What is civil society? Very often we come across this concept, plunging into the social and political discussions so popular in our country. After all, you must admit that the question of whether there is a civil society in Russia is often raised today, especially from the lips of all the same politicians or public figures. Of course, we all intuitively understand in the most general terms what civil society is. However, we are far from always fully understanding the intricacies of this sociological category. Let's try to fill in these gaps and put everything on the shelves in this article.
Historical roots
This concept arose in Europe during the era of established capitalist relations. Actually, what is civil society, if not the result of the development of capitalism and the social transformations of the New Age? Important milestones in its formation were the bourgeois revolutions in Europe, especially the English in 1640 and the French in 1789. The first laid the foundations of civil liberties in world history, limiting the royal autocracy, and also opened the country's path to capitalist development. The second one at all marked the triumph of ideas about national equality, when the lower classes achieved legislative consolidation of their influence on state policy, although not all were realized in practice.
Speaking about the fact that capitalist relations have become an important prerequisite for the emergence of civil society, we mean that they contributed to social transformation, destroying feudal relations and creating new categories of population: the bourgeoisie and the working class in the first place, which soon, realizing the community of their interests and weightiness in society (which could not be done by scattered peasants of the time of feudalism, whose world, by and large, did not go beyond the borders of their native village), began to demand more and more rights and freedoms. These requirements were directed, first of all, to the current political system, in fact, to the state itself. This is precisely the fundamental characteristic, thanks to which we intuitively distinguish between civil society and the state even today. The philosophy of this idea was mainly formed by prominent thinkers of the New and Modern times. Among them are the authors of the idea of a “social contract” John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, the French enlightenment Jean-Jacques Rousseau and
Charles Montesquieu, the German founders of
dialectical materialism Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
What is civil society today and what are its attributes?
And it is characterized by the following features:
- development of democratic foundations;
- real protection of citizens;
- free activity in the legal framework of the society of owners of production assets;
- a sufficiently high level of civic and political culture;
- a fairly high level of education of the population;
- applicability of self-government;
- multi-layered economy ;
- a significant number of the middle class in society;
- high attention to social policy by the state;
- pluralism of opinions in society;
- free competition.