Kitabı oku: «Civl society», sayfa 3
Citizen society, civil society, and the bourgeoisie
Today, when one speaks about the civil society or citizen society, one usually means the involvement of people in a great variety of areas outside of actual “politics” as well as their family and professional spheres. This involvement expresses itself in many ways in local, regional, and superregional initiatives in the fields of culture, the environment, the third world, care and support for asylum seekers, etc., but “civilian initiatives” can also have influencing politics and the administration as their goals. In authoritarian states, the civil society can even develop into a powerful movement to change the political system.1 It is worthwhile remembering the občanské forum (citizens’ forum) in the Czech part of what was once Czechoslovakia that was established on 19 November – only two days after the beginning of the Velvet Revolution in Prague.2 The terms “bourgeois society” and “civil society”, as well as občanské forum, are oriented towards mature, actively interested citizens who are prepared to become involved.
The following considerations deal with the question of the extent to which former concepts of the bourgeoisie and “bourgeois society” of the 19th and early 20th centuries have anything to do with the modern manifestations of the civil society. In modern democratic constitutional states, civil-society activity usually takes place within the framework of the legal possibilities achieved by “bourgeois” visionaries, pioneers, revolutionaries, and politicians. The central freedoms of the civil society include the right to personal freedom, the right to carry on a business, the freedom to practice a religion and express oneself, freedom of the press, freedom of association and assembly, and the right to petition. These are complemented by the protection of the private sphere (domiciliary right) and confidentiality of correspondence – although this is something that most of our contemporaries have voluntarily done away with by using the internet.
However, there is a conceptual problem in German that most other languages are not aware of. The German word “Bürger” denotes both the (fully entitled) inhabitant of a pre-modern city and the (fully entitled) citizen. French, on the other hand, differentiates between “citoyen” (citizen of a state) and “bourgeois” (inhabitant of a town, with its root in “bourg” that can mean a market or – in the form of “fauxbourg” – a suburb). English recognises the “citizen”, as well as the “burgher” (city resident), and, in Italian, we have the “cittadino” and the “borghese”. It is obvious that they have their roots in the Latin “civis” and the “civitas” connected with it, and the Germanic-late-Latin “burgus”, which originally only meant a fort but was later expanded to include “civil” settlements, markets, and cities.3 Slavic languages also differentiate between the citizen (“državljan” in Slovene) and town resident (“meščan” in Slovene – and very similar in Russian).
However, “zivile”, with its roots in the Latin “civis”, has remained alive in German alongside the local word. It was originally used as a contrast to the military but soon came to denote a certain – “civilised”, non-violent, equitable – behaviour when dealing with other people. Borrowed from the French “civil” (from the Latin “civilis”) in the 16th century, it meant middle class, patriotic, national, and public.4 During the Enlightenment in the 18th century, “zivilisiert” – in the sense of enlightened, non-violent, good behaviour – was added although the old bourgeois concept of “Ehrsamkeit” (respectability) and its inherent factors of being of legitimate birth and upright behaviour still resonated.
The behaviour required a juridical standardisation: In 1789, the great Austrian enlightener Gottfried van Swieten (1733–1803, son of the famous doctor Gerard van Swieten) defined the “bourgeois society”, as opposed to a “horde of wild people”, by “those principles of their affiliation” that there can be “no right without obligation, and no obligation without right.”5 The “civil society “(= society of citizens) therefore needed a “civil law” as a basis. This was codified at the time and came into force as the “General Civil Code” (ABGB) in the year 1812.6 The term “citizen” was first encountered in legislation during the reign of Joseph II. The ABGB also assumed a common citizenship of the residents of those Habsburg (Austrian) countries in which the ABGB was put into effect (but not in Hungary!).
But was society – not only in Central Europe but throughout the continent – so advanced that it could be interpreted as a society of people with equal rights? Feudal dependencies actually still existed in most regions. In no way could those living in rural areas, who made up the majority of the population at the time, be considered as being members of this new general bourgeois society. In 1789, the French Revolution asserted the abolishment of all feudal bonds in Europe with the victory of its slogan of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. A few years previously, Joseph II had at least done away with serfdom in his “Austrian monarchy” (from 1781, first of all in Bohemia), but the farmers still had to rely on the manorial lords for their land and property. This dependence continued in the Austrian Empire until 1848; it was considered a component of the “state constitutions”, meaning that these conditions were not included in the AGBG (they were not regarded as a lease!)
