CivilSocietyaNewParadigmintheYugoslavTheoreticalDiscussion

CivilSocietyaNewParadigmintheYugoslavTheoreticalDiscussion

byMojmirKrian

Source: PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:1+2/1989,pages:152163,onwww.ceeol.com.
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CIVIL SOCIETY A NEW PARADIGM IN THE YUGOSLAV THEORETICAL DISCUSSION

Mojmir Krian

An intensive theoretical discussion has evolved in Yugoslavia during the past few years, especially since 1985, concerning the theoretical concept of civil society and its importance in the understanding of the present situation and potential future developments of Soviet type societies, including Yugoslavia. As a matter of course, Yugoslav authors dealt with problems of political theory and practice of western democracies also before 1985, yet from normatively different perspectives, i.e. either neutrally, seeing in them objects of a purely theoretical interest and of no relevance for the constitution of Yugoslav society, or critically, intending to legitimate the self-government combined with the one-party rule. The present discussion is distinguished by positive evaluation of western theories of civil society, so that it is hardly influenced by former works by Yugoslav authors on the same subject. The aim of this article is to present the social and theoretical context, the most important topics and the most interesting argument of the discussion. As far as the actual social and political conditions influencing the discussion are concerned, the processes of economic decline, political disintegration and delegitimation, beginning around 1979, have first to be mentioned.1 By Yugoslav authors they have been referred to as the crisis or agony, and have confronted social theorists and all interested citizens with new problems, causing thereby an intensification and relative liberalization of public discourse. The discussion has been stimulated by numerous new social phenomena of the last ten years: (1) the increased number of strikes and the growing disposition of workers to self-organization, (2) citizens initiatives, addressing petitions to high institutions of the state and the party, demanding the institutionalization of elements of a modern civil society in the Yugoslav constitutional system, (3) formation of committees, protesting against various forms of state and party repression,2 (4) the relative autonomization of politically relevant professions, e.g. the journalists, (5) the appearance of group initiatives and movements with political platforms concerned with particular problems of modern civilization, which correspond to new social movements in the west, (6) formation of sub- and counter-cultures3, (7) a growing readiness of authors to discuss politically explosive subjects4, and (8) an increasing awareness of a growing technological, cultural and civilisatory lag with respect to the rest of Europe. Finally, the heterogeneity of cultural traditions of Yugoslav nations has to be mentioned, introducing a politically relevant component of pluralism into the political culture of the population.

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Among the external factors the close contacts of the Republic of Slovenia with its neighbours, Italy and Austria, have to be mentioned, as well as the fact that Yugoslavia is not subject to the Soviet hegemony, but tries to keep its precarious position between the blocks and its status of a nonaligned country. This exposes it to manifold and frequently hardly compatible political and cultural influences and requirements. In the 80s perturbations in the Soviet block have attracted a growing attention, to mention only the Polish movement of Solidarity, the economic liberalization in Hungary and Gorbachevs perestroika in the USSR. On the level of relevant theoretical influences, the stance of East-European critical5 left intellectuals has, over the last decades, drifted from a Leninistically imprinted Marxism, through varieties of neo-Marxism, to post-Marxism6. Some representatives of the Yugoslav philosophy of praxis have undergone a similar development: the dominant theoretical orientation of Praxis International is since 1986 no longer Marxist-humanist, as originally postulated by its predecessor7, but democratic socialist.8 The corresponding theoretical discussion in the west has also been received in Yugoslavia, especially its conclusion that a monistic and harmonic socialist democracy has to be considered as an illusionary goal of social transformation because it implies non-democractic forms of rule. In this context the problem of theoretically characterizing the movement of Solidarity in Poland 1980-81 turned out to be particularly stimulating. As releaser of the discussion the appearance of a collection of writings9 can be considered comprising articles by western authors (John Keane, Alain Touraine, David Held, Andrew Arato) and a large number of various texts and interviews of Polish origin concerned with the Solidarity movement. In its preface Frane Adam and Darka Podmenik argue that the concept of a socialist civil society can be considered as a new theoretical and political paradigm. In order to contour it, they stress its theoretical proximity to post-Marxism and post-liberalism, its political intention to radialize Eurocommunism and emphasise the importance of new social movements, and its requirement to shift the function of satisfaction of social needs to the solidary and self-organized society, especially to the local communities. They maintain that the ideal social monism is the central intention both of the Soviet type etatism and of the Yugoslav type self-government socialism. They formulate what turned out to be the central question of the discussion to come: . . . how is it possible to ask for political rights and freedoms in a system, where the difference between state and society has been abolished? In a system, where there is no functional differentiation, no hierarchy, no division of labor and no differences of power? Where all decide about everything, where there is no rule, no state and no party? . . . Excuses that genuine socialism is a process, that the abolition of the difference between state and society is the same as the withering away of the state, that in the transition period the self-organization of the society is required, are not founded.10 The most important loci of discourse have been meetings of Yugoslav social scientists, theoretical and literary journals and, in some cases, weeklies reaching a broad public. Among the professional meetings two conferences are of primary importance: Drutvo i drava u socijalizmu (Society and state in socialism), Belgrade, 10 Nov. 1986, and Civilna druba i drava (Civil society and state), Ljubljana, 28-30. Oct. 1987. The literary journal Knjivne novine

