THESIS

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL
THEORY OF CIVIL SOCIETY

presented by

THOMAS W. DONOVAN III

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL
THEORY OF CIVIL SOCIETY

by

Thomas W. Donovan III

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Philosophy
1 995

ABSTRACT

THE PHILOSOPHICAL
THEORY OF CIVIL SOCIETY

BY

Thomas W. Donovan III

This thesis argues that with the concept of civil
society we can conceive of a realm that offers the greatest
potential for expanding democracy in Western capitalist
democratic regimes in a way that is consistent with the
ideals of modernity. The study begins by briefly tracing the
history of the public sphere. This gives us a standard from
which to judge our contemporary society. Using Gramsci's
notion of hegemony and Habermas's system theory a theoretical
model of civil society is constructed that will be adequate
for today's world.

With this modern theoretical model of civil society this
study examines the role that social movements can play in
transforming society. This study concludes with a close look
at the welfare state and tests our theory of civil society in

light of the dilemmas that arise from the welfare state.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction...........................................1
Section 1: THE PUBLIC SPHERE...........................5
Section 2 : A THEORETICAL MODEL OF CIVIL SOCIETY. . . . . . . 13
Section 3: POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
Section 4: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS...........................29
Section 5: THE WELFARE STATE..........................36

Bibliography..........................................47

I ITIODUCT I OK

It can be argued that the idea of the concept of
civil society as a foundation for reconstructing
radical left political theory goes back to Gramsci's Prison
Notebooks.1 The concept was shown to have critical
implications for Soviet type ( i.e. Poland, Yugoslavia,
Czechoslovakia, and Hungary) societies. It has also been used
in analyzing the democratic potential of bureaucratic
authoritarian regimes in Latin.America that suppressed civil
society. Yet it seems questionable to assert that civil
society could become a key concept of ”a new critical theory
of all contemporary industrial societies, redeeming important
elements of the heritage of both radical democracy and
socialism.”2

In fact, one could argue that civil society merely
indicates what the West has already achieved, and thus it may
not have any critical potential for analyzing the
dysfunctions and injustices of our type of society. One could
also argue that the concept of civil society is

anachronistic. The concept seems to belong to early modern
1 See Andrew Arato. “Civil Society, History and Socialism: Reply to John Keane,” in Pra>ds
M19951 (April and July 1989) 133. Also see, Richard R. Weiner, “Retrieving Civil Society in a
Postmodern Epoch.“ in The SociaL Science Jourpgl (Vol. 26. Number 3, 1991)
Zluamrtaa

1

2

forms of political philosophy and may be irrelevant given
today's complex societies. Against these views, we will see
that with the concept of civil society we can conceive of a
realm that offers the greatest potential for expanding
democracy in Western capitalist democratic regimes in a way
that is consistent with the ideals of modernity.

At first glance one could confuse this project with
numerous others that cry "society against the state. " We
often hear of citizen initiatives, associations, and
movements that attempt to increasingly orient themselves
toward the defense and expansion of a variously described
societal realm, the forms and projects of which are clearly
distinguished from statism. This cry of "society against the
state" tends to go in one of two directions.30ne is by those
who defend an idealized premodern network of communities,
traditional solidarities, and collectives against modernity
itself. Second, there are various neoconservative,
neoliberal, and libertarian initiatives that identify
"society" with the market economy. Both of these trends are
regressive versions of antistatism. The first wishes to
retreat behind the modern state, thus eliminating an
essential precondition of modernity itself; the second wishes
to repeat the already failed experiment with the fully self-
regulated market economy of classical capitalism. Unlike

these approaches we will argue for a third way. This third

 

3 Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato. Civil Sociehrand Politicflhegm see preface.

3

way for retrieving the category of civil society involves the
attempt to construct a program.that can represent the values
and interests of social autonomy against both the modern
state and the capitalist economy, without falling into a new
traditionalism.

As the history of the West has taught us, the capitalist
market economy can represent as great a danger to social
solidarity, social justice, and even autonomy as does the
administrative power of the modern state. Therefore we*will
clearly differentiate civil society from the economy (as well
as the state). Civil society should be seen as a realm
between the state and economy that is composed.of the
intimate sphere, associations, different forms of public
communication, and social movements.4 This model is meant to
invoke the notion of the democratization of civil society,
not the revival of civil society. Again, this defense and
democratization of civil society demands a modern conception
of civil society that is capable of preserving its autonomy
and forms of solidarity against the pressures of the modern
economy as well as of the state.

The body of this paper is divided into five sections. In
the first section we will look at Habermas's important work,
The Structural Transformation of the Public 8 here, briefly
to trace the historical development and trajectory of the

public realm.as it tried to keep its independence from.both

 

4ldex

4

the state and market economy. we will detail the ways the
public sphere has declined. In section two we will draw from
Gramsci's notion of hegemony and.Habermas's system/lifeworld
distinction to construct a theoretical model of civil society
that is consistent with democratic and.modern ideals. In this
section.we will also see how this model does not posit the
exclusion of women from civil society as traditional theories
of civil society do. In fact, our model demands a
posttraditional stance in terms of gender issues. In section
three we will take a second look at Habermas’s analysis of
the decline of the public sphere to focus on how our model of
civil society offers normative and political perspectives
that make it possible to see progressive possibilities
despite the decline of the public sphere. The fourth section
will show how some contemporary social movements fit into
this concept of civil society and how some social movements
can offer the greatest hope for transforming Western
capitalist democracies. Section five, the last section, will
show how this concept of civil society can help us think
beyond the dilemmas presented by the welfare state. It will
show how a conception of civil society that is differentiated
from the state and the economy offers a progressive answer to
the challenges posed both by the neoconservative critics of

the welfare state and its liberal defenders.

Section 1: THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Habermas was and is attracted to the notion of the public
sphere because of its potential as a foundation for a
critique of society based on democratic principles. The
public sphere is a realm in which individuals gather to
participate in open discussions. Potentially everyone has
access to it; no one enters into discourse in the public
sphere with an advantage over another. These generic
qualities of the public sphere are of course subject to
qualification based both on historical context and the topics
that are admitted for discussion. The bourgeois public sphere
in its classical form (drawn mainly from English society),
which is the central focus of The Structural Transformation
93 the Public Sphere, originated in the private realm; it was
constituted by private citizens who deliberated on issues of
public concern. The literary public sphere, which Habermas
considers a prefiguration of a political public sphere
oriented towards matters of state policy, dealt with issues
of cultural, rather than governmental concerns.5 The
principles of equality and accessibility were its
indispensable ingredients. In contrast to institutions that
are controlled from without or determined by power relations,
the public sphere promised democratic control and

participation.
5 Jurgen Habermas. The Stggctural Transformation gt the Pugl'g Sphere, see section two.

