PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS and SOCIAL MODERNIZATION

PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS and SOCIAL MODERNIZATION

IN RUSSIAN EMPIRE, SOVIET UNION,

and POST-SOVIET REGIMES

Mykhailo Minakov, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine

WWICS, Kennan Institute, Washington, DC

24 January 2013

Plan of Today’s Report

• Motivation: why study Modernity at all?

• Purpose: what’s the aim of my research project?

• Definitions: what is Modernity and modernization?

• Methodology: how to study Modernity?

• Findings so far

Motivation

• How thinking changes human environment

• And… how thinking fails to change human environment

in a happy way

• There are always unpredictable impacts of rational interventions on

culture and nature

Motivation Change of values : from tradition to progress

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

0.30

0.35

0.40

0.45

0.50

0.55

0.60

0.65

0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 0.45 0.50 0.55 0.60 0.65 0.70

Africa

before 1921

1921-30

1931-40

1941-50

1951-60

1961-70

1971-80

after 1980

before 1921

1931-40

1941-50

1951-60

1961-70

1971-80

after 1980

Self-Expression Values +_

Secu

lar-R

atio

nal V

alue

s

+

_

before 1921

after 1980

after 1980

after 1980

after 1980

before 1921

before 1921

Motivation

Rational Governance : Supremacy of Imperial Order

Motivation

Rational Governance : League of Nations Order

Motivation

Rational Governance : U.N. Charter Order

Motivation

Unified Understanding of Political Freedom

Motivation

Rational Economics

Motivation

Rational Economics and Industrial Revolution

Motivation

Rational Economics and Global Warming

Research Framework

Territory: Western Eurasia (Imperial Russia/Soviet Union/Post-

Soviet Belarus, Russia and Ukraine)

Time: XIX – XX centuries

Main question: How Modern philosophical concepts influenced social

structures and political practices in territories that

entered Modernity as part of the Russian Empire?

Focus: Mutual impacts of philosophy and politics, as well as

government practices

Modernization

• Dissociation with traditional way of life

• Rationalization of a life-world

• Universalization of norms of action

• Socialization that formats abstract ego-identities

• Strict separation of the public and private spheres

Definitions

• Modernization – cultural, socioeconomic, technical and political change leading to the situation of Modernity

• Modernization is a part of Human Development at large, leading to ever broadening human choice

• Modernity

– society: rationalization, secularization, and bureaucratization

– human: individual autonomy, self-expression, and free choice

Definitions

• Modernity

– socioeconomic transformation

– masses with new identities

– special role of Reason in all spheres of human life

Methodology

• Phenomenological sociology (Schuetz, Berger and Luckmann)

– social stock of knowledge

– personal inquiry, habitualization, institutionalization

• Modernization and human development theory (Inglehart and Welzel)

– human development as a change of values and practices

– social progress in terms of increase of individual choices

• Dialectics of Modernity (Weber and Habermas)

– structural transformation of public sphere

– instrumental reason vs. life-world

Methodology dialectics of Modernity

• Structural transformation of public sphere

– from traditional rule to public control over authority

– constitutional separation of private and public

Methodology dialectics of Modernity

• structural transformation of public sphere

Methodology dialectics of Modernity

Structural transformation of public sphere

• Free competition for power, “universal access” to rights

• Idea of the law-based state: state as a system of norms

• Legitimated by public opinion distinction between

– legislative and executive power,

– reason ordering (norm) and will acting (action)

Methodology dialectics of Modernity

Modernity is a result of growing instrumental reason (system) separating from life-world

– LIFE-WORLD is the realm of life, meaning and social relationships

– system of instrumental rationality: use of rational argumentation to order large-scale societies

– `disenchantment' or the increasing instrumental rationality of contemporary society

Methodology dialectics of Modernity

Normative Public – Private Dichotomy

Public Sphere

Private Sphere

family

religious organizations

business

government

privacy of individual

judiciary

parliament

parties

civil society

System of Instrumental Reason

Life-World

Modernization and Philosophy

• Modernity, in social, terms is being produced by autonomous collective agents legitimately opposed to power

