[PEN-L:4317] Re: Re: civil society

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Then there's socalled "civilization". Sometimes it is said to be arise coincident with the origin of the state, writing and antagonistic classes.

Charles Brown

>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx> 03/12/99 07:05PM >>>


Jim Devine wrote:

>
> I think it's okay to use the phrase "civil society." Marx used it (it's a
> translation of  "burgerlicte gesellschaft" of course he spelled it
> correctly). After all, and he was right once and awhile.
>
> But it's important to be extremely clear to be clear what we mean by it.
> "Civil society" ideas come from folks like John Locke, referring to the
> consensus in bourgeois society in favor of the property system.

When I used it in the title of an article some years ago I had in mind
the difference between tributary social orders, in which social relations
were visible and (as it were) willed and a capitalist order in which
social relations came into existence behind the backs of the actors.
But that does not at all conflict with Jim's definition. The consensus
in (say) European feudal society was as to the absolute power of
the past over the present -- the present merely having the task
of passing on the structure which it had inherited. In civil society
as I understood/understand it (i.e., capitalism) reality shifts to
an unpredictable future (as in the metaphor/reality of "investment.")

Carrol