Democracy and the Post-Totalitarian Experience (Value Inquiry Book, 167)

DEMOCRACY AND THE POST-TOTALITARIAN EXPERIENCE

VIBS Volume 167 Robert Ginsberg Founding Editor Peter A. Redpath Executive Editor Associate Editors G. John M. Abbarno Mary-Rose Barral Gerhold K. Becker Raymond Angelo Belliotti Kenneth A. Bryson C. Stephen Byrum H. G. Callaway Robert A. Delfino Rem B. Edwards William Gay Dane R. Gordon J. Everet Green Heta Aleksandra Gylling Matti Häyry Steven V. Hicks Richard T. Hull

Laura Duhan Kaplan Joseph C. Kunkel Mark Letteri Vincent L. Luizzi Alan Milchman George David Miller Jon Mills Alan Rosenberg Arleen L. F. Salles John R. Shook Eddy Souffrant Tuija Takala Oscar Vilarroya Anne Waters John R. Welch Thomas F. Woods

a volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values SPV John R. Shook, Editor

DEMOCRACY AND THE POST-TOTALITARIAN EXPERIENCE

Editors:

Leszek Koczanowicz and Beth J. Singer Assistant Editors:

Frederic R. Kellogg and Łukasz Nysler

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005

Cover Design: Studio Pollmann The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-1635-3 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005 Printed in the Netherlands

Studies in Pragmatism and Values SPV John R. Shook Editor Other Titles in SPV John Shook. Pragmatism: An Annotated Bibliography, 1898-1940. 1998. VIBS 66 Phyllis Chiasson. Peirce’s Pragmatism: A Dialogue for Educators. 2001. VIBS 107 Paul C. Bube and Jeffrey L. Geller, eds. Conversations with Pragmatism: A MultiDisciplinary Study. 2002. VIBS 129 Richard Rumana. Richard Rorty: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Literature. 2002. VIBS 130 Guy Debrock, ed. Process Pragmatism: Essays on a Quiet Philosophical Revolution. 2003. VIBS 137 John Ryder and Emil Višňovský, eds. Pragmatism and Values: The Central European Pragmatist Forum, Volume One. 2004. VIBS 152 John Ryder and Krystyna Wilkoszewska, eds. Deconstruction and Reconstruction: The Central European Pragmatist Forum, Volume Two. 2004. VIBS 156. Arthur Efron. Experiencing Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Deweyan Account. 2005. VIBS 162

Editorial Board of SPV James Bohman Raymond Boisvert Paulo Ghiraldelli Jr. Peter H. Hare Leonard Harris David Hildebrand Kenneth Ketner Leszek Koczanowicz Tomasz Komendzinski Andrew Light

Richard Shusterman Jaime Nubiola Sami Pihlstrom Frank Ryan Sandra Rosenthal John Ryder Harvey Sarles Barbara Saunders Charlene Seigfried

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CONTENTS Foreword

xi

Preface Leszek Koczanowicz and Beth J. Singer

xiii

PART 1

Democracy and National Identity

1

ONE

In the Name of the Nation . . . In the Name of the Market. What Was Our Revolution For? Leszek Koczanowicz

3

Democracy, Ideology, and Nationalism: Democratic Reconstruction and Post-Totalitarian Eastern Europe Shannon Kincaid

13

Religion, Moral Values, and the Overthrow of Totalitarianism

21

Post-Communist Transition and Catholicism in Poland Dariusz Aleksandrowicz

23

Religion and Politics in Poland: Political Discourse, Toleration, and Neutrality Mariusz Turowski

39

PART 3

Liberalism and Democracy

49

FIVE

After Marxism: Democratic Liberalism and Hegelian Recognition Tom Rockmore

51

Communitarian Critique of Liberalism and the Problem of Democracy and Pluralism in Poland Andrzej Szahaj

61

Democracy and Public Reason

71

TWO

PART 2 THREE

FOUR

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PART 4

viii SEVEN

CONTENTS Public Reason and Higher Law: Reflections on John Rawls and the Idea of Public Reason David M. Rasmussen

73

Justification and Public Reason in a Democracy Frederic R. Kellogg

85

PART 5

Participatory Democracy and Social Justice

95

NINE

Public Choice Theory and the Post-Totalitarian State Justyna Miklaszewska

97

EIGHT

TEN

Academic Freedom and a Democratic Society John Ryder

107

PART 6

The Electronic Media and Democracy

117

ELEVEN

Democracy, the Media, and the Post-Totalitarian Experience Anthony J. Graybosch

119

Internet and Electronic Democracy Marek Hetmański

139

PART 7

Procedural Transformation

149

THIRTEEN

Detotalitarization and the Ambiguity of Moral Codes Andrzej Maciej Kaniowski

151

Politics of Exclusion and the Lustration Debate Radosław Sojak

163

American Philosophical Conceptions: Implications for Democratization

181

Josiah Royce’s Philosophy of Loyalty as a Basis for Democratic Ethics Richard P. Mullin

183

Pragmatism as a Political Philosophy for Emerging Democracies Sandra B. Rosenthal and Rogene A. Buchholz

193

TWELVE

FOURTEEN PART 8 FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

Contents SEVENTEEN

Guiding Post-Totalitarian Economic Democratization through Deweyan Radical Pragmatism Judith M. Green

ix

203

About the Contributors

219

Index

223

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FOREWORD The papers in this volume were read and discussed at a conference on the subject “Democracy and the Post-Totalitarian Experience” that took place in Karpacz, Poland on 27–30 May 1998. The conference was sponsored by the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy together with Opole University and the Lower Silesian University College of Education. We are very grateful to the following persons who helped to organize the conference: Professor Stanisław Nicieja, Rector of Opole University, Professor Józef Musielok, Vice-Rector of Opole University, Professor Robert Kwaśnica, Rector of Lower Silesian University College of Education, and Professor Wiesław Łukaszewski, Chairman of the Department of Psychology at Opole University. Special thanks are due to Łukasz Nysler.

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PREFACE The events of 1989 and 1990, which radically changed the politics of Eastern European countries, turned out to be the onset of a complicated and painful process of transformation from totalitarianism to democracy. This was contrary to the expectations of many that breaking the enslavement would almost automatically create a new kind of social bond. The majority of people thought, at that time, that most of the prevalent social tension was the effect of features inherited from the Communist system, if not a result of conscious manipulation by the Communist nomenklatura. Introducing democratic procedures was expected to change the situation immediately. Existing social tensions were to be exposed to public judgment and rationally discussed, and the political conflicts stemming from them would be solved through negotiations in the public sphere. It appeared that copying the Western model of democracy was sufficient for accomplishing this task. The only problem left was which model was to be imitated: Should Eastern European countries follow the presidential or parliamentary concept of representative democracy? The matter turned out to be much more complicated. The existing conflicts acquired a new, dramatic dimension, and different interests unexpectedly turned out to be incompatible. In many cases democratic procedures turned out to be useless in the face of these problems. The most obvious and saddest examples of this failure have been the wars among the different nationalities in the Balkans and similar conflicts in some places in the former Soviet Union. A less obvious example, but one with far-reaching consequences, is the frequent failure to reach a consensus on aspects of economic reform. This has happened in Russia and is an important cause of the instability of that country in recent years. It is also a factor in Belarus, where it gave rise to a quasitotalitarian regime. Even more stable countries have been torn apart by conflicts among different interest groups. Such situations, in turn, gave rise to a feeling of disappointment in the process of democratization itself. As a result, populist and nationalist slogans grew in popularity as they promised quick and easy solutions to the different social problems. Even if the picture just outlined is too pessimistic (since in general democracy held fast in the majority of Eastern and Central European countries), it depicts real problems that have to be solved by the societies in this corner of Europe. On the other hand, the extent to which the democratic transformation in Eastern and Central Europe did succeed provided support for the basic principles of democracy in general. The experience of 1989 and 1990 showed that democratic ideals could still stimulate a massive protest against the totalitarian state. Even for countries in which adoption of traditional procedural democracy was accompanied by some degree of disappointment in the operation of democratic principles, the events of 1989–1990 became a confirmation of the value of those principles. For instance, the importance of fostering the development of civil society, independent civic organizations and movements that

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address themselves to social and political issues, is increasingly being recognized by those who are involved in the process of democratization. Organization and action at the level of civil society are important components of Western democracy. But a more formal intellectual interchange between East and West is crucial for mutual understanding. In order to develop a rational dialogue, both sides have to get rid of any and all prejudices that might cloud the conversation. As an example, in the West the collapse of totalitarian communism is sometimes construed as merely one more argument in support of its own political model of society. From such a perspective, the only possible topic for discussion is speed of transformation, as the point of arrival is set up in advance. Adopting this standpoint, some Western experts complain that the changes in economy and politics are slower than they had expected or slower than they should be. A different and more extreme expression of the same attitude on the part of some intellectuals is the concept of the “end of history” and the ultimate triumph of the West. For some on the Eastern European side, the answer to such claims is to deny the usefulness of the Western political model. The differences among the Eastern countries and the complexity of their social problems are thereby emphasized. These do not parallel the experience of any Western democracies. In an extreme case their reasoning can lead to a rejection of the basic principles of democracy, as these are claimed not to be consonant with local customs and traditions. Such an attitude is, fortunately, very rare. We are more likely to encounter a soft version of it, which is a kind of populist and nationalist rhetoric mixed with the formal approval of democratic rules. When we decided to organize the conference, “Democracy and the PostTotalitarian Experience,” we assumed that the work of the meeting would consist in rational reflection on the basic principles of democracy in the context of the countries that started in 1989 to rebuild their societies on a democratic basis. The purpose of the conference was to confront different aspects of the principles of democracy, with the aim of considering the implications of these principles for the new environment into which they have been introduced. We hope that the collection of essays stemming from this meeting can achieve these goals. Leszek Koczanowicz and Beth J. Singer

Part One DEMOCRACY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

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One IN THE NAME OF THE NATION . . . IN THE NAME OF THE MARKET. WHAT WAS OUR REVOLUTION FOR? Leszek Koczanowicz 1. The Past and the Legitimization of the Present Social scientists have frequently observed that tradition is an important condition of societal cohesion. Historians and anthropologists have investigated this tendency and sometimes labeled it a “myth of origins.” In the seminal book The Invention of Tradition Eric Hobsbawm gave quite general meaning to this idea. According to him, “Invented tradition is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.”1 He added, “revolutions and ‘progressive movements’ which break with the past, by definition, have their own relevant past, though it may be cut off at a certain date, such as 1789.”2 The past fulfills important functions in the construction and the legitimization of the present. At the most abstract, metaphysical, level achieving the continuity between the past and the present makes people at home in their social and private lives. The feeling of rooting individual biographies in a broader context of the fate of the community (mainly nation) enables people to endow their lives with meaning. From the psychological point of view such an attitude helps people to restore their lives after the worst experience possible.3 For the life of the community itself the connection between the past and the present can be, at this metaphysical level, a source for validity of the social order. When Karl Jaspers spoke of metaphysical guilt in his famous lectures on German guilt, he had in mind mainly the distortion of the order which shattered the continuity between the past and the present.4 The relationship between the past and the present is equally important at the level of the social and political construction of society. Being so loaded with emotional meaning, the myth of origins is frequently used as a weapon in political battle. I would like to use some of Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas to clarify the significance of this myth. Bourdieu makes an interesting observation about the political field. He claims that there are inevitable tensions within it which give rise to constant reformulations of its structure. First, a permanent struggle exists to establish a language that would provide a dominant description of the

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social world. Second, there is a tendency to divide the political field into two parts, which makes possible definition of the friend and the enemy. Third, politics is an activity which is contradictory in itself. It assumes a secret knowledge, a kind of expertise not available for laymen; and it involves appeal to the public and the necessity of support from ordinary people. This contradiction regularly produces schisms as some participants in the political game seek wider support and prefer it to the purity of ideological principles.5 The idea of a “crucial past” can have important consequences in each of the three dimensions. It sets in motion a mechanism of inclusion and exclusion enabling one to divide the political field between “them” and “us,” and giving one the feeling of initiation into secret political knowledge. 2. Workers Protest. Legitimization against Legitimization Workers’ protest was the main factor in the demolition of the Communist system. The massive strikes in 1980 resulted in the emergence of Solidarity, which in turn was the turning point in the history of communism. Solidarity became the first independent social organization since the October Revolution. The importance of Solidarity consists in destroying the official ideology of the Communist state as the workers’ state. This ideology was the hard core of the politics of legitimization of the Communist state. Lacking any substantial democratic validity, communism was bound to refer to Marxist eschatology as the ultimate justification of the social and political order. This kind of justification was far from any empirical testing and the working class was conceived as a theoretical construct instead of an empirical reality of life in the factories or in industrial suburbs. But the ideologists of the Communist state constantly tried to prove the link between political power and the working class. The rituals of elections of the highest Party nomenklatura by Party cells in the biggest factories were invented to show this intimate relation. The main idea of Polish opposition was to attack Party ideology on its own territory by organizing workers against the Communist state. Acting in this way the opposition had to adopt, in part, the ideology of the special historical role of the working class, this time treated as the destroyer of the Communist state. Why did the working class have to dismantle the Communist state? The answer was very simple: it did not fulfill the promise of making life better and easier for the poorest part of the society. The ideology of the opposition was that of protecting the working class against the abuses of the state which in theory was supposed to be their state. The name “Committee of Defending Workers” was invented as a response to the official reaction to workers’ riots in 1976 but the name perfectly reflected the main goal of the opposition movement. The idea that opposition to the Communist regime is built up in the name of the working class became an official slogan of Solidarity. But it was ambiguous regarding the workers’ relationship to the Communist state: the work-

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5

ers struggled against the Communist government in the name of the rationalization of the Polish economy. They saw how their efforts were wasted by the inefficient organization of work at different levels from the bottom to the top. They believed, and the intellectuals connected with Solidarity sup-ported these beliefs, that under capitalism the whole structure of the economy could survive but become more rational. The official standpoint of Solidarity at that time was to promote self-management of the units of economy. Workers were supposed to have a decisive influence on creating both the policy of their factory and its governing body. This idea, far from any liberal programs, was to some extent tactical as then nobody could predict the collapse of the Communist state. In such a situation self-management in the economy appeared to be the first step to a free market economy that was acceptable to the state. I do not think this idea was developed only for the sake of diplomacy. Its proponents frankly believed in still existing potentialities of the socialistic economy and the historical role of the working class. The rationalization of the economy appeared to mean something different for the majority of people. To understand these expectations we have to refer for a moment to the relationships between an individual and the collective under Communist government. Communist ideology adapted almost the whole field of traditional thinking, reformulating it in collective terms. In the fight against “bourgeois” ideology, stress was put on the deficiency of the concept of individualism as a useful tool for understanding and organizing social reality. For this reason the underground movement had to put emphasis on the value of individualism. It reflected, to some extent, the experience of millions of people. A paradox of social life under the Communist government was that people did not trust any service that the government provided. People learned how to behave in a no man’s land between state-organized social life and the demands of their personal situations. Everybody had to exercise individual initiative to survive but the problem was that it was an initiative restricted to the conditions of existing social institutions. People scarcely dreamt of changing the social system but tried to find a good niche in it for themselves. This was also the attitude of the peasantry which despite being mainly private under communism (a Polish peculiarity) was, through the system of contracts and minimal prices, strongly connected with the state. Peasants took advantage of the inefficiency of the state-controlled trade system and sold their products illegally. They had good reasons to think that the changing of the social system would result in the destruction of legal barriers to their activity but without any significant changes in the support the state gave to agriculture. Summing up, we can say that the “ideal social system” which emerged in the minds of people was an extrapolation of the main features of real existing socialism. All legal forms of security should be preserved in it but made more just, and any barriers to an individual’s initiative were to be destroyed.

6

LESZEK KOCZANOWICZ 3. Radical Change or Liberal Utopia

In the “first” Solidarity (1980–1981) there emerged elements of different thinking. Groups of intellectuals proposed radical changes in the economy and introduced a genuine free market economy. Economically they were inspired by Frederich Hayek and the Chicago School and politically by the success of liberal reforms in the United States and the United Kingdom. As Jerzy Szacki stated in his book, they had to face the task of total reconstruction of the society. This idea was in principle foreign to classical liberal thought as it was directed to the justification and rationalization of an existing political practice.6 Although political and economic liberalism became important for Polish politics after 1989 with Leszek Balcerowicz’s reforms and the “liberal” government of Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, it had originated in some ideas of democratic opposition in the late seventies and enjoyed increasing popularity in the eighties.7 At the same time it was marginal both as an economic task and as a political option. Liberalism was outweighed by the mainstream opposition’s concept of civil society and by the Catholic Church’s social teaching. The growing role of liberal ideology was connected with gradual loss of faith in the possibility of demolishing the Communist system. Liberalism appeared to offer an alternative way of reform directed rather at forming new forms of ownership and economic relationships than at the struggle for power. A major proponent of liberalism, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, stated in 1989, “It is entirely indifferent to us who introduces liberal principles, Lech Wałęsa or Mieczysław Rakowski. What matters is that they be introduced.”8 The liberals believed that their option could be accepted by the Party nomenklatura as it would give them economic instead of political power. Party activists were to turn into managers and eventually into owners of privatized property. Adherents of liberalism assumed that the “China model” of society, with economic reforms and the undisturbed political power of the Communist Party, would evolve in the direction of liberal democracy. I think that this opinion depended largely on acceptance of the dogma of the close link between a free market economy and political democracy. Creating capitalist relationships in the economy had to result in the long run in forming representative democracy. The first Polish free election was held on the same day as police and army forces brutally suppressed the Tienanmen demonstration in China. The Polish Round Table Agreement proved the possibility of peacefully changing the power apparatus whereas events in China were a blow to the illusions about gradual evolution from economic reform to a democratic society. Polish liberals had to reject the strategy of “small steps” and start building a capitalistic economy “from above.” They started to create the “ideal social system” of an unrestricted free market economy and political institutions of representative democracy.

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4. The last Polish uprising Like the history of many Eastern European nations, Polish history has been marked by the struggle for preserving national identity. The partition of the state at the end of the eighteenth century put the problem of national survival in a priority position for the generations to come. Romantic poetry created symbols, metaphors, and tropes ready for description of the fate of the nation. These became a means of communication within and between generations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.9 From this perspective communism was perceived as a system of Russian domination, and the Soviet regime as a continuation of traditional Russian politics of subordination of Poland. By the same token the West was seen in an ambiguous way. It was a source of resistance to Russia with the idea of Poland being a Western, European nation but it was also accused of corruption, losing the “real” Western values which were protected in enslaved Poland. The Yalta agreement confirmed this image of the West and served as an argument for treating it with the greatest suspicion. Romantic symbols played an important role in mobilizing the collective imagination during the strikes of 1980 and afterwards. Certain analyses of the Solidarity movement emphasize the Pope’s first pilgrimage in 1979. It showed the strength of masses gathered in the name of the nation and the Church and of traditional ideology and its potential for creating a collective consciousness. This “power of symbols” turned out to be crucial for defeating the Communist ideology.10 Public high Masses, collective prayers, singing Church songs and the national anthem became an indispensable part of every demonstration in 1980–1981 and after Martial Law. It caused a lot of confusion in representatives of the Western Left who came to see the real workers’ protest. They had to confront religious and national emotions instead of traditional leftist slogans. Religious symbols attained an even higher status in the eighties. Catholicism fulfilled the function of “civil religion” as its symbols and ethical teachings were generally accepted even by people who presented opposite metaphysical beliefs. The generalization of this mood was that recovering national identity and dignity became the main task of Solidarity, more important than creating a free market economy or a socially just society. This task was considered even more important than building up a democratic society. The nation, understood as having values closely connected with Catholic Church teaching, was supposed to play the decisive function in organizing society. Instead of searching for compromise in the political sphere Poles were to uncover hidden and partly forgotten values and base their agreement on them. Wałęsa’s famous remark at the end of the strikes in 1980 that “ . . . we really come to terms as a Pole with another Pole” meant a simple formulation of such an ideology.11 From this standpoint Communism was regarded as a meaningless break in Polish history, conceived in terms of creating new values or patterns of life. If there was novelty during this period it was bound to be corrupt and serve as

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a vehicle of enslavement of the nation. If the Secular Left Opposition was ready to recognize a certain emancipatory potential in the Communist period and the liberals appreciated Communist modernization, to some extent the proponents of the national option treated the Communist period as a “silent past.” 5. Beyond Economy and Nationalism: Civil Society and the Ethos of Solidarity “Civil society” became the most important slogan of the underground movement in the eighties after the introduction of Martial Law. The popularity of this idea was caused by factors similar to those that brought about the growing interest in economic reforms. The Communist elite appeared to control political power and it appeared to be certain that Solidarity was on the defensive. On the other hand it was clear that the Communist regime, by not going to the extreme in oppression, was not able to wipe out Solidarity entirely from the political field. On the side of the Communist regime this stalemate resulted in giving up any attempt to spread its influence beyond controlling the system of political institutions. Solidarity was forced to focus on the grassroots activity which was crucial for the survival of the movement. The idea of civil society was by no means the only tactical response to the political circumstances. It had originated in the seventies in the idea of creating workers’ committees and was later developed by the first Solidarity into the concept of self-limiting revolution. In both cases, besides contextual meaning linked to the inability of the opposition to struggle for political power, this turning away from doing politics was a conscious ethically motivated choice. The very idea of solidarity served as a basis for such a vision of society. Conflicts in the society and the concept of conflict itself were perceived as being brought from the outside by powers that were foreign to the society. The first steps in recovering pre-existing social unity depended upon resisting the temptation of playing off a regular political game. The ideological background of this idea came from two main sources: Christian anthropology and the ethical tradition of Polish socialism. The first was expressed mainly by the intellectual group centered around a Catholic independent weekly, Tygodnik Powszechny, referring to the ideas of Christian personalism and stressing individual moral responsibility. As is well known, this doctrine was close to or even identifiable with existentialism. It shared with existentialism the idea of social responsibility and critique of the “commodified society,” which in turn enabled the Catholics from this group to find a kind of compromise with the Communist power. Compromise was always fragile especially when the rights of the human individual were at stake. Rev. Father Józef Tischner, the man who exerted the greatest influence on the spiritual endowment of Solidarity, was a member of this group. In his sermon Community [Wspólnota] he put emphasis on the ethical dimension of the

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movement. Solidarity is possible only among people who have a conscience, and having a conscience is a task which must result from conscious decision. A good politics is in itself a matter of conscience, a bad politics demands intervention which protects a space where solidarity can be achieved.12 This tendency was in accordance with the viewpoint of the secular left opposition. People of this orientation, such as Adam Michnik and Jacek Kuroń, started their activity far from the Catholic Church’s teaching. In the seventies they pronounced themselves the successors to the tradition of the antiCommunist Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and liberal rationalism. Both orientations were popular among radical intellectuals before World War II and were directed originally against the Catholic Church, which embodied conservative powers in the society. The convergence of standpoints became possible because of endorsement by the Church of the role of human labor as a central factor in creating the self and human rights as guarantees of political freedom, which in turn could be understood as a worldly expression of free will. Former critics of the Church discovered in the late seventies that it had protected the dignity of labor and freedom of the individual against the totalitarian state.13 They had to change the image of the Church from that of a conservative power to one of participant in the same struggle for liberation from totalitarianism. The idea of civil society, which resulted from these sources, had a mainly ethical character. Civil society was to be an organization of people against the state and beyond the state. The state was considered inevitably corrupt and the only chance for spiritual restoration lay outside the system. So, at the foundation of the idea of civil society lay an ethical instead of a social challenge. As accepted in the eighties this idea was to a high degree deliberately utopian. It was to serve as a criterion of the society’s recovery from contamination by the totalitarian state. The network of independent associations, societies, and organizations was supposed to be an expression of such a change. Because it was not possible to build such a network in the presence of an oppressive regime it had to be imagined as an ideal social system.14 Real problems appeared when the dissidents came to power and had to change an ethical utopia into a real system of institutions. 6. Consequences and Contradictions I wish to present a few observations which could shed light on relationships between the “myth of origin” and current politics in Poland. First, none of the versions of the ultimate purpose of revolution have been fulfilled. Such is the usual fate of revolutionary promises. Mythological as they are, they are bound to lie in the sphere of utopian thinking. On the other hand, as a very strong motivational factor in human behavior they have to be perceived as attainable in a finite time.

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In Poland the standard explanation of the political success of the postCommunist party involves ascribing to it the mechanism of “escape from freedom.” During the transformation people got freedom but lost the security which the totalitarian state provided. For most of them freedom became too much of a burden. Therefore, they attempted to reconstruct the former situation and voted for the post-Communist party. This explanation is very often used by disappointed dissidents like Kuroń, Michnik and Tischner. Tischner is the author of the concept of homo sovieticus, which serves as a description of individuals formed by totalitarianism. Reference to the relics of communism enables him to account for the failure of radical ethical change by the anthropological mechanism of mental enslavement. Second, the mood of disappointment results in the radicalization of the political stage. This strategy is also connected with the failure of the myth. In this case the political elite is accused of not being radical enough, of making a compromise with the opponents and thereby legitimizing them. From this point of view the most important myth (or counter-myth) of origin is associated with the Round Table Agreement. At the Round Table the opposition and the ruling elite came to an understanding and opened up a way to political reforms. In the eyes of the radicals this agreement became the Original Sin of the new Poland, blocking the possibility of a real break with the past. In the myth of the Round Table talks there is the hidden myth of Magdalenka. This refers to a villa of the Ministry of Interior Affairs where a narrow group of the representatives of the opposition, the Catholic Church, and the Communist Party met, and where the agreement was forged. For the participants in the Magdalenka talks it was just a technical arrangement, whereas for their opponents it was proof of betrayal. Consequently, fulfillment of the myth includes rejecting the Round Table Agreement. Third, myths of origin can undergo differentiation and fragmentation. It is possible for opposing parties to refer to the same myth and for parties with similar programs to refer to different myths. For instance, radical right wing populists and post-Communists demand that the original postulates of the workers’ protest be respected. They stress the fact that these were forgotten after the transformation. But in each case fragments of the same myth are included in a different whole. For the post-Communists, the postulates were abandoned because of attempts to build the free market economy at any cost. For the right wing populists, workers’ protest was closely connected with the national revival and they accuse the liberals of being agents of international capital in its attempt to dominate Poland. Fourth, divisions according to different myths of origin dominated the Polish political stage. Subsequent elections meant struggle for identity, for the definition of the society instead of discussion of economic and social problems. In this fight the mythological origins of post-totalitarian Poland prove quite significant.

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7. Appendix: Mythology, Ideology, and Social Reality. Note on Concepts. I have used the concept of mythology instead of the more popular one of ideology. I think that the concept of myth (and myth of origins) is broader than the concept of ideology as developed in the Marxist tradition. First, the concept of ideology presupposes a strict connection between class interests and “literary superstructure.” Second, in its original meaning it denotes “false consciousness” and in its later incarnations in Marxist thought with the exception of the consciousness of the working class. In this paper I have tried to avoid both problems. In my opinion the images of social reality are relatively independent of indirect class interests and avoiding these images’ being distorted appears impossible. I use the concept of myth, which is more casual and less overloaded than ideology, in order to describe how political behavior is regulated by social representations of reality. Were I to include the notion of ideology in my conceptual framework I would say that it can be formed at the crossroads of different myths. Ideology would then be much more accurate in representing group interests. Not being a subject of the paper it was not elaborated in terms of relationships between social mythology and social reality. I limit myself to brief remarks on this topic. Myths, no matter how powerful, need confrontation with social reality. They can regulate social behavior insofar as the results of such regulation do not contradict and threaten the social activity of people involved. Then, always with a designated delay, myths cease to exist and new mythology comes into being. NOTES 1. Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” The Invention of Tradition, ed. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p.1. 2. Ibid., p.2 3. See Vieda Skultans, “Theorizing Latvian Lives: The Quest for Identity,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 3:4 (December 1997), pp. 760–781. 4. Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: The Dial Press, 1947), pp. 31–32. 5. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1991), p. 183. 6. Jerzy Szacki, Liberalism after Communism, trans. Chester A. Kisiel (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1998), pp. 150–157. 7. Ibid., pp. 74–77. 8. Janusz Korwin-Mikke, “First Gdańsk Congress of Liberals, Zapis dyskusji,” Przegląd Polityczny, [Political Review], vol. 12 (Dec. 1989), p.71, quoted in Szacki, Liberalism, p. 128.

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9. See Leszek Koczanowicz, “Polish Nationalism and National Identity,” Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 4 (Dec. 1996), pp. 201–211. 10. See Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols Against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). 11. Gdańsk, Sierpień 80, Rozmowy [Gdańsk, August 1980, Talks], ed. Andrzej Drzycimski and Tadeusz Skutnik (Gdańsk: Instytut Wydawniczy Zwiazków Zawodowych, 1990), p. 433. 12. Józef Tischner, Etyka solidarności oraz Homo sovieticus [Ethics of Solidarity and Homo Sovieticus] (Kraków: Znak, 1992), pp.14–18. 13. See Adam Michnik, Dialog, Lewica, Kościőł [Dialogue, the Left and the Church] (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1977). 14. See Michael Walzer, “The Civil Society Argument,” Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, ed. Chantal Mouffe (London: Verso, 1992).

Two DEMOCRACY, IDEOLOGY, AND NATIONALISM: DEMOCRATIC RECONSTRUCTION AND POST-TOTALITARIAN EASTERN EUROPE Shannon Kincaid It appears to me that we are driven to this, that logicality inexorably requires that our interests shall not be limited. They must not stop at our own fate, but must embrace the whole community. This community, again, must not be limited, but must extend to all races of beings with whom we can come into immediate or mediate intellectual relation….Logic is rooted in this social principle. Charles S. Peirce “The Doctrine of Chances” (1878) Contemporary discussions of democratic theory generally take nationalism to be antithetical to the ideals, values, and aspirations that define the democratic state. Given the recent history of self-proclaimed nationalist movements in Germany, in the former Yugoslav republic, and elsewhere throughout the world, this reticence toward nationalism is justified. Yet ignoring nationalism entails ignoring some of the fundamental traits of democratic nations, and tends to produce a limited view of the processes of democratic nationbuilding, especially in the wake of the collapse of totalitarian regimes. Understanding nationalism, the relationships between a national identity and international interaction and their relation to democracy, is crucial to understanding how democratic states actually work. The split between procedural and substantive theorists may be the most important issue faced by Western European and American democratic theorists. For theorists such as Jürgen Habermas, and to some degree John Rawls and Robert Dahl, democracy must be neutral with regard to the construction of individual and collective identity and values. For theorists like Seyla Benhabib, Michael Sandel, Amy Gutmann, Dennis Thompson and Charles Taylor, democracy necessarily contains a substantive moral component, and must actively engage in the processes of identity construction and will-formation. For all, the alternative to democracy involves the loss of a commitment to self-governance, with totalitarianism as one potential result. This anti-democratic, totalitarian tendency arises in the enforced proscription

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of national identity or in the failure to secure any form of nationalistic identification which can resist dictatorial intervention. This “split” among Western democratic theories is, in some senses, caused by failing to recognize the importance of social factors such as group identity and collective agency. It also exposes an inconsistent and incomplete account of the formation of the identities of individuals. Unexamined assumptions about what individuals, societies, states, and nations are, how they develop, and how they relate, tend to dominate the landscape of Western democratic theories. While Western democracies enjoy a sort of historical authority in democratic theory and practice, this is not the case in other parts of the world, especially with regard to the nations of Eastern Europe. Their peculiar position is one of emerging from under the blanket of command socialism. Though importantly different from the dictatorial rule of fascists during the middle of this century, this particular brand of totalitarianism carries its own insidiousness, its own threats to self-determination, and its own denial of the generally recognized goods of the democratic state. Yet according to many theorists, the role of these states in defining the democratic process is one of merely “coming up to speed” with the democratic institutions in other parts of the world. This misses what is perhaps the most salient characteristic of the post-totalitarian experience: the crucial role these states can play in helping all of us to better understand democracy, and the vitality which these nations can inject into contemporary discussions of democratic theory. The complacency of the West has bred a marked staticity in democratic theorizing, and has produced a sort of pejoratively ideological climate in their approaches to the basic tenets of democracy. The West has seen a demise of democratic nation “building,” and its outlook has degenerated into a markedly insular analysis of why democracy is the way it is. The nations of Eastern Europe hold the possibility of breaking this complacency, of forcing the West to renew its understanding of democracy in light of the very real and practical concerns faced by countries emerging from the strictures of totalitarian rule. As Barry Smith has argued, the countries of Eastern Europe (Poland in particular) are “destined to enjoy a new lease of genuine philosophical life: the centre of gravity of European philosophy is set to move east.”1 Smith is correct in maintaining that the union of Western European developments in philosophical analysis with the practical social, cultural, and national concerns facing the countries of the former Soviet bloc is perhaps one of the most exciting and philosophically important events of the last decade. Yet in some ways he appears to underestimate the profundity of the issue at stake in these developments. Taking Smith’s claims seriously entails recognizing the great impact the processes of reconstructing a nation from the ashes of command socialism will have upon the West in both its theory and practice of democracy.

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This is a primary reason why ignoring nationalism is so devastating to theories of democracy. The key issues are captured by terms such as “transition,” “development,” and “reconstruction.” The important questions center around issues concerning the relations of a nation to the diverse communities it encompasses, and the relations of nations to each other. The collapse of the nationalistic identification imposed upon the Eastern bloc nations is definitely a good thing, but the real problems arise when we try to understand how that sudden loss of national identity affects these countries, and how this identity might best be reconstructed and institutionalized in the developing apparatus of the national state. The role of national ideological commitments, of the common intellectual and cultural fibers which bind the diverse citizenry of any state, must also be understood, and may provide us with the starting point in the development of an effective understanding of national identity. But again, Western theories of democracy offer very little insight into the ways in which national identification and ideology are related. Both nationalism and ideology are recognized in a purely pejorative sense, one that blinds theorists to the very real issues faced by a re-emerging state. Wojciech Żełaniec has effectively shown that in a state such as Poland, the mutual construction of something he calls an “open” ideology (as distinguished from pejorative ideology), understood as “a general outline of [a political system] or of other relevant dimensions of the nation’s life”2 is of the utmost importance. Why? For anyone who takes the task of applied philosophy seriously, the nations of Eastern Europe provide much insight into the relations between our theories and practices, and into the processes of democracy and of the construction and maintenance of democratic institutions. The collapse of Soviet ideology has opened a vacuum which has veritably decimated the ideological centers of countries which desperately need them. Filling that vacuum means taking seriously the positive conception of ideological commitment and the role social constructions of institutionalized commitments play in the identity and activity of a nation. Ignoring this, as we have in the former Yugoslav republic, has had devastating consequences. As Svetozar Stojanović rightly points out, “[t]he dissolution of Yugoslavia probably would not have assumed such tragic proportions had not the Western governments competed among themselves in imposing ‘human, civil, and national rights’.”3 The ideas and theories that were essential to the construction of Western democratic nations have degenerated into the very sort of pejorative ideology which the West itself purports to reject. By recognizing the important distinctions between open and pejorative ideologies, we can begin to understand how the role that the unified construction of a loosely bound set of parallel values or “forms of life” which we hold in common as a nation is integral to the internal stability of that nation. An ideology functions as the sort of intellectual glue which holds a nation together. The real issue lies in

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identifying the processes by which ideologies slip from open to pejorative, or from fresh ideas capable of uniting a people to the stale ideas that bind them. And these processes, it is argued, are best understood by taking the distinctions between fallibilistic inquiry and dogmatism seriously. Pejorative ideologies are “finished.” They may start as novel perspectives on the psychical life of a social unit, but they degenerate into static pronouncements and finished doctrines. Open ideologies are incomplete. They are open-ended, and still in the processes of review and revision. Both types provide nationalistic identification, but the former imposes it. Open ideologies are mutual constructions. They too provide the citizenry of a nation with the nationalistic identification necessary to any state, but this identification is one geared toward a voluntary commitment to the process of ideological construction and nation building, not to the products of a fixed set of nationalistic values. But what is nationalism? Charles Kupchan claims that nationalism is “an ideology that calls for the merging of the sentimental state with the functional state.”4 Nationalist commitments combine the historical, cultural, and intellectual ties that bind the emotive aspects of national identification to the administrative and institutional function of the state apparatus. For Kupchan, this means that nationalism involves issues of identity and identity-formation. Tending to the formation of the identities of the individuals of a social group transforms the state into a “sentimental nation,” one which gains the loyalty of its members by providing the sort of mutual identification necessary for the unification of the individuals of a nation. For Kupchan, nationalist ideologies differ in so far as they vary in both intensity and content. The “content” of nationalism is the distinction between ethnic or cultural nationalism and the sort of nationalistic sentiment garnered through the political interaction in the institutions of a nation. The “intensity” of nationalism varies from group identification to separationism, and from the demand for political recognition to aggressive expansionism. These distinctions reflect Kupchan’s commitment to the necessity of maintaining what he calls a “moderate” intensity in nationalistic ideology. Moderation in civic nationalism means claiming and building a national state; in ethnic nationalism, it entails group identification and autonomy, with the extremes of expansion and secession being carefully avoided. How? Kupchan has very little to offer us on the normative side of his claims. While his analysis is correct, his emphasis on the perspective of the community, and on the means by which a state or culture “manufactures” nationalistic sentiment by attending to the development of the self-identity of its members, is misguided. Its error lies in the conception of nationalism as a sort of “common identity.” Here, Kupchan slips into the very same error that threatens those who call for a moral conception of the democratic state. The community has an interest in the development of its citizenry, but does this necessarily entail the sort of indoctrinatory bent Kupchan appears intent on

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emphasizing? Granted, Kupchan rightly recognizes that the key to maintaining the positive side of nationalism, and defusing its potentially destructive capability, lies in the maintenance of a moderate level of nationalistic intensity. But to whom does this job belong? A similar problem is apparent in the analysis of nationalism presented by George Schöpflin. For Schöpflin, as for Kupchan, nationalism is best consumed in moderation, with this moderation being best achieved by “redirecting” the energy of notoriously explosive ethnic nationalisms. Nationalism, understood as a “political ideology that claims that the world is divided into nations and only into nations, and that each individual belongs to a nation and only one nation,”5 is a necessary component of democracy. National communities construct social rules, then follow them. This is the ground of Schöpflin’s conception of how a national community creates a basis for national identity. But each nation’s rules, and by default, its identity, are different. For Schöpflin, there appears to be no overlap, and no potential for international cooperation and interaction, apart from a utopian vision of a nationalistic sentiment embracing all of humanity. We stand on the brink of a set of ontological questions regarding the status of international relations, and the constitution of nations and nationalistic identities. Schöpflin and Kupchan fail to address these issues, and their respective claims for “moderating” the extremist tendencies of nationalism appear limited, given our experiences of international politics and cultural conflicts. Concepts of culture and of human sociality are the key to clarifying these matters. To understand the relation between nationalism and culture, we must clarify our conception of culture. We can start with the general observation that human beings inherit cultural traditions. These traditions, understood as cognitive frameworks by which a cultural perspective structures its experiential reality, give us the ability to interact with others and to make judgments according to the perspective of our cultural tradition. Yet individuals are not trapped within these perspectives. Belonging to different cultures (understood in this extended sense) makes possible reflection on our cultural inheritance, and gives individuals the ability to reflect upon these traditions in novel ways, broadening and deepening their understanding of these cultural commitments. Jonathan Glover recognizes the importance of culture when he points out that nations are, at bottom, cultural institutions.6 He argues that nationalism is a common culture maintained by state institutions, something that has developed from the deeply-rooted human commitment to tribal affiliation and sociality. Glover wants to emphasize something he calls “reciprocal altruism” as having an obvious biological advantage. Communal identity, be it tribal or national, is the product of this biological mechanism, but is expressed in different cultural forms dependent upon the conditions of their creation. Culture is the development of a unique moral identity, and nationalism, as a cultural entity, engenders respect, both internal and external,

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by developing these nationalistic identities and striving for certain levels of independence from other communities (though not necessarily in a strict isolationist way). Glover argues that nationalism goes awry when the processes by which national and personal identity are formed become unbalanced. This happens when the balance shifts too far to the side of the individual (as is the case with liberalism) or to an over-emphasis on the interests of the community. At bottom, the trick to maintaining this balance rests in a recognition of pluralism, on both the individual and national levels. Maintaining the balance between individual and national interests, and between nations themselves, appears to require recognition of different individual, cultural, and national perspectives, and the maintenance of the investigation into the means by which these different identities are best constructed, maintained, and unified. But Glover fails us in this regard. His tendency is toward an over-arching set of distinctly humanistic commitments, with cultural and national loyalties taking a back seat to “higher-order” humanistic concerns. The “mutual construction” of cultural perspectives by individuals is lost at the national level, subsumed under this larger set of commitments. Glover’s commitment to the claim that nations are culturally homogenous is perhaps the most disturbing feature of his analysis. Charles Taylor, in his essay “Nationalism and Modernity,” makes the same commitment. In this essay, he argues that “homogeneity is a requirement of the modern state,”7 and that nation-building involves the subsumption of other cultures under the over-arching national culture. Taylor is right in arguing that the modern democratic state needs patriotism, understood as self-sacrifice and identifcation with the polity, and that nationalism is the motor of this patriotic sentiment. Yet Taylor, like Glover, overplays the homogeneity card. In defending nationalistic unity, Taylor unwittingly undermines his commitment to culture and diversity. For Taylor, cultures are inherently resistant to change, to openness, and to interaction with other cultures. While this may be correct for some cultures (especially those of the destructive nationalistic bent), it is not definitive of all, if even most of the myriad cultures existent today. The point that all of these theorists appear to miss is that diversity and nationalism are not opposed. A diversity of perspectives is the most important ingredient in the corrective to nationalistic extremism. Totalitarian nationalism is what John Dewey called “one-sided” nationalism, and his characterization gives important insight into the workings of nationalist identity and where it can go wrong. Perhaps most importantly, it shows that Schöpflin, and the other theorists we have seen so far, are incorrect in their assumption that nationalism is an ideology based on the recognition that the world is composed of nations, with each person belonging to one nation and no other. If nations can be understood as a sort of civic expression of culture, then our potential for membership in different “nations” becomes almost limitless. You can be a member of a provincial “nation,” with its own identifiable culture

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(identified in its unique cultural “blend”), but still hold allegiance to the national state which unifies different provinces. Cultural groups, understood in the extended sense, may form “nations within nations”; and nation-states themselves may organize into multi-national coalitions. We must recognize that “nationalism” is always marked by diversity of opinion and perspective, and only those who quell this diversity, who denigrate the importance of novel inquiry into the ideological underpinnings of the nation itself, fall into the category of “one-sided.” This one-sidedness can have both internal and external manifestations. The nation that dismisses novel reflection and inquiry on the part of its members is as one-sided as that nation which disregards and ignores the perspectives of those who stand outside the national boundaries. As such, the democratic nation-state necessarily entails the denial of the subsumption of a diversity of cultural affiliations under the strict interests of the “state” culture. The nationalism of democracy does not consist in the rejection of cultural commitments in the interest of the state. It consists in the recognition that national identity is less a commitment to state ideology, and more a commitment to the mutual construction of a unifying ideology or to the construction of parallel values, interests, and concerns from across a wide diversity of cultural and personal perspectives. Dewey understood this as far back as 1920. The democratic “state,” according to him, is nothing more than a conjunction of different perspectives previously separated by technological or geographic obstacles. And along with the development of the state there has been an increase in individual freedom. The democratic state, according to Dewey, is important, but its importance consists more and more in its power to foster and coordinate the activities of voluntary groupings. Only nominally is it in any modern community the end for the sake of which all the other societies and organizations exist. Groupings for promoting the diversity of goods that men share have become the real social units.8 “Pluralism is well ordained in present political practice and demands a modification of hierarchical and monistic theory.”9 Żełaniec’s “open” ideology is, at bottom, integrative and pluralistic. Democratic nationalism is the same. The key commitments of democracy become centered, not upon traditional liberal conceptions of “rights,” but upon commitments to diversity, to growth, and to interaction. Democracies in different places will look different, though they will share a parallel commitment to democratic freedom. The freedom of democracy is not a freedom “from,” for a democracy, like any state, must necessarily make civic demands on its citizens. Its freedom lies in the freedom to voluntarily choose one’s associations, one’s commitments, and one’s concerns.

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Democracy needs nationalism, but it needs a nationalism of a specific sort. The national unity of a democratic form of nationalism lies not in common values, but in a recognition that individual interests entail community interests, and that community interests entail national interests. These interests themselves entail a recognition of the interests of the larger multi-national community, and of the interests of other nations and of other individuals. Democracy must constantly be reconstructed if it is to remain democratic. Inquiry, and an integrative conception of nationalism, are the keys to the maintenance of a democratic state. This is the lesson taught by Peirce in his formulation of the social principle at the start of this essay, and it is the lesson which the West needs to relearn. And it is the countries of Eastern Europe, and other countries around the globe which have emerged from totalitarian rule, that hold the most promise in teaching the world the value of these lessons. NOTES 1. Barry Smith, “The New European Philosophy,” Philosophy and Political Change in Eastern Europe, ed. János Kristóf Nyíri and Barry Smith (LaSalle, Ill.: The Hegeler Institute, Monist Library of Philosophy, 1993), p. 166. 2. Wojciech Żełaniec, “Philosophy and Ideology: The Case of Poland,” Philosophy and Political Change in Eastern Europe, p. 49. 3. Svetozar Stojanović, The Fall of Yugoslavia: Why Communism Failed (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1997), p. 146. 4. Charles Kupchan, “Introduction: Nationalism Resurgent,” Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe, ed. Charles Kupchan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 2. 5. George Schöpflin, “Nationalism and Ethnicity in Europe, East and West,” Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe, p. 38. 6. Jonathan Glover, “Nations, Identity, and Conflict,” The Morality of Nationalism, ed. Robert McKim and Jeff McMahan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 11–30. 7. Charles Taylor, “Nationalism and Modernity,” The Morality of Nationalism, p. 33. 8. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948), p. 204. 9. Ibid.

Part Two RELIGION, MORAL VALUES, AND THE OVERTHROW OF TOTALITARIANISM

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Three POST-COMMUNIST TRANSITION AND CATHOLICISM IN POLAND Dariusz Aleksandrowicz 1. Social Costs, Institutions, and Patterns of Culture We may consider Post-Communist transformation to be a goal-oriented process. In a negative sense it consists in moving away from the model defined by planned economy, one-party rule, and international dependence on Russia. In a positive sense it means establishment of markets, democratic institutions, and integration into Western supra-national economic and political structures. Even in such countries as Belarus or Albania the reformist elites have initially declared similar objectives. To explain why some societies in process of transformation are more (or less) successful in approaching these objectives than others, we have to take into account issues of geopolitics and initial economic and political advantages (or disadvantages), factors of economic development (like rate of investment, of inflation, of capital import), and, related social costs.1 We could also see the speed and course of transformation as a result of a political contest between reformist elites and politically defined interests opposing them. Societies have to pay costs, including social ones. Reformist elites are ready to accept them. Transformation-opposed interests are manifested in those forces that would be burdened (or feel so) by the expected costs. In addition to the generally valid costs of the type just outlined, there are some which (according to their scope and relative relevance) are specific to particular societies as they undergo the changes in question. The constellation of non-economic transformation costs in post-Communist Poland emerges mainly from three factors: (1) powerful trade-unions, (2) a huge peasantry, and (3) a highly influential Catholicism. Although these factors are obviously interconnected, I deal more extensively with the last one. “Catholicism” is to be distinguished from “The Catholic Church.” The latter refers to a formal institution.2 Through its representatives it can be a partner in political bargaining with institutions of political life and of the state. In contrast, “Catholicism” means a “culture,” that is, a set of patterns of behavior and of thought. The term “civil religion,” originally used by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and reinvented in social theory by Robert N. Bellah, is only a rough analogy to what this distinction between “religious institution” and “religious culture” aims at. The problems Bellah deals with include religion-like aspects (such as

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ritual celebrations etc.) in the public life of the society.3 For clarification of the meaning of “religious culture” suggested by the distinction it would be more useful to refer to Max Weber and his theory of the “Protestant ethic.”4 Formal institutions are elements of the social environment, against the background of which the behavior of human individuals takes place. Whereas elements of the environment remain external to the individual, cultural patterns become assimilated by the person in the process of socialization and acculturation. They are tools with the help of which the adaptation of the individual to the (social and natural) environment takes place.5 Referring to “Polish Catholicism,” I do not ignore the controversy between so-called “popular” and “fundamentalist Catholicism” and “openminded Catholicism.” It is, however, only “popular Catholicism” that can be seriously regarded as a significant pattern of national culture. Its “openminded” counterpart can be seen at best as a pattern of reasoning. In addition, it does not imply any way of thought about public issues, and is therefore compatible with liberal, Christian democratic or social democratic ones. This holds true because of a crucial claim of the “open-minded Catholicism”––the separation of the public sphere and what can be regarded as consequences of religious belief. 2. The Culture of Disappointment When the social environment changes more rapidly than the patterns of the related culture, culturally inherited adaptive mechanisms become ineffective. Four possible strategies can be implemented in order to master this problem. The first is accelerated evolution of adaptive tools. The second consists in attempts at slowing down, stopping, or reversing the changes in the environment. The third strategy rests upon efforts to “explain away” the facts of change and of novelty by integrating the changed, unfamiliar reality into the conceptual and evaluative puzzle which has been designed in accordance with the known one. According to the fourth strategy, the tension between inherited culture and changed environment remains a relatively permanent state, partly mastered by the spreading of apocalyptic and catastrophic ideas. In a real transformation process, all models can occur in parallel, with their relative significance differing with respect to social and historical contexts and with respect to different groups within the society. Nowadays, we face such tension between Polish Catholicism as a pattern of traditional culture and the reality of a competitive, pluralistic, Western-oriented society which emerges from the transformation process. The response of the challenged culture shares many features with the second and fourth of the strategies just outlined. The fourth strategy is more defeatist and is therefore less relevant for the understanding of the social process than the second one. On the other hand, they are somehow correlated since to stop or to reverse the change would also mean to avoid the expected catastrophe.

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Since catastrophic expectations are primarily a matter of mentality and of ideas, that is, of how individuals perceive the world, a “reactionary” strategy is more than that. It also involves some elements of practical action which could eventually be a factor in the social power-play. The main prerequisite for this is a correlation between cognitive patterns of a traditional culture and those groups in the society that pay (or appear to pay) the costs of systemic change. Such a correlation results from expressing within the symbolic context of the respective culture the interests and fears of the disappointed people and hopeful expectations offered to them. The next step consists in establishing appropriate instruments (organizational forms, and so on) that could guide such “reactionary” potential to find its politically relevant articulation. The most significant group of losers in the transformation process in Poland consists of peasants, who usually own small pieces of land, and workers of the former state-owned production plants in industry and in agriculture.6 (I call the basic institution of economic life which was created under socialism, “production plant,” deliberately avoiding the name “enterprise.” A corresponding term which was widely used in the popular and in the official language of Polish socialist society can be translated as work establishment. Unlike “enterprise,” the main objectives of the “production plant” alias “work establishment” were “to produce” and “to give work,” without any serious market-related regulation and evaluation of these activities.) Retired persons also belong to this group in that they usually do not expect to take advantage of systemic change. In the cultural tradition of Polish society there are two main cultural patterns which provide a symbolic framework for the fears and hopes of social groups disappointed by the transformation: (1) the working-class culture of state-socialism and (2) popular Catholicism. The relation between the two is ambiguous. They compete with each other but also influence one another. The most effective organizational (political) correlates of the respective bundles of transformation-opposing interests and corresponding symbolic frameworks are at present: (1) the more populist currents of the post-Communist spectrum and (2) activities animated by the most influential Catholic radio station. 3. The Destructive Mobilization The activities of the above-mentioned radio station and the media empire that has been built around it are the most representative manifestations of popular Catholicism as a social and political force. According to the widespread diagnosis, supported by both analysts dealing with the political scene in Poland and some leading politicians, its real meaning is marginal and therefore illusory. In maintaining this these commentators are usually referring to an argument which appears impressive by virtue of the empirical evidence it relies on. They point out that political forces which built up their image on religiously backed nationalism and xenophobia were never able to gain any respectable

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support by way of democratic elections. The elections offered a negative proof of their alleged influence and popularity. According to this, the politicians in question never succeeded in establishing themselves as a decisive factor in parliament or government. In the real political competition, they proved to have no genuine significance and should, therefore, be regarded as an element of the “political folklore.” As true as these factual statements are, the argument just sketched appears to ignore the complexity of the real problem. The trouble is that, even accepting the argument, we must recognize that a notable part of the political life in Poland takes place within what we may call “political folklore.” Although the activities in question often take place on the margins of the usual political life, these margins are extremely large. They contain a respectable amount of political potential that can be activated by mobilizing efforts. In countries undergoing transformation some significant problems pertaining to the political process arise apart from the usual questions of the distribution of power on the formally institutionalized political scene.7 This is even more true in those countries without a deeply rooted tradition of democracy and active citizenship. It is important for the speed and consistency of the transformation process in these countries whether liberal or populist or postCommunist forces gain better results in the democratic elections. But the evolution of the very social and cultural framework of the political competition takes place in a more fundamental context. It is due in part to the development of the political culture of democracy. This includes growth of popular acceptance of democratic institutions and rules of play, adoption of skills and behavioral patterns needed for participation in the democratic political process, and elaboration of a realistic notion of one’s own goals and interests in relation to the institutionally given means for their articulation and enforcement. An obvious symptom of the weakness of the respective cultural patterns in contemporary Polish society is a low rate of popular participation in democratic elections and a relatively low acceptance of the institutions of representative democracy. With less than 50% of the adult population usually participating in elections, this society provides an example of a discrepancy between institutionalized democracy and a political potential consisting of those members of the society who are only superficially involved in it. An additional factor which intensifies this effect is to be found in an influential current of the Polish cultural tradition. It results from the general view of social institutions as opposed to the “nation,” and therefore hindering the “nation” from becoming the real actor in public life.8 This tradition goes back to the historical experience of foreign domination and hopeless struggle for independence. But it also has roots in the preceding period of the anarchistic liberty of the noblemen, who opposed the monarchy in its attempts to reform the state. The corresponding ideas can easily be used in support of utopian, anarchistic, and other counter-productive types of social commitment.