The genesis of the “bourgeois society” in the Habsburg monarchy
Where can we look for the core of the new “bourgeois society”? It originally was comprised of men who were not dependent on domiciliary rights and not subjected feudally – therefore, first and foremost, townspeople. They were “citizens” in the traditional sense of possessing the civil rights of a town and being the subject of a monarch (and not a noble lord!). A new, educated bourgeois configuration, dominated by civil servants, buts also including writers, professors, teachers, and scientists – many of them in civil service (and more than a few ex-Jesuits after the repeal of their order in 1773) – developed out of this old urban bourgeoisie in the years after the reign of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. In addition, the emerging supra-regional market (and the almost equally significant market in the rapidly expanding residence city itself) resulted in considerable entrepreneurial growth, the prosperity of which formed the foil against which the bourgeois culture of the Biedermeier period could later develop. This new entrepreneurship was usually favoured by a state factory charter; i.e., it was possible to run a business without adhering to the restrictions and stipulations that the individual guilds, associations, and professional societies had formerly prescribed. This shows that the new educated bourgeoisie and new entrepreneurship were both the products of the state in the making!
Entrepreneurship, which was not regulated by a guild, and for which the name of “fabricant” was soon introduced to distinguish it from “master craftsman”, originally had no connection to the new educated classes. The entrepreneurs only gradually achieved some of the social standing that the intelligentsia had already claimed for itself. The state, which needed both, awarded outstanding members of the two groups with titles of nobility.7 These peerages (from a simple “von” to “knight” – or “baron” at the most) characterised the “second society” with their upper-class lifestyle who ranked behind the traditional high nobility but combined their sophisticated modes of behaviour with scientific, artistic, and literary interests. Schubert was honoured in these circles, and this is also where Grillparzer and Bauernfeld socialised. Grillparzer’s close ties were due to his uncle Joseph Sonnleithner’s connections. These circles were also the principal clients for painting which, along with music and theatre, rapidly blossomed in the Biedermeier and pre-March periods. Its master artists Friedrich von Amerling, Moritz Michael Daffinger, Josef Danhauser, Peter Fendi, Josef Kriehuber, and Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller created many portraits of members of this society.
The “second society” and the middle classes
The “second society” can be considered the leading group of the new bourgeois class that referred to itself as middle class. As early as in 1770, a rhyme typifying the self-awareness of the new middle class made the rounds:
“No-one’s lord, and no-one’s slave
That is the right of the middle-class”
The middle class therefore found itself between the ruling system (sovereign, bureaucracy, military, and nobility) and those who were still subjected to feudal domination – the mass of the farmers, as well as those dependent on domiciliary rights, apprentices, labourers, messengers, servants, and maids. In an anonymous document published in Leipzig in 1843 “Pia desideria of an Austrian Writer”, Eduard von Bauernfeld described all the intellectually active segments of society, “Professors, academics, artists, fabricants, tradesmen, economists, and even civil servants and clerics”, as belonging to the middle classes that were urgently demanding that censorship be relaxed and a general change in the political situation:
“… the Viennese have changed; they have become desperately serious. Here, as everywhere else, industry has set up its throne; a people that forms trade associations no longer has time to deal with what they prefer most: fried chicken, the Theatre in the Leopoldstadt, and the music of Strauss and Lanner.”8
With the Lower Austrian Trade Association (1839), the Inner Austrian Trade Association in Graz (1839), the Juridical-Political Reading Circle (1841), and the Concordia Writers’ Club (1844), the still-young middle-classes created new, modern organisational forms – ultimately also discussion forums in which, in spite of censorship and the police, certain demands on the state were also formulated.
Numerous problems were waiting to be solved – the farmers’ demands to abolish the feudal system, the growing need of the lower classes, and the national discontent that was becoming increasingly pressing, as well as the paralysis of the government that had been playing absolutism without a monarch (since the death of Franz I). Ferdinand I (1835–1848) was only nominally in power.
1848 – “… bourgeois revolution” –?
The long-expected revolution erupted on 13 March 1848 – it was a reaction to the Parisian February Revolution as well as Kossuth’s inflammatory speech in the Hungarian Parliament that was meeting not far from Vienna in Pressburg (Bratislava) at the time. Bourgeois circles prepared several petitions to be presented to the court, but the demands were expressed most clearly in the petition that the students formulated in the Aula and handed over to the Lower Austrian State Parliament on 13 March. The first success came soon after the first shots had been fired and the first people had been killed (“the fallen of March”). Metternich, the hated symbolic figure of the old regime, was overthrown on the same evening (the fact that he had already been disempowered was not known outside of court circles).
