Concept, peculiarities of constitution and functions of civil society as a structural element of the modern world-system

From now on, any injustice, any “defects” in the society could be fixed peacefully, via open public communication in civil society, by producing public opinion as a result of communication and exerting pressure upon the liberal state. It seemed that one of the important postulates of liberalism, spoken about by such thinkers as John Locke, James Harrington and Immanuel Kant, has finally been put into practice: a nation of citizens is able themselves to set the course of development of their society via open, public communication and via broad use of “communicative reason”; a nation is able to gradually direct the society, step by step, toward a more developed, ordered, rational state. To be sure, that would require a relatively long time to accomplish. Instant changes are impossible. But in a distant future, a society guided by the will of its citizens would definitely become more and more just and rational. Radical, revolutionary methods of social changes are not only inappropriate and irrelevant but also dangerous and harmful. Looking from the angle of Wallerstein's world-systems analysis, it appears that the construction “liberal state -- civil society” has become a sort of a mechanism used by the elites of the modern world-system's core states to suppress anti-system rebellions of the lower strata via limited engagement of the urban middle class in political administration processes.

4. Peculiarities of inclusion of the lower strata of the European capitalist world-economy into civil society

In the course of revolutionary events, the urban middle class and the lower strata fought together to overthrow the absolute monarchy. However, their union broke up after adoption of the model of liberal state. The new model did not quite conform to interests of the lower strata --they wanted more radical transformations. But the urban middle class believed that the main goal of revolutionary movement had been achieved, and blocked further development of anti-system rebellions. The model of liberal state became a reality of life, so the lower strata had to get used to it. However, the urban middle class began to oppose the broadening of electoral and civil rights: having achieved full membership in civil society, they looked for the ways of not letting the lower strata in it. In that respect, their interests coincided with interests of the capitalist class of the modern world-system, who also could not accept the idea of political participation of the lower strata.

The problem was how to justify the exclusion of the lower classes without contradicting ideological achievements of the French Revolution: the principles of freedom, equality and justice. Immanuel Wallerstein shows that a special criterion was applied to justify the exclusion of the lower strata, the so-called “reason” criterion [16, 7]. The ability to act reasonably was named the key condition for participation in communication in the civil society sphere. Only if the participation is limited to those who have this ability would the communicatively achieved agreement regarding the ways of correctly organizing social life become possible. But who should be considered “reasonable”, or worthy to partake in civil communication?

Jeffrey Alexander notes two polar discourses appearing in the communicative field of civil society: “discourse of liberty” and “discourse of repression”, based on the system of binary symbolic codes. If a social group is constituted in positive symbolic codes of the “discourse of liberty”, its representatives are depicted as having the qualities required for participation in communicative processes of producing public opinion: they are rational and critical, and do not require strong “leaders” and do not submit to authoritativeness; they are autonomous, abiding by law not because of external sanctions but because law expresses their natural rationality; they make themselves clear and do not conceal their ideas; they are open and benevolent to other members of a social community, etc. Representatives of this group do meet the criterion of “reason”, and therefore, can be included into civil society [1, 56-59, 60-61]. At first, only the representatives of the urban middle class were depicted in positive symbolic codes of the “discourse of liberty”. Only they were considered sufficiently competent to partake in open public communication in the modern civil society.

The “discourse of repression” refers to “uncivil” qualities. If a social group is constituted in negative symbolic codes of the “discourse of repression”, its representatives are depicted as threatening the existence of civil society. They are unable to make rational judgments and critically perceive information; they cannot tell truth from lies, and therefore, they are easy to manipulate; these people are dishonest, inclined to recognize the authority and thoughtlessly submit to it, etc. The representatives of this group do not meet the criterion of “reason”, and therefore, must be excluded from civil society [1, 56-59, 60-61]. The lower strata was immediately placed under the “discourse of repression”, in particular, the following three social groups: working class, women and the Blacks. The representatives of these groups were considered incompetent in the sense of the ability to participate in civil communication. Since they are hardly able to make a rational contribution to discussions concerning matters of contemporary importance for the community, particularly those concerning its rational constitution, they must be denied the membership in a modern civil society. Therefore, the model of liberal state envisaged from the very beginning that only a small fraction of people -- white educated wealthy males -- have the right to engage in open public communication.

After the establishment of modern civil society, social movements of those excluded from it began to appear in it. Worker movements, feminist and suffragist movements, movements of the Blacks oriented toward the use of communicative institutes of civil society in order to depict their social groups in positive symbolic codes of the “discourse of liberty” and substantiate on this basis the legality of their inclusion and the need for it. On the other hand, the dominant social groups -- capitalist class and the urban middle class -- wanted to apply the “discourse of repression” to the representatives of the lower strata in order to deny their access to the newly-established communicative sphere. Therefore, a lengthy symbolic struggle for the inclusion was waged in the discursive field of civil society.

