Die Neue Zeit
12th September 2011, 02:15
http://www.codesria.org/IMG/pdf/neocosmos.pdf
I shall be commenting here on theoretical problems inherent in thinking the neo-liberal state in an African context and also concerning the relations between this state and what has come to be referred to as ‘civil society’. The dominant theme of this paper is that, in an African historical context, the liberal conception of politics, which forms the globally hegemonic discursive framework within which much of the debate on democratisation operates, and which outlines both ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ for Africa, is authoritarian to the core. Moreover, it will be argued that both alternatives proposed by power for Africa, namely neo-liberalism and state nationalism, are founded on liberal precepts and are fundamentally authoritarian. An alternative conception of emancipatory democracy has to reject liberal thinking on the state and politics and cannot just simply ‘radicalise’ liberalism (as in eg. Mouffe 1992).
Central to liberal discourse has been a conception revolving around the idea that politics is reducible to the state or that the state is the sole legitimate domain of politics. For liberalism, ‘political society’ simply is the state. This idea has permeated so much into African political. thinking for example, that it has become difficult to conceive of an opposition political practice that is not reduced to capturing state posts or the state itself to the extent that it seems to be universally assumed that ‘politics is the state and the state is politics’ (Wamba-dia-Wamba 1994:250).
[...]
While the state cannot substitute itself for social activities, it should not be assumed a priori either that any social institutions can be substituted for the state itself.
[...]
The one-sidedness of a statist conception is thus not unconnected with its apparent mirror image, the tendency to analyse social relations abstracted from state activity. After all, a whole academic discipline of Western Sociology has largely been content to study society and culture while assuming their ability to reproduce themselves of their own accord, without state intervention in society—a position perhaps most clearly expressed in Durkheim’s work (at least in its structural-functionalist readings). For such a sociology, political power could easily be seen as a feature of society abstracted from institutional control, thus diluting its political character.
Recent debates and whole threads have pushed me towards referring to papers such as these, which try to grasp what politics really is. The parts in bold, I think, are yet another strike against growing political struggles out of things like mere labour disputes, and also against both "civil society" and raw syndicalist illusions in avoiding state policy altogether.
I shall be commenting here on theoretical problems inherent in thinking the neo-liberal state in an African context and also concerning the relations between this state and what has come to be referred to as ‘civil society’. The dominant theme of this paper is that, in an African historical context, the liberal conception of politics, which forms the globally hegemonic discursive framework within which much of the debate on democratisation operates, and which outlines both ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ for Africa, is authoritarian to the core. Moreover, it will be argued that both alternatives proposed by power for Africa, namely neo-liberalism and state nationalism, are founded on liberal precepts and are fundamentally authoritarian. An alternative conception of emancipatory democracy has to reject liberal thinking on the state and politics and cannot just simply ‘radicalise’ liberalism (as in eg. Mouffe 1992).
Central to liberal discourse has been a conception revolving around the idea that politics is reducible to the state or that the state is the sole legitimate domain of politics. For liberalism, ‘political society’ simply is the state. This idea has permeated so much into African political. thinking for example, that it has become difficult to conceive of an opposition political practice that is not reduced to capturing state posts or the state itself to the extent that it seems to be universally assumed that ‘politics is the state and the state is politics’ (Wamba-dia-Wamba 1994:250).
[...]
While the state cannot substitute itself for social activities, it should not be assumed a priori either that any social institutions can be substituted for the state itself.
[...]
The one-sidedness of a statist conception is thus not unconnected with its apparent mirror image, the tendency to analyse social relations abstracted from state activity. After all, a whole academic discipline of Western Sociology has largely been content to study society and culture while assuming their ability to reproduce themselves of their own accord, without state intervention in society—a position perhaps most clearly expressed in Durkheim’s work (at least in its structural-functionalist readings). For such a sociology, political power could easily be seen as a feature of society abstracted from institutional control, thus diluting its political character.
Recent debates and whole threads have pushed me towards referring to papers such as these, which try to grasp what politics really is. The parts in bold, I think, are yet another strike against growing political struggles out of things like mere labour disputes, and also against both "civil society" and raw syndicalist illusions in avoiding state policy altogether.