The Modern Social Conflict

The Politics of Liberty

Michael Curtis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351479318
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Revolutions are melancholy moments in history—brief gasps of hope that emerges from misery and disillusionment. This is true for great revolutions, like 1789 in France or 1917 in Russia, but applies to lesser political upheavals as well. Conflict builds into a state of tense confrontation, like a powder keg. When a spark is thrown, an explosion takes place and the old edifice begins to crumble. People are caught up in an initial mood of elation, but it does not last. Normality catches up.

Why do revolutions occur? In this completely revised edition of The Modern Social Conflict, Ralf Dahrendorf explores the basis and substance of social and class conflict. Ultimately, he finds that conflicts are about enhancing life chances; that is, they concern the options people have within a framework of social linkages, the ties that bind a society, which Dahrendorf calls ligatures. The book offers a concise and accessible account of conflict's contribution to democracies, and how democracies must change if they are to retain their political and social freedom. This new edition takes conflict theory past the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and into the present day.

Upon publication of the original 1988 edition, Stanley Hoffmann stated, "Ralf Dahrendorf is one of the most original and experienced social and political writers of our time.... [this book] is both a survey of social and political conflict in Western societies from the eighteenth century to the present and a tract for a new'radical liberalism.'" And Saul Friedlander wrote, "Ralf Dahrendorf has written a compelling book... the brilliant contribution of a convinced liberal to the study of conflict within contemporary democratic society."

1
Revolutions and Life Chances

The Two Faces of Modernity

Revolutions are melancholy moments of history. The brief gasp of hope remains submerged in misery and disillusionment. This is true for the great revolutions, like that of 1789 in France or of 1917 in Russia, but applies to some lesser political upheavals as well. Before they occur, there are many years of repression, of arrogant power and malign neglect of people’s needs. A stubborn old regime clings to privilege, and by the time it begins to reform its ways it lacks both credibility and effectiveness. People do not like it. Energies of conflict build up into a state of tense confrontation. It is a powder keg. When a spark is thrown into it—a spark of hope, as by grudging political reform, a spark of anger, as by a shot fired at the wrong time—an explosion takes place and the old edifice begins to crumble. Suddenly everything seems to give. Yesterday’s high treason becomes today’s law of the land, and yesterday’s law today’s treason. To the more excitable, vistas of unheard-of opportunities open up, “people power,” the liquefaction of everything hard and fast, utopia. Many are caught by a mood of elation. Not just the abuses of the old regime, but the constraints of society itself seem suspended. However, the honeymoon does not last. Normality catches up with people. After all, they cannot go on demonstrating every day, or even fighting a civil war. Individual circumstances are reflected in social conditions. Turmoil does not help economic development, and political instability raises fears. Well-meaning attempts to avert the valley of tears are failing. The general mood begins to waver at first and then it turns. Sometimes, a foreign power intervenes and thereby leaves utopia intact, though not the revolution. Sometimes, a Jacobin faction within takes over from the impotent majority. Is not “people power” a contradiction in terms? Quickly, the slogans of better days are perverted to justify a new regime of terror. This may be a “temporary” dictatorship, a state of emergency in the face of outside pressure, or simply charisma in the midst of anomy; in any case, it leads to another period of repression. Many years later, people realize that there have after all been lasting changes. The first day of the revolution is celebrated as a public holiday. But in the meantime a generation of disillusioned men and women have vacillated between sullen submission and vain protest.

If this is so, why does anyone want revolutions? It is not certain that many people do; for most, the welcome interruption of daily routines is more than balanced by suspicion and fear. When the thunderstorm breaks a long period of heat and drought, people like the rain, but they would have preferred a little of it each day to the tumultuous opening of the skies. To be sure, not all people are alike. There are always free-floating groups whose members are more likely to enjoy the suspension of society than those who are anchored quite firmly. Also, the frisson of revolution contains a general appeal. At times, revolution seems another word for hope, that indispensable principle of life. After all, the real revolution may yet happen. Was not the American Revolution on balance a story of success? And what about the revolution of 1989 in the communist countries of Europe?

But none of this really matters. People are not asked whether they want revolutions or not. Revolutions happen when there is no other way out. They are indeed like thunderstorms, or like earthquakes. To be sure, they are manmade, but men and women act under conditions they do not wholly control. “Mankind inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve.”