Over time, main social movements would achieve success and “fade away”. At least in core and semiperipheral states, the lower strata have eventually gained the electoral and broad civil rights: working class earlier, women and the Blacks later. But that did not significantly change their position in the capitalist world-economy. The lower strata were unable to achieve a substantial redistribution of surplus value in their favor, but only a partial one, based on mechanisms of the so-called “welfare state”; nor were they able to shake the power of the capitalist class. Instead, their rebellious energy was redirected from anti-system revolutions into the channel of struggle for the inclusion into civil society, thus being exhausted. And the integration of lower strata into national societies helped strengthen social solidarity, thus strengthening core states even more. The model of liberal state has been successfully functioning for a century and a half, and the first crisis has occurred in 1968.

An important function of civil society should be mentioned here. Civil society is a sphere where via rational communication meanings are produced. This function was discussed as by Jьrgen Habermas, as by other scholars as well. In particular, it was described in Ralf Dahrendorf's works. This scholar says that in the modern era, people need deep cultural ties, the existence of which would give meaning to the world. These ties bind societies together, keep them in unity. Dahrendorf terms them as “ligatures”. Without them, there is a danger to go down into the state of anomy. In Dahrendorf's opinion, civil society is the most important structure in society where “ligatures” are produced. Using civil communication, people provide themselves with semantic benchmarks in order not to feel themselves hapless in the ever-changing, unstable modern world [20, 32-36].

An assumption can be made from the standpoint of world-systems analysis that civil society of every country that adopted the model of liberal state produces more or less the same semantic benchmarks. In other words, communication in civil society gives the European capitalist world-economy uniform meanings. In particular, they help its residents reconcile with the injustice of social reality. These meanings are essentially ideological. They work well in core states, while their certain artificiality may be felt in peripheral states.

But overall, they serve their purpose. Max Weber says that in the 16th -- 17th centuries, Protestant ethics that promised eternal bliss in the afterworld helped the lower strata reconcile with their dismal fate and quietly bear the burden of exploitation. In the 19th -- 20th centuries, the full-fledged inclusion of the lower strata into civil society and active communicative participation in it brought the hope that a more just social order could be created in the future with the efforts of the citizens themselves.

Immanuel Wallerstein forecasts that approximately in the mid-21st century, the European capitalist world-economy will cease to exist. The capitalist mode of accumulation of wealth, based on the axial division of labor, will exhaust itself. It is going to cause crisis of the other two structures, modern state and civil society. The ideology of liberalism will probably lose the status of Geoculture. It will become clear that social deficiencies of society could hardly be gradually fixed via rational communication. The fundamental issue of fair redistribution of surplus value may again take the center stage. A crisis of civil society, coupled with the decline of Geoculture of the modern world-system, may produce the situation of the lack of “ligatures” in which the “world” can lose sense. People may start looking for other mechanisms of producing meanings and for other cultural sources required for that purpose. Perhaps the first and the simplest thing in this situation would be to turn to religion. One of the possible ways out of the state of the “lack of meaning” could be rollback to religious fundamentalism.

A new world-system will rise in the place of the European capitalist world- economy. The mode of producing wealth and the mode of its appropriation by elites will probably change. The economy and the state will probably be organized somewhat differently. In that case, civil society may undergo transformation as well. The very communication in public space will not disappear, especially considering that information technologies would enlarge the public sphere like never before. However, both the institutional and the discursive dimensions of civil society may undergo some changes. Public communication may be ordered somewhat differently.

Conclusions

1. Modern civil society as the third structural element of the modern world-system appears in the context of political changes -- changes caused by the French Revolution. It emerges along with the model of liberal state. Establishing of civil society made it possible to organize and to canalize in a definite direction a public open communication in the European capitalist world- economy.

2. Communication in public space outside the scope of the state and economy took place before the French Revolution as well, and it was typical for not just European countries but also, for instance, developed world-empires of East Asia. But only after the French Revolution have the necessary social institutes and the necessary value-based normative cultural context been created in the modern world-system, shaping public communication in the form of fundamental practices of modern civil society.

3. Civil society is often considered an entity confronting the state and trying by all means to limit its authoritarian tendencies. At the same time, civil society needs the state for its normal functioning. But it must be a liberal state, not, say, an absolutist state. Civil society and a modern liberal state need each other and could hardly function separately from each other.

4. The growth of civil society enabled to redirect the rebellious energy of the broad masses from anti-system revolutions into the peaceful channel of civil communication. At the same time, the functioning of the European capitalist world-economy was not seriously disrupted. The very communication in civil society was strictly regulated and canalized in that direction and not in another.

5. Civil society is a controversial entity. On the one hand, its functioning enables citizens to influence the organization of their collective life; but on the other hand, its creation rather makes an impression of the possibility to exert influence, in the sense that it is limited by territorial borders of a national state. However, the processes taking place in the world-economy at the supranational level and having indirect, or even direct impact on life of the citizens, remain beyond their influence.

6. The urban middle class was the social group that benefited the most from the advent of civil society. The creation of a new communicative sphere was very much in their interests. Unlike the lower strata, they were not interested in more radical political changes. Therefore, anti-system rebellions of the lower strata were transformed into liberal or national bourgeois revolutions largely thanks to the efforts of the urban middle class.

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