There is in Western political
philosophy a set of basic categories, which can be traced back to Aristotle,
for distinguishing between government in terms of monarchy, democracy or
despotism. While it is possible to approach these categories numerically, that
is, by the one, few or many, one central element to the problem of government
is the relationship between the state and the individual. For example, the
notion of ‘despotism’ typically involves a spatial metaphor of the social
system in which there is an institutional gap between the private individual
and the public state. In despotism, the individual is fully exposed to the gaze
of the despotic ruler, because there are no intervening social institutions, especially
voluntary associations, lying between the ruler and the ruled.
The individual is completely
displayed before the passion, caprice and will of the despot and there are, as
it were, no social groups or institutions behind which the ruled may hide. The
distance between the despot and the subject may be considerable, but the social
space is not filled up with a rich growth of social groupings and institutions
which could encapsulate the individual and within which separate interests
could develop in opposition to the unified will of the despot.
By way of a preliminary
definition, we may argue that despotism presupposes a society in which civil
society is either absent or underdeveloped. A definition of ‘civil society’ is
that a prolific network of institutions—church, family, club, guild,
association and community—lies between the state and the individual, and which simultaneously
connects the individual to authority and protects the individual from total
political control. The notion of ‘civil society’ is not only fundamental to the
definition of political life in European societies, but is also a point of
contrast between Occident and Orient.
In the Scottish Enlightenment
tradition, the emergence of civil society was regarded as a major indication of
social progress from the state of nature to civilization. The theory of civil
society was part of the master dichotomy of nature/civilization, since it was
within civil society that the individual was eventually clothed in judicial
rights of property, possessions and security. In Hegel’s social philosophy,
civil society mediates between the family and the state; it is constituted by
the economic intercourse between individuals. The Hegelian conceptualization of
‘civil society’ in terms of economic relationships was the source of so much
confusion in subsequent Marxist analysis in that it became difficult to locate
civil society unambiguously in the metaphor of economic base and superstructures.
For Marx, Civil Society embraces the whole material intercourse of individuals within
a definite stage of the development of productive forces.
It embraces the whole commercial
and industrial life of a given stage and, in so far, transcends the State and
nation, though, on the other hand again, it must assert itself in its foreign
relations as nationality and inwardly must organise itself as a state. (Marx
and Engels 1953:76) Since Marx was primarily interested in the theoretical
analysis of the capitalist mode of production, it has subsequently been
difficult for Marxists to determine the precise relationship between civil
society/state, on the one hand, and to analyse such sociological concepts as ‘family’,
‘church’, ‘community’, or ‘tribe’ on the other. One solution, of course, is to treat
this area of social life as explicable in purely economic terms; the primary
divisions within society are those between classes, which in turn are explained
by the mode of production (Poulantzas 1973).
The difficulties of locating
civil society in relation to the economy and the state are exemplified by some
recent debates over Antonio Gramsci’s analysis of the concept (Anderson 1974).
In a famous passage, Gramsci commented that, ‘Between the economic structure
and the state with its legislation and its coercion stands civil society’
(Gramsci 1971). In Gramsci’s writing, civil society is the arena within which
ideological hegemony and political consent are engineered, and it therefore contrasts
with the state, which is the site of political force and coercion. Such a conception
complicates the more conventional Marxist dichotomy of base superstructure, but
there is much dissensus over exactly where Gramsci places his theoretical
emphasis (Anderson 1977).
While there is much disagreement
over the extent of hegemonic consent in modern capitalism, it is interesting to
note that Gramsci’s conceptualization of ‘civil society’ was important for his
view that political strategies were relevant in relation to the extent of
coercion and consent in society. Gramsci made a basic distinction between the
West, in which there is widespread consensus based on civil society, and the
East, where the state dominates society and where coercion is more important
than consensus. Speaking specifically of Russia, Gramsci argued that: the state
was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there
was a proper relationship between state and civil society, and when the state
trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The state
was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of
fortresses and earthworks. (Gramsci 1971:238)
Where civil society is relatively
underdeveloped in relationship to the state, political coercion of individuals
is the basis of class rule rather than ideological consent which characterizes
the bourgeois institutions of Western capitalism. Liberal political theory,
while clearly fundamentally different in outlook and conclusions, has often
approached the East/West, and coercion/consent dichotomies in somewhat similar
terms, especially in terms of the notion of constitutional checks and balances.
