Towards Civil Socialism

* Article: Vers un socialisme civil ? L’épreuve de la contrainte démocratique de différenciation de la société Bruno Théret.

URL = http://cemi.ehess.fr/docannexe/file/2422/9._the_ret.pdf

In: Bernard Chavance, Éric Magnin, Ramine Motamed-Nejad, Jacques Sapir (dir.), Capitalisme et socialisme en perspective. Évolution et transformation des systèmes économiques, Paris, La Découverte, 1999.

Summary

From the Reading Notes from Michel Bauwens, 2005:

Unlike the postwar West-European social-democratic model, which aimed to re-absorb the economic in the social, 'state socialism' aimed to absorb it in the political. It strived for holism and refused the social differentiation of industrial society. But modernity's deep trend is to escape traditional forms of domination and thus a return to totalisation under an absolute state goes counter to this. Modernity wants to limit the state through a 'regulated polity'.

The structural differentiation of modernity cannot only be achieved through an equally totalitarian 'total market', which also would destroy the political. Other avenues are still possible.

According to Theret, the postwar model showed a civil society independent of state and capitalism

Excerpts:

- “Les sociétés salariales de l'après-guerre ont esquissé une forme de dépassement du capitalisme comme de l'étatisme. Ceci grâce à des processus de socialisation democratique fondés sur les principes de liberté, et d'égalité institutionnalisés grâce au jeu de la monétarisation et de la juridicisations des rapports sociaux."

- Ce type de société montre un troisième ordre autonome de pratique (en dehors de l'économique et du politique, c.a.d. Marche et pouvoir: l’ordre domestique.

   - SYSTÈME CAPITALISTE
       - Capitalisme liberal radical [market > state > civil]: individualism, freedom, market
   - SYSTÈME SOCIALISTE D’ETAT
       - [totalitarian socialism: state  > market > civil]: equality, power
   - SYSTEME SOCIALISTE CIVIL
       - Communisme communautaire intégral [civil > market > state]: holindividualism

In this new third order, both market and state are subsumed to civil society and receive specialized non-dominant functions

What then is the utmost value and symbolic system of such a third order society ? Is it fraternity, or eqaulity in difference, or freedom ?

What are the philosophical sources for this vision:

   - socialist thinkers who distinguished society from statist
   - in particular around the 1848 revolution (David, 1992)
   - the literature on reciprocity 
       - with Polanyi
       - neo-Maussians such as Chanial, 1998
       - M. Walser and his 'democratic decentralized socialism'

“Par delà leur diversité, ces approches conduisent toutes à faire de la solidarité réciproque, le troisième principe éthique dont la mise en valeur hiérarchiquement supérieure est propre a fondé un socialisme civil.”

I. De la dette primordiale aux formes différenciées de la dette privée et de la dette sociale

“Toute vie collective suppose l’existence d’un lien social qui tient ensemble les humains s’identifiant au groupe .. Ce lien est un rapport d’endettement mutuel. La structure qui se cache derrière toute vie en société, derrière toute transaction .. n’est qu’une méthode de création de dette.”

- Première hypothèse: sa forme originale est la dette de vie, “l’endettement original de toute homme à l'égard des puissances représentative du tout cosmique dont l'humanité est issue.

- Deuxième hypothèse: des pouvoirs temporels souverains s’imposent comme des légitimes représentants de ces puissances et récupèrent ainsi la dette ici-bas.

- Troisième hypothèse: ces pouvoirs souverains inventent la monnaie comme moyen de règlement des dettes (remplaçant le sacrifice humain ?)

"La structure symbolique qu’est la dette primordiale … est ainsi une institution du meme status anthropologique que la prohibition d’inceste … ; le fondement toujours necessaire des societes modernes. La monnaie comme abstraction, libère la dette des relations interpersonnelles."

How then to interpret modern societies in this context. There are two inversions!

- 1) First inversion: economic debt still has the same structure (the individual is totally represented by money), but it is now no longer directed to a mythical past, but to anticipations of the future

- 2) Second inversion: social debt. It is now society which is indebted to the individual by which it is constituted.

Modern money integrates both aspects, and functions equally for public and private life.

II. Le travail democratique de la contrainte de différenciation dans le salariat.

Theret has distinguished 2 ideal-types of differentiated capitalist societies.

- 1) Les systèmes territoriaux rentiers-guerriers:

       - Weak differentiation; imperialist phase, the state dominated capital: "l'éthique aristocratique (puissance) domine l’esprit bourgeois (richesse).

- 2. Les systèmes salariaux industriels providentiels

   - High differentiation: capital dominates the state: “Le désir de richesse s’autonomise vis a vis du désir de puissance”; economic debt, centered on the future, dominates social debt.

"Le rapport salarial crée des contraintes démocratiques par l’invention d’un nouveau sujet politique: l’individu pour soi et en soi."