The man who made this statement is also the author of a brilliant, if flawed, explanation of revolutions, Karl Marx. Fortunately, the flaws are sufficiently interesting to make their discussion worthwhile. Marx’s theory has two parts, one sociopolitical, the other socioeconomic. The parts remain a key to understanding the modern social conflict, although the way in which Marx has linked them raises serious doubts. These elements of a theory of change by revolution have to do with the two faces of modernity, with the burghers, or bourgeois, and the citoyens, or citizens. The two will accompany us throughout this book, one being the herald of economic growth, the other of social equality. It is perhaps a pity that the German term bürgerliche Gesellschaft confounds the two, though it is merely a rendering of the old notion of the societas civilis, civil society.

Let us consider then Marx’s theory of revolution.¹ Its first part has to do with class. In every historical epoch two social classes are set against each other. The ruling class is ready for the battle from the outset; it has emerged from the previous epoch. The oppressed class on the other hand has to go through several phases of formation before it can engage in battle. Sporadic outbreaks of violence accelerate the process of organization; latent interests become manifest; the “class in itself” turns into a “class for itself.” As this happens, the conflict between the ruling and the oppressed class becomes more vicious. For a while, it is in the balance, but then the balance begins to tip. The oppressed class continues to grow in strength; some elements of the ruling class even come to have doubts and join the enemy. (“In particular,” Marx says in the Communist Manifesto, “a portion of the bourgeois ideologues”: all social scientists have had trouble defining their own role in their theories, and Marx was no exception.) Then the final battle commences, and a revolutionary upheaval puts an end to the epoch. The old ruling class disappears on the rubbish heap of history; the old oppressed class sets itself up as a new ruling class.

But the struggle of classes is not suspended in midair; the soldiers of the class war are in a sense puppets held by invisible social forces. This is the second part of Marx’s theory. Ruling classes represent the “relations of production” characteristic of an epoch. What is meant here is that they have an interest in keeping things as they are, “things” being above all existing patterns of wealth creation, the laws that give them stability, and the distribution of power that backs them up. Oppressed classes, on the other hand, draw their strength from new “forces of production.” These include all that makes for change, such as new technologies, new forms of organization, new rules of the game, and new gamekeepers. For a while, forces of production find adequate expression in prevailing legal and social conditions; but before long, the potential begins to outgrow the actual. Worse, actual relations of property and power hold down the development of the social potential of satisfying human desires. As the compatibility of the two declines, the intensity of the class struggle increases. Revolutions are not just extreme expressions of protest, but assertions of new modes of social organization. They provide a passageway for opportunities that were held down by an old regime.

In the aesthetic terms of scientific method, this is a beautiful theory. One might call it one of the few theories that live up to the old dream of a social science that emulates the natural sciences in its power of explanation. But alas! the events that the theory is meant to explain resist its sweep, and the predictions that followed from it did not come true.

One can start unraveling the tapestry from one little corner. It is a part of Marx’s theory that the revolutionary explosion occurs when conditions are worst for the oppressed. He even plays on words to this effect; the moment of greatest “neediness” (of the poor) is also the moment of greatest “necessity” (of change).² In fact, this is never the case. The most needy are more likely to be lethargic than active, and hopeless oppression creates the great silence of tyrannical rule. Explosions occur when there is some slight change—a spark of hope, a spark of anger—and often a sign of weakness on the part of those in power, a signal of political reform.

The mistake is no accident. It has to do with the fundamental weakness of a theory that cannot break out of the assumption of “epochs” or systems. Of course, Marx knew that changes go on all the time. He even described the ruling class of capitalist society, the bourgeoisie, as one that “cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing…the relations of production.” But this merely means that adjustments of practice and operation are part and parcel of the capitalist system. The system itself will disappear only when the great revolution comes. Until then, “early capitalism” may become “high capitalism,” even “late capitalism,” or perhaps “state capitalism,” indeed “state monopoly capitalism,” but capitalism it remains. As long as there is no revolution, it cannot have disappeared. “Real” change must be revolutionary change, and until it happens, the old categories of analysis apply.

