File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-04-23.140, message 49


From: Michael Hoover <hoov-AT-freenet.tlh.fl.us>
Subject: Re: M-I: civil society
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 97 6:49:10 18000


> Could anyone enlighten me on the evolution of the term civil society? 
> Doug

I've arrived a bit later than intended to this thread because I lost
a post-in-progress last night when I was disconnected...and you
already had a number of responses by that time...so for what it's
worth (sans my pithy comments):

Locke: "Where-ever therefore any number of men are so united into
one society, as to quit every one his executive power of the law of
nature, and to resign it to the public, there and there only is a
political, or civil society." (*Second Treatise*)

Rousseau: "The first man, who after enclosing a piece of ground, took
it into his head to say, this is mine, and found people simple
enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society."
(*Discourse on Inequality*)

Hegel: "Civil Society - an association of members as self-subsistent
individuals in a universality which, because of their self-
subsistence, is only abstract." (*Philosophy of Right*)

Marx & Engels: "Civil society comprises the entire material interaction
among individuals at a particular stage of the productive forces.  It
comprises the entire commercial and industrial life of a stage and
hence transcends the state and even the nation even though that life,
on the other hand, is manifested in foreign affairs as nationality and
organized within a state.  The term 'civil society' emerged in the
eighteen century when property relations had already evolved from the
community of antiquity and medieval times.  Civil society as such
only develops with the bourgeoisie.  The social organization, however,
which evolves directly from production and commerce and in all ages
forms the basis of the state and the rest of the idealistic super-
structure, has always been designated by the same name." (*The German
Ideology*)

Gramsci: "What we can do for the moment, is to fix two major
superstructural 'levels': the one that can be called 'civil society,'
that is, the ensemble of organisms commmonly called 'private,' and
that of 'political society' or 'the state.'  These two levels
corrspond on the one hand to the function of 'hegemony,' which the
dominant group exercises throughout society and on the other hand
to that of 'direct domination' or command that is exercised through
the State and juridical government." (*Prison Notbooks*)

Andrew Heywood recently defined civil society as "A realm of
autonomous association and groups, formed by private citizens
and employing independence from the government; includes 
businesses, clubs, families, and so on.  A 'private' sphere of 
life in contrast to the 'public' sphere of government and the
state." (*Political Ideologies*)

Martin Carnoy's *The State and Political Theory* includes some
useful discussion on civil society.

Michael


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