The term "civil society" is used to denote a
central category of the European political philosophy. It is derived from Aristotle’s
term politice koinonia and its Latin version societas civilis, societe
civile, meaning civil society or that of private proprietors. The notion of the civil
society has been interpreted in various ways in the political philosophies of Hobbes,
Locke, Paine, Hegel, Marx, Mill and De Tocqueville, as well as those of postmodernists.
In the seventies of the twentieth century the term "civil
society" was used by the opposition and dissident groups in the socialist countries
to denote the strategy of political fight against totalitarianism by forming autonomous
institutions beyond the state control and for the sake of establishing a democratic
society as opposed to the total state. By redefining the modern concept of the civil
society a new and contemporary concept of the civil society has been created as an
alternative to authoritarian socialism. Thus, a new practical and theoretical political
paradigm has been set up for explaining ways of the transition of socialist, authoritarian
and stagnant societies into democratic and civil societies which are able for
self-development and are willing to use the civilization achievements of the developed
societies as well as the achievements of social and political philosophy and contemporary
sciences.
The civil society is most often determined as autonomous pluralism of
private and public activities, beyond the state control, expressed in individual freedom,
local and regional self rule, citizens’ participation in public affairs and social
movements as well as in cultural autonomy and free trade unionism.
In the former socialist countries the civil society was destroyed and
repressed by state measures. In order to restore it, it is necessary to de-etatize
all social spheres and to transform proprietorship in addition to the creation of a
developed market economy, autonomy of the society and of all its parts, the rule of the
law, the affirmation of the citizen as a political subject, a democratic political
culture, democratic public as well as moral and spiritual emancipation of the subjects of
changes and innovations. First of all, it is necessary to raise the status of pauperized
middle layers as the backbones of the civil society as well as to stimulate the
development of a democratic political culture without which democratic political
institutions tend to degenerate and corrupt. The political culture—the Civil
Culture—is the most reliable guardian and transmitter of the basic cultural values,
of an ethical vision of the social life and of the relations between society and state,
society and politics. It is a hermeneutic key necessary to establish harmony between the
private and the public, the individual and the common, the civil society politics and the
state politics. The ways in which a multi-faceted transformation of the Eastern European
societies will take place depend on their political culture, namely, of the countries
which are torn apart between, on one hand, re-traditionalization (neoauthoritarianism),
and, on the other, modernization. The political culture in these countries is increasingly
becoming polarized into the political culture of a political society (of the state and its
institutions, political parties and their organizations) and the political culture of a
civil society, that is, into a social system based on force and violence, on one hand, and
a system based on the agreement of the majority of its members, on the other. The politics
of the civil society consists of nonconventional politics, individual and group activity
of the citizens for the sake of satisfying individual and common needs and for the sake of
realizing collective goals with no state intervention.
The collision of, on one hand, totalitarian politics, and, on the
other, liberty-oriented and democratic politics has led to the deconstruction of socialist
societies; however, what has been omitted is the construction of civil societies as well
as overcoming of an all-inclusive crisis of these societies. Therefore, they have been
subjected to turbulence of the basic cultural and political values, especially of the
ethical ones. A moral crisis has deepened, the social anomie has expended and along with
it, there is an increasing criminal activity of both the citizens and the state with all
its institutions. In the conditions of an inclusive cultural and moral crisis it has
become even more difficult to create a cultural matrix of the civil society and its moral
values.
Integrative Power of the Political Ethos
The ethos—moral—is a category of the civil society. It
expresses a part of the social culture which comprises the system of norms according to
which people’s character and behavior are shaped and judged as good or bad ones.
Regarding the scope of its regulations, the ethos can be divided into egocentric,
genocentric, ethnocentric and anthropocentric. (1)The political ethos is a part of the sociocentric ethos which regulates behavior
of members of a political community concerning the realization of collective goals,
general and group interests as well as the realization of their duties and rights in the
political struggle. The political ethos is a part of the political culture oriented toward
unification and union of the political community as well as toward interpretation of the
causes for growth or disintegration of political systems
Already in the Classical Times (V and IV centuries BC) Tukidides
noticed that the political ethos of a society is determined by three factors: 1. political
principles of the system and of its main political institutions, 2. political behavior of
members of the political community and 3. people’s character. (2) The political ethos is the basis of a well-organized society and a good quality
of life. A disintegration of the political ethos leads the society to the state of eunomy
(rigid political institutions with no citizens’ participation) and of pleonexia
(destruction of the norms and the state’ s decay). The disintegration of the
political ethos, in Tukidides’s opinion, gives rise to a disagreement among the main
political actors about the general good for which the greatest threat is that of the civil
war.
Jean Bodin (16th century) claimed that there are various forms of the
political ethos (mores) and that they affect the shaping of various forms of
government. Accordingly, Bodin explains that the political system of northern countries is
built on the principle of enforcement, unlike the middle countries in which it is based on
the principle of justice; in southern countries it is based on the principle of religions.
Due to this, rulers have to know and preserve the ethos of their political communities. (3)
Under Bodin’s influence, Montesquieu also thought that each
political system has to be coordinated with mores, character and dispositions of
the nation for whose interest it is established. (4) The political system which is suitable for one nation is not good for another.
Each political system rests upon a special sentiment sustaining it. Montesquieu stated the
existence of three basic political sentiments from which three types of government spring.
Value is the basic principle of the republic, honor is that of the monarchy while fear is
that of the despotism.
Alexis de Tocqueville, following Montesquieu, used the term mores to
denote the totality of intellectual and moral state of a nation, the totality of customs,
public opinion and beliefs. (5) Moral had a
greater influence upon American democracy than its laws and its physical environment.