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Non-participation, through which the discrepancy between the democratic political process and the respective popular attitudes comes into the open, should not be confused with complete disregard for political issues. Although it suggests passivity or indolence, an underlying accumulation of frustrated illusions forms the basis of it. This attitude can therefore be expressed and developed further as a challenge to the institutional order of democracy. The relevance of the populist Catholic discourse and the related organizational activities can be appreciated in this context. The political role it can and does play is to be regarded not so much with respect to its constructive as with respect to its negative effects. The success of the opinion leaders and political activists in question does not consist in their extraordinary achievements in the democratic competition. On the contrary, it relies much more on conserving, activating, and manipulating the popular potential which is accumulated outside the corresponding institutional system. Their possible political influence therefore coincides with opposing and spoiling the process of piecemeal growth of the democratic culture of a society in transformation. The most visible activities of these forces consist in spreading skeptical or even hostile attitudes toward the institutions of the democratic state, the democratic procedures, and the very principle of the constitutional order. Let me illustrate this by a few examples from the public discourse of the representative exponents of populist Catholicism: To the commandment: “you shall not lie!” the state answers: “let’s lie!” To the commandment: “you shall not steal!” the state answers: “let’s steal!” To the commandment: “you shall not commit adultery!” the state answers: “we will bring up your children for prostitution!” To the commandment: “you shall not kill!” the state answers: “let’s kill!” Lie, betray, steal, commit adultery, kill––these are the principles of freedom offered to you by the state.9 (The author is a professor of philosophy and leader of one of the most significant political organizations within the populist Catholic spectrum.) Everywhere in Europe we can observe the breakdown of parliamentarism. Owing to this, there is a theoretical possibility to engage young people for programs based on the ideas of goodness and truth. We shall remember that it is only God Himself who is the Lord of history.10 (The author is a populist Catholic leader in the Polish parliament.) Radio ‘Maryja’ is a school of democracy based on values and not on institutions and consent.11

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(The author is president of a Catholic journalists’ association. “Radio Maryja” is the populist Catholic radio station already mentioned.) Wake up, Poland is in danger . . . this Constitution cancels the Divine law, and establishes instead of it the human law. We cannot be silent when they dethrone God, the Highest Lawgiver and Judge of people’s conscience, and try to persuade the people that the highest law in Poland is the Constitution . . . . This Constitution is dangerous for the existence of our nation.12 These words refer to the first democratic constitution after the breakdown of Communism, which was to be implemented by the Polish parliament in May 1997. The quotation also reveals another problem which I am not going to discuss in detail: The tension between the official policy of the Church and the populist Catholic political commitment goes across the Polish clergy. In effect, a significant number of the lower ranks of the clergy and some bishops more or less openly support the populist position and oppose those tendencies in the official policy which are contrary to it. Sometimes the political forces related to populist Catholicism define their tasks more constructively––for instance when they undertake efforts to be successful in accordance with the rules of democratic competition. But even then their relative success mainly results in destabilization and radicalization of the existing political scene. The lack of constructive potential in the exercise of a religiously backed political commitment is true with respect to the populist Catholics. The same is also true of the institution of the Church. Until recently, the Polish Church was directly and massively concerned with competition on the democratic political scene. It supported some political parties or candidates against others. Endowed with the authority of their pastorate and ministry, priests and bishops more or less directly suggested to the people to whom they should give or not give their votes. Although the official percentage of Catholics in Poland is about 95% of the population, these efforts of the Church never proved successful. The last example was the massive support the officials of the Church gave to the President, Lech Wałęsa, against his rival candidate in the presidential election 1995. At the peak of the campaign, the priests organized “prayers in the intention of a correct voting.” According to a statement the Primate of Poland made on the day of the final voting, “the Poles do not make a choice between two persons, but between two systems of values: the Christian and the neo-pagan system.”13 Yet, in spite of this support the “Christian candidate” lost the election. Among other factors, it was the lesson derived from these failures that motivated the Church to abandon this type of direct political engagement. The problem refers to issues of tactics but has a more substantial dimension. I do not think it possible in a democracy to rationally combine a worka-

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ble political program with premises of a religious (confessional) character. Trying to politicize the latter, we progressively tend to some sort of radicalism or even extremism. Its consequences are counter-productive even in a stable democratic society. But they can prove destructive in a society where democracy is still going through a process of institutional reform and cultural evolution. 4. Catholic Populism and the Church Differences and tensions between the Church and its official policy and the activities inspired by populist Catholicism become increasingly apparent. The official policy of the Church, after a period of “reactionary” commitment, aims at a compromise with the democratic state and it also increasingly supports Poland’s integration into the European Union. In contrast, fundamentalist populists follow a course somehow comparable to the French National Front, and they often declared sympathy with Le Pen, Haider and similar politicians of the European scene. Notwithstanding their affinity to the European right-wing nationalists, the populist Catholics are anti-Western. Their rhetoric directed against the Western world (especially against “Brussels,” Germany, and the United States) sometimes resembles the respective statements of the “antiimperialist” propaganda of the Communist past. In a way that was also similar to the Communistic rhetoric, Slavonic people of the East are considered the positive opposite of the decadent West. For instance, the populist Catholics usually refer to the abstract entity the “people” instead of the political elites of the respective countries. But they once quoted with some sympathy the criticism of the pro-Western policy of the current “Polish regime” expressed by Belarus’s dictator Lukashenko.14 The divergence of notions of the fundamentalist populists from the official line of the Church is also due to their critical assessment of some crucial innovations of the Second Vatican Council, especially with respect to the dialogue with other confessional and religious groups, which they sometimes proclaim explicitly. 5. Catholic and Post-Communist types of Populism The declared relation of fundamentalist Catholics to post-Communists, whose populist current is to be distinguished from the more or less liberally oriented tendencies within the post-Communist spectrum, is uncompromising hostility but the issue is a little more complex. The opposition between the two types of populism relates mainly to the sphere of symbols. By installing a crucifix in the Parliament chamber or other public buildings, taking part in services or otherwise manifesting their religious commitment, radical Catholics stress their difference from the “godless” Communists.

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Another manifestation is in their fierce campaigns against liberalization with respect to questions of morality in the narrowest sense of the word (that is, sexual morality). In their respective attitudes, the popular Catholics are still quite in line with the more old-fashioned Communists of the Stalinist and post-Stalinist period. The latter also held extremely “puritan” views and tended to practice them through their respective controlling measures. But there is a sharp contrast between the patriarchalism and parochial traditionalism of the Catholics and the “libertarian” image of the contemporary postCommunists. The differences between the two populist groups and their patterns of thought are hardly visible when “secular” problems, such as the model of public administration or the economy, are being discussed. With respect to the first issue, popular Catholics are adherents of the centralized model once designed by the Communists and they vehemently oppose any attempts to reform it. Their views on the economy are centered around the affirmation of public as opposed to private property, of protectionism against free trade, and of distributive étatisme against competitive entrepreneurship. They stress the value of “hard toil” in areas such as agriculture, mining or heavy industry and regard them as the major source of wealth. To sum up: The populist Catholic and populist Communist ideas of social reality are close to each other. Both affirm a model of society in which competition would be limited by some type of ideological regulation and control. Fundamental differences arise with respect to the ideology by which society is to be controlled. Ideas of a planned economy and of an ideology-centered one-party state do not play any significant role in the populist Catholic definition of Communism. The populist Catholics abandon Communism and characterize this system in terms related to issues of nationalism and religious fundamentalism. According to this notion, the main problem in dealing with Communism is its negative relation to Polish national interests and to Christianity. Crucial for establishing this understanding is to expose Communism as an invention of the enemies of both Polishdom and Christianity. Although there are different ways to identify these enemies, the names most commonly used for that purpose by the populist Catholics are: “free masons” and “Jews.” The struggle against Communism would therefore mean liberation of the nation from the (hidden or overt) domination by Jews and their allies. 6. Populist Catholicism and Anti-Semitism: A Case Analysis These problems––that is, problems of national xenophobia and especially of anti-Semitism––are among the central issues with respect to the relation between populist Catholicism and the institution of the Church. This indicates that we should deal with these issues in some detail in order to make the analysis more concrete.

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Looking back at the decade of the post-Communist transformation in Poland, we can see that the respective tensions continuously increased in their relevance and intensity. Quite recently, we were confronted by two cases of this type which were well known through the headlines of the world press. The best known one was the affair of the Christian crosses in the former concentration camp in Auschwitz. It consisted in activities of a spontaneously formed “Committee of the Defenders of the Cross.” In the name of “Catholicism” and of the “Nation,” the Committee directly opposed the policy of the episcopate and undermined the Church’s dialogue with the Jews. The other case was the conflict provoked by anti-Semitic activities of a politically engaged Catholic priest. The conflict goes back to June 1995 when a popular priest from Gdańsk, widely known for his anti-Communist commitment during the previous decade, in a Sunday sermon identified Jewishness with Communism and Nazism. His point was that Jewishness is to be understood as the source and the cause of the evils of both Stalinism and Hitlerism.15 That the President of Poland and his wife participated in the mass contributed to the political relevance of the words of the priest. The conflict escalated further after a sermon in 1997 in which the priest declared that the Poles should not tolerate any Jews in the government. He also argued that some ministers already designated for the government, by reason of their Jewish origin were not appropriate candidates for that position. The hierarchy reacted much more decisively than after the first incident. The secretary of the Episcopate and the local archbishop officially criticized the priest, and the hierarchy decided to restrict him in his functions for a year by way of an Episcopal decree. He was not allowed to make public statements in church or in the mass media, and another priest was designated to take over all his obligations as the head of the parish during this period of time.16 The restrictions ended in November 1998. Shortly after his triumphal comeback he caused a new conflict. The problem was a book store with anti-Semitic literature which he placed inside the church building, only a few meters away from the altar. The bookstore in the church building was installed during the “punishment period” prior to November 1998. (I bought all these anti-Semitic books in this store in July 1998.) After an official intervention by the archbishop the priest moved the bookstore from the church building to the neighboring parish house. I mention this particular case in dealing with differences between Polish Catholicism as an institution and as a pattern of popular culture, not only with respect to troubles the hierarchy has had, or still has, with a single priest. The activities of this priest and the institutional measures taken are also to be seen as indicating how something even more significant came into the open. This is due to the responses these events have provoked outside the institutional Church.

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As soon as the first critical assessments of the priest’s words and views reached the public, a spontaneous movement of “defenders” of the priest became apparent. It manifested itself in activities undertaken by a formally founded “Committee of the Defenders of the Prelate” and in letters written by his supporters to the mass media, to institutions of both the Church and the state, and to the priest himself. Both (1) the radicalism of anti-Semitic stereotypes, and (2) the attitudes toward the officials of the Church documented by the movement are worth considering here. Expressing his xenophobia, the prelate caused displeasure on the part of all those who think anti-Semitism to be morally and intellectually intolerable. But his words were quite moderate compared with much of what his supporters publicly declared. They propagated their extremely aggressive anti-Semitic opinions claiming to interpret or develop further and justify his views. According to these opinions, “Jewishness” is to be construed as the worst enemy of the Polish nation: a force that stood behind the plagues this nation had to suffer in the past, and the most serious danger for its future prosperity.17 The defenders of the prelate argue that it is a mistake to evaluate his words in terms of a particular political or ideological position which eventually could be confronted by a different one. They declare that by what he said he only performed his very duties as a Catholic priest. These duties consist in preaching the truth and are exempt from any commitment to be evaluated in terms of ideology or politics. What they take to be the truth concerning the Jews in their relation to Poland is of special relevance, because it is a “hidden truth.” The Jews were successful in getting under their control organs of the mass media and institutions of the state and so they are in a good position to prevent the Poles from knowing that truth. In publicly proclaiming the hitherto hidden truth in his sermons, the prelate contributes to making the very mission of the priesthood to support and coincide with what is to be regarded as genuine national interests. . . . this great son of Poland, fearless priest, devoted to the Gospel, appeared in the name of truth, in defense of the vital interests of the nation.18 . . . every priest should tell the truth, irrespective of to whom this truth refers. For courageously telling the truth rev. prelate Henryk Jankowski deserves recognition and not criticism, this is why I regard Him as a national hero.19 Telling truth, expressing fears, sorrows and opinions . . . of the faithful of the Church in Poland . . . is the duty of a Polish priest, because this is exactly the service the Church of Christ demands from him.20

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According to these views, the very legitimacy and source of authority of the Church and of a single member of the clergy relies as much on their relation to the transcendent Absolute as on their relation to the Nation. Both aspects merge into one, since it is the Nation and its problems through which the Absolute can be approached in the concrete, live. The doctrine of the Church has a universal character, but . . . a Catholic priest is a man of the Church and a son of a concrete nation, which he is obliged to love in a special way, and it is this very love . . . that gives him the moral right to perform religious services for this nation and to teach the nation the moral doctrine of the Church. Patriotism of the priests is . . . a necessary condition of the authority of the Church, at least as important as holiness.21 (The author is a university professor of philosophy.) Consequently, those priests who do not combine these two dimensions in their pastoral and ministrative activities do not deserve to be accepted as true spiritual leaders by the community of believers. This must be even more true with respect to those members of the hierarchy who use their formal authority to prevent the “patriotic” priests from truly serving the nation. . . . using the power of the Polish pulpit for the defense of Poland is unfortunately resisted by a pusillanimous and unpatriotic attitude of a part of the Polish Episcopate . . . . Behaving that way the bishops work for losing the confidence of the nation . . . just like their beloved Jews work for the hatred!22 Once such criteria of evaluation of the hierarchy of the Church have been accepted, it is but a short step to regard the negatively valued bishops as enemies of Poland and therefore allies of the Jews. And many patriotic-minded Catholics in Poland do not hesitate to publicly declare that. We are angered by seeing that the Polish Episcopate is still more and more penetrated by the Jews . . . . Many people, including myself, begin to doubt as to whether you, Rev. Bishop, are a Pole, because what you do demonstrates that you are not.23 The devil managed to come very high . . . . He has worn the cap of a Bishop . . . and causes damage to the Polish Nation and the Church.24 (The author of the letter is a Catholic priest.)

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DARIUSZ ALEKSANDROWICZ 7. The Logic of Tradition Versus the Rationality of Institution

The attitudes just described are sometimes characterized as elements of political or cultural “folklore.” To the extent that this word suggests that the respective phenomena are an interesting case to be studied by ethnologists, I do not see any reason to oppose this terminology. But it should not imply that what we name by it is of only marginal relevance. What comes into the open in these widespread attitudes is the very core of traditionalist Catholics’ pattern of thought: a close relation between what is considered pious and what “Polish.”25 The proper constituents of the latter, the traditionalists argue, are primordial realities like families and the “nation.” Nation means here a “family of families” bound together by “blood,” “soil,” and a common history understood as a sequence of struggles against common enemies. This reality of true Polishdom is what the divine powers (and especially the Mother of God) protect and have the care of. It is to be distinguished from the institutions of public life in actual Polish society, which are still (partly) under the control of the “enemies of Poland.” From this, according to their views, result all the plagues with which those Polish people who are frustrated or worried by systemic change are confronted. The solution and the practical task is to establish genuine “Polish” elites who would be able to take over public institutions and the sources of economic wealth from the hands of the enemy. A respectable amount of work has been done in recent years to translate this idea into a politically defined task. Its most significant aspects are efforts in the realm of mass media and corresponding organizational activities. This implies that the proper form of existence of the collective entity in question––the “Polish Nation”––is more like “community” (Gemeinschaft) than “society” (Gesellschaft), in the sense given by Ferdinand Tönnies.26 Society consists of (1) “civil society,” the constituents of which are individuals and groups with different respective interests and informal institutional arrangements implemented by them, and (2) formal institutions with their representative, regulative, and mediating functions. Both civil society and its institutional framework are irrelevant for the concept of “community” which is thought of as a “whole,” driven and kept together by some “spirit” or “common will.” In modern mass society there exists no such state of mind or fundamental consensus upon which the reality of a national “whole” could rest.27 Only some sort of ideological autocracy can be a workable consequence of such ideas as far as they turn out to be successful as a practical design. Since there is no definite reality that constitutes a “nation,” this reality is to be defined and constructed by way of ideology and supported by political means. Why call the described ideas “Catholic” and not simply “nationalist?” Are religious issues an essential part of them? In the Polish cultural tradition nationalism and (Catholic) religion became strongly connected as early as the seventeenth century. Part of this tradi-

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tion is the interpretation of some central religious symbols as combining particularism (nationally defined) with the universalist message they originally stood for. This is exemplified by the idea of the “Mother of God as the Queen of Poland” that belongs to the very core of Polish Catholicism. On the other hand, Polish nationalism has always had a confessional religious foundation, and its language and its whole interpretive framework wouldn’t be consistent without reference to that symbolic context. Nationalist Catholicism therefore has a strong backing in a relevant current of the national tradition. This is the same tradition from which the institutional Church in Poland emerges. It contributed decisively to the power of the Church, since from the end of the eighteenth century onward it was the most stable institution to which Polish claims for national sovereignty and the feeling of national identity could be addressed. This is why in a context of tensions with nationalist popular Catholicism the Church often reveals itself to be argumentatively weak and inconsequential. It lacks an appropriate “language” that could be effectively used in opposition to a significant aspect of its own tradition. In case the Polish Church continues its course of modernization and cohabitation with the democratic state, the hiatus between the popular Catholic culture and the hierarchical Church will grow and the Church will probably lose much of its remaining popular support. This process can also contribute to increasing the potential to be mobilized by the politically organized populist Catholics. The result could be a more or less overt confrontation between the latter and the institutional Church. The principal instruments available to the Church would then be disciplinary measures. As powerful as these instruments are with respect to canon law, their relevance would prove only relative in the context of Polish Catholicism. Notwithstanding the pre-modern commitment to faith, undoubtedly present in Polish popular Catholic culture, it also contains elements of anti-clericalism which can sometimes come into the open as a considerable factor. This is a particular consequence of the tendency to oppose what is “Polish” and what is “institutional.” The correlation of Catholicism and elements of anti-clericalism can diminish the importance of arguments and instruments eventually implemented by the Church. At best, the result would be a mutual weakening of both of the conflicting parties. This scenario probably appears unrealistic today. But it may prove closer to reality after the present pontificate comes to an end. Pope John Paul II in particular still inseparably links popular Catholic culture and the hierarchical Church. He is an integral part of both of them: he is the embodiment of the institution and at the same time a popular icon, who, like the Madonna from Claro Montana, symbolizes the unity of what is “Polish” and what is pious. According to Czeslaw S. Bartnik (a Catholic priest, professor of theology and a prominent ideologist of Catholic nationalism) in the pontificate of John Paul II we face “a marvelous encounter of the idea polonitas with the idea romanitas.”28

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Despite this very special position of the Polish Pope, even his authority may be sometimes called in question by nationally oriented Catholics if they recognize his particular opinions to contradict their views. I did understand the Polish Pope when he canonized Rev. Maximilian Kolbe [before his imprisonment in Auschwitz Kolbe was known for extremely anti-Semitic opinions and activities––D. A.] notwithstanding the furious reaction of the Jews . . . . The way I felt about it, it was a clear, even if subtle in its form, appeal for defense against . . . the Jewish minority. I did understand the Polish Pope when he was excited by the content of his own appeals to the Polish nation . . . [interpreted in the following words––D. A.:] ‘now you teach us how to clean our native Polish home from what brings shame upon us, ruins us, enslaves us and destroys us; and you want us to fulfill that task.’ But I completely do not understand the Polish Pope when he exalts Rev. Bishop J. Życiński [one of the most active opponents of the nationalist position among the Episcopate––D. A.] . . . forgetting at the same time that the drastic contamination of ‘our native Polish home’ by ‘what brings shame upon us, ruins us, enslaves us and destroys us’ wouldn’t be possible if we would manage to immediately unravel this enemy, to judge and to punish it . . . . It is enough that the Jews continue to bring shame upon us, to ruin us, enslave us and destroy us. It is time that we have to stop doing it by ourselves to the advantage of the Jews.29 The next pope, whether Italian, German, or African, will not able or willing to play such a role in any comparable way. Owing to this, the decisive factor that prevents the tension between the particular Catholic tradition and the institution to become even more apparent will cease to exist. NOTES 1. Cf. Dariusz Aleksandrowicz, “Kulturelle Kosten der Transformation,” FIT Viadrina-Discussion Papers, no. 3 (1998); Ronald Harry Coase, The Firm, the Market, and the Law (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Douglass C. North, The Contribution of the New Institutional Economics to an Understanding of the Transition Problem (Helsinki: UNU/WIDER, 1997); Douglass C. North, The Process of Economic Change (Helsinki: UNU/WIDER, 1997). 2. Cf. Jan Winiecki, “Formal and Informal Rules in Post-Communist Transition,” Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice, no. 1 (1998), pp. 3–26. 3. Cf. Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus, no. 1 (1967), pp. 1–21. 4. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948). 5. Cf. Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, ii: The Mirage of Social Justice (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), p. 4; Marven E. Olsen, Societal

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Dynamics: Exploring Macrosociology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1991), p. 57. 6. Cf. Aleksandrowicz, “Die sich öffnende Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde,” Mensch und Gesellschaft aus der Sicht des kritischen Rationalismus, ed. Hans Albert and Kurt Salamun (Amsterdam and Atlanta, Ga.: Editions Rodopi, 1993), pp. 227–241. 7. Cf. Aleksandrowicz, “Institutions, Culture and the Forming of Majorities in a Transforming Society,” FIT Viadrina-Discussion Papers, no. 12 (1998). 8. Cf. Aleksandrowicz, “Traditionelle und sozialismusgeprägte Denkmuster in der postkommunistischen Weltauffassung,” Gestige Tendenzen der Zeit. Perspektiven der Weltanschauungstheorie und Kulturphilosophie, ed. Kurt Salamun (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 167–181. 9. Piotr Jaroszyński, “Antydekalog” [Anti-Decalogue], Rodzina Radia Maryja, no. 11 (1997). 10. “Polityka a chrzescijaństwo” [Politics and Christianity], Interview with Jan Łopuszański, Niedziela, 09 May 1993. 11. Karol Klauza, quoted in Gazeta Wyborcza, 16 December 1996. 12. Józef Michalik, Archbishop of Przemyśl, Sermon, 4 May 1997, quoted in Niedziela, 25 May 1997. 13. Gazeta Wyborcza, 20 November 1995. 14. Cf. Nasz Dziennik, 9 February 1998. 15. Cf. Peter Raina, Ks. Henryk Jankowski nie ma za co przepraszać [There is nothing Rev. Henryk Jankowski would have to excuse himself for] (Warszawa: Książka Polska, 1996). 16. Cf. Raina, Ks. Henryk Jankowski “znów atakuje.” Spór o kazanie prałata [Reverend Henryk Jankowski “attacks again.” Controversy about the sermon of the prelate] (Warszawa: von borowiecky, 1998). 17. Cf. Raina, Jankowski nie ma za co; Raina, Jankowski “znów atakuje”, Krzysztof Koczwara, Zguba Twoja Izraelu z Ciebie Samego pochodzi. A jednak Ks. Jankowski miał rację…[Israel, you will bring disaster upon yourself. And yet Rev. Jankowski was right…] (Poznań: Wers, 1998). 18. Raina, Jankowski “znów atakuje,” p. 5. 19. Ibid., pp. 122–123. 20. Ibid., pp. 149–150. 21. Raina, Jankowski nie ma za co, pp. 241–242. 22. Ibid., p. 243. 23. Letter to the Secretary of the Episcopate, in Raina, Jankowski “znów atakuje,” pp. 153–154. 24. Ibid., p. 168. 25. Cf. Aleksandrowicz, “Vom Messianismus zum Nationalismus,” Vom Vorurteil zur Vernichtung? “Erinnern” für morgen, ed. Erich Geldbach (Münster: Lit, 1995), pp. 196–210. 26. Cf. Ferdinand Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundbegriffe der reinen Soziologie (Berlin: Karl Curtius, 1926). 27. Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); Georg Elwert, “Nationalismus und Ethnizität. Über die Bildung von Wir-Gruppen,” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, no. 3 (1989), pp. 440–464; Karl. R. Popper, “Epistemology and in-

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dustrialization,” Popper, The Myth of the Framework. In defence of science and rationality, ed. Mark A. Notturno (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 185–209. 28. Czesław S. Bartnik, “Sakrament pojednania narodu w nauczaniu Jana Pawła II w Polsce w 1983 roku,” [The sacrament of reconciliation of the nation in the teaching of John Paul II in Poland in 1983], Polska teologia narodu [Polish Theology of Nation], ed. Bartnik (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego [Scientific Society of the Catholic University Lublin], 1986), p. 322. 29. Raina, Jankowski “znów atakuje,” pp. 118–119.

Four RELIGION AND POLITICS IN POLAND: POLITICAL DISCOURSE, TOLERATION, AND NEUTRALITY Mariusz Turowski The project of which this paper is a part considers the idea of religious toleration in the post-liberal state. It defines the possibility of the manifestation of citizens’ religious convictions in public life, conditions for a ‘civic religiosity’ within the framework of a legislative and political system of multicultural societies. The discussion between Kent Greenawalt and Michael J. Perry addresses the question of religious principles’ influence on the process of political decision-making. The question is whether any ‘public’ limitation of arguments based on a certain ‘comprehensive’ religious doctrine or system or world-view connected to a given religiosity leads to secularized totalitarianism and a ‘tyranny of enlightenment’. 1. (Anti-)Political Dimension of Religious Discourse in Poland These questions have to be understood in connection with debate on the form and shape of the contemporary democratic state. We must first consider two problems if we are to talk about ‘conditions of neutrality’ in Poland. I would like to evaluate the prospects for implementing solutions suggested by philosophers dealing with this topic, mostly from America, in Polish political reality. This is connected with a broader issue, relating to the situation of Polish politics: What is its form? What are the means of progress? Are we, as Polish citizens, on a path of transformation? Or are we still members of a postCommunist country involved in past ideology and mentality? And if the latter is the case, how long will that state last? The second issue regarding aspects of neutrality discourse in Poland is linked to the former, but highlights a different problem. It can be expressed in the following way: Should Polish institutions be inspired by any ‘external’ model (‘Western’ or liberal-democratic) and eventually accept ‘ideas of neutrality’ that had already been worked out within that ‘outer political ideal’? The negative answer to that question doesn’t suggest any necessity to set up for our country some kind of ‘third way’, a compromise between Western and Communist political standards. Instead, it opens up a philosopher’s task, a task for someone who watches discussions that are taking place in the field of political theory. The task concerns such issues as the politics of difference, critiques of multiculturalism, ideas of auton-

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omy (both as a philosophical program regarding the constitution of an individual or community and as referring to national or ethnic groups’ rights to self-determination and sovereignty). It includes the search for universalism (‘global morality’, universal human rights, and so forth, supported by international organizations like the United Nations), and post-colonialism. We cannot address all this here. My task is to prepare a basis for potential solutions and to sketch an outline of conceptions of neutrality and ways of dealing with it, including consideration of the discussion between Greenawalt and Perry. But first I need to define particular ‘Polish aspects’ of political life that will then be put in the frame of reference of more general ideas. What are ‘Polish aspects’ of neutrality? The most significant is the already famous struggle between liberalism and Catholic theory and praxis, which we have had opportunity to follow for some eight years on the pages of the largest and most influential Polish newspaper, the daily Gazeta Wyborcza. What are the conditions for participation of the Catholic Church in Polish political life? Why is religion not allowed in some cases to have its ‘political representation’? Is the Polish political scene divided into supporters of widely specified liberalism on one hand, and those who base their opinions on traditional Christian values on the other? If so, how does that division influence our government when it has to deal with and solve problems in both domestic policy and foreign relations? These are some questions that will arise. Neutrality analysis will address the participation of the Polish Catholic Church in political life, the relation between the Church and contemporary democratic order. How does the Church understand democracy? Is it possible for the Church to support certain reforms connected with the modernization of politics and society? I suggest that my opinions as presented in this paper should be treated more as a preliminary definition of discussions between the state and the Church in Poland than as a comprehensive and fixed theory. What then is the tentative diagnosis of the conditions for neutrality in Poland? First we must focus on the neutrality debate from a more theoretical, philosophical perspective and turn to discussion between the two contemporary political philosophers, Greenawalt and Perry. 2. Political Theory of Liberal Neutrality How does Greenawalt see the possibility of the inclusion of religion within the structure of contemporary liberal society? His solution is an entirely negative one: it legally forbids the presence of religious convictions in the sphere of public life. Religious argumentation can be used in political discourse as long as it does not violate the legislatively binding neutral scheme of discourse, so that citizens having different conceptions concerning what the good life means cannot feel threatened by the possibility that one moral option will win and begin to dominate the whole sphere of public practice. According to Greenawalt, the most important feature of a ‘healthy’ society is neutrality of

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institutions and democratic processes. This virtue confirms the basic principles of liberal philosophy: rules of law, individual values, autonomy, and negative liberty.1 Perry’s point is quite different. While Greenawalt represents a contractarian and legal ideal of democracy, Perry appears to be influenced by the communitarian critique of liberalism. What does Perry propose instead of the idea of neutrality and the priority of the right over the good? First, he asks how it is possible to specify the relationship between morality and politics in an age of total plurality, relativity, and incommensurability of given narratives and practices. Relativity is evident in public life. Perry is interested in finding some notion of rationality and common ground for this age of escape from objective truth. He proposes a definition of truth within the scheme of rational acceptability. This scheme is valid only for those communities that gain and secure truth by developing given customs, practices, manners, and narratives that are involved in the tradition of the community. Perry proclaims the existence of ‘moral communities’––structures where individuals belong and exercise their skills, knowledge, and cognition concerning values. These structures do not determine or limit individuals. A particular person is able to protest, criticize, dissent, and act against the community. Every individual action is an encounter with the whole community as an expression of communal language, participation, interpretation, and value. This is where the following notions can be demonstrated and realized: common good, common values, and common ‘territory of actions’. These notions no longer seek objective, universal, and absolute justification. They are placed in the dimension of particular discourses and practices. This is also how we should understand the world of political life. Instead of looking for common and universal principles, we should turn to issues important for certain communities. Criticizing their attitude toward objectivity and universalism, Perry accuses the liberal theorists, Bruce Ackerman, John Rawls, and Ronald Dworkin for their attempts to construct absolutely true and valid systems of political values. The main objective of those constructions was to solve political conflicts and struggles by reference to established, allegedly universal, or meta-universal liberal principles. The common, and at the same time the most dangerous, feature of those ventures was to introduce a conception of political, not metaphysical, fairness and neutrality. That gives up reference to conceptions of the good life (which, according to liberals, is a metaphysical topic) and instead seeks a condition of undistorted communication and political consensus. Political freedom does not mean gaining the confidence of voters, nor is it only a matter of sincerity and authenticity. Perry distinguishes between two levels: the ontological (connected with the human idea of authenticity) and the political (directed toward autonomy and freedom) that are at the same time connected with each other. In the name of both ontological and political authenticity, public life is open for values, especially, as Hilary Putnam pointed

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out, the ‘Jerusalem-based religions’ that stress the importance of spiritual ideals: brotherhood of man, regardless of gender, and equality. In contemporary political life these ideals are enriched by liberal conceptions of freedom and critical thinking.2 How can these considerations connected to neutrality and the role of religion in political life be put in the context of Polish debates? We should examine the relationship between conceptions based on the liberal ideal and those typical of the ‘Catholic camp’ (as this is presented in Gazeta Wyborcza). It would be difficult to distinguish any comprehensive Catholic conception in Poland. Polish Catholicism is a complex and rich socio-cultural phenomenon. I present the position of those who consider themselves in Poland as the ‘only real Catholics’, who are connected with the Families of Radio Maryja, gathered around ideas promoted by Radio Maryja, a Polish Catholic radio station located in Toruń. Then I would like to focus on some more general questions about Polish religiosity and finally ask if we can find any relevant reasons to talk about Polish conditions of neutrality, when it is defined according to standards proposed by Greenawalt and Perry. I address the question whether any form of liberal discourse about neutrality (supported by Gazeta Wyborcza among others) is at all workable in Poland. 3. Radio Maryja An article about Radio Maryja appeared in Rzeczpospolita (another influential Polish daily): Father Rydzyk (head of the radio station) is trying to create a national religious ideology that would direct people toward the good.3 This is the most striking common motive, explaining why people decide to listen to this staion: I have enough of all this noisy stuff from commercial stations: commercials, advertisements, informational idle talk, aggressive music and so on, where in one sentence you have a story about 40 human beings who died in a plane catastrophe, and a Hollywood star’s favorite cat that has its gastric problems. Radio Maryja’s audience is estimated at 4.5 to 5 million listeners in Poland and among Polish communities in the United States and Canada. From the Fall of 1993 the number of listeners has grown fourteen times (data valid as for the middle of 1998). Radio Maryja is a phenomenon in the world of media because of the number of its listeners and because of the power of its message and the nature of its audience. A better word for this audience than ‘listeners’ would be ‘believers’. Believers’ motives are purely irrational and emotional; they don’t need information and knowledge but truth and certainty. These are also motives of Radio Maryja’s listeners. They have expectations that are met by the creators of this station. The essence of these expectations and its recog-

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nition are represented by the famous announcement that appears before every program on Radio Maryja: “This is Radio Maryja, Catholic Voice in Your Own Home.” Listeners very strongly adhere to this ‘Catholic Voice’ and it is doing its best to provide them with all they want from it. The very formula of the radio programs tells us how it works. It is a highly interactive formula based on unfinished dialogue with listeners. There are common prayers, common celebrations, where listeners connect to the radio by telephone and participate in them. And it is not only participation, it is a confirmation, because everywhere during these interactive programs listeners confirm their faith, get knowledge and experience, feel the presence of truth and values. The key to understanding the phenomenon of Radio Maryja is its founder, head, and the most famous editor, Father Rydzyk. Social scientists dealing with the phenomenon of Radio Maryja, and listeners, notice the same features: a strong personality and a serious believer who understands his religion very simply: there are truths (those that were told by Jesus in Biblical gospels, and that are developed by and in the Church) and we must execute them in the real world. The most striking feature of this personality is charisma. And the charisma includes a very strongly defined political attitude. Father Rydzyk is telling his listeners: Poland is at the crossroads. We have only Jesus and his Mother, Queen of Poland, Madonna, who can help us. We must fight against liberalism, which leads to a de-Christianized Poland. We must learn what it means to be free. There is one important task for Polish Catholicism: to build a civilization of truth and love. Andrzej Tyc, a Polish politician connected with the Union of Freedom, but at the same time a member of the Club of Catholic Intelligentsia, claims that Father Rydzyk proclaimed a new kind of Catholic-National political camp, with a special ideology oriented toward a certain idea of the good. This camp has a political and social character evident in actions Radio Maryja and its believers have performed. One such action was the establishment of the Social Movement for Protection of the Gdańsk Shipyard (the almost mythological origin of Polish independence and opposition movements from 1970s and 1980s, where Lech Wałęsa began his political career). This action consisted in the voluntary collection of money for workers who protested against the closing of the shipyard because of economic inefficiency. Father Rydzyk’s idea was to collect as much money as possible to buy it from the state and cover all the shipyard’s past debts. Interestingly, people did not want to give their money to any bank, but sent it directly to Radio Maryja’s account. Radio Maryja also encouraged spontaneous social movements, like the Families of Radio Maryja, that are active in certain parishes and are supported by priests. These families deal with particular social problems important for communities they live in. Miroslawa Grabowska, a sociologist working on the phenomenon of Radio Maryja, describes the motives of these actions:

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MARIUSZ TUROWSKI Today we are living in the age of revolution, where everything has been changed, our ways of working, leisure activity, shopping, dealing with the challenges of everyday life. In this age of relativism and postmodern lack of values, we need simple answers for the questions What is good and What is bad, and strong convictions as to what is true and valuable. Radio Maryja has filled the gap connected with our hunger for eternal and consistent values.4

Father Rydzyk’s fight for values has a unique character. He uses religious, patriotic, national, and historical arguments to move his listeners toward action in the name of these values. Here is an example from his program of 28 January 1997: I call the whole army and Family of Radio Maryja. The whole army, all mothers, all grandmothers. They were mothers and grandmothers who rescued Poland during the days of our uprisings, when fathers and sons were sent into exile. Now I appeal to all mothers and grandmothers . . . .5 4. Conflict between Priests and the Episcopacy A conflict between priests and the episcopacy began during preparation of the new Polish constitution and was developed especially before the constitutional referendum. Prof. Józef Tischner in an article in Gazeta Wyborcza said that “discussion about the constitution is a discussion about power, its forms, its foundations and its scope.”6 It was also a discussion about the place of the Polish Catholic Church in the modern Polish state. The struggles divided politicians and the Polish Catholic hierarchy, and also the hierarchy and ordinary believers and priests. The episcopacy decided not to evaluate the constitution and not to force believers’ political decisions about whether to accept or refuse the new constitution. But certain bishops decided to apply canonical law and to evaluate the project of the constitution in the light of their faith. Archbishops Marian Przykucki (of Szczecin and Kamień), Stanisław Szymecki (of Białystok), and Józef Michalik (of Przemyśl) claimed that the constitution project is against natural law, which was proclaimed by the Creator (referring in particular to abortion), that it does not take into consideration the common good, that it supports unlimited liberty instead of religiosity, and that it is anti-Polish because it preserves Communist rules and does not protect Poland from the influences from the West. Representing the Polish episcopacy, Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek came out against the political activity of these Archbishops. In an interview for Trybuna, the Polish newspaper connected with the Social-Democratic Union, he said that the constitution project is a necessary preparation for a democratic, plural, modern society, so Poles should accept its axiological flexibility.

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The episcopacy decided to encourage believers to participate in the referendum, without dictating whether to vote for or against the constitution. The Church does not force anybody to adopt certain views, as long as they are not being unethical, and the decision concerning the choice of a given political regime is not an ethical one. Pieronek was criticized by intellectuals and officials connected with the Church. Professor Władysław Piwowarski in an article for Gazeta Polska, the paper associated with the Polish political right, said Pieronek’s views reflect those of politicians from the Union of Freedom, and they are his private views, whose presentation should be prohibited because he is a spokesman for the Polish Catholic Church. Criticism of Pieronek was made by Radio Maryja, reflecting its antipathy to the Polish Catholic hierarchy. (In April, Bishop Józef Źyciński, a prominent representative of the hierarchy, had to defend a Catholic publishing house from Poznań––W Drodze, recognized as liberal––from an attack by Radio Maryja.) Meanwhile this divergence between the hierarchy and certain priests and bishops is reflected on the Polish political scene. In the beginning of 1997, the General Commission of Solidarity, in the face of the acclamation of the new constitution, voted an enthroning of Christ the King, as was done in 1920 before the war with Bolshevik Russia. Bishop Pieronek replied that there was no excuse for attempts to call on the authority of religion and the Bible for any political program. He claimed that the Church cannot be connected with any political party, left or right. According to another bishop, Tadeusz Gocłowski, politics is separate from religion, and the Church is able only to evaluate moral problems. The Church must exclude itself from political practice. If it participates in political life, its only concern must be the common good, and in this case it can present itself as a ‘critical conscience of the society’ and not as a political party. 5. Institutional, Apolitical Religiosity Do the above outlines of aspects of religious life in Poland tell us anything about the general forms and types of relationship between religion and politics in Poland? In order to answer this question we have to characterize Polish Catholic religiosity. Janusz Majcherek, an important observer of religious life in Poland, presented some ideas about this in an article that appeared in the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita on the occasion of the Pope’s visit to Poland in 1997.7 The first thing Majcherek points out is that Polish Catholics love the Pope cordially and manifestly, but are not interested in what he is saying. Poland is probably only one country where the Pope’s teaching and activity is accepted without exception and where there is no discussion and debate about it among believers. Polish Catholicism was always, because of its historical conditions, a matter of emotional attitude toward ideas not reflection about them. In the years when Poland was a dependent country there was no need

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for thoughts about the transcendental dimension of reality and existence. Religion was expected to provide people living in difficult conditions with ways of developing and strengthening national and religious identity. This demand for the building up of national-religious identity was evident from the end of the eighteenth century when Poland was partitioned, lasted throughout the nineteenth century, and was very strong in the years of ‘Communist occupation’ of Poland from 1945 to 1989. It was a common attitude, typical even for some intellectuals who were engaged in discussions about the relationship between religion and politics in Poland. For example the famous Polish opposition publicist, Stefan Kisielewski, in the years of the Vatican II Council attacked the Catholic magazine Tygodnik Powszechny for its attempts to talk about ‘empty’ and ‘superfluous’ theological analyses instead of focusing on the more important problems of rescuing the national spirit from ‘the Communist disease’. The most representative position of that type was expressed by Wałęsa, who after each meeting with the Pope used to say that he was able to “recharge his storage batteries.” He did not speak about any intellectual message he might receive from the Pope. It is not surprising that Polish Catholics are not interested in the content of the Pope’s teaching: they don’t know basic theological concepts. How can they grasp subtle ideas about subsidiarity, solidarity, integrity, and the dialogical dimension of the human person? This may reflect Polish ‘practical illiteracy’ (forty percent of the Polish people cannot understand the news in newspapers and on television). Other considerations make this picture of Polish Catholic attitudes more complicated and absurd: it is exactly this intellectual dimension of papal teaching that for Polish Catholics is the most important of all the Pope’s achievements (ninety-four percent say the Pope is for them the intellectual authority). Polish Catholicism has been influenced more by charismatic figures and officials than by scholars and intellectuals. One such charismatic person was Cardinal Wyszyński, head of the Polish church in the seventies and early eighties. It was Wyszyński who resisted attempts to introduce Vatican II in the Polish Church. Any discussion about the fundamentals of faith and liturgy is still considered dangerous by a large proportion of Polish Catholic officials. The Pope’s criticism of Western consumerism can hardly be heard in this country which, during the years of partition and state socialism, suffered from permanent social and economic deficiency and shortage. The most active and independent representatives of the new Polish economic middle class–– managers, well-educated people, executives, and owners of new private companies––are the most critical of papal teachings concerning social and economic problems. On the other hand, they do not deal with such controversial topics as celibacy and the ordination of women. Polish Catholics claim that the most crucial problem successfully addressed by the Pope is abortion. As a matter of fact, this is the main point (together with problems of human sexuality and family life) of worldwide criticism of papal teaching. But many Polish

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Catholics’ views concerning these issues depart from the position of the head of the Catholic Church: a large majority of them accept abortion, contraception, divorce, and premarital sexual relations. I would like to make a short summary of the considerations in this paper. First, there is no such phenomenon as Polish Catholic opposition to democracy and so-called ‘modernization’. Polish Catholicism is not a part of political discourse. It is basically connected to and rooted in emotions that reflect the tragedy of the Polish nation and state and its lack of independence. Polish Catholicism is much more connected to Polish nationality than to political attitude. Even if Catholicism may have strains opposed to democracy and liberalism, this cannot be so in Poland, because Polish Catholicism lacks a discursive, political background, and there is no comprehensive ‘Polish Catholic political theory’. Concurring with claims made by Anna Sosnowska in her recent article on the Polish political scene,8 we might say that Polish Catholicism is a part of the Polish “peripherality,” but at the same time it is the ‘Polish distinction’ which makes Polish Catholicism unique and so different from that of France or Germany. It is different from the American situation discussed by Perry and Greenawalt, framing the general problem of relations between religion and politics. The most important issue at present is whether Poland should try to overcome this “Polish specialty” and focus on ways of introducing modernization to act according to the theory of “sustainable democracy.”9 Or should we accept our situation as the “Polish peripheral spirit” and examine the possibility of moving forward to fulfill “Polish peripheral political expectations?” NOTES 1. Kent Greenawalt, Religious Convictions and Political Choice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 2. Michael J. Perry, Morality, Politics, and Law: A Bicentennial Essay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 3. “Alleluja!–i do przodu!” [Hallelujah!–Go Ahead!], Rzeczpospolita, 16 May 1997. 4. Miroslawa Grabowska’s opinion expressed in Rzeczpospolita, Ibid. 5. An excerpt from Father Rydzyk’s radio show quoted in Rzeczpospolita, Ibid. 6. Quoted in Ewa K. Czaczkowska, “Spór nie tylko o konstytucję” [Controversy not only Constitutional] Rzeczpospolita (30 April 1997). 7. Janusz Majcherek, “Podziwiany, lecz nie zawsze wysłuchiwany” [Admired, yet Generally Ignored], Rzeczpospolita (28 May 1997). 8. Anna Sosnowska, “Tu, Tam – pomieszanie. Wpływ cywilizacji zachodniej na sytuację społeczną w Polsce” [Here, There–Confusion: Western Civilization’s Influence on the Polish Social Situation], Studia Socjologiczne no. 4, (1997). 9. John K. Glenn, “Sustainable Democracy in Eastern Europe and International NGOs: Preliminary Considerations of Political Party Formation,” Ideas in Transit, ed. John K. Glenn and Andrea Peto (Vienna: Institute for Human Sciences, 1998).

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Part Three LIBERALISM AND DEMOCRACY

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Five AFTER MARXISM: DEMOCRATIC LIBERALISM AND HEGELIAN RECOGNITION Tom Rockmore In this paper I consider the dissimilar fortunes of liberalism and Marxism after the recent collapse of the latter’s institutionalized form. As concerns Marxism, I mainly restrict my comments to a rapid postmortem. I believe that Marxism has no future to speak of as either a political or a philosophical tendency, so my remarks about it will only be retrospective. I consider liberalism, understood as democratic liberalism, both in practice and in theory, at greater length since it is likely to be the main tendency in most of the world for the foreseeable future. The struggle between liberalism and Marxism has largely defined our time. Since the 1920s, if not earlier, this century has been marked by a continuing opposition between command and liberal-type economies, and a mix of authoritarian and democratic political systems, often depicted in strongly bipolar, moral language. This confrontation, which is a common feature in such disparate conceptual models as Marxism, fascism (if there is a coherent fascist political model beyond the inflammatory rhetoric), and liberalism, was recently brought to an abrupt end by the sudden, unforeseen, and irreversible decline of official Marxism. Fascism, to be sure, still exists. At the time of this writing, it is making a belated comeback in Europe (most strongly in France, less strongly in the reunited Germany, very weakly in the new Russia). Marxism, which has always presented itself as the only theory that understood real practice (in justifying the Moscow purge trials, Trotsky claimed that Marxism alone understood the objective nature of future history)1 has been decisively rejected by history. It is tempting to agree with the claim, which is often made, that Marx was wrong about communism but right about capitalism; but in reality the situation is more complicated than that reassuring slogan. There are important differences between the views of Marx and Engels, the first Marxist and the main source of Marxism. There appears to be no prospect of reviving Marxism as a political theory, although I think there is considerable hope of reviving Marx’s theory as a philosophy. Philosophy would not be enriched but impoverished if Marx’s insights were to disappear. A more accurate, but less catchy slogan is that Marxism was a catastrophe but liberalism did not succeed. Liberalism remains virtually unopposed as the single political model in the industrialized world and, with some exceptions, the single model in the en-

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tire world. Since there is no alternative, a large part of the world has in effect embarked upon an involuntary Pascalian wager, whose uncertain outcome depends on the practical resources of liberalism. Although it is likely to remain virtually unopposed for a long time to come, its prospects for practical success are probably no more likely than before. It should not be forgotten that its perceived inability to realize its social promise was a main cause of the emergence of Marxism as a suggested alternative. 1. Rousseau’s Problem and Hegel’s Solution Political philosophy divides generally into two main approaches: an effort, which is very widespread, to work out the conditions of the good life on a theoretical basis, (for example, Plato, Augustine, Locke, Nozick, Rawls, Habermas), and a very different effort to understand what is almost possible in the polis on the basis of what we know about it (for example, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Schmitt, Sandel, Honneth). It appears obvious that political philosophy needs to contemplate forms of social utopia (such as John Rawls’s fascinating but, as even he concedes, unworkable conception of justice as fairness), and to come to grips with real society at the risk of becoming something like a philosophy of current events. Politics centers on the human good, understood in relation to rights, justice, and other topics. In the famous observation that opens his discussion of the social contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau points to a failure of modern society. Rousseau links the good to social freedom. Human freedom includes intellectual, political, and economic forms. Economic freedom is central, since without it the other freedoms are difficult, perhaps impossible to realize. An example among many is the well known lawyer’s quip that the defendant receives the justice he can afford. Rights concern justice, which requires meaningful freedom for its realization. The idea of human good without human freedom is a dangerous illusion, better entertained in Dostoievsky’s novels than in real life. Without real freedom, justice, rights, and probably other criteria we can name are merely meaningless terms, which function within theories but not in the social world. For the present discussion, I take the solution of Rousseau’s problem as the standard by which to judge any view of politics both in practice and in theory. A solution to Rousseau’s problem obviously requires at least two elements: First, freedom needs to be acknowledged as a worthwhile goal, as something worth having, but as still not sufficiently widespread, since otherwise there would be no problem to consider. It might be objected that in Western democracies, especially the United States, we have already realized freedom merely by having a democratic form of government. Yet, most people are not free in any meaningful sense; and not all of us are free in the same or even relevant ways. Meaningful forms of economic freedom, which are increasingly plentiful in Western democracies, are still in painfully short supply.

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The point is that democracy is not itself social freedom, but at most its necessary precondition. Second, an interpretation of human freedom presupposes an account of human beings, a diagnosis of the problem, and a suggestion as to what to do about it. If we are concerned not merely to sketch an ideal society, there is no alternative to considering people as intrinsically social beings. It appears obvious that people are normally born into and conditioned by a social context. I believe that among modern thinkers, through his theory of recognition Hegel goes further than anyone else, not in resolving the problem, but in suggesting a criterion for its resolution. According to Hegel, we find ourselves in different forms of the master-slave relation, which can only be resolved through mutual recognition. If this is correct, then a first step toward a solution for Rousseau’s problem lies in finding a way to achieve mutual recognition both in theory and in practice.2 This is not the place for a detailed account of Hegel’s position. Suffice it to say that his complex conception of recognition includes distinctions between the relation of parents to children, the sexual relation between adults, friendship, formal legal recognition, and finally personal self-realization in an ethical community in which one participates in the realization of shared goals. Understood in this way, Hegel’s conception of recognition points in theory to conditions that must in practice be fulfilled for an individual to find himself or herself reflected in society, such as real social equality, identification with the state one contingently happens to inhabit, and so on. This model has recently been discussed by Axel Honneth, Charles Taylor, and Nancy Fraser. In pointing out that recognition is constitutive of personal identity, Taylor, for instance, argues that recognition of different cultures as equal is vitally important.3 Honneth, who, following Jürgen Habermas’s lead, prefers the view of recognition in the early Jena writings, contends that recognition includes distribution.4 Fraser, who favors a bipolar model, contends that redistribution and recognition are coequal elements of any contemporary theory of justice.5 Yet since economic distribution is only one among other forms of recognition, there is no reason to dissociate redistribution and recognition. Full development as an individual human being requires both a fair distribution of financial resources and intersubjective recognition. 2. Liberalism and Marxism as Opposites More, much more would need to be said to establish Rousseau’s problem as the main problem of modern politics and Hegelian recognition as the most promising approach. Foregoing further discussion, I want now, as if this discussion had been provided, to apply the Hegelian model of recognition to liberalism and Marxism, which are in many ways natural contraries. An easy way to understand their opposition derives from their very different attitudes

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to civil society and, to social well-being, or the human good.6 Civil society is discussed as early as Adam Ferguson’s natural history of man in society. It is presupposed in Adam Smith’s economic theory, and developed in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.7 It can be defined in different ways, for instance as a diverse set of nongovernmental institutions counterbalancing the state and, more narrowly, as that part of society opposed to the political order.8 “Civil society” will here be taken to mean, as Hegel meant it, the existing set of countervailing institutions located between the family and the state.9 Considered abstractly as ideal types, liberalism and Marxism can be distinguished through their opposing attitudes toward civil society. Liberalism of all kinds has always bolstered civil society, which Marx criticized as ineffective in reaching its goals, and which Marxism has simply tended, whenever it had the chance, to destroy. The difference in attitude toward civil society can be expressed in terms of the liberal conception of the invisible hand and its interventionist, Marxist counterpart, which I call the visible hand. The invisible hand is an omnipresent metaphor routinely accorded explanatory force in liberal theory, a metaphor which arguably never accurately described even the England of Smith’s day. It represents the secular equivalent of divine Providence on which Kant still relied. It signifies faith in invisible mechanisms supposed to bring about the common good. Some version of the invisible hand underlies all forms of liberalism (most recently in the socalled trickle down theory favored by Ronald Reagan), where it explains how, if individuals are concerned only with themselves, as in Smith’s famous description of England as a nation of shop keepers, everybody benefits. Liberalism flourished in the period after the decline of theological systems of explanation. Like Plato, who recommended that we grasp invisible reality, liberalism in all its many versions represents trust in the unfettered forces of civil society as working successfully through an invisible mechanism in favor of the common good. One need not be interested in anyone else, in the welfare of others, if for reasons intrinsic to it the system will tend over time to realize the good for everyone. Liberals from Smith to Rawls have faith that modern society is working on my behalf even when I know for a fact that other individuals are concerned only with their own selfish interests. The visible hand, on the contrary, signifies the conviction of the nonexistence, or insufficiency, of the invisible hand. As opposed to liberalism, an interventionist conception of a visible hand underlies Marxism, fascism, and certain other types of antiliberal politics. This conviction has led in practice to forms of intervention tending to destroy civil society, stultifying the very possibility of making good on the human deficit that accrues in simply trusting to the intrinsic working of civil society.