Because the original debt no longer functions directly, people's working power can no longer be mobilized by directly referring to it. Instead, private debt is invoked, and created by the workers themselves, who lend their labour power in advance as credit.

The salary and contract model, made this symbolic fiction of labour power possible. In such a system, labour as object is subjugated by the impersonal system, but it remains intact as subject, since he juridically remains the democratic subject with the same power as his employer.

- “En tant que sujet, il ne concède aucun de ses droits démocratiques, il reste libre et égal avec l’employeur avec lequel il a contracté; le travailleur en tant qu'être humain est absent de la production, c’est seulement son corps qui est présent: toute hiérarchie de pouvoir qui ne soit pas fonctionnellement légitime, est exclue des relations de production.”

Despite these fundamental advances, this does not entail a right sharing of the surplus value, which depends on the political strenght and the role of the state.

How come that the state, whose power now derives from the sovereign individual, who now is the universal lender from whom the state borrows, nevertheless holds power over him ? This is a consequence of the second process of symbolization (after labour power): the "force de pouvoir", a political power which can be detached from the individual, given away by him (through representation ?)

Despite the fact that the commercial and political elites have a surplus of power, these two symbolisations are extremely important, because they point to the transformation of the present system.

III. Les transformations de la faille moderne associées à l'émergence d’un ordre domestique autonome.

With modern differentiation, family life has become autonomous, it is no longer the basis of power and enrichment strategies, but based on a contract of mutual love, which can be disbanded at any time.

The family has become the locus where the ideals of freedom and equality are most fully lived out.

It is these domestic practices which form the basis of a autonomous civil society and founds the possibility of civil socialism. Love in the family is based on reciprocity, and in the family, it is the whole person that communicates. It is where the fragmented person of modernity can fully be integrated. It is based on intimate interpersonal communication.

- "L'intimité surgit quand le monde d’un être humain devient important pour un autre être humain, et que cela est réciproque. “

But a love-based human family is also inherently unstable.

Because of this, family forms cannot:

   - 1) stabilize themselves, and
   - 2) form the basis of a societal format

- "La famille ne peut plus être l’espace de la régulation familiale, mais la pluralité des formes familiales est ce système que l’on qualifie d’ordre domestique.”

We have a system whereby the family system is the cofre based on intimacy, surrounded by a socio-familial domestic order, with whole persons but no longer intimate, and finally the public space, where different social orders meet.

The other logic at work n the family is the logic of filiation, which cannot be broken. This creates a wider set obligations, i.e. the debt towards one's children, which founds the pluralistic family system, so that parents can extend care and protection even in case of divorce. This is what the author call the 'domestic order'.

IV. Société civile et espace public

Theret examines the relation between civil society and public space, comparing his views on Habermas. I understand from this chapter that the civil sphere is an extension of the sphere of family life and its values, but without the intimacy.

V. La solidarité réciproque comme valeur hiérarchiquement supérieure dans le socialisme civil

The way that the contradictions of the private and social debt are harmonized in the domestic sphere, can potentially be reproduced in the whole of society, without the need for re-totalisation. For this to happen, fraternity must become the supreme social value. Love has to dominate money and Law. Today, money is the guarantee of freedom, and law is the guarantor of equality, while fraternity should derive from the common belongingness to the nation (replacing God).

Three intellectual traditions are recommended to think this through:

   - 1) the pre-marxist socialism of PIerre Leroux
   - 2) the guild socialism (the federalist socialism of which Polanyi was the inheritor)
   - 3) the communautarian tradition re-activated by Michael Walzer

The thinkers of the first school concentrated on the tryptic, "freedom, equality, fraternity", and argued that the latter was a necessary duty, to balance the 2 other contradictory rights.

Polanyi, as representative of the second school, stressed another tryptic: exchange, redistribution, reciprocity, as three forms of integration that should be co-present in a healthy society:

   - market society absolutizes exchange
   - state socialism absolutizes redistribution
   - reciprocity is carried out by the community

This process of negotiated priorities would be undertaken by associated producers, consumers, and municipalities ('federal socialism').

Walzer's communautarianism aims a 'complex equality' (rather than a simple one). Equality is a negative right, wishing to abolish personal subordination and a monopoly on the instruments of domination.

Simple equality aims at a equal distribution of social goods and does not accept a monopoly on any resource. The latter is useless because it can only be done by monopolizing political power. An additional problem is that de-monopolizing such power, as in a democracy, weakens it against private monopolies.

Walzer's solution is to limit the convertibility of any monopolies to other areas, so that it cannot become predominance. This non-cumulation of inequality from one differentiated sphere to another, is what he calls 'complex equality'. The differentiation is then overcome through the common belonging and reciprocity inherent in a political community.

To obtain equality in liberty, they both must be subordinated to 'reciprocal solidarity', or fraternity, in a hierarchy of values. This way, differentiation is maintained, the logics of liberty and equality can still operate in their spheres, and a communautarian totalitarianism is avoided.