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published many of the presentations at these and other conferences on related subjects.11 In addition, the Slovene journals Nova revija, Mladina and Katedra, and the Serbo-Croatian weeklies NIN and Danas published a large number of articles on related subjects with similar intentions. Participants in the discussion are predominantly Slovenes and Serbs. One may conclude that the relevance of the topic has been recognized and that a broadening of the discourse can be expected in the future. Among the central topics and most interesting arguments of the discussion, in the first place attempts of historical reconstruction of the meaning of the concept of civil society (CS), having in mind particularly its possible relevance for the analysis of Soviet type societies, have to be mentioned. Ljubomir Tadi12 offers such a reconstruction underlining the historical dependency of the conceptual division of the CS from the state sphere on the industrial revolution and the related opposition of the bourgeios class to the absolutist state. This opposition can also be seen as a manifestation of the revolutionary impetus of the Age of Enlightenment. Slobodan Samardi13 sketches the development of that line of critical thinking on socialism, which in the course of the last ten years embraced the paradigm of the division of society and state. He stresses the growing preparedness to recognize the emancipatory potentials of bourgeois institutions, as for instance political democracy and a free public sphere. With regards to the oppositional movements in Eastern Europe he points out14 that, as a rule, they required a reinstitutionalization of elements of CS, in the first place social and economic liberalization and political democratization. Until the 60s, workers actions had predominantly socialist goals, trying to combine socialism and democracy. Only during the last decade, especially in Poland and Hungary, these goals have been replaced by a process of self-organization of society, producing a new social infrastructure which the party-state is unable to control and which is gradually constituting itself as an alternative to the official system. This development is the result of the conclusion that real existing socialism and CS are incompatible entities. Several authors have analyzed the modern meaning of the concept. Frane Adam15 proposes four (non-exclusive) alternatives of understanding CS: (1) as social oppostion, consisting primarily of the new social movements, (2) as society organized according to the principle of self-government (council democracy), (3) as a correlational concept based on the separation of state and society and (4) as a result of the process of modernization. He understands social modernization as a process of functional differentiation of social subsystems and emancipation from traditional patterns of structure of identity, value orientations, and symbolic sphere, and maintains that Soviet type societies are structured in a pre-modern way.16 This would explain both the central intentions of Gorbachevs perestroika and glasnost i.e., the social implementation and elements of commodity production and the strengthening of the role of public sphere and legality and the expanding interest in political theories of liberalism among East European intellectuals. Pavel Gantar17 deals with the problem of the definition of the concept of CS on a sociological level, and elaborates on the problem of its relationship to the concept of hegemony as developed by Antonio Gramsci, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. He polemicizes against Frane Adams alleged reduction of the concept of