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3. Marxism in Practice We need to distinguish between what Marxism might have become had conditions been different than they were, and what it unfortunately did become. On even the most favorable evaluation, the results of official Marxism, taken as a political theory, from the time of the Russian Revolution to its collapse in 1989 were astonishingly meager, insufficient (when judged by its claims or by the suffering it caused) to justify it as a viable alternative to liberalism. The precipitous decline of official Marxism is a defining moment of our time. The failure of Marxism needs to be understood against the background of a series of related events, including the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. Marxism has always presented itself through a privileged relation to the Russian Revolution, understood as an effort to complete the French Revolution, which created the political conditions for the Industrial Revolution. The very idea of revolution has recently come under attack. It has been claimed, for instance, that there was no scientific revolution, but only a series of gradual changes, running from the geocentric worldview favored by Ptolemy to the heliocentric alternative favored by Copernicus, then to the rise of the new science in Galileo, Huygens and others, which eventually peaked in Newtonian mechanics. The Marxist myth consists in the claim, through revolution,10 to break cleanly with the liberal tendency toward piecemeal, but ineffective amelioration, incapable of fundamental change. The myth lies in the idea that Marxism ever broke with liberalism, of which it unfortunately continued some of the worst traits, while inventing new ones, especially the destruction of civil society. Marxist practice ran against Marx’s own theoretical vision. Marx understood the social good in the first instance in economic terms. From the early Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts through Capital, he constantly presupposes development of the means of production as a necessary precondition for the transition from human prehistory to human history. From Marx’s perspective, Marxism failed because its destruction of civil society prevented it from developing the economic base to the extent necessary to free human beings from the economic yoke. Civil society, especially its economic dimension, requires more freedom to develop than it ever received in commandstyle economies, which is not to say that it functions wholly freely according to a noninterventionist model even in countries such as the United States. 4. Liberalism in Practice Liberalism in general has a better record than Marxism, better with respect to civil society, which typically flourishes in liberal regimes. But it has not done much better, not well enough to describe it as successful in realizing the good for men and women. The human good cannot simply be equated with a flour-

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ishing economic sector, not in a liberal system, in which, despite the ideology, the invisible hand typically remains invisible, undetectable to the many, visible, in some instances highly visible, only to the few. The liberal model has been read as suggesting that the fall of official Marxism would enable it to bring about the good life. For a short moment, say before the ink dried, this inference appears to have been believed by certain politicians and social theorists alike. Ronald Reagan regarded the fall of communism as the triumph of good over evil. George Bush (as ignorant of history as his political mentor) foresaw a new world order, whose half-life was nearly over before he named it. Francis Fukuyama, the right-wing social theorist who quickly proclaimed the end of history, is more interesting. His diagnosis of the end of history relied on A. Kojève’s famous Marxist misreading of Hegel.11 For even the most sympathetic observer, it should be obvious that what Fukuyama regarded as the end of history has not yet led to an increase in human happiness, or even to economic prosperity, and appears unlikely to do so. The best suggestion is that for most people, above all in the former Eastern bloc countries, who are stripped of the minimal but steady protection afforded by a stable political system, life will probably remain for the foreseeable future about as perilous as before. Interestingly, this is the case even in the reunited Germany, where steadily rising unemployment threatens its role in the European Common Market and even its political unity, which is based on an unusually efficient form of economic liberalism. The current situation, which is not comparable to the end of history or even to the beginning of human history, is grimmer than it looks; it is probably close to what Hobbes claimed to perceive, which may explain the recent surge in popularity, precisely among liberals, of a leading anti-liberal, a former Nazi, opposed to most things that liberal society represents, like Carl Schmitt. 5. Recent Liberalism in Theory Kant illustrates the tendency to concentrate on the theory of practice, as opposed to real practice. Since philosophers are mainly interested in theory, it is not surprising that the difficulties of liberalism in practice have not so far had any visible effect on its theoretical fortunes. The return to liberalism, which was already underway with the publication of Rawls’s Theory of Justice (1971), was only accelerated by the sudden demise of official Marxism. This book has often been described as the most important treatise in political philosophy in this century, appropriately so by those who regard liberalism as synonymous with a viable approach to modern society. Liberalism is based on the term “liberal,” which has undergone a seachange in meaning in recent years from a version of the idea of noblesse oblige common in nineteenth century liberal thought, as in Mill, to the recent idea, which in the United States took form during Reagan’s presidency, that

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liberals were engaged in wasting the public exchequer. Liberalism is understood in many different ways, often through a social contractarian approach, varying from emphasis on the defense of property rights as paramount (Locke, Nozick) to Rawls’s deontological view, influenced by Kant.12 For instance, John Kekes, who identifies different components of the liberal position, including Locke’s attachment to property, Kant’s insistence on moral autonomy, Mill’s rejection of interference with the actions of individuals, and Rawls’s championing of justice, regards pluralism, freedom, rights, equality, and distributive justice as the basic values of liberalism. It will be understood here, in opposition to Marxism and other alternatives, as favoring civil society, and what are grandly called rights, in cases of conflict at the expense of other social aims (such as the generalized possibilities for widespread access to quality education, universal health care, effective policies concerning minimum income and income redistribution, and so on). Rawls’s updated “deontological” version of liberalism,13 which is intended as an alternative to utilitarianism, features a theory in which right takes precedence over the good, whose nature is not specified.14 His view (which is based on “a procedural interpretation of Kant’s concepts of autonomy and the categorical imperative,”)15 has come in for criticism from Marxists and from a wide variety of others. The many different criticisms converge on the general complaint that, whatever the virtues of liberalism in theory, it is unable to realize its aims in practice. Kekes, who, as a conservative, should be sympathetic to the liberal insistence on rights, regards it as a self-stultifying doctrine on the grounds that the liberal stress on autonomy is not likely to make evil and wickedness less prevalent.16 Communitarians like Michael Sandel, Honneth, and Taylor, reject Rawls’s form of the traditionally liberal atomistic conception of the subject as unsituated and ethically neutral as unrealistic, on the grounds that it is always immanently situated.17 Although sympathetic to Sandel, Honneth, who defends Rawls against communitarian criticism of the theory of justice, also stresses the priority of the social community over individual autonomy. Taylor similarly argues that the liberal model needs to presuppose the social community as the real condition of the individual exercise of legally guaranteed liberty while rejecting Rawls’s social atomism. They follow Hegel’s own identification18 and criticism19 of liberalism’s commitment to social atomism. The communitarian charge that Rawls mistakes right for justice, since adherence to his deontological version of the social contract will not bring about the good for human beings, suggests that in practice the idea of justice as fairness is very unfair. Rawls simply concedes this criticism in Political Liberalism,20 where fairness, as distinguished from a moral doctrine, is presented as a political conception of justice.21 This book is intended to show that and how a pluralistic society can be stable over time. As in the original view, the aim is still to provide a public basis of justification which will be accepted by rational people. Yet it is not social or political stability but the good for

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human beings that is now at stake; mere stability is not the problem. His most recent book, The Law of Peoples, extends his position to the international arena.22 Even in its revised form Rawls’s theory is undermined by its unjustified assumption that a defense of pluralist democracy is sufficient to bring about the human good, resolving what I have been calling Rousseau’s problem. Even if the democratic way of life is better than its alternatives, it is a mistake to equate democratic pluralism of even the best kind with more than the potential to realize the human good, perhaps through a healthy civil society. When democracy functions, real, difficult, even intractable, problems remain. There is an obvious difference between whether the markets have the capability for self-regulation or require outside intervention, and whether, even if the markets function optimally, they require outside intervention to be useful, or maximally useful, for the wider population. More than a century and a half ago, Hegel rejected what he saw as the liberal reduction of the state to civil society on the grounds that we need to regulate the market,23 which, when unchecked, normally leads to the impoverishment of whole sectors of society. This observation is supported by what is happening in the United States during a period of nearly unprecedented economic expansion, when the standard of living of the so-called working class is not rising but declining, when real poverty is increasing, when the share of income going to the richest five per cent of the families is increasing rapidly while the share going to the poorest sixty percent is decreasing, and so on. Since both invisible hand and visible hand theories fail, we need to find another model; we need to discard the dual myths that merely leaving the system alone will suffice to bring about real human freedom, and that merely introducing constraints in the functioning of the modern economy will bring about the same goal. One solution is to find a way, as in many European countries at present, to intervene without destroying civil society in order to protect, if not the population as a whole, a greater cross section of the people. If civil society is not the problem or the solution, it still represents a necessary part of any solution, which lies in bending it to the uses of human beings, instead of destroying it or leaving it to its own devices. 6. Conclusion This paper has examined the opposition between liberalism and Marxism that dissolved in the sudden, unforeseen collapse of the latter. It has argued that the modern political problem is stated by Rousseau, that Marxism and liberalism do not adequately resolve the problem, and that at present the best approach lies in an updated form of Hegel’s theory of recognition. Here, as in many other areas of contemporary philosophy, the basic question at issue can be expressed through the difference between Kant and Hegel.

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Liberalism in its latest incarnation realizes the Kantian idea of respect for the individual as an end and not a means; in Rawls’s vision of a pluralistic, but rational society, in theory, all are equal. In practice, this is obviously not the case, since the respect each accords to the other needs to be understood through different kinds of recognition, in order, at some later stage of the process, to reach a level in practice commensurate with a claim that each possesses practically and theoretically an appropriate measure of real social freedom I contend that this remains the political problem of our time and that it can only be solved, if it can be solved at all, through practical freedom. In overestimating the positive functioning of civil society, liberalism, which trusts in providence, mistakes rights for the good. In repressing civil society, Marxism mistook intervention for the series of mechanisms lodged between the family and the state which alone could develop the real conditions for human freedom. As Hegel saw, we cannot rely only on civil society, or replace it through the state. We need both to rely on the tendency of the conflicting interests of producers and consumers to find their own balance and to provide for a control above them.24 For it is finally only in a state in which there is conscious cooperation that real reconciliation, or mutual recognition, hence real freedom, becomes a real possibility. NOTES 1. See Leon Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours (New York: International Publishers, 1942). 2. See Robert Williams, Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley: University of California, 1997). 3. See Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 4. See Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1995). 5. See Nancy Fraser, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflection on the “Postsocialist” Condition (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 11–39. 6. See Norbert Waszek, Man's Social Nature: A Topic of the Scottish Enlightenment in Its Historical Setting (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1986), pp. 137–170. 7. See Norbert Waszek, The Scottish Enlightenment and Hegel's Account of “Civil Society” (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988). 8. See Ernst Gellner, Conditions of Liberty. Civil Society and Its Rivals (New York: Allan Lane/Penguin, 1994), p. 5. 9. Ibid., p. 56. 10. See Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 11. For discussion, see Tom Rockmore, “Remarks on Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man,” Studia Culturologica, vol. 4 (Spring-Autumn 1996), pp. 83–96.

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12. See John Kekes, Against Liberalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), chapter 1. 13. See Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (New York: Cambridge, University Press, 1982), p. 1. 14. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 30–33, 446–452. 15. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 256. 16. Kekes, Against Liberalism, p. 202. 17. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, p. 152; see John Rawls, Political Liberalism, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 27n for his response to Sandel. 18. See G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: American Home Library 1902), p. 563. 19. For a study of Hegel's criticism of liberalism, see Steven B. Smith, Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism: Rights in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 20. For criticism of Rawls’s view of political liberalism, see William A. Galston, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues and Diversity in the Liberal State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), chapters 4–7, pp. 79–162. 21. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. xix, 11–15. 22. See Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). 23. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 149–150, 243–244. 24. See Ibid., pp. 147–148, 236.

Six COMMUNITARIAN CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM AND THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRACY AND PLURALISM IN POLAND Andrzej Szahaj John Rawls’s conception of justice presented in A Theory of Justice is widely known so I do not see any need to recall its main ideas here. I would like instead to proceed right away to the critique of it formulated by philosophers who have been called communitarians. I mean especially Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Walzer, Charles Taylor, and Michael Sandel. As is known, communitarians have raised several objections to Rawls’s theory. In this paper I am going to focus on the most important ones. First, they attack his concept of the person, accusing him of bringing out antisocial individualism. Their main objection is: the liberal political theory assumes that people are separate from the values they believe in, that people “precede” their values, and they can choose and change them freely. Communitarians think, on the contrary, that people are constituted by these values. It is not true that they can choose them freely, because they are defined by these values, and they cannot say who they are without reference to them. For communitarians, a liberal person is only a shadow of a real person, an individual invented by philosophers––one who walks about in a shop with values, choosing them as freely as if shopping in any other shop. There is nobody like that. We cannot separate ourselves from our beliefs. We cannot become someone else when we want to. We are closely connected with our community, whether we want to be or not, and it is our community that defines the values we believe in and consequently who we are. Communitarians do not agree with the idea of society as a contract present in all liberal concepts. They do not accept the idea that individuals in some presocial state of nature unite with one another in a society in order to fulfill their individual goals. In their opinion, social life is not a result of any contract, but something much more substantial. There is always a collective source of individual identity and individual concepts of good, and this applies also to the liberal ideas of the “good life” and the “good society.” Individual interests and the way they are defined are not prior to community, but depend on it. Individuals are not antisocial egotists, they are only viewed in this way by liberals. It is not true, according to communitarians, that propositions concerning values are only expressions of human preferences which cannot be justified rationally. If that was true, how could the liberals’ advice saying that

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society should let people choose the way of life they want be justified? What status would the advice have: objective or subjective? If subjective, why should it be obligatory for the whole of society? The last question refers to the supposed antiperfectionism, and also neutrality, of the comprehensive view of the liberal theory of justice and––more broadly––social life. Communitarians put forward a premise, that the liberal position is but an expression of certain philosophical and political preferences that try to put its own concept of good above others. How can you separate the right from particular visions of the “good life” shared by members of the just society? Briefly, Rawls only pretends to be neutral, adopting a certain vision of the good. All the significant philosophers from the communitarian camp share this critical approach to Rawls’s theory. Despite some significant differences among them, they agree on one thing: liberalism is not an attractive political offer. This does not mean that they would like to replace it with something totally different. The issue is rather its radical transformation, a transformation that would let them improve it, saving what is precious in it at the same time. The majority of communitarians claim that. Let us leave aside the problem posed by their position, and instead focus our attention on some positive theories that provide alternatives to Rawls and other liberals. Alasdair MacIntyre, a British philosopher resident for years in the United States, seems to have put forward the most interesting vision of the “good life” and the “good society”––an alternative vision to that of the liberals. Passing over details, he strives to revitalize Aristotelian ideas, as an antidote to the abstract individualism of post enlightenment European culture, to its tendency to subjectivize values, and its tendency to treat others as a means to accomplish our egotistic interests. First, MacIntyre appeals to the notion of telos, according to Aristotle the aim of human life when it is viewed in the context of community and the forms of life accepted by it. A man who is part of a given community does not need to make choices referring to the aims of life, since they have been well defined by particular practices and traditions shared by the community. This is the way to proceed rationally from “is” to “ought,” for it is known what “ought” must be. In this way, an aspect of virtue may be brought back to human life. Virtue is understood in the way Aristotle understood it––as the ability to conduct one’s own life according to the collective definitions of good and evil. MacIntyre proposes returning to the notion of virtue and to respect for tradition, for socially approved everyday practices. He talks about the necessity of imposing a “narrative unity” on human life. Other communitarians also emphasize the issue of the “good life” underlying the importance of human efforts aiming at a comprehensive and ethically coherent perspective which may be successful only if we reach for the collective resources of meaning. In their opinion this is the only way we can achieve personal identity. From the communitarian perspective, demanding the separation of the private and the public

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spheres––a typical argument of liberals––appears to be misleading and impossible. Rawls modified his account in a crucial way following the communitarians’ criticism and presented it in a book called Political Liberalism, published in 1994. He abandoned his earlier opinion that liberalism might be treated as a doctrine axiologically and politically neutral to all other political and ethical doctrines. He pointed instead to its rootedness in Western World customs and to significant practical advantages that result from implementing it in life. Stating that his doctrine of “justice as fairness” was political and not metaphysical in nature, he tried to narrow its reference to the sphere of political regulation of life in Western societies. He suggested that its validity and acknowledgement are due to the silent agreement among different political orientations based on different philosophical and ethical assumptions in regard to game rules which put public good above the particular concepts of the “good life.” He tried to defend his ideas by pointing out their political advantages instead of philosophical or ethical ones. Yet he remained faithful to his idea of procedural justice, arguing that this was the only way to find the minimum of unity in the pluralistic world of Western culture. Pluralism constitutes Rawls’s starting-point in all his inquiries. He notices the existence of it and believes it is praiseworthy, while his communitarian critics do not appear to share this opinion. The communitarian criticism, which is sometimes right, cannot bear the fundamental cultural fact of the Western world: there is not one vision of the “good life” and the “good society”; there is not one community that would have the right to impose some meaning on human life; there is no one tradition that we may recall in order to revitalize the forgotten past. If pluralism cannot be ignored, then there is nothing left but to recall these doctrines that, incorporating pluralism, will let people live together in peace. Liberalism has turned out to be such a doctrine. Though the world under the rule of liberalism has not turned out to be a paradise on earth, it has brought more good than harm on the whole. It has become an important tradition of Western culture. Having this in mind one might say Rawls in his attachment to liberal ideas is more communitarian than the communitarians themselves. It is true that liberalism calls for some moderation in public life, for some restraint, for making one’s comprehensive views more a private matter than a public one, which definitely may not make everyone happy. The political system based on liberalism has some negative aspects such as a sense of solitude, atomization, indifference to others’ fate, and so on. But it does not need to be like that. Liberals may meet communitarians halfway and project forms of life in which individuality would be connected with a freely chosen community spirit. There is no contradiction between the assumptions of liberalism and the desire to root human life in the values of human community; nor is there a contradiction between liberalism and the search for moral perfectionism. Liberalism cannot agree to the domination of the public sphere by

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any particular vision of life, since that would threaten one of its fundamental values, tolerance for those who think differently than others do. Liberalism cannot accept assumptions that human beings are not able to change their beliefs, that human beings are imprisoned in the frame of the community they belong to. As the research done in contemporary psychology shows, individuals are able to consider their beliefs reflexively and change them only if their culture and the society they live in appreciate self-criticism and the will to selfimprovement. Jürgen Habermas, following Harvard psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, has pointed out the existence of three possible stages in the evolution of an individual moral consciousness: the preconventional, the conventional, and the postconventional. During the preconventional stage, individuals consider all the events occurring in their milieu using an egocentric disposition to maximize their own pleasure, paying no attention to the norms of behavior established in a society or accepting them only to the extent they find them useful. At the conventional stage, the egocentric disposition to maximize one’s own pleasure is replaced by a pro-social disposition. Loyalty and obedience to the moral norms of one’s own social community becomes the key issue here. At this level of developing ethical competencies the leading role is played by everything that has gained social respect, and conformity to commonly adopted norms is superior to the egotistic calculation of gains and losses. At the postconventional level, an individual can realize that something formerly treated as simply given is socially and culturally constructed, contingent and conventional. In this way the subject can treat it as not obvious any longer, as something that does not deserve blind obedience, but that should become an object of ethical consideration making use of an individual sense of good and evil, and leaving behind the pressure of social images. Habermas writes: The identity of an individual is created through socialization; this means through the process in which a child first integrates into a social system by learning symbolic universals, only later developing his or her own identity which is preserved by individualization, that is, through the process of increasing resistance to social systems.1 It appears that having considered all the reservations (resulting for example from Michel Foucault’s theory) it is Western culture that gives an individual the green light, so to speak, for achieving the postconventional stage of the evolution of ethical competencies. Liberalism cannot agree on limitations of human freedom that do not result from the inclination to protect that freedom, although there is no contradiction between ideals of liberalism and the evaluation of aims for which the freedom is being used. A contradiction arises only when one of these aims is forced to be universally valid by the means of state apparatus. As the leading

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Polish sociologist Jerzy Szacki writes in his brilliant study, Liberalizm po komuniźmie, Liberalism does not try at all to cancel moral problems by avoiding taking a position on the question of common good, but only states that in contemporary society moral problems are solved in many ways, and whatever is thought about the particular solutions, it can hardly be different anyway, as the state is not found to solve these problems. The state that tries to be just toward its citizens must refrain from asserting who is right in the choice of ethical and philosophical views. Hence the role of the state lies in such an arrangement of relations among citizens that the unavoidable conflict among them would result in the least possible harm.2 Life in solitude is miserable, but it is not better in a community that imprisons. It appears that what we need is liberalism without solitude and collectivity without coercion. This is not always in the mind of those who would like to limit freedom of choice by ascribing to a philosophical or ethical doctrine a quality so far superior that it should be deployed to arrange human life with all its aspects; those who want to use a criterion of the majority to limit minority communities’ rights very often forget it. The last remark refers especially to supporters of fundamentalism. Different attributes have been ascribed to the fundamentalistic attitude. It appears that the belief that one has a warrant for resolving all human dilemmas is its main characteristic. It results from the certitude that one knows for sure what a “good life” should be and all people should (or even have to) share in that certitude. The Manichean vision of the world––typical for every fundamentalism––does not allow half-tones, ambivalent ethical and philosophical choices, or a conflict of values, the inability to fulfill them all at the same time. “Everyone who is not with us, is against us!”––here is the typical fundamentalists’ cliché that expresses a belief: the world is an arena of a never-ending struggle between good and evil, whereas only we possess all the good. There is no corner, no sphere of human life private or public, without a battlefield where one may win or lose everything, where the fate of the war is at stake. Struggle is a natural state of life for a fundamentalist and he will not rest until the day comes when his values have become the prevailing ones. A supporter of fundamentalism often takes on the role of a paternalistic teacher, all the more uncompromising in attaining perfection. Such a person claims to know the only way leading to the solution of all human problems. She or he knows where to lead the caravan of humanity and why freedom of choice must be forbidden. In the same way, as the author of this description, Isaiah Berlin, says: “One sacrifices a living human being on an altar of abstraction: nation, Church, political party, progress, forces of history.” A real–– imperfect, inconsistent, and continually seeking its own way of life––does not

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interest a fundamentalist. He takes care of Man In General. In the name of this imaginary man (often The New Man) people must suffer. But if the purity of an Idea requires it, a particular man’s good does not matter. We can find the fundamentalistic approach in present day Poland. It shows in the attacks on liberalism, and sometimes even liberal democracy itself. One may have an impression that the attacks are often close to the communitarian position. First, they concern cultural and philosophical liberalism; they often refer to both, and to political and economic liberalism too. They are most often an expression of unwillingness to accept the priority of right or justice over good, and of freedom over truth. In Poland, critics of liberalism ask frequently: why are we to accept pluralism of outlooks and cultural attitudes if the definite majority of the community shares the same beliefs? Is this not an attempt to force the majority of the nation to agree to the dissemination of error and untruth? Is pluralism an example of cultural conquest of Poland by the West, a manifestation of something that can be called (in their opinion) “totalitarian liberalism” or “despotism of freedom”? The critics of liberalism most often think in this way: if a community shares some universally certain beliefs, then one should be allowed to express them in public and next to make them the basis of a state law. This is the way the ideas of state-of-Truth emerge in Poland. The state’s task would be to embody the only Truth, that which is shared by all Poles (it is claimed) in the country. The situation in Poland distinctly reveals the possibility of taking an antidemocratic form by the communitarian approach. If we take a community to be the ultimate source of values and a basis for personal identities, then we may want to promote its judgments to the rank of a mere recipe for arranging the “good life” and the “good society.” A community that would claim to have the ultimate Truth may want to force those who remain outside of its borders to accept that Truth. It aims in this way to limit the individual’s chances for an autonomous choice of one’s own way of life, self-creation, and personal sovereignty. This is a minor problem when a collective rhetoric refers to a community that may expect competition in a given area. It becomes very dangerous when the rhetoric concerns a nation, that is, the community that, by definition, claims exclusivity for itself. In that case a natural tendency to give up individual rights in the name of national unity can emerge. Unfortunately, calls to preserve such unity appear again and again in Poland although, fortunately, this is far from being the dominant factor of Polish political life. They often adopt the structure of blackmail: you accept our value system, our comprehensive view, or you are no longer one of us. This is very frequently the consequence of the very popular idea in Poland, expressed by a phrase “Pole-Catholic.” It is an expression of a tendency to make values common for a dominant but still not inclusive community obligatory for all who are present in the country. The consequences may threaten democracy. A community resting on a unity of beliefs does not need democracy. Democracy is needed when dissimi-

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larity and pluralism are visible and it is not possible to ignore or suppress them any longer. In Poland those who reject with disgust the liberal ideas coming from the West point to their connection with capitalism and with freemasonry and other secret conspiracies, which aim at breaking unity among the Polish. They sometimes explicitly postulate separation of Poland from Europe in order to keep the unity of the nation, which in their opinion has never accepted inner divisions. But Poland was always a pluralistic country, and remains one. All sociological studies and results of elections prove that, and the contents of mass media or the works of so-called high culture suggest it as well. No community may claim the right to serve as the only one in which “real Poles” would find their proper place. In that sense one may say that Poles are doomed to learn the value of liberalism as intimately related to democracy. Let me propose that communitarians would defend themselves against the charges made against them by pointing out that it is not their intention at all to preach the necessity of accepting the beliefs of one community, but only the necessity to accept the rootedness in one of a set of different communities. Domination of one community over others is not the issue here but acceptance of the necessity of their peaceful co-existence. And even in this case the relation between an individual and each single community is a problem; should a community precede and utterly determine individuals’ philosophical and ethical choices or should it be a subject of individuals’ free creation––individuals who made up their minds for undertaking collective obligations? Should a community be our fate or should it be a subject of choice? If it is to be only our fate, then all the above charges remain valid; if it were to be a subject of our conscious creation or deliberation it would deserve only good will. The problem is not whether to live in a community or in solitude, but what a community we would like to live in will be like. Will it become our prison or the way to the fullness of human dignity? All that has been said above does not mean that there are no worthy elements in the communitarian rhetoric. Communitarians are right when they underline the fact that no one establishes one’s identity starting from scratch. Everyone has to reach to collective sources of meaning in order to construct his or her identity. It does not mean that one cannot then critically reflect on one’s process of socialization and establish one’s own identity anew by choosing what one likes best from the resources of meaning of other communities. They are also right when they notice that liberalism is only a possible way of thinking about the “good life” and the “good society,” and its superiority cannot be philosophically established. And they are also right in saying that a liberal state is not axiologically or politically neutral. They are wrong when they argue that the crucial argument exists for superiority of their own approach. There is strong evidence for advantages of liberalism and liberal democracy in the social and political practice in the Western world of the last several centuries. In turn, the practices of all collectivistic ideologies, starting with na-

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tionalism, have caused much harm in the world and show the dangers endemic to communitarianism. We may suggest that liberalism is the best among the known ways of managing social, cultural and ethical variety. Once pluralism has occurred, the choice appears to be clear: liberalism or violence. There would be nothing dangerous in communitarians’ yearnings if a painless return to the world of unity were possible. Yet such return would have to entail forgetting all the experiences that European culture has gathered throughout its history. It would have to imply erasing from social consciousness the results of the process of disenchanting the world and neutralizing the influence of the Reformation. It would imply abandoning the mission of philosophy understood as a way of thinking providing, not the Truth but instead, with cultural innovations, a paradigmatic unification of science, submitting arts to a certain pattern valid for all artists, suppressing the variety of methods of education. Different totalitarianisms have attempted to do just that. There is no need to recall the effects of those attempts. It appears that communitarians nostalgically yearn for the lost world of unity, not always being aware that such a unity has never existed and establishing it today would have to entail the use of coercion. It appears that we agree to pluralism, or we decide to use coercion. There is no other way. Well, one may dream of a voluntary renunciation of beliefs that make our social and political life so diversified, and of beginning a new life conducted in the name of the one and only Truth. But this dream appears to be based on doubtful premises. If we have not been successful in reaching a philosophical, ethical, scientific or artistic unity in European culture to date, why should we be successful now? Have there lately occurred any additional circumstances that could change anything in that regard? I do not think so. There were important differences among people even in culturally and philosophically homogeneous epochs such as the Middle Ages. Let us recall the Cathars and their fate. And what should we say about later epochs when the mechanism of differentiation started at both the economic (free market) and comprehensive levels (acceptance of the freedom of conscience and belief as a result of religious wars). European culture has been fed a variety of ideas for a very long time; the free market demands variety, promoting those who dare to offer something new. In the light of all that has been said, liberalism, with its ideals of freedom, justice, equality, democracy, tolerance, respect for human dignity, and––last but not least––active and critical citizenship, is the best and safest tradition, the one most likely to exclude manifest violence as a way of resolving social conflicts and to uncover the hidden one in the name of greater fulfillment of its own promises. Liberalism still appears to be the best cure for fundamentalism, because liberal democracy undermines its seductive powers by allowing the coexistence of a variety of different concepts of the “good life” and the “good society.” The best protection against monopoly is the acceptance of competition. Some of those who criticize liberalism radically are aware of that fact. The as-

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piration to a monopoly of the “only correct” ideology exists (whether on the left or the right) which has always supported the rejection of liberalism as such. To conclude, attacks on liberalism are sometimes attacks on democracy in disguise. In Poland where––as Szacki has pointed out––the liberal tradition has always been rather weak, and where is still too little general public appreciation for democracy, this is a real threat. One should agree with Rawls, who shows that it is hard to imagine a better way of arranging social and political life than liberal democracy based on the consensus of rules and the silent agreement that nobody has an ultimate license for the “good life.” It may not be the perfect way, but all others appear to be much, much worse. NOTES 1. Jürgen Habermas, “Einleitung: Historischer Materialismus und die Entwicklung normativen Strukturen,” Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischer Materialismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), p. 68. 2. Jerzy Szacki, Liberalizm po komuniźmie (Kraków: Znak, 1994), p. 244.

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Part Four DEMOCRACY AND PUBLIC REASON

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Seven PUBLIC REASON AND HIGHER LAW: REFLECTIONS ON JOHN RAWLS AND THE IDEA OF PUBLIC REASON David M. Rasmussen In an essay, “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy,” Richard Rorty wants to present us with a reading of John Rawls which claims that Rawls abandons the need for justification. Although Rorty is wrong about that, wrong if we take seriously Rawls’s recent remarks about the nature of justification in his debate with Jürgen Habermas, he senses the way in which the Rawls of Political Liberalism should be read. He simply wants to argue that “Rawls . . . shows us how liberal democracy can get along without philosophical presuppositions.” Rorty’s pragmatic point is that philosophy, like religion, has to go through a process of secularization, with the result that the problem of justification, in Rorty’s view the last vestige of philosophy’s religious heritage, is left behind. With this in mind he is enamored of Rawls’s attempt to construct a kind of political liberalism that can “apply the principle of toleration to philosophy itself.”1 Toleration that emanates not from philosophy but from the historical conditions following the religious wars means that political philosophy cannot be derived from moral theory. Rorty speculates that we can think of Rawls as saying that just as the principle of religious toleration and the social thought of the Enlightenment proposed to bracket many standard theological topics when deliberating about public policy and constructing political institutions, so we need to bracket many standard topics of philosophical inquiry.2 This is taken to mean that it is possible to “set aside” traditional philosophical topics such as “ahistorical human nature,” “the nature of moral behavior,” and “the meaning of human life.” Instead of bettering our “philosophical views” on these topics Rorty reads Rawls to mean that they should be treated with benign neglect. This application of the principle of toleration to philosophy itself means for Rorty that one takes a “thoroughly historicist and antiuniversalist” attitude which assumes that the “Enlightenment attempt to free oneself from tradition and history . . . was self-deceptive.”3 On this reading, Rorty claims to offer a different interpretation of Rawls than Michael Sandel, who in Rorty’s view misreads Rawls by assuming that

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Rawls is attempting to account for the “nature of the moral subject” which is “in some sense necessary, non-contingent and prior to any particular experience.”4 Rorty takes “philosophical toleration” to mean something different. According to this reading Rawls wants “questions about the point of human existence, or the meaning of human life, to be reserved for private life.”5 Instead, Rawls is said to follow John Dewey in developing a pragmatic view of society where justice is simply the “first virtue.” In such a society “reflective equilibrium” will be the “only method needed in discussing social policy.”6 Further, Rorty recommends that we should have read A Theory of Justice in light of this view. If we had fully understood Rawls’s claim that his notion of justice was simply the most reasonable “for us” we would have understood that even that book was “no longer committed to a philosophical account of the human self, but only to a historico-sociological description of the way we live now.”7 But in Rorty’s view, Sandel was unable to read Rawls from this perspective because Sandel understood Rawls to be making a metaphysical claim about the self,8 informed by Kant and Descartes. Actually, in Rorty’s view, Rawls is only making a political claim about the self. Such a self is not a self with an intrinsic ahistorical nature which functions as an “Archimedian point” from which to construct the basic structure of society; rather the self could be rather simply an historically situated “web of beliefs and desires” conditioned by “habits” and “choices.” Indeed, in this view the self as “centerless,” as “historical contingency,” fits with Rawls’s subsequent political claims. Rorty claims, “Rawls is not interested in conditions for the identity of the self, but only in conditions for citizenship in liberal society.”9 It appears that Rorty, using Sandel as his foil, gets a reading of Rawls which takes seriously the claim to apply the principle of toleration to philosophy even if it might take Rawls too far down the road toward relativism. Toleration means that it is simply impossible to adopt the vocabulary which resolves political questions beyond a doubt. This is to say that there is no one moral vocabulary in or through which political issues can finally be resolved. Rorty uses the anti-democratic dispositions of Nietzsche and Loyola to make his point. One cannot simply dismiss their views on democracy as crazy. Instead, in “the spirit of accommodation and tolerance” we should seek “common ground” even though one cannot know in advance where that common ground can be found. There may be enough overlap to reach an agreement, but there may not be. In any case, we try to reach an accommodation which may be in the offing. In the end, after many attempts we may simply have to give up because we “realize that we are not going to get anywhere.” “Rawls puts democratic politics first, and philosophy second.”10 Finally, for Rorty, if we take this kind of reading of Rawls seriously, we can make a certain kind of rebuttal to the communitarian critique of liberalism. One way of putting it is to raise the question whether toleration has paid off. Rorty sides with Dewey in his view that “communal and public disen-

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chantment is the price we pay for individual and spiritual liberation, the kind of liberation that Emerson thought characteristically American.”11 Rorty and Dewey would agree with Hobbes’s incorporation of Augustine’s suspicion regarding easy access to the good. To be sure, disenchantment with the world comes at a certain price, but the price is not necessarily too high. For Rorty, Dewey “assumed that no good achieved by earlier societies would be worth recapturing if the price were a diminution in our ability to leave people alone, to let them try out their private visions of perfection in peace.”12 1. Rorty gives the clue regarding how to read the later Rawls. He takes the case for a non-philosophic reading of Rawls too far. Rawls hasn’t given up on justification; he has only attempted to modify it, to give it a political instead of a purely philosophical reading. Taking toleration seriously means that one must redefine the relationship between philosophy and democracy, not by giving up philosophy but by giving it a more modest role. For Rawls, political philosophy begins from an historic instead of an epistemic point of departure.13 One could miss Rawls on this point. For the fundamental question regarding the problem which political liberalism is said to address could be given an epistemic reading. That problem is simply: “How is it possible that there may exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical and moral doctrines?”14 This is the problem of toleration. Toleration emanates from a new historical situation. This historical situation may be characterized by a dualism. But the dualism is not a philosophical one. Rather, in Rawls’s view, it is one derived from the special character of democratic culture.15 But if political liberalism begins with an historic instead of an epistemic point of departure, it is not devoid of rational characteristics. The important distinctions are those between the comprehensive and the political, the moral and the political, the private and the public, the reasonable and the rational. In his view reason is not the master of politics, merely its handmaiden. Reason can help clarify political practices that characterize our daily political life. Most of the categories associated with rational justification which have been rejected in the name of politics against the comprehensive view return in a more modest way to play a helpful if not fully clarifying role. One finds these distinctions illuminating. Philosophy is not the arbitrator of politics. But boundaries are often difficult to clarify even if we know in advance that philosophy does not create the diverse realms where conflict occurs nor does it necessarily reconcile them. So, in the end, against Rorty, there is in Rawls an epistemic component to political liberalism. If the very embeddedness of conflict that defines a modern political regime exists, for Rawls political liberalism arises as a way of specifying the terms of cooperation which will be adjudicated. How do we think about social

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cooperation in a political regime? The regulative idea is justice as fairness. But what can political reflection specify beyond that? How does one get people to cooperate in a society where there is fundamental disagreement about comprehensive doctrines? Rawls answers by suggesting that a political conception of justice can be derived or achieved through an overlapping consensus. If toleration is the issue and cooperation the goal, in a democratic society the form of cooperation cannot be forced; it must be free. For such a society to work there must be a certain form of agreement. But if one respects, or even accounts for, diversity then the basic issue that political democracy must address is the achieving of a consensus which is not imposed by philosophy or for that matter by anyone or anything else. Rawls’s rather brilliant point here is that the consensus must be overlapping. I take him to mean by this notion that there must be a consensus, but that the consensus cannot be complete. The consensus therefore cannot be achieved by reason in the comprehensive sense, but it must be reasonable. The reason that a consensus cannot be achieved by reason is that it would then be necessary that it be imposed, because by definition political liberalism is about toleration. The reason that it must be reasonable is that we must have a form of public cooperation. There must be terms, like the concept of the person, and to some extent the notion of institutions, that is, the concept of a well-ordered society, to which we can refer if we can have a participatory democracy. 2. If modern political philosophy begins with the problem of toleration and if the task of such philosophy is to apply the principle of toleration to philosophy itself, as Rawls suggests, then how is it possible to define a notion of public reason? Instead, would it not be the case that there would be several public reasons? One could claim that for a classical (Aristotelian) or even a modern (Kantian) notion of politics, public reason would be presupposed. Such a notion would be presupposed on the basis of the assumption that there is only one logos upon which all rational procedures are based. But Rawls wants to dissociate himself from both Aristotle and Kant by drawing his famous distinction between a comprehensive and a political form of justification. Having made this distinction it is difficult to see how public reason could be that singular thing to which citizens in a modern democracy could appeal when attempting to construct a rational justification of that particular political society. If one begins a political philosophy from the principle of toleration, does one not give up on the procedure of rational justification altogether? Rawls refuses to do this. He attempts to give a certain constructivist justification of public reason. In my view, this argument fails, or to put it more mildly it has a very limited success. It is only when Rawls blends his constructivist argument with a more contextualist one that one could conceive of public reason as a certain

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singular entity which could be perceived to emanate from a certain public. At this point the argument for higher law saves the argument for public reason by shifting the ground of the argument from a constructivist to a contextualist one. But this shift in the argument makes the fundamental distinctions and categories of political liberalism less convincing than they might at first appear. For example, is the original distinction between the comprehensive and the political as plausible from an interpretive as from a constructivist perspective? Equally, is the argument for an overlapping consensus as forceful as it might first appear when one shifts from a constructivist to an interpretive point of view? I do not mean to undermine Rawls’s attempt to establish a notion of public reason which takes with utter seriousness the actuality and the necessity of thinking from the point of view of necessary toleration. This attempt characterizes Rawls’s position as truly radical and innovative but I seriously doubt that Rawls succeeds in his attempt to justify public reason on the basis of the original constructivist model he presents. His turn toward the higher law argument saves public reason in the sense that it contextualizes it, thereby giving it an evidential basis from which interpretation can begin. But then is the “constructivist lens” through which Rawls would present political philosophy to us as necessary as it appears at first to be? 3. Public reason is a convenient device when applied to questions of political philosophy because it assumes a culture of agreement whether diversity is recognized and acknowledged or not. Public reason assumes a certain consensus about certain political practices. It assumes that there could be such a thing as a commonwealth, a common will-formation; in modern terms, it assumes that we can appeal to some kind of public autonomy. Republican arguments as old as those of Aristotle and as recent as those of Sandel assume commonality through a teleological notion of reason based on a certain human capability. Rawls, in contrast, has chosen a difficult task in that he must avoid defining public reason from a teleological point of view if he wishes to take the problem of toleration seriously. At the same time he must define public reason in such a way that it potentially grounds the possibility for a consensus in public matters. These two tasks lead Rawls’s thought to two different presentations and therefore to two different readings of public reason. If one follows Rawls’s constructivist justification of public reason, the procedural consequences of constructivism are to be accounted for in the doctrine of public reason. The principles derived from political constructivism would be the following: that the principles of political justice are the result of the procedure of construction; that those principles are based on practical reason; that use is made of a complex conception of person and society to give form and structure to its construction (with the implicit notions of a moral per-

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son endowed with capacities for justice and the good); and, finally, that society is a fair system of social cooperation. As is well known, Rawls attempts to build his notion of political constructivism by comparison with Kant’s notion of rational intuitionism. While Kant’s view is a moral or comprehensive view, political constructivism is political. Here political means that special emphasis is placed on the procedure of construction; the point of departure is not truth or the search for it. Political means that the focus on constructivism requires a more complex notion of person and society than does rational intuitionism. Since political constructivism dispenses with the notion of truth it is necessary that it rely on participants’ willingness to abide by the fair terms of social cooperation and a “willingness to accept the consequences of the burdens of judgment.” 16 Indeed, Rawls is careful to state that his understanding of political constructivism is not based on a comprehensive notion of reason as is rational intuitionism. Rather, this is a political conception of constructivism which accords with an appropriation of what is reasonable. In contrast to moral constructivism, political constructivism is not regulative for all of life but is autonomous, based on practical reason not regulated by an independent order of values. Its concepts of person and society are derived from the notion of justice as fairness. What is especially interesting in Rawls’s view of constructivism is his attempt to limit constructivism to a kind of deductive practice. He states: I do not say that there being an objective order of political reasons consists in various activities of sound reasoning, or in the shared practice thereof, or in its success. Rather, the success of the shared practice among those reasonable and rational is what warrants our saying there is an order of reasons.17 We can deduce from some “agreements in judgment” a rational basis for political justification. This modest view of the use of reason in political constructivism would lead to a notion of justification which would assume a designated procedure for establishing agreement on a public basis. This constructivist argument appears benign. This is merely an appearance. Politics equals power. The valid use of political power can be justified in two ways: through the raw and direct use of force or through reason. But if political power is to be justified rationally, if it is to follow the principle of toleration, it must legitimate itself while at the same time incorporating elements of difference sufficiently inclusive to include alternative points of view. Rawls’s famous answer to the dilemma of legitimation is his notion of overlapping consensus. The doctrine of overlapping consensus answers the question of precisely when power is “appropriately exercised.” In Rawls’s terms we must ask “in light of what principles and ideals must we, as free and equal citizens, be able to view ourselves as exercising that power if our exercise of it

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is to be justifiable to other citizens and to respect their being reasonable and rational?”18 Rawls answers this question by distinguishing between a comprehensive and a political doctrine. Overlapping consensus is presupposed in the distinction because it presumes a plurality of comprehensive doctrines which are in essential conflict but through which agreement on fundamental political matters may be achieved. This is said to be the reconciling work of public reason: to construct an overlapping consensus from a plurality of comprehensive doctrines. Rawls claims that this constructivist doctrine does two things: it identifies the fundamental role of political values in expressing the fair terms of social cooperation consistent with mutual respect between citizens regarded as free and equal. It fulfills the constructivist role of justice as fairness. Beyond that it has an ordering function; “it uncovers a sufficiently inclusive concordant fit among political and other values seen in reasonable overlapping consensus.”19 Public reason that emanates from a constructivist position may be defined as a democratic principle of legitimation. It is the “reason of equal citizens who, as a collective body, to exercise final political and coercive power over one another in enacting laws and amending their constitution.”20 The paradox of public reason is that given its political as opposed to its comprehensive justification, it would appear that the scope of public reason would go beyond the limits imposed by that distinction. This apparent paradox dissolves, claims Rawls, when we understand public reason from the perspective of “liberal legitimacy.”21 This means that the constructivist argument has established the appropriate arrangement whereby we can expect the paradox of public reason to be resolved. An overlapping consensus suggests that by definition only those rational or reasonable views that overlap are legitimate from a public point of view. A constructivist framework defines the limits of public reason by limiting legitimacy to precisely those values which are shared. Those values could be more fully justified by bringing to bear our private comprehensive views; but, by definition, those views which form a public point of view are conflictual and are barred from the arena of public reason. One must admire Rawls at this point for his faithfulness to the principle of toleration. But this argument for the dissolution of the paradox of public reason is not entirely convincing. Ultimately, the principle of liberal legitimacy must be sanctioned by Rawls through a kind of advocacy which is presented as a moral duty–– the duty of civility “to be able to explain to one another on those fundamental questions how the principles and policies they advocate and vote for can be supported by the political values of public reason.”22 This duty amounts to a kind of hermeneutics of translation in which the public values implicit in one comprehensive framework can be translated into that of another.23 Jim Josefson and Jonathan Bach argue that the kind of hermeneutics that Rawls is presupposing at this point is one inspired by W. V. Quine who develops what Joseph Rouse has called a hermeneutics of transla-

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tion. Briefly, Quine’s attempt to construct an empiricist epistemology results in the possibility of a translation from one conceptual scheme to another because of a shared framework of common sense which incorporates the history of science. Josefson and Bach make the claim that Rawls incorporates this Quinian approach which, in my view, is summarized in Rawls’s argument for the burdens of judgment. Ultimately, in my view the hermeneutics of translation argument is not strong enough for Rawls. Rawls turns to higher law. And what does that amount to but the turning to a text to guarantee that there can be consensus within a political framework? Perhaps one could surmise that the entire constructivist argument presupposes a Quinian hermeneutics of translation perspective. But the radical character of toleration presupposed by Political Liberalism requires more than Quinian common sense can guarantee. But what guarantees a common framework? If one were to apply the principle of toleration to philosophy itself wouldn’t we still be left with public reason instead of a political doctrine of public reason? It appears that the constructivist argument ends with little more than a weak moral imperative to respond to the duty of civility. In my judgment the constructivist argument is too weak to generate the consensus necessary for a notion of public reason. No doubt Rawls realizes this. 4. If the constructivist argument for public reason rests on relatively weak grounds, Rawls strengthens his argument, not for constructivism, but for public reason, by contextualizing it. This contextualization begins with the famous claim by Rawls that “in a constitutional regime with judicial review, public reason is the reason of its supreme court.”24 We have already had intimations of this move from a constructivist to an interpretive position when we were told that the first form of consensus which leads to an overlapping consensus is constitutional consensus. Here Rawls proposes to view the move to overlapping consensus and to a public form of reason as a series of stages. At the first stage the liberal principles of justice would be accepted as a “modus vivendi,” principles which are “adapted into the constitution.” However, “these principles tend to shift,” meaning that they become integrated into “citizens’ comprehensive views so that they at least accept the principles of a liberal constitution.”25 In Rawls’s view this accounts for a movement from “simple” to “reasonable” pluralism, resulting in a constitutional consensus. The movement to an overlapping consensus from a constitutional consensus is said to be a movement in “depth.” Ideas of person and society, basic structure, rights, freedom of thought, equal opportunity, essential needs––these ideas are all included. Whatever one makes of this argument, it is different from the purely, albeit weak, constructivist argument that was originally proposed. The consensus that was to be brought about through a constructivist use of reason is

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reinforced by an embedded notion of reason in which the very principles which are to be developed in public reason are found to be implicit within a political society that has developed a constitutional consensus. This argument begins to take over in Political Liberalism. The consensus to be brought about through a constructivist orientation, which is difficult to achieve given the ideal of applying the principle of toleration to philosophy itself, becomes possible through a much more historical interpretive argument in which a shared notion of public reason is seen to be already present in the existence of a constitutional consensus. This contextualist-interpretive argument for public reason sustains the following historical thesis that “in a constitutional regime with judicial review, public reason is the reason of its supreme court.”26 At this point Rawls is able to bring the insights of constitutional legal theory into his contextual argument for public reason. Hence, the idea of dualist democracy which can be traced to Locke’s distinction between the people’s constituent power to establish a new regime and the ordinary power of officers of government and the electorate exercised in day-to-day politics. This distinction is read into the notion of higher law as distinguished from ordinary law. The two distinctions are combined in Rawls’s very precise formulation: Higher law is the expression of the people’s constituent power and has the authority of the will of We the People, whereas ordinary legislation has the authority and is the expression of the ordinary power of Congress and the electorate. Higher law guides and binds this ordinary power.27 From this it follows that public reason is contextualized in the notion of higher law. The “democratic constitution” contains within it “a principled expression in higher law of the political ideal of a people to govern itself in a certain way.”28 Public reason in this view becomes a form of interpretation for, as Rawls claims, “the aim of public reason is to articulate this ideal.” This application of interpretation to the constitution “fixes once and for all certain constitutional essentials, for example, the equal basic political rights and liberties, and freedom of speech and association, and those rights and liberties guaranteeing the security and independence of citizens, such as freedom of movement and choice of occupation, and protections of the rule of law.”29 Public reasoning about the constitution, which is an act of interpretation in the name of We the People, as expressed through the activities of the court, “prevents law from being eroded by the legislation of transient majorities.” In order to make this case Rawls endorses Bruce Ackerman’s thesis that although the court may appear to be anti-majoritarian it is not anti-democratic because, through preserving the constitution, it is supporting the will of the people. This can be demonstrated by following the narrative of constitutional interpretation through the “three most innovative periods of American constitutional his-

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tory”: the “founding,” the “reconstruction,” and the “New Deal”––all of which fundamentally changed our understanding of the constitution through an act of reinterpretation. Finally, in Rawls’s view this interpretive model of public reason can complete its view of the Supreme Court as the guardian of public reason by sustaining the hypothesis of the “best interpretation.” Here the distinction between the comprehensive model of reason and the political model of public reason can be contextualized in such a way that the Supreme Court Justices are perceived to be limited by the scope of public reason. This is taken to mean that the court cannot endorse its own morality. It cannot, through the process of judicial review, endorse its own comprehensive view. 5. One comes to the following conclusion regarding one element of Rawls’s Political Liberalism: one bases the idea of public reason on a constructivist, political notion of reason or one bases the idea of public reason on a contextualist, interpretive notion of reason. If one follows the constructivist option the political notion of reason is not sufficiently strong to support the number of ideas of a public common ground associated with it. One argument has been to suggest as a consequence of the above assumption that Rawls entertains a notion of private reason with a public intent. But that is not my point. Rather, my point can be put in the following proposition: if one attempts to construct a notion of political, public reason from the point of view of a position which attempts to apply the principle of toleration to itself, we cannot presuppose a consensus sufficient for a notion of the political or the notion of the public. One senses that there is something half-hearted about Rawls’s position when taken as a constructivist position. For example, he has even withdrawn his famous device of representation, the original position, from the realm of constructivist argumentation. More importantly, as we have seen, the epistemic basis for the distinction between the comprehensive and the political cannot be sustained fully from a constructivist point of view. Equally, the argument for an overlapping consensus changes its meaning if not its force when one moves from a constructivist to an interpretive position. The case for public reason based on the argument from higher law is much stronger because it reflects the point of view of a consensus that has already been given or established by a political culture. If, and I believe Rawls is right on this, political philosophy must apply the principle of toleration to itself then, from the interpretive and not the constructivist point of view, the notion of a public reason is given, it need not be constructed. The point of departure is not constructivist based on argument but interpretive based on the specifics of a text and the dynamics of meaning and interpretation. One could argue that the point of departure would be a dialogue with a community over the meaning of a particular text. Such a point of departure raises the question

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of what happens when the text isn’t there, as, for example, in countries where a constitutional culture is to be established. No doubt this is problematic for Rawls when he attempts to deal with the problem of extension. Yet, this is precisely what his most recent work has been concerned with. Equally, the role of citizen, Rawls’s public political person who thinks and acts for the public as if she or he were a member of the Supreme Court, is in some sense given for reflection. The notions of person and society are already present in a constitutional culture. Even the idea of toleration from which public reason emanates has historical precedent. To be sure, the notion of reason that emerges from the perspective of a kind of reflection that uses higher law as its model is not devoid of constructivist elements. For example, the idea of justice as fairness can be at the center of an interpretive notion of public reason. Even the notion of higher law itself has constructivist elements. But if we are to have an idea of public reason, it is only possible, in my judgment, to begin with the idea of public reason as already given within a modern constitutional culture. My guess is that this is the direction in which Rawls is moving also. Had he begun with that assumption, public reason would be characterized differently than it was in Political Liberalism. NOTES 1. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p.10. 2. Richard Rorty, “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy,” Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, vol.1 of Philosophical Papers, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 179–180. 3. Ibid., 181. 4. Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 49. Quoted from Rorty, “Priority,” pp. 181–182. 5. Ibid., p. 183. 6. Ibid., p. 184. 7. Ibid., p. 185. 8. Ibid., p. 184. 9. Ibid., p. 189. 10. Ibid., p. 191. 11. Ibid., p. 194. 12. Ibid., p. 194. 13. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p.xxvi. 14. Ibid., p, xxvi. 15. Ibid., p. xxi. 16. Ibid., p. 94. 17. Ibid., p. 120. 18. Ibid., p. 137. 19. Ibid., pp. 157–158. 20. Ibid., p. 214. 21. Ibid., p. 217.

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22. Ibid., p. 217. 23. See Jim Josefson and Jonathan Bach, “A Critique of Rawls's Hermeneutics as Translation,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 23:1, pp. 99–124. 24. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p.231. 25. Ibid., pp. 163–164. 26. Ibid., pp. 231–240. 27. Ibid., p. 231. 28. Ibid., p. 232. 29. Ibid., p. 232.

Eight JUSTIFICATION AND PUBLIC REASON IN A DEMOCRACY Frederic R. Kellogg Western political theory is undergoing what might be called a postmodern reformulation. The essentialist and foundationalist remnant of the modern era, itself the product of a reformulation, is disclaimed by the major theorists. With such a disclaimer old foundations are abandoned while new ones are proclaimed contingent, problematic, and utterly human. The institutional implications of this are profound, in that human autonomy and control are magnified by the removal of all presumptive antecedent necessity in the ordering of political life. This is a challenging development for those engaged with the issues of reforming public life in Eastern Europe. The removal of antecedent necessity amplifies the difficulty of identifying the dynamic elements on which the future of liberty may turn. Intricately woven into this problem is the parallel one of finding a common language in which to articulate the problem itself. The stakes would be raised in the event of failure to settle on a common language within which the dynamics can be understood, and on which common action can be grounded. With elements of antecedent necessity surrounding the future of liberty gone, human responsibility for the consequences of failure is recognizably increased. Liberty must increasingly be seen as less a natural condition and more a human construction, and a fragile one at that. Richard Rorty, although not a theory-builder, has drummed home the postmodern reminder. Of John Rawls, unquestionably a major theorist, Rorty comments that “Rawls . . . shows us how liberal democracy can get along without philosophical presuppositions”1 by constructing a kind of political liberalism that can “apply the principle of toleration to philosophy itself.”2 As David Rasmussen has illuminated it in his excellent paper, this raises the issue of precisely where justification derives, and how both order and toleration are to be constructed and maintained. Without philosophical presuppositions, where do philosophers turn? Even as the stakes are raised, the element of uncertainty is greater than ever. The matter I wish to address involves justification. While this is a concept of broad scope, there is no question that justification, in the narrow sense in which it is applied to validation of political practice, lies at the core of public life, and especially of democratic forms of governance. If justification can no longer derive from presuppositions, we need to account for it nonetheless: what is justification in the postmodern era, whence does it derive, and how is

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it sustained? This appears to me to be the question raised by Rasmussen. It is opportune that my presentation follows his, as it prompts me to clarify and sharpen my own views. While I contrast my viewpoint with his, I hardly mean that by comparing them I am contemplating a choice between them. I only mean that Rasmussen has given me an opening, by his illumination and penetration, that I should not pass up, to explore a fundamental problem in a way that would not have been possible without his contribution. I read Rasmussen as a sympathetic critic of John Rawls, and this is where I would place myself. Both of us appear to be provoked by, if not entirely sympathetic with, Rorty, who might be described as an intellectual gadfly. While Rawls (along with Jürgen Habermas) is engaged in the profoundly important project of regrounding our modern Western practices, especially constitutional democracy, in the postmodern environment, Rorty is constantly looking over his shoulder––suggesting reinterpretation when necessary––in order to keep that environment utterly unpolluted. Rasmussen, it appears, is more concerned with strengthening the Rawlsian case itself, given the historic importance of his project. Rasmussen’s argument is that Rawls’s twin grounds for modern liberalism, or for liberal constitutional democracy, are not as secure as both Rawls and Rasmussen himself would like them to be. The first of these is the “constructivist” ground, and the second the “interpretivist.” The first emerges from the famous Rawlsian original position and his principal of reflective equilibrium––the architecture previously set forth in Rawls’s A Theory of Justice.3 To many critics, that work appeared to violate postmodern sensibilities. It hinted too much at antecedent necessity, at an a priori and noncontingent theory of the moral subject, for instance. The second ground was introduced, as it were, to address the erosion of the first ground by Rawls’s own efforts to cure those violations. To explain, the idea in A Theory of Justice was that citizens of a democracy, notwithstanding their radical and incommensurable differences regarding goods, goals, and ends, could agree on some aspects of just political practice––what Rawls called justice as fairness. They could be brought to do so by imagining themselves working out basic rules of procedure deliberately and discursively, while hypothetically presumed to be ignorant of their actual or eventual personal, social, or economic status––or any ascriptive conditions that might make them tilt more or less toward one rule or another. Once adequately framed, this set of rules could provide the grounds of justification for liberal political practice, especially toleration of opposing fundamental points of view. This outcome was subject to the criticism that it embodied noncontingent assumptions that left the purpose of justification severely unfulfilled. Rawls’s account of justice as fairness could not help but appear, as it was, historically situated. In incorporating a situated philosophical account of the human self (for instance), it could hardly be used to justify public practices for a society,

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or even for individual citizens, that were not unequivocally committed to that account. This kind of reservation led to Rawls’s revision of his project in Political Liberalism, with its twin grounds for liberal constitutional democracy. Here, as Rasmussen describes it, the account of justice as fairness is deliberately and explicitly freed from any ahistorical grounding or necessity: “[F]or Rawls, political philosophy [now] begins from an historic instead of an epistemic point of departure.” That history is the conflict between religions brought on by the Reformation: the experience of conflict between transcendent conceptions of the good not admitting of compromise. Toleration emanates from this historical situation, and in Rawls’s words, “Political liberalism starts by taking to heart the absolute depth of that irreconcilable conflict.”4 “But,” Rasmussen continues, “if political liberalism begins with an historic rather than an epistemic point of departure, it is not devoid of rational characteristics.” Here we find the essence of Rawls’s modified form of justification. It consists in something Rawls calls public reason. If the embeddedness of conflict is what defines a modern political regime, political liberalism arises as a way of specifying the terms of cooperation on the basis of which conflict will be adjudicated. Rawls suggests that there is a unique form of cooperation that can be derived from an overlapping consensus, a crucial partial confluence of opinion in the midst of comprehensive disagreement. All this is elegantly addressed in Rasmussen’s paper, and I only hope my efforts to summarize it are as accurate as possible. The key point, I take it, is that Rawls transformed the earlier architectonic of A Theory of Justice into a less rationalist and more naturalist enterprise. This is what he meant when he adopted the constructivist label when incorporating it into Political Liberalism. But in Rasmussen’s analysis, there remains enough reliance on rationalism to create a paradox. As Rasmussen puts it, If modern political philosophy begins with the problem of toleration and if the task of such philosophy is to apply the principle of toleration to philosophy itself, as Rawls suggests, then how is it possible to define a notion of public reason? Instead, would it not be the case that there would be a number of public reasons? Rasmussen makes a compelling case that Rawls’s resort to constructivism, as an attempt to head off this objection, is weak, and that Rawls himself senses this weakness. For this reason he adds a second, interpretivist, ground, where, as Rasmussen puts it, “[Rawls’s] turn toward the higher law argument saves public reason in the sense that it contextualizes it, thereby giving it an evidential basis from which interpretation can begin.”

