Kitabı oku: «Civl society», sayfa 5

Fundamental Principles of the Civil Society
Which Trends Do We Need to Protect Ourselves Against?

Werner J. Patzelt

Summary: A civil society of the Western style is not achieved once and for all. A civil society can only develop when – and for as long as – its complex cultural prerequisites exist. In addition, there are several trends that are currently endangering the civil society. As has so often been the case in history, political thought and speech are now subjected to rather strict regulations and restraints. These are guaranteed by creating taboos, and censorship imposed by oneself or others, as well as the social exclusion and condemnation of dissidents.

1. Fundamentals of a Western-style civil society

It is often the case that, when one is looking for insights that are beneficial for the present time, it is a good idea to dwell on some thoughts from the past. If these still seem plausible today, they contain lessons that have remained valid. One of the core statements in the dialogue by the Roman politician and intellectual Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC) “De re publica” fulfils this in our search for the fundamentals of a civil society: “Est […] res publica res populi, populus autem non omnis hominum coetus quoquo modo congregatus, sed coetus multitudinis iuris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatus.” Translated into English in a way that suits our purpose, this means: “The civil society is an affair of the people; however, they should not be understood as a group that has come together in one way or another, but as the collaboration of many such groups that become connected to form a society through their agreement to uniting regulations, as well as common benefits.” The principles of a civil society understood in this manner include rules that are followed jointly, as well as experiences of common benefits arising out of actions in keeping with these rules. The benefit is the common good.

Cicero’s concept is based on one of the central concepts of the Greek polymath Aristotle (384–322 BC). With the Greek city state – the polis – in mind, he spoke of the kononia politiké, the citizenry united by binding law, and binding ethics that – precisely through the acceptance and performance of public offices – aimed at a “good life” for all. Of course, neither Aristotle nor Cicero thought about equal rights for men and women. They also found the status of a slave without rights completely normal. However, restrictions of this kind, which we find intolerable today, can be shaken off without changing anything about the core concept of this kind of political vision: Self-aware citizens do not only take care of their own interests – in Greek: of tà idia, which makes them “idiots”. They also care for the interests of the community they belong to: for the common good of a polis as “politai”, and as “cives” for the common good of a “civitas”, a “res publica”.

Naturally, what we are referring to here could be described as a “civil society”. However, this term has become somewhat stale through its Marxist connotation. There, the “bourgeoisie” follows the feudal lords as a class and precedes the “civil” society of the socialist style. That is the reason that the German term “Zivilgesellschaft”, which emulates the French and English expressions of “société civile” and “civil society”, has been in use for many decades. Nevertheless, the Germanised concept of the “Zivilgesellschaft” also includes comparisons such as “civilised vs. barbaric” and “civil vs. military”. The first is absolutely reasonable, seeing that regulations, complete with their orientation on the common good, actually create important boundaries to a barbaric law of the jungle based on self-interest. The second comparison, on the other hand, is in no way appropriate. The politai of a Greek popular assembly, who practised democracy (rule by the people) were actually none other than the men of this civil society who were capable of – or had experience in – war. Indeed, in the most important form of Roman-republican popular assemblies, the – purely male – citizenry appeared in a military formation, albeit without weapons, in the so-called centuriate assemblies. It was precisely in this sense that, when the right to vote was introduced in the 19^th century, it was accompanied by the expansion of compulsory military service – modelled on the “levée en masse” of the self-defensive French Revolution. Germany’s first Federal President called conscription the “legitimate child of democracy” and the model of the “citizen in uniform” was developed for soldiers. It is obvious that examples of this kind fade in societies in which the following formulation became common – and which is even legally incontestable in Germany: “Soldiers are murderers”. In times of peace, which seem to be natural, it might be possible to understand and even treasure this separation between soldiery and citizenship. However, peace is like summertime in that it is often followed by a stormy period in autumn.

2. Intellectual challenges facing Western civil societies

In the meantime, another apparently self-evident fact has become fragile. This is the differentiation and contrast between the civil and religious community. This was not characteristic of antiquity and the early modern era but has definitely shaped our concept of a civil society since the Enlightenment. In the Western world, this concept of the civil society was preceded by the Christian dualism between “secular” and “religious” rule. After reciprocal, absolutely painful, disputes since the Enlightenment, the concept that – although it had been shaped by the Christianity it dialectically opposed – the Western state no longer had any need for genuinely practised Christianity to be able to develop itself as a “societas perfecta” in the sense of the Greek polis. Of course, the Western state, complete with the civil society supporting it, continued to live precisely in those conditions that had been moulded by Christianity and that it would be unable to reproduce – let alone create anew – itself. Going beyond the individual argumentative purpose – “transcending” it – these conditions include the justification for those rights to protection and freedom that have the common denominator of “human dignity”. For their part, these rights require a liberal, democratic, and social constitutional state to remain guaranteed. But as long as there is no lack of Christian, or functionally equal, prerequisites for this kind of formation of a civil society and its state, the secular state in the Western tradition only needs some kind of civil religion to give expression to its moral foundations and, ultimately, perception of sense not only discursively, but also symbolically – and, therefore, appealing to the emotions – as well as stabilising socially in this way. This religion must not necessarily be Christianity as long as it is possible to make “human dignity” the key element of social and political order convincingly.

