Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Communism and democracy – a problematisation
- Part I The experiential basis of communism and democracy
- Part II Critical events and their symbolisations
- Part III Democracy as a process of meaning-formation
- 9 The power of memory
- 10 The future that failed
- 11 Democracy as a civilising process
- Index
11 - Democracy as a civilising process
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Communism and democracy – a problematisation
- Part I The experiential basis of communism and democracy
- Part II Critical events and their symbolisations
- Part III Democracy as a process of meaning-formation
- 9 The power of memory
- 10 The future that failed
- 11 Democracy as a civilising process
- Index
Summary
To ‘fraternise’ with another person did not, however, mean that a certain performance of the contract, contributing to the attainment of some specific object, was reciprocally guaranteed or expected … The contract rather meant that the person would ‘become’ something different in quality (or status) from the quality he possessed before … Each party must thus make a new ‘soul’ enter his body.
Max WeberProblems of democratic essentialism
The two preceding chapters have argued that the experience of communism has been crucial for the historical composition of meanings of democracy. Democratic attitudes developed during the resistance of techniques of communist power that subordinated individual freedom to the collectivist logic of total images about the past and the future. This final chapter contrasts such an experiential approach with the popular and widely propagated idea of ‘democratic consolidation’. Discourses of democratic consolidation subordinate logics of experiences to logics of outcome. Their epistemological basis rests upon a deliberative filter according to which communism and democracy were logically generated categories, characterised by non-communication and radical antagonism. In this view, the values and the systemic features of communist and democratic regimes seemed incompatible because situational premises were left largely unmentioned.
This chapter puts forward the hypothesis that the situational premises of ‘unconsolidated’ moments of uncertainty are crucial for understanding the emergence of democracy as a process of meaning-formation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Communism and the Emergence of Democracy , pp. 269 - 295Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007