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What is this second “interpretivist” evidential basis and how does it fit the purpose for which Rawls introduces it? Before elucidating this, let me indicate the direction in which I am heading. I largely agree with Rasmussen’s analysis so far. But as his critique places more of the burden of justification on the alternative ground for political liberalism, I wish to address what I see as a misguided conception of higher law, and the role of the courts, which constitutes a key element of that alternative ground. I address in particular Rawls’s thesis that “in a constitutional regime with judicial review, public reason is the reason of its supreme court.” I strongly oppose this conclusion, drawing heavily on a theme that Rasmussen has raised in his paper, the nature and derivation of justification. The relevance for the overall theme of this conference is that, as the newly reconstructed Eastern European states regain a working relationship with the public and constitutional role of judicial power, especially as it has developed in the past half century, and also with the increased role of interEuropean judicial bodies, they will confront in a real context the very questions before us here. I wish, in effect, to warn against any self-actualizing institutional view of justification that leads to over-reliance on official constructions of constitutional law in the rebuilding of democracy in Eastern Europe, drawing on the experience of the United States. In advancing his alternative ground, Rawls turns to a field of history and theory with which he is not wholly familiar: constitutional law. In fleshing out the idea of overlapping consensus, it occurs to him that the first form of consensus that leads in that direction is constitutional consensus. He views the move to overlapping consensus and public reason as taking place in stages, in which the Rawlsian principles of justice as fairness, which are essential to liberal democracy, begin life by adoption into a constitution, at first as a “modus vivendi”––a tentative experimental step toward social cooperation. Over time, the constitution’s principles become integrated into the citizens’ overall thoughts and attitudes; they become integrated, that is, into the melange of otherwise disparate comprehensive views. This development of constitutional public reason is described as a movement in “depth,” in that ideas of person and society, rights, and basic needs are also emergent in the process. Rasmussen rightly regards this as quite a different argument from the purely constructivist first ground of Rawls’s position. As Rasmussen says: The consensus that was to be brought about through a constructivist use of reason is reinforced by an embedded notion of reason in which the very principles which are to be developed in public reason are found to be implicit within a liberal society that has developed a constitutional consensus. This argument begins to take over in Political Liberalism. The consensus to be brought about through a constructivist orientation,

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which is difficult to achieve given the ideal of applying the principle of toleration to philosophy itself, becomes possible through a much more historical interpretive argument in which a shared notion of public reason is seen to be already present in the actual existence of a constitutional consensus. In Rasmussen’s view, this progression toward public reason through constitutionalism embodies a sounder argument, and provides a superior basis for justification of liberal constitutional democracy. Not willing to accept this on faith, we should return to the fundamental question that appears to underlie Rasmussen’s critique of Rawls: If justification can no longer derive from presuppositions, we need to account for it nonetheless: what is justification in the postmodern era, whence does it derive, and how is it sustained? Are there any questionable presuppositions on which Rawls’s view of constitutionalism may rest? One way of addressing this is to ask at what point justification comes into full existence in Rawls’s revised system of political liberalism, if public reason emerges in stages. Justification cannot be presupposed at the early stage when a constitution is first adopted as but a “modus vivendi,” a tentative experimental step toward social cooperation. It must await the later stage at which constitutional principles have become integrated into citizens’ overall thoughts and attitudes, into their otherwise disparate and conflicting comprehensive views. But this requires us to assume that justification starts out as an incompleted project. What then, we must ask, if the project goes awry along the way? I think the history of constitutionalism in America demonstrates that the project has not gone as smoothly as Rawls implies in using it as a model for Western society in general. The history of the abuse of constitutional due process to block social legislation during the first third of the twentieth century is a prime example. The United States Constitution was used as the legal authority by which nine elderly, successful, and politically well-connected lawyers overruled economic reform measures, such as the hours and conditions of work and public oversight of business practices, adopted by duly elected state and federal legislative bodies, on the ground that they violated a constitutionally protected “freedom of contract.” That is, the obviously unequal bargains between workers and employers should be considered constitutionally sacrosanct and immune from legislative meddling. Rawls’s thesis, that public reason in a constitutional democracy is the reason of its supreme court, would hardly have been convincing to a majority of working Americans at that time. Frustrated by the Court’s resistance to his legislative program, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, after winning a big electoral victory in the 1936 election, proposed structural changes to the Court in 1937, the famous “courtpacking plan.” The majority of the Court abruptly turned in favor of the con-

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stitutionality of state and federal social reform legislation. It has only been in subsequent years, after the idea of constitutional free contract was rejected by the same body that had formerly adopted it, that faith in constitutional review by the courts has been restored, to the point where Rawls and others can view it as an elementary part of the political process. But this does not warrant the assumption that public reason is the settled province of the Supreme Court, or that justification has somehow settled in with it. What appears to me to be at the core of this discussion is that there exists an all-or-nothing view of justification that dictates an obsession with which Rasmussen is dealing, and which appears to preoccupy political philosophy even after its postmodern reformulation. Even Rorty, the postmodern purist, implies an all-or-nothing view when he claims that justification is the last vestige of philosophy’s religious heritage, and must be left behind. In this spirit, as Rasmussen says at the outset of his paper, Rorty declares that Rawls has abandoned justification, and Rasmussen begins his paper with a denial of that claim and proceeds to a defense of Rawls’s modified version. Rorty is famous for his resort to shock treatment like the wholesale abandonment of philosophical concepts, “relativism” and “metaphysics” among them. Such moves have been unwelcome to many followers of John Dewey, who accordingly prefer to maintain a distinction between pragmatism and postmodernism. This distinction preserves the methodological preference of Deweyan pragmatism for reconstruction of controversial concepts instead of abandonment. In the case of justification, it avoids the very dilemma confronted here––the choice between locating the precise embedded conceptual or institutional site of public validation of legal and democratic institutions, and abandoning the search for modes of validation altogether. We are, in effect, thrown back to our metaphysical assumptions by the question of justification. Is it essential, and if so, in what way? Does it have an inherent role, and if so does it have an inherent location? If it is real, then must it exist only in full or not at all, but never in part? If postmodernism is philosophy without presuppositions, is justification a presupposition––or does it pose questions that must be asked in different ways? If the latter, we must be open to viewing justification as a supple and changing concept that may refer to different things in different contexts. It is nonetheless important to retain it as a general predicate that applies to a political system. But the value of this predicate lies in our ability to understand its influence and dependence upon political practice––a two-way transaction. Take for example the two distinct grounds that Rawls advances for political liberalism. The constructivist ground, as Rasmussen acutely sees, has a basis both historical and rationalist. The rationalist aspect was worked out first in A Theory of Justice. While that version may appear as an excessively ahistorical exercise, when published in 1971 it was already part of the history of political theory, as a major critique of utilitarianism. Rawls’s writings have spanned a long time; they respond largely to a new and different intellectual

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attitude. What began as a post-utilitarian reconsideration of the utilitarian foundations of Western political theory must respond to an antipathy to foundationalism itself. Yet we should recall that utilitarianism began life in the same way as Rawls’s liberalism. It was a both a “pure” rational principle and a working proposition. For the radical reformer Jeremy Bentham, utilitarianism served as an effective intellectual tool for criticizing unreflective commitment to existing doctrine and custom. British common law covered most matters of public policy, rendering them the province of a privileged few, inaccessible and intractable to the majority of affected citizens. The greatest good of the greatest number was, in effect, the philosophical principle of democratically enacted legislation, the choice of good by majority vote. The utilitarian principle fueled the process whereby embedded custom was gradually swept aside in favor of the interests of an increasingly broad electorate. By the time of Rawls’s Theory of Justice, utilitarian theory was in disarray, reflecting (inter alia) the practical fact that simple majoritarianism was hardly adequate to explain justice in the liberal state. Not to say that utilitarianism had been abandoned as a ground of justification. The greater good of the greater number had become embedded among the primary considerations of all legislative bodies. But theory had failed to account for the need to temper majoritarianism with other considerations, among them the awareness that an omnipotent majority can inflict irreparable damage through its unrestricted will. Adjustment to pure utilitarian theory has been hard pressed to address all the shortcomings of purely utilitarian calculation. Rawls’s development of nonutilitarian rules offsetting the power of an unrestricted majority has been part of the process whereby constitutional democracy has sought a more distinct sense of the practices by which its rule is justified. Theory has played a dual role in this process. It has had both a prospective and retrospective influence, an advance view of how practice ought to be reformed, and a subsequent revision (literally, a “seeing again”) after trial and error has prompted modification of theory. Meanwhile, as the original theory becomes subject to more and more qualification, it loses its “pure” quality, the very aspect that had made it most compelling, believable, and capable of validating practice. It loses, in effect, its justifying power, and opens the way to a replacement. Rawls’s A Theory of Justice was initially designed to fill the need for replacement, a new “conceptual scheme” that could both explain and validate practice. Like utilitarianism, its initial form was predominantly rationalist, and its strength in providing putative justification drew from this character. Its advantage lay in opening the notion of public calculation, oversimplified in utilitarianism, to the problem of divergent interests. But the pure form of Rawls’s theory of justice could not fully reconcile the divergent interests it sought to take into account. It proposed a rationalist model whose own premises, as Rawls himself concedes, were ultimately used against it.5 But its value, even

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as a rationalist model, or perhaps a model of rationalism, remains notwithstanding its revised historical instead of epistemic grounds. Moving to the second, interpretivist, Rawlsian ground, it is troubling that Rawls ignores the uncomfortable facts to which I have alluded, surrounding the growth of judicial implementation of the United States Constitution as a “higher law” in America. I think he does so because to most observers the practice of judicial review has appeared to work, and work well, roughly since the Supreme Court abandoned laissez faire economics and turned to the enforcement of constitutional provisions broadly concerned with civil rights and liberties. It is appropriate for Rawls to look to real life, to constitutional architecture, to supplant the beleaguered abstract rationalist architecture of the earlier version of justice as fairness, and to support the public reason argument based on the idea of overlapping consensus. Here, too, there is an element of pure theory. The interpretivist ground is necessary to reinforce the choice of particular rules of fairness, and the argument from a discrete, constitutional higher law is laid out to provide the foundations for liberal constitutional democracy. But there is little sense of the inevitability of trial and error, the possibility of further case-specific failures in implementation, and of the possible failure of the entire project. Rawls’s political liberalism is still too pure to serve as a blueprint for Eastern Europe. The theoretical problem lies in the presumption that justification must be found in an all-or-nothing form before the project of constitutional democracy can proceed. If justification was a yet-incompleted project in the formative stages of the American republic, when did it become complete, and what is the effect of considering it so, as opposed to, say, an inherently incompleted project? Rawls suggests that justification is a matter of choosing a constitution in which rules of fairness are embodied, and setting a process in motion whereby they will become embedded. This may be a useful conceptualization. But for the emergent democracies of Eastern Europe, the adoption and choice of content of their constitutions present great difficulties. Even after successful adoption, the challenge of justification will not be met at a given point of “embeddedness.” The danger of Rawls’s current scheme is to deny this problem, and in so doing to deprive the citizens of critical tools with which to deal with it. There is another entire literature on the problems of constitutional interpretation, to which I can only briefly allude.6 Two recent books in particular suggest the danger of a view that relies on the Supreme Court to interpret higher law, and that accepts an entirely judge-made set of constitutional principles: Mark Tushnet’s Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts (1999), and Cass Sunstein’s One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court (1999).7 If Rawls were revising his project, I would wish that he could take this into account. But even unrevised, Rawls leaves an important legacy. Having

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first asked what kind of rules would define a fair democracy, he has shifted attention to the historic conditions that bring such rules into existence. The introduction of the concept of public reason permits focused and deliberate analysis of these conditions. I differ with David Rasmussen regarding his conclusion that “if we are to have an idea of public reason, it is only possible, in my judgment, to begin with the idea of public reason as already given within a modern constitutional culture.” Perhaps the difference is one of degree; I would replace the words “already given within” by “closely connected with.” Although the idea of public reason may have been constructed with our experience with constitutionalism, we should be aware that constitutionalism itself did not emerge from a vacuum, and cannot be established from a text. There has been a far broader participation in its development, and that of public reason, than all of the justices of the Supreme Court, or even all the judges and lawyers in America. The process of constructing successful constitutionalism, and of constructing justification itself, should require the broadest possible participation in the process of adoption and in that of interpretation and implementation. As Rawls has shown, public reason is a useful notion mainly because of its theoretical importance in the post-utilitarian era of political liberalism and toleration. We should keep in mind that there are many practical difficulties that have been dealt with along the way to making constitutionalism successful enough to appear given. The view that I would prefer is one in which justification is seen as an inherently incomplete project. This is the only way to create a political theory that is, if not purged of philosophical presuppositions, critically aware of them. This includes notions such as public reason, and the assumption that in a constitutional democracy it is identical with the reasoning of its courts. Critical awareness opens up the more important inquiry into the degree of dependency of public reason on the judicial role, and the manner in which that role must be exercised so as not to encroach upon popular sovereignty. Granting the entire responsibility for justification to the judges may grant them excessive countermajoritarian power. This is the essence of my objection to Rawls’s answer to the major question he addresses. “How is it possible that there may exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical and moral doctrines?” To this question, which has motivated Rawls’s quest for decades, there is for me no simple, unitary answer. What I wish to ask is, To what degree is the creation, the interpretation, and the implementation of constitutional rights the responsibility of a few, whether professionals or academics, or of many, of the people at large? And what are the practical implications of our answer to this question? Is it responible to construct a theory that necessarily places the burden of public reason on courts and lawyers, where political liberties will be defined in a politically charged environment, in heated controversies that have resisted compromise,

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often in technical language inaccessible to the general public, and relying less on consensus than on the ultimate sanction of coercion? NOTES 1. Richard Rorty, “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy,” Objectivity, Relativism and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 179. 2. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 10. 3. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971). 4. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. xxvi. 5. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. xlii. 6. See John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980). 7. Mark Tushnet, Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Cass Sunstein, One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).

Part Five PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

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Nine PUBLIC CHOICE THEORY AND THE POSTTOTALITARIAN STATE Justyna Miklaszewska The theory of public choice is a relatively new discipline situated between economics and politics. The founder of the theory, Duncan Black, describes the subject of the discipline as investigating political markets by using the tools of economics and decision theory.1 The most important feature of public choice theory is comparative institutional analysis, in which the emphasis is placed on the relationship between economic and political institutions. Public choice scholars analyze political institutions applying the methods of economics. The theory focuses on the institutional instruments through which policy choices must be made. The suggested reforms that emerge from public choice analysis relate to long term or “constitutional” improvements. Public choice theory began in the early fifties when Duncan Black’s and Kenneth Arrow’s works were published.2 Black attempted to define the conditions of equilibrium both in economics and in politics. In opposition to Black, Arrow proved mathematically that it is impossible to construct the social welfare function from individual preferences by using democratic procedures. Then, Anthony Downs in his work An Economic Theory of Democracy3 replaced the analysis of individual voting (the median voter analysis) with investigating interest groups. Mancur Olson also examined interest group behavior, stressing the importance of special interests which decisively influence the competitive processes in the political markets. Olson then moved to investigating relations between nations.4 At present, the problems connected with nationalism are examined by Russell Hardin who considers it to be the manifestation of interest group strategy.5 Public choice theorists analyzed the conditions of voting and creating political lobbies in the environment isolated from external pressures which, according to them, was parliamentary democracy. But James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock in their work The Calculus of Consent6 moved from parliamentary democracy, described by Downs, to constitutional republicanism which was similar to the views of the authors of the American constitution. Buchanan and Tullock, the eminent representatives of the Virginia School of public choice, disagree with neoclassical economics and traditional political science. They reject Keynesian macroeconomics, welfare economy (Galbraith), and also the theories of majoritarian democracy. Their program is

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based on the assumptions of methodological individualism and contractarianism combined with classical liberal notions of homo economicus and the rationality of individual choice. They also distinguish between the choice of the rules and the choice between the rules, establishing the ground on which the constitutional political economy is based. In their scientific work, Buchanan and Tullock aimed to counterbalance neoclassical economics. According to them, Keynes, Pigou, and Musgrave attacked the free market and defended the idea of benevolent democratic government. In The Calculus of Consent, the Virginia scholars present a program of moral philosophy and support constitutional reform, which is to constrain governmental power. They do not examine what motivates the behavior of individuals acting in political markets. Instead, they analyze group interests, in particular, the political profit-seeking group.7 Then, the phenomenon of rentseeking society, in which individuals and groups seek posts created by the government especially for them, becomes an important subject of public choice investigations.8 The Virginia scholars also strongly believe that the political market must be constrained by institutions. Besides, they do not assume that individuals who make decisions in political markets are well informed about the present situation or that the equilibria are permanent. On the contrary, the voter is seldom well informed, which creates the opportunity to manipulate him or her by interest groups that reach for control over the political process and manipulate the media. James Madison (The Federalist, No. 51) notes that majority rule can justify a policy beneficial for some interest groups and harmful for all citizens. According to him, the separation of powers and the human rights provided by the American constitution are to prevent the dangerous actions of some groups. Investigating the problem today we can observe that interest groups influence governmental policy because of ignorance on the part of the ruled and lack of sufficient information on the part of the rulers. Tullock, Downs, and William Niskanen in their analyses of bureaucracy describe it as a well informed interest group able to manipulate the legislature so as to gain budget profits for themselves.9 Charles Rowley also observes that, in parliamentary systems, the president and the Cabinet usually come from the elected legislature. They often belong to the same party––the one that won the election. In this situation, the separation of powers appears to be an illusory belief.10 Public choice theory stresses the necessity of the citizens controlling political authorities. This is also an argument for constitutional republicanism. I would like to concentrate on the public choice approach to the problem of democratic participation. In terms of public choice, participation means making choices, political or economic ones. In constitutional choices the goals must be decided unanimously. The less important issues are decided in postconstitutional choices by majorities, or by designated groups of

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representatives. Public choice scholars analyze the methods of making collective decisions and reaching agreements: unanimity and majority rule. Each of these methods can be acceptable if rational individuals consider themselves the agents able to shape their politico-economic environment. The theory proceeds from how to what, as the goals are the results of morally acceptable procedures. The constitutional political economics created by Buchanan as a subdiscipline within the domain of public choice theory stresses unanimity as the basis for constitutional democracy and allows for a majority vote only because of practical considerations and in less important matters. In the face of the absence of equilibrium and the impossibility of establishing the welfare function, Buchanan replaces the notion of economic efficiency with Pareto optimality. In The Calculus of Consent Buchanan and Tullock explain the fundamental character of unanimity and how it is possible. They point out the uncertainty in the situation of individuals who are discussing and defining rules on which a State will be based. The notion of uncertainty is apparently similar to the Rawlsian veil of ignorance; however, uncertainty is not hypothetical but related to existing individuals.11 According to Buchanan, constitutional choices in which the basic framework of the State is defined must be made unanimously because they justify the State. They also lead to constitutional revolution, which means making a new social contract and is the only ethically permissible change of the political system. In contrast with the rationalistic political liberalism of John Rawls, Buchanan’s political economy is based on the principle of voluntary agreement. Both claim that impartiality is a characteristic of constitutional choices, not of post-constitutional ones. But in his recent writings Buchanan opposes interest group theories (R. Dahl, C. Lindblom) and argues for impartiality even in post-constitutional choices.12 He focuses on contemporary American society and on current policy issues. According to him, even in the choices in which a person is fully aware of his or her interests, the person should think about the consequences of possible actions for the political system as a whole. Buchanan’s idea of constitutional revolution was transformed into constitutional reform, being an attempt to describe political change as an evolutionary process. Public choice theory explains political transformation as an evolutionary process in terms of constitutional choices. As far as economic transformations are concerned, the public choice view is similar to the classical liberal account in stressing the economic value of individual freedom and of private property. Unlike Robert Nozick’s libertarian philosophy, it contains normative arguments for creating an economic system based on private property. And unlike the speculative theory of John Rawls, it can be used both to explain politico-economic processes and to lay out programs of economic policy, especially privatization programs.

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The privatization policy launched by the Polish liberal governments in the period 1989–93 was crucial for the beginning of the transformation of the socialist command economy into a free market one. The goals of Balcerowicz’s Plan were to curb inflation, to privatize State-owned enterprises, and to create a strong private sector in the economy. In his paper on the theories of private property Balcerowicz regards the classical liberal account of private property as the best theoretical solution, that which can bring about the desired economic results.13 He also stresses that the sources of effective productivity in the economy are corporations and private and public companies. Thanks to the system of incentives introduced by the first Polish liberal government, there was a growth of new private firms. As a result, already in 1993 the private sector produced more than 50% of the gross national product (GNP) and the number of employees in the private sector exceeded the number of employees in the public sector.14 At first, the government followed the British method of privatization. It was the method of evaluating each firm separately to set its selling price. But in Britain about 50 enterprises were privatized during ten years, whereas about 8,000 enterprises were to be privatized in Poland. As a result, according to Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the adviser to the Polish government, the privatization policy was too slow and too democratic.15 Due to parliamentary legislation, decisions about the means of privatization were relegated to the workers. The great obstacle to privatization was that councils of workers gained partial property rights without economic responsibility, so they often opposed privatization. The liberal idea of widely dispersed ownership was reflected in the Mass Privatization program. Passed by Parliament in 1993, this program involved about 500 firms and has not been finished yet. Meanwhile, privatization ended in the neighboring countries, the Czech Republic, Germany, Russia and Lithuania. The Polish program was intended as a compromise between requirements of social justice and economic efficiency. But it failed in its main purpose, which was to transfer property to the citizens. In Poland, as in the Czech Republic, ordinary people received coupons which are currently worth about 100 zl each (very small) and most people immediately sold them. Milton Friedman, the author of the privatization project of the Israeli enterprises, was also followed by the Polish authors of the first version of the mass privatization program.16 However, after further corrections and changes, during the parliamentary debate the program completely altered its goals, shifting from liberal efficiency to social justice.17 Government officials defined privatization goals in the classical liberal way as the increasing of economic efficiency.18 This manifested itself in launching privatization with the participation of foreign capital: for example; the American concern PepsiCo bought the Polish firm Wedel, the Swiss company Nestle bought Goplana together with some smaller enterprises in the food industry, and ING Bank became a strategic investor in Polish Bank

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Śląski; also in the washing powder industry several small Polish firms were bought by German companies (Henkel). In general this kind of privatization turned out to be successful. On the other hand, the participation of foreign capital in Polish industry is smaller than in the Czech Republic and Hungary. At present, the privatization policy concentrates on banks (about 60% of the bank sector’s capital is private now).19 The giants of socialist industry, shipyards and steel mills, are also to be privatized. The most difficult issue is reprivatization. Apparently, there is no convincing liberal theory of recompensation to be followed by the government.20 According to public choice theory, any property law passed by the legislature must be unanimously approved by the citizens.21 In Poland, unanimous agreement has not been reached yet even in Parliament. It is still an unsolved issue and in practice most reprivatization cases are decided in courts. As a result of liberal economic reforms, we live in a free market country. The economic growth noticeable in society is an accepted effect of a liberal economic policy which was prescribed by public choice theory and followed by liberal and even, to a certain extent, by post-Communist governments. Public choice theory also stresses that establishing a new politico-legal order is as important as transforming the economy. The new Polish constitution was passed by Parliament in 1997. As a result, the Polish State became a constitutional liberal democracy in which human rights and civil liberties and the separation of powers, private property, and social justice were protected. In contemporary Poland, we find verbal acceptance of a democratic system and, at the same time, diminishing participation of the citizens in public life. According to opinion surveys, participation in the economy is growing constantly whereas participation in political life is diminishing. We are facing the phenomenon of “passive citizenship” which cannot be explained by the theory of public choice.22 According to statistical data, there is also a growth of popular discontent, which sociologists interpret as a shallow acceptance of democracy. This means that people accept any State which guarantees the improvement of their standard of living, whether it is democratic or not. There are also some accompanying factors, including a small turnout for elections (about 40%), and a small percentage of the population reading daily newspapers (about 20%). This can be explained in two ways: (1) Economics and politics, closely connected under communism, are now separated and people do not see the links between them; (2) People do not care about politics as they devote all their efforts to achieving better living conditions.23 Both of these sociological explanations appear unsatisfactory. Regarding the first, we can observe growing corruption and attempts of politicians to influence government officials. These facts are better known to the public than before as there is no censorship. Concerning the second, under communism the struggle for life

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was even harder and, despite this, people voluntarily participated in many underground activities. Analyzing political markets, public choice theorists stress the process of influencing political decisions by persons or interest groups able to gain profit at the expense of other people. In the young Polish democracy we have recently seen many examples of this. One of these is the case of the “gelatine affair” in which one man, Mr. Grabek, secured a monopoly of the Polish gelatine industry. As a result of his lobbying efforts he got the government to introduce customs barriers on gelatine because of the apparent threat of “mad cow” disease. This gave him a monopolist position in the Polish gelatine market. This case and the examples of manipulating the system of taxation by government officials to gain extra benefits, were discovered by the press. Apparently, there is nothing wrong in finding loopholes in the tax laws by citizens, but in these cases the Ministry of Finance officials created a set of tax reductions to gain profits for themselves. These examples show the importance of the public choice approach to politics. Poland as a democratic State faces the same sort of problems that are common in the Western world: corruption, illegal links between business and politics, influences, special interest pressures. According to public choice theory the constitution and the legal system of a democratic State are insufficient to prevent these negative phenomena. It is necessary for ordinary people to engage in public life to control the government and current political decisions. In the conflict in contemporary political philosophy between the constitutional liberals and the proponents of participatory democracy à la Jean-Jacques Rousseau, where participation is obligatory, the public choice scholars are not followers of the latter. They stress, like Alexis de Tocqueville, that no constitution can provide a sufficient guarantee of individual liberties. It must be accompanied by the participation of citizens. In the United States, constitutional liberal democracy has recently been criticized from several different points of view. Communitarians blame liberalism for the decline of civic virtue in contemporary Western societies.24 Some ecological theorists stress that liberal democracy does not solve the problem of the degradation of the environment.25 Lawyers also stress the difficulties with interpretations of the law given by the Supreme Court which are not impartial but based on the system of values preferred by the members of the Court.26 They all emphasize the necessity of strengthening citizens’ participation within a constitutional liberal democracy. The theory of public choice is republican; negative liberty should be supplemented by the positive element on which participation is based: the citizen’s duty. However, a question arises: How can we justify duty on the ground of constitutional liberal democracy? One may say that we have to go back to John Locke’s theory of freedom in which the notions of positive and negative freedom are not contradictory. They both result from the natural

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duties of a man who should take care of himself (rights) and of others (duties). Locke then justifies duties on the ground of natural law theory, which is rather an obsolete explanation from the public choice point of view. Poland is moving from totalitarian democracy in which participation was obligatory to liberal democracy in which voluntary participation is based on moral duty. According to public choice theory, the constitution sets up the institutional framework within which people can act. The new Polish constitution creates this framework and allows for the voluntary participation of citizens. But public choice theory takes it for granted that people will act in this constitutional and legal situation. The theory offers useful tools for understanding and explaining the process of attaining democracy in Poland. It is also suitable for analysis of the political market typical of the young Polish democracy. But it appears less convincing when used to persuade people to control politicians. It fails to account for the political participation that is one of its assumptions. The theory does not give a sufficient reason why people should maintain democracy. The incoherence of the theory leads to more fundamental questions: What makes an individual participate in public life, go to the polls, attend political meetings, or help create cultural or religious institutions? It is the need of that person to express and realize values which according to him or her are neglected or insufficiently realized in the society. The problem of participation is closely connected with the existence of civil society, which is the community linked by the system of commonly shared values. Participation in society makes people preserve these values or transfer them to others. Analyzing politico-economic relationships, public choice scholars neglect the problems of civil society and the common values on which it is based. These are stressed by communitarians and other philosophers like Jürgen Habermas or Quentin Skinner, who do not perceive an individual as a being isolated from other people, or from tradition and cultural contexts.27 Some of them, like Michael Sandel, note the plurality of values in big, multicultural societies in international States. They stress the necessity of debate in which common goals and values are discussed. It appears that the notion of participation has changed its meaning and means entering the public debate, the exchange of opinions, expressing views in the media, and educational activities. Indeed, the democratic environment is as crucial for political democracy as is the competitive environment for the market economy. According to de Tocqueville, participation meant joining political and social associations. Nowadays, it manifests itself mostly through the educational system, the media, and public debates. Unless we create these institutions that are part of a democratic environment, the young Polish democracy will not work efficiently.

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1. Charles K. Rowley, “Introduction,” Public Choice Theory, vol. I, ed. Charles K. Rowley (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar Publishing, Ltd., 1993), p. ix. 2. Duncan Black, “On the Rationale of Group Decision–Making,” Journal of Political Economy, LVI, (1948) pp. 23–34; Kenneth Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1951, rev. ed. 1963). 3. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957). 4. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965); Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). 5. Russell Hardin, Collective Action (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982); Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 6. James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1962). 7. Ibid., p. 292. 8. Toward a Theory of the Rent–Seeking Society, ed. James M. Buchanan, Robert D. Tollison, and Gordon Tullock (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M Press, 1980); The Political Economy of Rent Seeking, ed. Charles K. Rowley, Robert D. Tollison, and Gordon Tullock (Boston: Kluwer-Nijhof, 1988). 9. See Tullock, The Politics of Bureaucracy (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1965); Downs, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967); William A. Niskanen, Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971); Charles Rowley and Robert Elgin, “Towards a Theory of Bureaucratic Behaviour,” Public Choice, Public Finance and Public Policy, ed. David Greenaway and G. K. Shaw (Oxford, U.K. and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985). 10. See Rowley, Public Choice Theory, Vol. I, p. xxii. 11. Buchanan and Tullock, The Calculus of Consent, p. 93; Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 70, 175. 12. Buchanan, The Economics and the Ethics of Constitutional Order (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press), p. 153. 13. Leszek Balcerowicz, “Uwagi o pojęciu własności,” Studia Filozoficzne, 4 (1986). 14. See Barbara Błaszczyk and Mark Dąbrowski, The Privatization Process in Poland 1989–1992 (London: CRCE, 1993); Privatization in Poland: Aims for 1993 (Warsaw: The Ministry of Privatization Brochure, 1993); Jan Winiecki, “Źródła ekonomicznego sukcesu: eliminacja barier dla ludzkiej przedsiębiorczości,” Pięć lat po czerwcu, ed. Jan Winiecki (Warszawa: 1994), p. 55. 15. Jeffrey Sachs, Poland's Jump to the Market Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1993), pp. 84–85. 16. Ibid., p. 87. 17. See Janusz Lewandowski, “The Political Struggle over Mass Privatization in Poland,” Economic Transformation, 46 (Gdańsk-Warsaw: 1994). 18. See Privatization in the Transition to a Market Economy, ed. John S. Earle, Roman Frydman and Andrzej Rapaczyński (London: Pinter Publishers, 1993); Justyna

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Miklaszewska, “The Libertarian Concepts of Property and Their Impact on Privatization in Poland,” The European Legacy, 1:2 (1996), pp. 614–618. 19. See Sytuacja finansowa banków w 1997 roku. Synteza (Warszawa: Materiały Narodowego Banku Polskiego, marzec 1998). 20. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford, U.K.: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 152. 21. Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty, p. 87. 22. Lena Kolarska-Bobińska, “Konsolidacja demokracji w Polsce,” Prognozy i wybory. Polska demokracja '95, ed. Lena Kolarska-Bobińska and Radosław Markowski (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 1997), p. 21. 23. Ibid., p. 24. 24. See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, trans. Adam Chmielewski, Dziedzictwo cnoty (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1996), p. 128; Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 177; Michael Sandel, Democracy's Discontent. America in a Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 1996), p. 326. 25. R. Eckersley, “Greening Liberal Democracy: The Rights Discourse Revisited,” Democracy and Green Political Thought, ed. B. Doherty and M. de Geus (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 212–236. 26. William M. Landes and Richard A. Posner, “The Independent Judiciary in an Interest-Group Perspective,” Public Choice, vol. III (1995), ed. Rowley, pp. 109–135; Wojciech Sadurski, “Spór o ostatnie słowo: sądownictwo konstytucyjne a demokracja przedstawicielska,” Civitas, 2 (1998), pp. 81–100. 27. Quentin Skinner, “Dwie teorie obywatelstwa,” Czas Kultury 5–6 (1997), trans. Rafał Wierzchosławski, pp. 40–45.

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Ten ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY John Ryder A virtue of conferences like this one is that they provide an opportunity for us to examine important questions with some measure of leisure. Difficult problems can rarely be settled even under these circumstances, but we do have the chance to clarify what some of the relevant issues might be, and perhaps even explore both the merits and disadvantages of possible responses to a problem. The ability to carry on a conversation like this is more important in proportion to the seriousness of the problem. The question I would like to pose has to do with a serious problem of democracy, whether post-totalitarian or not, and academic freedom. The question is whether it is ever justifiable in an academic environment to interfere with the free expression of ideas, and if so how we might identify the cases in which such interference is justified. I am sensitive to the possibility that this is a live problem more in the United States than in Central and Eastern Europe, and that American academics may be more inclined to worry about it than those in Poland and elsewhere in the region. I would say, though, that if academic freedom is not seen to be a problem here in Central and Eastern Europe, it should be. Everyone is better served by attending to it than not. The reason I say this is that there are few issues as critical as this one because the academy is a social institution that sets the tone for the whole of the society, along with the media and the political sphere. The way the question of the freedom of speech is handled in the academy will permeate the rest of the social order. It will have an immediate impact in that it will determine which issues, perspectives, and critical judgments receive the careful treatment that scholarly discussion can provide, and it will have a long term impact in that it will contribute to framing the habits of mind of the people who in the future will hold influential positions in a society’s economic, intellectual, and political life. I would like to pose the problem of academic freedom, then, on the assumption that this crucial question will never be finally settled, but instead will constantly demand our ongoing critical consideration. My intention is to raise issues for further discussion, and to propose a direction we can take in handling them. We might begin with the more general problem of freedom of speech. In societies dominated by Anglo-Saxon culture, and despite our ethnic, racial, national and religious diversity the United States is still predominantly an Anglo-Saxon culture, we can trace our standard approaches to the question of academic freedom to John Stuart Mill. No single work has had the extended

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influence on our treatment of free speech as has Mill’s 1859 book On Liberty. In what is easily one of the most intellectually elegant and influential studies of the problem, Mill argues for the uninhibited flow of ideas and for unrestricted speech, which includes publication. The arguments are fairly simple. Since none of us are infallible, despite our frequent tendency to think otherwise, we can never be sure when we censor an idea whether we might be censoring the truth. Since in the long run the truth is more valuable than falsehood, it is better for us not to censor even those ideas we are convinced are false. Even if we are right that a given idea is true, over time its power and impact on us will weaken if it is not able to sustain itself in the face of criticism and objections. Mill’s point is that ideas that we simply accept as given truths do not have nearly the power for us as do ideas that continuously need to be defended against criticism. He uses a metaphor from physical training, in the sense that he treats true ideas like muscles that strengthen only if they are exercised and conversely that atrophy if unused and taken for granted. The free expression of ideas gives truth the opportunity to exercise itself, or to be exercised by us, in confrontation with other ideas that challenge them. Finally, we might add, in the spirit of Mill, that times change, and ideas that may well be true in the sense that they are appropriate and efficacious in some circumstances may become useless and in that degree false as circumstances change. Without the ongoing infusion of new ideas that free speech encourages, it is harder to recognize when ideas have outlasted their usefulness and when new ideas may work better and therefore are to that extent “truer.” For all these reasons the free, unimpeded, uncensored flow of ideas, especially the ones we do not like and which we are convinced are false, is necessary for a healthy society. Mill was quite willing to grant that, as he put it, actions cannot be as free as ideas. Some actions could pose threats to people’s lives, interests or social rights that would make those actions unjustifiable. He himself used the example of a criticism of a corn dealer. It is one thing, he argued, to criticize a corn dealer in the press, but it is quite another to inflame a crowd gathered outside the corn dealer’s house. The first is an expression of opinion and should be protected; the second is an action that unjustifiably endangers the well being and property of a member of the society. As with most important issues, things get muddy and unclear at this point. If the criterion that justifies impeding an action is that it threatens a legitimate interest or social right, then, we might ask, is it not possible for an idea or the expression of an idea to pose such a threat, and if so could it not also be subject to justifiable censorship? A difficult illustration of this problem in recent American history occurred in 1979, when a small group of American Nazis applied for a permit to march and give speeches, swastika flying, in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in the town of Skokie, Illinois, just outside Chicago. A significant number of the citizens of the town were survivors of the Nazi death camps here in Europe. Should the march and rally be re-

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garded as the expression of opinion, and thereby be permitted, or should it be regarded as an unjustifiably threatening action, and therefore properly forbidden? Or, to put the question in a way that challenges Mill’s very categories, should it be regarded as an expression of ideas that is unjustifiably threatening, and therefore could be censored? This quickly became a legal issue, which is not our concern. Our issue is whether ideas are ever properly to be regarded as dangerous enough to be impeded or censored. The question whether ideas are or can be dangerous and thereby justify censorship brings us finally to the issue of academic freedom, because the business of the academy is ideas. In the United States today the issue comes up more often than not in relation to ideas about race. Should we, for example, tolerate ideas expressed by a professor that a particular racial or ethnic group finds insulting, or even frightening? Does academic freedom protect an African American professor when he or she attacks Jews in general for contributing to the history of black oppression in America? Conversely, would academic freedom protect a white professor if he or she were to advance racist theories in class? Or would it protect a male professor if he were to advance sexist theories in his class? That these are the kinds of issues in terms of which the problem of academic freedom is expressed today tells us something about contemporary American society and about the social tensions that are the most pressing right now. Forty-five years ago the situation was different. Then the pressing question was whether academic freedom applied to Marxist and Communist professors. Many Americans at the time, including such prominent former Marxists as Sidney Hook, argued that Marxism and communism posed such a profound threat to the fundamental principles of liberal society that the society had to protect itself by banning those who professed such ideas from the academy. From the point of view of intellectual history arguments like these were understandable. It was early in the cold war, and bourgeois American academics felt themselves to be fighting the intellectual battles of a life and death struggle. The enemy was clear and to be given no quarter, not within the very institutions that were allegedly providing “higher education” and liberal study. But if these positions are understandable from the point of view of intellectual history, their reasonableness from an analytic or philosophical point of view is far from clear. Two points cast into doubt the arguments used to ban Marxist professors from the academy. First, one would have to point out that the very same arguments were being used in the socialist world to ban bourgeois professors from the academy. In the socialist world at the time it was perfectly clear that bourgeois ideas were a fundamental challenge to the ability of working people to defend and build the kind of society that would function in their interests instead of in the interests of the owners of capital. Anyone to whom this was not obvious was already tainted by dangerous ideas and therefore to be regarded suspiciously. Academics in the socialist world, those with the loudest

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voices, were likely to regard anti-Communist scholars to be threats to the social order and a danger if given access to the minds of the young. The arguments in America against Marxist scholars and the arguments in Central and Eastern Europe against bourgeois scholars were basically the same. The Americans might want to argue that history has proven them right, but at the time history had not proven anything to anyone, and both sides were quite sure that history was on their respective sides. At the time, there was no better historical rationale for one side than for the other. In any case, Americans who insist that history has proven them right may yet be jumping to conclusions. Francis Fukuyama notwithstanding, history is not yet over, and it is far from obvious that the interests of private capital represent the highest possible attainment of humankind. It is most likely not reasonable at this point for an American anti-Marxist to accept the very arguments that equally well lead to the opposite conclusion when applied by a Marxist in his circumstances. The second point that inclines one to wonder about the wisdom of the attempt to ban Communists from the classroom forty-five years ago is Mill’s point. Even if it turns out that Marxism is false, and even if it is in some respects dangerous, liberal society does not and cannot defend and strengthen itself by silencing its opposition. American students today, to give one kind of example, are not usually able to defend the principles of a liberal society, or for that matter the principles of a capitalist economy, beyond the thinnest of clichés and stock explanations. One reason for this curious fact is that American students rarely if ever hear a criticism of liberal and capitalist principles. They are told simply that any critical ideas have already been proven false and so do not have to be dealt with. As Mill might have said, this is the surest way to guarantee that a society’s principles will eventually wither and die. When even the educated cannot articulate a careful defense of their own society’s fundamental ideas then those ideas, and the society based on them, no longer have any roots and can no longer nourish themselves. This point alone ought to be sufficient reason, assuming it is right, to encourage serious critics of capitalism and liberal society in the classroom, and to expose students early and carefully to their ideas. The question of the place of Marxism in the academy, and the question whether it is legitimate to suppress Marxist scholars, is an area in which the issue of academic freedom finds expression in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. I will not attempt to generalize on this point, since the situation may well differ quite a bit from one country to another in the region. But even though there are differences among countries in the region, I am fairly confident in saying that there are influential people in all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe who would, if they have not already, fire Marxist scholars or impede their access to the academy. The situation has already reached across the ocean, so to speak. I know of one case, and this is recent, in which an American scholar was denied a Fulbright grant on just these grounds. In this case the individual, who is a full

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professor at an American university, had applied to teach for a semester at a university in a country nearby; he had been invited by the rector of that university to come to teach. He had passed the first round of review in Washington, and had been recommended for the award by the Fulbright commission in Washington. My understanding of this case is that when his application reached the university, an administrator looked at his curriculum vita and on the basis of the professor’s publications and professional work, made the judgment that this person was politically too far to the left and therefore unwelcome to teach at that university. The administrator then told the Fulbright Commission in the capitol to turn down the application, which it did. If this description is accurate, and if this case is at all representative of the current climate in Central and Eastern European universities, then the issue of academic freedom is extremely timely. To put the question most bluntly, is it proper to prevent Marxist and Communist scholars from teaching, publishing, and from taking full part in academic life? If you say “yes,” if you say that Marxists should be kept away from the university, do you risk making the same mistakes as were made during the socialist years, only in reverse? But if you say “no,” do you risk exposing yourselves and your students to ideas and possibilities that have only recently been rejected, and rejected on a large scale? The issue has application far beyond the question whether Marxists can justifiably be prevented from teaching. Would it be justifiable to prevent a scholar who advances racist ideas about the Roma from teaching in the university? What about a scholar who wants to assert the legitimacy of ethnic cleansing in the interest of Serbian nationalism, or a scholar who teaches the legitimacy of terrorism in defense of Albanian interests in Kosovo, or a scholar who defends the interests of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia? One could also easily imagine similar questions in relation to the place of religion in a society. There are many people in this part of the world who would like to see their respective religions, whether Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Muslim, provide the fundamental principles of their society. For those who value a secular state, the prospect of a theocracy is little short of horrifying, with images of the Taliban in Afghanistan coming quickly to mind. Are theocratic ideas dangerous enough that they should be excluded from the academy? The list of relevant and extremely serious questions could probably grow far longer, but I assume that we all get the point already. My guess is that sooner or later each of us would find a point of view for which we could imagine trying to justify exclusion of someone from the academy, and we could all find an idea for which we would be appalled by any attempts at censorship or prior restraint of the expression of the idea. This alone would suggest that our instincts in this matter are probably unreliable guides for our decisions. Our instincts are likely to lead us to say that those ideas with which we agree should never be interfered with while those ideas that we hate may legitimately be restricted. The obvious problem with that approach is that we

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do not share our likes and dislikes, and the idea that I may despise is the same idea that someone else may value above all. In the absence of a reasoned judgment, the issue will in any particular case be decided by power. Those ideas will be permitted that are approved by those in power, while the ideas out of favor among the powerful will be repressed. On the assumption that this situation would be intolerable, some reasoned response is necessary. I would like to suggest a solution to the problem, even if I am not able to defend it sufficiently well. With respect to the many different issues that may generate the problem of academic freedom, we have three general options: first, we could argue that all intellectually plausible ideas should be protected and even encouraged in the academy; second, we could argue that any idea the academic or political leadership does not like can be excluded from the academy; or third, we could argue that neither extreme is acceptable, and that some third criterion can be found according to which we could judge whether to protect or exclude ideas. The second alternative appears to me to be unacceptable, since it serves the interest of authoritarian and dictatorial power. The first alternative, the view that academic freedom must extend to all views that can demonstrate some reasonable degree of academic legitimacy, is one commonly supported by civil libertarians in the United States, and it is an attractive one. It has the virtue of leaving decisions about what is right and what is wrong to the socalled “market place of ideas,” and it provides a general condition in which ideas can be challenged and defended. The primary shortcoming of this approach is that it does not regard seriously enough the possibility that some ideas are genuinely dangerous. It might be more accurate to say that on this approach no matter how dangerous a given idea may be, the practice of suppressing it or not allowing its expression in the academy, is even more dangerous to a healthy society. That may well be true, and if it is, then a nearly absolute academic freedom is called for. I would endorse this view myself, except that I have a nagging suspicion that under some circumstances, some ideas are more dangerous than it acknowledges. Imagine, for example, that the nationalist inclinations among the French increase dramatically, and there is greater and greater resentment of immigrants, especially those from North Africa. Under those circumstances, the ideas of Le Pen’s nationalists become a greater threat to the well being of immigrants, and something rings false when we say simply that all ideas must be tested in the market place of ideas. In that kind of situation, people’s legitimate interests and what we would otherwise regard as social rights are increasingly threatened by some ideas. Similarly, in the United States today we probably would not tolerate a professor who openly and consistently asserted racist ideas. What does this mean? Does it mean that any idea that endangers the interests of any group in the society can legitimately be banned from the academy? The answer is “no,” simply because that principle is far too broad. Most

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significant ideas challenge some interest or other, but should not thereby be repressed. But maybe it is possible to frame a more refined principle. I would like to propose the following way of handling the question of academic freedom: Unrestricted academic freedom should be our point of departure, though we should also recognize that there are circumstances in which certain ideas are genuinely and illegitimately threatening. Aside from the general right to life, no other right is more central to a democratic society than the right to full membership in one’s own society. The academy, therefore, is entitled to impede the expression of those ideas that threaten the full and equal membership in the society of any of its citizens. Notice that this principle does not say that an idea that threatens the interests of citizens can be interfered with, since that is far too broad and since the interests of some members of society might themselves be indefensible. It does take as a given the entitlement of all citizens to full and equal membership and participation in the society, and it asserts this view as more fundamental than an absolute academic freedom. Let us consider the principle and what it might mean a bit further. First, it assumes that there are likely to be some interests that are properly to be regarded as social rights. What those rights are or should be, though, is left unstated. I am inclined to follow Mill here, and say that I too will forego any potential advantage to my argument that might derive from attempting a priori to determine some set of natural, immutable rights. Mill had a better idea, which was to accept the notion that a society should acknowledge some goods and interests to be rights, but that these rights will be determined by social conditions, and so differ from place to place and time to time. So for present purposes I simply accept the idea that there are social rights without feeling any compulsion to determine what they must be. A second point that needs to be made is that in any particular situation some hierarchy of social rights has to be determined. Since it is possible for individually defensible rights to come into conflict, we will be forced to decide which among them have priority. The issue of academic freedom is a case in point. On more or less Mill’s grounds I would argue that academic freedom should be regarded as a social right, and as a social right it has a priority over many other of our interests and desires. Academic freedom, for example, is more important than our general desire not to be offended, or the desire many people have that they only be exposed to those ideas they already happen to like. Some of us may have an interest in the promotion of our ideas, but academic freedom trumps that interest, and requires of us that we tolerate even if not appreciate contending ideas. Some of us may even have material interests that are challenged by some ideas, but academic freedom is so impor-

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tant a social right that it requires that there be room for the expression of ideas that challenge our material interests. There is one other social right that takes priority over academic freedom, or so I am arguing. Roughly put, it is the right of all citizens of a society, other things being equal, to full and equal membership in their society. Please bear in mind that this does not mean that any citizen has a right to have his or her interests met or desires fulfilled. It does mean that no one is justified in undermining the legitimacy of one’s place in the society. The verbal attacks on Jews by Nazis and others both in Europe and the Americas, implying that they should be regarded and treated as less than full and equal citizens of their society, runs afoul of this principle. The same is true of any other attempt to dismiss whole segments of a society on racial, ethnic, religious, or other grounds. The assumption is that the social right to the legitimacy of one’s membership in his society is so fundamental that even the profound importance of academic freedom does not override it. Additional clarification is still needed. The principle suggested here does not handle all cases where there might be a question of academic freedom, simply because not all such cases involve a conflict with one’s right to a place in one’s society. In some cases, there is a conflict between designated ideas and the academy’s commitment to the values of creative and rational investigation. For example, is the academy obligated on the grounds of academic freedom to permit a biology professor recently converted to fundamentalist Christianity to teach creationism instead of evolutionary theory? Or an astronomer who for whatever reason decides that the earth is flat and proposes to teach astronomy that way? Or a historian who denies that the holocaust ever occurred? However one answers these questions, they are not cases of a conflict between academic freedom and the right to one’s place in a society. The principle suggested above, to state it again, is that academic freedom does not require the academy to permit the expression of ideas that threaten the legitimacy of some citizens’ place in their society. The principle requires the assumption that the right to the legitimacy of one’s place in a society is more important than a right to academic freedom. One might ask, though, why we should accept that claim, and the question deserves an answer. The reason I establish the priority as I do is that it appears to me that as important as the right to academic freedom is, a democratic society can survive and even flourish with minimal limitations on the rights scholars have to express their ideas. An analogy can be made to free speech in the society at large, in that the importance of freedom of speech is not denied or impeded by legal restrictions on slanderous and libelous expression. But a society cannot continue to be democratic, let alone flourish, if it denies to one or more segments of its population the legitimacy of their place in society. Full and equal membership in a society of all its citizens is a necessary condition of a democratic polity and a healthy civil society. It is necessary to emphasize that as ironic as it appears, this is an argument for a principle of inclusiveness as a fundamental trait of a

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democracy. The irony is that I am arguing, on the basis of a broad inclusivity, for a limitation on academic freedom. This fact needs no apology, since strange as it may appear, it is in the end not so odd that the greatest degree of inclusivity may in restricted cases justify limitations on the activity of some people. The general argument is helped in another way as well by the centrality of the principle of inclusivity, which is the second premise of the argument. A likely objection to the argument, and probably the strongest, is that it is simply too dangerous to try to justify impeding academic freedom because it opens the door to abuse by those with power in the academy to interfere with free expression as they please. We can point out that logically there should be no danger of a slippery slope with the argument, since the position it urges is that interference with academic freedom is not justified unless a threat exists to one’s entitlement to full and equal membership in one’s society. But the objection is not a logical point; rather it is a point about the potential of authorities to abuse their power. That is, it is a political point, and we can easily imagine the argument which says that the best way to prevent the potential abuse of power is to insist on absolute academic freedom. Even if that were true, however, it is important to notice that absolute academic freedom is probably not the best defense of other democratic values, especially the right to full and equal membership in one’s society. In cases of conflict we sometimes simply have to decide which conflicting end is more important. And I have been arguing that the generally democratic character of a society requires that its members not have their entitlement to be members threatened. If that is true, then the danger to democratic values posed by a minimal limit on academic freedom is more than compensated for by the protection, in those cases in which it is called for, of people’s right to take for granted their continued inclusion in their society. An additional response to the objection that to avoid abuse we are better off advocating absolute academic freedom is to make the point again that what justifies the limit on academic freedom is that in the relevant cases the limit is conducive to greater democratic inclusion. The necessity of democratic inclusion is both a premise of the argument and the purpose of the conclusion. The limit to academic freedom is wrapped in the principle of inclusion. This is important because it clarifies the spirit of the idea that academic freedom can be justifiably limited, and it points to the sort of considerations that need to be taken into account if one is tempted to interfere with academic freedom. Such interference can only be justified if it is taken in the spirit of and for the purpose of greater democratic inclusion. This is another way of saying that the default position, so to speak, is to encourage free and open expression on all issues, even where possible on those ideas that might potentially threaten people’s entitlement to social inclusion. In the academy we need to go out of our way to enable unfettered discussion, and in the vast majority of cases it is free expression that serves democratic interests best. So the overall argument holds

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that limiting academic freedom is only justified when even greater democratic interests are served.