But now there are extremely influential alternatives to the formerly Christian character of a (civil) religion that unites individuals to form a nation. In particular, there is very special alternative in those Western states that have a large Muslim minority in their population. Members of this group often also – or even above all – feel that they are part of an Islamic culture spanning many societies and states. However, precisely this culture, which dates back to late antiquity, did not produce the Western state and the society that supports it, but, in many cases, even expressed its opposition to both. What is important in Islam is not the contraposition of the “state” and “church”, or a dualism of “politics” and “religion”. It is much more a matter of the relationship between “Dar al-Islam” and “Umma”. The latter is – completely corresponding to the Christian church as an “assembly of believers before God” – the community of Muslims. On the other hand, the Dar al-Salam – which can be translated as “house of peace”, in contrast to the “house of war (Dar al-Harb) – refers solely to that part of the world that has really already been pacified: namely, through the establishment of precisely these rules, both politically and as a form of state. A “societas perfecta” is therefore not possible in the orthodox thought of Islamic culture on the basis of any civil religion but only there where religious Muslims, who have been guided in the right direction, govern. It is therefore a matter – for the sake of peace – not only of the religious character of an individual society and its state, but of the questionable legitimacy of a special path of those societies and states that precisely do not allow themselves to be guided by Islam in which, however, Muslims live permanently.

Viewed in such contexts, the very concept of a society that is understood in a non-religious manner, as has become customary in Western cultures, seems subversive for Muslim societies and is regarded as an act of aggression by more than a few Muslims. This, in turn, is ascribed not only to the different intellectual foundations of secular-Western and religious-Islamic societies but also to the diminishing supremacy of the West that humbled and deeply damaged the “ethically superior” world of Islam. In this way, political religion becomes directly linked to political power struggles and revenge.

Acting on the foundations of civil society today, therefore, demands having arguments that are – or could, at least, become – compatible with internal debates on Islamic self-understanding. By the way, when considering China’s rise to become a dominant global power, it should be remembered that, in the future, Western ideas of a civil society will also find themselves in competition with completely different East-Asian convictions on the just relationship between the state and the people living in it. However, these combine well-established insights into traditional Chinese statecraft, which were only slipped into the once-fashionable garb of Communism, with such new possibilities of governance based on modern technology relating more to scientific data and “harmonising” social control than on trying to cultivate the willingness of a self-determined citizenry to participate. Whether a political model of this kind is inferior or superior to the Western version must be treated as an open question. The desired answer can only be provided if one’s own efforts to bring about or secure a really “good life” are reinforced through sustainable, successful politics.

In any case, civil society of the Western variety is not something that can be achieved once and for all. Anyway, it can only come about as soon as – and for as long as – its complex cultural requirements are satisfied. But, even then, it remains threatened by anti-pluralist currents regardless of their origin and goals. It can only counter the allure of ideological righteousness, and the willingness to believe in religion, with cumbersome considerations about the fact that being open to criticism is what makes learning possible, and that all historical examples of politics founded on a specific claim to truth are terrifying. A civil society can also threaten itself. This occurs especially when those civil-religious formulas and civil-liturgical practices, which guarantee the stability of the civil society through symbols appealing to feelings, are used tactically and instrumentally to defend current cultural-hegemonic positions against new competition. That is when communication-hygienic rules of political correctness develop into quasi-religious taboos, concern about the preservation of civil liberty becomes political witchcraft, and securing equal rights for all leads to a new caste structure separating the “decent” from the “evil”. In essence, these are precisely the new internal trends in our Western civil societies that, in the meantime, are impairing all the opportunities that a form of pluralism that flourished for many years granted us. For the sake of the wider common good, we should therefore attempt to better understand – and apply more honestly – those rules which, in the West, have so frequently turned selfish individuals and self-righteously competing groups into a public-spirited civil society that takes an active part in its community.

3. Indispensable rules for a civil society

How is it possible to keep a society and its state permanently capable of learning, to be able to adapt to new internal and external challenges and, in this way, realise the common good time after time? The best possible answer seems to be: As long as there is no emergency requiring immediate action, one must initiate unloaded discourse about – real or hypothetical – problems, organise open-ended debates about the causal connections of problems, and make social disputes about solutions possible. Only after all of this has taken place should decisions about what to do next be made. These, in turn, are best designed as majority decisions, because this is precisely the way to create pressure for the widest possible consideration of various opinions and interests. Of course, the majority principle established in this way also includes the protection of minorities. And this political approach has to go hand in hand with a basic attitude of always being ready to start learning anew.

The name given to a political system operating according to these kinds of rules is pluralistic democracy. Among its characteristics are a willingness to accept, and even revere, diversity – not only in matters of skin colour, but also political opinions; acknowledging the right of the individual to define his interests independently and responsibly as a matter of course – and there, especially those that one objects to oneself; and the legitimacy of dispute – even when one is at risk of losing the argument. It is also important for pluralistic democracy that the area that can be disputed, without the parties risking social ostracism, be kept as broad as possible. On the other hand, the areas that are not open to question should be kept as small as possible. It is a fact that dictatorial regimes and their subservient societies are characterised by the minimisation of what can, and the great increase in what cannot, be questioned. This ranges from the dominant role of a single party to the law of God directly influencing politics.

