Published with a kind permission of the Embassy of the Chech Republic in Moscow.

See the original at http://www.hrad.cz/president/Havel/speeches/1999/2604a_uk.html

Ladies and gentlemen,
While a totalitarian system of the Communist type could now and then coexist with private ownership, and sometimes even with private enterprise, it could, as a matter of principle, never coexist with a developed civil society. Genuine civil society is the truest fundamental of democracy, and totalitarian rule can never, by definition, be reconciled with that.

It was therefore no coincidence that one of the most intense and possibly the most fateful attack that accompanied the installation of Communist power was an attack on civil society.

The freedom of speech that had been suppressed by Communism overnight could, forty-one years later, be restored overnight as well. It was also possible to rapidly abolish the constitutional provisions concerning the leading role of the Communist party, to establish other parties and to hold free elections. We even succeeded rather quickly in transferring the greater part of our nationalized economy into the hands of concrete owners. In the realm of civil society, things are much more complicated; its restoration is a task that will take years. The reason is self-evident: civil society is an intricately structured, very fragile, sometimes even slightly mysterious organism that grew for decades, if not centuries, out of a natural development, reflecting the continuous evolution of the human mind and morality, the degree of societal knowledge and self-knowledge, and a certain type of civic awareness and self-confidence. After so many years of virtual non-existence, civil society, therefore, cannot be restored by any single act from above, such as a law, a directive or a decision of the political leadership. The only possibility is to patiently build an environment favorable to its advancement and to strengthen those characteristics of societal spirit that promote such advancement.

With your permission, I should like to take this opportunity to review my thoughts on how I view - against the background of our post-Communist experience - the principal elements of civil society, and its significance.

To begin with: What, in fact, is a civil society?

In the most general terms, we could perhaps describe it as a society in which citizens participate - in many parallel, mutually complementary ways - in public life, in the administration of public goods and in public decisions. The extent, the manner and the institutional form of this participation depend predominantly on the participants, on their initiative and imagination, even though these are naturally exercised within a certain legal framework. Thus, it is a society that not only gives wide latitude for both individual and group creativity as an important component of public activity, but is directly founded on such creativity. The functions of the state and of its structures in such a society are limited only to that which cannot be performed by anyone else, such as legislation, national defence and security, the enforcement of justice, etc.

In a somewhat simplified way, we could say that civil society has three basic pillars.

The first pillar is one of association in the broadest sense of the word - free association of people in different types of organizations, ranging from clubs, community groups, civic initiatives, foundations and publicly beneficial organizations up to churches and political parties. People associate in these organizations in order to accomplish things that a group can do better than an individual. The two crucial points are that this kind of association - which leads to an authentic self-structuring of the society - emanates from interests other than those linked directly with business or material profit; and that the state, as a representative of the entire society, supports such an association and offers advantageous conditions for its operation. The state does so for at least two reasons: First, because the stability, harmony and success of society as a whole depend considerably on whether the various legitimate non-profit interests of citizens and their groupings have sufficient opportunities for their implementation. Second, because most of these not-for-profit activities do not serve only those who take part in them, but bring a wider benefit that can be, in one way or another, enjoyed by everyone.

The second pillar of civil society is constituted by a strong self-government within the system of public administration. This means that citizens elect not only the members of the central representative bodies, but also their representatives in the self-governing bodies of municipalities and regions and that these lower representative bodies have substantial jurisdictions and funds of their own. All that which does not have to be decided at the central level, or within the hierarchy of state administration, is decided by the elected representatives of the people at lower levels. In other words: One of the basic dimensions of civil society - and at the same time one of the forms of its development, or preconditions for it - is a decentralized state.

Of course, the state has certain social responsibilities in the domain of solidarity, laid down by the law - we could even say that these functions constitute one of the reasons for its existence. This includes responsibilities in the fields of social welfare, public health, education or protection of the environment. Yet, the state's role as the guarantor of such functions does not mean that the state must be the only one to directly perform them. The state is usually neither a good doctor nor a good teacher. The third pillar of civil society should, therefore, be constituted by an ingenious system of delegation of certain functions guaranteed by the state to other entities; this should be accompanied by an equally ingenious system of controls, and of support for such bodies. Schools, hospitals, theaters and similar institutions - unless they operate as trading companies - should not be part of the state in the same way as is the military or the police. Instead, they should have the status of non-profit organizations toward which the state merely possesses certain rights and also has certain responsibilities.