 

6

Habermas recognizes that the liberal phase of the
bourgeois public sphere was not entirely free of
contradictions. The great mass of workers, women, and
peasants were<exc1uded fromumembership and.private interests
often supervened in what was ostensibly a rational
articulation of the public interest. He nonetheless
appreciates the principle of democratic self-determination
and critical accountability that it embodied.

With the development of modern capitalism, however, the
conditions that nurtured the bourgeois public sphere, namely
homogeneous class interests and a relatively high level of
education and material affluence, disappeared. So the public
sphere, at least its bourgeois prototype, began to decline
during the course of the past century. The collapse occurred
because of the intervention of the state into private affairs
and the penetration of society into the state. Since the
rise of the public sphere depended on a clear separation
between the private realm.and public power, their mutual
intervention inevitably destroyed it. The role that the
public sphere had played in the intellectual life of society
‘was then assumed by other institutions that reproduced the
image of a public sphere in a distorted guise. The
intensification of class conflict in the nineteenth century
and the accompanying expansion of the press beyond its
original bourgeois base were accompanied by both a decline in

disinterested discussion and a rise in propaganda wars

7

between competing private interests. The dissolution of
public life into naked power struggles between self-
interested.economic classes foreshadowed the absorption of
the market into the protective orbit of the‘welfare state in
the twentieth century. This 'refeudalization of the public
sphere" stemmed from the need of the state to:make
controversial decisions vital to the management of a class-
based economy without fear of public reprisal and to plan
policy without regard to public demands for accountability.
But this required.depoliticizing the public sphere and making
it malleable to the state's designs. This was accomplished
by artificially orchestrating public opinion so as to promote
the illusion of a profusion of competing interests. The
assumption that such interests are rationally irreducible
indirectly justifies the right of the state to intervene in
the role of arbitrator. It also contributes to the further
dissemination of "technocratic consciousness," for, if
economic interests cannot be decided rationally, than public
policy planning geared toward.the technological maintenance
of steady economic growth.must be directed from.above by
trained.bureaucratic elites.

Since our purpose in analyzing the decline of the public
sphere is to see if it can be revived and.democratized it
may be helpful to view the decline from six different though

related theses.6 The first thesis is that the modern state

 

6 Cohen and Arato summarize Habermas’s multidimensional synthesis. see 242-246.

8

intervenes in the liberal capitalist economy. The self-
regulating market and oligopolistic competition create
imbalances that the state seeks to correct. This
intervention occurs at the cost of the economies liberal
character, but it protects the capitalist structure that is
endangered by crisis tendencies and by unhelpful self-
regulation. One way the state corrects the imbalances is
through welfare-state expenditures.7

The second thesis is that there arises the assumption of
public powers by private associations. Habermas argues that
in processes of oligopolistic competition, private
organizations are capable of, in effect, forming public
economic policy. The state itself increasingly uses private
legal contractual devices to regulate its relations with its
social partners. This was not the case in liberal
capitalism.8

Thirdly is the assumption of public powers by private
associations that leads to the emergence of corporatist
processes of negotiation, bargaining, and.oompromise that are
not open to public processes of scrutiny and end up reducing
parliamentary discussion and debate to merely a process of
legitimating decisions already arrived at under secret.
Representatives mobilize a plebiscitary opinion from outside

parliament and no longer try to truly debate and convince one

 

7 it is worth noting that Habermas (and Claus Oils and James O'Connor) Stressed the inevitable
dysfunctions and Iegitimation problems well before the emergence of neoconservatism.

8 See Stmtural Tramstgrmatign chapter 16.

9

anotheru9 One thing this lack of political opposition does is
reduce the public controls upon the administration, which in
turn strengthens authoritarian power without authoritarian
means.

The fourth thesis is the rise of propaganda in
contemporary political discourse.10 The forms of commercial
advertisements that become dominant as price competition
ceases to dictate oligopolistic groupings in their fight for
market shares allow for our type of modern political
manipulation. This manipulation comes in the form.of
propaganda campaigns that advertise and sell political
leaders, parties and policies. For this type of propaganda
to work there must already exist mobilizable audiences that
are passive and uncritical. This advertising addresses people
in their private capacities which helps break down the
intimate sphere. Although some kind of political public
sphere is reconstructed.during electoral campaigns, parties
still prefer to target individuals who are not members of
associations or higher status groups, and who have no access
to‘what are depicted here as residual forms of a reasoning
public. The voters targeted are done so by appealing to
consumerist behavior not through.enlightenment. The success
of this approach not only entails that those who organize
elections understand that there has been a loss of a genuine

political public sphere, but they must also consciously help
SHUdAeManL
10|bid.

10

to assure that a genuine political public sphere has
disappeared.

The fifth important thesis is the decline of the
intimate sphere of the family.H-There is a destruction of the
private shell of bourgeois property around intimacy, caused
by the loss of the family's economic functions and the growth
of client relations to the state in its capacity of providing
social insurance. The family, and especially the father, lose
the authority they once possessed due to the reduction of the
family's economic functions; and.with the growth of the
states ability to provide social insurance the loss of
repressive features and defensive ones increases. The
intimate sphere becomes subsumed because new forms of even
more intensive intimacy are hopelessly defensive; private
life becomes more and.more open to the gaze of outsiders.

The sixth and last major thesis is the decline of the
literary public sphere and the rise of mass culture.12 The
literary public sphere grows into a sphere of consumption and
manipulated leisure. This growth is tied in with the decline
of family-based institutions and to the industrial-commercial
transformation of the media communication. Although the
intimate sphere of the family is not strictly part of the
public Sphere it is a "source of impulses and energies for

that.more public arena."313 .Although the eighteenth-century

 

11 lbid, see chapter 17.
12 lbid, see section Vl.
13 Terry Eagleton, The Function of Criticism, 115.

11

public sphere officially excluded the intimate realm, the
intimate realm did help generate forms of subjectivity which
were "publicly oriented" and so were incorporated into the
public realm. The literary public sphere was a "vital nexus
or mediation between the now privatized nuclear family and
the political public sphere; it provided the symbolic forms
for the negotiation of new modes of subjectivity, which could
then be transmitted into the public domain. "14 The literary
public sphere had a privileged place between an autonomous
subject and the institutional life of political society.

