EMERGENCE OF CIVIL SOCIETY AND ITS OBSTACLES IN POST-COMMUNIST EUROPA. SOME SMALL REFLECTIONS
Communist totalitarianism
created peculiar social conditions deeply influencing individual life, social
relations, human cognition. It challenged the
autonomy of human existence. It destroyed long-established social guarantees of
culture and human co-existence. Communist party-state replaced previous models
of ethics and value reasoning by Marxist ideology. The formal system of culture,
education, media and propaganda served in the hands of the state the
dissemination of this ideology, imposing it on society. On the other hand
individuals and society attempted to preserve customs and habits of the
forefathers. It turned out to be a silent opposition even if people did nothing
else than followed their old practices and tried to preserve effectively their
views and convictions, - all that simply as manifestations of their own
individuality against the almost omnipotent tyrannical state. This human efforts
were made without much reflection, in everyday life, both in private solitude
and in informal networks. Organized opposition was as good as impossible, as the
creation of independent social movements was. The state-official oppression
confronted the opposition of an atomized society, of more or less isolated
individuals. State and individual, official and inofficial, formal and informal,
system and person represented opposing philosophies, contradictory world-views
and competing concepts about human beings and society. Previous processes of
socio-economic differentiation were suspended. Culture, or even subjective
reality became reorganized in a bi-polar arrangement.
The fight, coexistence,
compromise and amalgamation of these two realities is a key feature of the
communist system. The concrete relation of both depended from countries,
histories, social conditions, personal decisions. Two structural settings
remain, however, basic characteristics of the communist system. One is
totalitarianism or authoritarianism as exercised by the party-state. It
had a strong impact on everyday life and hindered and limited social
differentiation, notwithstanding
the bi-polarity of life-world. The other is an underlying uncertainty or anomy.
It resulted from the contingency of relationships between officially expected,
visible and the informal and invisible social regulations, the second quite
often persecuted by the state. No consensus, no common denominator enabled
communication. Neither the overarching official ideology, nor tradition, nor
particular views of individuals and their small circles of acquaintances were
efficient enough to lend plausibility or just socially recognized stability to
their own worldview and the pattern of social behaviour.
A very specific tension and
uncertainty marked the communist model. It was though a stable socio-political
construction. In its way it fixed social relations and rules of the game. They
became the basis of routines of public and private behaviour. The end of
communism destroyed this. The hollowness of the collapsed political and
ideological order became obvious, shocking much of previous followers. Nothing
replaced the erstwhile superstructure. The end of communism created a
socio-cultural vacuum. Neither a civil society, nor a pattern of cultural
positions, not even a process to their chrystallization is visible.
Post-communist countries struggle for economic survival, but even more to an
inner stabilization of their socio-cultural system.
Provided that our diagnosis
is correct, the question remains why civil society did not develop in communism.
The second question relates to the present. How can the reorganisation of
society be promoted from a multitude of individualists and after a lifelong
experience without broader societal cooperation.
The first problem can be
explained partly by historical arguments, partly by the explication of the
nature of totalitarianism. Prior communist take-over (or more accurately before
Soviet-Russian occupation and rule) societies in Eastern- and East-Central
Europe were structured overwhelmingly in a traditional, organic manner. The
taken-for-granted character of norms, values and truths rooted in general social
consensus. A just starting emergence of civil society expressed differences
rather in specific fields, like different spheres of division of labour, or
different cultural styles, than diffences in fundamental convictions or
behaviours. This community-type organization was eliminated by the destruction
and partly physical annihilation of previous upper and upper-middle classes, by
forced industrialization and urbanization, by the socialization of agriculture,
by an extensive and similarly enforced social and geographic mobility. The
forced character of social change hindered the spontaneous transformation into
another kind of autonomous social system.
