Why There Is No Civil Socialism in the USA

Civil Socialism means the verbal advocacy of "civil society" by intellectuals. To say that it scarcely exists in America is not at all the same thing as to claim that "civil society" is not found here. Of course it is, just as there were lots of proletarians around when Sombart asked his original question about plain unepitheted socialism. This discussion is about slogans and sloganeers (or, more politely, theorists and theories), not about what those slogans appeal to. The more exact meaning of the above title is not that these slogans aren't uttered, but rather that they are probably going to remain just slogans and utterances. The Civil Socialists will unfurl their ideological banners, no doubt, but there won't be any troops worth mentioning marching behind them. That is to say, the dreary fate of the Scientific Socialists in the USA exactly prefigures their own.

There are lots of reasons for thinking so, because the Civil Socialists have lots of problems. To begin with, there is what one might call the problem of sucess, which amounts to asking "Why travel, when we're already here?" The CS are ready enough to assure us that "civil society" is a very Yankee notion, and Yankeedom a very civil socialist place. They have a tendency to assume rather presumptuously that M. de Tocqueville is a wholly owned ideological subsidiary of their own.

That sounds like it ought to be promising, but in fact it is not, as one may see, perhaps, by reflecting why "Tocquevillism" was never, in all the decades before CS recently blew in from Central Europe, set up as a political and ideological thing in itself. The ugliness of the word and the nationality of the eponym may have had some slight negative effect, but the real cause is surely that hardly anybody in America would venture to be against it. To this day, hardly anybody in America (except eccentrics like the present writer) will say a discouraging word about St. Alexis. Which means, not very paradoxically, that there is very little point in saying many words for him. Indeed, since he described the Eternal America perfectly, nobody really even has to read him, since one can just look at contemporary America directly instead. America is not a very theoretical place, anyhow, as one could undoubtedly quote St. Alexis to prove, and a theory that nobody denies is least of all likely to interest people not interested in theories. In short, Civil Socialism will thrive in the USA about the time the Round Earth movement really takes off: the date will be 31 February, although the year is hard to predict.

There is one obvious gap in that success-is-failure thesis which a CS objector might take advantage of: if America turns out not to be Eternal, if things change enough from the immutable 1830's paradigm, sooner or later Tocquevillism might actually become relevant, false enough to be worth bothering about. Whether this has happened or not must be in some sense an empirical question. It certainly seems that the Civil Socialists assume that it has, since nobody sensible, not even an American academic, would knowingly found a Round Earth Movement. If Civil Socialism is to be the solution, there must be some problem for it to solve, even if only an imaginary one.

Before discussing the imagined problems, however, notice one plain general implication: Civil Socialism must, on these terms, be a right-wing or strictly speaking "reactionary" movement. Tocquevillism used to be true and now it is not so true and therefore (obviously! who could doubt?) Americans must restore it. And, so far as I know, Civil Socialism is available in America only on those terms. The CS disagree about various things, but none of them speak as if their "civil society" were itself a brand-new contraption just invented in exotic Bohemia and imported by themselves. The only thing that is new seems to be the idea of making a fuss about it or a movement out of it.

If CS is to be a good idea, let alone a successful one, there must be both a problem to be solved and, more concretely, a crew of enemies to be defeated. Exactly who, then, is against "civil society"? This is the central question, and the answer is not far to seek: the predestined enemies of CS are, as everybody knows, the statists. Even without the fancy newfangled epithet, "society" is usually antithetical to "state," at least for speakers of American. Even if she sticks entirely to boosting her own stuff and not knocking somebody else's, an enthusiast for "society" is pretty certain to be antistatist.

Logically, of course, she might be anti-individualist instead. However possible in the abstract, this stance is not very easy in America, where the state and the individual have traditionally travelled together as "democracy." The high-falutin' terminology used here to some extent swims upstream against the Yankee current, since it explicitly separates the element "statism" out of the compound "democracy." Most Americans take for granted that "statism" is a bad thing, and are thus predisposed to be appealed to by Civil Socialists, but the CS will in fact get little mileage out of this, since Americans equally firmly assume that "statism" is always about an undemocratic state, that there is no puzzle at all about adoring democracy and loathing the state. In fact, talking about "statism" and "the state" (as also about "civil society") has a vaguely foreign flavor in all cases: here at home the political question is more likely to be phrased in terms of "Big Government," which can be an enemy to Mr. Individual as "democracy" cannot. Hegel's notorious dictum about the State being God's way of dealing with the world sounds very Prussian and wicked, but if the same were said of Democracy, it would pass muster in a Commencement Day address, except perhaps with separation-of-church-and-state fanatics. In fact, we say "state" (in the philosophical sense) almost solely in the phrase "church and state," "government" or "democracy" everywhere else. Conversely, it might shock some Americans into really thinking about the First Amendment if we spoke for once of "separation of religion and democracy"! That is to say, even in the peculiar and archaic phrase "church and state," the "state" is rather decidedly a bad thing. Evidently George III and Lord North were associated with a nasty "state," but Washington and Co. set up a noble democratic government instead. It doesn't make sense, exactly, but that's how we usually think and talk.

