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Human Nature, Social Engineering, and The Reemergence of Civil Society*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2009
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There is not much disagreement that the recent spectacular establishment of parliamentary democracies and market economies in Eastern Europe and the even more breathtaking events in most Soviet republics – which should culminate in the reemergence of the Baltic nations as independent states – may be convincingly conceived of as the triumph of civil society over the Marxist-Leninist system. Both the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist system and the reemergence of civil society may be discussed in terms of theories which deal with the relationship between human nature and sociopolitical systems.
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References
1 By civil society in this context, I mean various groups and movements which were established outside the structure and independent of the Soviet-type system. I will elaborate on this point in the last section of this essay. For different conceptual and ideological approaches to the phenomenon of the reemergence of civil society in Eastern Europe, see Szelenyi, Ivan, “Socialist Opposition: Dilemmas and Prospects,” ed. Tokes, Rudolf L., Opposition in Eastern Europe (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 187–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arato, Andrew,” Civil Society Against the State: Poland 1980–81,” Telos, vol. 50 (1981), pp. 23–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rau, Zbigniew, “Some Thoughts on Civil Society in Eastern Europe and the Lockean Contractarian Approach,” Political Studies, XXXV (1987), pp. 573–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pelczynski, Zbigniew A., “Solidarity and ‘The Rebirth of Civil Society’ in Poland 1976–81,” ed. John, Keane, Civil Society and the State (London: Verso, 1988), pp. 361–80.Google Scholar For attempts at an analysis of civil society in the USSR, see Lapidus, Gail W., “State and Society: Toward Emergence of Civil Society in Russia,” ed. Seweryn, Bialer, Politics, Society, and Nationality inside Gorbachev's Russia (Westview Press: Boulder & London, 1989), pp. 121–47Google Scholar, and Gray, John, “Totalitarianism, Reform, and Civil Society,” ed. Ellen, Frankel Paul, Totalitarianism at the Crossroads (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1990).Google Scholar See also Sakwa, Richard, The State and Civil Society in the USSR (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar For a discussion of civil society as the force overcoming the Marxist-Leninist system, see Zbigniew Rau, “Four Stages of One Path Out of Socialism,” in Totalitarianism at the Crossroads.
2 Compare the argument structure of Stevenson, Leslie, Seven Theories of Human Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974).Google Scholar
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4 Genesis 1:26.
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8 Karl Marx: Selected Writings, p. 177.
9 ibid., p. 249.
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