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CS to that of modernization and his neglect of the difference between the descriptive and the normative dimensions of the latter. He also contradicts Adam by interpreting socialist revolutions as radical responses to retarded modernization, instead of trying to specify the modern and the pre-modern elements of Soviet type societies. Other authors deal with the questions of social technology, the history and theory of legal and welfare state etc. Neboja Popov18 examines the cultural history of the bolshevik movement and points to the fact that it enjoyed wide support only in East- and South-European countries, where it was successful in integrating many elements of patriarchal, authoritarian and bellicose cultures. The strategy of the Comintern after the 1st World War, to continue the communist world revolution in the agrarian countries of the Balkan after it had failed in the West, resulted in the contamination of the socialist project by local nationalisms. Central to the debate is the relationship between state and society in socialism, particularly the problem of conceptualizing a civil society in the frame of a socialist system. Darka Podmenik19 enumerates the general conditions for such a conceptualization: The division of state and society implies: (1) disagreement with the official Marxist-Leninist doctrine of state, stating that it is a result of class contradictions, an instrument of class struggle and historically doomed to wither away; (2) rejection of the postulated possibility of realization of communist utopia as a free and harmonious community; (3) refusal to see in the class struggle the only way of emancipation and (4) negation of the possibility to replace the representative democracy by a direct one. Since the official Yugoslav theory of self-government never gave up the quoted elements of Marxism-Leninism, the same incompatibilities also relate to it. Vesna Pei20 argues that the principle of equality extends to all men and that civil equality has to be safeguarded on the level of formal and procedural conditions of action by equal rights and chances of all. In opposition to this, real socialism, being ideologically determined by Marxs critique of political economy, concentrates its revolutionary energies on the realization of material equality in the economic sphere and tries to construct the society by proceeding from the sphere of production. Because equality in this sphere can be founded neither on the structure of the means of industrial production, nor on its optimal organization, and it is not a stable constitutive element of the workers consciousness, structures of inequality arise time and again. Therefore the extension of the workers democracy onto the level of state, as required by the ideology of self-government, is impossible. Attempts to implement it in spite of these limitations imply equalizing interventions of the state in the economy. These are the reasons why political orders of the Soviet type have to restrict the liberties and rights of men and citizens and are intrinsically incompatible with the concept of CS21. With intent to lay stress on the element of intolerence inherent in existing socialist social systems, the same author22 points to the importance of conflicts in Marxs analysis of society, resulting from his historical-philosophical approach, and to the violent and pre-modern character of a Marxist-Leninist understanding of society and revolution. The Marxist approach she contrasts to the central elements of a civil society: autonomy and mutual dependence of social actors, clear delimitation of their spheres of freedom and power, and the resulting reduction of violence

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and the corresponding pacification of internal relationships of society. Whereas in modern societies the dominant endeavour is to constitute its present in accordance with the expectancies of the majority, Soviet type societies are based on the intention to violently implement a utopian project in the future. Gregor Tomc23 also stresses that the enemy-ideology is inherent to these systems: it results both from the failure of socialist revolutions to build up a socialist society, and from the ambition of the party to preserve its unlimited power. This allows the inference that Soviet type social orders are intrinsically unstable. Tine Hribar24 shows the interdependence of the concepts of legitimacy and of CS as separate from the state, i.e. of a society ruling by legislation and thus controlling the government, which governs according to the law. Without such a separation the government tends to usurp the legislative power and begin ruling in a totalitarian or authoritarian manner. Then laws cannot be distinguished from party directives, and the society tends to de-politization. On the other hand, the separation stimulates the politization of CS in the frame of legality and thereby makes possible the legitimation of government. A number of authors discuss the same problems in connection with the particularities of the Yugoslav self-government socialism. Already in 1984 Svetozar Stojanovi25 pleaded for the replacement of the atomized mass society by an ordered, pluralist one capable of autonomous action. He suggested that the existing social-political organizations (socialist alliance, trade union, youth organisation) be relieved of their hitherto prevailing function of transmission of party directives and thereby enabled for such action. For the representative state organs he proposed a three chamber system able to guarantee an adequate representation of citizens, producers and nations. In the actual discussion26 he criticizes Marxs mistake to consider what he (Marx) believed to be aufgehoben27 in a logical or theoretical sense as for instance the institutions of a bourgeois democracy as surpassed and obsolete also in a historical sense. Since it turned out that also in socialism conflicts cannot be avoided and that in every society a tendency for formation of new class divisions is imminent, an institutionalized sphere of CS is necessary. Concerning both the development of economy and that of CS, modern capitalism proved to be the best point of departure for socialist transformations.28 Kosta avoki29 denounces the ideological abuse of the concept of enemy and stresses the importance of the principle of reconciliation as a constitutive element of CS. He concludes that the latter can be made possible only under the condition that the one-party monopoly of power is given up and civil rights and liberties reestablished. In order to overcome the actual tendencies of disintegration in Yugoslav society and clear the way for its democratization, he proposes a series of changes in the Yugoslav constitution in order to guarantee these rights and liberties: (1) free and secret elections for all representative bodies, based on a plurality of political programs and the freedom to disseminate them publicly, (2) abolition of the monopoly of power of the communist party, as it is presently anchored in the constitution, (3) implementation of the principle of public responsibility and recallability of all public and state functionaries, (4) freedom of the press, (5) rights of (public) assembly, free trade unions, the right to strike and (6) effective legal protection of fundamental rights and liberties. Many contributions to the discussion of intended constitutional reforms also