Part Six THE ELECTRONIC MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY

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Eleven DEMOCRACY, THE MEDIA, AND THE POST-TOTALITARIAN EXPERIENCE Anthony J. Graybosch In established democracies the press has often been conceived as an extension of democratic government with the complementary roles of creating an informed public, facilitating open debate on crucial public issues, and ensuring the accountability of government officials to their constituencies. Democracies contrasted the governmental role of the free press with the media of totalitarian states. The totalitarian press served as an extension of government also, as a propaganda machine that presented events in the manner dictated by those in power. But some doubted the ability of the press to carry out its idealized role. Noam Chomsky repeatedly called attention to the factors influencing democratic media to function as an unofficial propaganda machine that served the interests of the financial elite. A generation earlier, Walter Lippmann argued that the democratic press lacked the resources to fulfill the roles of educating the public and generating universal consent. Instead, the press manufactured consent. Chomsky located the propaganda function of democratic media in five news filters and emphasized anti-communism’s role as a news filter. The persistence of this filter in the post cold war era is intriguing. Lippmann saw the problematic role of the press to be dictated by democracy’s outdated attachment to the idea of the omnicompetent individual. The reconception of the democratic media he envisaged was suggested by American society’s transition from emphasis on local participatory democracy to a more centralized state with global involvements. This is not the same transition that formerly totalitarian states are undergoing. Yet Lippmann’s focus on the omnicompetent individual as central to liberalism raises important issues of democratic participation. Entertainment value has emerged as a news filter and the Americanization of media in formerly totalitarian states carries with it the tendency of the media to be turned into an advocate of the interests of the financial elite. Alternative media and virtual communities might facilitate a resurgence of participatory democracy. Both are fostered by the emergence of relatively inexpensive access to the Internet. Unfortunately, I find no good reason to believe that the Internet will advance democracy. Post-totalitarian states and established democracies face many of the same problems. But the effects of Americanization are more dangerous in areas such as national unity and economic policy for countries undergoing a transition to democracy than in those

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with longer democratic traditions. 1. The Daily Me In order to keep myself informed of the important events of the day I subscribe to Infobeat, an electronic newspaper delivered by electronic mail to my laptop each morning. Infobeat allows subscribers to select from several editions of its news service. I chose the West Coast edition so that I read the news as I would if I were in California no matter where I am. Infobeat subscribers may personally tailor news. In my user profile under sports I selected baseball, but not basketball, and the New York Yankees, not the New York Mets. Infobeat allows me to live virtually in New York as I read the sports; and Infobeat relocates me to the States each morning over coffee from any place with an Internet connection Currently, selective “intelligence” in the production and transmittal of news is concentrated at the point of origin. An editorial board culls stories from wire services on the basis of its profile of audience interest and editorial policy. Since newspapers are market sensitive, the concerns of advertisers and the target audience have a great deal of influence on the selection and placement of news. Selective intelligence sometimes operates at the point of consumption: the selection of one newspaper for its editorial policy or comics, the selection of stories to read among those presented based on familiarity with a particular reporter. Infobeat tips the distribution of intelligence slightly toward the point of reception. (I say “slightly” because the material in wire service stories is still the product of the usual news sources. Other news sources, such as Usenet groups, can theoretically do more to diversify news.) Each news consumer may function as a board of selection when choosing variables that filter wire reports. And so more information is presented directly to the news consumer, or to the consumer’s profile. But less information is potentially forced on the reader through inclusion in a product. Less opportunity exists to inform a public through information that readers come across by happenstance.1 Eventually interactive news consumerism will spread from the Internet to other media. The impact of the digital revolution on broadcasting will lessen the differences among media. Newspapers will not be eliminated but will more closely approximate the personalized news available from Infobeat. Personal nightly television schedules will be constructed in accordance with a consumer profile from both current broadcasts and archived programs: TV and radio of the future will be delivered asynchronously. This will happen either on demand or using broadcatching . . . the radiation of a bit stream, most likely one with vast amounts of information pushed into the ether or down a fiber. At the receiving end, a computer catches the bits, examines them, and discards all but the few it thinks you want to con-

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sume later.2 Infobeat is a first step toward creating a Daily Me. Imagine being able to exclude from your attention all stories dealing with your favorite contemporary celebrity marked for eventual obscurity such as O. J. Simpson, Monica Lewinsky, Princess Diana, or Pope John Paul II. Perhaps you have already read enough about gay rights, abortion, and Bosnian Muslims. An issue based profile will allow the construction of a very comfortable morning paper. And one learns a lot about a person from news shopping: consumer tendencies, political affiliation, and the relative worth the person places on entertainment and information. This marketing information induces advertisers to sponsor free services such as Infobeat. The Daily Me will use both deliberate selections and feedback from reading habits to compose itself. The news of the future will be largely the news each person deems fit for personal consumption. The digital revolution in the delivery of news appears to provide for a shift in the placement of “intelligence” to the point of consumption by promoting the reader. But the overriding filter of news, in the Chomskian sense, will be entertainment value, both in delivery and content. The combination of the emergence of entertainment as an important news filter, the ability to personalize news, and the media’s tendency to serve the interests of the elites mean that the media will be increasingly prone to fulfill the role of a propaganda machine. The Internet is as likely to produce mirror communities that foster self-verification as it is likely to foster democratic community through better news. The ultimate responsibility for useful reporting of news will remain with the press; and this means that we will receive more enjoyable propaganda that feels personal but responds to a mass culture geared to the consumption of entertainment. 2. Filters Since I selected the Middle East in my user interest profile, my Infobeat contained this story about Kuwait. It is a useful example of entertainment as news content. The World Wrestling Federation wrestler Vader has been fined the equivalent of $156.00 for an attack on the host of the television show “Good Morning Kuwait.” The host told Vader that professional wrestling is fake. Vader responded by body slamming the host. A Kuwaiti court found Vader guilty of assault and imposed the fine. Wrestling is not an option in the Infobeat sports menu. The report was deemed news by Reuters, the major wire source for Infobeat, and the Kuwaiti news show. It might be objected that “Good Morning Kuwait” is not a news program. It is hard to tell what a news program is any more since content and

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manner of presentation both reflect the desire to entertain the news consumer. The Americanization of news programs involves the acceptance of entertainment value as the overriding filter of news. By Americanization I mean the export of values present in American media, for instance, entertaining presentation, personal anecdote, repartee, and multicultural representation. There is nothing American in these values except perhaps for positive associations with America in the minds of news consumers and foreign media owners. The German company Mövenpick advertises that it sells American style ice cream; Kuwaiti and German television sell American style media. Americanization of the news also means that news media are increasingly sensitive to market forces. This coincides neatly with the switch in the location of intelligence facilitated by the Internet and digital media. What constitutes entertainment? Humans are entertained by suffering as easily as humor. What entertains calls attention to itself; it encourages consumption of the details presented and discourages reflective analysis. That is what I mean by entertainment value. When it is combined with a desire to reach a popular audience it generates media with a flair for the sensational, vulgar, and superficial. In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky and Edward Herman argued that the American media routinely served the interests of the elite while cloaked in the self-ordained roles of free speech advocate and the tireless critics of governmental and corporate interests.3 The complicity of the media in formulating and circulating propaganda favorable to the elite is difficult to see when the media occasionally attack members of the elite. Public acceptance of the media in the role of gadfly of those in a position to abuse political and economic power plays an important part in narrowing public discussion to the alternatives acceptable to elites. The question put to the media, originally by politicians on the right but often by the representatives of the media, is whether they have been too relentless in the pursuit of this or that public official. And this question takes it for granted that the media are zealous in the pursuit of truth. The media in a democratic society serve the elite by selective filtering of news in order to publicize those criticisms of state and corporate interests which fall into a narrow range of acceptable alternatives. The cumulative effect of the filters and the duplicitous role of the media is to manage public consent, marginalize unacceptable alternatives, and limit democratic changes. Chomsky and Herman claimed that the filters functioned largely as an economic consequence of the market sensitivity of the major media. Their view does not depict the press as part of a conspiracy to undermine democracy; nor does it eliminate the possibility of actions on the part of the press that foster democracy. In any case, I interpret their view as a useful summary of market forces that influence the media in a democracy. Chomsky and Herman’s position was formulated before the collapse of European Communism. The five filters they found important in explaining the self-censorship of American media were: (1) the size, concentrated ownership,

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owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass-media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and experts funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) “flak” as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) anti-communism as a national religion and control mechanism. The filters summarize forces behind prevalent behavior in market sensitive media. Television networks are concerned to garner as high a Nielsen rating as possible to maximize advertising revenues. So television will ordinarily stay away from topics that will interfere with the shopping mood or alienate a consumer from a program and its associated advertisers. If the network and its program directors do not carefully follow this policy, advertisers will voice concern. Television news is part of popular culture by being part of that medium.4 And popular culture tends to be only slightly innovative in order to preserve a large popular audience while at the same time exciting the audience with the feeling that something slightly forbidden is occurring. News media have learned this marketing lesson. You can serve two masters, the elite and the public, by being only slightly critical. Yet despite restraining social and economic pressures in the first four filters, the major media do, on occasion, follow stories that polls tell them the public would just as soon be dropped, such as the Lewinsky affair. One reason is that you can reach more people with an inconsistent message. When President George H. W. Bush ran for reelection in 1991 he maintained a firm antiabortion position. Mrs. Bush and Vice President Quayle let it be known that they were less sure that abortion was always wrong. It was an attempt by the Republican Party to reach out to court the votes of a pro-choice constituency favorable to other Republican policies while not alienating their core pro-life voters. News media can increase audience share by splitting the message also, by producing shows in which different points of view are aired in an entertaining, confrontational, emotion charged format. And there are always the Nielsen ratings, surveys of viewer preferences that also determine the network price for commercial time during each show, to guide the construction of such forums presented under the guise of informing the public of an ongoing debate. The media need only maintain some distance from full endorsement of a position lest they embrace what political strategists refer to as a wedge issue. The media do not need to be seen as unbiased and can use ratings to determine just how much bias to convey. What people will say about sensational stories in a poll does not give a reliable indication of viewing habits. I would tell a pollster that the Lewinsky affair is over covered; but I follow each “development” in the story. Over coverage is just one more aspect of a story to be turned into news. Perhaps a better indication of the occasional social responsibility of news media is coverage of stories that cast a negative light on public policy such as CNN’s coverage of the plight of Bedouins in Israel left without gas masks during the

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buildup to Gulf War II in February 1998. Chomsky and Herman do point to important forces that encourage selfcensorship within democracies, a self-censorship functionally equivalent to active propaganda favorable to the elite. The start-up costs for a major newspaper and the importance of advertising revenues to continuing what is ultimately a business mean that modern newspapers will be owned by members of the elite and respond sensitively to the interests of corporate advertisers. Even publicly funded television stations such as the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) rely upon corporate donations more than individual subscriptions and are therefore susceptible to the filters. Non-commercial television does not exists any longer in the United States since PBS’s acceptance of commercial patrons. The “commercials” are just more dignified on PBS. The financial interest in gathering news cheaply makes media depend on government for news releases, experts, tips, leaks, and interviews with important newsmakers. And although market forces have a major influence on programming, a well-organized campaign directed at advertisers by an interest group can result in influence disproportionate to the group’s buying power. When the Cable News Network (CNN) was awarded exclusive rights to broadcast an Ohio State University town meeting with President Clinton’s national security team, it was an interesting experiment in recreating direct democracy. Communitarians attempted to manage public opinion by staging a town meeting in which military policy would be discussed and endorsed. The town meeting broadcast live would provide other Americans with virtual participation. And the choice of location was interesting: a university campus suggested intellectual respectability and open discussion. CNN originally had exclusive broadcast rights. The other American networks protested. But the financial benefit of cooperating with the government was clear to all involved. CNN may have even performed a public service as a direct channel to the Iraqi government, a service that smaller media cannot provide. But CNN has also become a diplomatic chat room for government officials who do not want to engage in private, direct negotiations. Government officials become, in turn, dependent upon CNN for access to the chat room and may become inclined to manage crises with an eye to time slots that maximize the audience. At the least, the role of CNN in international politics lessens the chances of private negotiations and increases the chances of action being taken as a result of public posturing. And the benefits of being an international source of news distance the major media, controlled by the elite, from smaller, alternative media. The elite media can anticipate better sources and fewer financial expenditures in reporting major events than alternative media. And they are guaranteed the first opportunity of influencing public opinion through program content and editorial comment. Chomsky and Herman remind us that the major media are businesses with financial interests, and that they have political interests. There are many factors that contribute to selecting experts or determining what events count as

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crises. Affiliation with a government agency means that the media outlet has selected a plausible source that protects it from lawsuits. But whether an expert is merely recognized by the media, as in the immediate selection of Henry Kissinger to comment on the death of Pol Pot, or gradually created as in the cases of Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour, the media participate in the ordination. (Both Blitzer and Amanpour are CNN reporters. Blitzer became a media mainstay during the first Gulf War and Amanpour’s profile increased during the Bosnian crises.) This ceremonial role carries over from the first case to the latter as reporters become experts not on the basis of qualifications but via continued exposure and the marketability of the opinions expressed in reports. This is the weather man effect. Because someone regularly reports on the weather leads us to infer that the person, who as often as not lacks a degree in meteorology, knows something about the forces that create the weather. The elite media’s ability to create experts to report events contributes to the realization of their political interests. What about the fifth filter? Contrary to what we might expect with the demise of communism, the fifth filter retains an important role, especially in the coverage of foreign policy. Here, the Bosnian civil war illustrates the persistence of the fifth filter. The association of Serbia with the ruling Communist party in Yugoslavia contributed to exclusion of Bosnian and Croatian Serbs from the right of self-determination central to liberalism. The well funded public relations campaigns carried out in the American media by Croatians and Muslims, the desire of the West to avoid a Muslim state in Europe, and American apathy about the region did not help the Serbian position. The major media reported as fact that Croatia was more westernized than Serbia and Montenegro and downplayed the role of religious affiliation in Bosnia. Izetbegovic was depicted as a secular multiculturalist and not a Muslim fundamentalist, no matter what he had published on democracy and religion. No one reads his book anyway. And in 1998 the major media mentioned the refusal of the joint Bosnian and Croatian protection force to even wear the same uniforms or display the same flag, yet failed to subject such events to serious analysis and draw the obvious consequences for multicultural Bosnia. Radio broadcasts from Sarajevo in 1991 of debates in the Bosnian Parliament made it clear that the Serbian representatives (and given the popular support shown during the Bosnian conflict a majority of the Bosnian Serbs also) had no desire to live in a multicultural Bosnia. In 1991, access to these discussions outside of the Balkans required a short-wave radio. Today Internet radio makes such transmission readily available both in real time and asynchronously. In the early 1990s, there was little coverage of the Serbian position in Western media. When major media outlets such as The New York Times ran stories on the plight of Serbs in Krajina there would be mention of objections such as those occasioned by the introduction of the kuna. But no background information would be provided on the kuna’s significance for Serbs.

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A Fall 1997 CNN interview with the Croatian foreign minister included an assertion that the Croatian government had built apartments for 70,000 displaced Serbs in Eastern Slavonia. The interview occurred on the same day that the Croatian government passed a law, later withdrawn under pressure from the West, making it illegal for Serbians to live in government owned apartments. And the CNN interviewer made no inquiry about the future of the 240,000 refugees from Krajina. Regardless of what one thinks of the Serbian role in the Bosnian war, it is hard to overlook the media’s choice of descriptions such as “the self-styled” or “self-appointed” Bosnian Parliament. Clinton administration officials, and more recently British officials on Sky Channel, ridicule the Serbian attachment to Kosovo by asking what other people celebrate a defeat. Someone has obviously forgotten the Alamo. Still, anti-communism no longer plays as dominant a role in filtering the news in Americanized media. Domestically, this filter’s political equivalent is anti-statist ideology. Internationally and domestically it is the requirement that news be entertaining which provides the major replacement for anticommunism in filtering news. And as the Internet and the digital revolution place more emphasis on selective intelligence at the point of consumption, entertainment value threatens to become increasingly important to understanding Americanized media and dangerous to preserving an informed citizenry crucial for political democracy. 3. Infotainment The newscasters of American television in the fifties aspired to a scientific rendering of the news. News was delivered in a serious, almost academic manner to inform the public of current events. Radio, and to a certain extent even cable news, substituted the impression of immediacy for in depth reporting. In the 1960s all news stations took us around the world every fifteen minutes complete with local weather and traffic reports. The acceptance of this scientific, objective reporting by the public was not lost on politicians. In the United States government sponsored newsreels of the forties and fifties it is often difficult to tell if one is dealing with a reporter from a network or a government official masquerading as a reporter. Chomsky points out the enormous effort of the United States military not just to influence the media but to become a media outlet through its own newspapers, magazines, press releases, and news conferences based on statistics provided by the military itself. And then he notes that Senator Fulbright wrote in 1970 that the Air Force publicrelations effort in 1968 involved 1,305 regular employees.5 The success of crises as ongoing television events alerted commercial media to the entertainment potential of ongoing, dramatic true stories. Weekly news digests such as Sixty Minutes provided extended stories and developed a reputation for tough investigative reporting. Later, Nightline kept Americans

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constantly informed of ongoing stories such as the hostage crisis in Iran. But extended coverage did not always translate into in-depth coverage. The stable fare provided by investigative reporters such as Geraldo Rivera became sensational exposes and extended interviews with protagonists. Rivera is a good example since he has made the transition from investigative reporter to talk show host. Attractive news has all the qualities of a slick nighttime soap opera: conflicting stories, personal confrontation, stereotypical character development, race and gender tensions, dead children, dead police officers, police brutality, dramatic recreation of events, a raging fire, flashbacks, missed opportunities, and memory difficulties on the part of the protagonists. Major media turned toward extended coverage of real life drama as a convenient and profitable substitute for fiction. Real life provides dramatic stories without the overhead of an author or actors. And such entertainment receives an aura of respectability from its supposed news content. The depth of most reporting is restrained by the increasingly short attention spans of the audience. The short attention spans would appear to conflict with extended coverage. But extended coverage avoids analysis by stringing together a series of sound bites. Sound bites facilitate the presentation of news within a dramatic structure. And so we move from location to location, from protagonist to protagonist, and in the course of fifteen minutes CNN tells us what most of the European leaders think of Gulf War II. The rapid series of conflicting images serves several functions. The media appear unbiased through the presentation of alternative positions. But the viewer becomes highly skeptical of which account to accept. This skepticism occasions political apathy or an acceptance of the account that most appeals to the viewer on the ground of entertainment or previous conviction. The benefit of skepticism, happiness provided by freedom from belief in a life of accustomed appearances, is not conducive to participation in debate on public issues. By democratizing opinion, skepticism deprives us of both firm convictions and any systematic arrangement of belief which can lead to doubt and revision in a social setting or upon reflection.6 Ultimately, entertaining images are valued in themselves and become the primary purpose for consuming news. Such news occupies and entertains without encouraging action, since those with whom we disagree are merely accepting another series of appearances. Lewis Lapham sees the relative value American news consumers place on stories to be a function of narcissism: Transferred to what was once known as the public square, the descent into narcissism makes of politics a trivial pursuit. A society adjusted to the specifications of the tabloid press draws no invidious distinctions between the foreign and domestic policies of the President’s penis and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Both stories guarantee record sales at the newsstands. On the day after the Supreme Court certified Paula [Jones]’s complaint about Bill [Clinton] (which also happened to be the day on

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ANTHONY J. GRAYBOSCH which Boris Yeltsin announced at the NATO conference in Paris that Russia would no longer target its missiles on New York and Washington) the newspapers assigned the bigger headlines to the targeting error that either did or did not take place six years ago in an upstairs room of the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas.7

For Lapham, it is not just the sensational content of the story that explains its fascination for American audiences but the moral indecisiveness that has replaced Puritanism as the major value of the American character. Lapham rather kindly traces this indecisiveness to the lack of a common set of values in the workplace resulting from the fuller inclusion of minorities and women. I say “kindly” because he suggests that Americans lack an overriding consensus about proper behavior in the workplace and so can be excused for a fascination with sensational stories that illustrate a clash in values. Narcissism, then, is exhibited through attention to the lives of public figures which illustrate the same conflicts as those of the news consumers. If it is narcissism that explains the assignment of news value, and in Lapham’s view Clinton’s popularity, it is the narcissism that takes pleasure in the dramatic plight or sexual exploits of those in power and enlivened in the slow unfolding of additional details. No need exists to place this interest in a shared real experience, a repressed desire, or an uncertainty about values. In any case, this fascination with the sexual lives of public figures, and the not so public figures with positions of responsibility in the military, remains stable fare for American news. And it is handled with a typical lack of attempt to even introduce distinctions: the current sexual indiscretions of an officer being given the same weight as the exploits of a general fourteen years ago while separated from a spouse. For some news consumers, people’s lives become markers in a game of figuring out just what the new rules of behavior are for the new workplace. For others, the real lives displayed in the news are no more real than the lives in soap operas. Fiction, or nonfiction, the important quality is entertainment value. And this variable helps explain why the media have gone beyond presenting news in an entertaining manner to ensuring that the content is consumer oriented. And so the fake conflicts between professional wrestlers and media personalities become news. If entertainment value is an important filter of Americanized media, then we should expect to find news that is anecdotal, shocking, humorous, and often vulgar. It will be news designed to be consumed without encouraging analysis or discomforting belief. That is what we find. Media that can provide entertaining news will serve the interests of the elite and maintain a strong market share of the news audience at the same time. Differences will remain in the news coverage of elite media based in different nations. The programming of the German television station RTL2 is Americanized. Despite the presence of American situation comedies, dramas, soap operas, and quiz shows, RTL2 retains its distinctly German flavor by

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programming variety shows and lots of nudity. The entertainment in major news media will retain a national flavor that responds to local consumer preferences. The German media give Gerhard Schroeder considerably more media exposure than Helmut Kohl. Schroeder has more entertainment value than Kohl in Germany and probably in most markets. Schroeder might not be as big a hit in the United States because of his four marriages. That is just too much entertainment for most Americans to tolerate. But to succeed in Germany, Schroeder only needs to be entertaining to Germans. Entertainment’s essence is rather thin. 4. Democracy and News William Randolph Hearst claimed: “If news is wanted it often has to be sent for . . . . It is the journal’s policy to engage brains as well as get the news.”8 Hearst was known for aggressive participation in making news and seeking it out. The reporter who calls a public official asking for a position statement on censorship on the Internet is proactively seeking news instead of waiting for the news to be passively generated by a tip or a wire service. Hearst’s reporters went beyond proactive investigation to create news to foster a political goal, a war with Spain. A reporter who downplays one ethnic group’s mistreatment of another in stories published by influential American newspapers while admitting in conversation that injustice exists on all sides is creating the news in the Hearst tradition designed to manufacture public consent to a political policy through selective presentation of relevant facts. It may be possible for news consumers to seek out Internet radio and Usenet groups for alternative views and additional information. But few people will do that. The decisions of reporters do make a difference in the content of what is reported even if the identity of reporters is masked in the wire reports that provide the content of Internet news. Anyone with Internet access and a portable camera will be able to establish a broadcast network.9 But for now, the elite media continue to exert considerable filtering power before news reaches the point of consumption. And even in the future the elite media will continue to have privileged access to government officials and the capital to deliver news in the most entertaining manner. To the extent that entertainment value has replaced anti-communism as a media filter, it might be thought that the media are less prone to function as a propaganda machine. But the focus on entertainment does preserve an unreflective approach to issues that favors preservation of the status quo through apathy. Entertainment preserves the media’s role as an advocate of the interests of the elite by catering to our narcissism, moral bewilderment, desire for vivid images, and conviction that all sides have an equal right to an opinion. Americanized media facilitate the management of consent by providing diversion. The impulse toward more entertaining news comes partially from accep-

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tance of participatory democracy, which includes the idea that all citizens are naturally interested in important affairs. Instead of admitting that this component of participatory democracy is false, it is easier to convert it and treat as important all those ideas that everyone (or all important news consumers) finds interesting.10 The desire to capture and keep a significant portion of the news market leads to news that seeks the audience’s attention by provoking feeling in the reader, . . . inducing him to feel a sense of personal identification with the stories he is reading. News which does not offer this opportunity to introduce oneself into the struggle which it depicts cannot appeal to a wide audience. The audience must participate in the news, much as it participates in the drama, by personal identification.11 In such a situation the journalist becomes similar to a press agent. Both spin predigested material and spin it for an audience. The press agent spins material to benefit an employer, the reporter spins material to entertain news consumers. And when entertainment replaces information and analysis, it is much more difficult to admit errors or include seriously conflicting opinions. Readers have accepted a point of view, and sometimes a spokesperson, with which they personally identify instead of an identification with truth. In 1930 John Dewey wrote: The lack of secure objects of allegiance, without which individuals are lost, is especially striking in the case of the liberal. The liberalism of the past was characterized by the possession of a definite intellectual creed and program; that was its distinction from conservative parties which needed no formulated outlook beyond defense of things as they were. In contrast, liberals operated on the basis of a thought-out social philosophy, a theory of politics sufficiently definite and coherent to be easily translated into a program of policies to be pursued. Liberalism today is hardly more than a temper of mind, vaguely called forward-looking, but quite uncertain as to where to look and what to look forward to.12 Procedurally, liberalism in the 1990s does operate on the basis of a social philosophy selectively applied, as in its use of a limited respect for selfdetermination in allowing the partitioning of the former Yugoslavia. Liberalism begins to take on the appearance of being a patchwork of rules invoked contextually to serve the interests of the elite. It does look forward by looking away from communism. The patchwork state of liberalism’s social practice is covered over by the emergence of media stars like Amanpour who entertain us and manipulate sympathies so that inconsistencies of principle and lack of information are hardly noticed. And inconsistency of principle is justified by commitment to a vision of the Americanized good life which includes multi-

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culturalism and the avoidance of the use of force by minor states. News outlets that emphasize entertainment cannot provide common social values conducive to community integration. The emphasis on entertainment, at best, makes a virtue of being detached. As Dewey pointed out, true democratic community emerges only with “…the perfecting of the means and ways of communication of meanings so that genuinely shared interest in the consequences of interdependent activities may inform desire and effort and thereby direct action.”13 The phrase made famous by Chomsky, “manufacturing consent,” originated with Lippmann. Lippmann noted that traditional liberalism transferred from small communities to large states required informed citizens to be omnicompetent citizens. He believed that the doctrine of omnicompetent citizenship was more or less true for rural towns, that people were competent enough for self-governance in small, relatively isolated communities. “There was no serious trouble with the doctrine of the omnicompetent citizen until the democratic stereotype was universally applied, so that men looked at a complicated civilization and saw an enclosed village.”14 Experiments like the town meeting at Ohio State University are symptomatic of our continued fascination with the village model and testify to a desire to provide a semblance of participatory democracy. Lippmann despaired of the emergence of masses of individuals with such wide-ranging competencies. In local matters, news sources did not matter very much because each individual was capable of understanding and acting on the social meaning of events. News sources could be parochial without damaging an individual’s ability to act competently. But the aura of accuracy media acquired locally is easily transferred to matters concerning which the citizen has no ability to engage in independent investigation. Loyalty and parochialism coupled with entertainment value lead to a situation in which more information does not facilitate political competence. Even in a Deweyan society that encourages the use of critical reflection to reach positions on social problems, democracy is defeated by the poverty of the premises reflection operates upon. Lippmann understood that news was not a mirror of social forces, but the reporting of an event that marked the eruption of such forces. News reports the eruption of violence in an area, but not the forces that led to the eruption initially. A small realm of fact exists that journalists can report without controversy, for instance that so many bodies were observed buried or a public official has attributed deaths to a particular group. Beyond that area journalists report predigested opinions from press agents, government officials, and other “reliable” sources with an eye toward the audience for this news. But Lippmann thought it was possible to improve on the quality of news coverage in a way that did not depend upon belief in the ability of all citizens to participate in democracy on a broad scale. It was the notion of the omnicompetent citizen that thwarted the evolution of democracy. Lippmann be-

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lieved that good news depended upon good systems of recording social events. The press could do two things: it could make readers aware of the uncertainty of the editorial interpretation of the majority of events it reported by a judicious choice of language and it could prod social institutions for a greater reliance on social science and more complete record keeping. But the press could not and should not pretend to be able to record the governing forces of society and the social forces that lead to the eruption of news. Lippmann wrote, “The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone.”15 Democracy could no longer rely upon the omnicompetency of all citizens and must no longer conceive a complex world on the simple model of a rural village. The press should not be asked to generate a social consensus where government had failed. The press could not possibly generate consensus honestly with its limited resources and dependence on the elite. And the market forces operating on the press would influence it to seek consensus by other means such as entertainment: If the newspapers, then, are to be charged with the duty of translating the whole public life of mankind, so that every adult can arrive at an opinion on every moot topic, they fail, they are bound to fail, in any future one can conceive they will continue to fail. It is not possible to assume that a world, carried on by division of labor and distribution of authority, can be governed by universal opinions in the whole population. Unconsciously, the theory sets up the single reader as theoretically omnicompetent, and puts upon the press the burden of accomplishing whatever representative government, industrial organization, and diplomacy have failed to accomplish.16 Once the notion of the omnicompetent citizen was abandoned, the future of democracy would rest with a class of specialists who would provide policy makers with reliable information for decision making and inform the public of these decisions so that a semblance of democracy remained in place. Lippmann’s solution in 1922 was, in effect, to add another branch of government within the current system of separation of powers. These unelected, tenured experts would facilitate the decisions of public policy administrators by providing information gathered scientifically. Popular consent would be manufactured, preserving democratic procedure in the absence of the ability to preserve democratic participation, by making the process of decision making increasingly transparent. The press could not possibly fulfill this role given the required resources and the influence of market forces. Instead, the experts would keep the press on track. But the primary purpose of experts was to inform the decision making of policy makers, not to inform and empower all

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citizens. Citizens could still participate in voluntary associations devoted to specific causes. But they lacked the intelligence and energy to be informed on all important issues.17 Lippmann later changed his mind about dispassionate experts and advocated reliance upon explicit and public conflict among insiders, those with special expertise, as the preferred means to construct public opinion. Lippmann’s later solution in which advocates of public policies engage in adversarial debate is the more useful suggestion. Like Lippmann, we are no longer able to embrace the alternative of a class of unbiased experts as practical. And we know that media spokespersons and outlets have political perspectives; they are advocates. In order to prevent the public from mistaking scientific reporting or the presentation of two sides of a story for objectivity, the media need to be more forthright about advocacy. But such a stance requires that the cause of educating the public take precedence over any other political goal. To confess to an advocacy role is to alert the public to the existence of serious opposing views. The elite media will not voluntarily abandon consumer desires as the yardstick for determining the value of potential news. And government regulation or subsidy of alternative media substitutes one method of ensuring the interests of the elite are protected for another. The best alternative is for the media to cultivate, individually and through professional organizations, an ethic of explicit advocacy in order to combat the cloak of objectivity provided to them in the role of the transmitters of expert opinion. But Lippmann was correct: the media is such a powerful creator of public opinion that it would be ideal to separate it from the economic and political elite. I do not share his optimistic belief in the construction of public experts who would check the press, participate in decision making, and inform the public. But the ethics of explicit acknowledgment of the limits of media reporting and of the presence of economic and social forces in managing news might create a healthy skepticism conducive to democracy. Reporters remain on the front lines as the only possible individuals to fill the role of insider advocates. 5. Virtual Community Dewey desired to enlarge the sphere of true community from the local town and small institutions to the society as a whole. And such a community required an informed citizenry and a new public that transcended location in what we call third-places. Lippmann and Dewey agreed that the time of limited local government had passed. But Dewey thought the community of the town square must be replaced by a virtual community of informed citizens. History appears to have supported Lippmann’s view of the impossibility of extending democratic community; but the Internet offers renewed hope for the constitution of community independently of time and place.18 Local communities tend to select members and constitute themselves

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along lines that exclude others. Internet communities likewise are often organized around specialized interests such as French cuisine and the works of Charles S. Peirce. Exclusionary sentiments are frequently expressed in the virtual communities of the Internet. Lurking in newsgroups devoted to the former Yugoslavia, Norway, and Poland will provide many examples. It will also provide much more noise than useful content. The Dewey-Lippmann exchange raised the issue of which values should guide the media in a democracy. Lippmann was committed to the idea that information could be scientifically presented to the public by experts in a manner that could settle disputes over public policy. It is tempting to reject his position on Deweyan grounds: to say that information is never presented without an accompanying perspective that determines how we try to communicate it. Lippmann thought this was true for the majority of citizens and drew the conclusion that participatory democracy was outdated. But those who work in contemporary media have become so committed to interpretation for the sake of a position or entertainment that they forget to provide the information needed for an informed citizenry. So although I am skeptical of the media’s ability to present unbiased perspectives, I am also convinced that a return to responsible reporting of information would be conducive to encouraging public participation in democratic government. The Internet is a more obviously global medium than other news sources and that helps point out one shortcoming of Chomsky’s position. Chomsky and Herman were concerned to determine how national interests translate into propaganda so it was easy for them to overlook the significance of the global allegiances of the elite and the impact of those allegiances upon the American media. The media may present the President explaining why action against Iraq is in our national interest, but they offer little analysis of how the national interest is being used to rationalize the interests of an international elite. Christopher Lasch questioned the extent to which the American elite think of themselves as Americans at all instead of as members of a privileged international community.19 The demise of third places––the community center, the social club, and the neighborhood bar where Americans from diverse economic and social backgrounds met as equals––and the retreat of the elite into private communities refutes the optimism with which Dewey posited the emergence of a broad democratic community. The elite have an international orientation toward policy decisions, especially economic ones, not shared by other classes. And to the degree that the media serve the interest of the elite, national and class based interests will be overlooked. As media converge as a result of the digital revolution, we can expect an increasingly global perspective in news. Self-restriction of a person’s news sources to those provided by a Daily Me is no more in the interests of democracy and liberty than the focus of the media on entertainment and personalities. An individual cannot be allowed to only send for the news that fits a personal consumer profile, otherwise the

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media will fail to engage brains. The social importance of reporting news in the interests of critical public discussion is thwarted by media dedicated to entertainment. How can contemporary media pursue this social responsibility? The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) has committed itself to newsroom diversity. “Newsroom diversity is essential to the newspaper’s responsibility in a democratic society and success in the marketplace. To accurately and sensitively cover the community, newsroom staffs must reflect society as a whole.”20 This is a curious proposal that deals with representation among people who report the news already manufactured by others. I would have expected more concern with diversity of sources. ASNE explicates diversity in terms of the local population so it only provides a hint of how the newsrooms of the major international media should be composed. Just how having a newsroom representative of Philadelphia would lead to better international news in that city’s major newspapers is left unclarified. But intellectual diversity would discourage the cultivation of media stars with strong biases. The Internet has been incorporated into the services of many traditional newspapers through interactive web sites and chat rooms. This practice has caused some journalists to wonder when they should add links to the sites of partisan organizations including hate groups. Or, when a site has been constructed to represent a diversity of opinions, can anything be done to ensure that readers do not leave before considering all sides?21 So ASNE is aware of the problems and dangers occasioned by the emergence of the Daily Me. And the concerns ASNE addresses raise the issue of the relative priority of advocacy and scientific reporting, of proactive seeking out of news and creation of news by journalists at the point of origin. Electronic media such as the Internet allow the tendencies inherent in the consumerization of news to develop further. The Daily Me makes it easier for citizens to avoid opinions and issues that are inconvenient or distasteful. Media mediate; they allow formation of communities of common experience over vast geographic distances. And the Internet fosters the formation of inexpensive alternative media that some value as our best hope for responsible reporting given their freedom from market forces. The Internet makes finding others who share your interests and political concerns easier. It creates virtual diversity. Yet a web page devoted to moral issues sponsored by a fundamentalist religious group opposed to legal recognition of gay and lesbian rights to medical coverage for partners will not have a link to the gay and lesbian rights page. No mechanism is in place to ensure that users of either site would be exposed to a diversity of opinion and not just the range of views acceptable to the converted. The Internet offers no evidence that the access to more information will lead to exchanges vital to democracy instead of self-verification in mirror communities. Government licensing of Internet sites defeats the impulse to proliferation of news sites that offers the hope of alternative media. Although it may be tempting to encourage government regulation that requires reciprocal links be-

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tween sites with common content such as gay and lesbian issues, the government tends to extend its areas of concern too broadly. In any case, the government cannot make citizens carefully consider alternative views. Government regulation is itself suspect in reflecting the interests of the elite and leading to the attempt to censor information. The great interest of the government in the Internet encourages the acceptance of largely undocumented information as scientific fact. In formerly totalitarian states the urge to privatize former government monopolies may lead to the transfer of media to those whose possession of the necessary capital makes them sympathetic to the views of the elite. And the international nature of the elite suggests that this may be especially disastrous for the interests of those economically disfavored classes in emerging democracies. One should expect the media to favor membership in the European Union and NATO, for instance. And even in nations such as Poland that retain some central control over the media slight market reforms can lead to Americanization. The reform which allowed the inclusion of advertisements from corporate sponsors on Polish television also led to an increase of foreign programming, especially American comedy and drama, instead of an increase in domestic programming supported by the additional revenues. The switch in emphasis to intelligence at the point of consumption has not eliminated the old fashioned need for reporting dedicated primarily to educating a public for democratic participation. Consumer filtering will still operate largely on information presented to it by the elite media. The Internet has only increased the importance of entertainment as a news filter. NOTES 1. Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 19. 2. Ibid., p. 169. 3. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), pp. 1–2. 4. Jim Cullen, Art and Democracy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1996), p. 14. 5. Chomsky and Herman, Manufacturing Consent, p. 20. 6. Benson Mates, The Skeptic Way (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 66–67. 7. Lewis Lapham, “In the Garden of Tabloid Delight,” Harpers (August 1997), p. 42. 8. Lapham, “The Consolations of Vanity,” Harpers (December 1997), p. 13. 9. Negroponte, Being Digital, p. 176. 10. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: The Free Press, 1997), p. 173. Originally published in 1922. 11. Ibid., pp. 222–223. 12. John Dewey, Individualism, Old and New, John Dewey: The Later Works,

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1925–1953, vol. 5, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984), p. 70. 13. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925– 1953, vol. 2, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984), p. 333. 14. Lippmann, Public Opinion, p. 173. 15. Ibid., p. 229. 16. Ibid., p. 228. 17. Ibid., pp. 250–252. 18. Negroponte, Being Digital, p. 178. 19. Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995), p. 6. 20. “Statement on Newsroom Diversity,” American Society of Newspaper Editors (23 April 1998). 21. Joann Byrd, “Online Journalism Ethics: A New Frontier,” American Society of Newspaper Editors Online Publications (23 March 1998).

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Twelve INTERNET AND ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY Marek Hetmański In the last few decades information technologies have changed economic systems, management, education, and entertainment in many Western societies and countries. Changes have also occurred in politics, state and government institutions, and citizens’ attitudes. Information has become the main source of economic and political power in the postindustrial era. However, these changes concern only certain parts of the Western world. Recently they have been spreading and now East-Central Europe, including Poland, is undergoing such changes. In this part of Europe the global transformation from an industrial to an information society also overlaps the local transformation from totalitarian to democratic systems––the emergence of the post-totalitarian society. One question arises: how do information technologies, especially computer-aided communication like the Internet, influence political changes in posttotalitarian society? What is the role of information and knowledge, the digital technologies of their storage, processing, and transmitting, and what are the social institutions that serve them? 1. From a System and Cybernetic Viewpoint Cybernetics and Systems Theory can be useful in answering the above questions but we cannot treat them as the only and exclusive theories of social phenomena. They can help describe and forecast the changes of any system, including a social one, where control and communication are the essential elements. Taking this into account, preliminary to the next consideration, we can state that Polish society in the nineties is an example of a transitory posttotalitarian system in which hitherto existing totalitarian control and communication evolve into a new, democratic, system. By introducing the term “system,” or rather giving it a new meaning, Ludwig von Bertalanffy1 describes the structural properties of all types of “wholeness”: biological, physical, psychological, and social systems, both natural and artificial, whose elements interact dynamically with one another within a given whole. Simultaneously, the properties of wholeness are not constituted by the mere sum of all parts or components, but constitute a new quality. The classification of systems distinguishes between two basic types–– closed and open. The basis for such a distinction is systems’ internal organiza-

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tion and the role which information plays in them. The classification does not entail mutual exclusivity of these types. Briefly, a closed system (which one considers from the thermodynamic point of view of a traditional physicist) is a system in which the overall direction of changes is irreversible, and differentiation of elements tends to decrease (the distribution of events tends to assume the most probable state), which leads to an increase in entropy while the system information becomes dispersed. Following external input, such a system may show a tendency to temporarily and locally increase the degree of differentiation and organization. This phenomenon relies on the mechanism in which information from the effector is fed back to the receptor domain. In some situations this leads to a closed system showing partial self-organisation and operational stability. Subsequently, the system assumes a state of homeostasis in which its entropy is decreasing and negentropy (information) is increasing. Closed systems are primarily models of machines and servomechanisms, although to a large extent they also constitute models for live organisms, including human behaviour and social communication mechanisms. Open systems include all live systems exchanging matter and energy (including information) with their environment––those possessing their own metabolism. Open systems by their own volition aim at achieving a state of higher order and changing the organization of their elements. In this, they show “equifinality,” a property demonstrated by Bertalanffy, which refers to system stability and development direction depending not on the initial states (as they do in closed systems), but on their own parameters. The system’s final state may be arrived at in several ways and with a variety of initial states. Thanks to such structural properties, an open system evolves to the higher order and the higher organization state levels. Cybernetic analyses of control and communication are also useful in the description and forecasting of system changes, especially in the case of social systems. Both categories concern information, which constitutes the basic element of any cybernetic system and the measure of its organization. Information is used in defining social systems, their structures, activity, and efficiency and the direction of changes. “Properly speaking,” says Norbert Wiener, the community extends only so far as there extends an effectual transmission of information. It is possible to give a sort of measure to this, by comparing the number of decisions entering a group from outside with the number of decisions made in the group. We can thus measure the autonomy of the group. A measure of the effective size of a group is given by the size which it must have to have achieved a certain stated degree of autonomy.2

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For any biological, social, or artificial system to maintain its unity and efficiency, it has to be equipped with means of receiving, processing, storing, and transmitting information within itself (between individual elements in the structure) and for the needs of its interaction with the environment. Information is a measure of system organization (of its decreasing entropy), while the means employed in a society include the press, television, and public opinion. Their efficiency determines the system’s balance, its homeostasis. The latter is always a state of relative balance (although Bertalanffy claims that in social systems homeostasis is not an entirely desirable state) which fosters efficient communication between different parts of a system. This happens due to negative feedback which allows the system to regulate itself and control its activity. 2. Information in Political Systems A totalitarian social system based on the central and hierarchical control and communication among its subsystems betrays the tendency for the total concentration of feed-backs which regulate social processes; information in such a system does not effectively coordinate its functioning. With only one center it has limited possibilities of storing, processing and transmitting information. Consequently, bureaucracy arises and slows down the flow of information and the decision-making based on it. Such a system is closed to any external influences, it is characterised by low control of effectiveness, and finally, it falls into oscillations, crisis. Several crises lead to the system’s collapse. From the viewpoint of cybernetics it is a natural tendency, and not a certain evolutionary tendency of totalitarian systems as such. The transitory stage of a social system is based on replacing the hitherto centralized information channels by new independent ones which then unblock the process of control and communication. After the “information shock” they all make the system’s functioning more efficient. A posttotalitarian social system still remains at the transitory stage and its dissipative structures and institutions disperse energy and information. But it cannot remain in such a state for too long since it is a pathological state. The key element of its change is information that ensures the self-control of the whole system. In sociological terms, a post-totalitarian system must unblock mass communication subsystems, reduce the bureaucracy of decision centers, and open up to the local and global environment. The key elements are information and knowledge. New mechanisms of control and communication are the reason for the increase in the probability of the post-totalitarian system’s transition to democracy. In a democratic system the dynamics of social, political, and economic processes arises from the cooperation and coordination among the parts of the whole system. The basic mechanism is the market, while information and

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knowledge are the elements of this game. They are not centralized but dispersed among different groups, institutions and social structures. This diversity and dispersion of information is not a defect, but the system’s condition of stability and efficiency. One of the cybernetic rules, according to Ross W. Ashby, postulates the indispensability of the diversity of any system. Another, according to Claude E. Shannon, states that there are perfect devices consisting of imperfect elements. The second rule says that if there exist many elements processing information and some of them are disturbed or damaged accidentally, the system still runs efficiently, inasmuch as others are numerous enough and are connected in parallel. This is where the essence of the possibility and importance of Poland’s political transitions with regard to control and communication structures lies. In order to pass from the post-totalitarian to the democratic stage Polish changes have to accommodate to political, economic, and technological conditions. Poland must become an “information-rich society” in which information and knowledge rank equally with capital and labor as conditions of economic progress and democratization. 3. The Internet as an Information Machine Bertalanffy’s and Wiener’s classification and analysis of self-regulating open systems can be broadened by a model of a subsystem comprising two elements: man (user) and machine (computer). This is a complex techno-social system which, apart from its information-oriented character, has equally interesting political implications. Man-machine open social systems may assume several forms, from very simple entities to highly complex ones such as the Internet. Contemporary personal computer users make use of and communicate with their own machines and, in varying degrees, with any other machine connected to a local or global telecommunications network. Querying databases on remote servers, utilizing the computing power of super-computers, sending simple messages, or contributing to newsgroups is possible thanks to both the user’s personal computer and other computers working online in the telecommunications network. The Internet blurs the definition of an independent machine or tool limited to its own structure and a finite set of defined functions. It is a computer, a machine, and the Internet without which individual computers mean nothing or very little. We can also talk about the emergence of a new technical entity: a network machine. Its existence is virtual and based on the equipment and applications of traditional machines. The technical, hardware aspect of the network machine is not as important as its multi-functional software which, with increasing frequency, becomes self-programming. The power and significance of a computer depend on the machines that control it and which make it a different machine every time it is used. A variety of functions performed by a

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given digital machine make it universal in the true meaning of Turing’s machine (constituting the basis of any computer), capable of simulation of any digital machine. The computer’s universality is extended further thanks to connecting it to other computers and a universal network machine such as the Internet. Assuming part of their computing power and different selfprogramming functions, each computer becomes a new quality constituting an entirely new wholeness. Apart from its novel structure and operating principles, the network machine also entails new uses. These in turn, significantly simpler than more traditional ones, result in new and novel attitudes on the part of its constructors and users. Social relations and institutions within those groups and communities which use information technologies are also changed. The totality of the social system together with its dynamic internal relations becomes increasingly susceptible to the influence of microelectronic tools, especially the Internet, whose social role is hard to overestimate. According to Lewis Mumford, the Internet is a unique “megamachine” ––a conglomeration of methods of execution of production, communication, administrative, military, or information tasks, which emerge and function in all societies. The megamachine entails the organization of social cooperation whose technical aspects (tools, communication systems, and communication infrastructure) give any social entity its defined material form. Mumford writes: Wherever it was successfully put together the megamachine multiplied the output of energy and performed labor on a scale that was never conceivable before. With this ability to concentrate immense mechanical forces, a new dynamism came into play, which overcame by the sheer impetus of its achievements the sluggish routines and the petty inhibitions of small-scale village culture.3 Generally conditions are favorable on the basis of and with the substantial involvement of communication and information. Although, as the history of civilization shows, the megamachine develops both in democratic and in autocratic and totalitarian systems (to a varying extent and with different speed), the democratic system appears to foster its development best. It is significant that the Internet has emerged in the society and the state with the most advanced telecommunication infrastructure and the best-developed democracy, free public opinion, and free political elections. The Internet is not the only medium of mass communication in the modern world although it is often perceived as such. There are still other effective networks of communication in such areas as mass culture, science, or politics; the press, television, and radio are still dominant and constitute the main elements of public opinion or social control. But they only function in one direction. In contrast, the Internet as the “fourth medium of message” has the

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chance to become a many-sided and multidirectional information channel functioning amid individual elements of the social system. Similar to telephone networks and earlier, the telegraph, it can connect disparate elements of the system, providing a mass of information needed for control. The Internet is not intensified telephony (although it uses telephone lines) because it transmits information in parallel as well as serially. The Internet’s character results primarily from its interactivity in which the sender and the recipient of many messages are equal. They affect each other during their exchange. The message can distribute itself in parallel, along the length and breadth of the network or many networks, diminishing control of the sender. It is this parallel structure, the interactive character of the Internet, and multi-access to enormous databases, that is the basis of the network’s elements and its users’ efficiency. This efficiency is the most powerful characteristic of the Internet as a communication tool in economy, management and administration, trade and market, and, last but not least, in the public domain. The slogan “think globally, act locally” refers perfectly to the Internet. 4. Political Use of Information Technologies Among the institutional parameters of democracy––free election of representatives, freedom of speech, open criticism of authorities, full access to information, legal protection of alternative sources of information, and the right to associate––most depend on knowledge and information serving as a basis for political decision-making. In democratic societies, freedom of information and unrestricted access to its different forms are no less important than the rule of law or citizens’ economic entrepreneurship. Politics and many areas of civil enterprise based on information technologies in the United States and other Western countries are the subjects of many research programs and theories. Such theorists as Alvin Toffler,4 John Naisbitt,5 and Graeme Browning6 agree that representative democracy turns into direct democracy. The evidence is the increasing number of local initiatives and referenda, thanks to which citizens have an opportunity to participate in politics much more efficiently. They use telephone and cable systems for immediate contact with politicians and statesmen or visit remote databases of legislative acts and bills. Nowadays the electorate is much more educated, better informed, and better prepared for political decision-making. Direct democracy is based on the citizens’ education facilitated by information technologies. As Naisbitt said at the beginning of the eighties: Politically, we are currently in the process of a massive shift from a representative to a participatory democracy. In a representative democracy, of course, we do not vote on issues directly; we elect someone to do the voting for us . . . . But along came the communication revolution and with it an extremely well-educated electorate. Today, with instantane-

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ously shared information, we know as much about what’s going on as our representatives and we know it just as quickly. The fact is we have outlived the historical usefulness of representative democracy and we all sense intuitively that it is obsolete. Furthermore, we have grown more confident of our own ability to make decisions about how institutions, including government and corporations, should operate.7 Today’s situation is much more complicated and democracy is undergoing multidirectional changes, so it is worth discussing. The Internet is among the useful tools that play an important role in the evolution of electronic democracy although it should not be overestimated. One should remember that it is still shared by a relatively small population of “cybercitizens.” Still, it reveals a dynamic tendency to grow; emerging Eastern European democracies are starting to participate in this process. One advantage of electronically networked political participation exists: the distribution of knowledge and information. It depends on sending addressed information from one institution or informal group to many political lists on computer servers and subsequently spreading them automatically to others. The essence of information distribution is its geometrical progression. The addressee has––on the basis of his or her political preferences––a unique opportunity of selective searching through endless databases. This mechanism, originating in academic and military networks, is available in politics and public affairs. Present electronic means of mass communication, such as radio and television, are efficient and proven. But they have one important limitation: they are one-way and passive since the message flows only from the addressor to the addressee. The Internet provides instantaneous communication and global scope, and interactivity in political relationships, something equivalent to immediate democracy of Greek times symbolized by the agora. Today’s cybercitizens have the opportunity of contacting politicians thanks to videoconferencing, sending e-mail, browsing homepages, filling out e-forms, voting in the initiatives and referendums, or monitoring and controlling public and government institutions (feed-back mechanism in systems functioning). They begin to transfer their decision-making from physical places such as meetings and polling stations to cyberspace. This kind of direct citizen activity is the privilege of a minority, although the tendency is toward expansion. Recent American presidential elections showed that many voters used information technology during the campaign. The population of Internet users who took part in the election may not have differed in political opinion from the population of non-users, but it was far better educated and more politically responsible. “At the same time,” Browning reports, Net regulars also tend to be vitally interested in political issues. They’re not any more partisan than other citizens. A 1995 study of technology in

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MAREK HETMAŃSKI American households by the Times Mirror Center for The People & Press (now the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press) found that computer users are almost identical to those who don’t use a computer in terms of party identification and congressional and presidential voting patterns. But they appear to take their responsibilities as citizens very seriously. The same study discovered that 80 percent of computer users aged 50 to 64 voted, while only 58 percent of their non-computerowning fellow citizens in the same age bracket voted. Younger computer users––aged 18 to 29––voted in numbers that were double the voting rate of those Generation Xers who did not use a computer.8

Access to interactive political databases gives cybercitizens a new sense of taking part in electronic democracy. Information technologies do not guarantee that citizens always take advantage of them. Paradoxically, an increasing role of the Internet in political life overlaps the decrease in voter participation in many Western societies. The right to information does not automatically mean its use, although it still remains an essential feature of self-controlling democratic systems. 5. The Internet in Poland What is the state of information technologies in today’s Poland? What institutions are supporting them? What is the future of the Internet? Internet use in Poland has barely started. According to different assessments at the end of 1999 the Internet user population fluctuates between 1 million (according to the number of users connected to a host) and 2.5 million (an OBOP [Public Opinion Research Center] estimate based on users’ declaration), and the number is rising. In terms of age, sex, profession and place of living the typical Polish Internet user is a man under 30 (this indicator is diminishing), with a university degree, living in a large city, and using the Internet professionally and commercially. Questionnaires show that he uses the Internet mainly as a tool in his work but also as a means of communication (email, access to databases, group lists, and so forth). Many schools are connected to the Internet. From the point of view of Cybernetics and Systems Theory one should note that in the structure of Polish society the Internet reveals, paradoxically, post-totalitarian features where control and communication do not function properly. The main Polish Internet providers are still centralized. The dominant owner of the Internet’s framework is NASK (Scientific and Academic Computer Network), while the main owner of the telephone network is TP S. A. (Polish Telecom); as monopolists they dictate financial conditions to other network providers. This monopoly is not in conformity with a market economy of free competition and a democratic society of freedom of choice and speech. What is more, it is an obstacle to the progress of technology and inno-

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vation. It also gives rise to another danger: monopoly of the means of communication opens up the possibility of interference with the content of communication. 6. Prospects and Problems Does the vision of electronic democracy engender any possible problems? A few can be articulated. First, as long as access to the Internet remains restricted, it is not a fully democratic system of knowledge and information distribution. Second, the global reach of the Internet depends on information transcending state, national, and geographical barriers. In some circumstances such globalization may lend to itself to authoritarian and anarchic activity. Transnational corporations such as Microsoft can engender monopolistic, undemocratic software and network services and distribution as the price of globalization. Third, common access to network databases may create only an illusion of democratic decentralization; multi-access databases must be governed by centers that arbitrarily and undemocratically select and process data and information. This inevitably impinges upon such rights as privacy. Fourth, data and information protection rely on secrecy. This is a technological challenge and a social and moral issue as well. Consequently the question arises as to how to define the citizen’s right to privacy within the communication network and how to protect it. If completely free access to information about individuals that has been collected by public agencies exists, this could violate those individuals’ right to privacy. The introduction and spread of viruses presents another problem that must be solved if we are to have a viable electronic democracy. NOTES 1. Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (New York: George Braziller, 1968). 2. Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Paris: Hermann and Cambridge, Mass: The Technology Press, 1948) p. 184. 3. Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), p. 190. 4. Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: Bantam Books, 1981). 5. John Naisbitt, Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives (New York: Warner Books, 1982). 6. Graeme Browning, Electronic Democracy: Using the Internet to Influence American Politics (Wilton, Conn.: Pemberton Press, 1996). 7. Naisbitt, Megatrends, p. 160. 8. Browning, Electronic Democracy, p. 12.

