The notions of "private" and "public" have been used with increasing frequency in recent years as basic categories of analysis in sociological literature(1). This study will analyze a fundamental social dilemma, namely, whether there are any structural contradictions between the so-called private and public interests and spheres. The issues include: whether those two spheres have been deformed, whether it is possible to unite "private" and "public," and what are the continuities and discontinuities in private and public social inventions in modern society?
THE MEANINGS OF THE NOTIONS OF
"PRIVATE" AND "PUBLIC"
Difficulties arise immediately when one tries to explain the notions themselves. A number of authors emphasize that the notions are both impressive and ambiguous. Because they are difficult to operationalize, it is hard to determine their empirical sense and semantic content, and as they are frequently assigned a purely normative and evaluative, rather than a neutral, character their use in sociological analysis is more confused. In spite of these objections, they are employed as basic categories for dividing the relations of social life into two large parts.
The notion "private" is associated with the notion "interest," signifying the good, the goals and activities undertaken by one for one's own benefit, as opposed to the activities conducted for the good of everybody. This orientation to an individual's own good rather than to the common good of everyone provides a criterion distinguishing "private" and "public." Secondly, the notion "private" comprises the sphere of aspirations and activities which are not subject to control from the outside. "Privacy is defined as space of free movement or domain of autonomous activity, which is free from the control of larger groups."(2) Privacy includes physical space, objects and edifices, that is, private property to which others have no access. Privacy and its scope are determined by the kind of interaction and the degree of distance or isolation. In a given system of culture this makes up a so-called right to privacy which cannot be infringed upon without the consent of a given person or group. The right to privacy is usually regulated by the laws and moral norms of a given society.
According to Hans Paul Bahrdt, "private" and "public" are certain spheres of life and kinds of activity of an individual. Their borders are difficult to define exactly and explicitly since they change with time. Spatially, however, the "private sphere" comprises: an apartment, a house, and property. Socially, it includes the family, circles of friends, and all other informal groups which are based on the relationships of kinship, neighborhood and friendship--Bahrdt calls them "intimate" groups. The notion "privacy," he observes, comprises all kinds of an individual's activity which take place within a common residential situation.(3)
On the other hand, unlike private interest and privacy, public interest means the common good which is created and used by all or by the majority of the members of the society. It is commonly understood to comprise those activities which are necessary for the functioning of the state of community. Pendleton Herling writes: "In substantive or policy terms, the public interest may be envisaged as embracing those activities necessary to the safety of the state and the welfare of the community: defense, police protection, education, public health and sanitation."(4) The range of those goals and activities, which are important for the community, is defined variously in different societies. In the totalitarian countries of state socialism, public interest comprised almost all spheres of life. An identity was understood between state and society, and between the public interest and that of the ruling party. Above all, there was an absolute superiority of the public interest as determined by the party over the interests of an individual.
In countries with traditions of political pluralism, the public is defined on the basis of an agreement by the majority or by a compromise between political groups.
A number of authors view "public" not only as the "common good" of everybody--the "public interest"--but as the activities leading thereto and participation by the people in such activities. Therefore, they write about "public life," "the sphere of public life," and "the public sphere." They describe the functioning of broader social groups, such as the state or global society, and the participation of people in their activities.(5) Jürgen Habermas considers public life in modern society to comprise the state with the extended organs of its authorities, large industrial corporations, local and other communities and their functions.(6) Similarly, Richard Senett understands "public" as "political life" in a given society, that is, the social structures outside the family and their functioning.(7) On the other hand, according to H.P. Bahrdt, the "public sphere" (Oefentlichkeit) includes all kinds of activities which take place outside the family, its home, communities of families, kinship, neighborhood or friends. Therefore, sociologically, "public" means the institutionalization of the general collective life in which everyone can participate. Theoretically this takes place in a democratic state and its institutions over which the population can wield control.