In The
Spirit of the Laws (Montesquieu 1949) written in 1748, Montesquieu distinguished
between republics, monarchies and despotisms in terms of their guiding
principles which were respectively virtue, honour and fear (Montesquieu 1949).
The main differences between monarchy and despotism were: (1) while monarchy is
based on the inequality of social strata, in despotism there is an equality of slavery
where the mass of the population is subject to the ruler’s arbitrary will; (2)
in monarchy, the ruler follows customs and laws, whereas a despot dominates
according to his own inclination; (3) in despotism, there are no intermediary
social institutions linking the individual to the state. In an earlier work, Considerations
on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline, Montesquieu
had been particularly concerned with the problems of centralization in the
Roman Empire and with the transformation of republics into monarchies
(Montesquieu 1965).
Montesquieu, who was profoundly
influenced by Locke and English constitutional history, came to see the
divisions of powers and constitutional checks on centralized authority as the
principal guarantee of political rights. His Persian Letters (Montesquieu
1923) permitted him to write a critical
review of French society through
the eyes of oriental observers; it has subsequently not been clear whether
Montesquieu’s definition of and objections to the despotism of the East were,
in fact, directed against the French polity, especially against the absolute
monarchy (Althusser 1972).
Emile Durkheim, whose Latin
dissertation on Montesquieu and Rousseau was published in 1892, came to see the
problem of modern political life not in the effects of the division of labour
on common sentiments, but in the absence of regulating institutions between the
individual and the state. The decline of the Church, the weakness of the family,
the loss of communal ties and the underdevelopment of occupational and
professional associations had dissolved those important social relations which
shielded the individual from the state. Unlike Herbert Spencer, however,
Durkheim did not believe that the extension of state functions in contemporary
society necessarily resulted in political absolutism.
Durkheim in his ‘two laws of
penal evolution’ defined absolutism in the following terms: what makes the
central power more or less absolute is the more or less radical absence of any
countervailing forces, regularly organised with a view toward moderating it. We
can, therefore, foresee that what gives birth to a power of this sort is the
more or less complete concentration of all society’s controlling functions in
one and the same hand. (Durkheim 1978)
While Durkheim does not
specifically employ the term, in the light of his reference to the importance
of ‘countervailing forces,’ it is not illegitimate or inappropriate to suggest
that Durkheim’s argument is that the weakness of civil society, situated
between the individual and the state, is a general condition for political
absolutism. This French tradition in the political sociology of absolutism from
Montesquieu to Durkheim cannot be properly understood without some consideration
of the debate which arose in France over the nature of enlightened government.
What we now refer to as ‘enlightened despotism’ or ‘enlightened absolutism’
first arose as an intellectual and political issue in France in the 1760s
partly as the result of the doctrines of the Physiocrats (Hartung 1957).
The terms favoured by the
Physiocrats were ‘Despotisme eclaire’ and ‘Despotisme legal’. For example, T.G.Raynal provided a definition of good government
as ‘Le
gouvernement le plus heureaux serait celui d’un despote juste et eclaire’ in his
history of trade with the West and East Indies. In their economic doctrines,
the Physiocrats adhered to laissez-faire policies to free the economy and the individual from the unnatural
fetters which constrained efficiency and economic output. However, society was
not free from such artificial constraints and it was necessary for radical
changes to be brought about by ‘Despotisme eclaire’. The Physiocrats took for granted that such a despotism would be in
the hands of an hereditary monarchy which would rationally sweep aside the
artificial clutter of the past to restore the natural order of individual
freedom. The despot had a duty to force people to be free by a rational policy
of education and social reform.
