Lars Walker is writing about the distinction between civil society and government, which many Americans fail to recognize. (Not Tex, though, who is strong on this point.) The distinction between civil society and the state is one that Hegel makes a lot out of in his Philosophy of Right. There's a huge medieval history about the formation (and power) of such societies, whether they were secular or religious orders of knighthood or of laymen, or guilds, or early capitalist societies like the one built by the Fuggers, or the Hanseatic League. In addition to this stands the formal power of the Church and its many orders, which was a separate power from the state.
In other words, before the state became monolithic, a lot of the power in human life came from these choices of free association. When the state became overwhelming, it was these kinds of societies it tried to destroy. It was these kinds of societies that in fact overthrew the monolithic state: "The Soviets’ worries were not misplaced: the Armageddon of Eastern European communism in the late 1980s was brought about not by plutocrats but by Czech intellectuals, Polish labor unions, and various church groups."
The First Things article goes on to develop a distinction between these social institutions and the market, but I'm not sure that distinction is more than conceptually justified. Many of these free associations were businesses, small and large. We can distinguish conceptually that their status as 'free associations' held them together with things like church groups, rather than their status as businesses, of course. However, if we fail to understand that what made this subset of free associations work was their business interest, we fail to understand the real contribution of these kinds of organizations to liberty.
We've talked a bit lately about some reasons why I have concerns about the largest of these organizations, and think the state may be needed to counterbalance their power. But the point works just as well the other way. The state also must not become too powerful, with too much concentrated authority. These organizations, small and large, work to keep power from becoming too great in any one set of human hands.
2 comments:
The "business-groups associations" problem can be alleviated if one views them as part of the Ruling Class, of course.
The immigration debate is a handy demonstration of the Ch of Commerce's membership in that group.
One of the things that struck me the most strongly in Germany this time was just how critical the Imperial Free Cities were to the economic development of central Europe in the Medieval period. Not only as a check on the power of minor nobility, but as places where both economic and cultural development could bloom. The Fuggers in Augsburg, the patricians in Rothenburg ob den Tauber, Frankfurt, and Nuremberg, craft masters in Quedlinburg and Breisgau, plus the members of the Hansa and others all played huge roles. Where you had freedom from trade limits and taxes, you had economic growth and (within limits) intellectual and cultural freedom. It was something I'd never, ever thought about in all my reading about European history, for reasons that I won't bore you with.
Oh, and the Fuggerei, the retirement and housing center in Augsburg founded by Jakob Fugger in 1520? It remains a private charity, is still run by a Fugger-family foundation, and still requires residents to work in some craft or trade, even making birdhouses, as part of the contract.
LittleRed1
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