DEFORMATIONS OF PUBLIC LIFE
For many authors contemporary society is characterized not only by a lack of any links between what is private and what is public, but by deformations in both these spheres. Jürgen Habermas sees a deformation of the public sphere in the exclusion of the individual from participation in the process of decision-making in public affairs. Political life in contemporary society has been controlled by the state and its extended political and administrative institutions, or absorbed within the framework of large organizations coordinated by the state. Commercialized mass media serve not only the formation of rational social opinion and the public interest, but the interests of different group and class lobbies.
The sphere of social consciousness has been deformed by being subjected to different irrational and technocratic ideologies. People perform either specialized, technical actions or actions directed by the decision-makers and managers, though such actions are called participation in decision-making.
A similar diagnosis of the deformation of the public sphere is put forward by Hans Paul Bahrdt who points to the excessive extension of the function of the state and of large corporate monopolies in the fields of production and consumption. Even the workers or consumers in defending themselves against the omnipotence of large, centralized structures fall into the trap of their own bureaucratic and hierarchically structured organs which make decisions about them in advance. On the other hand, Theodore Roszak seeks the reason for the deformation of the public sphere in the alienation of an individual from the public life, not only factually but intentionally, as determined by the nature of our productive and consumer culture.
Richard Senett, author of The Fall of Public Man, proposed the most incisive view of the deformation of public life. According to Senett, the death of public life is reflected in the general withdrawal from it by the members of contemporary society as was the case with the Romans after the death of the Emperor Augustus. Similarly, contemporary citizens treat any required participation in public life as mere formal duties and take part in them only when necessary and then only passively.
Another sign of the erosion of the public life is a reduction in public interaction. In pre-industrial society, collective life took place in complex social communities; now it takes the form of specialized, formalized organizations. Personal interaction and relations in the economic sphere have died out and been replaced by large mute department stores. Public life in towns has ceased: streets and parks have become deserted and the erosion of public areas has become general. The depersonalization of the public sphere is reflected also in the formalization of necessary contacts, in which one participates without inner emotional involvement.
The signs of the deformation of "public life" are then as follows: lack of participation in different forms of public life; formal rather than real participation; lack of participation in decision-making regarding the important issues in the state, municipalities or communities; passivity and submission to manipulation by decision-makers and managers.
The deformation of public life in socialist countries was total since the state comprised all the spheres of life through the administrative and political institutions directed and controlled by the Communist Party. In the socialist system, society and individuals became "nationalized." Citizens lived within this system; they worked and spent even their spare time in state institutions in manners planned by centralized political authorities with whom they felt no identification.
In view of this, as confirmed by numerous diagnoses, it became relatively general for the population to withdraw from political and social life with a simultaneous increase of passive attitudes. This was intensified by the manner of ruling in the early decades which was based, as was the case in Poland, upon pressure and terror. The aversion to any social and political activity was deepened when the population was forced to keep up appearances and simulate voluntary action and participation in the decision-making process. Both society and individuals were deprived of their subjectivity in such a system.(8)
Comparison of the deformations of public life in democratic and totalitarian systems points up the difference between the two types of political systems in the range of this deformation and its mechanisms. In democratic systems it consists in the "outside control" of an individual by means of propaganda, fashion, degree of monopolization of production, etc., while in the totalitarian systems it consists in an incapacitation and coercion of an individual by means of direct and open, or indirect and concealed, pressure.(9)
DEFORMATIONS OF THE PRIVATE SPHERE
OF INTEREST
Deformation of the public sphere causes a breakup of the private sphere, as is noted by Hans Paul Bahrdt. One observes an ideologization of the family home and the enclosing of oneself within the sphere of private affairs and family life. Privacy becomes a barricaded fortress which provides an escape from public life.