This separation of the family and the political society is
important. It allows for the possibility of mediation between
them through culture, which then generates new forms of
subjectivity. But with the decline of the literary public
sphere and the rise of mass culture "[a] market is no longer
the precondition of autonomous art; marketability becomes a
principle of the industrial production of art."15The so called
"democratization" of culture is a pseudo-democratization, for
what is democratized turns out to no longer be culture.

The rise of mass culture brings with it a loss of a
critical character. A passive form of participation arises
with this new media. Art and culture split the classical
literary public sphere into a place of reasoning with experts
who are not engaged with the public and a mass of just public

consumers. So the private foundation of autonomy is abolished
14 lbid, 116.
15 Cohenand Arato, 244.

12

without a new public one arising.

‘What Habermas has shown.on all these levels of analysis
is not only that there has been a deformation and
deterioration of the principle of free public communication,
but he has also demonstrated that there has been a
destruction of the model of differentiation between civil
society and state through many different levels. If the
deformation of institutions of mediation itself promotes
dedifferentiation, it can also be argued that the tendencies
toward dedifferentiation of state and society have removed
the social space in which the liberal public sphere could
function. In 1962, at the time of writing The Structural
Transformation o§_§he Public Sphere, Habermas was interested
in the decline and revival of the public sphere, which he
still imagined to be possible without a model that
differentiated between state and civil society. Yet today it
seems a reconstructed model is not possible or desirable
without differentiating between these two spheres (and also
differentiating both from the economy).

The crisis of the public sphere, of course, brings with
it a threat to democracy. Calls for democracy and freedom
cannot be raised as long as there is no systematic way to
consult our neighbor. Democracy requires a vital and well-
informed public, eager to participate in debates and
struggles concerning political issues of common interest. In

a privatized society, however, individuals withdraw from the

13

public sphere and content themselves with consumption,
private family lives, and individual pursuits and pleasure.
In fact, the crisis of the public sphere is arguably
much more intense than it was in 1962, when Habermas
published The Stggctural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
Transnational entertainment and information.conglomerates
have streamlined cultural production to an extent far beyond
that analyzed.by Habermas. The new configuration of
capitalism.combines new technologies with neocapitalist forms
of economic organization. Centralized corporate control
gives these corporations enormous power to decide what people

‘will read, see, and experience.16

Section 2: A THEORETICAL MODEL OF CIVIL SOCIET!

The Habermas of 1962 tended to View the very forms of mass
culture as regressive, and exemplifying commodification,
reification, and ideological manipulation. {Commodity
culture, from this viewpoint, follows conventional formulas
and standardized forms to attract the maximum audience. It
serves as a vehicle of ideological domination that reproduces
the ideas and ways of life in the established order, but it
has neither critical potential nor any progressive political
uses. Against this "one-dimensional" approach I will take a
more multi-dimensional approach, discussing both the

regressive and progressive potentials of culture and the

 

16 Douglas Kellner, 13.

14

public sphere.

Rather than seeing Western capitalist democracies as
having a monolithic structure absolutely controlled by
corporate capitalism, I shall present them.as having a
contested terrain containing conflicting political groups and
agendas. Contrary to those‘who see the logic of capital as
totally dominating and administering contemporary capitalist
societies, I contend that Western capitalist democracies are
highly conflictual and torn by antagonisms and
struggles.

To argue this I will use Gramsci‘s notion of hegemony.f7
Gramsci distinguished between "force” and "consent" in
analyzing power relations.18 Whereas institutions such as the
police and military use force to:maintain social control,
ideology gains consent without using force. Hegemonic
ideology attempts to legitimate the existing society, its
institutions, and its ways of life. Hegemonic ideology
attempts to translate into everyday consciousness the
views of the dominant groups.

The hegemony model of culture reveals dominant
ideological formations and discourses as a shifting terrain
of consensus, struggle, and compromise, rather than as an
instrument of a.monolithic, unidimensional ideology that is
forced on the underlying population from above by a unified

rulinggclass. According to this model, different classes,
17 See Gramsci, 210-219.
18 See Keiner, 17-20.

15

sectors of capital, and social groups compete for social
dominance and attempt to impose their visions, interests, and
agendas on society as a whole. Hegemony is thus a shifting,
complex, and open phenomenon, always subject to contestation
and upheaval. Ruling groups attempt to integrate subordinate
classes into the established.order and dominant ideologies
through a process of ideological manipulation,
indoctrination, and control. But ideological hegemony is
never fully obtained; and attempts to control subordinate
groups sometimes fail. Many individuals do not accept
hegemonic ideology and actively resist it. Hegemony theories
posit an active populace that can always resist domination
and thus point to the perpetual possibility of change and
upheaval. In Gramsci's view, hegemony is never established
once and for all but is always subject to negotiation and
contestation. He pictures society as a terrain of contesting
groups and forces in which the ruling groups are trying to
smooth out class contradictions and incorporate potentially
oppositional groups and forces.

This model allows us to acknowledge not only the
capitalist side, but also the democratic side of contemporary
Western societies. While, of course, full-fledged democracy
does not really exist in any country, there does tend to be
conflicts between capitalism and democracy throughout.

By looking at western capitalist democracies as having

terrain that is conflictual and contested we are in a

16

position to connect social theory with issues of political
strategy and social transformation that does not rely on the
complete collapse of capitalism. But in order to connect the
concept of civil societwaith our hegemony model we need to
show how civil society can be clearly differentiated from the
state and economy.19 Habermas's distinction between system and
lifeworld.can inform.our Gramscian framework.

Habermas argues that there are two subsystems that are
differentiated both from each other and from.the lifeworld..20
One subsystem is the media of money that integrates the
economy. The other is the media of power that integrates the
state. They involve fundamentally different structures. Both
are differentiated from the lifeworld.

The concept of the lifeworld, socially integrated
through interpretations of a normatively secured or
communicatively created consensus, can be seen to occupy a
theoretical space similar to that of civil society in our
model. The lifeworld, as Habermas advances it, has two
distinct levels. On the one hand, the lifeworld refers to
the reservoir of implicitly known traditions, the background
assumptions that are embedded in language and culture and
drawn upon by individuals in everyday life. Individuals can
neither step out of their lifeworld nor bring it into

question as a whole. But another part of the lifeworld

19 Cohen and Arato argue for a threepart model using Habermas's system theory in chapter 9 01
Civil Society and Political Thegry. Gramsci also has a thme-part model, but his conception oi civil
society posits a strategically oriented civil society not one grounded in communication.