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contain statements concerning the problem of civil society. Srda Popovi30 rejects the wide-spread conviction that various legal restrictions of the freedom of speech and other rights and liberties are incompatible with Yugoslav constitution. He shows that, on the contrary, they have to be understood as implementations of its letter and spirit. This can be concluded from (1) the subordination of rights and liberties to the interests of socialist society or the working class (part II of the preamble and 203) and (2) the definition of the Communist Alliance of Yugoslavia as the only authentic interpreter and representative of these interests, in accordance with the laws of historical development (part VIII of the preamble and 154). Rights, including rights and liberties of the citizens, conditioned by interests are in fact no rights at all, they are concessions dependent on political opportunity. Toma Mastnak31 describes the case of repression of the punk movement in Slovenia und draws the conclusion that it is necessary for an effective CS not only to clearly delimit it own sphere from that of state power, but also to provide its own internal antagonistic differentiation. In the described case the repression was not exerted primarily by the state, but by the society (moral majority, vox populi). This demonstrates the danger that a homogenized society without a state, as postulated in the historical projections of the ideology of self-government, or a conservative and intolerent society, as it resulted from the practice of selfgovernment in Yugoslavia, establishes totalitarian relationships from below instead of protecting and respecting individual liberties. The demand for a free public sphere has been clearly articulated by the Yugoslav praxis-philosophers already in the 60s within the actual context of expectations at that time that public discourse could facilitate the constitution of the desired harmonious socialist society in Marxs sense. At present this demand is raised with the opposite intention, i.e. to demonstrate that a free public sphere is incompatible with the postulated harmony of socialism. Darka Podmenik32 argues in favor of the thesis that Yugoslav self-government cannot be seen as an institution rendering the bourgeois public sphere obsolete or superfluous, because it is also based on an ideology that presumes the abolition of all conflicts and does not allow their public disputation. A look at the methods and bodies for their resolution suggests that it rests on the extension of the model of democratic centralism over the whole society and therefore is incapable of effectively mediating individual interests to the sphere of political power. Together with Frane Adam33 she criticizes the present state of the Yugoslav public sphere. If understood as only a sphere of discourse, in recent years its degree of freedom has considerably expanded, but it remained informal, institutionally unprotected and of no relevance for the enforcement of political interests of the society. On the other hand the political activity of state and party still manifest the classical structure of directives from above. Thus the present freedom of public discourse can be cancelled at any time. Considering the central elements of a CS, Slobodan Samardi34 believes that among them legal state35 in socialism will be most difficult to realize. The main obstacle is its incompatibility with the party-state, which acts according to the Marxist-Leninist ideology rather than the actual needs of society. Silva Menari36 points to some characteristic tendencies in socialist systems de-differentiation, spontaneity, dominance of informal relationships and neglect of the needs of society that result from the revolutionary norm of harmonization. In the diffuse legal

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structure of Yugoslav self-government, neither the individual invoking the law, nor the self-governing legislator are sovereign in the sense of clearly defined rights and liberties. Therefore the functioning of self-government is to a large extent dependent on extra-legal instances and interventions of a few leading personalities. Although in the discussion the neologism socialist civil society has been frequently used, its clear delimitation against a capitalist CS has not yet been accomplished. There is a general consensus that it would be absurd to use this term in connection with Soviet type societies, where the implementation of a modern CS still has not been achieved. Some authors37 stress that also in Yugoslavia the communist party and its transmissions penetrate the society, destroy the traditional institutional frameworks, instrumentalize those of self-government for that purpose and therefore cannot accept the formation of even a socialist CS. The general question is whether the term has to be understood as a society systematically opposed to a socialist one-party state, as one in which collective forms of property of the means of production dominate, or as Marxs utopian communist society = community, which has dissolved the alienated state. A quite clear definition of the term is given by Laslo Sekelj38, locating its differentia specifica in a just distribution of property of the means of production, which for the most part belong to the state or to the society and are managed by autonomous workers organized in a trade unionist or a council democractic system. He proposes a similar structure for the political sphere. However, all these definitions leave unsolved the problems of optimal economic reproduction, and turn out to be compatible with most modern theories of civil society tout court, so that one has to agree with Toma Mastnak who said: Socialism can come to an arrangement with civil society, but it cannot generate it. One can imagine a civil society in socialism, but no socialist civil society and only in the former case can one speak of a democratic socialism. However, in that case democracy is at the same time something extra-socialist; one can speak of democracy without having to speak of socialism39. Ljubomir Tadi40 implicitly demonstrates the theoretical untenableness of this neologism when he speaks of Marxs idea of the reintegration of the abstract citizen into the real individual man (On the Jewish question), this idea being incompatible with a division and counterposition of the socialist state and a socialist civil society. Since the actual opacity of social and political processes, the praxis of redistribution, the economic decline and the general insecurity have intensified the nationalistic feelings of Yugoslav nations, and since the party oligarchies of the eight republics are not equally disposed to tolerate a public discussion about CS, even this discussion could not be protected from instrusions of nationalism. Although some authors have criticized these developments, in many instances the neutrality of modern concepts of CS towards national identities has been hardly perceived, and proposals for institutionalization of CS have been understood as expressions of particular national interests. This revival of nationalism provoked Slovene and Serbian intellectuals to initiate a general dialogue about the identities of both nations and the chances of their cohabitation in the frame of the Yugoslav federation41. From the point of view of this paper two lines of argumentation are relevant: the attempts to bind the national and cultural identities on pre-war civil traditions, and the efforts of both sides to prove their cultural proximity to Europe.