According to Richard Senett, the impact of industrial capitalism deprived the public activity of any moral legitimation, which it transferred to privacy, the private amassing of goods and profit-making. The signs of this deformation of the private sphere are: focusing upon getting richer and gathering goods, an orientation to one's own interest, and a growth of attitudes of consumption. Referring to Freud, Senett states that the members of contemporary capitalist society are seized by an illness, the mentality of narcissism. Privatization, narcissism and egoism lead to two personality types in successive generations. On the one hand, there are the professionals in public life--the decision-makers, experts and managers--who dominate public life and through required education and manipulation direct the masses of citizens. These passive masses are the "spectators": they take no part in public life, show a passive attitude and see nothing worth doing outside of business and their own family. These "spectators" even detest politics, but nevertheless judge the professionals, criticizing them and making claims upon them. Societies suffer from illnesses, states Senett, in both the socio-psychical and the moral sense.
Deformation of the private sphere, according to H. Marcuse, consists in a situation in which, although it should provide an arena for free self-expression and auto-determination, yet under the influence of mass and monopolistic production even the private sphere becomes an area of conformism and outside determination. In this way, private life avoids social control, but comes under the control of the cultural and socio-economic system; this produces a supremacy of society over the human being.
Descriptions of deformations of the private sphere in developed capitalist countries can be referred, mutatis mutandis, to socialist countries. There exist, however, some major differences. For example, it is stated that in the Polish value system such aspirations as high salaries, material prosperity and family happiness rank high. Hence, there is an orientation to the sphere of private life and a simultaneous distance from public affairs. However, these signs of the predominance of private interests and private affairs are of a different scale and are differently conditioned. A section of the diagnosis put forward by the Polish Sociological Association explains the reason:
Quite numerous categories of Poles feel their values and aspirations blocked in the sphere of both public needs and personal and material needs, that is, the need for socio-professional promotion, and for a feeling of material security for the future. This means that these people necessarily find themselves in a state of general frustration. On the other hand, in none of the domains in which they experience frustration of their needs or aspirations do they expect to find immediate improvement.
This general frustration results in different forms of aggression, including verbal aggression. The signs of pathology in family life could be observed: "escape from oneself" to alcoholism, drug-taking, annihilation, apathy or indifference to everything. These signs of deformation of personal life were characteristic of this society.
STRATEGIES TO COUNTERACT DEFORMATIONS OF
THE PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATE
Critics of contemporary society who make use of the dichotomic concept of public and private spheres of life try to point to the strategies or general orientation of activities which could lead to some reconciliation between the private and the public. Most frequently this reconciliation is defined in categories of balance, but further criteria are sometimes formulated differently. For example, H.P. Bahrdt speaks of a polarization of these spheres, while J. Habermas criticizes their "impermeability," putting forward the postulate that they should become permeable while maintaining their separate character.
Approaches to this issue are not explicit, but seem to adopt implicitly the principle of the Polish political scientist, Antoni S. Kaminski, according to whom "where there exists no distinction between the private and the public spheres, there is no citizens' society--public interests arise in a citizens' society, and it is only here that they can find support." On the other hand, where there is no private property there can be no private sphere. These are the starting points for strategies which differentiate as they proceed. With some simplifications one can group them in the following way: a concept of neo-liberal rationalism, an anti-culture concept, a concept of self-governments and cooperatives, and a mystic-anarchistic concept.
The neo-liberal concept is represented by Jürgen Habermas. He considers the complete development of public life to constitute the early period after the Great Revolution in France. In structural terms, political life proceeds openly and publicly in such a state of society. State and society are distinguished from each other, while public opinion functions as the mediator between the two. All citizens participate in its formation on the basis of freedom of speech. Thus, power is wielded based upon the rational opinion of the citizens. Public life can be assured by institutional guarantees of the freedom to organize meetings and form associations and unions, and by the rejection of any pressure, whether physical or psychic. Removing the barriers between private and public "speech" will make it possible to increase rational social consciousness and full communication between the members of society. Alvin Gouldner considers this situation to lack realism since it does not include any definite program for changing the large social structures.