20 Cohen and Arato, 426.

17

involves a range of institutions that cannot be equated with
the cultural background knowledge or with the steering
mechanisms that coordinate action in the economy and state.
This institutional component of the lifeworld, that includes
institutions and associational forms that require
communicative interaction for their reproduction and that
rely primarily on processes of social integration for
coordinating action within their boundaries, is where we can
link the lifeworld with the concept of civil society.

A.modernized, rationalized lifeworld involves a
communicative opening-up of the sacred core of traditions,
norms, and authority to processes of questioning and the
replacement of a conventionally based normative consensus by
one that is "comunicatively" grounded.21 The concept of
communicative action is thus central to that of the
rationalization of the lifeworld and to our concept of a
posttraditional civil society. Communicative action involves
a linguistically mediated, intersubjective process through
which actors establish their interpersonal relations,
question and reinterpret norms, and.coordinate their
interaction by negotiating definitions of the situation and
coming to an agreement. In terms of the concept of civil
society this opens up new possibilities for solidarity that
need not be based on traditional forms.

While a civil society that is not free from the medias

 

21flfl1435

18

of money and power may create a set of social benefits and
securities, these will occur only at the cost of creating a
new range of dependencies and destroying both existing
solidarities and the actors' capacities for self-help and for
communicatively resolving problems. For example, the
administrative handling of care for the aged, of
interfamilial relations, and.of conflicts around schooling
involves processes of bureaucratization and individualization
that define the client as a strategic actor with specific
private interests that can be dealt with on a one-to-one
basis. But this involves a violent and painful abstraction of
individuals from.an existing social situation and.damages
their self-esteem and.damages the interpersonal relations
that make up the relevant institution.22

From this we can see why it is important to stress the
democratization of civil society and not just merely its
revival. We must reject traditional conceptions of civil
society. By embracing the democratization of civil society we
are requiring differentiation rather than unification. This
requires the creation of institutions capable of fully
realizing the potentials of the communicative reproduction of
a.modern lifeworld, In particular, the development of
postconventional structures of culture would.allow the
projection of interconnected institutions of intimacy and

publicity, whichwwould.replace unexamined traditional

 

22 lbid. 459.

19

relations of domination with unconstrained forms of
solidarity produced and reproduced through free, voluntary
interaction.

Institutions whose raison d'étre is normative
integration and open-ended communication seem to be powerless
in face of state power and economic production. But civil
society is not everything outside the administrative state
and economic processes. There are also political and economic
societies that generally arise from.aivil society.23 But
unlike civil society, those involved in political and
economic society are directly involved with state power and
economic production, which they seek to control and.manage.
They cannot afford to subordinate strategic and instrumental
criteria to the patterns of open-ended communication
characteristic of civil society.

Since the political role of civil society on this model
is not directly related to the conquest of power the best it
can offer is influence through its democratic associations
and unconstrained discussion in the cultural public sphere.
This makes for an inefficient political role. This is why a
mediating role of political society between civil society and
state and a mediating role of economic society between civil
society and economy is indispensable. And since democracy is
our guiding principle political and economic society must be

rooted in civil society.

23 See Cohen and Arato pages 66-82 for different conceptions of the relationship between civil
amddeomsommy

 

20

By making an analytical distinction between civil and
political society we can avoid the risk of an overpoliticized
civil society while still recognizing that it has public and
associational components, as well as individual, private
ones. We can also continue to stress the priority of
nonstrategic domains of communication.

A democratic civil society, with its model of
differentiation, is one of "decolonizing" the lifeworld. This
model of civil society is only compatible with institutions
that stress democratic communication in a multiplicity of
publics and defends the conditions of individual autonomy by
liberating the intimate sphere from all traditional as well
as modern forms of inequality and unfreedom.

It is very important to stress this point. For as Carole
Pateman has shown, most descriptions and analyses of modern
civil society, even those thought of as a sphere of complex
freedom and equality, remain problematic.24 Since, in fact,
modern civil societies both past and present tend to be male—
dominated. This domination extends from discrepancies and
explicit biases within civil law and social policy
arrangements, through discrimination against women within the
sphere of commodity production and exchange, to the
compulsive prejudice that women are naturally fit for the
(unpaid) household tasks. Pateman points out that the early

modern discussion of civil society and the state always

 

24 See introduction in Keane.

21

supposed the exclusion of women from civil society and their
confinement to the privacy of the household. Women and the
domestic sphere are viewed as inferior to the male-dominated
”public” world of civil society and its culture, property,
social power, reason, and freedom. In short, civil society is
established after the image of the civilized male individual;
it rests on a foundation of excluded women, who are expected
to live under conditions of household despotism.

Because I include the family within civil society, at
first glance, it may seem that our theory is also susceptible
to this criticism. But I contend that keeping the family
within civil society is the only way to challenge the gender
subtext of roles like worker and childrearer. We can
challenge the gender subtext of roles while still arguing
that there is a fundamental difference between social
relations, and institutions in which the weight of
coordination must be communicative and those that can be
system steered without distortion, such as markets or
bureaucracies. Those that are system-steered do not create
meanings, norms, and identities that the communicative realm
does. So we do not want to think of the family as an economic
system25 (or for that matter an administrative bureaucracy
either). By viewing the family within the lifeworld we can
challenge the meanings, norms, and identities that are

constitutive of gender inequality. The system/lifeworld

 

25 See Cohen and Arato ch. 10.

22

distinction allows us to challenge the gender subtext of
roles. In contrast to a traditional conception of civil
society this model would argue for degendering the roles of
childrearing, nurturing, and homemaker along with a fight
against the gendered division of labor in the workplace.
Wages for housework and.child.care would only reinforce its
gendered character and lock women even.more strongly into
low-paid service jobs. The approach we suggest involves a
challenge to the patriarchal norms that define families and
attach genders to household and.other roles. By articulating
and.challenging the ways in which the modern capitalist
economy and the modern nuclear family intersect (through
gendered roles) presupposes their differentiation.

