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