Civil society Quote by Andrej Grubačić

““Imperial and colonial attitudes still define the terms 'civilized world,' 'international community' and 'civil society.' Balkan people were never too impressed by civilization. As early as 1871, the founder of the Balkan socialist movement, Svetozar Marković, ridiculed the entire 'civilized world,' from Times to the obedient Serbian press. The civilized world, he wrote, 'was composed of rich Englishmen, Brussels ministers and their deputies (the representatives of the capitalists), the European rulers and their marshals, generals, and other magnates, Viennese bankers and Belegrade journalists'...[he] believed...in a pluricultural Balkan Federation organized as a decentralized, directly demotractic society based on local agricultural and industrial associations. This is the kind of antinomian imagination that needs to be rediscovered: a horizontalist tradition of the barbarians who never accepted the civilized world that is now collapsing. (p.44)””

— Andrej Grubačić