The name given to the “non-dispute” area of a pluralistic democracy is “minimal consensus” and it is made up of three partial consensuses. There is the consensus of values that is principally composed of the consensus that everyone has the same human rights, including that of being different from others in terms of appearance, sexual orientation, religion, and political leanings. Then there is procedural consensus. It includes non-violence and the majority principle, together with the protection of minorities. Non-violence is an especially important aspect. Intimidation through the threat of violence, the anticipation of violence, and violence itself reduce the diversity of viewpoints and interests that are freely brought into the dispute. This is precisely what reduces the opportunities for learning in and through dispute and this deprives a pluralistic democracy of its central advantage. And there is finally regulatory consensus; for example, a consensus that demonstrations on the street are allowable, but that final decisions will be made in parliaments or by the courts. Shaping a state in a way that there can be disputes about as many topics as possible and that, as a result, the ability of politics and society to learn is optimised, is the “highly effectual secret” of pluralistic democracy and the great advantage of functioning civil society.

An additional, extremely special, value of this kind of society is that it is possible to criticise those in power and the existing conditions, and that it does not demand the affirmation, the justification or defence, of what already exists. It is much more the case that, in a pluralistic democracy, the citizenry always takes a critical stance towards any claims that somebody or something is right because that is the way it has always been – going beyond the minimal value, procedural, and regulatory consensus. However, criticism is more than just emotional grumbling. The demonstration of standards for judgement, complete with their rational justification, and likewise the assessment of those already existing based on the same standards, which claim to be logically correct, are also part of this. In other words: Pluralistic democracy is strengthened through rational criticism, not through the emotional defence of existing conditions.

These rules of the game of pluralistic democracy are based on experiences made by trial and error in designing political systems and the societies supporting them. Ultimately, they integrate the “algorithm of evolution” into political practice. However, when all we know about the development of complex systems, from biology, over culture, and into the world of institutions, is taken into consideration, this is really the best possible way for guaranteeing the ability to learn and efficiently coupling systems with their environment. The four steps of the evolutionary algorithm are variation, selection, retention, and as differential reproduction, which looks like this in society and politics: A wide variation of perspectives, priorities, proposed solutions, and self-evident actions required for solving new problems arises through the practical use of the right to diversity, as well as the fear-free articulation of opinions and interests, in continuous controversial discourses. This then leads to an internal selection from the variety offered; i.e., that which is not appropriate to the existing system of pluralistic democracy with its proven routines, or does not fit into the current discoursal structure, is dismissed. This kind of internal selection is carried out in a sensible manner based on a minimal consensus on human rights, non-violence, the principle of majority, and protection of minorities, as well as tried and tested organisational structures. This is followed by the external selection in such a way that not all of those political measures that have been agreed on in pluralistic discourse – with or without a majority decision being reached – will prove themselves in political practice. It is a fact – and this is especially true in politics, which usually acts under conditions of uncertainty – that the path to be followed hardly ever leads to learning from, at best, “well-intentioned” attempts, from inevitable errors and political corrections. Retention then means the preservation of what has proven itself – in the interim or often just until further notice. This can later develop into a component of the internal selection factors that prefilter whatever will actually be tried out in praxis.

Two basic political attitudes usually come into play when dealing with internal selection factors. Conservatives attempt to be guided by what is already tried and tested, while progressives want to experiment with new things, especially under new conditions. Both are really necessary if political structures are to remain stable over the long term and maintainable if the contexts around them change. If the latter fails, there is the danger of slipping into a fragile form of statehood and, in the worst case, into a state of civil war and anomie. However, if it is possible to preserve what is fundamentally time-proven through reforms, structures of this kind can expand even further; for example, institutions such as the rule of law, separation of powers, and periodic elections can take the place of their authoritarian alternatives in an increasing number of countries. That is precisely what is meant by “differential reproduction” as the concluding step in the evolutionary algorithm. It is clear that this kind of differential reproduction forms the foundation of the global expansion of the democratic system elements that have taken place over several “waves of democracy”.

Seeing that the conditions for political action are repeatedly changing, and that it is necessary to deal with new challenges from time to time, it is sensible to attempt to not bring this “algorithm of evolution” to a standstill – especially in the state and the civil society that supports it. But that is exactly what happens when attempts are made to protect things or structures that are taken for granted through subtle threats – or even crass use – of violence against people who question what already exists and expect changes. Damage to the foundation of a civil society and its state therefore begins with the avoidance, suppression, or disruption of controversial discourses. Unfortunately, conservative concepts and structures all too often become an irresistible political temptation for those who, for the time being, exercise political-cultural hegemony, benefit from the prevailing situation, and are, therefore, satisfied with the status quo and – in spite of new challenges – act in a purely affirmative manner, i.e., not critically rational as would correspond with the utilisation of the algorithm of evolution.