Principle for a Free Society

[William M. Finley]

Civil society
“Among the laws that rule human societies there is one which seems to be
more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilised or to
become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same
ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
What is civil society?
Civil society is all those voluntary organisations that exist between the
individual and the state such as the family, churches, sports and music
clubs, and charities. The idea of civil society is a product of civilisation.
What Tocqueville called the art of association is a result of the modern
practice of men co-operating with others they do not know for the purpose
of achieving their ends. This need simply did not exist in the huntergatherer
societies of our ancestors, where everyone was known to one
another and the survival of the species was dependent upon communities
sharing a common aim. With the advent of the division of labour and a
society of laws in which people could use their separate property for their
particular purposes, that art of association became the foundation of peace
and prosperity among men. The concept of civil society is inseparable
from the idea of freedom. It is a common mistake to suppose that an individual
existing alone can be free, and that freedom is the absence of
restraint. The theory of civil society reminds us that a state of freedom is
one in which just restraints are applied to men and that it is by their association
with one another that the condition of each is improved.
A French thinker, Benjamin Constant, articulated the meaning of civil
society when he pointed out that the idea only made sense in the modern
world, where the individual exercised only an imperceptible influence
on his fellow man. In a speech outlining two different types of liberty
of the ancients and of the moderns, Constant argued that it was the
freedom to associate with one another, rather than the freedom to participate
in government, that marked out man’s most important freedom
as an invention of the modern world. This idea of civil association, and
the institutions to which it gave rise, was discussed systematically by an
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Irishman, Edmund Burke, and a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, as
they observed the workings of England and America in their time. The
great insight of Tocqueville was that progress in society was a by-product
of human co-operation which in turn could not take place unless society
was free, ruled by what the Enlightenment thinkers had called “a government
of laws, not of men.”
While Tocqueville described the myriad ways which Americans had
developed the art of association on his travels there in the 1830s, Burke
articulated the role of intermediary institutions - the product of that
association - in the affairs of men. He gave them the name of little platoons.
These mediating institutions of family, church and community
assisted the functioning of society as a whole. As Burke wrote: “To be
attached to the subdivisions, to love the little platoon we belong to in
society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It
is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our
country and to mankind.” For Burke, these institutions played a key
role in shaping human personality and, by fulfilling a deep human need
to belong, gave rise to a vast network of associations which strengthened
the ties that bind us together.
The ties that bind
It is in these little platoons, what the conservative philosopher Michael
Oakeshott later called civic associations, that we find the instincts and
the spirit which form and shape the communities of men which are the
building blocks of society. By easing the path of social co-operation,
these civic associations allow us to benefit from, and so to cherish, the
existence of those who are closest to us. The loyalty we feel towards family
and friends, local community and nation are nurtured by our need to
associate with others. Civil associations are therefore part of the social
glue that holds society together. Far from the atomised individuals of
which the critics of free societies speak, civil associations strengthen our
ties to the heritage and common interests we share with others and
makes society as a whole stronger as a result. The civil society is a
humane society because it enhances and encourages our human feelings
of sympathy for our fellow man.
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Government versus civil society
The enemy of civil society is not individual liberty, but government.
Government tears up the bonds that connect us to each other because
it collects and centralises power and resources, and undermines our civil
loyalties by making demands on our time, our money and our compassion.
These demands loosen the ties that bind us together by depriving
us of the material and emotional resources we would normally invest in
one another. When Tocqueville visited America from Napoleonic
France, he was initially surprised by the proliferation of voluntary associations
which supported every conceivable cause and point of view. His
native France which laboured under a centralised government could not
support such a patchwork of individual effort because so much more
human energy was absorbed by the needs of the state. This is the basic
reason why communities flourish in conditions of freedom. Government
creates barriers to the art of association because it disempowers individuals.
In totalitarian societies, the state stops individuals co-operating with
each other to achieve common ends, because all of society’s ends are
directed towards achieving the aims of the state.
The wheels of commerce turn civil society
Commerce promotes civility. Montesquieu credited trade with the
spread of sweet manners to the people of Northern Europe whom the
Romans had once called barbarians. David Hume promoted the idea
that the spread of commerce was critical to the refinement of society and
the advancement of the arts and sciences. Because commerce made it
possible to “do a service to another without bearing him real kindness,”
he argued it created a society in which it was in the “interest even of bad
men to act for the public good.”
Traders require the trust and confidence of those with whom they
trade, and so contribute to a climate in which promises are kept.
Francis Fukuyama has demonstrated the significance of trust in successful
societies and the contribution of trade and exchange in creating
the trust that allows civil society to develop.
By Nigel Ash Ford