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A representative attempt seeking to demonstrate a particular civil national identity of the Slovenes and thereby question the membership of Slovenia in the Yugoslav federation is the open letter of Taras Kermauner to his Serbian friend. There he refers to the nature of Slovenes42, which they obtained by sucking up the way of life of central and western Europe. Hence they have difficulties to identify with the proasian and proafrican Yugoslavia. Kermauner himself identifies with Slovenia in a mystical way it is his extended, more complicated I and makes efforts to delimit his republic from the rest of the Yugoslav society in its present condition. A chauvinist timbre of his tune can clearly be discerned: The rest of Yugoslavia is backward, and its backwardness has two components. The first is Yugo-Stalinism and (pseudo) bureaucratic centralism, what in short can be called Lumpen-Yugoslavia. Its ideology of fraternity and unity results in terror and is thus incompatible with freedom, solidarity and the readiness to search for consent as principles of CS43. The second is the backwardness of a rural and militaristic tribal society, standing in the hajduktradition of the Balkans. These two forms of backwardness are closely related.44 Particularly malicious is Kermauners criticism of the Albanians: they are armed, have a high birthrate and tend to solve the problem of overpopulation by expansion of their Lebensraum;45 if underdeveloped peoples are not able for social transformation, they become aggressive like rats or ants.46 A second new element of national identity, closely related to the first, is the remembrance of the cultural belonging to Europe. The popularity of this trend among East European intellectuals became evident during the last few years and can be understood as a reaction to the Soviet political and cultural hegemony.47 This direction of the search for identity, abundant with nostalgic connotations, finds its political expression in the form of collaboration of Slovenia (and Croatia) in the regional coalition Alps-Adria. Serbian intellectuals, being able to refer to the existence of an independent modern Serbian state already in the 19th century as well as to the corresponding tradition of liberalism, stress the Serbian belonging to (western) Europe. Slobadan Seleni48 says that the Slovenes may indeed speak about Europe, but that in fact they have in mind the Central European culture and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which do not include the cultural experiences of ancient Greece, the anti-feudal populism of Cromwell and the French revolution. In that sense Austro-Hungarian conservatism, royalism and provincialism are a negation of European values. In contrast, many aspects of Serbian culture demonstrate its orientation towards (western) Europe. With a similar intention Borislav Mihajlovi Mihiz49 reconstructs the history of elements of CS in a number of Yugoslav nations. In the daily and weekly newspapers, writings dealing with topics related to the theme of CS also frequently appear. Among the great many of partially original contributions I shall mention only one: In order to show a way out of the economic decay, the economists Slavko Goldstein and Marijan Koroi50 present a program for an open economy, its central demand being the elimination of all obstacles to free economic activity in the frame of a unified Yugoslav market, i.e. the nascence of the free citizen in the economic sense, the legalization of all forms of property of means of production and the introduction of up to date instruments of economic policy.