A second reason for doubting the imminent success of Civil Socialism is that it asks us to stop thinking and talking that way. Although "civil society" is as American as apple pie, it doesn't sound so linguistically, and the CS are in for real sales resistance when Americans see that their antistatism is also antidemocratism. But in fact they aren't likely to get even that far: Americans will simply fail to understand what they're talking about rather than clear their minds of the canting antithesis of "state" and "democracy." They'll nod their heads at all the Tocquevillesque oracular deliverances and never dream of what Civil Socialism really implies, namely that "civil society" is different from, hostile to, and better than democracy. That doctrine has about as much antecedent plausibility in the USA as "2 + 2 = 5." It sounds so crazy that people who say so are not going to be taken seriously.

It is not, of course, a completely alien doctrine. It fits in nicely with the bumper-sticker "This is a republic, not a democracy." Most Americans haven't a clue what that minoritarian ideological affirmation implies ("Oh foo, of course America is a democracy! Everybody knows that!") and probably mentally translate it into something comparatively innocuous like "elephants are better than donkeys." It does not exactly imply Civil Socialism, since it is much older. Yet we might propose that Civil Socialism is the ideal theory to stand behind that bumper-sticker even if it wasn't invented precisely to do so, as plainly it wasn't. (CS was invented in Central Europe as a sophisticated variety of anticommunism.)

The problem about the bare bumper-sticker is obvious enough: cui bono? The sinister claim is that America is a republic for some people as opposed to a democracy for everybody, but who, exactly, are "some people"? Civil Socialism ideologizes the most comprehensive possible answer to this question, validating virtually any "some people" that comes along. This reflection brings us to the third reason CS probably is going nowhere: it is too clever for its own good. It synthesizes all actual, even all possible, "some people" into a "civil society" that plainly ends up comprehending everybody, yet without having a good word to say for the most common kind of everybodyism, the statist-democratic kind. Or for the second most common kind of everybodyism, the libertarian-individualist-anarchist kind. Or even for the thirty- eighth most common kind of everybodyism, so-called "communitarianism." This comprehension is all very ingenious, but surely very dangerous in practice, since if Civil Socialism were to triumph, it is almost inconceivable that it could retain its purity and unity and not degenerate into one or more of these rather similar everybodyisms. (America being America and antistatism being so important to CS, libertarianism seems the most likely end-product of the decay of Civil Socialism. It is unlikely to "degenerate" into democracy proper: although very likely most Americans will never notice that it isn't "democracy" in the first place, that obliviousness will prevent rather than assure its success. But I repeat myself.)

It could degenerate into worse than that, into mere fronting for some particular sort of "some people," with the business corporation sort heading the list of candidates. There's already something called "The Institute for Civil Society" which might more honestly be called "The Institute for Friederich von Hayek." Civil Socialism is in theoretical as well as practical danger in the Hayek direction, since his info- economic system is not only superficially similar to Civil Socialism but more impressive intellectually. Still, Hayekism and the GOP are so much stronger than the Civil Socialists that it would be ludicrous to suppose that their universal ideological triumph, were it to happen, would owe much to CS proper, let alone be the triumph of CS--not even if the authentic victors used the words "civil society" in every third sentence, as they well might. In the nature of the case, the Hayekoids would not care to make clear exactly who their primary patrons are and presenting themselves as agents of "civil society" would be a very tempting strategy. But that's enough said about people for whom the words are just words and window-dressing. We'll assume that Civil Socialists are people who believe in a notion, not just parrots who repeat a phrase.

[DIGRESSION
[The intellectual superiority of Hayekism to Civil Socialism was asserted, so perhaps a bit of justification may be added. The similarity between Hayekism and CS is qualified by the fact that the former is interested only in economic corps intermédiares, the latter in all sorts. Less is more hereabouts, because the crucial Hayekian gimmick, the generation of public "knowledge" about prices and values, cannot plausibly be attributed to all corps intermédiares simply as such: most of the non-economic ones aren't at all public and are hard to describe as interested even in private "knowledge." Hayekoid arguments cannot be adduced to show that they are eo ipso a good thing, and the arguments that can be (and are) adduced tend to beg the question, assuming that "freedom" (against the state, of course) is unquestionably and invariably a good thing. This, however, is not the proof of CS, but rather the very thing that needs to be proved. If it is accepted without specific proof, CS becomes, as remarked, difficult to distinguish from libertarianism or communitarianism or generic antistatism, which assume unprovedly "individualism is good," "community is good," and "the state is bad."
[What CS ought to do (not just pretend or profess to do) to become intellectually impressive is to show all these antistatist things simultaneously in terms of an independently defined notion of good and bad, independent as Hayekoid market "knowledge" is independent. This is easy enough, I partisanly think, if the requirement of antistatism is dropped, a plan which ends up justifying the Democratic State. If you want to call that set-up "civil society," OK, but sensible people will call it "the Democratic State." (That is, one might stipulatively define "civil society" as "society under a democratic state." An odd linguistic move, but possible, and surely the happiest possible outcome of the Civil Socialist movement.) If "civil society" is to mean something substantially antistatist and antidemocratic, however, existing demonstrations of democracy are clearly useless and you must come up with something at least as original and persuasive as Hayekism and a great deal more comprehensive. Good luck.]