5. D emocracy, Citizenship, Liberalism, and Civil Society

Abstract

In modern capitalist democracy, socio-economic inequality and exploitation coexist with civic freedom and equality. Concept of citizenship, implying not simply the passive enjoyment of individual rights which we have come to associate with 'liberal democracy'. The current theories occlude 'civil society' in its distinctive sense as a social form specific to capitalism, a systemic totality within which all 'other' institutions are situated and all social forces must find their way, a specific and unprecedented sphere of social power, which poses wholly new problems of legitimation and control, problems not addressed by traditional theories of the state nor by contemporary liberalism. This historical reality tends to undermine the neat distinctions required by current theories which ask us to treat civil society as, at least in principle, the sphere of freedom and voluntary action, the antithesis of the irreducibly coercive principle which intrinsically belongs to the state. Keywords:capitalism; citizenship; civil society; democracy; exploitation; liberalism; social forces