These three pillars of civil society - association, decentralization of the state and delegation of the exercise of some of its functions to relatively independent entities - are the three basic goals that should be pursued in the process of restoring civil society in my country.

Dear friends,

All this may seem to you to be banally self-evident; perhaps you are wondering why I am speaking about such commonplace affairs.

Yes, I know that in America - a country with probably the most advanced civil society in the world - it may be surprising that someone feels the need to again articulate things that are so apparent.

My speaking about them here and now has one single purpose: I am convinced that America can perform its unique role in the world well only if it understands the problems of other nations. For the Czech Republic, like for all post-Communist countries, the restoration of civil society is a matter of great importance that is still far from being taken for granted.

Needless to say, it is a very demanding process - not only because of the general circumstances that I have already mentioned, but also because a part of our new political elites either takes an apathetic stand towards the concept of rebuilding civil society or is even opposed to it. As soon as these elites gained control of the state, they quickly embraced the general unwillingness of the state to give up anything that it has once got into its power. Thus, even many democratic or outright anti-Communist politicians are now, paradoxically, defending the overblown powers of the state that are a relic of the Communist era. This is why many schools, hospitals, cultural institutions and other establishments in my country are still governed by outdated, often entirely nonsensical and uneconomical rules of centralized administration, although they could have long ago become modern non-profit organizations that the state would merely watch from a distance or support through some transparent procedures. This is why debate on decentralization of the state has been dragging on for nine years without any government department displaying the willingness to transfer any of its powers to regions or to municipalities without a fight. This is why - at least from the viewpoint of the needs of an economy in transition - taxation in our country is still excessively high: the state has to pay for a thousand things which it would not have to pay for in an advanced civil society, because citizens would then pay for them directly.

This extensive state conservatism has nothing to do with ideology. If some politicians do try to find ideological excuses for their unwillingness to allow reductions of the state's power, they mostly come up with the following: "People have chosen us in an election; it is therefore their will that we rule the country on their behalf. Anything outside this pattern is an attack on representative democracy, on standard political parties and on the standard political system in general. The social redistribution of resources is a task for the state, and its responsibility in this field must not be diffused. Attempts to build or to support any parallel structures that would not be politically controlled from the center amount to casting doubt on parliamentary democracy." Faith in civil society is still interpreted by many in the Czech lands as leftism, anarchism or syndicalism; someone has even called it proto-fascism.

Of course, this is nonsense: Civil society as I have just described it is in reality the only truly solid foundation of a democratic political system. Political parties and the basic institutions of a democratic state work well only when they continually draw strength and inspiration from a developed and pluralistic civic environment and are, at the same time, exposed to well-founded criticism from such an environment. The intention is not to exclude the parliament, the government or the political parties from public life or to circumvent them. It is just the opposite: The aim is to enable them to work to the best of their ability as institutions that constitute the culmination of the democratic system. Without a life-giving background in the form of a diversely structured civil society, political parties as well as the supreme political institutions of the state wither, lack new blood, lose momentum and invention, and are eventually reduced to uninteresting closed groups of political professionals that largely do without any external input.

At the root of the argument that the advancement of civil society is an attack on the standard political system, we thus again find the well-known unwillingness to share power with anyone else. It is as if the parties were telling us: "Governing the country is our business, so choose between us, but don't do anything beyond that."

Why is it worthwhile - despite all the adverse circumstances - to strive to restore civil society? What are its advantages, and what is it that constitutes its truest meaning?

Let me mention at least a few basic facts.

First: Civil society generates genuine pluralism, and pluralism - leading to competition - produces quality. In this respect, there is a similarity between the economy and public life in general. The more different initiatives, grown freely from grass roots and independent of one another, operate in any particular sphere of public life, the greater is the chance that the best and most inventive one emerges from their free competition. To rely on the capability of the central state authorities or of central political bodies to always decide beforehand what is best, and what needs to be done and how, means to identify power with truth and to grant power a patent on reason. We know, or should know, what the result is of such an identification of power with the "reason of history": It is a general decline. Who once said A must also say B. If we want freedom, we must grant the right of existence also to that which constitutes its natural product, its expression and its actual fulfillment; that is, to civil society.