It should.be noted that the abstract categories of
system and lifeworld indicate only where the*weight of
coordination lies in a given institutional framework.
Cultural, social, and personality-reproducing institutions
have their center of gravity in communicative forms of action
coordination. Nevertheless, it becomes possible to locate
strategic dimensions as well as forms of administration and
monetarization in lifeworld institutions. This does not
necessarily lead to pathological consequences, as long as
they remain subordinated to communicative coordination and as
long as they are not allowed to develop their own logics.
This framework allows us to speak of decolonization on the

basis of the immanent possibilities within such lifeworld

23

institutions.26

The point is, that with this model, we have a way to
mediate between the different spheres as long as we do not
violate the logic of each sphere. Political and economic
institutions can mediate between civil society and the state
and economy. SO‘WB can also insist on the possibility of
democratizing political and economic institutions. Here, the
center of gravity of the coordinating mechanism is and must
be on the level of steering performance through the media of
money or power, that is, through system rationality. But that
does not preclude the possibility of introducing
institutionalized norms of communicative action into state or
economic institutions. All types of action can and do occur
in societal institutions. Even the market economy cannot be
understood exclusively in terms of instrumental or strategic
calculations. The mere existence of parliaments and forms of
workshop self-management, codetermination, and.oollective
bargaining indicates that publics can be constructed even
within institutions that are primarily system-steered. These
would and in some cases do constitute receptors of societal

influence within the "belly of the whale."27

Section 3: POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES
With our concept of civil society now informed by Habermas's

system/lifeworld distinction and.Gramsci's notion of hegemony
26 lbid, 478.
27 lbid, 480.

24

we are in a better position to view the decline of the public
sphere, that we dealt with in section one, from.a more
dualistic perspective. We will see that the contemporary
institutional developments of the public sphere constitute
both a positive and negative side. The positive side is that
there are aspects of contemporary institutions that can
contribute to the autonomy and further rationalization of
civil society. The negative side, which Habermas has
highlighted, is the reified structures that promote
colonization.

The first thesis was that the state intervenes in the
capitalist economy. We have seen that state intervention is
not necessarily destructive unless it goes so far as to
disrupt the steering media the economy must function through.
In fact, state intervention is necessary. It protects the
capitalist structure which is riddled with crisis tendencies.
The state also is necessary to correct imbalances created by
the self-regulating market and by oligopolistic competition.
The issue is not that the economy needs to be freed from the
state, but that the economy needs to be monitored from the
vantage point of civil society. Intervention in the economy
can open up egalitarian and democratic possibilities for all
of society.

The second thesis concerned the assumption of public
powers by private associations. Though it is true that this

has allowed private organizations to dictate public economic

25

policy this is not the whole story.

The hostility of the modern state and economy to public
associations could not completely block their reemergence and
modernization. The bureaucratization of associations and the
emergence of corporatist forms of interest representation and
aggregation cannot be considered the only tendency in
contemporary associational life. There is also the existence
of an immense number of voluntary associations in all
capitalist democracies. Also, there has been the emergence of
new ones in the context of corporatist bargaining, and they
have played a role in citizen initiatives and social
movements. The resilience of associations and the periodic
revival of their dynamism can be explained through the
modernization of the lifeworld.28The problem is that there has
not been a sufficient modernization of the lifeworld, and
associations have not been publicly or democratically
oriented.

The third thesis was that private associations lead to
the emergence of corporatist processes of negotiation,
bargaining, and compromise that are not open to public
processes of scrutiny. This ends up reducing parliamentary
discussion and debate to merely a process of legitimating
decisions arrived at under secret. This, of course, is
crushing to democracy. Democratic legitimacy and

representation imply the free discussion of all interests

 

Zinmi461

26

within institutionalized public spheres and also requires
emphasizing the primacy of the lifeworld with respect to the
two subsystems. So when the centralized public sphere is no
longer one of genuine participation a wide range of interests
and issues are screened out from general discussion.

As true an image as this seems to be it has not become
completely totalizing. We can also see that when parliaments
become merely a show of decision making, and become
smokescreens for decisions made outside all public
discussion, there tends to arise repoliticization and
republicization of spheres outside the political system.
There also arises the spread of dysfunctional forms of apathy
with respect to politics.29 If hegemonic ideology was complete
the elites would not have to propagate the official
conception of the classical theory of democracy or continue
to structure important parts of the political process
accordingly. Large structural shifts such as the welfare
state seem to respond to many grass-root initiatives.

Granted the central political public sphere, constituted by
parliaments and the major media remains rather closed and
inaccessible, nonetheless a plurality of alternative publics,
differentiated but interrelated, time and again revives the
processes and the quality of political communication. With
the emergence of new type of political organizations, even

the public discussion in parliaments and party conventions

 

29 Ibid, 459.

27

tends to be affected. So though we see the strong tendencies
towards the drying up of political public life, we should
also acknowledge a trend, albeit weak, of redemocratization,
based on the new cultural potentials of the lifeworld.

The fourth thesis stresses the place that propaganda has
taken in contemporary political discourse. We live in an age
of an uncritical mass media and a time when elites use
commercial advertisements to advertise and sell political
leaders, parties, and policies. The success this advertising
has by addressing people in their private capacities help
assure that a genuine political public sphere has all but
disappeared. we see it partly reconstructed during electoral
campaigns although it is weak.

These fleeting moments of reconstruction show us that
there are opportunities for longer term and more genuine
types of political organization. Yet this seems very
limiting as long as the mass media is so easilysubject to
corporatist manipulation. With our model of civil society we
can challenge the control of the media by the logic of money
and power and.push for a genuine public sphere.

The fifth thesis highlighted the decline of the intimate
sphere of the family. This thesis claims that the assumption
of socialization by the schools and the mass media and the
loss of the property base of the middle-class patriarchal
family entails, along with the abolition of the father's

authority, the end of ego autonomy. From the standpoint of

28

the system/lifeworld distinction, we can reject this
totalizing'picture.

The freeing of the family from many economic functions
and the diversification of the agencies of socialization
create a potential for egalitarian interfamilial relations
and liberalized.socialization processes.30 The rationality
potential of communicative interaction in this sphere can and
should be released.

The sixth thesis of the decline of the literary public
sphere and the rise of mass culture also is ambivalent in
light of our systems/lifeworld model. There is little reason
to deny that to a large extent there has been a
commodification of culture and a manipulation of leisure. The
culture industry has led to a distortion of communication.
Yet we must also acknowledge that there are still generalized
forms of communication that can and have expanded and created
new publics. From subcultures to great educational
institutions, from political to scientific publics, from
social movements to:microinstitutions, the spaces for
consequential, critical communication have immensely expanded
along side with the regressive growth of the commercialized
and manipulated.frameworks of public relations, advertising,
and industrial culture. The public sphere and culture have
been penetrated through.money and power, but there has also

been a renewal of a.more universal, inclusive, and

 

33k*i459

29

pluralistic public life that the modernization of the
lifeworld has made possible. While the first of these
processes obviously seems to be dominant, this is not due to
an inevitability latent in the technical means of
communication. The technical development of the electronic
media does not necessarily lead to centralization; it can
involve horizontal, creative, autonomous forms of media

pluralism.