This is what Karl Popper has called historicism.³ Concepts of analysis are hypostasized. Instead of using them to identify aspects and elements of real societies, they are confused with reality itself. In fact, of course, there never was such a thing as a capitalist society or economy, but only societies and economies that displayed traits defined as capitalist to a greater or lesser extent. The poverty of historicism is that it blinds the user to the real world. In theory, it makes one search endlessly for ways to save explanations that have lost their grip. Marxists have had a terrible time coming to terms with the disappearance of the revolutionary proletariat. In practice, historicism makes one stare at revolutions as the only mode of “real change” and thus miss the continuous changes of the reality of ordinary people. Marx’s theory is too neat to be useful; it is a model that has little to do with the experience of history.

Where then did its author get it from? Partly, of course, from his master, Hegel, whose dialectics overshadowed German thought both in the progressive years before 1848 and in the reactionary ones after. Hegel epitomized the illiberalism of dogmatic thinking, and those who tried to turn him upside down failed to break out of this straitjacket. But partly Marx was influenced by indirect experience. Born in 1818, he grew into a restless time. The rumblings of the French Revolution continued. As he turned from philosophy to political economy, Marx soon discovered that other dramatic transformation of the eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution. One can almost see how the two events began to be superimposed on each other in Marx’s mind. In Paris, the crowds had played a part in making history, and somewhere behind the demands of the Third Estate for more adequate representation in the Estates General there was a kind of class struggle. In Lancashire and Yorkshire, on the other hand, new methods of production had allowed a new dynamic to unfold. The limitations of feudal bonds, and also of guilds and corporations, were broken by the new division of labor, new forms of contract, a new tone-setting group. So there were the twin elements of a theory of change, revolution or not.

The word “revolution” has long been used for two quite different versions of dramatic change. One is deep change, the transformation of core structures of a society that in the nature of the case takes some time; the other is quick change, notably the circulation of those at the top within days or months by highly visible, often violent action. The first might be called social revolution, the second political revolution. The Industrial Revolution was in this sense social, the French Revolution political. But the two did not happen at the same time and in the same place. Clearly, some of the many changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution in Britain and elsewhere were political. These included the desire of the promoters of the new form of production to take part in the process of making laws that apply to all. Equally, some of the issues of the French Revolution were social and economic. The financing of public expenditure was such an issue, which in turn raised the question of the role of the King (whose expenditure it was) as well as the property of the Church and the aristocracy. Drastic changes happened with respect to all of them. Yet the Industrial Revolution in Britain occurred long after the civic revolution of 1688, and spilled over to pre-revolutionary France and other countries, whereas the political revolution of France did not in any sense unleash great economic forces. On the contrary, it may be said to have stalled the process of modern economic development in France.

And the middle class or, using Marx’s language, the bourgeoisie? Was it not the driving force behind both revolutions? Was there not thus a class that represented at the same time new forces of production and the demand for political power? Leaving on one side the fact that the increasingly self-aware bourgeoisie of the eighteenth century can—unlike the later proletariat—hardly be described as a suppressed class, the social figure of the burgher, the bourgeois, remains remarkable, notably with respect to the two faces of modernity.

In order to exploit the new potential of technology and the division of labor, the early entrepreneurs needed a type of labor contract that differed fundamentally from all traditional modes of dependence. They needed wage labor based on formal agreements between parties that were at least legally held to be equals. In that sense the new labor contract presupposed civil rights for all. At the same time these entrepreneurs and their followers demanded a place in the sun for themselves, or more prosaically, social recognition and political participation. They no longer accepted being confined to their burghs—those islands of liberty in a sea of feudal dependencies—nor were they content with their position as the third class. Thus the social and political interests of the early bourgeoisie added up to one crucial demand: They wanted to be citoyens, citizens with all the rights and liberties of this status.

Looked at from the considerable distance of analysis, both the Industrial and the French Revolutions may be described as bourgeois revolutions. The profound changes of the eighteenth century have two faces, they are both economic and political; these two faces also mark the new social figure of the bourgeois-citoyen. But the distance of analysis is too large to offer a satisfactory explanation of anything. As one looks more closely at events in England and in France, the two faces of the driving forces of the time prove to be those of two different figures rather than one. England’s inventive entrepreneurs and France’s Third Estate were simply not one and the same social group. We encounter no Janus, but at best twins, and non-identical ones at that.

