05-05-2007, 10:14 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Ideological state and civil society </b>
FT
Khaled Ahmed
<b>Since Pakistan is not yet completely ideological like Iran or Afghanistan under Mullah Umar, it gestates what may be called fragments of a civil society embryo damaged by an ongoing miscarriage of the intellect </b>
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Let us first trace the story of civil society as a concept. It was the Scottish Enlightenment and its philosophers Adam Smith (1723-1790) and David Hume (1711-1776) who started the discussion of civil society. Adam Smith in 1776 began talking of 'political economy' to remove the confusion from the word 'economy' which in Greek meant 'household'. The addition of 'political' linked it to the 'polis' (city) because the early states were all city states. He also started calling civil society commercial society to differentiate between the classical republic based on feudalism and slavery, and the new class of 'free' men who did not depend on the state because they traded.
Adam Smith however added the moral aspect to his discussion when he condemned the purely materialist instinct of the trading class and its ignorance of spiritual values. His contemporary David Hume was clearer in his mind that civil society stood between the power of the state and the self-interest of the individual. Marx in 1843 had no doubt that civil society was nothing but an expression of the interests of the bourgeois class.
German philosophers Kant (1724-1804) and Hegel (1770-1831) too discussed civil society but it was Hegel who looked at it as a modern phenomenon and decried the attribution of emotion to the state. He thought that all 'affective' aspects of human life sprang from the family and that this life, lived independently of the diktat of the state, was possible because, even as a "commercial" contract, marriage engaged human emotion. He was responding to the definition of civil society as a phenomenon that comes about in consequence of "the tendency of the market to emancipate individuals from traditional moral religious and political constraints".
Adam Smith was influenced by Rousseau (1712-1778) in his doubts about his "commercial society", but Hume was not and did not look with disfavour at division of labour which produced the institution of the standing army and which, in Smith's view, lessened the genuine nationalism of a people's army. Civil society fulfilled the emotional needs of the classical republic through interdependent self-interests. Adam Smith nevertheless thought civil society had to be educated, and kept secular and free of religion and superstition.
The tyranny of the classical state was watered down by the rise of civil society where people did not depend on the state for their identity as citizens. But in today's world, the less developed states continue to manifest symptoms of the classical state that gave no rights to the individual and employed slaves. This negative phenomenon is however being eroded through globalisation and the interdependence it has produced between states. States in dire economic straits are especially vulnerable to dictated change from the outside. It can be said that despotic state is defanged by globalisation. Trends of "third worldism" against globalisation's "monoculture" - uniting the global Left, such as World Social Forum, and the Islamists - tend to revive the despotic state.
<b>NGOs play an important role in the creation of civil society where there is none owing to the predominance of feudalism and lack of education. Religious NGOs or "religious parties" are included in this category as saviours of civil society. In Guyana the majority population is Hindu-Indian and the ethnic divide between the blacks and the Indians is sharp and aggressive. </b>
Ethnic conflict tends to divide the NGOs as well or at least give them a factional colouring. In fact in an ethnically divided society all institutions take on factional colouring.<b> In Guyana, Hindus vote for their party while the blacks vote for theirs, thus blocking the road to pluralism in which civil society flourishes</b>. In Pakistan the "MQM vote" and the "Pushtun vote" contravene civil society. Where the state is not secular, religious NGOs oppose civil society institutions.
Globalisation with its easy movement of finance has created a new trend through social reaction against it. Civil society is seen as rejecting the very phenomena meant to nurture it, because people see the "collaborative" state as a partner of globalisation. In Pakistan, NGOs look at policies of laissez faire dictated by the World Bank and the IMF as being inimical to civil society. Also, in Pakistan, the religious parties are not in favour of civil society because the state itself is religious and the clergy forms a part of the coercive apparatus of the state. However, in Guyana and Trinidad, where the state is secular, religious NGOs play a positive role. Civil society takes easily to pluralism because of its paramount concern with the laissez faire worldview.
In the realm of human rights - which is one area crucial to the life of a nascent civil society - globalisation plays a positive role. Underdeveloped societies do not take to human rights until a certain evolutionary stage has been passed. To quicken the process of catching up with the rest of the world, global pressure has to be put on dictators and theocratic regimes to relax their hold on the lives of the people. Since even the masses are opposed to human rights, the state must therefore be made to go down the road of enlightenment against its wishes.
Does Pakistan have a developed civil society?<b> In India, Muslims did not take to commerce and were late in building a civil society of their own. The Indian Muslim community instead introduced the lawyers' class together with "student wings" of the political parties as a civil society component challenging the British Raj</b>. Today lawyers in Pakistan represent Pakistan's civil society, but contravene it in so far as a section of them embraces the ideological aspects of the state and endorses the coercion of vigilante action under ideology. An ideological state will leave little space for the development of civil society as a countervailing force. Between the "monoculture" of globalisation and the "monoculture" of ideology, the former is better for civil society.
Pakistan should not have a civil society because it claims to be ideological. Those who want to see it fulfil its destined identity want no freedom of space given to any countervailing force. Such a development of "free space" would be blasphemous. Yet, since Pakistan is not yet completely ideological like Iran or Afghanistan under Mullah Umar, it gestates what may be called fragments of a civil society embryo damaged by an ongoing miscarriage of the intellect. It is only because the ideological state is incomplete and unstable that it suffers the existence of this lacerated embryo in its lap.
