The ongoing political farce of amendments to the constitution of the Russian Federation has raised a wave of enthusiastic references to the U.S. Constitution on Russian social networks: drafted in 1787, its core remains largely unchanged to this day. This popular perception of the U.S. Constitution misses the fact that its creation was not a one-time creative act of several prominent intellectuals. The ratification and revisions of the Constitution (the inclusion in 1789–1791 of the fundamental Amendment – the Bill of Rights) was accompanied and facilitated by a broad public discussion structured by the Federalist Papers. This series of eighty-five newspaper articles published in 1787–1788 discussed in depth various aspects of key constitutional provisions. These publications not only reflected the most advanced philosophical and legal ideas of the Enlightenment but also adapted them to the realities of the thirteen American colonies, translated into the language of the local educated society’s social imagination. Today, when making fundamental legal decisions, federal judges still refer to the Federalist Papers as the authoritative text corpus explaining and contextualizing the provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
Nothing of the kind happened after the collapse of the USSR: post-Soviet society in different countries was formed mainly by spontaneous improvisation and imitating certain “Western” models or reinstating the constitutions of the interwar period. No consensus on the most fundamental common values and goals of society has been reached, and no principles have been formulated on which new decisions should be based. Most important, neither the former “metropole” nor the “colonies” (if one believes in the literal “empireness” of the USSR) have undergone a full-fledged postcolonial emancipation from the previous form of hegemony. Past grievances should not be forgotten, but if the response to them continues to shape the politics of the future, the society will remain locked in a structural colonial situation of dependence not on its own positive subjectivity, but on someone else’s negative one. In this sense, Gleb Pavlovsky was right to conclude in the late 1990s: “There is nothing post-Soviet, and nothing post-Soviet is relevant any longer.”
Today, we observe the consequences of this lack of new development scenarios. Some countries, first of all, Ukraine after Euromaidan, are trying to find the foundations of a fundamentally new society. Still, neither the abstract ideal of “Europe” nor the glorification of nationalist movements and regimes of the mid-twentieth century contributes much to truly postcolonial liberation. Thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, the systematic work of contemplating a fundamentally new configuration of society has not begun. It should be noted that the task of “inventing” the new society is no less important for the First World countries, which are habitually perceived as role models. The postwar version of the state is becoming increasingly outdated and the lack of a new convincing model of a welfare state adapted to a modern economy and society has led to a series of economic crises. The growing problems of the old social arrangement are also reflected in the political crisis of the old party systems, national citizenship, and the concept of the nation-state itself. Although the crisis of the normative model of the nation-state has become a frequent topic of popular publications, there are no convincing and readily available scenarios of a new, postnational society (not remakes of some twentieth-century projects) in either Western Europe or North America.
Unlike society in the eighteenth century, modern educated society is not restricted to a handful of Renaissance men, and post-Soviet countries bear little resemblance to the American colonies with their small and culturally homogeneous populations and their fairly primitive economic system. A new model of society cannot be invented overnight, producing a final comprehensive draft. For a start, it is necessary to draw up a mental map of the most advanced social imagination. In modern mass society, such a map implies a huge “jigsaw puzzle,” the pieces of which have to be collected from hundreds and thousands of people who have different life and intellectual experiences in different circumstances. A preliminary draft of such an intellectual puzzle can become the basis for more meaningful public discussions, practical political projects, and decisions.
If we believe that, as scholars, we understand some regularities in the organization of society – whether modern, or in the past, or in another country – then this knowledge might be helpful in finding new solutions to specific problems, as part of outlining the society of the future. This act of critical thinking involves staging a mental experiment that is effectively structured by the personal and professional experience of scholars.
Ab Imperio invites colleagues to begin the work of systematic contemplation of a fundamentally new society by participating in a journal forum that will be published in the section “ABC of Social Imagination.” Our twenty-year experience in developing new imperial history as a model conceptualizing multidimensional diversity suggests that the only productive way of describing reality (both resembling “real life” and being suitable for life) is the recognition of its inherent structural contradictions. Utopias remain “utopian” precisely because they are formulated as a noncontradictory narrative that, by definition, is incompatible with the reality of multidimensional and unsystematic diversity. Historically, such contradictions have tended to be resolved not by cutting the Gordian knot, but by fundamentally altering the very structural situation that engendered those contradictions. As a result, potential new conflicts began taking shape, as the old burning ones were simply dissipating. For example, interconfessional barriers and mutual hostility that were hindering the formation of a political nation and a single cultural and economic space were overcome not as a result of a radical decree prescribing the “friendship of religions” but through a fundamental secularization of the entire society, thus making former religious differences irrelevant. To be sure, secularization brought about many new problems: it undermined the intracommunal mechanisms of social control, enhanced a sense of crisis of national culture, and contributed to mass neuroses. However, the old predicaments were losing their urgency, whether the problem of mixed marriages or universal military service.
