Jim Devine wrote,
>But there's a bigger meaning of "civil society": it often means society
>outside of the state. Within this realm, it's possible we could have a
>"proletarian (or oppositional) civil society." But for clarity, we have to
>use a term like counterhegemony (following Gramsci).
Henry Carter Adams ("The State and Industrial Action," 1887):
"It is futile to expect sound principles for the guidance of intricate
legislation so long as we over-estimate either public or private duties; the
true principle must recognize society as a unity, subject only to the laws
of its own development."
Adams' discussion is based on distinctions between public finance and
private finance. He uses "public duties" and "the state" interchangably and
"private duties" and "individual industrial activity". There is no
autonomous "third way" except as it expresses an organic unity of public and
private duties (or public and private finances).
Adams, by the way, gives a magnificent critique of the doctrine of laissez
faire, *from an individualist perspective*, showing that as a "scientific
principle" of classical political economy it was based on faulty premises
but that as a tempered "maxim of strong presumption" it is based on no
principles whatsoever.
"Much of the confusion that now surrounds the question of the appropriate
duties of government," Adams writes in 1887,". . . is due to the failure to
distinguish between laissez faire as a dogma and free competition as a
principle. The former, as we have seen is a rule or maxim intended for the
guidance of public administration; the latter is a convenient expression for
bringing to mind certain conditions of industrial society. . ."
regards,
Tom Walker
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