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Finally, several critical remarks should be presented, in particular concerning relatively neglected spheres of problems. In the first place, a relative deficiency of reception and discussion of European political theories of the last few centuries can be observed. There is no doubt that such a reception would imply a comfortable answer to many of the treated or only imminent problems and help to avoid some of the argumentative impasses. One such problem concerns the principle of constitution of society. If the principle of a ruling vanguard party has been recognized as being incompatible with a modern civil society, the question about an alternative principle of association and legitimation of social and political order has to be answered. The only available alternative seems to be the theory of social contract. Therefore the existing theories of social contract should be reassessed, and eventually new ones developed, keeping in mind the present condition of Soviet type societies and the type of political and social modernity desired to be implemented. A second problem relates to the desired type of civil society. Should it be understood as predominantly a tamed bellum omnium contra omnes (Hobbes), or as a system of egoistic needs (Marx, Hegel), or as the locus of cultural hegemony (Gramsci), or as the harmonious community of creative individuals striving for free development of their many-sided potentialities (praxis-philosophy), or as the sphere of free action of enlightened individuals in a frame of democratically maintained and (therefore) self-regulative institutions, or other? It seems that the participants in the discussion have in mind primarily the last alternative, thus being in accordance with the present state of the discussion in west and east, especially with the way of thinking of East European oppositional intellectuals (Michnik, Havel, Konrad). Still probably due to the tradition of praxis-philosophy, they seem to be too optimistic about the chances of the establishment of social harmony, so that, having in mind the impending problems of the modern world, strategies of theory construction starting from more pessimistic premises could in the long run turn out to be more realistic. In close connection with this is the problem of the type of political pluralism. Almost all intellectuals in Yugoslavia agree that some kind of political pluralism is necessary, but there is considerable debate over its optimal form. At one end of the spectrum are the oppositional intellectuals clamoring explicitly for a multiparty system of the western type. Others support the present situation in Yugoslavia, i.e. the confederal structure of the communist party disabling it to act monolithically, or lay their hopes in the constitution of a corporatist system. Still others believe that pluralism can be realized within the structure of a council democracy, or even that the present system of socialist self-government should be revitalized in order to obtain the much implored self-government pluralism, etc. In some cases the argumentation ends with the mention of political pluralism, probably because of some kind of self-censorship. Against this background the argumentation of Joe Punik51 positively excels: He sees the dangers for the legitimacy of the political order and of the effectiveness of the social order if CS as a whole degenerates into an institution of opposition a development which can easily be induced if the ruling party continues to insist on its monistic project, as the case of Poland has demonstrated. The required legitimacy and effectiveness can be ensured

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only if pluralism of society finds an adequate expression in the political sphere, and for this purpose a plurality of political parties is required. In a further step questions concerning social ethics could be posed, because ethical considerations and decisions are a necessary precondition for the acceptance of the principle of social contract and a particular structure of social and political institutions in contrast to the situtation in a society ruled by a vanguard minority that monopolizes all knowledge about the welfare of the majority. As a particular instance of this ethics, keeping in mind the virulent nationalisms of Yugoslav nations and other actual political developments, which often let democratization mean nothing else but disintegration and confederation due to these nationalisms, a constitutional patriotism52 seems to offer a (partial) solution. This patriotism implies a supra-national base of identification, i.e. an emotional binding not (only) on ethnicity, nation or local community, but on the political and social constitution of the whole country. However, for that purpose a modern universalist constitution is required, one which guarantees individual rights and liberties and defines institutions capable to solidify the integrity of the country. To conclude: the importance of the discussion can probably be seen in two of its functions: On the theoretical level the concept of CS presents a relatively coherent alternative stance for a systematic critique of the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, Soviet type social orders and Yugoslav self-government. Probably the conjecture is allowed that in the years to come it will be the dominant one as far as Yugoslav social theorists are concerned, and that their critique will in the long run have some palpable political consequences. This would be as Darka Podmenik and Frane Adam remarked synonymous with a change of paradigm as compared to the critique formulated in the 60s by the praxis-philosphers, whose normative perspective was that of early Marx and who did not question the utopian expectancy of a future harmonious communist society. In the actual perspective this change of paradigm seems to be a necessary precondition for the possibility of a theoretical description, normative determination and practical circumscription of the political power.
NOTES
1. Cf. Jens Reuter, Die politische Entwicklung in Jugoslawien, and Hans-Christian Iversen Wirtschaft und Wirtschaftspolitik in Jugoslawien, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 6/88 (5. Feb 1988), as well as the immense amount of publications on the same subject in Yugoslavia, lately primarily in the context of the discussion of the imminent reforms of the yugoslav constitution 2. The following should be mentioned as representative: Committee for the defense of freedom of thought and expression, Committee for the protection of human rights, Committee for the protection of artistic freedom and the Initiative for a solidarity-fund for the support of non-legally persecuted people. 3. The most pronounced being the punk in the Republic of Slovenia, cf. Group of authors, Punk pod Slovenci (Ljubljana, 1985). 4. For instance the description of the concentration camps for political prisioners during the 50s in the wake of Titos conflict with Stalin, and of their practices of re-education. 5. I.e. independent of the official ideology of Marxism-Leninism. 6. Cf. Andrew Arato, Marxism in Eastern Europe, paper presented at the IUC, Dubrovnik Yugoslavia, Spring 1983.

