Basically, being an international event, the Peace of Westphalia is also interesting as a marking point in Europe’s social and cultural history. It introduced or reestablished a number of practices that were to prove crucial to the development of modern society. It provided for religious toleration in Germany and, more important perhaps, confirmed the United Provinces of the Netherlands and the Swiss Confederation in their capacity as independent modern-type republics. In this, as well as in its other provisions, it marked the shift of historic initiative from the Mediterranean to other countries (the Nordic et alia), where modern society was being forged. If not the birthday, it can thus be viewed as, at least, the day of confirmation of modernity. But it also marked a cultural rift between European nations, it would take a centuries-long and arduous effort of modernisation to heal.  

From “Natural Selection” to Active Adaptation. A question to be asked about modernity is why this kind of social order, despite its apparent advantages and often irresistible appeal, is so difficult to borrow or, for that matter, to impose? The usual, almost “natural” answer is that transition to modernity is a response to a set of challenges that is open only to societies that have reached a certain phase of development. The explanation is however wanting on, at least, one crucial point: societies at the same – presumably, technological – phase of development are known to respond to similar challenges in different ways. The obvious conclusion is the process in question does not follow a clear-cut line of development. It is seductively easy to theorise in terms of phases that every society will have to pass sooner or later; it is much more difficult to substantiate this kind of theory. There is no reason to believe that all societies will end at the same place after having passed the same route. In fact, social development is remarkably analogous in this respect to the biological evolution: a wolf may be good, a crocodile, perhaps, even superb, in their own niches, but this does not mean they are steps to a human being. In a similar way, a community may discover its own niche and drag on without visible changes simply because no one seeks to oust it. Admittedly, social life is characterised by the scarcity, not to say – virtual absence of unoccupied niches. In this, it is different from natural life and its challenges prove more imperative.

If this general (evolutionist) approach is accepted, the viability (survivability) of societies appears in the following perspective. Roughly speaking, the evolutionist theory knows two adaptation strategies: either “narrow” specialisation (securing dominance in a specific niche), or development of a “universal” mechanism that would enable an organism to analyse the changing environment and facilitate the species’ expansion to other niches. The latter function is performed by the brain, which is of use, to be sure, in isolated niches, but becomes much more important with the development of technology. To pursue the metaphor, good clothes make all weathers good!

If we review the historic process from this evolutionist perspective, we shall come across a great number of stagnant societies that fail to generate their own, internal resources for development and may be viewed as analogues of vegetable or animal species that have got control over their own niches and exist in equilibrium with their environment, but are doomed to perish when the resources supplied by that environment are exhausted. And we shall find out only one type of social order that has proved to expand into all possible niches and shows no signs of stagnation, but is, on the contrary, characterised by sustainable development [10]. This society, usually referred to as modern, dates back, at least, to the Age of Discoveries.

Our principal argument here is as follows. Just like the development of the brain is the beginning of a process that eventually replaces somatic changes as a principal means of adaptation for a selected species of living beings by technological development, so the emergence of a social order that would enable societies to live and expand by adapting environment rather than by adapting to environment is a radical, absolutely radical, change that likewise terminates “natural selection” in the social sphere. Unlike earlier, “traditional” societies, “modern” societies respond to challenges not so much by reshaping themselves, as by reshaping their environment, i.e. in a way that is characteristic of human adaptation. But just like humans cannot help being affected by this and must, at least, learn to live with the kind of stress that goes with the lifestyle in question, so do the societies.

Modernity is not immune to criticism, and this type of criticism is an important part of the modern political discourse. The irony of this criticism is that when it comes to modernity traditionalists and postmodernists are sometimes extremely difficult to distinguish between (compare Konstantin Leontiev to Herbert Marcuse, for instance) [5]. The message of ecologists is that by destroying environment technologically the civilisation digs its own grave [9]. But is this not what man has been doing for millennia? Most deserts on earth owe their existence to human activities. Not only in modern times, man has always changed its environment, provoking new challenges. This is a law of technological adaptation. It would be irresponsible to ignore the problem, of course, but from Russian Slavophil philosophers of the nineteenth century and Oswald Spengler to Herbert Marcuse and the Roman Club theorists, all critics of modernity follow the same line of argument: the threatening trends are extended to infinity, while the principal feature of modern societies – their innovative potential that helps solve the problems – is ignored.