The Revolution quickly chalked up other victories. Freedom of the press, arming the people (national guards and the Academic Legion), and the promise of a constitution were announced on 15 March. When the so-called Pillersdorf Constitution was enacted on 25 April, it seemed as if the majority of the bourgeois demands had actually been fulfilled. But, the constitution, which was modelled on the Belgian version, had its weaknesses. It had been issued, or imposed, from above and allowed for a two-chamber system and an absolute veto from the monarch.
The “storm petition” of 15 May opposed this and especially the extremely restrictive electoral procedure that had been proclaimed on 9 May. The so-called May Revolution was borne mainly by students, craftsmen, and labourers whose situation had not improved since March. This led to the “bourgeois” revolution finding itself in a decision-making crisis. What was more important – especially for the members of the upper middle-class: the expansion of personal and political rights or the preservation of the Habsburg Empire? Faced with these alternatives, quite a few the dissatisfied bourgeois citizens remained silent. Or – like Franz Grillparzer in early June in his famous poem on Field Marshall Radetzky (“Good luck, Commander! Get it done! […] Austria is on your side”) – came out in favour of the nation state, the military, and ultimately, on the side of the counterrevolution.
However, the Austrian Reichstag assembled before the victory of the counterrevolution – this was the first elected parliament in the Western sector of Habsburg Monarchy (elections to the lower house had been held previously in Hungary – but only entitled members of the nobility had taken part). The election resulted in a clear bourgeois majority: approximately 55 per cent of the 383 representatives belonged to this class. Almost one quarter – 92 – were farmers. They considered the question of the constitution relatively unimportant; their main concern was with the agrarian reform to abolish the landlord’s primary ownership and resulting contractual obligations on the part of the farmer as well as the landlord’s jurisdiction and police force. This was actually passed by the Reichstag at the end of August and made the farmers fully entitled citizens. The differences between citizens and labourers, property owners and those without possession, intensified during these debates. When the empty state coffers caused the Minister of Labour to cut former subsidies, this resulted in mass demonstrations by the workers who were bloodily dispersed by the bourgeois National Guard (“Prater Battle”, 23 August 1848). It proved impossible to overcome this split.
The rest is well known: The Croat Banus Jelačić invaded Hungary, leading to war between that country and the imperial army. When it was planned to send troops from Vienna to Hungary, the October Revolution broke out and ultimately led to the military conquest of Vienna by the emperor’s forces on 31 October. This was followed by numerous arrests and executions.
But, similar to the retarding element before the catastrophic last act of a tragedy, the Reichstag assembled once again – this time, in Kremsier (Kroměňiče) in Moravia in the imposing castle of the Archbishop of Olmütz (the imperial family had been housed in his residence in Olmütz since October 1848). Here, the exclusively “German” liberals were isolated in a Czech environment and there was no danger of a popular uprising for this parliament. However, the Reichstag performed extremely positive work until its dissolution on 7 March 1849 – a draft for a constitution was agreed on: it not only proclaimed the principle of the sovereignty of the people and civil liberties, but also aimed to solve the problem of the coexistence of the different language groups in the multinational state. At the same time as the dissolution of the parliament, Prince Felix Schwarzenberg’s government proclaimed its own constitution (once again: imposed from above) dated 4 March 1849. The parliamentary representatives who were thought to be radical were arrested, and several were sentenced to death (including the “Preacher of the Revolution”, Anton Fuster, Dr Josef Goldmark, Dr Ernst (von) Violand, and the “liberator of the farmers” Hans Kudlich, who – like many others – was able to flee in time).9
The struggles for independence in Hungary – with Russian help – and Italy had been crushed by the summer of 1849.
Neo-absolutism – restoration or bourgeois control?
