Social Theory and Postcommunism

264 Pages·2004·1.31 MB·English

Outhwaite/SocialTheoryandPost-Communism FinalProof 19.10.2004 11:35am pagei
Social Theory and Postcommunism
Outhwaite/SocialTheoryandPost-Communism FinalProof 19.10.2004 11:35am pageii
Outhwaite/SocialTheoryandPost-Communism FinalProof 19.10.2004 11:35am pageiii
Social Theory and
Postcommunism
William Outhwaite and Larry Ray
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(cid:1)2005byWilliamOuthwaiteandLarryRay
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Contents
Preface vii
Introduction: Being Taken by Surprise 1
1 Theoryafter theFall 7
2 Class: Marx and Weber 25
3 Society,Solidarity,and Anomie: Durkheim 42
4 Three Typesof Convergence 67
5 Socialism,Modernityand Beyond 88
6 Globalization and Convergence 117
7 Civil SocietyEast and West 147
8 Modernity,Memory,and Postcommunism 176
9 Concluding Themes 197
Notes 204
Bibliography 217
Index 245
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Preface
The rise and fall of communism represented one of the most dramatic and
world-historical forces of the twentieth century and shapes the context in
which events unfold in the early decades of the twenty-first. This phenom-
enon has, of course, been subjected to enormous scholarly and political,
journalistic, and cultural commentary; the division of the world into com-
peting ideological and military systems was the fundamental point of refer-
ence for politics for much of the last century. Yet the departure from the
world stage not only of the Soviet system but also, at least as it seems at
present, of the idea of socialism, occurred with a whimper rather than a
bang. Rapidly and, with a few tragic exceptions, largely peacefully the So-
viet systems fell within the space of a few years between 1989 and 1991, to
be replaced, by what? This is where the course of world development be-
comes less clear and where there are competing futures and realities emer-
ging within the former countries of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Indeed the emergence of a postcommunist condition opens up a new stage
in global history the contours of which are still taking shape. This book
develops an analysis of these events using a range of sociological approaches
and theories, while asking throughout how these monumental events might
affect the process of sociological theorizing itself. We bear in mind that most
of the latter has been undertaken with the Western world in the forefront of
our perceptions, as to a large extent it is still.
This is, then, a contribution to social theorizing about social change and
development with a view to considering how existing debates can be re-
invigorated and developed by seriously embracing issues raised by the post-
communist condition. It raises questions about the consequences of living in
a world without (systemic) alternatives in which issues of social justice and
inequality remain as pertinent and demanding of solutions as ever. The
arguments are grounded in classical social theory but also move beyond
these, recognizing the important gulf that separates us from the world of the
classical theorists. In the wake of the rapid and profound social changes of
the later twentieth century, it is important to question whether our theoret-
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viii PREFACE
ical frames of reference are appropriate for these novel configurations of
culture, economy, and society. Sociologists further need to ask whether re-
cent theoretical preoccupations – for example with the ‘‘cultural turn,’’ post-
modernism, deconstruction, globalization, and identity adequately grasp
social processes in the new millennium. Sociology is still reluctant to forget
its classical founders, and the relevance of this tradition is both powerful
and problematic. It is powerful because the classics constitute a rich source
of insights, concepts, and analyses that can be deployed and reinterpreted to
grasp current problems. But it is problematic because the social world of the
classics is largely that of industrial, imperial, and high-bourgeois European
societies prior to World War I. How do we begin to relate the concepts
formed in this milieu to the concerns of the globalized social world that is
postcolonial, postindustrial, and has seen the rise and collapse of Soviet
socialism? In addressing these questions we intend to provide a book that
will be relevant to students and will contribute to wider thinking about the
discipline.
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to many friends and colleagues who have contributed in
various ways to the development of this book. William Outhwaite would
like to acknowledge in particular helpful comments by Justin Rosenberg and
other participants at a Social and Political Thought seminar at Sussex on a
paper related to this project, and by participants at a conference at Schloss
Elmau, Upper Bavaria, organized by Gerard Delanty. Seminars by colleagues
at, and visitors to, the Sussex European Institute also provided valuable
background. Larry Ray would like to thank Georgi Dimitrov (Sofia Univer-
sity), Benjamin Forest (Dartmouth College, US), Sławomir Kapralski (Center
for Social Studies, Warsaw), Barbara Misztal (Leicester University), and
Richard Sakwa (University of Kent) for assistance, helpful comments and
discussions of the issues addressed here.
We are also grateful to Pearson Education for permission to reproduce
Figure 3.1 (on p. 51).