In the meantime, the very idea, the core of modernity is to solve problems generated by technological development by means of further technological development. Innovations are innovations precisely because they cannot be “calculated” in advance (cf. Karl Popper [8]). Incidentally, this is why criticism of modernity appears plausible (at least, many have found it convincing), but in real life, problems turn out to be solved: we witness industries to disappear and new industries to emerge.

The situation can only be explained if we admit that, starting from a certain minimal level of institutional complexity, societies are no longer destroyed by unanticipated challenges, but learn to respond to them adequately.

The question is what is the minimal level of institutional complexity or, to be more specific, what is the configuration of institutions that enables societies to give an innovative response to virtually any challenge? If this question can be answered, the classification of societies (civilisations) into those that are capable of sustainable development and those that are not is no longer a display of arrogance, of Euro- (or for that matter, some other) centrism, but an intelligent point of distinguishing between two types of social adaptation and survival. From this standpoint, stagnant societies that do not maintain a regular flow of innovations share the fate of living species adapted to a specific niche: their survival is a matter of luck, viz. whether this niche is sought by a better adapted rival or not.

The principal difference between natural and social history, however, lies in the fact that once a society capable of sustainable development has emerged, it cannot help upsetting the equilibrium of eventually all other societies – by its very existence, by the continuous flow of innovations that create new problems to be solved by further innovations, in short – by destroying other societies’ specific niches simply because the Earth is too small and no social niches are truly isolated.

Needless to say, the process is painful, for all other societies, for all their distinctive achievements, are faced with, in fact – are forced to face a hard, often uninspiring dilemma: either to lose their identity and modernise or to disappear. To “disappear” does not necessarily mean to literally “die out” (the “human matter” can be preserved at the expense of social structures), but extinction is not excluded and is sometimes quite probable – as a number of small, “too” traditional societies have all but learnt from their own experience.

To come back to the “minimal configuration” of social institutions that “starts up” modernity one has to revise the institutional developments of the areas where modernity originated at the time of its origins. What institutions were known to the countries in question, what was lacking and had to be created?

It is not difficult to discern in Northern Europe of the seventeenth century the unique simultaneous existence (in some cases, first appearance) of social institutions that are characteristic of modernity, but unknown to the traditional societies. These include (1) the parliament, (2) rational bureaucracy, (3) independent judiciary, (4) academic science, (5) financial institutions, (6) mass production, (7) mass media (book-printing) [1; 7].

On their own, these or similar institutions could exist and in fact existed earlier in other societies (parliaments, for example, date back to High Middle Ages, rational bureaucracy is a well-known Chinese phenomenon [see 2]), but did not produce similar consequences. Our principal hypothesis is that of critical importance was their simultaneous existence, i.e. their interaction, or rather self-support. This self-support is our next theme.

The “Backbone” of Modernity.Let us now pursue the metaphor and consider the system of social institutions as the social analogue of the brain or, to put it more adequately, as the society’s institutionalised mind.

Like everything else that exists in the world as a part of it, societies must interact with their environment; and like everything else that interact with the environment, they require certain functional organs. They need organs that could “see” and “apprise” the situation; let us call them “the eyes”. They need organs that could “interpret” the situation. They need a set of rules guiding, or rather triggering behaviour; let us call them “the instincts”. They need “effectors” that could change the environment or else move from the unfavourable environment to a favourable one. And they need resources of energy and, last but not least, a mechanism that would help them assess how (for what purposes and to what extent) these resources must/may be spent.   

Primitive societies (like lower animals) may manage with rigid behaviour traits and rigid “judgement” rules, but more sophisticated systems would require special organs and mechanisms that could adapt the “rules of behaviour” and “value systems” to the environment or – in still more “advanced” cases – to the desired environment [3].

Once developed, such mechanisms would essentially function like “metaprograms”, transcending the immediate task of “supporting life”. It is, therefore, obvious that the transition from the simplest – responding – mechanism to a mechanism supporting deliberate adaptation of the environment is a structural leap that involves development of “metaprograms”. In the case of the brain we think we understand how this shift to a purposeful active adaptation was achieved – by the development of new sections of the brain, viz. cortex (which is bigger in size than all its other sections taken together) – and know when it took place.