The second evident fact, related to the first, is that the more stratified civil society is, and the more it thrives, the more stable is the domestic political situation. This is understandable: Civil society protects citizens from being excessively affected by changes at the center of political power. It absorbs, at lower levels, some of the effects of such changes, attenuates them or even disposes of them. In this way, it actually facilitates political changes or at least ensures that they are not seen as fateful occurrences. In a functional civil society, a change of government does not have to mean a windstorm that leaves nothing in its place. However, where civil society is not sufficiently developed every problem that occurs at the political center filters down into the everyday lives of the citizens, while many a problem of the citizens filters up to the center of power that, therefore, deals with matters which it would not have to deal with otherwise - at the expense of matters which are its responsibility. Consequently, civil society is the best safeguard, not only against political chaos but also against the rise of authoritarian forces that always emerge whenever a society feels shaken or insecure about its future. The more power is left at the center the more favorable are the conditions for such forces to gain control over the country. Communists knew very well why they needed to dominate and manipulate every bee-keepers' association.

Third: I do not think that one needs to be a great economist or arithmetician to discover that civil society pays off. When things are paid for by the state budget, more money must be collected in taxes and substantial sums are lost on the way up and again on the way down, being consumed by the mechanisms for such transfers. In a system that allows tax deductions, publicly beneficial initiatives get more money than they would get if the same amounts were collected as taxes. Furthermore, a shorter, more straightforward link between the contributor and the purpose for which he contributes allows for closer scrutiny of how the money is spent, thus reducing the danger of mismanagement. Not to mention the incalculable economic value of pluralism, strengthened by a decentralized pattern of redistribution. In addition, a concrete donor is much better equipped to discern the structure of public needs in an area of his or her specific interest than this can ever be done by even the best civil servant at some ministry.

Fourth: The most important aspect of civil society is yet another thing - it is the fact that it enables people to realize themselves truly and entirely as the beings that they potentially are, that is, as the species called zoon politicon, or social animal. Human beings are not only manufacturers, profit-makers or consumers. They are also - and this may be their innermost quality - creatures who want to be with others, who yearn for various forms of coexistence and cooperation, who want to participate in the life of a group or of a community and who want to influence that which happens around them. A human being is intrinsically disposed not to be indifferent towards fellow humans and towards society. People desire to be appreciated for that which they give to the environment around them. Humanity constitutes a subject of conscience, of moral order, of love for our fellow humans. Civil society is one of the ways in which our human nature can be exercised in its entirety, including its more subtle elements, which are more difficult to grasp, but are perhaps the most important of all.

Civil society, at least as I see it, is simply one of the great opportunities for human responsibility for the world.

I certainly do not need to stress how important it is in today's world, which is endangered by so many different threats, that we cultivate opportunities of this kind.

This finally brings me to the point that perhaps most clearly concerns in the same measure both my fellow citizens and yourselves: In the world of today - enveloped by a global, essentially materialistic and widely self-jeopardizing civilization - one of the ways of combatting all the escalating dangers consists in the systematic creation of a universal civil society. In my opinion, the state in the next century - in the intrinsic interest of a rapidly growing humankind - should visibly transform itself from a mystic embodiment of national ambitions and a cult-like object into a civil administration unit, and it should get used to the necessity of delegating many of its powers either to the levels below it, that is, to organisms of civil society, or to those above it, that is, to the transnational or global - and thus actually civic - communities and organizations.

I am certainly not against patriotism. We should love our country at least as much as we love our family, our village or town, our profession, as well as the planet on which we are destined to live and on which we have, among other things, the country that is our home. I am only against nationalism - a blind elevation of national affiliation above everything else.

Nor am I against any religion, any culture or any specific tradition of the human civilization. I am only against all kinds of fanaticism or fundamentalism which, again, blindly elevates one level of human identity above all its other levels.

It seems to me that the most open arrangement - one that best enables all types of human self-identification to develop alongside one another - is an arrangement based on the civic principle, an arrangement founded on faith in the citizen and on respect for him.

One of the most important expressions of such a civic arrangement is that which we call civil society.

I wish you success in your deliberations on this subject, in the faith that all those who reflect on it without bias advance us all towards a better future.

Thank you.

See also http://www.hrad.cz/president/Havel/index_uk.html

Published with a kind permission of the Embassy of the Chech Republic in Moscow.