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7. Cf. the editorial A quoi bon praxis?, Praxis, 1, No. 1 (1965), 3-7. The publishing of Praxis was stopped by a politically induced self-governmental decision of the typographers to refuse to print the journal. 8. Seyla Berhabib, Svetozar Stojanovi, Editors Introduction, Praxis International, 6, No. 3 (Oct. 1986), 251. 9. Toma Mastnak (ed.), Socialistina civilan druba? (Socialist civil society?) (Ljubljana, 1985). 10. Mastnak, Socialistina civilan druba?, 21-22, my translation. 11. Lectures given at the latter conference appeared also as a book: Drubostovne razprave 5 (Debates in social science 5) (Ljubljana, 1987), further referred to as DR. 11. Ljubomir Tadi, Socijalizam i civilno drutvo (Socialism and civil society), Knjievne novine (further referred to as KN), No. 743 (1. Dec. 1987), as well as DR, 170-176. 13. Slobadan Samardi, Drutvo i drava u socijalizmu (Society and state in socialism), KN, No. 719 (1. Nov. 1986). 14. Slobodan Samardi, Gradansko drutvo u realnom socijalizmu (Civil society in real socialism), DR, 148-156. 15. Frane Adam, O treh pristopih k pojmu civilna druba (On three approaches to the concept of civil society), DR, 5-15. 16. Adam quotes a number of authors who analysed the processes of modernization, for example Claus Offe, Richard Mnch, Johannes Berger, Jrgen Habermas, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt etc. 17. Pavel Gantar, Sociologija in civilna druba (Sociology and civil society), DR, 41-49. 18. Neboja Popov, Kuda ide postagrarno drutvo? (Where does the post-agrarian society go?), KN, No. 742 (15. Nov. 1987). 19. Darka Podmenik, Razmiljanja o civilnom drutvu i dravi u realno postojeem samoupravnom socijalizmu (A consideration on civil society and state in a real existing selfgovernment socialism), KN, No. 725 (1. Feb. 1987). 20. Vesna Pei, Civilno drutvo i socijalizam: problem redefinicije drutvene jednakosti (Civil society and socialism: the problem of redefinition of social equality), KN, No. 723-724 (1-15. Jan. 1987). 21. Similar arguments can be found in: Vladimir Arzenek, Marksizem in demokratini socializem (Marxism and democratic socialism), DR, 16-27. 22. Vesna Pei, Civilno drutvo i pacifikacija unutranjih odnosa (Civil society and the pacification of internal relationship), DR, 105-112. 23. Gregor Tomc, Civilno drutvo ispod socijalizma (Civil society below socialism), KN, No. 723-724 (1-15. Jan. 1987). 24. Tine Hribar, Civilna druba, pravna drba, pravna drava in legitimna oblast (Civil society, legal state and legitimate power), Nova revija, No. 67-68 (1987), 1864-1878. 25. Svetozai Stojanovic, Sadasnja jugoslovenska kriza i neophodnost politikih reformi (Present Yugoslav crisis and indispensableness of political reforms) in Ekonomija i politika (Beograd, 1984). 26. Svetozai Stojanovi, Kapitalizam, etatizam i civilno drutvo (Capitalism, etatism and civil society), KN, No. 723-724 (1-15. Jan. 1987); Svetozar Stojanovi, Od marksizma do etatizma sa ljudskim licem (From marxism to etatism with a human face) (Beograd, 1987), 163ff; english title of the book: From Marxism and Bolshevism to Gorbachevs Perestroika (1988). 27. Since the English language turned out to be quite unsuitable to convey the meanings of the dialectical thinking in the tradition of German idealism, here I left its central notion untranslated. 28. Similar ideas are expressed by Zagorka Golubovi, Sukob drave i drutva (Conflict of state and society), KN, No. 723-724 (1-15. Jan. 1987). 29. Kosta avoki, Pretpostavke i izgledi za uspostavljanje gradanskog drutva u jugoslaviji (Presuppositions and chances of establishment of civil society in Yugoslavia), KN, No. 742 (15. Nov. 1987). 30. Cf. the summary of his talk in KN, No. 751 (1. April 1988), where also a large number of other contributions on the same topic, originating from various meetings of Serbian intellectuals, is published. The most important document is the Prilog javnoj raspravi o ustavu (A contribution to the public dispute on the constitution), a collective work adopted by the Assembly of the Association of Writers of Serbia on 27. March 1988.