The leap thus implies the development of a new organ: such a change in behaviour patterns would be impossible unless supported instrumentally. There is no reason to believe a similar transition in social life can be achieved without an appropriate instrumental support: “metaprograms” must apparently be realised in the form of new, hitherto unknown institutions. And these new institutions would have to account for a considerable part of the society in question: a couple of clever heads would obviously not suffice.

If we now turn to modernity and summarise the changes that distinguish modern societies from their predecessors, we shall at once come across these “metainstitutions”, i. e. the institutions that fulfil the function of “metaprograms”: parliaments whose basic task is to set the “rules of the game” depending on the changing environment (situation); science that is supposed to generate innovations (including ideas of new “rules”); and economic institutions (the banking and exchange system) that regulate the resources on the basis of principles that go beyond the immediate needs. From this standpoint, profit is a metaprinciple because profit does not satisfy any “immediate needs”; once the profit mechanism is on, a totally different process begins. It is not surprising, therefore, that it is precisely this principle of profit that traditionalists renounce as the primary evil of modern times. And it is likewise no coincidence that the two other principal objects of traditionalist criticism happen to be representative democracy and science.

What is important here is the systemic aspect of modernity. If a society that seeks modernisation introduces – for whatever reason – the basic institutions of modernity only partially or formally (by this we mean that institutions may be established but the basic principles of their operation are rejected), the attempt at modernisation is doomed to fail [6, p. 4.].

For the principles of modernity are not human principles. They transcend human understanding and human interests – in so far as by “human understanding” and “human interests” we mean the understanding and the interests of an individual human being. For this reason, it is so easy to criticise them – and so unrewarding. For it is precisely because they are “superhuman”, because they activate mechanisms that transcend immediate human needs and, moreover, appear sometimes to violate certain basic rules worked out at the previous stages of development, they constitute a breakthrough to a new stage of development, viz. modernity.

But they form a system that must operate as a system, that is as a set of interacting and mutually supporting elements. It would be useless to try to introduce the profit mechanisms in a society that has not developed institutions capable of originating and applying innovations. If the principles of science are not recognised and supported by the appropriate institutions, the profit principle will produce nothing but usury. It would be likewise useless to introduce representative democracy if economic priorities cannot be assessed by the bodies that operate independently from the (presumably democratic) institutions of power. You will only get corruption.  

We may thus identify three basic “metainstitutions” of modernity, viz. parliaments, science and financial system, that are supported and served by the rational bureaucracy, independent judiciary and mass media. The functions of the latter three are as follows:

(1) Rational bureaucracy operates as an effector. With this, it differs from particularistic bureaucracy: unlike the latter, it has no interests of its own and simply does what it has to do; otherwise it would not be able to serve as an effector. The functional difference between rational and particularistic bureaucracy is that the latter complicates the system by providing an additional focus of somewhat unintelligent decision-making (for it is not easy to judge on the factors that define bureaucratic interests and the motives behind their decisions) which is essentially under no one’s control.

(2) The basic function of the independent judiciary is conflict resolution. Civil cases are in the long run more important socially than criminal cases. The courts’ primary task is not so much to support a proper behaviour, but to secure the proper functioning of the social system by resolving conflicts within it. The bulk of these conflicts refer to civil suits. When courts try more criminal cases than civil ones, something is wrong with the system; this indicates serious dysfunction. A criminal case manifests a conflict between a citizen and his/her society, not between two citizens. If such conflicts are many, the society is in peril.

Another important difference between the criminal and civil law lies in the fact that the former is about norms (as embodied in the criminal code) and deviations, whereas the latter is about justice (fairness?). One can, of course, speak of punishments as just or unjust, but in that case the criterion, and hence the agency, of justice is something beyond the society, something above it – a transcendent entity that judges on us and distributes prizes and punishments. Civil case, however, deals with justice within the society; and this justice is to be defined by the society itself, i.e. in fact by citizens, and not by some supersocial power. The obvious consequence is that criminal cases can hardly be tried independently of the state, for in actual life it is the state that plays the part of the transcendent judge, that, in particular, sets and maintains the norms. In civil cases, on the contrary, the state is generally neutral, for as a rule it has no interest and consequently needs to have no part in them. One may therefore conclude that the independence of the judiciary is directly proportional to the percentage of civil cases in the total number of cases tried in courts.

