Bourgeois civil society rests on the choice between deceit or failure

Evidence

Initially, Fromm wrote, the bourgeois struggle for toleration was directed against social oppression. But when the middle class became socially dominant, tolerance was transformed into a mask for moral laissez-faire. In reality, it was never extended to protect serious threats to the prevailing order. As epitomized in Kant’s work, it was applied to thought and speech rather than action. Bourgeois toleration was always self-contradictory: it was consciously relativistic and neutral, but subconsciously designed to preserve the status quo. Psychoanalysis, Fromm suggested, shared the two-faced character of this type of tolerance; the facade of neutrality was often a cover for what Fromm expressly called the doctor’s implicit sadism. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 342 (#expands, via linked claim)

Civility in this generalized sense amounts to the texture of sociality, the fabric (and fabricated) of the lived, sometimes frayed and sometimes fine, the latter too often tied, if only by negation, to the former. I would say even that civility emerged and has operated as a form of class rule, its privatization. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 232 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Bourgeois tolerance functions as a mask preserving the status quo — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 342; Civility functions as a form of class rule by privatizing social order — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 232; Statolatry must be criticised so civil society becomes self-governing and spontaneous (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Bourgeois tolerance functions as a mask preserving the status quo #expands (0.83) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 342
• Civility functions as a form of class rule by privatizing social order #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 232
• Statolatry must be criticised so civil society becomes self-governing and spontaneous #contradicts (0.75)