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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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