The other argument refers to
the conscious strategy of totalitarian state, which tried to prevent the
emergence of autonomous social formations. All not state-controlled
associations, gatherings, groups, friendships were automatically suspicious and
forbidden. The state applied the same logics, when it put its citiziens under
continuous surveillance – by each other. The spy-system worked in several
directions. It gained complices for the state. It created a continuous bad
conscience among the complices, and fear that their spying may become public. It
spread fear everywhere in the population, because nobody knew who, where and at
which occasion may discover and report something in one’s speach and conduct,
which may appear as nonconform as compared by the expectations of the state and
may initiate official punishment. Eventually it isolated people from each other
and successfully hindered their cooperation and the creation of integrating
milieus of communication and their joint actions. Willy-nilly individuals in
communist society had to learn how to behave, how to succeed without social
support and without a calculable cooperation with their fellow men. Certainly,
cooperation did not fully lacked. But it remained constrained to specific
concerns of functional relations, like in the workplace or neighbourhood. It did
not include convictions, values, goals, morality of individuals. Private issues
had to remain family affaires or totaly private. Some people suffered under this
restriction of human relations. They had to live with it. Communist period was
long enough to socialize a generation
which grew up in the spirit of isolated self-reliance. Communism is the
begetting father of post-communist individualism.
Post-communist societies use
ofter the distincion of „winners” and „loosers” of the systemic change.
The adherence to this or that group is partly a consequence of luck and
individual abilities. To another part previous positions determined strongly who
will gaine or loose in changes which lead to an achievement society. Beyond
these factors the socio-economic (or class-) position is a strong determinant
too. In general those were predestined to become winners, who were able to stand
their ground in communism as well: the lonely fighters, the partisans of
communist time and the similarly friendless members of communist elites. All
their success is one big argument for the individualist stance. These persons
advocate now human freedom and pluralism, and tolerance but not cooperation and
social mindedness. They have no argument and no need for autonomous social
bodies and even less for the socially balancing role of civil society.
Reclamation of community,
cooperation and networks of a civil society might be a cry among the loosers.
Generally it is not. Loosers are as scattered as everybody. They may feel the
need for contacts and social relations. The model they can remember of is yet
premodern society. Their nostalgy is a monocentric, unified, ’Christian
society’, where everything is certain and easily understandable. Religious
fundamentalism and nationalism find best soil. Both can be easily
instrumentalized by politics.
There are good arguments and
evidences for the integrating and community creating force of religion and
church-life. The same factors may contribute to social responsibility and
charity. Generally they do not support, though, pluralism and tolerance. They
provide distinct cells for an autonomously developing society but not the
readiness for mutual understanding, not motivation for cooperation with others,
neither the tolerance of those, - all qualities which are indispensable for an
overarching recognition and success of civil society.
The old antagonism of state
and society, and of party elite and immaturely held citiziens transformed itself
after 1989 into the contraposition of winners and loosers. It seems problems
remained, at least in the first run. It is yet, we may hope, an optical
illusion. As a matter of fact, there are inherited positions, which influenced
success or failure in post-communist competition. It is true, as well, that
social origin and adherence contributes to chances in life everywhere. The
distribution of power do not favour the rapid rise of an autonomous,
differentiated and pluralist social organisation. Social positions are yet not
fixed by an allmighty state anymore. And no central institution is interested
and powerfull enough to prevent the emergence of civil society. The road to its
establishment may be albeit long and strenuous.
The social development, as
characterized, is not the end of our reflections. Our central task is not only
the detection of social processes, but of their consequences on social thinking.
Post-communist societies experience now the transition from an anomical,
atomized society, where the main visible structuring principle is the tension
between winners and rulers, to a democratic and pluralist system with strong
civil society. Whether the way is long or short, questions remain the same. Does
the rise of a civil society need a second systemic change in which merits and
abilities, earned in communism,
loose their relevance? Does this transformation occure automatically, or does it
need directed efforts? What consequences can be expected from EU-enlargement and
generally from tendencies of globalization? What should come first, the
structural stabilization of social networks or the acceptance of common values?
A typical chicken and egg situation. How does society reflect and process this
development culturally? How can a chaotic situation gain structure? How can
relations of mistrust and isolation be transformed not necesserily into trust
and friendship, but into calculable and reliable relations? – Questions for
debate, queries which challenge social sciences and philosophy equally. And the
answers should be not only scientific ones but at the same time decisions about
the future of Eastern and East-Central Europe.