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Part Seven PROCEDURAL TRANSFORMATION

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Thirteen DETOTALITARIZATION AND THE AMBIGUITY OF MORAL CODES Andrzej Maciej Kaniowski Soon after the first, fully democratic election of 1990 some Poles voiced the opinion that the Roman Catholic Church had implemented Communism’s overthrow (from which some would draw the conclusion that for this reason the Church had been granted the privilege of creating a new reality, the right to have a decisive influence on the form of a new political system). Another, similar, yet more general conviction corresponds to this one: an organization outside the system brought about “communism’s overthrow.” The idea of “being outside the system” is broader. The Church had been an outside element with regard to the system––unlike all other institutions and organizations (under the control of the monolithic Party)––in the sense of its never having developed any basic party structures and of the failure of the Party ever to have employed its “personnel policy” and ever to make use of the tool of its “nomenclature” within the Church’s framework. According to this understanding of “outsideness,” all the remaining members of the society had to be regarded as having been immersed in the system. Some circles in Poland treat a person’s “outsideness toward the system” even more comprehensively. Some Poles no longer treat outsideness as a feature of an institution placed outside the system of institutions controlled by the monolithic Party. They consider it to be a personal characteristic of some individuals or groups that had been able to realize their professional lives within the Party-controlled institutions, but who had managed to retain their “outsideness” toward the system. In what was that outsideness supposed to consist? First, it consisted–– according to this way of thinking––in those persons’ self-identification with values and principles which were contrary to the official ideology, or in their inner and (maybe sometimes outwardly manifested) negative attitude toward the official ideology and toward all propagandistic ideas or principles. In view of such an understanding of “outsideness,” all, or almost all, other members of the society would have to be considered as immersed in the system. “Outsideness” of this sort was first considered a characteristic of priests and religious (due to their institutional allegiance), yet it was also––or maybe primarily–– attributed to laypersons whose professional life (whether as a foreman, a manager, a teacher, a research worker, a journalist, a lawyer, and so forth) was led within the framework of institutions under the control of the monolithic Party and under the influence of the principle of nomenclature. Their “outsideness”

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depended on this sort of self-identification, and their negative or downright hostile attitude toward the ideas, principles or practices following from those principles could be realized in different ways. It could consist solely in one’s inner affirmation of the values or principles that one held, without any obvious manifestation of them. It could also––and this appears to be a rather general pattern––be manifested passively, for instance by refraining from seeking some jobs or levels on one’s potential career ladder, the achievement of which would involve manifesting an acceptance of the official ideas, abiding principles, or preferred rituals as expressed through, for example, membership in the monolithic Party or in one of the “allied parties.” The foundation of one’s “outsideness” continued to be one’s faithfulness to one’s own values or norms, even though they were in conflict with the “anti-values” proclaimed by the ideology and the “anti-principles” governing all institutions and organizations controlled by the monolithic Party; this foundation meant full subordination of one’s life to principles and values which had been suppressed by the existing regime. Does the reference to “outsideness,” understood in this sense, allow one to explain the sources and mechanisms of system transformation, that is, the so-called “overthrow of communism”? At first it might appear so but such an explanation appears to be unsatisfactory and may lead to a paradox. If the overthrow had been implemented from the outside, what could then be said about the so-called “Party-government side” in the Round Table talks that did contribute––although in collaboration with the “Solidarity side”––to the actual “overthrow of communism,” and became an “outside force”? This sounds unlikely, and yet one may wonder whether the very fact that the “Party-government side” joined the Round Table talks is not evidence enough that it also became some sort of “outside force,” in the sense of its having had to cease to identify itself with its previous (anti-)ideas, (anti-) values, (anti-)principles and concepts of political order. The paradox leads to yet other much more serious theoretical problems with the claim that the “overthrow” had its basic source in what is sometimes called a “principled meta-attitude.” That is an attitude which “totally identifies itself with the norm, which is regarded as binding, and not with the authority of the day.”1 We may question the way in which such an attitude, which depended upon one’s self-identification with social norms or values contrary to the totalitarian order, could have “become rampant” within the “totalitarian system,” that is, the order which used to control everything (or almost everything). The theoretical problem we are concerned with can be illustrated by the following question: how are we supposed to treat so called revisionism and the revisionists––the phenomenon which had already appeared during the October 1956 breakthrough and which had a considerable impact on the fate of communism? These advocates of Marxist doctrine still shared some ideas and values advocated by the totalitarian regime and also remained for quite a long time totally “within” the system (for instance as Party members or per-

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sons holding different offices). Did they represent a “principled metaattitude”? If so, was that attitude to be attributed to them already when they remained within the “totalitarian” institutions or only when they were deprived of their jobs and forced to emigrate or to take other positions, for example those not connected with young people’s education? I am not concerned here only with the phenomenon of revisionism, but with a broader problem: that of true premises and mechanisms leading to system transformation. The example of the “revisionists” can serve as an illustration of the difficulties of the “downfall of communism” approach, which prefers to view this downfall as the outcome of the operation of merely outside forces and values on the “totalitarian” reality––itself unchanging and never subject to evolution. If the “overthrow of communism” had taken place as a result of some revolutionary breakthrough, such an interpretation could have been more feasible. That it was the result of negotiations and compromises is evidence that the “overthrow of communism” must be treated as the result of a long process of detotalitarization, made possible first by some features of the doctrine itself, features which had legitimized the totalitarian order at its outset; and second, by contingent factors, such as the concrete conditions in which the totalitarian doctrine had been implemented. The preferable approach is that the doctrine did create possibilities for detotalitarization, while contingent conditions could have worked in favor of or against the use of those possibilities. The use of the possibilities led to the weakening of the oppressive character of the doctrine and of the whole system, which in turn created further possibilities of action and behavior weakening the doctrine and deepening detotalitarization. Detotalitarization can be seen as the simultaneous result of some “outside-the-system” pressures (the “outsideness” here designating different attitudes and concepts that had the effect of weakening totalitarian expansiveness) and of an expansion of the range of freedom that was brought about by some subjects operating within the system, within institutions and organizations controlled by the “totalitarian” regime. A causative factor of the process of detotalitarization was doubtless an attitude which could be defined as a “principled meta-attitude,” some forms of individual moral consciousness and patterns of building identity. Yet, if we view the process of detotalitarization through the prism of these attitudes, we cannot decipher the mechanism of the process. Most activities that resulted in widening the range of freedom (whether in the mass media, culture, or education) were marred by some sort of compromise with the “totalitarian”‘ system, in the form of one’s acceptance of censorship in publication (whether a scientific study, a piece of journalism, or a cabaret sketch-script), or through “negotiation” with the censor’s office about the scope of intervention. When viewing the so-called “totalitarian” reality through the prism of radical moral objection or straightforward dissociation from the existing system, the phenomena depicted above––which fostered the process of detotalitarization––are

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hard to understand, while the attitudes and behaviors contributing to detotalitarization, burdened with the stigma of compromise, deserve only moral condemnation. For such theoretical and moral reasons (for example, in the light of my refusal to agree to the moral condemnation of the Round Table), I suggest that a broader term should be used for the moral attitudes which played an important role in the process of detotalitarization and which led to the implementation of growing possibilities for widening the range of freedom. Let me suggest that we use the term “attitudes characterized by independence”; one then can, or even should, speak of different degrees of actual “independence,” which manifested itself in a variety of ways. The category comprises the wide spectrum of behaviors that hindered the realization of the totalitarian concept (taking into consideration its starting point in the Stalinist period) of making all life spheres liable to control and ideological indoctrination. My suggestion that the expression “principled meta-attitude” be replaced by the notion of “attitude of independence” has another motivation as well. This term does not appear to imply any associations with the so-called “authoritarian personality,” unlike the expression “principled meta-attitude,” which may evoke such associations. It is, in a way, the very definition of the attitude that constitutes a denial of the “authoritarian personality.” Besides, the use of this term does not invite the sorts of dangers that accompany the notion of a “principled meta-attitude.” Such dangers include the potential usurpation (still present in Poland, and not only in the expressed attitudes of some individuals connected with the Church), by those who perceive themselves as having been the sole representatives of this attitude under so-called “totalitarianism,” of an exclusive position with regard to the new realities created after the “overthrow of communism.” The conviction that the norms and values they themselves abide by are the only true norms and values is threatening to the democratic order arising after the fall of communism. This does not alter the fact that the “attitude of independence”––in this case independence from the offices and institutions which formed the system of executive power––may have received (and often did receive) some support from that condescending attitude toward rules and behaviors imposed by the authority which were discordant with one’s personal principles or values. In this sense the latter attitude––beginning with the attitude of the Church––did have a most fundamental impact on the launching and realization (in the conditions of Poland) of the process of detotalitarization. Let me offer some clarification regarding the suggested definition of the “attitude of independence” and its opposition to the authoritarian attitude. A characteristic feature of this attitude as understood here, in addition to independence from institutionalized authorities, is a general reliance, in one’s actions and thoughts, not upon authority but upon justifiable convictions (which are at the same time fallible convictions). Such an attitude entails a readiness to correct one’s normative convictions and an openness to arguments, instead of blind subordination to particular values. The attitude appears to reverse the

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formula of Hobbes, “Auctoritas non veritas facit legem,” and to assert that it is the truth––understood as rationally justified conviction––and not authority that determines whether a given norm has a binding force. It is only by means of the “attitude of independence” that we can avoid the enormous dangers created by the attitude defined as the “principled meta-attitude” when the values and norms that the advocate of this attitude recognizes as absolutely binding ones happen at the same time to be the values and norms whose implementation in reality has become an objective of the authoritarian (or totalitarian) regime. It is only by means of the attitude of independence that the necessary conditions for the existence of a liberal-democratic order can be achieved. This is also the attitude that results from the Western process of rationalization in the legal-political sphere. The features of this rationalization are worth noting in order to make precise my title thesis concerning the “ambiguity of moral codes,” and in order to demonstrate that the making of façades under the conditions of the old system––including the façades of legal and democratic order––depending upon contingent conditions, beginning with the relative prevalence of the “attitude of independence” within the society, could constitute an important element in the process of detotalitarization and of preparing the conditions for the peaceful transformation of 1989. In talking about “ambiguity” I have in mind the absolutist attitude which had been defined as the “principled metaattitude,” and which had an emancipatory function in the process of detotalitarization, can become a destabilizing factor in the process of constituting a liberal-democratic order, unless the advocates of this attitude subordinate themselves to liberal-democratic principles and procedures. This attitude, invaluable under some particular circumstances, rests upon a type of rationality different from its own, that is the type to be found at the foundations of the liberal-democratic order. What is so characteristic of this type of order and of the form of rationality which is its cornerstone? Above all, it is a procedural rationality not a substantive rationality. On the basis of such a rationality some procedures (those of democratic, statutory legal regulations) acquire primary value. It is not the aims, values or principles I hold and cherish as righteous ones that are granted a primary position. Instead, first priority needs to be given to democratic procedures by means of which my own normative convictions (and my particular interests) can be tested, from the point of their universal validity, to the same extent as the convictions of all the other members of the society. Among the indispensable elements of the rationality that lies at the foundations of the liberal-democratic order are (a) the acknowledgment of the principle of outer freedom as the basis of co-existence of individuals within a given community organized into a state. This principle states that regulations must be such as to make possible this outer freedom of each individual, so that it can co-exist with the outer freedom of every other individual. The realization of the values I recognize as absolutely binding cannot violate the like pos-

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sibility of the realization of analogous values held by other subjects (and vice versa). Priority is here given to the principle of equal freedom following the universal rule, while all “personal” principles or values become secondary from the point of view of the supreme principle of everyone’s equal freedom. As a result, in accordance with the principle of outer freedom (b) absolute importance must be attributed but to the definite formal statutory procedures regarding definite legal regulations. These procedures will have a legitimizing function in reference to regulations formed with their help only when they themselves are legitimate from the point of view of democracy. Another indispensable moment of rationality lying at the foundations of the liberaldemocratic order is (c) the acceptance of the existence of inalienable rights of individuals and minorities; with respect to both, the problem of defending against the so-called “tyranny of the majority” is involved. A similar “muzzle” must also be imposed upon the state as the only institution in possession of coercion mechanisms; in keeping with democratic-liberal ideas, (d) state coercion may be used only for the sake of the maintenance of outer freedom or–– in case this principle has been violated––for the restitution of the original state (penalizing those who have broken the principle of outer freedom). Several consequences follow. First, the form of rationality that I have described rests upon the demarcation of the sphere that is the state’s domain–– and therefore the sphere regulated by the law––and its separation from the sphere of privacy, or the sphere regulated by moral norms; in this way, a clear-cut area in which coercion––at the disposal of the state––can be applied is marked. Second, stress is laid not on a content-biased definition of what an individual is supposed to realize in his or her life, but on the formal drawing of the framework within which he or she must operate or else dare to risk sanctions on the grounds of having violated other individuals’ freedom, the very freedom in which he or she partakes. Third––and this is perhaps an important determinant of the liberal attitude (one which invites dissatisfaction and hostility on the part of its critics)––only individuals can be subjects. They can organize themselves and function as collective subjects, but they are unable to function as carriers of the interest of some abstract “whole,” “nation,” “whole society,” “race,” or other allegedly absolutely binding transcendent reality. They always remain particular subjects who are obliged to negotiate the freedom they demand with that of all the other particular subjects, while they must respect the validity of the very fundamental principle of outer freedom to which they owe their rights. A basic quality of liberal thinking then––hard as this is for its multiple opponents from the right and from the left to accept––is its anti-essentialism and empiricism: according to this approach we are dealing here with empirical individual subjects, who cannot, while they construct the laws that are to govern their lives and their co-existence, be guided by imperatives derived from insights into “the true spirit of the nation,” “the views of the healthy part of society,” “the essence of mankind,” “the historic or world-wide mission of the

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proletariat” (or of any other eschatological subject), or “the objective order of values.” Totalitarian thinking and the way of thinking just discussed, which is an outcome of the process of Western rationalization, appear to be poles apart. From the historical point of view we were confronted with two kinds of totalitarianism in twentieth century Europe––Nazism and Leninist-Stalinist Communism––similar to each other in terms of their criminal consequences, yet considerably different in the sphere of their justifications, even though their ideological frameworks did betray some structural resemblance. Why should we still consider the subtle similarities and differences of systems which both resulted in criminal consequences? First, it is only when we realize the structural similarities on the level of fundamental concepts regarding the outlook on moral life which resulted in totalitarian consequences that we can better visualize the fundamental difference between the rationality supporting liberal-democratic concepts and that of the totalitarian concepts of Nazism and communism. Our awareness of their structural similarities will also make credible our assumption of the “ambiguity of moral codes.” In turn, by becoming conscious of the differences between the two doctrines, we can better understand the occurrence––in the case of communism––of the process of detotalitarization (whose development depended, as I have said, on some contingent circumstances, on certain particular conditions in a particular society). I am by no means trying to define totalitarianism as such but I would like to point to three determinants of totalitarianism. These are: (a) the acceptance of some aims and values expressed in axiological terms on the ideological level, which are to be realized within some holistic order (of the state or the society), the political power seen as an indispensable tool for their realization; (b) the absolute demand that the members of the society manifest their affirmation of the realized axiological order and the existing power at the same time; it is a totalitarian goal to achieve full interiorization of the axiological ideals by the members of the society, their full identification with them, and their manifestation of this fact, which has, consequently, a tendency toward “effective enslavement of the minds and consciousness,” in Andrzej Walicki’s words. The third, perhaps most important, factor, which is the reverse side of positive axiology, is (c) a diagnosis of tracing and identifying whatever makes it impossible to realize the positive axiology, whatever constitutes its denial, which in itself is defined as the quintessence of evil; the more negative the diagnosis of reality, the stronger the struggle and the hatred (and vice versa). The two forms of totalitarianism that have been of concern to us so far, Nazism and Leninist-Stalinist Communism, are characterized by a structural resemblance, which can be defined as radical axiological Manicheism. Aside from this resemblance, some significant differences can also be observed in regard to the contents of positive axiology and negative diagnosis. To put it briefly, one could say that the positive axiology of communism consists in the utopia of actualizing “true freedom,” conceived as the realization of the “es-

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sence of mankind.” The essence of mankind––something by definition universal––was supposed to be achieved only through a harmonious co-existence with others in a community relieved of all political and economic pressure whatsoever. From this perspective the greatest evil, which threatens the realization of positive axiology and needs to be eradicated, is, above all, property relations and the institutions associated with them. The axiological core of Nazism is totally different. The object of axiological affirmation there was not the abstract human being but the national community and the particular subject of that community, conceived not in a nominalistic spirit, that is, not as a community of empirical individuals, but as some mystical body incarnating itself empirically through the unity of race and blood. The mystical element marked the cultural superiority of the community endowed with it. Contradictions to this value and factors that constituted an obstacle to its realization were not so much the structures and forms of the organization of life, but races and nations considered to be inferior in a cultural sense (first the Jews, followed shortly by the Slavs), and particular individuals regarded as carriers of anti-values, values opposed to the cultural values of the national community. This category comprised those who were excluded from the community on the grounds of “objective” ethnic or racial estrangement and those who might personally undermine the nation’s “spirit” by being weak, cowardly, indecisive, physically deficient or mentally handicapped. At this point an immediate objection might be raised, since the very stigmatization of property and related structures became transformed, in the Russian version of the “Promethean” idea that had been born in the Western world, into hatred directed at particular individuals, milieus, and strata, so that the apotheosis of freedom was transformed into the apotheosis of violence and institutions which implemented it. It cannot be overlooked that there was a certain inner tension in the Communist doctrine itself, which consisted in the inevitable contradiction between the nature of the aim and the nature of the means: the abolition of violence became its axiom, while the means leading to it was thought to involve violence (in the Russian version of the doctrine; its Western variation soon woke up to a social-democratic position). This sort of tension, which did not occur in the Nazi doctrine, made it possible to set in motion the process of de-ideologization, and then detotalitarization. But it only created the premises of this process, its implementation depending on contingent cultural and mental conditions. The departure from “revolutionary socialism” in Western European countries did not undermine the autocratic police structure of the state which emerged after Yalta. The maintenance of this structure under conditions of advancing de-ideologization resulted in the “façade” character of social and political life. The façade can be viewed from two angles. From the point of view of the liberal-democratic order it was a total fraud, where parliament was not parliament but a “voting machine,” where legislation did not serve law-

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abidingness but was a tool to exercise power, where the mass media served as the tools of an information blockade, schools and universities were instruments of indoctrination instead of learning or research, and the Academy of Sciences was not a repository of knowledge but a tool to gag the mouths and minds of “pseudo-scientists.” Is this evaluation completely absurd? Maybe not, though it is not the whole truth, and maybe not even half of the truth, about all those “façade” establishments. The façades––under Polish conditions (and, to a lesser degree, elsewhere as well)––were what they were made to be by the people functioning within those institutions or working out its rules and their execution, subject to external control that went well beyond the regulation of financial support. The façades were to serve as outer evidence of the states’ not being “that much different” from the Western democratic states (although the former were supposed to represent a “different,” “better” economic and political system); even if on the surface they were declarations of belonging to the Western tradition. Façades tend to admit some range of latitudinarianism. They exhibit a peculiar inertia and a tendency toward autonomy. This is the route we should follow when tracing the transformation from ideologized reality to the reality which claimed “in a façade manner” to merit being called a state, where the law––and not some secret or administrative directives––would regulate the behavior of individual subjects. The laws created an infrastructure that was able to play a certain role in the transformation of reality. (It is worth remembering that German fascism did not have to put up any façades whatever, since, as Carl Schmitt argued when he repeated the generally acclaimed Third Reich doctrine, “The highest law is now the will of the Führer––this is the primary principle of the abiding state law,” the “will of the Führer” not necessarily being expressed as legal regulation). Regarding terms of what interests us special attention ought to be paid to structures of moral consciousness and ways of building identity. I do not think it legitimate to treat the whole post-war period in Poland in a homogeneous manner as something that just went on until the “overthrow” of the system eagerly referred to as “totalitarian,” conceived as having been the same in its “essence” throughout this period. I consider this attitude to be a faulty one, related to another, similar fault of a theoretical nature, the use of an excessively extended concept of totalitarianism (with all autocratic, patrimonial, and other such systems falling under this category). A drawback of the approach that uses an excessively extended notion of totalitarianism is that it does not let us understand the meaning of cultural conditionings influencing the shape of its legal system. China, where the first penal code was introduced in 1979, under Communist rule, and the first civil code in 1986 may be an example of such cultural conditioning. This had nothing to do with Communist doctrine, but was a result of two thousand years’ tradition; as shown by Weber, the law in the Chinese culture had a totally different character from that which it acquired in Western rationalism. It was modeled on der theokra-

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tischen Wohlfahrtsjustiz. This is just an illustration of the implicit assumption contained in the above considerations, which is that we cannot say that the status and character of a legal system within revolutionary socialism followed directly from the doctrine of Marx, although it cannot be reduced to the contingent cultural conditions of Russia. The approach that uses too broad a notion of totalitarianism does not allow us to understand the assumptions of transformation, its sources (which can also be embedded in the doctrine itself), its mechanism and result––in the case of Poland, a possibility of peaceful transition to democratic reality, where political groups, formerly mouthpieces of the “totalitarian” order, suddenly start functioning on the democratic political scene as equally recognized partners. This fact will become less surprising and will arouse fewer moral objections if, instead of applying too rigid and too general a notion of totalitarianism, we view the former period as a dynamic reality. Some detotalitarization premises were already embedded in its doctrinal layer and then, owing to the existence of a definite cultural background and outlook, were used to extend the scope of independence in the intellectual, moral and (to some extent) economic spheres, until––thanks to some favorable external circumstances (the decline of the Soviet Union’s power)––the establishment of independence in the political sphere. The major factor contributing to this was doubtless moral attitudes and concepts. The common ground for the different political forces’ and personalities’ drive toward independence was the attitude of independence. The immediate goal was mutual: the establishment of political freedom and the standard, democratic functioning of the political sphere. At the same time there were essential divergences within the milieus actively driving toward democracy and political freedom, divergences visible in the current disputes about our draft constitution (and in the demagogic attack on the draft represented by the National Assembly). Some people take the goal to be the establishment of a democratic order in which formal liberal-democratic rules (which stand for what may be held in common and what is universal) are prior to all other particular axiological concepts. Others, who have also contributed to the establishment of the democratic order, hold that the rules of liberal democracy are to function, but only as tools for the elimination of former dispensers of power from political life, and for the state to realize some axiological concepts with definite contents. It appears that in a society in which the attitude of independence also means opposition to attempts to impose axiological concepts, the advocates of the priority of axiological concepts–– meritorious as they are for the extension of the range of independence––will remain a minority. Their attitude, their type of moral consciousness, is becoming a real threat to liberal democracy.

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NOTES 1. Adam Podgorecki, “Totalitarian Law: Basic Concepts and Issues,” Totalitarian and Post-Totalitarian Law, ed. Adam Podgorecki and Vittorio Ogliati, Oñiati International Series in Law and Society (Aldershot, U.K. and Brookfield, Vermont: Dartmouth Publishing Co., 1996), p.3.

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Fourteen POLITICS OF EXCLUSION AND THE LUSTRATION DEBATE Radosław Sojak My inquiry has two starting points. The first is the lustration debate that took place in Poland between 1989 and 1995; the second is the problem of social exclusion. The first is predominantly interpreted as a political or legal issue while in the sociological tradition the latter is conceived as strongly connected with problems of poverty and the underclass. In my paper I aim at two goals. First, I present alternative interpretations of both lustration and exclusion. Second, I find a common ground for interpretation of both issues: the ground that will allow me to redescribe and reinterpret the problem of lustration in terms of social exclusion. The common ground for my analysis is provided by the theoretical tradition of the sociology of knowledge, broadly understood. The sociology of knowledge is very often seen as an obscure theoretical program of no consequence for empirical studies. This is the third stance I want to challenge here. A broad understanding of this tradition of thought allows me to view it as a coherent approach that has its origins in Karl Mannheim’s work and reaches its empirical fulfilment and confirmation in the recently developed sociology of scientific knowledge. What makes this broad understanding of the sociology of knowledge possible is rejection of Mannheim’s view that scientific knowledge is free from any social influences. Mannheim thought that his propositions were valid only as far as what he called “existentially bound” or “existentially connected” knowledge is concerned.1 Important arguments in favor of the broad understanding of the sociology of knowledge were presented by Dick Pels.2 He argues that the Mannheimian program was not so very different from that developed by the new sociology of scientific knowledge. I incorporate into the tradition some insights provided by thinkers who are not usually considered sociologists of knowledge, especially Pierre Bourdieu to whom I owe the idea of “symbolic field.” I feel justified in doing so because of the already recognized relevance of Bourdieu’s thought for the sociology of knowledge.3 Viewed and reconstructed in this way the tradition of the sociology of knowledge will serve as the theoretical background for my inquiry. Let me discuss two insights introduced by the sociology of knowledge that will serve as paths to the redescription of processes of social exclusion and the redefinition of the lustration problem. These insights are the convic-

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tion that knowledge about things cannot be separated from knowledge of people, and methodological relativism. The first will be the theoretical basis of my reinterpretation of exclusion; the second will lead me to a redescription of the lustration debate in terms of exclusion. 1. Exclusion We leave it to others to decide whether the relations between power relations and sense [meaning] relations are, in the last analysis, sense [meaning] relations or power relations.4 As far as I know, the bond between knowing about things and knowing about people was articulated most recently and most explicitly by Steven Shapin: . . . the fabric of our social relations is made of knowledge––not just knowledge of other people, but also knowledge of what the world is like––and . . . our knowledge of what the world is like draws on knowledge about other people (chapter six of this work contains an empirical analysis of this statement).5 This is a very straightforward claim, but quite similar theoretical ideas can be traced in the whole tradition of sociology of knowledge, especially in Mannheim’s writings. Three features of his Wissenssoziologie are especially relevant here: the notion of “perspective,” and the activistic and group character of cognitive processes. The notion of “perspective” is central to Mannheim’s program of the sociology of knowledge. His understanding of it stems from the metaphor which states that cognitive processes are similar to processes of seeing things. We conceive reality from different viewpoints just as we perceive spatio-temporal objects from different angles.6 Perspectives are constitutive of every act of cognition and they account for the existential connectedness of knowledge. How far does the social determination of knowledge reach? Mannheim gives an answer when stating what perspectives consist of. According to him they contain basic epistemological and ontological presumptions and structures of reasoning and language structures used in describing events. Since in the domain of existentially bound thought social determination reaches such a deep level, perspectives are at least partly irreducible to one another. The main aim of the sociology of knowledge is to provide the humanities with as full a synthesis of different viewpoints as possible. This program was often criticized because of its relativistic implications. One of Mannheim’s ways of escaping this criticism was to claim that existential connectedness does not affect the truth or falsity of knowledge claims:

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That certain items of knowledge are incapable of an absolute interpretation and formulation does not mean that they are arbitrary and subjective, but only that they are a function of a particular viewpoint or perspective; that is to say, that certain qualitative features of an object encountered in the living process of history are accessible only to minds of a certain structure.7 This fragment is important also for other reasons. It reveals a point where for the first time problems of social exclusion can be interpreted in terms of the sociology of knowledge. The point is the issue of accessibility. It arose also in Ideology and Utopia8 where Mannheim stated that knowledge produced by the natural sciences differs from knowledge in the humanities in that the former is accessible to everybody. If we assume that particular kinds of knowledge are available only to minds shaped within a certain perspective, knowledge itself can be a tool of exclusion. But exclusion is even more deeply embedded in the notion of “perspective.” This is because each perspective has its own horizon: it enables us to see some things but simultaneously prevents us from seeing others. The exclusion of some things can also take the form of exclusion of other perspectives. This happens if two perspectives anticipate different objects of cognition––if they envision different ontologies and epistemologies. And these differences are the mainspring of processes of competition among different groups, since . . . from the point of view of the social sciences, every historical, worldview, sociological knowledge . . . is clearly rooted in and carried by the desire for power and recognition of particular social groups who want to make their interpretation of the world the universal one.9 It does not matter if this competition leads to a synthesis or a monopoly; in both cases selection and thus exclusion is present.10 So far I have sketched some reasons explaining only why the sociology of knowledge is relevant to the issue of social exclusion. But in order to examine why and in what respect Mannheimian Wissenssoziologie foresees a connection between knowledge of things and knowledge of people one has to look at how perspectives work. Two of the three above-mentioned features are important here. The first is the active character of cognition. Mannheim tries to give an answer to the question why perspectives are so different by stressing the role of action in the processes of viewpoint creation. He concludes that some things can enter perspectives only by being acted upon.11 Perspectives are effective in actions because they limit one’s interpretation of the world: viewpoints are simultaneously revealed and constructed by human actions. Every action can be a means of exclusion. But this is not the strongest bond between the sociology of knowledge and exclusion processes. The strongest is constituted because perspectives are collective properties through which the

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very existence of the group is defined. The perspective is somehow prior to the individuals. As Mannheim writes: We belong to a group not only because we are born into it, not merely because we profess to belong to it, nor finally because we give it our loyalty and allegiance, but primarily because we see the world and certain things in the world the way it does.12 Here knowledge about things is directly connected with knowledge of things. But if so, we also have to be ready to face the second consequence of such a statement, that exclusion of knowledge means exclusion of people, and conversely exclusion of people means exclusion of the knowledge they are carrying. Contemporary sociology of scientific knowledge provides plenty of empirical evidence for that claim. The historical analysis by Steven Shapin shows that experimental practice was in general largely based on social exclusion. The main claim presented in A Social History of Truth states that . . . a working solution in one area of the culture (gentlemanly society) was transported into another (the new practice of empirical science) to act as a local resolution of a pervasive problem about the grounds and adequacy of knowledge.13 Gentlemen were considered trustworthy spokesmen for reality because of their freedom of action, high prestige, and wealth. The need for such spokesmen arose from the breaking of the old symbolic order of world-interpretation and the inflow of new information and testimonies with the discovery of new lands. All this had to be assessed and evaluated. Gentlemen used their social position in order to win the competition for establishing legitimized rules for the evaluation of knowledge claims. In Mannheimian terms one encounters here a situation of concentration which emerged as a result of an earlier atomistic competition among different groups.14 Exclusion is hidden in the act of drawing the boundaries of gentlemanly society. It was crucial to be able to recognize who a gentleman was in order to assess any testimony. Exclusion has more recently been used as a strategy of closing scientific controversies. Controversial scientists (and their views) are sometimes excluded from the scientific community in order to preserve consensus. The latest work of Barry Barnes, David Bloor, and John Henry15 depicts two such stories, and others can be found in Harry M. Collins and Trevor Pinch.16 But there is another, more fundamental way of tracing exclusion by the contemporary sociology of scientific knowledge. Bruno Latour, for example, sees science in general as a practice based on exclusion: “Generally ‘science’ is never to be explained by itself. It is an ill-composed entity which excludes most of the elements that allow it to exist.”17

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From what I have said so far one might conclude that I view social life as a continual, chaotic struggle for dominance over interpretations of the world. I would concede that with one proviso. I do not consider this struggle to be a chaotic one; I would say instead that it is a highly structuralized and institutionalized social practice. This order of struggle for symbolic dominance––we must not forget that it can be the subject of such a conflict itself––is well captured by Pierre Bourdieu in his notion of “symbolic fields.” For Bourdieu symbolic fields are created realities with their own goals and rewards. The merits and aims can differ very much from field to field, but one reward exists common to every field. This is legitimization. The aim of legitimacy shapes the logic of practice within every field. We can extrapolate the definition of scientific field given by Bourdieu to every kind of field. In “The Specificity of the Scientific Field” we read: . . . the scientific field is the locus of a competitive struggle, in which the specific issue at stake is the monopoly of scientific authority, defined inseparably as technical capacity and social power, or, to put it another way, the monopoly of scientific competence, in the sense of a particular agent’s socially recognised capacity to speak and act legitimately (in an authorized and authoritative way) in scientific matters.18 To some extent the same thing can be said about the fields of politics, the media, education, and art. Within them, too, different groups seek the dominant position which would allow them to introduce authoritative and “true” world interpretations. We cannot escape this competition because “legitimacy is indivisible.”19 But the competition, as I view it, is organized at two levels. The first, not yet mentioned, is the level of the fields themselves. Fields strive with each other to extend the realm of legitimized use of the rules with which they construct the interpretation of the world. To put it another way, what is at stake here is not a particular world-interpretation but the imposition of a logic that creates the interpretation. In Bourdieu’s terms this is a problem of exchangeability of the different capitals created in different fields. Competition on this level results in establishing a hierarchy of fields. Some are superior to others and are empowered to impose their logic on others. But a second level of rivalry exists which I call a level of discourses. It describes competition within instead of between fields. The goal is to establish valid views of the world––the rules of this interpretation game being already pre-established. Within a field, hierarchy is determined according to the different levels of legitimacy ascribed to group statements or individual utterances. The most important divide within each field is that between the legitimized and unlegitimized discourses. Corresponding to these two levels of competition I distinguish two kinds of exclusion process: external exclusion which occurs when knowledge or people are expelled beyond the boundaries of a given field and are redefined

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as part of another––inferior––field; internal exclusion which means being expelled from dominant––legitimized––discourse without being simultaneously defined as a member of another––legitimate––field. Internal exclusion usually results in demotion to a less legitimized or even unlegitimized discourse. The categorical system sketched above will serve the analysis of the lustration debate presented in the second part of this paper. 2. Lustration The main and overwhelming problem when approaching lustration is how to avoid being trapped into political discourse and the use of the language of politics in describing different attitudes toward the problem. Here again the sociology of knowledge is very helpful. For my analysis I adopt the methodological relativism introduced by Collins.20 This means that the claims of proand anti-lustration parties about what is true and false are not taken as the starting point of my analysis. I am not trying to assess the rightfulness of different claims about lustration. Instead I analyze the different claims as attempts to put to work a certain underlying perspective. That means I view the lustration controversy as an act of competition in the above described Mannheimian sense. This will affect the order of my analysis in two ways. First my inquiry concentrates on anti-lustration discourse and its underlying perspective. This asymmetric interest results from the conviction that attention should be paid first to the definitions of the social reality that have been effective in shaping society. Second, I reconstruct the main lines of anti-lustration argumentation in search of its hidden presuppositions. This may bring to mind the theoretical tradition of critical or muck-raking sociology. However, this is not accurate. The sociology of knowledge very often stresses its self-reflexivity. The self-reflexive sociology of knowledge gives no epistemological ground for any unmasking practices. It only gives a ground for other alternative constructions, another level of observation21 or a different viewpoint. Let me elaborate on some formal aspects of the inquiry. Within what I call the lustration debate one approaches two analytically distinctive issues. The first is lustration itself. Lustration means revealing the names of all former undercover agents of the Communist secret services among members of Parliament and high ranking officials. Some lustration projects entailed debarment of those exposed from taking official posts and some did not foresee any sanctions for being an agent. Decommunisation means the exclusion of high-ranking PUWP (Polish United Workers’ Party) officials from the political life of the country. Different decommunisation projects differ in the prescribed length of time of this exclusion. These two distinctive issues merge during the lustration debate. Both the supporters and the opponents of bringing to account those responsible for Communism treat these problems as interwoven. Against both issues the same arguments were raised. This is the only reason I will not treat them separately.

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I analyze the lustration debate that was taking place between 1989 and 1995. My analysis starts in 1989 for two reasons, the foremost being that it was then for the first time that the problem of lustration could be articulated in official media and groups posing this problem could legally enter the political field; and secondly that it was from that moment that the process of creation of the independent media field started. Thereafter, public interest in lustration and decommunisation rose and the debate culminated in June 1992 when the government led by Jan Olszewski made the first attempt to carry out lustration in Poland. On 4 June 1992 the Minister of Internal Affairs, Antoni Maciarewicz, distributed among members of Parliament a list comprising the names of sixty-four high-ranking officials and members of Parliament who were suspected of being undercover agents of the Communist secret services. The very same day (at midnight) the government was overthrown. As a consequence Parliament concentrated on the way the lustration was carried out, not on lustration itself. Nothing was done to assess the individual cases of those accused. The period of my concern closes in 1995 with the accusation that the Polish prime minister, Józef Oleksy, was a secret agent of a foreign intelligence service. That re-opened the debate and at the same time extended the scope of the issue at stake. By 1995 many of those who had been leading actors in 1992 were off the political stage, and others who in 1992 were opposing lustration changed or softened their position. The lustration debate after 1995 calls for a separate study. My analysis will have three stages. First, I will (re)construct a perspective revealed in the main lines of anti-lustration argumentation. Then I want to elaborate on what kind of rhetoric had been used to get this perspective accepted. The two stages will concentrate on what I have called internal exclusion. In the third stage of my inquiry I will trace some rhetoric aiming at external exclusion of the lustration supporters. Before I start the analysis, let me suggest one more thing. In my opinion lustration can be interpreted in terms of exclusion, but the lustration debate itself became an argument for a legitimized rule of exclusion. Let me elaborate on it while explaining when the Polish lustration debate started. In September of 1989 Tadeusz Mazowiecki made a statement on behalf of the first nonCommunist government for fifty years to take office in Poland. Famously, he declared: The government I will form is not responsible for the burden it inherited. It affects however circumstances in which we have to act. We cross out the past with a thick line and accept responsibility only for what we will do to improve the country’s situation.22 Soon, as interpreted by Adam Michnik, crossing out the past symbolized neglecting any attempts to bring to book those responsible for the Communist

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past. The “thick line policy” legitimized rules of exclusion. While building the new democratic order, the past was excluded as were people who wanted to base the new order on exclusion of the Communist nomenklatura. This should not be considered a one-sided accusation. Supporters of lustration and decommunisation also promote some rules of exclusion. By invoking Mazowiecki’s statement I only want to show that no difference exists between parties in that respect. I also intend to indicate that in that very moment lustration and decommunisation became problematic and became at the same time a struggle for legitimized rules of exclusion. In 1989, the two fields relevant to my analysis, the media and politics, agreed in believing that forgetting the Communist past was justified. With the entry into the political arena of Olszewski’s government this consensus was disturbed. The government promoted different exclusion criteria. The conflict was rising. But behind this debate much wider perspectives were hidden. Let me start with what I call cognitive anti-lustration argumentation. Although it was not very often used it is important for the reason that it established the stakes of the game. Already in 1990 the Minister of Internal Affairs had stated that the files of the former Communist secret services would be useless as far as gaining knowledge about Poland’s contemporary history is concerned.23 In 1991 Olszewski was criticizing the so-called “thick line policy” because it prevented gaining the whole truth about the nature of the Communist system.24 The truth was at stake in the lustration debate. Supporters of lustration tried to face their opponents with what Foucault would call the “regime of truth.” The truth was their goal but it was also a powerful ally in the debate. An accusation of hiding the truth was a very mighty argument. There were two ways of opposing it along with the accusation hidden within. The first, already mentioned, was to reject the historical or in general the cognitive validity of revealing the contents of the secret services’ files. The second was to contrast the notion of “truth” with “understanding.”25 Opponents of lustration suggested that the most important thing, prior to revealing the files, should be to understand the nature of communism. Only then, they argued, can the cold facts about being or not being an undercover agent of the secret services be properly and justly assessed. This line of argument does not primarily reveal assumptions about what the world is like but indicates presuppositions about cognitive processes that should lead to its understanding. One should not overlook here a very interesting coincidence. As far as a vision of cognitive processes leading to understanding of social reality is concerned, the difference between supporters and opponents of lustration can easily be described in terms of the familiar controversy between positivists and anti-positivists in the philosophy of the social sciences. The opponents claim that society should be understood instead of explained; facts ought to be the subject of empathy instead of simple objects of revelation. In my opinion, this is the first and deepest presupposition underlying the perspective of the antilustration parties. Others are revealed in different lines of argument.

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Next is what I call the ontological anti-lustration line of argument. In general it states that lustration is unrealizable because of the structure of reality itself. Within this line I differentiate two types of argumentation. The first claims that it is in the nature of communism that it is impossible to tell people responsible for it from those who are not responsible. The best formulation of that claim was given by Jacek Kuroń: Establishing who, among people adult in that time, is and who is not responsible for the totalitarian system is not possible. There are exceptions. On the one hand there are those who committed crimes; on the other those––if there are any––who spent all this time in prison. Apart from that any divide between those who are guilty and not guilty will be artificial.26 With such a distribution of responsibility any attempts to carry out lustration or decommunisation are senseless and impossible. Polish society is viewed here not as divided into the opponents and the supporters of the system but as a gray, shapeless mass reconciled to the existence of communism. Some antilustration authors attacked what they called the black and white divide of Polish society as far as evaluation of the Communist past is concerned. It is very interesting that, in this type of argumentation, the existence of “Solidarity” as a mass movement is hardly ever mentioned. At the same time Polish post-war history is divided into two strongly juxtaposed periods. The first dates from 1945 to 1956, the second from 1956 to 1989. In the first the state is seen as strongly totalitarian, while in the latter it is for the most part seen as progressively weakening. This interpretation of Polish history is also accompanied by a designated vision of the collapse of communism. It is seen as a slow, evolutionary process finished by the Round Table talks. Another version of the ontological argument does not address the interpretation of Polish contemporary history but promotes a certain vision of the Communist secret services. In general, this line of argument states that the archives of the secret services do not provide enough trustworthy testimony to establish who was an undercover agent. This general assumption hides two other interconnected statements. The first says that the files of the Communist secret services are incomplete. This is correct from what we know of action taken by the secret services that resulted in destroying a large number of files. The second takes for granted that a wide range of documents in the archives is falsified. That was a statement with huge rhetorical power. It rests on some general knowledge and presumptions about the Polish secret services’ usual practices. It was known that each officer was expected to run from ten to twelve undercover agents and that his salary and any extras and promotion were dependent on the number of his agents. That must have led, argued the lustration opponents, to widespread practices of falsifying documents.

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This sounds plausible but the reasoning is grounded in a tacit assumption. If what the lustration opponents claimed was right, the Communist secret services must have been regarded as a weak, inefficient administrative apparatus of state which continuously lied to itself. Some facts deny that picture. But in my opinion, an even wider presupposition plays a role here, that secret services in general have hardly any influence on the flow of history. I analyse this issue more carefully while addressing accusations of believing in a conspiracy theory of history faced by the lustration supporters. The lustration opponents claimed that the services were empowered to make anyone an agent even without his or her knowledge. This statement had great persuasive power. In my opinion it was one of the mightiest arguments used against lustration, especially since quite often it was associated with the slogan, “You could be an agent, too.”27 That was a strategy aimed at making a large part of the newspaper reading public, which was at that time indifferent to the issue, interested or maybe even scared. That some innocent people could be unjustly accused of being secret agents takes us to the third line of anti-lustration argument. I call this line a moral one. It is based on the general idea that the lustration conducted by Olszewski’s government is the posthumous revenge that the Communist secret services took on the former opposition. It was regarded as a bitter paradox of history that in establishing the guilt of former members of the opposition, testimony prepared by officers of the Communist secret services was about to be treated as trustworthy. Lustration alone was sometimes treated as a humiliating procedure. Although those were the bones of the moral line there are three other issues within it that should be mentioned. The first is the problem of the government’s intentions in supporting lustration. Opponents suggested that it had been dictated by mere vindictiveness or that it was supposed to divert attention from the government’s mistakes and help it to survive the political struggle. The second issue is the question of responsibility and method of punishment. Opponents of lustration saw here an important difference between the supporting parties, between those who were ready to harm some innocent people only to get all agents and those who claimed that if even a single individual is accused unfairly, lustration is not worth doing. In this context, lustration supporters were sometimes accused of fanatic adherence to the idea of decommunisation. The third issue within the moral line of argumentation can be called “accusing the accusers.” The aim was to deprive the supporters of lustration of the moral right to carry it out. But it is also interesting for a further reason. Quite often former opposition members were accused of lack of courage or even of cooperating with the Communist secret services. I would interpret this accusation as an attempt to exclude the lustration supporters from the group that can legitimately bring to book those responsible for Communist crimes and undercover agents of the secret service.

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Let me call attention to the presuppositions hidden in moral argumentation. If ontological argumentation revealed some assumptions about social reality, then moral argumentation exposes presuppositions about lustration supporters. Here one approaches a kind of contradiction. They are viewed as people merely following their political interests; and they are accused of being zealots. This argumentation reveals also the individualist implications of the vision of cognitive processes supported by anti-lustration parties. If every deed has to be evaluated and relativized to its own context then there can be no permission for sacrificing anyone in the name of abstract or historical justice. I call the fourth and last line of the anti-lustration argument a pragmatist one: though it is possible to carry out lustration it is not worth doing. The social and political costs of lustration are considered much higher than expected benefits. This line of argument splits into two more specific ones. The predominant one states that there are many more important political and economic issues to be addressed and solved than lustration. The politicians and journalists using this argument pointed especially at Poland’s difficult economic situation. Their statements reveal two presuppositions––a general and a more specific one. The first states that the economy is the most important determinant of a country’s well being, while the latter states that the postnomenklatura network does not affect the Polish economy. The conviction that the economy holds the leading role probably originates from both Marxist and technocratic roots, while the second stems from a particular vision of the collapse of communism in Poland. It views Polish reforms as founded on a broad compromise between the opposition and the Party and assumes that the success of these reforms still depends on the actuality of this agreement. Based on this belief it was reasoned that instead of bringing to account those responsible for Communist crimes one should seek national reconciliation. The second line of the pragmatist argument stresses more specific issues. It claims that lustration would paralyze the country’s administration and army. This line is based on two interwoven presuppositions. First, it infers that there are so many people involved in the post-nomenklatura network that they cannot be withdrawn from the state apparatus without jeopardizing its ability to act effectively. This implies an assumption similar to that mentioned above, that the existence of this network does not affect the political and economic transition in Poland. That was the last line of argumentation aiming at abandoning any attempts at lustration and decommunisation. I analyzed them in search of hidden presuppositions of the broader perspective underlying the anti-lustration parties’ actions and utterances. Let me summarize by listing those I have found. They are: (1) that social reality should be rather understood than explained and every fact must be evaluated in its own context;

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(2) that everybody who has ever lived in Communist Poland must have somehow, directly or indirectly, participated in the system and there can be no easy distinction made between those responsible and not responsible for it; (3) strong individualism and contextualism as far as the problem of judging the past is concerned; (4) that secret services in general have little influence on history and the Polish ones in particular were a weak and inefficient administrative apparatus; (5) that priority should be given to economic reform and to reaching social integration and reconciliation as far as the transition is concerned; (6) that even if a post-nomenklatura network exists it does not harm the economic and political situation of Poland; (7) that the Polish transition was a pacted one and the future of Polish reforms still depends on maintaining the agreement negotiated during Round Table talks. The contents of a perspective do not guarantee that it will become the predominant one or that it will be conceived as the “true” one. Since Bruno Latour states that “truth happens to the idea,” I have to consider how it happened to this perspective. That is a question of the power relations within two relevant fields, and of the rhetoric used to put this perspective to work. Let me address those two problems. Power relations in the field of the Polish press are not very complicated. There were three main newspapers (Gazeta Wyborcza, Życie Warszawy, Trybuna) and four weeklies (Polityka, Wprost, Nie, Tygodnik Powszechny) with anti-lustration views in spring 1992. At the same time one newspaper (Nowy Świat) and one weekly (Spotkania) supported lustration. It is worth mentioning here that within a year after June 1992 both went bankrupt. In 1992 the pro-lustration newspaper had an audience of about 1.5% of the population and the biggest anti-lustration paper, Gazeta Wyborcza, 25.3% (for other antilustration titles the numbers are: Życie Warszaw, 4.5%; Trybuna, 3.1%). In the group of weeklies the disproportion is not so huge: the pro-lustration weekly was read by approximately 1.4% of the population and the most popular antilustration weekly, Nie, by 9.6% (for other weeklies the numbers are: Wprost, 6.0%; Polityka, 5.1%; Tygodnik Powszechny, 0.5%).28 The situation in the political field was much more complicated. The only player that was pro-lustration was the government, but its position in the Parliament consisting of twenty-nine parties was very unstable. The government held office from December 1991 and from the outset was losing parliamentary support. The President, whose power against a fragmented Parliament was rising, did not support the government. Although formally the government dominated the political field its power of action was constrained even more strongly.

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As for anti-lustration rhetoric, four of its most used phrases were the metaphors of Pandora’s box and the sickness of hatred, accusations of a conspiracy theory of history, and Bolshevist methods of ruling. I found thirteen articles using or invoking the metaphor of “Pandora’s box” or “Pandora’s files.”29 This metaphor draws on the pragmatist argument. Pandora’s box was filled with sicknesses so it should have been kept closed for the common good. This association was used only at the beginning of the intense lustration debate during the first days of June 1992 and was soon replaced by another one, the powerful word “hatred.” There was a double application of it. It was used alone to describe the motivation of the lustration supporters or it was used within the metaphor of the sickness of hatred. I found twenty articles referring to this association.30 It supported the moral line of argument in depicting supporters of lustration as filled with hatred and deprived of the right to bring to account those responsible for Communist crimes. But it also supported the accusation that supporters of lustration were aiming merely at revenge on their political adversaries. The most complicated rhetoric invoked the accusation of Bolshevist or in general revolutionary methods of ruling. It had several versions. The prevailing one compared the lustration supporters to the former Communist authorities or the Bolshevist party during the revolution. I found twenty-eight articles with such comparisons.31 Among these articles there were some tracing similarities between the lustration and the anti-Semitic campaign of 1968. Some journalists made a comparison with the Jacobins. This must have been considered very effective as it was so often used. First, it brought to mind the times of revolution: periods of riots, disorder, and anarchy. This tallied with rhetoric of the hell predicted by Kuroń as the consequence of lustration.32 But it also equates the lustration supporters with those who were supposed to be lustrated. Finally, it excludes the supporters from the group that can legitimately invoke “Solidarity roots.” These comparisons are acts of exclusion from the tradition. One other kind of rhetoric accuses the lustration supporters of believing in a conspiracy theory of history. There are eighteen articles containing such allegations.33 The accusation equates any utterances invoking the secret services with the absurd idea that conspiracies are the mainspring of the history. Those who seek agents among members of Parliament are foolish. Consequently any attempts to draw public attention to the lustration problem are ridiculed. This rhetoric quite often suggests that supporters of lustration are actually insane and conspiracy theory is treated as a proof of that. As Jerzy Pomianowski writes, “It is right to consider the conspiracy theory of history as a sign of mental illness,”34 and this phrase echoes the metaphor of the sickness of hatred. But this rhetoric is also strongly connected with the vision of the 1989 breakthrough in which the secret services are denied any role. We can ask now, what is the purpose of these phrases? In my opinion, first, they are supposed to prepare the ground for further argumentation. They

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are to make people sensitive to some arguments and indifferent to others. Just like perspectives, “the words we use cause us to make assumptions and value judgments about what we are seeing (and not seeing).” And we can say this about words only because perspectives “are really interrelated sets of words used to order physical reality.”35 But the above-mentioned role is especially important in the very beginning of the struggle for symbolic domination in this situation. Afterwards, they become discursive tokens used during the game of reality construction. The slogans can evoke lines of argument and soon they replace them. Some words stabilize connections between those who speak and those who listen. But sometimes they also justify the lack of any disposition to talk. If our interlocutors are mad with hatred or revenge why should we listen to them? This denial of someone’s right to be listened to amounts to internal exclusion. One is being pushed out of a dominant discourse and redefined as a member of a marginal one. During the lustration debate there were also attempts aiming at external exclusion of the lustration supporters. They are most apparent in what I call medicalization. Some journalists were using medical expressions to depict and explain the behavior and views of the lustration supporters. In descriptions of the parliamentary debates and the lustration action alone we can find words such as: “crazy,” “craziness,” “madness,” “aberration,” “lustration fever,” and “lustration plague.” I must recall here again the already mentioned metaphor of the sickness of hatred. It is only a metaphor but in this context Kuroń said: “A man who hates is sick and as in the case of every other sickness he has to protect himself.”36 And to Jerzy Sosnowski the behavior of the politicians conducting lustration is “a proof of aberration which resembles to a great extent clinical descriptions of paranoia.”37 These expressions can be understood as emotional statements during the climax of a political struggle. I would like to draw attention to two other examples, two interviews. The first was given by Maria Szyszkowska38 who at one time was Chair of the Philosophy of Politics in the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the second by Zdzisław Bizoń39 who was director of the Psychiatric Clinic in Warsaw. In both articles we can find suggestions that part of the Polish political class needs psychiatric treatment. In the interview with Bizoń the conspiracy theory of history and searching for agents everywhere are mentioned as typical signs of paranoid behaviour. The suggestion is made that politicians trying to run lustration should be treated as psychiatric cases instead of serious interlocutors. In the given context, these statements are an attempt to exclude lustration supporters from the political field and place them in the medical one. That would mean that they are not merely unlistened to but that they are deprived of the right to talk within the political field. They become subjects of medical treatment. This attempt was not a successful one. Lustration supporters were not excluded from the political field, they were only pushed out of legitimized discourse. Why? In my opinion, the decisive role here was played by the

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institutional context. The lustration supporters were members of Parliament and the authority of Parliament saved them from being treated as mentally ill. Some role could also have been played by public opinion polls showing that in 1992 a majority supported lustration. Let me summarize my analysis. I do not profess to know what the truth was or who was right in this conflict. I do not even believe that the full truth can be established. What I am sure of is that with different power relations among political and press members different testimonies would be considered as factual. We would live in a social reality shaped by completely different perspectives. That currently prevailing excludes particular knowledge about the mechanisms of the Communist state or closes some channels of distribution of knowledge. I do not rule out the possibility that some day historians will attain knowledge about how the Communist secret services operated against the opposition, but we will not in the meantime have a wide public debate about the Communist past. I believe that national reconciliation can be reached only through such a debate. And since exclusion processes break communication, revealing them and their roots can contribute to reestablishing dialogue. NOTES 1. Cf. Karl Mannheim, “Competition as Cultural Phenomenon,” Knowledge and Politics: The Sociology of Knowledge Dispute, ed. Volker Meja and Nico Stehr (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1990), p. 55. 2. Dick Pels, “Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of Knowledge: Toward a New Agenda,” Sociological Theory, 14:1 (1996), pp. 30–48. 3. Cf. Ibid., p. 35; cf. also, Hans Herbert Kögler, “Alienation as Epistemological Source: Reflexivity and Social Background after Mannheim and Bourdieu,” Social Epistemology, 11:2 (1997), pp. 141–164. 4. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (London: SAGE Publications, Ltd., 1977), p. 15. 5. Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. xxv; cf. also, Barry Barnes, David Bloor, and John Henry, Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis (London: Athlone, 1996), p. 58. 6. See Karl Mannheim, “Historicism,” Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1972), p. 105; cf. also, Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1968), p. 266. 7. Mannheim, “Competition,” p. 55; cf. also, Mannheim, Ideology, p. 124. 8. Ibid., pp. 149–150. 9. Mannheim, “Competition,” p. 57. 10. Cf. Mannheim, Ideology, p. 20. 11. Ibid., pp. 4, 19, 26. 12. Ibid., p. 19; cf. Max Scheler, Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1980), p. 67; cf. also Shapin, A Social History and

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Harry Collins, Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice (London: SAGE Publications, Ltd., 1985), p. 5. 13. Shapin, Social History, p. 42. 14. Cf. Mannheim, “Competition,” p. 59. 15. Barnes, Bloor, and Henry, Scientific Knowledge, chapters 2 and 6. 16. Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem: What Everyone Should Know about Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), chapters 1 and 4. 17. Bruno Latour, The Pasteurisation of France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 28; cf. also, Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987). 18. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason,” Social Science Information, 14:6 (1975), p. 19. 19. Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction, p. 18. 20. Harry Collins, “An Empirical Programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge,” Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science, ed. Karin D. Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay (London: SAGE Publications, Ltd., 1983); Collins, Changing Order; cf. also, Jonathan Potter, Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction (London: SAGE Publications, Ltd., 1996), pp. 25– 34. 21. Stephan Fuchs, “The New Wars of Truth: Conflicts over Science Studies as Differential Modes of Observation,” Social Studies Information, 35:2 (1996). 22. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, “Przeszłość odkreślamy grubą kreską. Przemówienie Tadeusza Mazowieckiego w Sejmie,” Gazeta Wyborcza (25–27 August 1989), p. 3. 23. Krzysztof Kozłowski, “Teczki pełne raportów,” interviewed by Jerzy Jachowicz, Gazeta Wyborcza (11 April 1990), p. 3. 24. Jan Olszewski, “Czy przełamiemy ten kryzys?” Wokanda (14 April 1991), p. 2. 25. Cf. Józef Tischner, “Votum separatum,” interviewed by Wiesław Kot and Bogusław Mazur, Wprost (14 June 1992), pp. 13–14; Adam Michnik, “Gorąca historia dekomunizacji,” Gazeta Wyborcza (03 August 1992), p. 9; Aleksander Małachowski, “Lekcja odwetu,” Wprost, (20 September 1992), pp. 13–14. 26. Jacek Kuroń, “Staroświeckie słowo honor,” Gazeta Wyborcza (25 January 1993), p. 15. 27. Edward Krzemień, “Tajemnice biura C,” Gazeta Wyborcza (14 May 1991), p. 5. 28. All numbers taken from “Zmiany w czytelnictwie prasy 1993 – zmierzch optymizmu?” poll results by Ośrodek Badań Prasoznawczych Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego prepared by Ryszard Filas, Zeszyty Prasoznawcze, no. 1–2 (1994), pp. 181– 191; “Zmiany w czytelnictwie prasy w latach 1993–1994; (Czerwiec 1993 – czerwiec 1994),” Zeszyty Prasoznawcze, no. 1–2 (1995), pp. 164–174; Ryszard Filas, “Zmiany poczytności gazet i czasopism o zasięgu ogólnopolskim (1989–1992),” Zeszyty Prasoznawcze, no. 1–2 (1992), pp. 55–74; “Czytelnictwo prasy w połowie lat dziewięćdziesiątych: Od czytelnictwa do oglądactwa?” Zeszyty Prasoznawcze, no. 3–4 (1995), pp. 142–153. 29. Cf. Krzysztof Kozłowski, “Teczki Pandory,” interviewed by Ewa Milewicz, Gazeta Wyborcza (29 May 1992), p. 2; Ryszard Holzer, “Upiory przeszłości,” Życie Warszawy (29 May 1992), p. 1; Andrzej Jagodziński, “Czechosłowacka przestroga,”

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Gazeta Wyborcza (29 May 1992), p. 2; Piotr Pacewicz, “Odejście w niesławie,” Gazeta Wyborcza (06–07 June 1992), p. 3; Michnik, “Wszystko to było jak czarny sen,” Gazeta Wyborcza (06–07 June 1992), p. 24; M. J., “Otwarto puszkę Pandory,” Życie Warszawy (06–07 June 1992), p. 2; Agnieszka Sowa, “Po premierze?” Wprost (07 June 1992), pp. 23–24; Wojciech Maziarski, “Co tu się stało?” Gazeta Wyborcza (13–14 June 1992), p. 10; Piotr Pytlakowski, “Zemsta tajnych teczek,” Przegląd Tygodniowy (14 June 1992), pp. 1, 5; Piotr Bratkowski, “Apetyt na rodziców,” Gazeta Wyborcza (27–28 June 1992), p. 11; Antoni Macierewicz, “Minister bez teczek,” interviewed by Agnieszka Sowa, Wprost (28 June 1992), pp. 18–19; Janusz Korwin-Mikke, “Lustracja,” Wprost (28 June 1992), p. 77; Wiktor Osiatyński, “Dekomunizacja, czyli szansa,” Gazeta Wyborcza (04–05 July 1992), pp. 8–9. 30. Cf. Michnik, “O co idzie w tych wyborach,” Gazeta Wyborcza (25 October 1991), p. 5; polit, “Teczki zostały rzucone,” Gazeta Wyborcza (05 June 1992), p. 2; Jacek Bocheński and Michał Głowiński, “Co dalej, narodzie?” Gazeta Wyborcza (08 June 1992), p. 11; Małachowski, “Zabawa w piegi,” Życie Warszawy (08 June 1992), p. 3; Stanisław Stomma and Marta Fik, “Okrutna zabawa,” Gazeta Wyborcza (09 June 1992), p. 14; Andrzej Osęka, “Godzina nienawiści,” Gazeta Wyborcza (11 June 1992), pp. 10–11; Helena Zaworska, “Lustracyjna historia literatury,” Gazeta Wyborcza (12 June 1992), p. 9; Aleksander Wieczorkowski, “Naga twarz władzy,” Życie Warszawy (12 June 1992), p. 3; Jerzy Sosnowski, “Boni, brednie i dranie,” Gazeta Wyborcza (20–21 June 1992), p. 13; Małachowski, “Stan po utracie rozumu,” Życie Warszawy (22 June 1992), p. 3; Andrzej Osęka, “Wsłuchani w ryk,” Gazeta Wyborcza (22 June 1992), p. 11; Bogusław Mazur, “Kapłani nienawiści,” Wprost (28 June 1992), p. 16– 17; Osiatyński, “Dekomunizacja”; Roman Graczyk, “Solidarność jest naga,” Gazeta Wyborcza (05 August 1992), p. 11; CIS, “Nie ma tego złego . . . ,” Trybuna (09 September 1992), p. 3; Marek Heyza, “Ciężka choroba nienawiści,” Gazeta Pomorska (11 September 1992), p. 3; Zbigniew Bujak, “Sezonowa siła władzy,” interviewed by Aleksander Chećko, Polityka (12 September 1992), p. 3; Małachowski, “Lekcja’; JK, “255 tysięcy nabojów,” Nie (19 November 1992), p. 2; Kuroń, “Staroświeckie.” 31. Cf. Artur Domosławski and Dominika Wielowieyska, “Rząd pada?” Gazeta Wyborcza (04 June 1992), p. 3; Michnik, “Wszystko”; Bocheński and Głowiński, “Co”; Małachowski, “Zabawa”; Michnik, “Wobec oszczerstwa,” Gazeta Wyborcza (13–14 June 1992), p. 1; Andrzej Romanowski, “Początek raz jeszcze,” Tygodnik Powszechny (14 June 1992), pp. 1, 6; Tischner, “Votum”; Małachowski, “Rokosz białego betonu,” Życie Warszawy (15 June 1992), p. 3; Tischner, “Wyborco! To twoje dzieło,” Gazeta Wyborcza (17–18 June 1992), p. 4; Michnik, “Bolek, Lolek i Zapalniczka,” Gazeta Wyborcza (17–18 June 1992), p. 1; Sosnowski, “Boni”; Ryszard Marek Groński, “Barykady komuny,” Polityka (20 June 1992), p. 15; Andrzej Siciński, “Do redakcji,” Rzeczpospolita (20–21 June 1992), p. 2; Andzrej Szczypiorski, “Z notatek,” Życie Warszawy (24 June 1992), p. 3; Teresa Bogucka, “Obraza rozumu,” Gazeta Wyborcza (26 June 1992), p. 10–11; Piotr Bratkowski, “Apetyt”; Ewa Szemplińska, “Gabinet cieni,” Wprost (12 July 1992), pp. 26–27; Michnik, “Gorąca”; Graczyk, “Solidarność”; Zofia Radzikowska, “Senacki projekt do kosza!” Tygodnik Powszechny (09 August 1992), p. 5; Karol Modzelewski, “Dyktatura ciemniaków,” Gazeta Wyborcza (04 September 1992), pp. 12–13; Wojciech Załuska and Dominika Wielowieyska, “Gdzie lustracji sześć . . . ,” Gazeta Wyborcza (07 September 1992), p. 3; Heyza, “Ciężka”; Bujak, “Sezonowa”; Małachowski, “Lekcja”; Tischner, “Nie wiem, jak to

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nazwać,” Tygodnik Powszechny (27 September 1992), p. 2; JK, “255 tysięcy”; TES, “Godzą w podstawowe prawa i wolności,” Gazeta Pomorska (09 January 1993), p. 4. 32. Jacek Kuroń, “Lustracja i co dalej?” Gazeta Wyborcza (02 June 1992), p. 14. 33. Cf. Dariusz Fikus, “Rekomunizacja – nowe hasło,” Rzeczpospolita, (27–28 June 1992), Saturday Magazine “Zawsze w sobotę,” p. 1; Michnik, “Wszystko”; Groński, “Jeśli do tego dojdzie,” Polityka (06 June 1992), p. 15; Wieczorkowski, “Naga”; Groński, “Grzebać będziemy ryczałtem,” Polityka (13 June 1992), p. 15; Alina Grabowska, “Syndrom teczki,” Życie Warszawy (17–18 June 1992), p. 3; Wieczorkowski, “Spisek tysiąclecia,” Życie Warszawy (19 June 1992), p. 3.; Małachowski, “Stan”; Szczypiorski, “Z notatek”; Bogucka, “Obraza”; Piotr Bratkowski, “Apetyt”; Mazur, “Kapłani”; “Lustracjo-inkwizycja,” Trybuna (08 July 1992), p. 3; Jerzy Pomianowski, “Prałat Bierut i spółka,” Wprost (12 July 1992), pp. 66–67; Graczyk, “Solidarność”; Ernest Skalski, “Państwo prawa czy sprawiedliwości?” Gazeta Wyborcza (08–09 August 1992), p. 8; Zaworska, “Lustracyjna.” 34. Pomianowski, “Prałat.” 35. Joel Charon, Symbolic Interactionism: An Introduction, an Interpretation, an Integration (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1979), p. 3. 36. Kuroń, “Staroświeckie,” cf. Bocheński and Głowiński, “Co dalej.” 37. Sosnowski, “Boni.” 38. Maria Szyszkowska, “Polityczny Sancho Pansa,” Rzeczpospolita (27–28 June 1992), Saturday Magazine “Zawsze w sobotę,” p. 1. 39. Zdzisław Bizoń, “Poli-paranoi-tyka,” interviewed by Katarzyna Nazarewicz, Wprost (12 July 1992), pp. 28–29.