– request to limit the power

– request for rational argumentation

– request for legitimacy through rational conceptualization of authorities (rights, citizenship, political freedom etc)

• Special role of philosophy as cultural institute responsible for

– preservation of critical position

– knowledge production promoting disenchantment of the world

– impact on science and education: production of Modernities’ human resources

Methodology dialectics of Modernity

• Special role of philosophy and sciences:

– philosophy:

• production of rational concepts

• critical position toward tradition and reason

– social sciences:

• articulation of theories and institutional models

• impact on economic vision and political projects

• ideas for civil society

– hard sciences:

• production of technologies

• impact on economic vision and political projects

– academic and educational institutes: production of new human

but if philosophy and science fail

Normal and Deviant Modernizations

Historical Modernization often viewed as

• normal: when rationalization takes place in economy, society, political sphere and science

• deviant: when rationalization takes place in only one of these spheres, sharpening contradictions with the other spheres

– Sonderweg of Nazi Germany

– Chinese modernization (I in 1960-s, II – in 1990-2000-s)

– Soviet modernization

Deviant Modernities : pathologies of Modern society

• Pathologies of Modern society: loss of guiding norms or values in society

– Colonization of the life-world

– `Iron cage of bureaucracy’

– Rule of intimacy in quasi-Modern societies (oligarchy, cleptocracy, systemic corruption, façade democracy)

Methodology dialectics of Modernity

Deviant Public – Private Dichotomy

Public Sphere

Private Sphere

family

religious organizations

business

government

privacy of individual

judiciary

parliament

parties

civil society

System of Instrumental Reason

Life-World

Main Theses

• Western Eurasia in Deviant Modernity Cage

– Russian Empire : dependence on Western European modernization models

– Soviet Union – dominance of public over private

– Post-Soviet regimes : inability to maintain the public – private dichotomy

• Problematic Modernities in contemporary Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are connected with:

– weak institutionalization of communities and practices responsible for rationalization of culture

– colonization and intimacy as dominant tendencies in Western Eurasian modernization paths

Transfer of Modernity

Dependence on Western European modernization models

• In the non-Western contexts, transfer of development models / modern institutions was one of the ways of modernization

• Case of the Imperial Russia:

– traditional regime: created its own or transferred models from the Eurasian states in XV-XVII centuries

– beginning of modernization: transfer of imperial institutions from the West in XVIII-XIX centuries

– USSR hunting for technologies

Dominance of public over private

• Pro-Modern totalitarianism (Arendt)

• Marxism as applied theory for social engineering of progress

• Colonization of life-world

– destruction of traditional ways of life (peasantry, language, calendar)

– Big Brother: destruction of family and privacy

• Intimacy structures

– formal laws vs. one-party rule

– nomenclature principle

Post-Soviet Systemic Corruption

Inability to maintain the public – private dichotomy

• Political systems based on use of public instruments for private gain

– Corruption as response to ineffective public institutes

– Oligarchy as mechanism of preserving public institutes ineffective

• Use of private instruments for public purposes

– Populism as a core content of politics

• De-modernization as a sum of all actors’ activities

– invention of traditions (tribalism, ethno-nationalism)

– irrational legitimation of power and property

Public Reason without Guardian

Weak institutionalization of communities and practices

responsible for rationalization of life-world

– Academy of sciences as governmental project

– University as part of administration

– Separation of Academy and University

– Philosophy under permanent control

Local production of technical modernization; social

modernization depends on Western transferred models

Path-Dependency : Conclusions

• Problematic Modernities in contemporary Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are connected with the specific path of their Modernization and with the dysfunction of core institutes promoting rationality in societies at large

• The point of long-term change – growth of autonomous groups in the public sphere that promote separation of public and private spheres, rational politics and responsive governance

Thank you!