The debate about the virtues of
forms of government was generated not only by absolutism in the late eighteenth
century but also by the rise of colonialism in the nineteenth. Colonial
administrators were forced to decide upon schemes of imperial control for the
new dependencies. Raynal’s use of the notion of ‘legal despotism’ is
interesting in the context of a discussion of the colonies. Utilitarian
commentaries on political organization in Britain were similarly set in the
context of criticisms of British government by an hereditary aristocracy and in
terms of the colonial administration in India. The utilitarians were concerned
both with the problem of the working class and parliamentarian government in Britain
and with the question of the government of Indian natives Thus, James Mill’s The
History of British India was driven in particular by the question of native despotism and
government reform. He observed that: Among the Hindus, according to the Asiatic
model, the government was monarchical, and, with the usual exception of
religion and its ministers, absolute. No idea of any system
of rule, different from the will of a single person, appears to have entered
the minds of them, or their legislators. (Mill 1972:212–3)
For Mill, there was a social
hiatus between the traditional, all-embracing life of the Indian village and
the outer, public world of kingdoms. The constant break-up of the latter
contrasted with the social isolation and stagnation of the former. The
principal political solution to this static despotism was a dose of ‘Despotisme
eclaire’, that is, strong central government, benevolent laws, modernized
administration and a redistribution of land rights. In many respects, John
Stuart Mill followed his father’s line of argument both about political reform
in Britain and colonial government. J.S.Mill’s basic fear was focused on the
effects of majority rule in popular democracies on the life and conscience of
the educated and sensitive individual.
This fear had been greatly
confirmed by the more pessimistic aspects of Alexis de Tocqueville’s analysis
of American political institutions in Democracy in America, which Mill read in 1835 (de Tocqueville 1946). According to de
Tocqueville, majority rule on the basis of universal franchise could result in
a sterile consensus which was inimicable to individuality and individual
rights. The only check to the despotism of the majority would be the existence
of strong voluntary associations (that is, civil society) protecting the
individual from majority control and protecting diversity of interests and
culture. Without safeguards, democracy would produce in Britain the same
sterility which tradition had brought about in Asia, namely social stagnation.
Mill’s fears were consequently, ‘not of great liberty, but too ready
submission; not of anarchy, but of servility; not of too rapid change, but of
Chinese stationariness’ (Mill 1859:56).
In the case of colonial rule,
however, the choice was between two types of despotism: native or imperial.
Native despotism was always arbitrary In Western sociological accounts of
Islamic societies, it has been argued that, because of the absence of a ‘spirit
of capitalism’ in the middle class, trade in most Islamic societies was
dominated historically by minorities (Greeks, Jews, Armenians and Slavs).
Recent sociological studies of Islam have continued this tradition by
suggesting that in the absence of the entrepreneurial spirit and achievement,
motivation was linked to the underdeveloped nature of the middle class in Islam
(Bonne 1960; Lerner 1958; McClelland 1961).
The absence of a civil society in
Islam and the weakness of bourgeois culture in relation to the state apparatus
have been associated, in the orientalist problematic, not only with the
backwardness of economic development, but also with political despotism. There
is a common viewpoint among political scientists that there is no established
tradition of legitimate opposition to arbitrary governments in Islam, because
the notions of political rights and social contract had no institutional
support in an independent middle class (Vatikiotis 1975). However, the
orientalist theme of the absence of a civil society extends well beyond the
area of economics and politics. The scientific and artistic culture of Islam is
treated as the monopoly of the imperial court which, within the ‘city camp’, patronized
the emergence of a rational culture in opposition to the religion of the
masses.
The union of science and industry
which was characteristic of the English Protestant middle classes in the
nineteenth century was noticeably absent in Islamic culture. Ernest Renan, in a
forthright commentary on Islam and science, suggested that, ‘the Mussulman has
the most profound disdain for instruction, for science, for everything that constitutes
the European spirit’ (Renan 1896:85). For Renan, science could only flourish in
Islam in association with heresy. While Renan’s highly prejudicial attitudes
are rarely articulated in an overt fashion in contemporary oriental
scholarship, the same arguments concerning elitist patronage of arts and
sciences in the absence of a middle class are constantly repeated. This
perspective is normally conjoined with the notion that science in Islam was
merely parasitic on Greek culture and that Islam was simply a vehicle
transmitting Greek philosophy to the Renaissance in Europe (O’Leary 1949). The
deficiencies of Islamic society, politics, economics and culture, are, in
orientalism, located in the problem of an absent civil society.