Section 4: SOCIAL NOVICETS

Civil society has become the indispensable terrain

on which social actors assemble, organize, and mobilize, even
if their targets are the economy and the state.

It is my contention that the so called "new" social movements
offer the greatest hope for realizing the positive potentials
of modern civil societies.

"New" social movements have positive potential insofar
as they pursue the expansion of basic rights, the defense of
the autonomy of civil society, and its further
democratization. In other words they must be consistent with
the utopian ideals of modernity. These notions help keep a
democratic political culture alive. Movements opposed to this
are those that have a traditional, hierarchical, patriarchal,
or exclusionary character. Their opting for tradition while
denying the universalist tradition of cultural and political

modernity just implies fundamentalism.

30

This being said the ”new" social movements themselves
often fail to make links between their specific interests or
programs advanced and what they have in common with other
social movements or societal concerns.

In fact, one of the major problems with social movements
has been their coexistence with national states, their
political institutions, and parties.”- By getting too close
to political parties social movements run the risk of having
their organizational forms and identities affected. In fact,
a movement that pursues only state power tends to lose its
force as a social movement. Social movements can and have
turned into political parties. By becoming a political party
a social movement can lose the advantage of a grassroots
participatory democracy and end up compromising its aims.
(Just look at what Jesse Jackson's Rainbow'Coalition ceded to
the party.)

It can be said that traditionally movements pursued
state power, often through political parties, to promote
their goals. Now state power and political parties are often
not seen as viable instruments for securing our freedoms.

One reason why views have changed about the necessity and
sufficiency of the state and specifically political parties
is that there is now a perception of weakening state power in
regard to growing, powerful world-economic forces. With this

external economic weakness of states comes the realization
31 See Frank and Fuentes, 139-179.

 

31

that transforming state power through political parties for
economic purposes is unlikely.

But although states are becoming more externally*weak
they also are gaining more internal strength to defend
themselves against any revolutionary force. "The
revolutionary capture of state power is now virtually
inconceivable in the West. "32

This paradox of the growing external weakness of states
and an increased internal strength to defend themselves has
resulted in an increase in the perceived inability and
insufficiency of state power to achieve or even to address
the widespread popular concerns with freedom. So most of
today's social movements pursue their goals without trying to
achieve state power or by transcending state power. But this
is not to say some social movements do not try to influence
state action on their behalf.

One advantage that the so called "new" (peace, feminist,
and ecology) social movements have is their potential to be
transnational. Even though.many movements are local and seek
to influence the action of particular states; much movement
activity and scope is also transnational. Movement concerns
and.communication are neither limited to the nation-state,
nor necessarily intentionally international, but they can be
transnational in escaping or transcending the nation-state

schema. This is important for our theory of civil society
32 Ibid. 174.

 

32

because a focus on national self-determination can have anti—
democratic effects. Social movements can deemphasize
nationality and help lead toward an international civil
society. This ability to forge transnational links makes
social movements the most active agents to transform the
world in new directions.

By situating social movements within our framework of
civil society we can show how social movements can transform
society without seeking state power. This will also allow us
to show'why it is unwise for social movements to seek state
power.

With our model of civil society we can argue that
contemporary collective actors should not simply target the
state or the economy for inclusion or increased benefits
because their identities cannot be deduced from these
subsystems.33 It is possible for collective actors in civil
society to exercise influence on actors in political society,
to make use of public speech not only to gain power or money
but also to restrict the role of the media of power and money
in the lifeworld in order to secure autonomy and to
democratize the institutions and social relations of civil
society itself. Progressive contemporary collective actors
must realize that there is a difference between just seeking
power and trying to influence society in order to maintain

one's identity. Progressive contemporary social movements
33SeeCohenandAratbch.10.

 

33

should follow a dualistic politics of identity and influence,
aimed at civil society and the political sphere.

Progressive collective actors have attempted to do more
than influence the state and economy. They also tend to try
to influence public opinion in general. They attempt to undo
traditional structures of domination, exclusion, and
inequality rooted in social institutions, norms, collective
identities, and cultural values based on gender, racial and
class prejudice. For example, the feminist movement takes
clear aim at patriarchal institutions in civil society and
works for cultural and normative change as much as for
political and.economic power.

But not only is civil society the target of movements,
also, it is within the terrain of civil society that
movements can seek to influence political and economic
society. Social movements can and have played an important
role in defining what kind of civil society is to be defended
against the state. Social movements must strive to defend
and democratize all those institutions of civil society in
which.discrbmination, inequality, and domination have become
visible and contested. To snmply defend society against the
state would be to leave the relations of domination and
inequality within civil society intact.

Our theory of civil society allows us to account for
this dual logic of contemporary movements. we can account for

the strategic logic of organization involved in pressuring

34

the state and economy and for stressing identity, norms,
cultural models, and associational forms targeting the
institutions of civil society.

Progressive contemporary movements should mainly seek to
detraditionalize and democratize the social relations in
civil society. While they also, of course, try to influence
the economy and state. This is necessary because
authoritarian institutions are often reinforced by unequal
control of money and power, and since the colonization of the
institutions of civil society by these media prevents their
further'modernization.

While the democratization of civil society and.the
defense of its autonomy from economic or administrative
”colonization" can be seen as the goal of the new movements,
it can also be said that the further democratization of
political and economic institutions is also central to this
project. Social movements can operate on both sides of the
system/lifeworld divide. Defensively collective action
involves preserving and developing the communicative
infrastructure of the lifeworld. This involves efforts to
secure institutional changes within civil society that
correspond to the new'meaning, identities, and norms that are
created. Offensively they target political and.economic
society. Political and economic society are the realms of
mediation between civil society and the subsystems. Social

movements should seek to develop organizations that can exert

35

pressure for inclusion within these domains and extract
benefits from them. The strategic modes of collective action
are indispensable for such projects. The offensive politics
of the new movements involve not only struggles for money and
political recognition but also a politics of influence
targeting political and economic insiders and projects of
institutional reform.