Part Eight AMERICAN PHILOSPHICAL CONCEPTIONS: IMPLICATIONS FOR DEMOCRATIZATION

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Fifteen JOSIAH ROYCE’S PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY AS A BASIS FOR DEMOCRATIC ETHICS Richard P. Mullin Josiah Royce’s proposal that loyalty can serve as the basis for morality deserves a close look at the end of the twentieth century. His idea, which requires “loyalty to loyalty,” rises above any narrow partisanship and requires devotion only to causes that promote loyalty throughout the human community. Royce’s idea of community avoids the mirrored evils of individualism and collectivism and provides a theoretical foundation for democratic ethics. Royce is concrete enough to evoke the spiritual richness of Christianity and universal enough to appeal to persons of other religions or no religion. After arguing the timeliness of Royce’s idea, I show that it can be presented free of metaphysical obscurity to practical men and women as we enter the new millennium. 1. Josiah Royce’s Idea of Loyalty In his 1907 book, The Philosophy of Loyalty, Royce took on the task of establishing the basis for the whole of morality. He considered this to be the crucial need of his time since religion and science do not have any worth unless a genuine standard by which to measure their worth exists. Royce proposed loyalty as the ultimate standard. His thesis as stated in the opening chapter is: “In loyalty, when loyalty is properly defined, is the fulfillment of the whole moral law.”1 This paper will focus on Royce’s ethical thinking as expressed in The Philosophy of Loyalty. The task of that book is to give the proper definition of loyalty and then to show that it can serve as the basis and the fulfillment of morality. Royce began his treatment of loyalty with a preliminary definition and, by interpreting what the word means in its real usage, developed it to the point where he thought it could satisfactorily serve as a foundation for morality. The preliminary definition is “the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion to a cause.”2 The modifiers, “willing, practical, and thoroughgoing” are packed with meaning. Willing: your cause must be something that you choose instead of something imposed on you or something that you were born into without giving it personal consideration and choice. Practical: it is something that you act on instead of something that you merely feel strongly about. Thoroughgoing: it must be a wholehearted commitment instead of a casual interest. The key part of the definition is that it must be devotion to a cause.

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Royce meant that your cause must be something outside of yourself. It must be something larger than any individual and must have value apart from any one follower. Consequently, it must be social in that you, as a loyal person, must have potential fellow servants of the cause. The social nature of loyalty presented immediate problems for individualists in Royce’s day, just as it does today. Royce anticipated this objection by exposing the connection between individuality and loyalty to show that they are not incompatible. In his 1899 lectures, The World and the Individual, Royce contended that individuality is not something given, but a task that each person needs to accomplish.3 By nature we are not individuals. Each human being is an instance of a biological and sociological type and is replaceable by other people of the same type. We are victims of our biological and social ancestry, “a meeting place of changing and conflicting impulses.” A person can become an individual only by a conscious act of choosing a life plan. The life plan rescues the person from natural and social determinism to take a unique place in the community of humans. The cause provides the object of the choice and the plan. There is no real individuality without loyalty. To be an individual in Royce’s sense of the term is to be irreplaceable and this requires a cause. Some readers might object that this is Royce’s idiosyncratic stipulation. But anyone who asserts individualism as a standard is concerned with uniqueness. To affirm that a person ought to act as an individual and be treated as an individual is an affirmation of uniqueness and a denunciation of standardization. A person can achieve uniqueness only in relation to other persons. To rise beyond biological and social determinism and become individuals, people need to affirm something greater that governs their lives. It takes a cause beyond oneself to do this. An individual must express loyalty to some cause. For some, the cause that enables them to become individuals is individuality itself. Royce pointed out that much of the objection to the concept of loyalty is inspired by a loyalty to individuality. Because loyalty is a necessary condition for both individuality and community, it is a prerequisite for any other good. For this reason, the greatest good that we can do for any person is to promote their loyalty. The greatest harm to any person is to destroy their loyalty. Loyal people must be loyal to their chosen cause and must be loyal to loyalty itself. Loyalty to loyalty is the cardinal virtue. We each need to find a cause to which we can be loyal, but it cannot be a cause that destroys the legitimate object of someone else’s loyalty. This is the answer to the critics who argued that Royce’s philosophy would condone loyalty to an oppressive regime or a criminal gang. Democracy cannot survive without a substantial portion of citizens who are loyal to democratic values. Loyalty to loyalty is the basis for all of the qualities which we rightly recognize as democratic virtues. Truthfulness, justice, benevolence, and courtesy are ways in which we express our loyalty to other persons and to the common ties that connect us and without which we

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could not survive as democratic societies. As an example, Royce observed about business ethics in a free economy: In the commercial world, honesty in business is a service not merely and not mainly to the others who are parties to the single transaction in which at any one time this faithfulness is shown. The single act of business fidelity is an act of loyalty to that general confidence of man in man upon which the whole fabric of business rests.4 2. The American Problem Royce saw some American problems for loyalty which sound very timely in the United States ninety years later. How these might apply to countries that have recently emerged from Socialism is an interesting question. But the analysis will first deal with the situation in the United States. In Royce’s time and in ours, the national government does not inspire much passion for loyalty. From our perspective in history we can note that there was some such passion during the two World Wars and during the Cold War. But it does not appear likely that any politician could stir the hearts of the American people today by appealing to loyalty to the federal government. This could change if there were a credible enemy to threaten the survival of the government. The enemy could be real or imaginary, foreign or domestic. But at present, the degree of sophisticated cynicism is such that Royce’s philosophy of loyalty does not readily resonate on first hearing. His work met the same problem in his time that it would in ours. In explaining the problem facing America, Royce cited Hegel’s description of the Roman Empire and the absolute monarchies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe. Hegel called this “the spirit estranged from itself.”5 This meant that the social reality appeared foreign to the people who made it up. This observation applies even more pointedly to most of the citizens of twentieth century socialist states. The people did not see the society as their own; they did not feel at home with it. It loomed as a force from outside controlling their lives. Applying this to the government in the contemporary United States, even when we see it as beneficial, it is impersonal and does not awaken a sense of loyalty. This is true of both the economic system of capitalism and the government. Economic forces are seen as if they were forces of nature. As Royce described the economic forces of his day: “They excite our loyalty as little as do the trade winds or the blizzard.”6 This presents a formidable if not insurmountable problem for my argument that Royce’s philosophy of loyalty is a viable basis for contemporary ethical theory in the United States, and perhaps an even larger problem for post-totalitarian societies. The lack of loyalty that most Americans feel toward their government may result from the impression that the government is secure instead of vulnerable and in need of intense support. Loyalty is more at-

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tractive as an ideal in times of great distress. Royce contended that the great teachers of loyalty were imagination and grief. In times of defeat and loss, loyal persons preserve the beloved cause in their imagination. They grieve over the loss and the gap between the ideal that they long for and the reality in which the ideal is not present. Royce’s examples of national loyalty were Poland and Ireland, two nations that observers in his time perceived as lost causes, although today, fortunately, both are alive and independent. 3. The Contemporary Problem The situation in the United States today is not so tragic as was the plight of Poland and Ireland in Royce’s time. But a sense of loss exists. The divisions along the lines of race, class, and ideology, and the general centrifugal disintegration are painful to anyone who believes that America means, or ought to mean something much better than what they are presently experiencing. This gap between the ideal and the everyday reality produces a longing and can inspire the imagination to create what ought to be whether it ever was that way or not. Loyalty is the ability to sustain this ideal and to work vigorously for its embodiment in contemporary life. The danger is that loyalty emerges as a partisanship that fuels the flame of disintegration. This would happen if loyalty became loyalty to a part at the expense of the whole. The fear of partisanship makes Royce’s idea of loyalty appear to be extremely difficult to accept. Loyalty appears to be a big part of the problem as it evokes images of everything from street gangs to private militias. But the solution to the problem, philosophically, is the idea of loyalty to loyalty. For example, no one could serve the cause of the United States of America with an exclusive loyalty to race, class, or ideology. Such exclusiveness would be disloyal to the idea of the republic. An exclusive loyalty is disloyal to loyalty if it destroys the loyalty of its opponent. Loyalty to loyalty in the United States has to mean loyalty to the republic. This means loyalty to the notion that diverse groups and individuals can live together in equality and mutual respect, and where we do not need a Hobbesian overwhelming force to secure the peace. Loyalty to loyalty cannot be a bare longing for a non-existing abstraction. It has to be lived for and worked for in the lives of the loyal. Royce thought that we could compensate for the lack of loyalty to the national government by a reinterpretation of provincialism, a newer and wiser provincialism. The term “provincialism” poses a communication problem for us since the term has no meaning except a pejorative one in the United States today. I think that Royce’s meaning can best be conveyed by interpreting provincialism to mean what we call regionalism. Writing while the American Civil War was still a vivid memory, Royce made it clear that he wanted to avoid the “old Sectionalism.” By a “newer and wiser provincialism” he meant:

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the sort of provincialism that makes people want to idealize, to adorn, to ennoble, to educate their province, to hold sacred its traditions, to honor its worthy dead, to support and multiply its public possessions. 7 The regional loyalties mediate between the individual and the nation, thereby overcoming alienation, and increase the strength of the nation through enrichment and diversification. 4. The Practicality of Roycean Loyalty Today, there are political leaders across the spectrum who are trying to achieve the goals that Royce advocated. This includes politicians and others who call themselves “Communitarians,” but is not limited to them. A sense of family, a sense of obligation, a sense of pride of place all require loyalty to loyalty and all are teachers of loyalty. Granted, much of the American population is mobile and does not have a lifetime commitment to a place. The chosen object of loyalty could be the place where the person lives. To paraphrase the song: “If I cannot live in the place I love, I can love the place where I live.” In the context of loyalty to loyalty, regionalism would mean that I devote myself to my own region, however I define it, with the hope that the other regions in the nation have equally devoted people. If I moved to another region I would become one of them. The larger object of the regional loyalty is national loyalty. But if it were a loyalty to loyalty, the nation would cherish and foster a similar regional loyalty in every other nation when possible. It would acknowledge that the greatest moral good that one person or community can do for another is to promote their loyalty, and the worst thing is to destroy it. This would also apply to national communities. What of the feasibility of this strong sense of unity? Royce’s philosophy is not starry-eyed, nor is it tragically defeatist. It demands rigorous action. In response to William James’s facetious dismissal of idealism, Royce insisted that he was not looking for a “moral holiday.” Loyalty provides the motivation to work strenuously for the cause of unity. For example Royce contended that the whole process of seeking truth implies that the world possesses a rational and spiritual unity. Any loyalty, including the loyalty of two lovers to their love, presupposes a unity beyond the experience of any individual in isolation but comes into view whenever two or more persons share a beloved cause to which they are loyal. He credits James with helping him to discover that “all truth seeking is practical and that a purely theoretical truth that would not guide any practical activity is a barren absurdity.”8 Truth seeking has an ethical purpose: as far as possible, to fulfill the eternal unity in our temporal world. Royce did not claim that the eternal exists by itself and that the temporal tries to imitate it. In Royce’s view the temporal strivings and events are part of

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the eternal whole. Our actions are part of the process of winning the unity that we all want and need. If we do not do our deed, that deed will go undone and be missed. That is why Royce contended that his view called for intense action instead of a moral holiday. Defining loyalty in the light of his metaphysical interpretations, Royce concluded: “Loyalty is the will to manifest, so far as is possible, the Eternal, that is, the conscious and superhuman unity of life, in the form of the acts of an individual Self.” 9 He contended that this definition applies to loyalty in the ordinary sense of loyalty to a cause (provided it includes loyalty to loyalty) and to art and science. Science, like all truth-seeking, is an attempt to find the connection between the fragmentary bits of experience. Art is also a teacher of loyalty. Art supports loyalty whenever it associates our cause with beautiful objects . . . by showing us any form of the beautiful it portrays to us that very sort of learning and unity that loyalty ceaselessly endeavors to bring to life.10 Royce’s philosophical faith is that in spite of the fragmentary and transitory nature of our experience, there is an invisible but real unity and goodness in the life-world. Our ethical task and our only way to become a self is to develop and live a life-plan that enables us to contribute to the realization of the unity. The commitment to this over-arching ideal is loyalty. The question is whether Royce has anything to say to those who do not share his metaphysical idealism. Historically, Royce had little impact on later philosophy, in large part because American thinkers saw his views as esoteric and dependent on a discredited idealism. Among other things, he sounded too German.11 His view of truth stands in contrast to that of James. The comparison between Royce and James’s better known theory is useful in clarifying Royce’s meaning. James believed that we can pursue the good and the true in part while facing that something will inevitably be lost. We can strive to do good and seek truth without achieving the salvation of the world. We can even seek the salvation of the world in the sense of preserving some ideals while recognizing that some ideals will be lost and that there may not be a final unity. Truth consists of believing propositions that are true in the sense of leading to a satisfactory relationship with reality. Royce contended that James’s theory of truth presupposed a unity. Royce is not convincing on this point. James did not seek truth as if it were a quality of the universe as Royce’s invisible but real unity. James saw truth only as a quality of some beliefs, those that get us in touch with some aspect of reality no matter how fragmentary and fleeting that bit of reality is. James’s notion of truth did not imply a coherence in which each true proposition is connected to all of the rest. James hoped for a unity, an intellectual re-

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public in which things were connected. But he saw this as a task whose outcome was not guaranteed by an eternal mind and will. Royce was undeterred in making his argument. He did not ignore James’s attack or succumb to it. In his 1885 book, Religious Aspects of Philosophy, Royce had argued that the possibility of error requires an eternal truth. He addressed James’s position using another Jamesian notion, in a new definition of loyalty. “Loyalty is the Will to Believe in something eternal, and to express that belief in the practical life of a human being.”12 This argument ought to carry some weight with anyone who accepts the idea of the right to believe. The belief in the Eternal is momentous in that it can determine whether persons can unify their own lives through loyalty to the ultimate cause of unity. It is forced in that a person must make this choice or not. Is it a live option? This question must be answered subjectively. It was probably not a live option for James since he was terrified of the idea of an Absolute and believed it was not necessary for ethics or religion. Likewise, to anyone committed to an atheistic and/or materialistic view of reality it is not a live option. To anyone who believes in an ideal realm in any sense, religious or not, or for a genuine agnostic, the viability of the option should be possible. What are the options for the contemporary reader of Royce? There are three main possibilities. First, reject Royce as most of the history of the twentieth century has done and go on to other things. Second, recognize that perhaps he was correct and live and think in accord with his tenets. Third, suspect that he is probably wrong, too good to be true, but commit to a sense of loyalty as if he were right. This would be in accord with James’s conclusion at the end of the Will to Believe, “Live for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes.” People who follow either of the latter two paths would live to create a unity in their own lives and to live a life that would be good by any ethical standard. If skeptics argue that the second group is wrong because they are betraying truth by living an illusion, this argument begs the question. It assumes that Royce is deluded, not the skeptics. But further, from their point of view, what constitutes an illusion, and by what standard is it wrong to have an illusion? If we are to be loyal to truth, then it is disloyal to live an illusion. The statement that it is wrong to live an illusion implies that we ought to be loyal to truth. The third group, those who are suspicious of the Eternal, but decide to pursue it, live by a tragic sense of life. They are like the airplane crash survivors in John Wild’s allegory, who land in the Himalayas and although they do not believe that they can reach a village on the other side of the ridge, and even doubt that a village exists, nevertheless go out to find it. Royce believed that our search for truth was a search for the “city on a hill.” He might be right and we may yet find it. In this uncertain hour we might concentrate on finding the mountain village. Some may seek it because they believe it is there and can be found with utmost effort. Others may doubt that any salvation exists,

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but recognize that the search for it is still our best option. Persons who choose a cause that incites loyalty to itself and loyalty to loyalty will live by a plan that enables them to become real individuals in real communities. That would constitute a significant improvement in the life of nearly anyone. 5. Conclusion The task of sustaining democracies in the twenty-first century will not be easy for the long established democracies such as the United States or for the nations of Eastern and Central Europe which have recently established or restored democracies. We will be able to call ourselves successful only if our societies are orderly, while individual freedom and dignity is a reality for all of our citizens. In the United States large numbers of citizens, especially in the cities, are marginalized and many middle class citizens are disgruntled and disillusioned. The newer democracies face much more difficult economic problems along with the temptation to revert back to communism or to sink into forms of fascism. The only way to preserve democracy is to educate citizens in loyalty to the ideals of respect for all individuals along with a respect for and loyalty to the communities that we need in order to be individuals. The loyalty must begin with the immediate community of family and neighborhood, and extend to region, to nation and to the international community of humans and to the living earth itself. The insights of Josiah Royce are valuable for this endeavor. This paper did not go into the metaphysical or religious foundations of Royce’s view of the individual and the beloved community which is the basis for loyalty. The main argument is that the need to foster loyalty as the cardinal virtue of democracy stands regardless of a person’s metaphysical and religious positions. Royce did not establish a school of followers and there never were “Royceans” in the sense that there have been Thomists, Marxists, Freudians, or Existentialists, Phenomenologists, Positivists, and so on. But Royce’s insights can energize other philosophers while they remain and grow loyal to their own several methods of doing philosophy. The concept of loyalty to loyalty allows the richest flourishing of diversity and yet provides unity and security for all. Cultivation of and education in loyalty will be a necessary condition for all democratic societies. NOTES 1. Josiah Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995) p. 9, italics in original. 2. Ibid., p. 9. 3. Royce, The World and the Individual, Second Series (New York: Macmillan, 1901), Lecture VI.

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4. Royce, Loyalty, p. 67. 5. Ibid., p. 111. 6. Ibid., p. 113. 7. Ibid., p. 115. 8. Ibid., p. 151. 9. Ibid., p. 166, italics in original. 10. Ibid., p. 135. 11. Frank Oppenheim, Royce’s Mature Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1993), pp. 1–22. 12. Ibid., p. 166, italics in original.

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Sixteen PRAGMATISM AS A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY FOR EMERGING DEMOCRACIES Sandra B. Rosenthal and Rogene A. Buchholz The centrality of the issue of pluralism in the transition from totalitarian regimes to democratic systems occurring throughout the former Soviet Union and its satellite countries is evident in the tensions building within many multiracial or multiethnic societies in the process of this transition. Many of the societies involved, such as the Czech and Slovak republics, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Poland, and the states of what was once Yugoslavia house substantial ethnic and religious minorities, and the problems posed by this pluralism are developing as part and parcel of the transition to liberal democracy. During the totalitarian regimes there was no problem of pluralism, for what dominated was what John Dewey characterizes as “a factitious sense of direct union and communal solidarity,”1 an artificial “moral consensus” which exists through a “unity of beliefs and aims” and is “of the very essence of totalitarian states.”2 As Dewey characterizes the rejection of pluralism inherent in the basic tenets of the totalitarian moral code, it incorporates the belief “that the mass of human beings cannot be trusted to judge and to believe aright in moral matters; that if they are permitted to exercise freedom of mind their policies and decisions will be so swayed by personal and class interests that the final outcome will be division, conflict and disintegration.”3 But the rejection of totalitarian unity and the transition to democracy and a liberated pluralism is bringing in its wake a fragmentation that is part and parcel of a tendency to stifle a sense of community embodying values held in common. American democratic theory is the natural place to look for a solution to this problem, for perhaps nowhere has the entrenchment of democracy coupled with the pervasive problems of multiracial, multiethnic, and multireligious life been more pronounced than in the United States. Yet, the conceptual alternatives provided by American democratic theory, far from offering a pathway for resolving the dilemma of balancing the features of individual freedom and communal solidarity, announce their ultimate irreconcilability. This problem is starkly exhibited in Alasdair MacIntyre’s view that the United States may well be founded on incompatible moral and social ideals: a communitarian vision of a common “telos,” and an ideal of individualism and pluralism. He holds that “We inhabit a kind of polity whose moral order requires

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systematic incoherence in the form of public allegiance to mutually inconsistent sets of principles.”4 At the same time, implicit in the ongoing rhetoric in which proponents of each side portray the other as the enemy of freedom and democracy, there appear to lie the seeds of a reconciliation which cuts beneath the alternatives offered. And perhaps nothing brings home more forcefully the pressing need for such a reconciliation than the turmoil taking place in the formerly Eastern Bloc totalitarian regimes in their transition toward democracy within the context of pluralism. These seeds of a conceptual reconciliation between individual freedom and community solidarity which can serve as an important guide for emerging democracies will be seen below to be implicit in the discussions of Michael Sandel and Mark Sagoff. But the full development of these seeds requires a reconstructed philosophical framework for nourishing them, a framework which classical American pragmatism can offer. The following discussion will first examine the two opposing sides of the debate between communitarianism and individualism as incorporated in the divergent positions of Sandel and Sagoff, and then lay out a pragmatic reconstruction of the self-community relation in which to situate these issues, showing in the process the significance of this pragmatic reconstruction for the transition from totalitarian regimes to pluralistic democratic communities. The supposedly incompatible sets of principles characterized above are rooted ultimately in incompatible understandings of the nature of the self and its relation to the communal order which it inhabits. The self is understood as inherently communal, as implicated in a moral bond which allows for progression toward a common good. This notion of inherently communal selves enmeshed in a common “telos” is supported by a “substantive” political theory which envisions deliberation leading to legislation that incorporates moral features geared to promoting the common good or common conception of the good. On the other hand, the self is understood as inherently independent or atomic, free of encumbrance by any social or moral bonds which it has not itself chosen. The goal of supporting the individualism and pluralism which arises from the notion of independent, unencumbered selves is incorporated in “procedural” political theory which advocates a procedural protection of rights devoid of moral content. Sandel and Sagoff come at the problem from opposite ends of the spectrum, and a brief comparison of their resolutions helps point toward the significance of the pragmatic position. Sandel argues that the individualist or libertarian view of freedom cannot provide for a government that can deliver liberty because “it cannot inspire the self of community and civic engagement that liberty requires.”5 The “thin pluralism” offered by procedural democracy is a problem for pluralism itself, erodes the resources of self-government, and “provides a kind of toleration that fails to cultivate a pluralism of mutual appreciation.”6 He argues that if we are “to revitalize the civic strand of freedom it must find a way to ask . . . how

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the public life of a pluralist society might cultivate in citizens the expansive self-understandings that civic engagement requires.”7 While Sandel stresses the substantive position of deliberation about the common good, he is not seeking a common good or “common telos” as a type of common content which infringes on individualism and pluralism, which erodes freedom or melts down differences. What he advocates as a common good is the pursuit of a political environment which allows for the development and enrichment of those human qualities which promote the flourishing of participatory government. Sandel is ultimately advocating a common good or common telos as the development of citizens who have the qualities needed to engage in dialogue in such a way that society can continually reconstruct itself in a manner that will lead to the thriving of individuals and communities alike through a process of participatory self-government. Coming from the other direction Sagoff presents a strong defense of procedural democracy. Within this context, he accommodates the need for social legislation by making a distinction between social structure and social policy, holding that procedural theory as a comprehensive view applies at the level of social structure, not at the level of social policy. While procedural theorists have views of the good society and social policies needed to implement this, such social policy cannot be inferred from procedural political theory. He holds that the level of policy does not depend on procedural political theory about neutrality and equality but on “aesthetic judgment, moral intuition, human compassion, honesty, intelligence, and common sense.” These qualities provide “a lively, diverse, and hospitable environment in which people can develop their own values and exercise their talent and imagination.”8 It would appear that something is amiss when political theory must be conceptually divorced from social policy. And perhaps this is not the case, for providing an environment which fosters the above qualities that allow for the self-development of individuals is itself a moral content which is conceptually linked to procedural political theory, and it is these human qualities which allow individuals to participate in enriching social legislation. Debate about what will foster these qualities is itself debate about a common good, not about a common good as a content which intrudes upon individual rights and pluralism, but a common good which fosters the ability of individuals to constructively utilize their freedoms. While Sandel argues that true pluralism flourishes only within the context of community, he does not acknowledge that community itself cannot flourish without this pluralism. Conversely, while Sagoff stresses the importance of the development of qualities necessary for responsible freedom and community life, he does not view these qualities as themselves emerging from an inherently communal context. Instead, his view ultimately rests on the intuition of the “bringing together of” theoretically unencumbered selves. While Sandel and Sagoff move from polar opposite starting points to conclusions that are remarkably similar in what they almost advocate, and while each al-

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lows for the other dimension as an outgrowth of its own respective initial starting point, neither views the other pole as intertwined with and part of the very dynamics of the vitality of its own starting point. What can move us beyond this conceptual chasm to a fruitful synthesis is an understanding of these two poles as inherently intertwined dimensions of a single ongoing dynamic process, a reconstructed understanding of the self-community relation. Classical American pragmatism, as the most distinctively American philosophy and the movement whose very fiber is interwoven with the climate of American culture, offers such a reconstructed understanding, one nurtured by its absorption in the problems of democracy, pluralism, libertarianism, and communitarianism which constituted the native soil within which the movement was born. In this way, it houses a unique paradigmatic framework for reconceptualizing a pathway for the ongoing transition from totalitarianism to pluralistic democracy. It is small wonder, then, that pragmatic philosophy is gradually becoming an intellectual center of attention for those actually living through the problems of the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. With the above points in mind, this paper will present, in broad strokes, the understanding of the nature of the individual and community contained within the framework of American pragmatism to show how this philosophical approach provides a strong grounding for a pluralistic community, changing the nature of some of the issues in a way which can provide an impetus for moving beyond the self defeating dichotomies and alternatives discussed above. This approach undercuts the extremes of the individualism-communitarianism dichotomy portrayed by MacIntyre and at the same time provides an anchor in reality in a way that eludes the kind of conceptual frames which offer free floating arbitrariness, or those which offer detached ahistorical rationality. Such alternatives may be intellectually satisfying but offer no guides for emerging democracies grappling with the all too real problems involved in the concrete process of the ongoing reconstruction of developing democracies. The pragmatic view holds that all knowledge and experience are infused with interpretive aspects, funded with past experience, and stem from a perspective, a point of view. In being inherently perspectival, experience and knowledge are at once experimental, for this perspectivalism involves a creative organization of experience which directs our anticipatory activity and which is tested by its workability in the ongoing course of experience. All experience is experimental, then, not in the sense that it is guided by sophisticated levels of thought, but in the sense that the very structure of human behavior embodies the above dynamics of scientific or experimental method. Within this context of experience as experimental, meaning emerges in the interactions among conscious organisms. In the adjustments and coordinations needed for cooperative action in the social context, individuals take the perspective of the others in the development of their conduct, and in this way there develops the common content which provides community of meaning and allows for the emergence of selfhood. To have a self is to have a particu-

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lar type of ability, the ability to be aware of one’s behavior as part of the social process of adjustment, to be aware of oneself as a social object, as an acting agent within the context of other acting agents. Not only can selves exist only in relationship to other selves, no absolute line can be drawn between our selves and the selves of others, since our selves are there for and in our experience only in so far as others exist and enter into our experience. The origins and foundation of the self are social or intersubjective. As Dewey stresses, it is through social interaction that “the self is both formed and brought to consciousness.”9 In incorporating the perspective of the other, the developing self comes to take the perspective of others as the group as a whole. In this way the self comes to incorporate the standards and authority of the group, the organization or system of attitudes and responses which George Herbert Mead terms “the generalized other”;10 a passive dimension to the self exists. Yet, in responding to the perspective of the other, the individual responds as a unique center of activity; a creative dimension to the self exists. Any self incorporates, by its very nature, both the conformity of the group perspective and the creativity of its unique individual perspective. Dewey holds that the tension between conservative and liberating factors lies in the very constitution of individual selves.11 Because of this, “the principle of authority” must not be understood as “purely restrictive power” but as providing direction.12 Freedom does not lie in opposition to the restrictions of norms and authority, but in a self-direction which requires the proper dynamic interaction of these two poles within the self. This understanding of freedom at once demands the liberation of individuals from restrictive totalitarian regimes while yet disallowing a “liberation” from the directive power of community authority. Because of the dynamic I-me interaction constitutive of the very nature of selfhood, the perspective of the novel, “liberating” pole always opens onto the common, “conserving” perspective of the generalized other. The negative freedom of procedural democracy, of non-communal pluralism, of “freedom from” is not adequate for the development of authentic human freedom. Yet, as Mead points out, freedom has “always been formulated negatively, with reference to restrictions to be overcome.”13 And, as he well anticipates, the ongoing struggle for liberty will require a redefinition of what human beings are and should be, and consequently, of what constitutes their freedom.14 From the backdrop of the above brief overview of the self, the ensuing discussion will turn to the nature of community. It has been seen that the unique individual both reflects and reacts to the common perspective in his or her peculiar manner. And, when the individual selects a novel perspective, this novelty in turn enters into the common perspective which is “there” as incorporating this novelty. This novel perspective is an emergent because of its relation to institutions, traditions, and patterns of life which conditioned its development, and it gains its significance in light of the new common perspectives to which it gives rise. In this continual interplay

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of adjustment of attitudes, aspirations, and factual perceptions between the common perspective as the condition for the novel emergent perspective and the novel emergent as it conditions the common perspective the dynamic of community is to be found. To ask if a new perspective is a product of an individual or a community, or to ask which is prior, the individual or the community perspective, is a false question. The creativity of the individual can be contrasted with the conformity represented by the common perspective, but not with community. A community is constituted by, and develops in terms of, the ongoing dynamics of communicative adjustment between the novel individual perspective and the common or group perspective, and each of these two interacting poles constitutive of community gains its meaning, significance and enrichment through this process of accommodation or adjustment. In its ontologically grounded historical rootedness a community develops its own particular organs for the control of the ongoing process. A free society, like a free individual, requires both the influencing power of authority as embodied in institutions and traditions and the innovative power of creativity as contextually set or directed novelty. Societies in which freedom thrives are characterized by both the reign of law and the sense of responsibility.15 Given this understanding of community, the good of the whole cannot be viewed as the good of the group set over against the individual, for the good of the whole is the good of the community, and this requires the proper balance between the individual perspective and the common perspective. The development of the ability to create and to respond constructively to the creation of novel perspectives, and to incorporate the perspective of the other, not as something totally alien but as something sympathetically understood, is at once growth of self and growth of community. Growth incorporates an ever more encompassing sympathetic understanding of varied and diverse interests, leading to tolerance not as a sacrifice but as an enlargement of self and community. To deepen and expand the horizons of community is at the same time to deepen and expand the horizons of the selves involved in the ongoing dynamics of adjustment. Such growth can concomitantly require reconstruction of the institutions and practices of the community. A community, to be a community, must be based on a common goal. But the ultimate “goal” of this open-ended dynamic process is enriching growth or development, not final completion. This in turn indicates that neither democracy nor the working ideal of universality can imply that differences should be eliminated or melted down,16 for these differences provide the necessary materials by which a society can continue to grow. Though the generalized other represents social meanings and social norms, social development is possible only through the dynamic interrelation of the unique, creative individual and the generalized other. As Mead expresses this point, “The value is the contribution of the individual to the situation, even though it is only in the social situation that the value obtains.”17 Individual intelligence is social intelligence, though social intelligence is not possible without individual creativity. As

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Dewey expresses the same point, “Wants, choices and purposes have their locus in single beings,” but the content is not “something purely personal.” Instead, the “along with” is part of the very life process.18 Even if novel perspectives at times emerge in such a deep sense that they incorporate standards and criteria and solutional goals, or kinds of problems important to resolve, which are incommensurable with those of another perspective, yet because of the nature of perspective as open horizon, they cannot be closed to rational discussion for possibilities of socializing adjustment within one community. No community is constricted by closed horizons, in terms of possibilities of penetrating to more fundamental levels of community, or to wider breadth of community. This is itself a false dichotomy, for expansion in breadth is at once expansion in depth. Authentic reconstruction in cases of incompatibility must be based on the problem situation and the history within which it has emerged. Yet, reconstruction cannot be imposed by eliciting the standards of a past which does not contain the organs of resolution. It has been seen that the very relation of individual selves to the generalized other requires the openness of perspectives. And the adjustment of perspectives through rational reconstruction requires not an imposition from “on high” but a deepening to a more fundamental level of human rapport. The understanding of a radically diverse way of life, or way of making sense of things, is not to be found from above by imposing one’s own reflective perspective upon such diversity, but from beneath, by penetrating through such differences to the sense of the different ways of making sense of the world as they emerge from the essential characteristics of beings fundamentally alike confronting a common reality in an ongoing process of change. Such a deepening may change conflict into community diversity, or it may lead to an emerging consensus of the wrongness of a conflicting position. Deepening does not negate the use of intelligent inquiry, but opens it up, frees it from the products of its past in terms of rigidities and abstractions, and focuses it on the dynamics of concrete human existence. In this way, over time, incompatible perspectives, though not proved right or wrong, are resolved by the weight of argument as reasons and practices are worked out in the ongoing course of inquiry. If such adjustments do not emerge, then community has broken down; what remains is sheer factionalism. A true community, as by its very nature incorporating a temporalism and perspectival pluralism requiring ongoing growth, is far from immune to the hazardous pitfalls and wrenching clashes which provide the material out of which ever deepening and expanding horizons are constituted, allowing for growth of community and growth of self. Dewey stresses that growth by its very nature requires the rational resolution of conflict,19 while C. S. Peirce gives thanks “for the law of growth with all the fighting it imposes.”20 Critics of this position have at times wrongly interpreted growth as mere accumulation. This leads to charges that increases in morally detrimental activity or un-

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founded beliefs could be considered instances of growth. But the pragmatic understanding of growth involves reintegration of problematic situations in ways which lead to widening horizons of self, of community, and of the relation between the two. In this way growth has an inherently moral and esthetic quality. Indeed, according to Dewey, this growth itself is the only moral “end,” and the moral meaning of democracy lies in its contribution to the growth of every member of society.21 Though Dewey refers to growth as an “end,” growth can best be understood not as an end to be attained but as a dynamic embedded in the ongoing process of life, just as experimental method is not an end to be achieved but a dynamic embedded in the very structure of behavior. The major tool for changing irreconcilable factionalism into a growing pluralistic community is education. Universal education is a striven for ideal. But what has not been adequately recognized is that this means much more than equal opportunity to develop one’s potential. It involves the education of the society at large, of social intelligence, of collective intelligence at work. A community, then, to maintain itself as a community, requires universal education. It requires as well an understanding of the educational process as concerned with the education of the whole person. For, when there is lacking the reorganizing and ordering capabilities of intelligence, the imaginative grasp of authentic possibilities, the vitality of motivation, or sensitivity to the “felt” dimensions of concrete human existence, all of which are needed for ongoing reconstructive horizonal expansion, then irreconcilable factionalism results. This in turn indicates that education is not fundamentally the transmission of information but is the development of the skills of experimental inquiry. Education must provide the skills of experimental inquiry needed not just for the adequate exploration of subject matters but for the possibility of the interrelated ongoing reconstruction and expansion of the self, values, and the institutions and practices of the community, including the very organs of adjudication for the communicative adjustments which make possible such ongoing reconstructions and expansions. In this way education is the vehicle for nurturing free individuals within a free society. This pragmatic understanding of community does not negate, but requires, individuality, freedom, and pluralism. It attempts to combine the commonness of human beings qua human with the uniqueness of each human being qua human in a way that allows for situations of intelligently grounded diversity accompanied by ongoing reevaluation and continual testing within concrete situations; allows for the resolution of conflicting situations through reconstructed contexts which foster ongoing growth. This synthesis of community, shared values, and pluralistic freedom is precisely what Dewey sees as necessary to prevent “the rise of authoritarian states which claim they can do for individuals what the latter cannot by any possibility do for themselves,”22 because the inadequacy of “doing for themselves” is based on the

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empty character of negative freedom, of freedom without a community solidarity of “values prized in common.”23 These values prized in common are not values which stifle pluralistic freedom but those which foster “aesthetic judgment, moral intuition, human compassion, honesty, intelligence, and common sense,” qualities which provide “a lively, diverse, and hospitable environment in which people can develop their own values and exercise their talent and imagination.”24 While this pragmatic position unabashedly reflects its nourishment in the climate of American culture, it speaks with a unique vitality to those engaged in emerging political situations around the world as human beings struggle more and more with the issues of liberal democracy and community in the context of pluralism and diversity and the need to be open to the voice of “the other.” NOTES 1. John Dewey, The Later Works, vol. 13 (1988) ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill.: University of Southern Illinois Press, 1981–1989), p. 176. 2. Ibid., p.157. 3. Dewey, The Later Works, vol. 15 (1989), p.177. 4. Alasdair MacIntyre, “Is Patriotism a Virtue?” Lindley Lecture, University of Kansas, 1984, pp.19–20. 5. Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 6. 6. Ibid., pp. 117, 119 7. Ibid., p. 203. 8. Mark Sagoff, The Economy of the Earth: Philosophy, Law, and the Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 166–167. 9. Dewey, Art As Experience, The Later Works, vol. 10, (1987), p.286. 10. George H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, ed. Charles Morris (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1934). 11. Dewey, “Authority and Social Change,” The Later Works, vol. 11 (1987), p. 133. 12. Ibid. 13. Mead, “Natural Rights and the Theory of the Political Institution,” Selected Writings, ed. Andrew J. Reck (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, The Library of Liberal Arts, 1964), p. 159. 14. Ibid. 15. Mead, The Philosophy of the Act, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1938), pp. 496–97. 16. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p.352 17. Ibid., p. 212. 18. Ibid., p. 249. 19. Dewey, Ethics, The Middle Works, vol. 5 (1978), p. 327. 20. Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, vols. 1–6, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1931–1935);

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vols.7 and 8, ed. Arthur Burks (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), 6.479. 21. Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, The Middle Works, vol. 12 (1982), ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill.: University of Southern Illinois Press, 1976–1983), p. 181; p. 186, 22. Dewey, The Later Works, vol. 14 (1988), p.93. 23. Dewey, The Later Works, vol. 13 (1988), p.71. 24. Sagoff, The Economy of the Earth, pp. 166–167.

Seventeen GUIDING POST-TOTALITARIAN ECONOMIC DEMOCRATIZATION THROUGH DEWEYAN RADICAL PRAGMATISM Judith M. Green The countries of East-Central Europe have not shed their Communist system in order to embrace the capitalist system––whatever that is. They have shed a closed system in order to create an open society . . . .If any creed has won in the events of last year, it is the idea that we are all embarked on a journey into an uncertain future and have to work by trial and error within institutions which make it possible to bring about change without bloodshed. –Ralf Dahrendorf, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, 1990 . . . Economic harmonization with Western Europe and eventual membership in the European Community are fundamental goals of the Eastern European countries––and they determine the fundamental strategy guiding the reform effort. Pursuing this basic strategy will make success possible, just as it led to an economic flowering in Spain after Spain abandoned its autarkic policies at the end of the 1950s. If instead the philosophy were one of open experimentation, I doubt that the transformation would be possible at all, without costly and dangerous wrong turns. –Jeffrey Sachs, Poland’s Jump to the Market Economy, 1993 . . . The test of all institutions of adult life is their effect in furthering continued education. Government, business, art, religion, all social institutions have a meaning, a purpose. That purpose is to set free and to develop the capacities of human individuals without respect to race, sex, class, or economic status. And this is all one with saying that the test of their value is the extent to which they educate every individual into the full stature of his possibility. Democracy has many meanings, but if it has a moral meaning, it is found in resolving that the supreme test of all political institutions and industrial arrangements shall be the contribution they make to the all-around growth of every member of society. –John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1920

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The still-living history of a cascading series of people’s revolutions in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and other Central and Eastern European countries marked 1989 as the year that brought down Soviet-controlled Communist governments after fifty years of heavy industry-focused command economies, strict limitations on personal, intellectual, and religious freedoms, and centralized, radically hierarchical decision processes. Important as the events of 1989 were in ending this era, their even greater significance lies in the challenge and the opportunity they have created for ordinary citizens, emerging national leaders, and other interested parties world-wide: how to conceptualize and to realize democracy in these newly post-totalitarian contexts. Even to the most naïve, it must have been immediately apparent in such revolutionary circumstances that democracy requires more than the end of totalitarianism. It requires new ideas that can guide deep transformations in institutions, laws, social relationships, public planning, personal life plans, and the habits of daily life. Some theorists, including Polish Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz and his influential American economic adviser, Jeffrey Sachs, have argued that what Poland and the other newly post-totalitarian nations need to do in order to achieve a “transition to democracy” is to adopt the economic and political institutions, laws, public policy goals, and other elements of existing models of democracy in Western Europe and the United States, with the goal of becoming members of the European Community (EC) as soon as possible.1 Pursuing their approach has led to some rapid and radical changes, some of these very positive. For example, Poland’s gross domestic product (GDP) achieved an annual growth rate of nearly 7% for several years in the late 1990s. If this rate of growth could have been sustained for twenty years, Poland’s economy would have become comparable in power and per capita economic welfare to that of the poorest of the EC nations, Portugal, when it joined the EC in the 1970s; unfortunately, Poland’s growth slowed from more than 5% in 1998 to an estimated 3.5% in 1999, due to the collapse of Russian markets and slower economic growth in Western Europe.2 Yet this economistic approach to post-totalitarian social transformation has not deeply transformed the Polish lifeworld; according to Polish philosopher Dariusz Aleksandrowicz, Poland has experienced a sharp break in institutions and symbols, but a basic continuity in social mentality.3 And according to Polish philosopher Leszek Koczanowicz, the lack of a deeper realization of the social goals that evoked great risk-taking revolutionary energies in the 1980s, in combination with widespread dissatisfaction with the pace and the direction of many of the institutional changes this economistic approach to democratization has wrought, has led many Poles to ask, “What was our revolution for?”4 Two key theoretical and practical questions must be addressed concerning the post-totalitarian transformation process in Poland and other Central and Eastern European nations: Is the Sachs-Balcerowicz approach the most ef-

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fective guide for democratization? And is it addressing all of the key aspects of democratic transformation in the most effective way? This essay will argue that the answer to both questions is “no.” Sachs, Balcerowicz, and those who look to their guidance make fundamental mistakes, both about the nature of democracy and about the uniform applicability of basic principles of standard capitalist economic theory to widely differing situations. Deweyan radical pragmatism’s participatory model of democracy and its experimental approach to inquiry-guided transformation offers a preferable alternative that would guide citizens from all sectors of Central Europe’s newly posttotalitarian societies in determining together what the meaning of their continuing revolutions will be. And their collaborative democratic solutions could teach the democratically deficient nations of the West a great deal. 2. The Paradoxical Sachs-Balcerowicz Model of Formal “Democratization” In addition to the importance of its post-totalitarian transformation process for the quality of its citizens’ future life, Poland offers a valuable case study for assessing the usefulness of these two alternative theoretical approaches to democratization because it has been guided by the Sachs-Balcerowicz model “against the grain” of its history-woven cultural memories since the early 1990s. The “New Poland” that has emerged under their guidance has been regarded by economists and financial analysts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the “tiger economy” of Central Europe, offering an example of the kind of institutional “democratization” in our globalized contemporary context that the IMF semi-coercively urges other nations to follow in order to achieve comparable economic outcomes. Poland’s rate of annual growth in GDP in the late 1990s exceeded those of the EC nations and those of its posttotalitarian neighbors in Central and Eastern Europe. And any visitor can see that Poland is experiencing an obvious and exhilarating urban revitalization in cities like Warsaw and Kraków, with many small entrepreneurs starting up new businesses, consumer goods and services becoming more readily available, and visible improvements in the built environment busily going forward. Sachs and Balcerowicz attribute these positive developments to rapid action guided by their prescription for democratization: privatizing state-owned businesses in order to focus decision-making on “the interests of capital” instead of those of workers and managers, shutting down or downsizing “sunset industries” and other inefficient firms, making financial institutions “transparent” according to Western norms of good business practice, and reducing the cost of the social safety net.5 But in spite of Poland’s rapid rate of privatization (so rapid that by 1993, the private sector produced 50% of GDP and employed more than half of all workers), Sachs and Balcerowicz have expressed concern that it has proceeded too slowly and too undemocratically because of constitutional obstacles.6 At the same time, they have expressed concern about

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the stubbornly continued existence of many “uneconomic” small farms that somehow managed to maintain their independence during the Soviet years in spite of irresistible collectivization elsewhere, that employ a disproportionate number of workers in comparison to EC economies (27–28% of the Polish workforce contributing only 6% of the GDP), and that cannot hope to be competitive in international markets.7 Not surprisingly, many members of this “peasant” sector of Polish society strongly oppose the Sachs-Balcerowicz transformative model, feeling themselves even more vulnerable than before the 1989 revolution, and thematizing their opposition in terms of an older conception of justice.8 Other sectors of the opposition who similarly refuse to recognize the SachsBalcerowicz program as an adequate guide to desirable democratic progress include former shipbuilders and miners who provided leadership and strong support for the Solidarity movement, but who bear the pain of unemployment from their “sunset” industries whose dismantling has brought economic devastation to their beloved home regions. Many of these workers are deeply unwilling to accept a basic principle of standard capitalist economics: that human locations within modern economies are and should be temporary, and that they should “flow” to whatever place offers them the best monetary return for their labor power, leaving the homeplaces they cherish and tearing themselves away from their sustaining network of family and friends. Other opponents of the Sachs-Balcerowicz approach include some of the academic intellectuals who played a crucial role in the Solidarity movement, who are still very poorly paid, and who agree with the widespread assessment that the public “shares” that were offered to Polish citizens when state-owned industries were privatized are virtually worthless.9 Last but not least, the Polish Catholic Church, which played a primary role in sustaining a sense of Polish peoplehood over more than a century of imperial domination and operates as a kind of “cultural software,” includes among its leaders some prominent intellectuals who offer critiques and counterproposals to the SachsBalcerowicz transformative model on issues of economic justice, social equality, and democratic participation in shaping the nation’s future; but according to Polish philosopher Mariusz Turowski, the vast majority of the faithful largely ignore what these intellectuals say, and are more likely to take their oppositional cues from the vastly more powerful, culturally conservative voice of Radio Maryja.10 Paradoxically, many members of the diverse groups who were the historical sustainers of Poland’s cultural identity, of its tradition of grassroots political participation, and of its struggle for independence from successive waves of imperial control over a period of nearly two hundred years are arrayed in opposition to a model of social “democratization” that they regard as antithetical to the purposes that led them to work together for the 1989 revolution. Yet instead of questioning whether the transformative model so challenged is democratic if all these people reject it, proponents of the Sachs-

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Balcerowicz model label their visions and values dangerously anachronistic. For example, Jan Winiecki criticizes the commitment to “principles of social justice” this “unholy alliance” succeeded in including in the language of Article 1 of the Polish Republic’s constitution as “a typical Communist slogan of extremely vague content.”11 Such a criticism ignores the deep, pre-Communist cultural roots in Judeo-Christian social justice teachings and in Poland’s unique, decentralized participatory political history underlying a widely shared anti-authoritarian but non-libertarian Polish moral-intellectual perspective that motivates these diverse opposition groups’ shared commitment to a non-capitalist conception of justice, which they used effectively to turn the value claims of communism against the Communist bureaucracy.12 This culturally contextualized, revolution-validated conception of justice also motivated these opposition groups’ expectation that economic democratization would mean “stronger roles for trade unions, worker self-management, participatory producer and consumer cooperatives, and the welfare state, both during and after the transition.”13 In addition to the shock of finding themselves economically worse off and politically marginalized in shaping Poland’s future, these groups felt a deeper, value-interpretive shock in finding the meaning of their anti-authoritarian cultural heritage of transformative struggle subjected to the libertarian “shock therapy” of the Balcerowicz Plan. Does their continuing opposition to the EC-oriented, free-market model represent their unenlightened refusal to pay “the price of progress” Sachs describes, in which there inevitably must be winners and losers? Has the SachsBalcerowicz approach shown itself to be so unquestionably effective in guiding Poland’s democratization, and is the search for a less painful alternative so dangerous, as to assure that experimentation is not necessary or desirable? Or is the meaning of democracy for Poland something new and different that can only be discovered experimentally, with inclusive and active participation of representative members of diverse Polish groups who bring their memories, their values, and their hopes into the processes of transforming their nowglobally interconnected society into a more deeply democratic New Poland? Two aspects of the Sachs-Balcerowicz model show that it is not a necessary or a desirable guide for Poland’s post-totalitarian democratization: (1) its unrealistic assumptions about the adequacy of current Western instantiations of democracy as a universal ideal, and (2) its rejection of the importance of inclusive citizen participation in the design and implementation of new processes and institutions of political economy that bring with them the deeper democratization of Polish culture. Like its influential predecessor, the ReaganThatcher-Friedman model of the 1980s, the Sach-Balcerowicz model justifies its prescription for “democratization” by reference to an apparently descriptive conception of democracy that is, in reality, misleadingly reductionist in its treatment of non-economic values, that ignores the very real democratic deficiencies of Western nations, and that hides the role of increasingly powerful global economic actors. Within their theoretical framework, “democracy” is

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reduced to the set of capitalism-linked values, institutions, processes, and habits of daily life that broadly characterize the EC countries, the United States, and perhaps Canada, on the assumption that history has somehow ratified these with the defeat of communism, and that people “vote with their feet” for them by high levels of immigration (legal and illegal) into these Western countries. But many people might prefer relatively benevolent and economically successful authoritarian societies over societies that are not benevolent or economically successful. Such expressions of preference among the presently available alternatives do not show that these nations’ evolved social patterns are the best practically attainable ones, or even that these nations are democracies. Contrary to the Sachs-Balcerowicz claim that guiding Poland’s economic democratization process by its institutions and policies on a Western universal ideal will produce the best economic results, R. G. Lipsey and Kelvin Lancaster showed in “The General Theory of the Second Best” (1956), that if any of the key conditions for “the best” economic outcome in a situation are lacking, a different model will yield better results––“the second best”––than will an attempt to approximate “the best” in significantly different conditions.14 More recently, a body of empirical case studies produced by World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President Joseph E. Stiglitz, which ranges from studies of risk management techniques in the American insurance industry to adverse impacts of IMF policies in managing the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s, tends to confirm the importance of a situationspecific approach to economic planning.15 Explicitly, Stiglitz’s work focuses on the practical significance of imperfect information in decision processes, which limits the optimizing capability of unregulated free markets and requires the use of situation-specific interventions to avoid specific harms and to produce optimal situation-relative benefits. Implicitly, Stiglitz’s work reflects the realization that historical and cultural differences within situations limit the usefulness of universal empirical generalizations, making non-universal local knowledge always significant in arriving at the best decisions about localized problems and opportunities. The millennial corollary to the great American political practitioner Thomas P. (“Tip”) O’Neill’s wise aphorism that “All politics is local,” and economist Hazel Henderson’s wise advice to “Think globally, act locally,” appears to be that we must have globally contextualized local knowledge in order to act effectively at all. Proponents of the Sachs-Balcerowicz model, who argue that free markets reflect the best way to assure that globalized local knowledge drives locally optimal decision processes, reckon abstractly, imagining capitalist economists’ ideal conditions of many small local firms pursuing their own interests in perfect competition. They fail to factor in real, radically distorting impacts that are created in our globalized era by the vastly disproportionate power of wealthy firms and investors who are narrowly selfinterested in maximizing their own profits within short-term time horizons,

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and who act at great distances with the aid of modern communications technologies, often without accurate local knowledge, and almost always without local commitment. These considerations support a very different conclusion than the SachsBalcerowicz model suggests. There are significant differences between Poland’s socio-economic conditions at the end of the twentieth century and those within which the United States, Canada, and the different E. C. countries have processively evolved their different institutions of political economy and sustaining “habits of the heart” over the past two hundred years. Poland is likely to achieve better economic results by pursuing a process of institutional transformation well-suited to its unique conditions as differently understood by a wide range of local knowledge-bearers, instead of a “top-down” one guided by “experts” who employ an apparently universal model that implicitly assumes the significantly different conditions that once held in the West. It follows from these considerations that even if economic success were the only test of democracy, developing new institutions by drawing on globally contextualized local knowledge would be a more effective approach to democratization than copying the institutions and policies of Western nations that continue to increase their wealth at the expense of poor nations.16 “Democracy” means something more and different than “economically successful and therefore preferred.” It suggests a quality of community life in which diverse people equally share power and responsibility, contributing values and insights from their differing experiences within cooperative processes of shaping the shared conditions of their lives in ways that will promote the mutual flourishing of each member, to which all are committed. We have good reasons to regard differing Western societies as partial models of democracy so understood, even if imperfect ones, in that their citizens have a vote in choosing their political representatives within constitutional structures that set broad goals and limits for law and public policy. And historically, we have good reason to regard the creation and maintenance of these processes and institutions in the face of great obstacles and threats as significant human achievements. Yet without more deeply democratic cultures and a wider distribution of economic power, these societies have shown themselves in recent years to be ideologically hollow, overly influenced by concentrations of economic power, prone to social crises, and productive of life experiences marred by existential nihilism and ontological rootlessness.17 These phenomena show that there must be more to democratically promoting our mutual human flourishing than increasing the aggregate wealth of nations, and that growth in GDP is not a sufficient cause or adequate indicator of overall social health. A fuller realization of the purposes and potentials of democracy must be both possible and desirable, both in the West and in Central and Eastern Europe’s post-totalitarian nations. Must Poland choose between aggregate economic growth and inclusive, actively participatory democratic processes? Sachs warns that experimentation

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with non-Western institutional forms and policies is dangerous, that it could cost Poland the fleeting opportunity to benefit from the self-interested investments of global capitalists that will continue to rapidly increase the size of Poland’s GDP, that institutional requirements for membership in the EC are precise, and that the “social pain” that accompanies other-directed selfcontortion in Poland’s national life is preferable to a future of poverty and global subordination. Balcerowicz agrees, as does Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, president of the National Bank of Poland: “We are not a country that can profit from being alone. Our situation is much more vulnerable to external shocks than many people think.”18 Yet Stiglitz and other prominent World Bank economists, including Vice Presidents Ismail Serageldin and Kyu Sik Lee, argue that the theoretical assumptions that Sachs, Balcerowicz, Gronkiewicz-Waltz, and the IMF share are empirically refutable, even dangerous. Serageldin argues that the danger extends to our shared ecosystem if regional poverty is not effectively addressed, because desperately poor people in different nations’ hyper-cities that have emerged out of global processes of rural economic and social breakdown are “consuming the planet.”19 Though Lee agrees with Sachs and Balcerowicz that institutional transformation is very important, he does not believe that sustainable institutions that can be effective in addressing localized problems can emerge through expert-driven, rapid results-oriented methods; instead, he is a principal architect of recently adopted requirements for local citizen participation in developing proposals for World Bank funding, which emphasize “strong local leadership and sequencing of development programs, instead of a Big Bang.”20 In a related vein, Bangladeshi economist Mohammed Yunus criticizes the ineffectiveness in reaching the rural poor of “trickle down” strategies of centralized national economic planning that focus on aggregate growth in GDP; the localized, actively participatory “trickle up” strategies his Grameen Bank funds and teaches have been adapted to differing conditions in fifty-six countries thus far, with good results.21 Deweyan radical pragmatism offers a way of realistically refocusing this theoretical and practical controversy among economists so as to bring out the necessary connection between optimizing Poland’s economic future and adopting a more democratically inclusive, citizen-participatory approach to the processes that are reshaping Poland’s institutional structures and policies. Unlike the Sachs-Balcerowicz approach, it treats education and semiautonomous cultural transformation as necessary aspects of sustainable and desirable processes of post-totalitarian democratization. Starting from an appreciation of the West’s historic achievements in advancing human welfare while frankly acknowledging that the democratic ideal requires more, Deweyan radical pragmatism offers a feasible and desirable guide to fuller democratic transformation in Poland and other post-totalitarian societies, and also in the powerful Western nations with which they are inextricably interconnected in our globalized contemporary life.