This conclusion is only strengthened if we consider a financial aspect of the matter. Courts try civil cases at the litigants’ expense, whereas criminal suits are carried on at public expense. The more civil cases courts judge on, the more independent financially they become. (It goes without saying that financial independence is an important aspect, if not the basis of independence in general).

(3) The mass media are basically an information network. Knowledge must be disseminated if social mind, and the institutions it is embodied in, are to function, but it is of vital importance how it is disseminated. In particular, it is important whether dissemination is effected through a centre that can monopolise, and hence control, certain kinds of information.

What is significant in this is the fact that media are foci that accumulate, sort out and disseminate information. Their very existence makes transfer of information from one citizen to another largely irrelevant: the job is to be done anyway. If the free transfer of information and absence of barriers or filters between the sources and the recipients is a democratic ideal, the more such foci are on the scene and the farther they reach, the better. Ideally, we need many long-reaching foci of information, for small centres are obviously not enough.

History saw dramatic changes in this respect. The invention of book-printing resulted in the appearance of many and generally long-reaching foci of information. The situation was doubtless due to the fact that printing-shops were relatively cheap. This plurality trend was reversed when radio and television were invented. Since radio and TV studios were expensive, their number was incomparable to that of printing-shops and publishing houses; the result was considerable restriction on the free flow of information. It is well known that radio helped establish and consolidate the totalitarian regimes of the 1930s. The Internet has reversed the trend again. Moreover, we are not simply back in the book-printing era as it existed before radio and television; it may be that we are about to enter a totally new era characterised by a potentially infinite number of information accumulating and disseminating centres.

Separation of the above institutions, both functional and institutional, is at least as important as separation of powers. The former must be regarded as a founding principle of the same rank. If the three functions of our metainstitutions, viz. the innovative, the distributive and legislative, are fused together in a single superinstitution, the society will suffer – basically for the same reasons why it suffers when the legislative, the executive and the judiciary are fused together, i.e. because of the overlapping of interests and “crossinfluence”: the powers have to be separated precisely in order to prevent secondary interests from influencing the decision-making where such influence is undesirable.

The above principle has a number of vital consequences. It determines in particular the inefficiency of economic monopolism that de facto fuses the innovative and the distributive functions. The impact of monopolisation is well known: innovations become to be suppressed. That means that “the market of innovations” must be institutionally separated from “the market of resources”.

The CPSU Central Committee is the classic example of a body that sought to combine the innovative and legislative functions (in fact, all the three major metafunctions, including the distributive). The result is well known: it has been called “stagnation”. And it is after all not that important whether it is the distributive function that absorbs the rule-setting function or those who set rules and monopolise distribution of resources. The choice is between corruption (in the former case) and stagnation (in the latter case). From this standpoint, our recent transition from subduing resources distribution to rigid rules of the game to subduing rules to distribution of resources is hardly inspiring: we had financial institutions that were totally dominated by the state apparatus, now we have the state apparatus that is totally dominated by financial institutions. Whether the society as a whole has gained anything from exchanging stagnation for corruption remains doubtful.

(A good example of what happens when the rules of the game are set by distributing institutions is provided by our recent pawn auctions. What is bad is not that banks see their interests satisfied – there is nothing wrong in satisfying bankers’ interests. Bad is the situation in which bankers themselves set the rules according to which their interests are going, in fact have, to be satisfied. This is obviously not in the public interest.)

Authoritative regimes generally tend to concentrate innovations (if these are allowed and even if they are proclaimed as the body social’s primary goal) and legislation in same hands. Hence, the principle of academic freedom as something that must be a point of concern not for academics alone, but for the society to which they belong in general. Any attempt to make science serve “ the public interests” is in fact, for all its enchantment, an attempt to fuse the innovative and the distributive functions – usually with the most unrewarding consequences for both science and economy – and hence for society in general.

An important aspect of this problem is the responsibility of scientists for the results of their research work [4]. If this is demanded and, moreover, institutionalised, the legislative and innovative functions become inseparable. Just as financial independence (freedom of enterprise?) is a guarantee against amalgamation of the function of innovation and resource distribution, academic freedom (freedom from responsibility for scientific results) is a guarantee against amalgamation of the innovative and the legislative functions.

