Isegoria

Bruce Charlton examines the destruction of civil society by the Left:

Going back to the early 1990s, there emerged a considerable literature and a political movement concerned with Civil Society — which was the layer of organized social life between the government and the family: churches, professions and guilds, charities and clubs and the like.

This movement came in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union and most of its satellites and colonies in 1989, and the break up of that empire into ‘democratic’ nations. The idea was that totalitarianism had been characterized by the destruction of civil society (either annihilation — as with many Christian churches, or take over by the state.

By contrast, civil society was seen as a vital characteristic of a health and free society — the idea that Men should have forms of organization that were substantially autonomous was seen as both efficient and also morally necessary.

The idea was that civil societies should be encouraged in the emerging nations of central and Eastern Europe -and indeed elsewhere — so that they might become Free as the West was Free.

What we have seen instead has been the near complete destruction of civil society in the West — and the process has bee all but un-remarked and un-noted as a general phenomenon. Almost all forms of human association have been brought under control of the state, most are irrelevant, participation in civil society is very low and feeble, many churches, professions social hobby groups been severely weakened or become extinct.

By the criteria of 25 years ago, objectively this means The West is not free, and is instead totalitarian.

It happened by a different mechanism than under Soviet Communism — which used direct suppression, making institutions illegal, confiscating their assets. imprisoning their leaders etc. In the West the imposition of totalitarianism was a mixture of subsidy-control and strangulation by regulation.

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