Original scientific paper

The Civil Society and Postsocialism

Milan Mesić ; Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb

Abstract

The author expresses the opinion that for a critical understanding of postsocialism (which he conditionally defines as the situation and contradictory processes in Eastern Europe after the democratic revolution) and its development perspectives, the most adequate is the concept of civil society. He indicates three different social currents which contributed to the renewal of the civil society issue: neoliberalism, post-Marxism and the dissident civil opposition to totalitarianism. He then determines the concept of civil society within the meaning it had obtained in the modem theories of natural law. Following this line of thought he specifies his own definition of this concept as an analytical means for studying socialism and postsocialism. When it is a question of socialism, he indicates the constant tension between the state and unautonomous but »real socialist society«, in which new seeds of the autonomous civil sphere keep appearing over and over again. Finally, he discusses the non-fulfilment of the three fundamental pre-suppositions for civil society in contemporary postsocialist processes in the European East, including Croatia and Yugoslavia.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

155037

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/155037

Publication date:

31.12.1991.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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