A second strategy is found in the "anti-culture" program which has different versions. One is the radical version put forward by Theodore Roszak(10) according to whom only a cultural revolution can change existing social relations. He proclaims the program of so-called anti-culture which to some extent provided the ideological grounds for the mass social movements of the 1960s. Anti-culture in the field of social structures must be based on collective forms and activities, which must be on a small scale. These are--and should be--small, voluntary unions, local communities, production units, housing collectives, small religious groups, and so on. These new structures have the potential to improve and deepen their members spiritually. Each kind of such communities will radiate and lead to a transformation of the whole urbanized, municipal society. They are the ones to bring down the existing, centralized power and to create a collective and spiritually more perfect society. They will heal political life and ensure a many-sided growth for the individual.
The third strategy is the program of the state's democratization, which appeared in certain socialist countries, especially in Poland (e.g., the "Solidarity" movement). This can be summarized in a most general manner as a program of shifting, by means of reforms, from a "nationalized" to a self-governing, cooperative society based upon self-government and collective organization. Independently of the deeply democratized structure of state authorities securing the influence of an individual on the state's government, the social structure would be filled by self-governments: territorial, labor (in factories), professional, cooperative. The idea of uniting the private and public interests would find a possible real and effective solution in self-governing units and collective forms.
The fourth type of strategy can be termed mystic-anarchistic in the sense of an individual's breaking off from the existing structures and public life and taking up activities which have meaning in themselves and express the author. It is a strategy of gaining oneself through contemplation, meditation, controlling the body or erotism, or achieving so-called "self-expression." Although this kind of behavior is a protest against existing public life, it occurs within communities of like-minded individuals. Dissolution of "private" and "public" takes place through breaking with the collapsing society, its culture and forms of public life.
Anarchistic strategies are even more radical. They proclaim breaking not only the existing structures of political life, but those of traditional private life as well in order to achieve a complete and general decentralization of structures. In this way, the factors of individual development will be released, namely, aggression, conflicts, disorder, contradictions and combat. Thus, for instance, Richard Senett accuses the family, neighborhood, and local communities of repressing aggression and an individual's aspirations to fight. Only groups of people created as a result of conflict can revive the public life which has been suppressed or even extinguished.The above are the four general models of solving the relations between the spheres of private and public interest. Only in particular levels and areas of social life is it possible to detect continuities and discontinuities in the modern society through private and public social inventions.
The Catholic University of Lublin
Lublin, Poland
1. For problems and discussions on "private" and "public" see J.A. Beckford, "The Ideologies of Privacy," Current Sociology, 30 (1982).
2. International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, XII, pp. 480-487.
3. H.P. Bahrdt, Die moderne Grosstadt. Soziologische Ueberlegrungen zum Staedte-bau (München, 1961) and Wege zur Soziologie (München, 1973).
4. P. Herling, "Public Interest", International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, XIII, p. 180.
5. Cfr. A. Giddens, Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory (London, 1982).
6. J. Habermas, Strukurwandel der Oeffentlichkeit, 5 Aufl. (Neuwied und Berlin, 1962); Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus (Frankfurt/M, 1973).
7. R. Senett, The Fall of Public Man (New York, 1978); M.P. Smith, The City and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980).
8. These statements are based on the following works: Zalamanie porzadku etatystycznego (Warszawa, 1988); Spoleczenstwo polskie czasu kryzysu, Praca zbiorowa pod red. St. Nowaka (Warszawa, 1984); Polacy-1984-Dynamika konfliktu i konsensusu (Warszawa, 1986); Spoleczenstwo polskie drugiej polowy lat 80-tych Wyd. Polskie towarstwo Socjologiczne (1987).
9. Czlowiek w poszukiwaniu zagubionej tozsamosoi (Lublin: KUL, 1987).
10. Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends (New York: Doubleday, 1973); The Unfinished Animal (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).