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3. The Deweyan Radical Pragmatist Approach to Deeper Democratization In contrast with the Sachs-Balcerowicz prescription, a radical pragmatist experimental and participatory approach to democratization that could more effectively guide Poland’s transition is summed up in classical American philosopher John Dewey’s slogan, “The solution to the ailments of democracy is more democracy.”22 We can and must learn from the successes and the failures of the past, but our approach must be experimental if we are to go beyond them, because “The alternative to the adoption of an experimental method is not the attainment of greater security by adoption of fixed method (as dogmatists allege), but is merely to permit things to drift: to abdicate every attempt at direction and mastery . . . .”23 And we have ontological, epistemological, moral, and political reasons to think that the most effective experimental approach will be one that involves active citizen participation with a localized focus by members of diverse social groups within interlinked but decentralized, rolling cooperative processes of information-gathering, analysis, imaginative hypothesis formation, transformative implementation, evaluation of results, and planning of next steps.24 There are valuable roles for “experts” as consultant-mediators within such democratic transformative inquiry processes, but these are support roles instead of directive ones.25 The very idea of “radical pragmatism” might appear like an oxymoron to someone who thinks of pragmatism as lacking a positive program of any kind, especially a radical one. They would be correct in thinking that Deweyan pragmatism would reject any single transformative strategy as a universal formula for vastly different situations. But they would be wrong to think that there are no positive implications of a deep commitment to the ideal of democracy, understood as a commitment to mutual flourishing within a kind of community life in which differing people contribute values, share responsibility, and collaboratively determine a cooperative path out of a problematic present toward a preferable future. Such a pragmatism is radical both because it focuses on the root values, habits, and processes of community life instead of the institutions that are created to serve them, and because it denies that there are any fully realized examples of national democracies to which posttotalitarian nations can look as universal models for their own democratization processes. “Democracy is radical,” Dewey wrote, “ . . . for there is no country anywhere in the world that has ever fully succeeded in realizing it at any time.”26 Nonetheless, Deweyan pragmatism suggests some general aspects of democratization processes in diverse situations, and a test for determining whether such processes are on the right track. Democratization processes must be inclusive, educative, and actively participatory, because only processes that have these aspects lead to growth of all of a nation’s citizens, which requires mutual changes in their characters, their way of thinking, and their shared way

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of life, so that they draw more deeply upon and actively contribute to the development of a shared fund of social intelligence. Dewey’s friend and theoretical collaborator, Jane Addams, the founder of America’s late nineteenth century settlement house movement to assist immigrants in adjusting to their new conditions of life, understood this mutuality of transformative influence within democratic collaborative processes even more fully than did Dewey.27 Such inclusive and active participatory processes can foster moralintellectual growth to the level that Polish philosopher Andrzej Szahaj characterizes as post-conventional, allowing a critical appreciation of cultural values, treating community life as an object of choice instead of of fate, and giving rise to “a liberalism without solitude and a community without coercion.”28 The test of the policies and institutions that grow out of such inclusive, actively participatory processes that can rightly be labeled “democratic” is that they must be effective in guiding and supporting sustainable, dynamic patterns of mutual flourishing. Such radical pragmatist participatory processes are more likely to be effective toward this end than is the Sachs-Balcerowicz expert-driven approach because they have the epistemological advantage of maximally including dispersed local knowledge while increasing the likelihood that participants will support instead of seek to block the policies and institutions that grow out of them, given the mutual education and mutual commitment they foster. In our era of global interrelations, sustainable democratic policies and institutions must flexibly organize a people’s interactions with many other stakeholders (both well-meaning ones and potential predators), while serving that people’s practical, participatory, existential, and spiritual needs as these are diversely and critically re-defined through processes of mutual education and intelligent cooperation amidst differences. Instead of dismissing as ignorant and anachronistic those realistic fears that have been expressed by different voices of Polish “opposition”––that their distinctive values, hard-won practical independence, and opportunities for realizing their own, localized visions of human flourishing will be swept away by invisible, distant powers operating through globalized markets within and beyond the EC––effective democratization processes must honor and critically reflect these realistic fears while strengthening citizens’ powers to resist and to negotiate, to cooperatively shape their future, and to contribute valuable experience to the world’s fund of knowledge about how to “do democracy.” As Polish philosopher Justyna Miklaszewska argues, active citizen participation in public life is necessary to control corruption, illegality, and special interests in Poland and other post-totalitarian Central European nations. Yet the desire to express important values that are not being respected in one’s society, which motivated the actively participatory mode of life that achieved the 1989 revolution and has since led to protests by frightened and angry farmers and labor union members, is fragile. “Unless such participation is stimulated,” Miklaszewska warns, “the young public democracy will fail.”29

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A Deweyan radical pragmatist approach to Poland’s post-totalitarian democratization would concur with the Sachs-Balcerowicz analysis that political economy must be an important area of transformative focus, but it would conjoin political economy with education and cultural transformation, treating the interactive participation of opposition groups as the key to a sustainable democratic future, and carefully limiting the influence of powerful international stakeholders and expert analysts, whether predatory or wellmeaning. Acceptance into the European Community at the earliest possible date according to terms set by powerful Western nations may require the further disempowerment of those groups who struggled to bring about the 1989 revolution, and it may require the Polish people to give up the hard-won opportunity to democratically shape their national future in ways that are critically continuous with the values that sustained them in past struggles. If this is the price, the Polish people might be wise to delay EC membership as their focal goal, and to give priority instead to creating inclusive, actively participatory democratic processes of economic and cultural revitalization that are globally informed yet uniquely Polish, focusing on local, regional, national, and international levels of relational transformations. If they make the latter choice, the Polish people will not find themselves alone, as Gronkiewicz-Waltz fears. United Nations analysts have expressed concern that the current “rules of globalization” are widening the gap between rich and poor nations, leaving sixty nations worse off than they were in 1980.30 And speaking in language that partially echoes the Polish opposition when he addressed finance ministers and central bank governors from 182 nations at a crisis-focused joint meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in October 1998, World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn argued emphatically that “If we do not have greater equity and social justice, there will be no political stability. And without political stability, no amount of money put together in financial packages will give us financial stability.”31 Offering a complete transformative prescription for Poland’s political economy and the related challenge of simultaneously validating and critically transforming its national culture is alien to the spirit and the capacities of Deweyan radical pragmatism. It is not a full theory of a utopian “Third Way” between libertarian capitalism and communism that the Balcerowicz Plan’s supporters misleadingly dismissed Solidarity’s supporters as seeking when they expressed their critically appreciated value heritage and recognized their own developed competences in their 1990 call for worker self-management and cooperative firms as elements of a preferable approach to institutional democratization. Instead, Deweyan radical pragmatism is an experimental approach to democratic transformative inquiry, including general characteristics and a test for effective inquiry processes that are guided by the democratic ideal and grounded in the world’s fund of experiences within democratization processes, some of which have Polish resonances that may make them helpful. In combination with other interventions, Yunus’s Grameen Bank’s grass-

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roots approach to localized economic transformation through cooperative networks of micro-firms may be effective in supplementing Poland’s farm incomes in rural areas like those for which it was originally developed. It might also help to generate economic opportunities for some of the workers in urban regions that were hard-hit in the 1990s by the Sachs-Balcerowicz strategy of “dismantling sunset industries” and downsizing inefficient firms. In contrast with the Sachs-Balcerowicz model of libertarian capitalism, in which all relationships are mediated by free markets alone, face-to-face local cooperation among Yunus’s teams and networks of micro-entrepreneurs undergirds their effective participation in competitive national and international markets. Contextually adapted variations on Yunus’s Grameen Bank model of funding and supporting networks of micro-firms have emerged in widely differing countries as decentralized yet interlinked nodes of economic energy that efficiently connect human drive and imagination with productive means in locations and for individuals and groups that lack more desirable economic alternatives. Such networks of micro-firms may also offer one partial, economically focused experimental solution to deepening democracy in Poland. They include an initial educational element and promote continuing education through cooperative borrowing groups that progressively increase participants’ efficacy in project-focused interactive communication, problem-solving analysis, and collaborative transformative visioning. The kind of broader “loyalty to loyalty” that American philosopher Josiah Royce rightly argued is so necessary to democracy can be cultivated through such decentralized micro-entrepreneurial networks. As Royce also asserted, such “loyalty is contagious”32 ––but so is cynicism and despair. A Polish experiment in microentrepreneurship must pay close attention, as did Yunus in the Grameen Bank’s early years, to careful selection of initial participants, to developing educational processes that will prepare participants for effective design and operation of their projects, and to assuring adequate financial and social support to help them succeed. As Solidarity argued in 1990, cooperatives may offer another promising approach to Poland’s current economic problems with democracy-deepening implications, one that draws on extensive empirical evidence from successes and failures in other parts of the world. Some of the largest and most successful dairy products firms in the United States are farmer-owned cooperatives like Land O’ Lakes. In addition, “special niche” agricultural products like organic tomatoes are typically grown in America on much smaller farms than could be competitively successful were it not for their organization into farmer-owned cooperatives. These cooperatives can succeed because their products are grown for discriminating customers who are unwilling to trade off these products’ special qualities against the lower prices that huge national and international agribusinesses can offer for inferior products because of economies of scale. Historically, some regions in the United States, like the Basque region in Spain, have been successful in producing and marketing

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handicrafts and even some industrial products through cooperatives; most of the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States was once organized as cooperatives, and their failures and their successes have lessons to teach. As Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have demonstrated, democratically owned and operated firms can be as efficient as those that are organized along the hierarchical, interest-separating lines that Sachs and Balcerowicz argue are necessary in Poland––provided that they operate in a supportive social and legal environment.33 At the same time, as Dewey suggested, democratic firms offer the advantage of developing a different set of skills, attitudes, and values in workers than do capital-focused authoritarian firms–– democratic “habits of the heart” that influence both daily life and broader forms of political participation. Given the desirability of a revitalization of its cultural heritage and the need for targeted regional economic revitalization, Poland may be better served by national policies that encourage local and regional economic initiatives to develop micro-firms, cooperatives, and other kinds of democratic firms, instead of––or in addition to––current national policies that invite multinational capitalist firms to invest in targeted “empowerment zones.” While a commitment to hire displaced local workers is usually part of “empowerment zone” initiatives, these may encounter suspicion––even hostility––on the part of citizens of regions that have been economically hard-hit by earlier government policies. In any case, the participating multinational firms or the government will need to underwrite retraining for older, displaced workers if they are not to be unjustly ignored in favor of a younger, presumably more flexible generation, who must in any case be educated to work effectively with new technologies. Instead, why not offer the targeted tax breaks, matching investment capital, land, facilities, training funds, and consulting assistance that are usually part of “empowerment zone” strategies to support local and regional economic initiatives proposed by existing Polish institutions like labor unions and churches, and by newly organized regional cooperatives and democratic firms? Such a home-grown approach to region-specific economic revitalization might be more just (and therefore more politically stabilizing) because it could retrain and reemploy a larger proportion of the now-displaced workers who helped to make the revolution. Additionally, it would assure that the firms so located are committed to the region over a long future, and would deeply interconnect economic growth with democratic cultural revitalization. The World Bank and some other international funding sources appear willing and able to support Poland and other post-totalitarian nations in such experimental initiatives because they would have positive effects for local, regional, and national participants and because of what other nations could learn from them.

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At present, a vision of economic harmonization with the West guides Poland’s post-totalitarian transformation process, leaving the future of its economy, its political life, and its culture to market forces and processes within which invisible global outsiders play a great, perhaps a dominant role. Alternatively, Deweyan radical pragmatism could guide preferable, actively participatory processes of democratization that would be inclusive of those nowoppositional voices that helped to achieve the 1989 revolution. In combination with nationally and internationally supported but locally and regionally focused democratic participatory processes of economic revitalization, schools and universities could nurture those processes of moral-intellectual development that allow people to become both appreciative and critical community members while cultivating the knowledge and skills they will need for a deeply democratic way of life. Democratizing all of the economic, political, legal, educational, and religious institutions that frame Poland’s national life is an enormous challenge, especially after fifty years of recent totalitarian experience within a two hundred year period of successive imperial dominations. And yet, as Szahaj says, “Poland really is and always has been pluralistic.”34 Against enormous odds over centuries of struggle, the Polish people sustained a stubborn memory of tolerance of diversity, of decentralized political participation, and of courageous experimentation in shaping a shared future upon which the Polish Republic can draw in evolving its own uniquely appropriate democratic institutions and processes. “Democracies from different places will look different,” as American philosopher Shannon Kincaid has suggested.35 If they can discover their own best democratization processes, the Polish people will offer a valuable example to people of other nations, including other peoples of post-totalitarian Central and Eastern Europe and the many Western Europeans, Canadians, and Americans who understand that a deep realization of democracy is yet-to-be. NOTES 1. Jeffrey Sachs, Poland’s Jump to the Market Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), p. 5, quoted above; see also Simon Johnson and Gary Loveman, Starting Over in Eastern Europe: Entrepreneurship and Economic Renewal, with a foreword by Jeffrey Sachs (Harvard Business School Press, 1995), and Ben Slay, The Polish Economy (Princeton University Press, 1994). 2. Sachs, Poland’s Jump, p. 7; see also Edmund L. Andrews, “Poland Opens Door to West, and Chills Blow Both Ways” (The New York Times, 21 June 1999), p. A1. 3. Dariusz Aleksandrowicz, “Post-Communist Transition and Catholicism in Poland,” in this volume.

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4. Leszek Koczanowicz, “In the Name of the Nation…In the Name of the Market. What Was Our Revolution For?” in this volume. 5. Sachs, Poland’s Jump. 6. Justyna Miklaszewska, “Public Choice Theory and the Post-Totalitarian State,” in this volume; see also Jan Winiecki, “Building Institutions in the Third Republic: A Distorted Rule-Making Process,” Institutional Barriers to Poland’s Economic Development: The Incomplete Transition, ed. Jan Winiecki (New York: Routledge, 1997). 7. Aleksandrowicz, “Post-Communist Transition”; Sachs, Poland’s Jump; Slay, The Polish Economy. 8. Andrews, “Poland Opens Door.” 9. Justyna Miklaszewska, Radoslaw Sojak, and other Polish participants in the conference on “Democracy and the Post-Totalitarian Experience,” Karpacz, Poland (1998). 10. Aleksandrowicz, “Post-Communist Transition”; Mariusz Turowski, “Religion and Politics in Poland: Political Discourse, Toleration, and Neutrality,” in this volume. 11. Winiecki, Institutional Barriers, pp. 3 and 93. 12. Andrzej Kaniowski, “The Detotalitarization and the Ambiguity of Moral Codes,” in this volume. 13. Slay, The Polish Economy, p. 90. 14. R. G. Lipsey and Kelvin Lancaster, “The General Theory of the Second Best,” Review of Economic Studies XXIV: 63 (1956), pp. 11–32. 15. Louis Uchitelle, “The Economics of Intervention: A Prominent but Impolitic Theorist Questions the Worship of Free Markets,” The New York Times, 31 May 1998, p. 3–1. 16. Judith Miller, “Globalization Widens Rich-Poor Gap, U. N. Report Says,” The New York Times, 14 July 1999, p. A8. 17. See Judith M. Green, Deep Democracy: Community, Diversity, and Transformation (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). 18. Andrews, “Poland Opens Door.” 19. Ismail Serageldin, Vice President for Environmentally Sustainable Development at the World Bank, speaking at a Reuters Forum at Columbia University in New York City (30 April 1997). 20. Kyu Sik Lee, Principal Evaluation Officer at the World Bank, speaking at a Reuters Forum at Columbia University in New York City (16 April 1997). 21. Mohammed Yunus, Managing Director of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, speaking at a Reuters Forum at Columbia University in New York City (27 January 1997). 22. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (1927), republished in a critical edition, The Later Works of John Dewey: 1925–1953, vol. 2, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984). 23. Dewey, Ethics, Revised Edition (1932), written with James H. Tufts, republished in a critical edition, The Later Works of John Dewey: 1925–1953, Vol. 7, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), p. 350. 24. Dewey, Theory of Valuation (1939), republished in a critical edition, The Later Works of John Dewey: 1925–1953, vol. 13, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988); Green, Deep Democracy (1999).

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25. Larry Hickman, Director of the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University, at the conference on “Democracy and the Post-Totalitarian Experience,” Karpacz, Poland (1998). 26. Dewey, “Democracy is Radical” (1937), republished in a critical edition, The Later Works of John Dewey: 1925–1953, vol. 11, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987). 27. Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Green, Deep Democracy (1999). 28. Andrzej Szahaj, “Communitarian Critique of Liberalism and the Problem of Democracy and Pluralism in Poland,” in this volume. 29. Miklaszewska, “Public Choice Theory.” 30. Miller, “Globalization Widens.” 31. David E. Sanger, “Dissension Erupts at Talks on World Financial Crisis: I.M.F.’s Austerity Policies Draw Criticism,” The New York Times, 7 October 1998, p. A6 (italics in original). 32. Josiah Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty (Macmillan Company, 1908; reissued with an introduction by John J. McDermott by Vanderbilt University Press, 1995); Richard P. Mullin, “Josiah Royce’s Philosophy of Loyalty as a Basis for Democratic Ethics,” in this volume. 33. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, “A Political Case for the Democratic Enterprise,” Economy and Philosophy 9 (1993), pp. 75–100. 34. Szahaj, “Communitarian Critique.” 35. Shannon Kincaid, “Democracy, Ideology, and Nationalism: Democratic Reconstruction and Post-Totalitarian Eastern Europe,” in this volume.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS DARIUSZ ALEKSANDROWICZ is Professor and Chair, Philosophical Foundations of Cultural Analysis at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. He has published four books and numerous articles in German, Polish, English, Czech, and Japanese, including “Vom Messianismus zum Nationalismus” [“From Messianism to Nationalism”], and “Fremdenfeindlichkeit im Kommunismus und in der Post-Communistischen Transformationsgesellschaft” [“Xenophobia in Communism and in PostCommunist Society”]. ROGENE A. BUCHHOLZ is Legendre-Soule Professor of Business Ethics Emeritus in the College of Business Administration at Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A. He is co-author with Sandra B. Rosenthal of Business Ethics: The Pragmatic Path Beyond Principles to Process and Rethinking Business Ethics: A Pragmatic Approach. He is also the author of Principles of Environmental Management: The Greening of Business. ANTHONY J. GRAYBOSCH is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Chico, California, U.S.A. His publications include “Computer Assisted Civil Disobedience”, “Napster: Spreading the Music,” and “Bootlegs: Intellectual Property and Popular Culture.” JUDITH M. GREEN is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University in New York City, U.S.A. Her publications include Deep Democracy: Community, Diversity, and Transformation, “Deepening Democracy in Central Europe: A Radical Pragmatist Perspective from the American Experience,” and “Alain Locke’s Multicultural Philosophy of Value: A Transformative Guide for the Twenty-First Century.” MAREK HETMAŃSKI is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland. His publications include Umysł a środowisko. Wokół koncepcji George’a Herberta Meada [Mind and Environment: On George Herbert Mead’s Philosophy] and Umysł a maszyny. Krytyka obliczeniowej teorii umysłu [Mind and Machines: A Critique of the Computational Theory of Mind]. ANDRZEJ MACIEJ KANIOWSKI is Professor of Ethics and Social Philosophy in the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Łódź, Łódź, Poland. His publications include Supererogacja. Zagubiony wymiar etyki. Czyny chwalebne w etykach uniwersa-listycznych [Supererogation, A Forgotten Dimension of Ethics: Meritorious Acts and Universalistic Approaches in Ethics],

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“Lustration and Decommunisation: Ethical and Theoretical Debates,” and “Europa oder das Rationale. Bemerkungen zu Novalis aus einer europäischpolnischen Sicht” [“Europe or the Rationale: Remarks on Novalis from a Polish-European Perspective”]. FREDERIC R. KELLOGG is Visiting Scholar in the Department of Philosophy at The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. He is the author of “Holmes, Common Law Theory, and Judicial Restraint.” SHANNON KINCAID is Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Social Sciences Department at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York, U.S.A. He is the author of “Democratic Ideals and the Urban Experience.” LESZEK KOCZANOWICZ is Professor in the Lower Silesian College of Education Society for the Advancement of Knowledge, Wrocław, Poland. His publications include Jednostka-działanie-społeczczeństwo. Koncepcje jaźni w filozofii amerykańskiego pragmatyzmu [Individual-Activity-Society: The Concept of Self in American Pragmatism], “Memory of Politics and Politics of Memory: Reflections on the Construction of the Past in Post-Totalitarian Poland,” and “The politics of political biography: self-realization, loyalty, and political change.” JUSTYNA MIKLASZEWSKA is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute of Philosophy at Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. She is the author of Libertariańskie konceptcje wolności i własności [The Libertarian Concepts of Liberty and Property] and the editor of Liberalizm u schyłku XX wieku [Liberalism at the End of the Twentieth Century] and Democracy in Central Europe: Comparative and Historical Perspectives [Polish translation: Demokracja w Europie Środ-kowej]. RICHARD P. MULLIN is Professor of Philosophy at Wheeling Jesuit University, Wheeling, West Virginia, U.S.A. His publications include “The Work Ethic in the Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral on the Economy,” “The Business Leader as a Facilitator of Moral Development,” and “Profit Making: The Creation or Destruction of Wealth?” ŁUKASZ NYSLER, an Assistant Editor of this volume, is the author of several essays, including “Problem jaźni w filozofii Richarda Rorty’ego,” [“The Problem of the Self in Richard Rorty’s Philosophy”] and “Democracja, lewica i pragmatysm” [“Democracy, the Left, and Pragmatism”]. DAVID M. RASMUSSEN is Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, U.S.A. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the journal,

About the Contributors

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Philosophy and Social Criticism. He is the author of Reading Habermas, editor of Handbook of Critical Theory, and editor with Richard Kearney of Continental Aesthetics: Romanticism to Postmodernism: An Anthology. TOM ROCKMORE is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Among the books of which he is the author are Heidegger and French Philosophy: Humanism, Anti-Humanism and Being, On Heidegger’s Nazism and Philosophy, and Habermas and Historical Materialism. SANDRA B. ROSENTHAL is Provost Eminent Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A. She is co-author with Rogene A. Buchholz of Business Ethics: The Pragmatic Path Beyond Principles to Process and Rethinking Business Ethics: A Pragmatic Approach. Her other publications include Speculative Pragmatism. JOHN RYDER is Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Office of International Programs, and Director of the Center on Russia and the United States at the State University of New York, Albany, New York, U.S.A. He is the cofounder and co-chair of the Central European Pragmatist Forum and President of the Alliance of Universities for Democracy. He is the author of Interpreting America: Russian and Soviet Studies of the History of American Thought and the editor of American Philosophical Naturalism in the Twentieth Century. BETH J. SINGER is Professor of Philosophy Emerita at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. Her publications include Operative Rights, Pragmatism, Rights, and Democracy, and “Human Rights: Some Current Issues.” RADOSŁAW SOJAK is a Teaching Assistant in the Institute of Sociology at Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland and for the year 2000 was a grantee of the Foundation for Polish Science. His publications include “Socjologia wiedzy chce pozostać nieświadoma. Uwagi o statusie poznawczym socjologii wiedzy” [“Sociology of Knowledge Wants to Stay Unconscious: Remarks on the Theoretical Status of the Sociology of Knowledge”], “Konsekwentna niewspól-mierność. Uwagi na marginesie ‘sprawy Alana Sokala’” [“Consistent Incommensurability: Insight into ‘the Alan Sokal Affair’ ”], and “Teoretyczna ciąglość––ciąglość teorii? Uwagi na temat scalającej mocy ekskluzji” [“Theoretical Continuity––Continuity of Theory? Remarks on the Unifying Power of Exclusion”]. ANDRZEJ SZAHAJ is Professor in the Institute of Philosophy at Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland. His publications include Jednostka czy wspólnata? Spór liberałów z kommunitarystami a “sprawa polska” [Individ-

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

ual or Community? The Debate between Liberals and Communitarians on the “Polish Matter”], “What Kind of Liberalism do Poles (and not only Poles) Need?” and “Cultural Pluralism and the Problem of Tolerance.” MARIUSZ TUROWSKI is Adjunct and Lecturer in the Department of Social Philosophy in the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland. He is also the editor of a computer magazine, PC Format. His publications include “Suwerenność i odpowiedzialność. Liberalne i komunitarystyczne poszukiwania tożsamości jednostki” [“Sovereignty and Responsibility: Liberal and Communitarian Quest for Human Identity”], “Instytucje dobrego życia? Komunitaryzm a liberalna koncepja demokracji” [“Institutions and the Good Life? Communitarianism and the Liberal Conception of Democracy”], and “Religia i polityka w Polsce. Dyskurs publiczny, tolerancja, neutralność” [“Religion and Politics in Poland: Public Debate, Tolerance, and Neutrality”].

INDEX Balcerowicz, Leszek, 6, 100, 200–214 Bourdieu, Pierre, 3, 163, 167 Catholicism, vii, 23–25, 27–31, 35, 42–43, 45–47 Catholic Church (the), 6–7, 9–10, 23, 40, 44–45, 47, 151, 206 Chomsky, Noam, 143, 146, 148–150, 155, 158 civil society, xiii, xiv, 6, 8–9, 34, 54– 55, 57–59, 103, 114 communism, xiv, 4–5, 7, 10, 28, 30– 31, 51, 56, 101, 109, 122, 125, 130, 151, 154, 157, 168, 170– 171, 173, 190, 207–208 anti-c. 119, 123, 126, 129 communitarianism, 194, 196, 222 communitarians, 57, 61–63, 67– 68, 102–103, 124, 187, 222 community(ies), 3, 8, 13, 15–20, 33– 34, 40–43, 53, 57, 61–67, 82, 103, 119, 121, 131, 133, 135, 140, 155, 158, 166, 183–184, 187, 190, 193–201, 203–204, 209, 211–213, 216, 219–220, 222 sense of, 193 constitutionalism, 1, 89, 93 constitutional law, 88 constitution(s), 28, 44–45, 79–82, 88– 89, 92, 98, 101–103, 160, 207 American c., 98 Polish c., 44, 101, 103 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 203 Dewey, John, 18–19, 74–75, 90, 130– 131, 133–134, 193, 197, 199– 200, 203, 211–212, 215 diversity, 18–19, 76–77, 107, 135, 142, 190, 199–201, 216, 219

education, xi, 57, 68, 109, 139, 144, 153, 167, 190, 200, 203, 210, 212–214, 220 European Union, 29, 136 fascism, 51, 54, 159, 190 freedom, 9–10, 19, 27, 41–43, 45, 52– 53, 55, 57–59, 64–66, 68, 80– 81, 89, 99, 102, 107, 109–116, 127, 135, 144, 146, 153–158, 160, 166, 190, 193–195,. 197– 198, 200–201, 204 f. of speech, 107, 114, 144 Germany, 13, 29, 47, 51, 56, 100, 129, 219 Habermas, Jűrgen, 13, 52–53, 64, 73, 86, 103, 221 Hegel, G. W. F., 52–54, 56–59, 185 Herman, Edward, 122. 124, 134 individualism, 5, 61–62, 98, 174, 183– 184, 193–196 individuality, 63, 200 internet, 119–122, 125–126, 129, 133–136, 139, 142–147 James, William, 187–189 Jews, 30–33, 36, 109, 114, 158 J. and anti-Semitism, 30, 32 justice, 52–53, 56–57, 61–63, 74, 76– 80, 83, 86–88, 90–92, 95, 100– 101, 206–207, 213 justification, 4, 6, 41, 57, 73, 75–79, 85–93, 157 Kuroń, Jacek, 9–10, 171, 175–176 liberalism, 6, 18, 40–41, 43, 49, 51, 59, 61–69, 73, 75–77, 80–83, 87–90, 92–93, 99, 102, 119, 125, 130–131, 212, 220, 222 Lippmann, Walter, 119, 131–134

224 majority rule, 98–99 Mannheim, Karl, 163 Marxism, 51–59, 109–110 Mazowiecki, Tadeusz, 169–170 Mead, George Herbert, 197–199 Michnik, Adam, 9–10, 169 Mill, John Stuart, 107–108, 110, 113 nation(s), 3, 7–8, 13–20, 30, 32–34, 36, 47, 54, 66, 130, 158, 186– 187, 190, 204–205, 208–211, 213, 215 nationalism, 8, 13, 15–20, 25, 30, 34– 35, 97, 111. 219 NATO, 128 Nazism, 31, 157–158, 221 Olszewski, Jan, 169–170 participation (political), 26, 40–41, 43, 93, 98, 100–103, 113, 119, 124, 127, 129, 132, 134, 136, 145– 146, 206–207, 210–216 non-participation, 27 Peirce, Charles S., 13, 20, 134, 199 peasants, 5, 25 perspective(s), xiv, 7, 16–19, 40, 55, 62, 74, 77, 79–80, 83, 107, 133– 134, 158, 164–166, 168–170, 173–147, 176–177, 185, 196– 199, 207, 219–220 pluralism, 18–19, 57–58, 61–63, 66– 68, 80, 193–197, 199–201, 222 politics, xiii, xiv, 4, 6–9, 17, 32, 39– 41, 45–47, 52–54, 74–76, 78, 81, 97, 101–102, 124, 127, 130, 139, 143–145, 163, 167–168, 170, 176, 208, 220, 222 Pope John Paul II, 35, 121 populism, 29 p. and Catholicism, 29–32 pragmatism, 90, 193–194, 196, 203, 205, 210–211, 213, 216 privatization, 99–101, 205 Radio Maryja, 28, 42–45, 206 Rawls, John, 13, 41, 52, 54, 56–59, 61–63, 69, 73–83, 85–93, 99

INDEX rights, 8–9, 15, 19, 40, 52, 57, 59, 65– 66, 80–81, 88, 92–93, 98, 100– 101, 103, 108, 112–114, 121, 124, 135, 147, 156, 194–195, 221 Rorty, Richard, 73–75, 85–86, 90, 220 Round Table Agreement, 6, 10 Round Table Talks, 10, 152, 171, 174 Russia, 23, 45, 51, 100, 128, 160, 221 Sachs, Jeffrey, 100, 203–215 self, 5, 9, 74, 86, 188, 194, 196–198, 220 s. identification, 151–152 socialism, 5, 8, 14, 25, 46, 158, 160, 185 Solidarity, 4–6, 8, 45, 152, 171, 175, 206, 213–214 Supreme Court, 80–83, 88–90, 92–93, 102, 127 television, 46, 120–124, 126, 128, 136, 141, 143, 145 toleration, 39, 73–83, 85–87, 89, 93, 194 totalitarianism, xiii, 9–10, 13–14, 21, 39, 68, 154, 157, 159–160, 196, 204 United States, 6, 29, 42, 52, 55–56, 58, 62, 88–89, 92, 102, 107, 109, 112, 124, 126, 129, 144, 185–186, 190, 193, 204, 208– 209, 214–215, 221 utilitarianism, 57, 90–91 Wałęsa, Lech, 6–7, 28, 43, 46

VIBS The Value Inquiry Book Series is co-sponsored by: Adler School of Professional Psychology American Indian Philosophy Association American Maritain Association American Society for Value Inquiry Association for Process Philosophy of Education Canadian Society for Philosophical Practice Center for Bioethics, University of Turku Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Central European Pragmatist Forum Centre for Applied Ethics, Hong Kong Baptist University Centre for Cultural Research, Aarhus University Centre for Professional Ethics, University of Central Lancashire Centre for the Study of Philosophy and Religion, University College of Cape Breton Centro de Estudos em Filosofia Americana, Brazil College of Education and Allied Professions, Bowling Green State University College of Liberal Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology Concerned Philosophers for Peace Conference of Philosophical Societies Department of Moral and Social Philosophy, University of Helsinki Gannon University Gilson Society Haitian Studies Association Ikeda University Institute of Philosophy of the High Council of Scientific Research, Spain International Academy of Philosophy of the Principality of Liechtenstein International Association of Bioethics International Center for the Arts, Humanities, and Value Inquiry International Society for Universal Dialogue Natural Law Society Philosophical Society of Finland Philosophy Born of Struggle Association Philosophy Seminar, University of Mainz Pragmatism Archive at The Oklahoma State University R.S. Hartman Institute for Formal and Applied Axiology Research Institute, Lakeridge Health Corporation Russian Philosophical Society Society for Iberian and Latin-American Thought Society for the Philosophic Study of Genocide and the Holocaust Unit for Research in Cognitive Neuroscience, Autonomous University of Barcelona Yves R. Simon Institute

Titles Published 1.

Noel Balzer, The Human Being as a Logical Thinker

2.

Archie J. Bahm, Axiology: The Science of Values

3.

H. P. P. (Hennie) Lötter, Justice for an Unjust Society

4. H. G. Callaway, Context for Meaning and Analysis: A Critical Study in the Philosophy of Language 5.

Benjamin S. Llamzon, A Humane Case for Moral Intuition

6. James R. Watson, Between Auschwitz and Tradition: Postmodern Reflections on the Task of Thinking. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 7. Robert S. Hartman, Freedom to Live: The Robert Hartman Story, Edited by Arthur R. Ellis. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 8.

Archie J. Bahm, Ethics: The Science of Oughtness

9. George David Miller, An Idiosyncratic Ethics; Or, the Lauramachean Ethics 10.

Joseph P. DeMarco, A Coherence Theory in Ethics

11. Frank G. Forrest, Valuemetrics‫א‬: The Science of Personal and Professional Ethics. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 12. William Gerber, The Meaning of Life: Insights of the World’s Great Thinkers 13. Richard T. Hull, Editor, A Quarter Century of Value Inquiry: Presidential Addresses of the American Society for Value Inquiry. A volume in Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies 14. William Gerber, Nuggets of Wisdom from Great Jewish Thinkers: From Biblical Times to the Present

15.

Sidney Axinn, The Logic of Hope: Extensions of Kant’s View of Religion

16.

Messay Kebede, Meaning and Development

17. Amihud Gilead, The Platonic Odyssey: A Philosophical-Literary Inquiry into the Phaedo 18. Necip Fikri Alican, Mill’s Principle of Utility: A Defense of John Stuart Mill’s Notorious Proof. A volume in Universal Justice 19.

Michael H. Mitias, Editor, Philosophy and Architecture.

20. Roger T. Simonds, Rational Individualism: The Perennial Philosophy of Legal Interpretation. A volume in Natural Law Studies 21.

William Pencak, The Conflict of Law and Justice in the Icelandic Sagas

22. Samuel M. Natale and Brian M. Rothschild, Editors, Values, Work, Education: The Meanings of Work 23. N. Georgopoulos and Michael Heim, Editors, Being Human in the Ultimate: Studies in the Thought of John M. Anderson 24. Robert Wesson and Patricia A. Williams, Editors, Evolution and Human Values 25. Wim J. van der Steen, Facts, Values, and Methodology: A New Approach to Ethics 26.

Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman, Religion and Morality

27. Albert William Levi, The High Road of Humanity: The Seven Ethical Ages of Western Man, Edited by Donald Phillip Verene and Molly Black Verene 28. Samuel M. Natale and Brian M. Rothschild, Editors, Work Values: Education, Organization, and Religious Concerns 29. Laurence F. Bove and Laura Duhan Kaplan, Editors, From the Eye of the Storm: Regional Conflicts and the Philosophy of Peace. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 30.

Robin Attfield, Value, Obligation, and Meta-Ethics

31. William Gerber, The Deepest Questions You Can Ask About God: As Answered by the World’s Great Thinkers 32.

Daniel Statman, Moral Dilemmas

33. Rem B. Edwards, Editor, Formal Axiology and Its Critics. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 34. George David Miller and Conrad P. Pritscher, On Education and Values: In Praise of Pariahs and Nomads. A volume in Philosophy of Education 35.

Paul S. Penner, Altruistic Behavior: An Inquiry into Motivation

36.

Corbin Fowler, Morality for Moderns

37. Giambattista Vico, The Art of Rhetoric (Institutiones Oratoriae, 1711– 1741), from the definitive Latin text and notes, Italian commentary and introduction byGiuliano Crifò.Translated and Edited by Giorgio A. Pinton and Arthur W. Shippee. A volume in Values in Italian Philosophy 38. W. H. Werkmeister, Martin Heidegger on the Way. Edited by Richard T. Hull. A volume in Werkmeister Studies 39.

Phillip Stambovsky, Myth and the Limits of Reason

40. Samantha Brennan, Tracy Isaacs, and Michael Milde, Editors, A Question of Values: New Canadian Perspectives in Ethics and Political Philosophy 41. Peter A. Redpath, Cartesian Nightmare: An Introduction to Transcendental Sophistry. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 42. Clark Butler, History as the Story of Freedom: Philosophy in InterculturalContext, with responses by sixteen scholars 43.

Dennis Rohatyn, Philosophy History Sophistry

44. Leon Shaskolsky Sheleff, Social Cohesion and Legal Coercion: A Critique of Weber, Durkheim, and Marx. Afterword by Virginia Black

45. Alan Soble, Editor, Sex, Love, and Friendship: Studies of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love, 1977–1992. A volume in Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies 46. Peter A. Redpath, Wisdom’s Odyssey: From Philosophy to Transcendental Sophistry. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 47. Albert A. Anderson, Universal Justice: A Dialectical Approach. A volume in Universal Justice 48. Pio Colonnello, The Philosophy of José Gaos. Translated from Italian by Peter Cocozzella. Edited by Myra Moss. Introduction by Giovanni Gullace. A volume in Values in Italian Philosophy 49. Laura Duhan Kaplan and Laurence F. Bove, Editors, Philosophical Perspectives on Power and Domination: Theories and Practices. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 50.

Gregory F. Mellema, Collective Responsibility

51. Josef Seifert, What Is Life? The Originality, Irreducibility, and Value of Life. A volume in Central-European Value Studies 52.

William Gerber, Anatomy of What We Value Most

53. Armando Molina, Our Ways: Values and Character, Edited by Rem B. Edwards. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 54. Kathleen J. Wininger, Nietzsche’s Reclamation of Philosophy. A volume in Central-European Value Studies 55.

Thomas Magnell, Editor, Explorations of Value

56. HPP (Hennie) Lötter, Injustice, Violence, and Peace: The Case of South Africa. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 57. Lennart Nordenfelt, Talking About Health: A Philosophical Dialogue. A volume in Nordic Value Studies 58. Jon Mills and Janusz A. Polanowski, The Ontology of Prejudice. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology

59.

Leena Vilkka, The Intrinsic Value of Nature

60. Palmer Talbutt, Jr., Rough Dialectics: Sorokin’s Philosophy of Value, with contributions by Lawrence T. Nichols and Pitirim A. Sorokin 61.

C. L. Sheng, A Utilitarian General Theory of Value

62. George David Miller, Negotiating Toward Truth: The Extinction of Teachers and Students. Epilogue by Mark Roelof Eleveld. A volume in Philosophy of Education 63. William Gerber, Love, Poetry, and Immortality: Luminous Insights of the World’s Great Thinkers 64. Dane R. Gordon, Editor, Philosophy in Post-Communist Europe. A volume in Post-Communist European Thought 65. Dane R. Gordon and Józef Niznik, Editors, Criticism and Defense of Rationality in Contemporary Philosophy. A volume in Post-Communist European Thought 66. John R. Shook, Pragmatism: An Annotated Bibliography, 1898-1940. With contributions by E. Paul Colella, Lesley Friedman, Frank X. Ryan, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis 67.

Lansana Keita, The Human Project and the Temptations of Science

68. Michael M. Kazanjian, Phenomenology and Education: Cosmology, CoBeing, and Core Curriculum. A volume in Philosophy of Education 69. James W. Vice, The Reopening of the American Mind: On Skepticism and Constitutionalism 70. Sarah Bishop Merrill, Defining Personhood: Toward the Ethics of Quality in Clinical Care 71.

Dane R. Gordon, Philosophy and Vision

72. Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, Editors, Postmodernism and the Holocaust. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

73. Peter A. Redpath, Masquerade of the Dream Walkers: Prophetic Theology from the Cartesians to Hegel. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 74. Malcolm D. Evans, Whitehead and Philosophy of Education: The Seamless Coat of Learning. A volume in Philosophy of Education 75. Warren E. Steinkraus, Taking Religious Claims Seriously: A Philosophy of Religion, Edited by Michael H. Mitias. A volume in Universal Justice 76.

Thomas Magnell, Editor, Values and Education

77. Kenneth A. Bryson, Persons and Immortality. A volume in Natural Law Studies 78. Steven V. Hicks, International Law and the Possibility of a Just World Order: An Essay on Hegel’s Universalism. A volume in Universal Justice 79. E. F. Kaelin, Texts on Texts and Textuality: A Phenomenology of Literary Art, Edited by Ellen J. Burns 80. Amihud Gilead, Saving Possibilities: A Study in Philosophical Psychology. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology 81. André Mineau, The Making of the Holocaust: Ideology and Ethics in the Systems Perspective. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 82. Howard P. Kainz, Politically Incorrect Dialogues: Topics Not Discussed in Polite Circles 83. Veikko Launis, Juhani Pietarinen, and Juha Räikkä, Editors, Genes and Morality: New Essays. A volume in Nordic Value Studies 84. Steven Schroeder, The Metaphysics of Cooperation: A Study of F. D. Maurice 85. Caroline Joan (“Kay”) S. Picart, Thomas Mann and Friedrich Nietzsche: Eroticism, Death, Music, and Laughter. A volume in Central-European Value Studies

86. G. John M. Abbarno, Editor, The Ethics of Homelessness: Philosophical Perspectives 87. James Giles, Editor, French Existentialism: Consciousness, Ethics, and Relations with Others. A volume in Nordic Value Studies 88. Deane Curtin and Robert Litke, Editors, Institutional Violence. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 89.

Yuval Lurie, Cultural Beings: Reading the Philosophers of Genesis

90. Sandra A. Wawrytko, Editor, The Problem of Evil: An Intercultural Exploration. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology 91. Gary J. Acquaviva, Values, Violence, and Our Future. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 92.

Michael R. Rhodes, Coercion: A Nonevaluative Approach

93. Jacques Kriel, Matter, Mind, and Medicine: Transforming the Clinical Method 94. Haim Gordon, Dwelling Poetically: Educational Challenges in Heidegger’s Thinking on Poetry. A volume in Philosophy of Education 95. Ludwig Grünberg, The Mystery of Values: Studies in Axiology, Edited by Cornelia Grünberg and Laura Grünberg 96. Gerhold K. Becker, Editor, The Moral Status of Persons: Perspectives on Bioethics. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics 97. Roxanne Claire Farrar, Sartrean Dialectics: A Method for Critical Discourse on Aesthetic Experience 98. Ugo Spirito, Memoirs of the Twentieth Century. Translated from Italian and Edited by Anthony G. Costantini. A volume in Values in Italian Philosophy 99. Steven Schroeder, Between Freedom and Necessity: An Essay on the Place of Value

100. Foster N. Walker, Enjoyment and the Activity of Mind: Dialogues on Whitehead and Education. A volume in Philosophy of Education 101. Avi Sagi, Kierkegaard, Religion, and Existence: The Voyage of the Self. Translated from Hebrew by Batya Stein 102. Bennie R. Crockett, Jr., Editor, Addresses of the Mississippi Philosophical Association. A volume in Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies 103. Paul van Dijk, Anthropology in the Age of Technology: The Philosophical Contribution of Günther Anders 104. Giambattista Vico, Universal Right. Translated from Latin and edited by Giorgio Pinton and Margaret Diehl. A volume in Values in Italian Philosophy 105. Judith Presler and Sally J. Scholz, Editors, Peacemaking: Lessons from the Past, Visions for the Future. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 106. Dennis Bonnette, Origin of the Human Species. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 107. Phyllis Chiasson, Peirce’s Pragmatism: The Design for Thinking. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 108. Dan Stone, Editor, Theoretical Interpretations of the Holocaust. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 109. Raymond Angelo Belliotti, What Is the Meaning of Human Life? 110. Lennart Nordenfelt, Health, Science, and Ordinary Language, with Contributions by George Khushf and K. W. M. Fulford 111. Daryl Koehn, Local Insights, Global Ethics for Business. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics 112. Matti Häyry and Tuija Takala, Editors, The Future of Value Inquiry. A volume in Nordic Value Studies

113.

Conrad P. Pritscher, Quantum Learning: Beyond Duality

114. Thomas M. Dicken and Rem B. Edwards, Dialogues on Values and Centers of Value: Old Friends, New Thoughts. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 115. Rem B. Edwards, What Caused the Big Bang? A volume in Philosophy and Religion 116. Jon Mills, Editor, A Pedagogy of Becoming. A volume in Philosophy of Education 117. Robert T. Radford, Cicero: A Study in the Origins of Republican Philosophy. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 118. Arleen L. F. Salles and María Julia Bertomeu, Editors, Bioethics: Latin American Perspectives. A volume in Philosophy in Latin America 119. Nicola Abbagnano, The Human Project: The Year 2000, with an Interview by Guiseppe Grieco. Translated from Italian by Bruno Martini and Nino Langiulli. Edited with an introduction by Nino Langiulli. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 120. Daniel M. Haybron, Editor, Earth’s Abominations: Philosophical Studies of Evil. A volume in Personalist Studies 121. Anna T. Challenger, Philosophy and Art in Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub: A Modern Sufi Odyssey 122. George David Miller, Peace, Value, and Wisdom: The Educational Philosophy of Daisaku Ikeda. A volume in Daisaku Ikeda Studies 123. Haim Gordon and Rivca Gordon, Sophistry and Twentieth-Century Art 124. Thomas O. Buford and Harold H. Oliver, Editors Personalism Revisited: Its Proponents and Critics. A volume in Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies 125. Avi Sagi, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd. Translated from Hebrew by Batya Stein 126. Robert S. Hartman, The Knowledge of Good: Critique of Axiological Reason. Expanded translation from the Spanish by Robert S. Hartman. Edited by Arthur R. Ellis and Rem B. Edwards.A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies

127. Alison Bailey and Paula J. Smithka, Editors. Community, Diversity, and Difference: Implications for Peace. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 128. Oscar Vilarroya, The Dissolution of Mind: A Fable of How Experience Gives Rise to Cognition. A volume in Cognitive Science 129. Paul Custodio Bube and Jeffery Geller, Editors, Conversations with Pragmatism: A Multi-Disciplinary Study. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 130. Richard Rumana, Richard Rorty: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Literature. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 131. Stephen Schneck, Editor, Max Scheler’s Acting Persons: New Perspectives A volume in Personalist Studies 132. Michael Kazanjian, Learning Values Lifelong: From Inert Ideas to Wholes. A volume in Philosophy of Education 133. Rudolph Alexander Kofi Cain, Alain Leroy Locke: Race, Culture, and the Education of African American Adults. A volume in African American Philosophy 134. Werner Krieglstein, Compassion: A New Philosophy of the Other 135. Robert N. Fisher, Daniel T. Primozic, Peter A. Day, and Joel A. Thompson, Editors, Suffering, Death, and Identity. A volume in Personalist Studies 136. Steven Schroeder, Touching Philosophy, Sounding Religion, Placing Education. A volume in Philosophy of Education 137. Guy DeBrock, Process Pragmatism: Essays on a Quiet Philosophical Revolution. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 138. Lennart Nordenfelt and Per-Erik Liss, Editors, Dimensions of Health and Health Promotion 139. Amihud Gilead, Singularity and Other Possibilities: Panenmentalist Novelties

140. Samantha Mei-che Pang, Nursing Ethics in Modern China: Conflicting Values and Competing Role Requirements. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics 141. Christine M. Koggel, Allannah Furlong, and Charles Levin, Editors, Confidential Relationships: Psychoanalytic, Ethical, and Legal Contexts. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology 142. Peter A. Redpath, Editor, A Thomistic Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Étienne Gilson. A volume in Gilson Studies 143. Deane-Peter Baker and Patrick Maxwell, Editors, Explorations in Contemporary Continental Philosophy of Religion. A volume in Philosophy and Religion 144. Matti Häyry and Tuija Takala, Editors, Scratching the Surface of Bioethics. A volume in Values in Bioethics 145. Leonidas Donskis, Forms of Hatred: The Troubled Imagination in Modern Philosophy and Literature 146. Andreea Deciu Ritivoi, Editor, Interpretation and Its Objects: Studies in the Philosophy of Michael Krausz 147. Herman Stark, A Fierce Little Tragedy: Thought, Passion, and SelfFormation in the Philosophy Classroom. A volume in Philosophy of Education 148. William Gay and Tatiana Alekseeva, Editors, Democracy and the Quest for Justice: Russian and American Perspectives. A volume in Contemporary Russian Philosophy 149. Xunwu Chen, Being and Authenticity 150. Hugh P. McDonald, Radical Axiology: A First Philosophy of Values 151. Dane R. Gordon and David C. Durst, Editors, Civil Society in Southeast Europe. A volume in Post-Communist European Thought 152. John Ryder and Emil Višňovský, Editors, Pragmatism and Values: The Central European Pragmatist Forum, Volume One. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values

153. Messay Kebede, Africa’s Quest for a Philosophy of Decolonization 154. Steven M. Rosen, Dimensions of Apeiron: A Topological Phenomenology of Space, Time, and Individuation. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology 155. Albert A. Anderson, Steven V. Hicks, and Lech Witkowski, Editors, Mythos and Logos: How to Regain the Love of Wisdom. A volume in Universal Justice 156. John Ryder and Krystyna Wilkoszewska, Editors, Deconstruction and Reconstruction: The Central European Pragmatist Forum, Volume Two. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 157. Javier Muguerza, Ethics and Perplexity: Toward a Critique of Dialogical Reason. Translated from the Spanish by Jody L. Doran. Edited by John R. Welch. A volume in Philosophy in Spain 158. Gregory F. Mellema, The Expectations of Morality 159. Robert Ginsberg, The Aesthetics of Ruins 160. Stan van Hooft, Life, Death, and Subjectivity: Moral Sources in Bioethics A volume in Values in Bioethics 161. André Mineau, Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics Against Human Dignity 162. Arthur Efron, Expriencing Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Deweyan Account. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 163. Reyes Mate, Memory of the West: The Contemporaneity of Forgotten Jewish Thinkers. Translated from the Spanish by Anne Day Dewey. Edited by John R. Welch. A volume in Philosophy in Spain 164. Nancy Nyquist Potter, Editor, Putting Peace into Practice: Evaluating Policy on Local and Global Levels. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 165. Matti Häyry, Tuija Takala, and Peter Herissone-Kelly, Editors, Bioethics and Social Reality. A volume in Values in Bioethics 166. Maureen Sie, Justifying Blame: Why Free Will Matters and Why it Does Not. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics

167. Leszek Koczanowicz and Beth J. Singer, Editors, Democracy and the Post-Totalitarian Experience. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values