What happens when the legislative and the economic (distributive) functions are combined together is well known from experience. What is required here is correct formulation of the principle. Combining the two functions leaves science alone vis-à-vis the united political/economic power and makes scientists – contrary to their intuitive unwillingness and their own aspirations – behave according to the maxim: if your society wants you to solve a problem, solve it. The result is that science ceases to generate innovations and simply lags behind pondering problems that are defined by someone else. It can no longer provide timely solutions for these problems, but is continually busy trying to catch up with the life that is far ahead. If there is anything that may be properly called “backwardness”, it is this. Gradually but steadily people grow accustomed to being always late in solving their problems – all despite the ostensibly reasonable official slogan of effective and useful science.

If science is generally regarded as a means to satisfy public needs, public opinion is likely to expect it to work miracles, not generate innovations. It thus ceases to be science and turns into a kind of magic – at least, in the public opinion. What happens to a miracle worker who fails to work the desired miracle is easy to imagine. What is important from the standpoint of this study is that this attitude destroys the science’s institutional structure: those able to fulfil this magic function are likely to get all the honours and, since no one is in actual life able to fulfil it (for magi do not exist, of course, and science is no magic), charlatans and scoundrels prosper at the expense of genuine and conscientious scientists. At least, they find themselves at the head of scientific institutions. In the long run everyone is disappointed: science yield neither miracles, nor innovations.

Modern Institutions and Modern Mind. As a form of conclusion we would like to consider the nature of the relation between the institutions in question. That the six basic elements of modernity, viz. representative democracy, academic science, financial system, rational bureaucracy, independent judiciary and free media, are in some way related to each other is a point of common knowledge. What usually escapes attention is the fact that this relation, though obvious to the democratic mind, is far less obvious to minds shaped in different ways, e.g. the authoritarian mind. In other words, if the relation exists (and we think we have made it clear that in our opinion it does), the knowledge of it is not a priori. It is no gift of “the democratic grace” – something like a natural reward of a “politically correct” thinking, no innate democratic idea. A modern mind usually possesses this knowledge, but, as we shall try to demonstrate, it owes it to experience, and there is therefore no reason to believe that this kind of knowledge preceded modernity and was moreover instrumental in creating it.

Let us consider, for instance, the relation of market economy to political democracy[1]. A modern mind easily recognises that the two are interrelated and it seldom hesitates to assert that there can be no true market without political democracy as there can be no true democracy without market economy. Two reasons are usually given to substantiate this assertion (leaving aside the purely empirical argument that democratic countries are also market economies).

One of the arguments is sociological in nature. It emphasises the structural interdependence of market institutions and institutions of political democracy. It is often argued that only market economy can insure citizens sufficient economic independence without which they would never be anything but the objects of political manipulation and would never become independent political agents. The argument proceeds from the assumption (generally speaking, a correct one) that only economically independent agents can be politically independent. On the other hand, it is widely believed that only democratic institutions can guarantee freedom of economic activity to masses of citizens, rather than to a limited class of economic elite.

Both assertions are, though correct, irrelevant. It is true that political independence is a sheer illusion if it is not based on economic independence. But this does not mean a free economic agent is necessarily a citizen. On the contrary, most economic agents that enjoy freedom of market are not individual citizens, they are corporations. If corporations are economically independent, they are likely to be politically independent, but a system of politically independent corporations is not what we call “democracy”. It is conceivable for a society to allow economic freedom and political influence that goes with it to corporations while denying them to individuals. Modernity takes it for granted that the agents that enjoy economic and political rights and freedoms (including freedom of the press and the right for legal protection) are individual human beings. But like everything that is said about human rights, this is simply an assumption and, frankly speaking, a surprising one. One may wonder, indeed, why the founding fathers of modernity never considered alternatives!

On the other hand, it is not exactly true that political democracy guarantees equal economic rights to all or, at least, to most citizens. Even if it is true, as, indeed, it seems to be, that there is no other way to secure economic freedom to the rank and file except through democratic institutions, it does not mean that these institutions actually fulfil the task. In fact, they do not. What they do (and one has to admit this is a job that is important enough) is to minimise the risks of economic inequalities, to prevent the resulting conflicts from destroying the society.

Another argument offered to prove that democracy and market always go together is psychological or, rather, socio-psychological. It is believed that the democratic mind is also a market-oriented mind and vice versa.