Thus, the main criterion for selecting ideas for publication will be their authors’ engagement with a series of fundamental contradictions that cannot be “undone” even in the brightest future. It is precisely the aim of our joint work to develop particular practical solutions (institutions, organizational forms, practices) that could transfer these conflicts to a different plane, where they will appear in an absolutely new setting of a completely different structural situation. We are talking not so much about some elaborated programs of action as about the formulation of the principles and logic of social organization, which could be used as the foundation for practical political measures – in various countries and different local conditions.
We can preliminarily formulate the following main fundamental contradictions that effectively limit the variability of the future society:
1. No matter where the new society emerges, on any continent, it will be a long-settled territory. The people are all very different and often defy each other’s preferences, yet we have no other choice but to tolerate these differences, finding forms of demarcation and deescalation of conflict situations. Population displacement, systematic apartheid, and any forms of discrimination are unacceptable.
2. The highest social goals and values are the interests of the individual – but so are the interests of the community, however it is defined by its members.
3. Just as in a prenational society, the category of “minorities” is meaningless in a postnational society, because there is no “majority” as defined by any single main criterion. However, a particular lifestyle or embraced group identity may require special protection (see the previous paragraph).
4. Over the past century, the concept of citizenship has changed significantly: in addition to suffrage, guarantees of personal freedom, and inviolability of property, full membership in the political community now implies access to comprehensive medical care, affordable education, and ability to sustain the decent standard of living in case of unemployment or retirement. However, the expanding understanding of citizenship places an ever greater burden on the economy and can be practically implemented close to the ideal only in small countries with a homogeneous population (and minimal expenditures on defense or protection from natural disasters). The main contradiction of the future is the combination of social guarantees associated with citizenship and a less (not more) expensive state. This task is all the more pertinent because the transition to a new society is likely to happen only in the conditions of a severe economic and political crisis accompanied by diminished economic potential.
The preliminary map of the reassembled social arrangement will be clarified along the way. For now, Ab Imperio invites you to formulate new questions and propose solutions to problems according to the following program:
1. Political self-expression of the citizen and community
How is the citizen’s political will communicated (direct democracy vs. representative democracy)?
What are the political powers of a territorial community (village, city) and of a nonterritorial community (national, professional, gender, etc.)?
What is the administrative structure of the state?
What are the political consequences of the simultaneous participation of people in different circles of solidarity (territorial and cultural, professional and national)?
How can a monopoly on power of a territorial administration (municipal, regional, of a national republic) in relation to a citizen be prevented?
How can we protect the interests of a territorial administration (municipal, regional, of a national republic) from the central government?
2. Economic potential of the individual, community, and corporation
How are the natural resources in the country distributed? How can the citizen, the local territorial community, the company extracting and processing these resources, and the state make use of their share?
What is the system of taxation and how does it reflect the multiplicity of political subjects (see section 1)?
How can citizens participate in the distribution of their own tax money?
Who sets indirect fees and excise taxes and distributes income from them?
How is the financial and banking system organized, how much can it be decentralized, and what is the status of cryptocurrencies?
3. Cultural self-determination of the individual and community
How can a citizen’s cultural identity be ensured?
What can be offered to communities wishing to live in a culturally homogeneous environment in the format of a territorial group (nationalists, religious congregations, sociopolitical movements)?
What are the feasible scenarios for maintaining cultural pluralism on the scale of the whole country and in its individual parts?
What new model of school education and curriculum will be focused on adaptation to a new society?
What is the language policy throughout the country and in its individual parts?
4. Organization and maintenance of the social sphere
How are public order and security maintained (given that the autonomous local police force is prone to corruption and the central ministerial system can be seen as occupiers)?
What does the army of the future look like and what is the safest path to it?
How do we guarantee access to quality medical care and education in sparsely populated areas and to the poor?
At what level is the school system organized and controlled?
Who finances the different levels and categories of medical and educational institutions and the police and how do they do so (see also section 2)?
How is social security for the elderly and people with disabilities organized?
What is the migration policy and what are the principles of obtaining citizenship?
5. Formalization of the new order and conflict resolution
What is the permissible degree of legal pluralism and how exactly is it implemented (e.g., the integration of Sharia and customary law into the general legal system or the admission of special legal regimes for certain localities and categories of the population)?
What are the judicial system’s costs and sources of financing for various types and jurisdictions of the courts?
How do we reconcile the need to simplify legislation and take into account many particular circumstances and contexts?
Where and when do we train new lawyers for the new legal system?
Ab Imperio will accept contributions addressing these questions, clarifying them, or formulating new ones, up to ten thousand characters without spaces. The text can be split into segments discussing different points or focusing on one topic. E-mail for submissions: abimperio.inc@gmail.com. Qualified submissions, in Russian or English, will be published in the 2020 issues of the journal.