Marx, of course, was as much concerned about the one and only revolution of the future as he was about those of the past. In his predictions the flaws of his theory are also most apparent. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat are the combatants of capitalist society. That much is a plausible description of some countries at certain times in the nineteenth century. Organized workers demand from those in power more rights and benefits. Marx would not have used this language, but it is not totally alien to his thinking either. The problem begins with the next step in his argument, which is that trade unions and socialist parties make their demands in the name of new forces of production. This, I suggest, is a meaningless statement. It always has been meaningless, despite numerous attempts by Marx and Marxians to define these new forces in terms of the “associated producers,” “social ownership,” or even the unconstrained discourse of autonomous individuals. (The nearly desperate search for new forces of production by later Marxists itself tells a story of analytical weakness.) There are political struggles, and there are tectonic changes of social and economic structure. They are undoubtedly related. But their relationship is not given once and for all. It varies from time to time and from place to place, and the moments at which the two coincided have been rare. Some people have double vision and see the same thing twice; Marx’s ailment was the reverse. His Hegelian eyesight merged two different things into one. Reality was the victim.

Entitlements and Provisions

Metaphorical language is always a little misleading. The time has come therefore to characterize the two figures of modernity whose conflict has determined the path of societies since the eighteenth century, without similes and allusions. In doing so, the story of a real experience may help.

In March 1986 I visited Nicaragua. The revolutionary regime of the Sandinistas had reached its nadir. Even then, it did not take long to discover that the shelves in the supermarkets carried little, and what there was by way of foodstuffs or clothes looked drab and rather elementary. In a conversation with the minister of foreign trade, Martinez, I brought up this observation and received a striking answer: “You seem to be critical of the fact that there is not much to buy on the shelves of our shops. This may be true, but let me tell you something. Before the revolution, our supermarkets were full. Everything you could find in Miami was on the shelves in Managua as well. But the majority could not afford any of it. People pressed their noses against shop windows to admire the goods, but they were not for them. We have changed all that. Today everyone in the country can afford what is there. And a bit of luck and America permitting, there will soon be more for all as well.”

Many people laugh when they hear the story. Paradoxes make people laugh, and I have come to call this the Martinez Paradox: The revolution has transformed a world of plenty for the few into one of little for all. On inspection, the story is not so funny. First there are the facts. The per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of Nicaragua doubled between 1950 and 1976. This development was not linear; there were pauses in the late 1950s, and again at the time of the earthquake of 1972. After 1976, a downward trend began. It took the country back to the level of the early 1950s by the time of the revolution in 1979. After the revolution and until 1981 there was a slight improvement that soon gave way to further decline. In 1985, per capita GDP in Nicaragua was roughly what it had been in 1951. In part, this is a story of revolution; in part it is one of war and pressure from the United States. Figures of income distribution are harder to come by. It seems clear that real wages also declined, though by less than per capita GDP; by 1984 they were about one-third lower than in their heyday in the late 1960s. Urban incomes have held up better than rural ones; and in the country, the poor have done relatively better. The role of the state as an economic actor has increased significantly. Transfer incomes have grown. The blights of illiteracy, epidemics, and unemployment have been fought with some success. One economist has summed up the net result in terms that are not dissimilar from the Martinez Paradox: “from growth without redistribution to redistribution without growth.”⁴

There is another, more theoretical reason why the Martinez Paradox warrants more than a laugh. The minister introduced an important distinction that has a lot to with the two faces of modernity. It is the distinction between people’s access to things and the things that are actually there for them to desire. It is entirely possible that large quantities and varieties of goods are available in the sense of being physically present where one would expect to find them, as in shops, but that many are unable to put their hands on them in a legal manner. In some cases, they lack the money; in others, they are not allowed to go and buy things. This was the case with the special shops of communist countries (“Intershops,” “Intourist”) in which one had to have either a permit or foreign currency to buy anything. It is equally possible that there are no barriers to prevent people from getting to the goods and services they want, but that there are simply not enough of them. One method frequently employed in such cases is rationing. Everyone gets a ration book for 2,000 calories’ worth of food a day, and sixty cigarettes a week, so that there are no special restrictions on the access side, but there are limitations on the availability side. (In reality, it is likely that rationing would be coupled with privileges for the few and a black market for the many on which nonsmokers trade their right to buy cigarettes.) In extreme cases, the situation can become more eerie. Everyone is allowed to go to places where there is nothing...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Revolutions and Life Chances
• 2 Citizenship and Social Class
• 3 Politics in Industrial Society
• 4 Temptations of Totalitarianism
• 5 Thirty Glorious Years
• 6 Limits to Growth
• 7 Conflict after Class
• 8 A New Social Contract
• Notes
• Index