maintains the domination of the bourgeoisie. Hence, Marx rejected the positive role of state put forth by Hegel. Marx argued that the state cannot be a neutral problem solver. Rather, he depicted the state as the defender of the interests of the bourgeoisie. He considered the state and civil society as the executive arms of the bourgeoisie; therefore, both should wither away (Brown 2001:74).

This negative view about civil society was rectified by Antonio Gramsci (Edwards 2004:10). Departing somehow from Marx, Gramsci did not consider civil society as coterminous with the socio-economic base of the state. Rather, Gramsci located civil society in the political superstructure. He underlined the crucial role of civil society as the contributor of the cultural and ideological capital required for the survival of the hegemony of capitalism (Ehrenberg 1999:208). Rather than posing it as a problem, as in earlier Marxist conceptions, Gramsci viewed civil society as the site for problem-solving. Agreeing with Gramsci, the New Left assigned civil society a key role in defending people against the state and the market and in asserting the democratic will to influence the state (Ibid:30). At the same time, Neo-liberal thinkers consider civil society as a site for struggle to subvert Communist and authoritarian regimes (Ibid: 33). Thus, the term civil society occupies an important place in the political discourses of the New Left and Neo-liberals.

I. Who uses civil society?

II. Civil Society and Democracy

a. Early associations were made by Alexis de Tocqueville, but then later developed

b. In 20^th century by Gabriel Almond, Sidney Verba who identify “POLITICAL CULTURE” as vital for democracy

c. Robert D. Putnam- argued that even non-political civil society is vital for democracy

i. Because they build social capital, trust and shared values, which are transferred into the political spher and help to hold society together , facilitating an understanding of the interconnectedness of society and interests within it.

III. “Problems”? with civil society?

a. (Related to V. above) Many politicians, scholars have questioned the democratic potential of civil society stating that:

i. some civil society actors have now obtained a remarkable amount of political power without anyone directly electing or appointing them

ii. since the concept is closely related to democracy and representation, it should in turn be linked with ideas of nationality and nationalism.

keep on truckin'

random waves to surf. between notes to myself. which is which?

02/24/2010

the other day

02/23/2010

Civil Society

Modern history

tok

Search