To reiterate, the primary targets of the new social

 

movements should be the institutions of civil society. These I
movements can create new associations and new publics, try to
render existing institutions more egalitarian, enrich and
expand public discussion in civil society, and influence the
existing public spaces of political society, potentially
expanding these and supplementing them with additional forms
of citizen participation. Also the defensive politics of
social movements are not simply a reaction to colonization.
They focus on the normative presuppositions and institutional
articulation of civil society. They attempt to initiate and
influence discourses on norms and identities throughout
society. Such projects can challenge restrictions and
inequalities in the communicative processes that generate
norms, interpret traditions, and construct identities. Given
the obvious permeability of political and.economic
institutions to societal norms, there is also no reason to
foreclose the possibility of the development of egalitarian

and democratic institutions capable of influencing and

36

controlling the polity and the economy.

From a system/lifeworld model we can see that the
transformation of movements into bureaucratic political
parties remains a negative and avoidable alternative.
Movements cannot survive a complete step over the boundaries
of the lifeworld. Movements cannot control structures
coordinated through.means other than normative or
communicative interaction without succumbing to the pressure
for self-instrumentalization. The system/lifeworld
distinction continues t0»provide boundaries that cannot be
conjured away by movement activists if they hope to be

effective.

Section 5: TEE WELFARE STATE

By analyzing the debate between neoconservative advocates of
the free market and defenders of the welfare state we can
judge how the concept of civil society can serve as a
critique and possible solution to this dilemma.

Keynesian economics claims that welfare state policies
should serve to stimulate the forces of economic growth and
prevent deep recessions by encouraging investment and by
stabilizing demand.“ Things like social insurance, and public
services for workers along with incentives through fiscal and
monetary means should counter the risks of the market and

contribute to overall stability. The result of these

 

34Ekmfl2menamdAnmi4644sa

 

 

37

policies should be high growth rates, full employment, and
low inflation. Also, the political aspects of the welfare
state should make for a stable and productive environment.
Things like legal entitlements and state services can provide
protection for the negative effects of the market and at the
same time remove these issues from the arena of industrial
conflict. Class conflict is said to be tempered by the role
of labor unions in collective bargaining who balance the
power relations between labor and capital.

Critics of the welfare state have pointed out that the
welfare state has not delivered.on all its promises. Since
the 1970's in Western capital economies there have been high
rates of unemployment and inflation and low growth rates
which they claim proves that state-bureaucratic regulation of
the economy is counterproductive.

On the economic front three claims are usually made
against the policies of the welfare state. First it is
claimed that the policies of the welfare state threaten the
viability of the independent middle class, secondly, the
welfare state is said to lead to a disincentive to invest,
and lastly, it is said to lead to a disincentive tO‘work. We
will examine each of these three criticisms in turn.

First of all, what critics of the welfare state fail to
mention is that the policies that threaten the viability of
the independent middle class also temper the undesirable side

effects derived from unregulated.market forces. So the middle

38

class may face uncertainties and conflicts from.the burden of
the welfare state, or from the unregulated market if there is
no welfare state.

The second claim that there is a disincentive to invest
is said to be the fault of fiscal policies and regulation
which supposedly impose a burden on capital, and also the
fault of unions that demand high wages. This allegedly leads
to slow growth rates and to the perception that investment in
home markets will be unprofitable. But Claus Offe35 has shown
that there are other factors that prompt investors to
postpone investment. For example, an expectation of special
tax incentives or the hope that the burdens of certain
regulations will be lifted whether or not there are other
reasons for the failure to invest, reasons like the inherent
crisis tendencies of the capitalist economy, including
overaccumulation, the business cycle, or uncontrolled
technological change. The point is that none of this has
anything to do with the welfare state and that private
investors have the power to define reality, so in effect
their perceptions create that reality. Whatever they perceive
as an intolerable burden is an intolerable burden that will
in fact lead to a declining propensity to invest. So to
dismantle the welfare state in order to eliminate the so
called disincentive to invest, would actually abolish

precisely those buffers that stabilize demand.

 

35$eeOfle.QQLiregidm§.sithe_\_Nstfareflate

39

This is also true for the so called disincentive to
work. The disincentive to*work is blamed on social security
and.unemployment provisions that allowHworkers to avoid
undesirable jobs and to escape the normal pressures of market
forces. But they are also the same polices that are meant to
provide economic security and.mitigate class conflict. If the
socioeconomic supports for workers and the poor are
terminated in the name of refurbishing the work ethic, the
compulsion of the market will certainly return, but so will
the gross injustices, dissatisfaction, instability, and class
confrontations that characterized the capitalist economies
prior to the welfare state polices.

In speaking of this debate it may be useful to briefly
outline the history of welfare in this country. When peOple
speak of welfare today, they mostly refer to AFDC (Aid to
Families with Dependent Children). These single parents are,
of course, mostly mothers. So the definition of the "welfare
problem" is feminized. How did the debate get framed in this
way?

Theda Skocpol points out that despite the perception
that Americans are a people inherently opposed to taking
"handouts" from government the fact is that since the
nineteenth century, large numbers of mainstream American

citizens have been happy to accept and to politically support

40

certain federally funded social benefits.36 Still, virtually
all the welfare we have today comes from the Social Security
Act of 1935.37 It has been attacked ever since, despite the
fact that it was inadequate even when it was first passed.
From the start, Social Security set up an inequitable welfare
system, operating along gender, racial, and class lines. From
the start, Social Security excluded most minorities and women
from superior programs like old-age insurance and
unemployment compensation. These programs excluded domestic
servants and agricultural workers; the largest categories of
employment among blacks and Hispanics at the time. Also,
unemployment compensation did not cover seasonal and casual
workers; these were the jobs common among women and minority
men. These were not accidental omissions. For the most part
they were concessions to (mainly southern) conservative
congressional leaders. Congressional leaders in the south
would not support a program that provided aid for
sharecroppers, farm wage laborers, or domestic servants.
They did not want these workers to be able to challenge the
miserly wages they were stuck with. This, of course, shows
who were considered citizens worthy of support.

The result was that Social Security forced single
mothers and minorities into stingy, and stigmatized programs.
Programs like AFDC were means-tested so applicants had to

strip themselves of resources and submit to repeated searches
36 See Skocpol, 6, 11-13. 255-256.
37 See Linda Gordon’s essay in Dissent (Summer 1994)

 

41

for moral reproach and financial cheating.

Even public works programs were set up so as to maintain
women's invisibility. Most programs were weighted toward male
labor. A regular public-works program and medical insurance,
which were originally part of Roosevelt's New Deal welfare
program, were eliminated from Social Security. So only those
with full-time jobs who worked for large companies got
benefits; largely as a result of unionization.