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FT
Khaled Ahmed
<b>Since Pakistan is not yet completely ideological like Iran or Afghanistan under Mullah Umar, it gestates what may be called fragments of a civil society embryo damaged by an ongoing miscarriage of the intellect </b>
 Â
Let us first trace the story of civil society as a concept. It was the Scottish Enlightenment and its philosophers Adam Smith (1723-1790) and David Hume (1711-1776) who started the discussion of civil society. Adam Smith in 1776 began talking of 'political economy' to remove the confusion from the word 'economy' which in Greek meant 'household'. The addition of 'political' linked it to the 'polis' (city) because the early states were all city states. He also started calling civil society commercial society to differentiate between the classical republic based on feudalism and slavery, and the new class of 'free' men who did not depend on the state because they traded.
Adam Smith however added the moral aspect to his discussion when he condemned the purely materialist instinct of the trading class and its ignorance of spiritual values. His contemporary David Hume was clearer in his mind that civil society stood between the power of the state and the self-interest of the individual. Marx in 1843 had no doubt that civil society was nothing but an expression of the interests of the bourgeois class.
German philosophers Kant (1724-1804) and Hegel (1770-1831) too discussed civil society but it was Hegel who looked at it as a modern phenomenon and decried the attribution of emotion to the state. He thought that all 'affective' aspects of human life sprang from the family and that this life, lived independently of the diktat of the state, was possible because, even as a "commercial" contract, marriage engaged human emotion. He was responding to the definition of civil society as a phenomenon that comes about in consequence of "the tendency of the market to emancipate individuals from traditional moral religious and political constraints".
Adam Smith was influenced by Rousseau (1712-1778) in his doubts about his "commercial society", but Hume was not and did not look with disfavour at division of labour which produced the institution of the standing army and which, in Smith's view, lessened the genuine nationalism of a people's army. Civil society fulfilled the emotional needs of the classical republic through interdependent self-interests. Adam Smith nevertheless thought civil society had to be educated, and kept secular and free of religion and superstition.
The tyranny of the classical state was watered down by the rise of civil society where people did not depend on the state for their identity as citizens. But in today's world, the less developed states continue to manifest symptoms of the classical state that gave no rights to the individual and employed slaves. This negative phenomenon is however being eroded through globalisation and the interdependence it has produced between states. States in dire economic straits are especially vulnerable to dictated change from the outside. It can be said that despotic state is defanged by globalisation. Trends of "third worldism" against globalisation's "monoculture" - uniting the global Left, such as World Social Forum, and the Islamists - tend to revive the despotic state.
<b>NGOs play an important role in the creation of civil society where there is none owing to the predominance of feudalism and lack of education. Religious NGOs or "religious parties" are included in this category as saviours of civil society. In Guyana the majority population is Hindu-Indian and the ethnic divide between the blacks and the Indians is sharp and aggressive. </b>
Ethnic conflict tends to divide the NGOs as well or at least give them a factional colouring. In fact in an ethnically divided society all institutions take on factional colouring.<b> In Guyana, Hindus vote for their party while the blacks vote for theirs, thus blocking the road to pluralism in which civil society flourishes</b>. In Pakistan the "MQM vote" and the "Pushtun vote" contravene civil society. Where the state is not secular, religious NGOs oppose civil society institutions.
Globalisation with its easy movement of finance has created a new trend through social reaction against it. Civil society is seen as rejecting the very phenomena meant to nurture it, because people see the "collaborative" state as a partner of globalisation. In Pakistan, NGOs look at policies of laissez faire dictated by the World Bank and the IMF as being inimical to civil society. Also, in Pakistan, the religious parties are not in favour of civil society because the state itself is religious and the clergy forms a part of the coercive apparatus of the state. However, in Guyana and Trinidad, where the state is secular, religious NGOs play a positive role. Civil society takes easily to pluralism because of its paramount concern with the laissez faire worldview.
In the realm of human rights - which is one area crucial to the life of a nascent civil society - globalisation plays a positive role. Underdeveloped societies do not take to human rights until a certain evolutionary stage has been passed. To quicken the process of catching up with the rest of the world, global pressure has to be put on dictators and theocratic regimes to relax their hold on the lives of the people. Since even the masses are opposed to human rights, the state must therefore be made to go down the road of enlightenment against its wishes.
Does Pakistan have a developed civil society?<b> In India, Muslims did not take to commerce and were late in building a civil society of their own. The Indian Muslim community instead introduced the lawyers' class together with "student wings" of the political parties as a civil society component challenging the British Raj</b>. Today lawyers in Pakistan represent Pakistan's civil society, but contravene it in so far as a section of them embraces the ideological aspects of the state and endorses the coercion of vigilante action under ideology. An ideological state will leave little space for the development of civil society as a countervailing force. Between the "monoculture" of globalisation and the "monoculture" of ideology, the former is better for civil society.
Pakistan should not have a civil society because it claims to be ideological. Those who want to see it fulfil its destined identity want no freedom of space given to any countervailing force. Such a development of "free space" would be blasphemous. Yet, since Pakistan is not yet completely ideological like Iran or Afghanistan under Mullah Umar, it gestates what may be called fragments of a civil society embryo damaged by an ongoing miscarriage of the intellect. It is only because the ideological state is incomplete and unstable that it suffers the existence of this lacerated embryo in its lap.
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