The economic and political instability of the Eastern European
postsocialist countries is a consequence of the lack of the civil society in its developed
form and its political ethos. The general social moral including the political ethos is in
the state of chaos. The basic values of the political ethos of the civil society are:
tolerance, spontaneity, dialogue, compromise, non-violent regulation of conflicts,
rationality and humanism; they are overshadowed by the value matrix of the political
society as well as by that of the traditional society, namely, by the matrix made up of:
collectivism, authoritarianism, tribalism, fatalism, egalitarism, ethnocentrism,
militarism, etatism, mitism, fideism, heroism ... A high degree of anomie, especially
among young people, causes political apathy and cynicism, on one hand, and extremism, on
the other hand. (6) Of especially destructive
influence upon the postsocialist societies and their political moral was nationalism and
its political use in solving the basic social conflicts, especially in multiethnic
societies, as well as blooming of populism as a pseudo-democracy. A belated, too
persistent, incomplete and insufficiently successful modernization of the postsocialist
countries, especially in the economic sphere, cherishes nostalgia for socialist systems (7) and the orientation towards regressive
re-traditionalization in general. This is also joined by citizens’ distrust of
institutions of the existing political systems which is accompanied with the crisis of
legality.
In the conditions of a general moral chaos politics becomes arrogant
and unscrupulous. In trying to win its victories politics does not pay attention to the
difference between truth and lie, means and goals, causes and consequences, good and evil,
holiness and diabolism, moral-political principles and political strategy, certainty and a
political adventure. Beyond ethical norms politics an end in itself and tries to transform
everything into the means of its domination. In this way politics corrupts the general
interest by turning it into the particular one while proclaiming it as the highest
national interest—the interest of the state and the people. It spreads illusions
about its self-sufficiency and purposefulness. Even in such conditions the civil
society—or its elements—comprises an ethical potential with which the society
defends itself from aggression and hegemonies of the official state policy by its
autonomous political ethics and its moral and political ecology. It springs from a natural
aspiration of people toward democracy and self-determination, from their value-orientation
toward democracy and changes of the existing unfavorable economic and political state in
the post-socialist countries. (8)The ethos of
the civil society springs from the citizens’ active potential as well as that of
their associations, their readiness for political engagement, self-initiative, respect for
general interest and their acceptance of political responsibility for providing a better
future. This ethos is firmly grounded in the moral conscience which, by its imperatives,
makes the way for a more rapid development of the civil society. In the societies which
are late in their development, the ethos of the civil society should precede the
development of the civil society in them since they can look after the model of the
developed societies. The cultural-spiritual and moral restoration of these societies will
make easy the creation of the civil societies in them, namely, of those able to reproduce
their authentic political ethos upon which the political identity of these societies will
be reflected. Without political identity, it is not possible to discover political
interests. Neither is it possible to discover the best strategy for their realization as
best suits the human community.
The moral conscience about the need to de-blockade and to develop the
civil society in the postsocialist societies is linked with the knowledge that this can be
achieved with more profound mental and structural changes in these societies. The mental
changes will contribute to the transformation of the authoritarian citizen—upon which
the authoritarian political system rested—into a free citizen, aware of his needs,
interests and goals which he can realize by his political commitment in the democratic
system. An authoritarian personality does not take critically the authority of leaders,
parties, states; besides, it is rigid, inclined to stereotypes and prejudices (especially
ethnic ones), a black-and-white way of thinking, irrational reactions,
collectivist-nationalist ethos, subordination and totalitarian indoctrination and
manipulation. Authoritarianism as a character structure and a way of social behavior is
widely spread, especially on the Yugoslav territory. (9) The change of the authoritarian and traditional syndrome of domination and
subordination requires a fundamental moral and political re-socialization of adult members
of the postsocialist societies and democratic political socialization of the young
generation. The structural changes in these societies would lead to the same goal.
The structural changes in the postsocialist societies are necessary for
the sake of changing structures of the social power toward liberation and affirmation of
creative and democratic social forces, able to lead these societies toward civilization
development in the spirit of humanist ethics. These changes give rise to market economy,
pluralism of ownership, division of power, a multi-party system, a rational and efficient
legal state, pluralism of values, moral and political tolerance, a free and objective
information system, introduction of efficient institutions for controlling government and
independent agencies for satisfying common needs; they will lead to the merging of the
legal and social state. These changes will disintegrate remains of the Bolshevik system
and uproot the Bolshevik political culture and authoritarian mentality of the personality
shaped according to the Bolshevik morality.
Democratic economic and political reforms provide for the creation of
civil culture, initiative, courage, conscience, solidarity and behavior—the basis of
the civil ethos. By means of successful social reforms and moral transformation of the
postsocialist societies what can be brought to an end is a hypertrophied, expensive,
centralized, arbitrary, inefficient, expansionist and greedy state as well as its desire
for an all-inclusive domination and control. To the extent to which elements of the civil
society strengthen along with its political ethos, the power of etatisme will be
reduced as well as the danger from neo-totalitarianism in the postsocialist societies.
Along with the strengthening of the civil society there will be a competent elite created
able to solve social conflicts by political and democratic means and it will oppose to
political voluntarism in controlling the social development.
The political ethos of the authoritarian societies has been created in
the ideology of the ruling party and of the state and it manipulated its subjects by
indoctrinating them. The political ethos of the civil society springs from the conscience
of a free citizen, aware of his rights, interests and duties; it acts through democratic
political public opinion. This is its advantage which requires support and respect
especially in the postsocialist countries.
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