Home > Op-ed | To bottom

The legend of civil society (1)

This is a story of how today’s organized citizen groups came to be called “civil society.”

I was reading out a draft article on this topic while crunching on kropek chips with my favorite neighbor, when he suddenly went ballistic.

“Aargghh!” shouted Kabsat Kandu. “One more word from you about that horrible term, and I’ll strangle you!” His outburst startled me, and made me spill my coffee on the newspaper he was reading.

“Ooops, sorry,” said I, “Methinks you’re about to go stark mad, but tell me at least the reason why.”

###

As my high-strung neighbor calmed down to my soothing words, I followed up: “Why do you hate ‘civil society’ so much?”

“I don’t hate it, I’m just perplexed. Just look at the political ads and TV talk shows,” Kandu replied, pointing at a full-page Inquirer ad with dozens of signatures on parade. “Some people say they belong to the top 600 of civil society – whatever that means – and that they support GMA. Others say they are also with civil society, but they want GMA out. Civil society says this, civil society demands that. And no one’s telling me whether I’m part at all of civil society. And which one? Makaulaw ngay! “

Hey, cool it, I told Kabsat Kandu, here’s your kropek. And crush more garlic for the vinegar dip, will ya? Let me tell you a modern, politically correct fairy tale.

###

Ages ago, when human communities lived much simpler lives (what we would call today primitive societies), many institutions and ideas we now take for granted did not yet exist.

There were no vast landholdings, no factories, no banks. There were no governments, no armies, no cities. There wasn’t any sense of public and private, civil or uncivil. The savage’s life was often, as Hobbes said, “nasty, brutish and short.” For bad or good, humanity sustained itself that way for many thousands of years.

###

Around 10,000 years ago, things began to move faster. Impelled by changes in climate and technology, many communities shifted to farming or pastoral life and attained a stable food surplus. Populations grew and stratified into social classes. Early civilizations emerged.

Hey, Kandu, pay attention, I said, because this is where that slippery term “civil” emerges.

“Civil” referred originally to life in towns or early cities with their surrounding rural villages, in contrast to so-called primitive lifeways. In these early civilizations, the citizenry organized themselves into the state (usually in the form of the city-state), whereby the wealthy classes held the reins of power and every person knew their fixed social role.

###

Some city-states (Greek polis) were ruled by all their citizens who practiced a kind of town-hall democracy. Others were ruled by petty nobility representing the citizenry. Still others, by kings chosen by the nobility. In any case, the citizenry saw themselves as comprising the political community (Aristotle’s koinonia politike, an early term that later evolved into “civil society”) that regularly participated in state or public affairs.

But, take note, my friend: this political community or civil society always excluded the exploited slave and serf classes. They were not counted as citizens and had absolutely no rights.

“Ha! I thought so, too!” Kabsat Kandu muttered. “Poor people never belong to civil society, they are always relegated to servile society.” Glad that he was getting my point, I excused Kandu’s corny pun.

###

Yes, slaves and serfs were a totally different matter. The polis represented the common class interests and lifeways of its citizens – except for serfs and slaves. Ancient Greek thinkers did grapple with conflicts between the interests of individual citizens and of the wider polis. But they stressed the role of the state and citizens’ debates in shaping public good.

Later, as the young city-states grew into expansionist empires such as the Greek and Roman empires, the rulers gradually distinguished between public and private affairs. They recognized the status and rights of private persons as distinct from the public citizen. But the private sphere remained very narrow, and the state remained omnipotent.

###

The Greco-Roman empires gradually broke up into a patchwork of smaller feudal states. But the Christian Church remained as the predominant all-European state machine. Everywhere, clergy served as royal advisers, local administrators, judges and military officers. The Church held on to its omnipotent powers based on faith, not reason. It imposed a single Christian framework on all social life – yes, my friend, even on how people had sex.

The distinction between public citizen and private person blurred anew. The Church was the state, and the state was civil society. Hey Kandu, you still follow?

“Go on, go on. I’m not as stupid as I look,” my neighbor said with a devilish grin across his face.

###

St. Augustine (AD 354-430) discussed civil society in his The City of God although he did not use that actual term. Echoing the early Church fathers, Augustine believed that the “City of Man” (civitas terrena) was too sinful to govern itself.

Hence, people had to submit to the “City of God” (the feudal-military state wedded to the Church) to punish sinfulness and ensure salvation.

Augustinian thinking would justify oppressive feudalism and theocracy for the next thousand years.

It didn’t help that the only competing state force in the Western world back then – Islam in the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe – also thought and behaved in the same way.

###

Thus, like in the ancient Greco-Roman world, the medieval West saw no distinction between the state and civil society. The state claimed itself as civil society. Civil life and state affairs were merely aspects of one integrated social life – again, excluding the slave and serf classes.

When Aristotle’s works were rediscovered and translated during the European Renaissance, a humanist scholar named Leonardo Bruni translated the Greek term koinonia politike (political community), without much ado, into Latin societas civilis (civilized society).

So you see, my friend, for many millennia until about 500 years ago, civil society simply meant the state – and the ruling classes who held state power – encompassing all walks of civil life.

Kabsat Kandu’s reply floored me. “Well, has anything been different lately?”

Next week, my friend, this modern fairy tale continues next week. #

Romancing the sword (1)
Romancing the sword (2)
Romancing the sword (3)

(Email your feedback to jun@nordis.net)

Home > Op-ed | Back to top