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31. Toma Mastnak, Totalitarizem od spodaj (Totalitarianism from below), DR, 91-9S. 32. Darka Podmenik, Civilna druba in javnost (Civil society and the public sphere), DR, 113-120. 33. Darka Podmenik, Frane Adam, Democratization of public sphere in a socialist state the case of Yugoslavia, paper presented at the course Philosophy and Social Science, IUC, Dubrovnik Yugoslavia, 28. March - 8. April 1988. 34. Slobodan Samardi, Gradansko drutvo, socijalizam i pravna drava (Civil society, socialism and legal state), KN, No. 723-724 (1-15. Jan. 1987). 35. In the signification of the german Rechtsstaat. 36. Silvs Meznardi, Autonomija pravonog sistema (Autonomy of the legal system), KN, No. 726 (15. Feb. 1987), and DR, 99-104. 37. Cf. Gregor Tomc Civilna druba pod slovenskim socializmom (Civil society under the Slovene socialism), Nova revija, No. 57 (1987), 144-149 Hribar, Civilna druba, pravna drava in legitimni oblast. 38. Laslo Sekelj, Socijalisticko gradansko drutvo - izlaz iz krize? (Socialist civil society a way out of the crisis?), DR, 157-166. 39. Toma Mastnak, Dalje od istonoevropskog marksizma (Away from east-euroropean marxism), Medunarodni radniki pokret, No. 3-4 (1986), 125. 40. Ljobomir Tadi, Socijalisticko civilno drutvo i Socijalisticko civilno drutvo i socijalisticki Behemot (Socialist civil society and socialist Behemoth), KN, No. 725 (1. Feb. 1987). 41. Instances of this dialogue are the two meetings of members of the Serbian and the Slovene PEN-club in Ljubljana on 5. and 6. Oct. and in Belgrade on 13. Nov. 1987, as well as the open letters of the Slovene writer Taras Kermauner to his Serbian friend. 42. NIN, 9. Aug. 1987, 22f. 43. NIN 26. July 1987, 23. 44. NIN, 16. Aug. 1987, 7; Dragan D. Lakicevi, Civilno drutvo i tribalna zajednica (Civil society and tribal community), KN, No. 738 (15. Sept. 1987), elaborates in an illuminating way the relationship of the analogies between the power structures in tribal communities and Soviet type societies, as well as the totalitarian character of the latter. 45. German in the original. 46. NIN 26. July 1987. 47. Following two titles by Central-European writers who enjoy at present a great popularity in Yugoslavia: Gyrgy Konrad, Antipolitika. Srednjeevropske meditacije (Anti-politics. CentralEuropean meditations) (Ljubljana, 1987), and Milan Kundera, Tragedija Srednje Evrope (The tragedy of Central Europe), Gordogan, VD (Jan.-Apr. 1985), 289-305. 48. Slobodan Seleni, Slovenija i Evropa (Slovenia and Europe), KN, No. 743 (1. Dec. 1987). 49. B. Mihajlovi Mihiz, Podstrek za bolje razumevanje (Incentive for a better understanding), KN, No. 742 (15. Nov. 1987). 50. Slavko Goldstein, Marijan Koroi, Vrijeme radikalnih poteza (Time for radical strokes), Danas, 1. Dec. 1987, 10 f, and Strah ili predrasuda (Fear or prejudice), Danas, 29. Dec. 1987, 24f. 51. Joe Punik, Civilna druba z vidika tehnologije reguliranja in njeno uveljavanje v Sloveniji (Civil society from the view of technology of regulation and its implementation in Slovenia), DR, 130-139. 52. As far as I know, the syntagm (German: Verfassungspatriotismus) has been coined and the concept elaborated by Jrgen Habermas in 1986 in course of the so called controversy of historians (German: Historikerstreit).