When combined together, the two arguments appear to amount to a plausible explanation of the interdependence between market and democracy. However, the explanation is not flawless because, though compatible, the arguments are logically independent. That means that the explanation is valid only if both conditions are fulfilled, i.e. if the democratic and market institutions cannot actually exist without each other’s support and people know about this and base their efforts on this knowledge.

However, it is not easy to explain how the two conditions happen to be simultaneously satisfied. The first, sociological, argument is a classic a posteriori argument. In other words, people may come to believe it after they have learnt it from experience. They cannot be expected to believe it from the very beginning.

The second argument seems to be an a priori argument, but is in fact not. Or, to be more precise, it operates like an a priori argument only within a particular social ontology. Modernity supports the appropriate social ontology, and a democratic mind readily infers democracy from market and market from democracy. But if we assume, and it is not easy to see how one can avoid assuming this, at least, when we refer to the dawn of modernity, that not every mind is ipso facto a democratic mind, the link between market and democracy is no longer self-evident. Is there any reason to believe that market skills always go with democratic beliefs or, at least, eventually produce them? Is a person of non-democratic convictions necessarily a bad businessman? On the other hand, does a democratically-minded person have to believe in the efficacy of market? Are there no critics of market that not only profess democratic beliefs, but base their criticism of market on them? Is there nothing to be said against market from the standpoint of pure democracy? What about economic inequality that no market has yet succeeded to overcome? Or is economic inequality irrelevant when it comes to political equality? Or is the latter irrelevant when it comes to democracy? Democracy can likewise be criticised from the standpoint of economic efficiency and, indeed, is often criticised.

We are in a vicious circle: in order to organise a society that would meet both conditions, i.e. be based on market economy and be democratically governed, people must understand that market economy and democracy always go together. But in order to understand this, they must either live for a while in a market-based democratic society and learn from experience that this is indeed so, or else be born in such a society and be brought up in that creed.

The same stands true for science and democracy. A dynamic science does indeed have some democratic features, but there is no reason to believe that scientific, less so educated, mind is necessarily a democratic mind or, for that matter, that an uneducated mind is necessarily an undemocratic mind. It would not be difficult to name notable critics of democracy of great intellect and knowledge (Heraclitus or Plato, for example). But even if we disregard these persons as sad exceptions, it cannot be denied that science, while requiring freedom, does not require equality. Whether we like it or not, science is elitist in nature. That equality and freedom are not easily married is true, but it is also true that democracy is not easily defined without reference to both (though, it seems, one can do without “fraternity”).

On the sociological level, therefore, we have no reason to assert that there exists a cause-and-effect relationship between the various elements of modernity, that market economy, for example, results in democracy or vice versa. What we can assert on the basis of experience is that market and democracy coexist, not that they generate each other. If they do it, they only do it through people who consciously work on it. The cause-and-effect relationship presupposes socio-psychological “mediation”: people must believe that democracy requires market and/or market requires democracy. If this belief is absent, the cause-and-effect relationship is doubtful. The belief is not absent, it may be argued. It is not in the modern market-based democratic society, because modern society goes to great lengths to bring its citizens up in this belief. But what about societies that have not been modernised? Would the explanation be of any avail in their cases?

This study seeks to substantiate the thesis that coexistence of market and democracy (as well as of all other basic elements of modernity) is due to mutual support, not to mutual generation. Market cannot regulate distribution of resources properly, unless it is supported by representative democracy, academic science etc. It thus either proves ineffective and is, consequently, discarded in favour of alternative economic mechanisms, or continues in some other capacity. In both cases it does not produce modernity.

The same stands true for democracy: unsupported by market economy and academic science, it breeds nothing but anarchy and is willy-nilly discarded for the sake of survival. Without democracy and market, science does not generate innovations or can find no use for them and remains a job for leisurely amateurs, i.e. a marginal activity. Unless supervised by democratic institutions, rational bureaucracy is corrupted and loses its definitive rational character, degenerating into particularistic bureaucracy etc. In other words, when isolated, the basic institutions of modernity either disappear or are transformed beyond recognition. This is why they must go together. This truth can be learnt, as any other truth can, and learning it facilitates modernisation. But there is no reason to believe that modernisation can be effected by introducing isolated institutions of modernity and then waiting for them to produce all other necessary institutions. It can hardly be effected even if all the basic institutions are reproduced, because, although vital, their self-support is by no mean spontaneous. It must be secured – ideologically, but mainly institutionally.