In contrast to the old form of absolutism, neo-absolutism was characterised by resolute government. Agrarian reform was quickly introduced. Now the “Empire of Austria” became a genuinely unified state for the first time, having been given a unified administration, a unified customs territory, and a unified (private) legal sphere. The decision-making authority was concentrated on the young Emperor Franz Joseph. The bureaucracy became the pillar of this new system of rule. It could be said that, as compensation for political codetermination, the German-Austrian, bourgeois-bureaucratic element was de facto given control not only of the bureaucracy but of all people living in the empire. Seeing that, after 1848, the German-Austrian bourgeoisie developed into the beneficiaries and bearers of the counterrevolution, Habsburg centralism, and concept of large national state, their memories of the “bourgeois” revolution were later relatively insignificant. At the same time, a slow change in the German bourgeoisie’s traditional feeling of cultural superiority led in the direction of an increasingly radical German nationalism (and increasingly radical antisemitism) in which, finally, anticlericalism remained the sole remnant of the once liberal heritage.10
The entrepreneurs also profited from the new unified state. During the Revolution, they had already taken the side of the government and military. The most important thing for them was the preservation of greater Habsburg Austria, with equal rights throughout the country and a uniform customs and currency area. If the counterrevolution guaranteed that the bourgeoisie would achieve their goal, and this was threatened by the Revolution, they would inevitably become an ally of the restoration. One small example:
On 27 March 1848, Giuseppe Miller-Aichholz, a Viennese wholesaler from Trentino, wrote to his father (in Italian) in Cles that the behaviour in Milan and Venice was hair-raising, that they had broken their oaths and were unfaithful traitors. In June, he travelled to Innsbruck as a member of a community committee to beseech the emperor to return to Vienna. On 13 August, he enthusiastically told his father about Radetzky’s victories over the Lombards and Piemontese. In March 1849, Miller was a member of the deputation of Viennese citizens chosen to thank the young Emperor Franz Joseph for the constitution and dissolution of the Reichstag. Only a few days later, he travelled to the war theatre in northern Italy, together with other councillors, to present Radetzky with the diploma making him an honorary citizen of Vienna. This put an impressive seal on the alliance between the upper classes and the army.
The brief reign of the liberal bourgeoisie
Initially, the “German” bourgeoisie only dominated in Austria in the form of the bureaucracy.11 However, simultaneously with the retraction of “civil” liberties, the entrepreneurial upper classes were granted considerable freedoms. The state’s difficult financial situation increased the possibilities of the financial bourgeoisie to have an influence, seeing that the state needed a tremendous amount of money to develop the new court and administration system with its countless new civil servants. At the same time, the expenses for the army and (new!) gendarmery remained high.12 And they increased even further when Austria occupied the Romanian princedoms during the Crimean War and stationed an army in Galicia. These politics led to a state of permanent hostility with Russia, without being able to win the liberal Western powers (England and France) as allies. Finally, after the defeat near Solferino in 1859, the Emperor was informed that there could only be new loans for the highly-indebted state with parliamentary representation – at least for a control of the state’s finances. In this way, the unwilling Emperor was forced to establish representative bodies from the individual parliaments and imperial Reichsrat that were principally intended to act as the taxpayers’ controllers of the state’s non-transparent expenditure policies.
The voting rights for the communities and individual parliaments, which were legislated within the framework of the “February patent” in 1861, from which the representatives in the Reichsrat were to be elected were quite clearly tailored to satisfy the interests of the bourgeoisie. Seeing that it was, in principle, a matter of controlling finances, the right to vote was linked to the tax payments: each person who paid a direct tax (property, trade, building, or income tax) in the communities was entitled to vote. However, only the top two-thirds of community voters, and those in the cities who paid taxes amounting to more than 10 guilders annually, were entitled to vote for the parliaments. Those in possession of an education patent – teachers, professors, priests, doctors, engineers, and attorneys, as well as captains in coastal regions – were also eligible. The aim was to ensure that community councils, parliaments and the “Reichsrat” were dominated by “property and education”.
It was not until 1867 – after the defeat at Königgrätz – that these representative bodies were given more responsibilities and all citizens were given the five fundamental constitutional rights (“December Constitution”) that had long been demanded by the liberal bourgeoisie: independence of the judiciary, the separation of justice and the administration, and a clear definition of the positions of the parliament and (imperial) government. This resulted in the introduction of the first government to be made up almost entirely of men from the bourgeoisie – the “citizens ministry”. To provide a balance to so much bourgeois culture, its head, the Minister-President, was “Carlos” Prinz Auersperg, the “first cavalier of the empire”. The bourgeois ministers actually did particularly good work. Here, I should mention the passing of the Elementary School Law that was presented to the Reichsrat by the Minister of Education Hasner Ritter von Arta (1818–1891). In the years before 1875, the representatives of the bourgeoisie, German, centralistic liberalism developed considerable problem-solving competence in areas that, in the future, would make “civil-society” commitment easier. These included the Cooperatives Law (1873), which complemented the freedom of association in the area of economic activity that had been attained in 1867. The liberals also simplified the self-organisation of workers through the coalition freedom. However, after several confessional laws, its creative powers became paralysed around 1875. The liberals became the defenders of the already-achieved legal and material possibilities, but they lost their role in the forefront of bourgeois society. They truly became conservative.