W.O.
L.R.
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Introduction:
Being Taken by Surprise
For much of the twentieth century, around half the world’s population lived
under regimes, the official ideology of which was ‘‘communist.’’ The world
was divided into hostile camps of ‘‘capitalism’’ and ‘‘communism’’ until the
end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, which was followed by the dramatic
collapse of European and Soviet variants of communism. The prime focus of
this book is to argue that these events have serious consequences for the
projectofsocialtheorizing–manyofwhichareevennowwidelyunacknow-
ledged. We review a number of central theoretical issues, asking how the
communist and postcommunist experience has changed our thinking about
social theory. In summary, these are social class, social solidarity, social
changeandconvergence,modernity,globalization,civilsocietyandthestate,
and memory and identity. In each case we set out the current state of the
debates,identifysomekeyissuesandthenattempttoshowhowthepostcom-
munist transformation might cast new light on these. More broadly, we ask
howthepostcommunistconditionposesnewchallengestosociologicalanaly-
sis. The world ofthe Cold War wasa world of borders par excellence –both
physicalbordersepitomizedbytheBerlinWall,andsymbolicbordersof‘‘us’’
and‘‘them’’inwhichcrossingalandfrontierinvolvedthefrissonoftransgres-
sion. In the postcommunist world borders are more porous, yet subject to
repeated panics over migration and ‘‘asylum.’’ The phenomenon of global
migration has been given huge impetus by the end of European and western
Asiancommunismandhasbecomeembroiledinpostcommunistfearsaround
securityandidentity.
Most mainstream social theory was rooted in the economic, political, and
cultural experiences of the ‘‘Western world,’’that is, the world of ‘‘advanced
capitalism’’ in Western Europe, North America, and Australasia. Where the
rest of the world appeared it did so within particular specialisms such as the
‘‘sociology of development,’’ ‘‘world systems,’’ and ‘‘sociology of Eastern
Europe/communism.’’ The former were for brief periods of central concern
in sociology, and are now largely replaced by globalization theories. How-
ever, mainstream sociology generally approached communism through
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2 INTRODUCTION
theories of industrial society and convergence. This limited focus was rather
odd, in view of the crucial significance of the ‘‘East–West’’ divide for the fate
of contemporary societies and, indeed, the world itself. The nuclear stand-
off between the US and USSR did after all threaten to destroy most of the
world on a number of occasions and the superpowers’ involvement was
evident in many local conflicts in the latter half of the century. However,
while one might expect social theorists to take an interest in these issues
because of their intrinsic importance, there are other reasons why the com-
munist experience is crucial to our evaluation of social theory.
These reasons are as follows. Firstly, the project of social reconstruction
in line with the putative ‘‘laws’’ of social evolution, which is what the com-
munist parties claimed to be doing, was linked to and had much in common
with the central project of sociology. An early sociological ambition that
one finds in theories as politically diverse as positivism and Marxism was to
identify ‘‘laws’’ of social development.1 The belief that history followed a
determinate and therefore predictable course was an illusion, but one that
has proved remarkably tenacious, as we will show a little later.
Secondly, the origin and fate of capitalism is one of the central concerns
of social theory. There is now a chance to observe the construction of capit-
alism under novel circumstances and this has implications for how the core
concepts in the discipline might be considered. The social sciences often
bewail the impossibility of experimentation in more than the most banal
social situations. The communist experiment itself, its collapse, and the
process of postcommunist development are surely among the most valuable
resources available to social science and not to be confined to the back-
waters of area studies or ‘‘transitology.’’
Thirdly, there is the question of the legacy of Europe after communism,
which involves an examination of the limits of globalization and postcom-
munist integration (including EU enlargement), as well as current issues of
asylum and post-Cold War migration. Fourthly, the sociological enterprise
has, in different ways, often claimed to be critical of prevailing social condi-
tions. However, critique is dependent on the existence of a potential or
imaginable alternative to existing social forms. The end of communism thus
has two different possible implications. One is that there is now no ‘‘really
existing’’ alternative to capitalism, and possibly therefore never will be.
Another is that now communism has finally shuffled off the historical stage,
it is perhaps possible to imagine non-authoritarian and genuine alternatives
to capitalism, although we need also to acknowledge that the fate of the
Soviet system has seriously damaged, for the present at least, the idea of
systemic alternatives. In this sense we may have to wait a while for the
rehabilitation of socialism that Weber predicted following the Russian Revo-
lution.2
What implications, then, does the fall of communism have for sociological
theory? We have chosen to discuss these issues in relation to recognizable