The point is that this deepened stratification. Federal
programs, like old-age insurance and unemployment
compensation became entitlements. State programs, like AFDC,
were means—tested. The result is that now these inferior
programs bring with them stigmatization, and the superior
programs are not even recognized for what they really are;
they too are government provisions .

In the 1950's the welfare caseload increased. By
claiming welfare, poor white women and minorities can be seen
to have been challenging their exclusion and insisting on
citizenship rights. This shows that being "on welfare” does
not necessarily lead to dependency and despair. Going on
welfare can be seen as a step toward citizenship, a step
toward interacting with government. The fact that the result
has not been progressive is partly because these programs
have increasingly become more and more stigmatized. This
makes the recipients politically weak. The result is that the

poorer and more stigmatized one becomes the less political

42

influence they have.

we can say that the welfare system contributed to
inequality and misery. The inadequacies and stigmatization
associated with certain programs helped create an
"underclass." Against'what conservatives claim, amwelfare
system itself is not necessarily a problem, it is the design
of the welfare system and the way it contributes to inferior
citizenship, lack of opportunity, and a spirit of defeatism.
The stigmatization that the welfare system.has increasingly
carried with it is as damaging as its financial shortcomings.

The neoconservative model for welfare (or lack of it) is
in line with their model of civil society. The
neoconservative model of civil society is one in which civil
society is depoliticized. Civil society is identifiedmwith
the market and whatever is outside the market gets
reintegrated by way of a conservative retraditionalized
cultural model and lifeworld that itself exists to help
integrate market society. The neoconservative model also aims
at strengthening an authoritarian state. The goal is for a
smaller, but stronger state that has fewer functions but more
effective and authoritarian forms of action.

The neoconservatives argue that it is not just the
institutions of the welfare state but also our modernist
political, moral, and aesthetic culture that places excessive
material demands on the state. These allegedly weaken

traditional values. The answer, for neoconservatives, is to

43

revive traditional values and resacralize our political
culture. we have seen that their policies are of deregulation
and privatization in order to recreate a traditionalist and
authoritarian lifeworld.

The neoconservatives are just plain wrong to blame
modernity's moral and political culture for undermining
meaning and authority. Rather, it is due to an illiberal
corporate economy as well as an overextended.administrative,
interventionist state that has undermined meaning in the
modern world. To try to recreate traditional institutions by
the use of political and economic power will just foster
dependency.

To be sure, there are features of the welfare state that
destroy solidarity and render individuals dependent upon the
state, but unrestrained capitalist expansion has the same
destructive consequences. Appeals to tradition, the family,
and religion build a dangerous fundamentalism of false
communities that can be manipulated from above. Also, as we
have seen, not all features of the welfare state create
dependency. I fail to see how things like social security,
health insurance, job training programs, unemployment
insurance, and family supports such as day care or parental
leave create dependency. In fact, it seems they can create
autonomy, especially if the particular administrative
requirements are not humiliating. In other words, social

services and social supports should and can be seen as

44

supports for all members of the community and not
symbolically constituted as welfare for "failures."

The neoconservative desire for tradition, that is
accompanied by a denial of the universalist tradition of
cultural and political modernity turns out to just be
fundamentalism. Against this, we must defend a cultural
modernity that acknowledges that it is not just one tradition
among others but has a universal thrust that is reflexive,
and nonauthoritarian towards tradition itself. This points us
towards the further modernization of the culture and.of the
institutions of civil society to produce the autonomy, self-
reliance, and solidarity that the neoconservative critics of
the welfare state supposedly desire.

This also answers the neoconservative claim that the
only alternative to a paternalistic welfare state is to turn
back to the magic of the market.with its renunciation of
distributive justice and egalitarianism. A.modern political
theory must attempt to protect civil society from the
destructive penetration of the state and economy while also
guaranteeing the autonomy of both subsystems.

Habermas has argued for this need to protect the public
sphere from both subsystems.38 He has pointed out that the
establishment of the welfare state represented both a defense
of the lifeworld against the capitalist economy and a .

penetration of the lifeworld by the administrative state.

38 See Habermas. “The New Obscurity: The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Exhaustion of
Utopian Energies,” in The New Consgryatism.

 

45

This second consequence could have been avoided. The goal of
the welfare state was to develop solidarity. But there was
the mistaken belief that society could act upon itself
through the supposedly neutral medium of political power. But
power is not a neutral medium. The lifeworld is protected
from the medium of money by the state, but only at the cost
of further colonization. The lesson learned is that power is
incapable of creating meaning or solidarity.

Habermas's notion of the "reflective continuation of the
welfare state"39 is important for getting beyond the dilemma
the welfare state poses. Many of the forms of the welfare
state offer social protection that should not be abandoned.
We have seen that the welfare state historically has, but
only selectively, combined power and self-restraint to serve
solidarity without promoting dedifferentiation. This has
ultimately failed because of the mistake in believing that
political power can be neutral when it is necessary to defend
society against the state.

Opposed to this is the notion of solidarity that is
registered in the reflexive continuation of the welfare
state. This means the application of the same innovative
combination of powers and self-limitation that the state once
applied to the market economy to the welfare state itself.
What is needed is innovative forms of limiting both

subsystems. The place to start is with a differentiated civil

 

mimfl.

46

society that is democratic and pluralistic. Projects against
either the capitalist economy or against the administrative
state that would simply strengthen the other with respect to

the lifeworld are pointless and destructive.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

47

SISLIOGRAPE!

Amin, Arrighi, Frank, and.Wallerstein. Transforming the
Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990.

Arato, Andrew; “Civil Society, History and Socialism: Reply
to John Keane." Praxis International. (April/July 1989).

Cohen, Jean L. and Andrew Arato. Civil Society and Political
Theogy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992.

Eagleton, Terry. The Function of Criticism. London: New Left
Books, 1984.

Gordon, Linda. ”welfare Reform: A.History Lesson." Dissent.
(Summer 1994).

Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notepooks.
New York: International Publishers, 1971.

Habermas, Jurgen. The New'Conservatism. Cambridge: MIT Press
1992.

Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere. Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
MIT Press, 1989.

Keane, John. ed. Civil Society andpthe State.

Kellner, Douglas. Television and the Crisis of Democracy.
Coloradoz‘Westview Press, 1990.

Offe, Claus. Contradictions of the‘Welfare State. Cambridge
MIT Press, 1993.

Skocpol, Theda. Social Policypin the United States.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

weiner, Richard. “Retrieving Civil Society in a Postmodern

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