It became conventional in the eighteenth century – and it has remained so ever since – to distinguish between two fundamental spheres of social activity – “civil society” (or just “society”) and “the state.” The titles of this chapter and the next would seem to conform to that convention. Though Smith, other political economists, and Marx meant by “civil society” only economic institutions, others – notably, Ferguson, Paine, Hegel, and Tocqueville – believed it comprised the two spheres discussed in this chapter. For them, civil society meant (1) decentered economic markets resting on private property and (2) “forms of civil association … scientific and literary circles, schools, publishers, inns, … religious organizations, municipal associations and independent households” (Keane 1988: 61). These two spheres carried vital decentered and diffused freedoms that they wished secured against the authoritative powers of states.

Yet, such a clear division between society and state carries dangers. It is, paradoxically, highly political, locating freedom and morality in society, not the state (obviously Hegel differed in this respect). This was so among the eighteenth-century writers resisting what they saw as despotism, and it has recently been so again as Soviet, East European, and Chinese dissidents sought to mobilize decentralized civil society forces against state repression. Yet states are not as distinct from the rest of social life as these ideologies suggest. Volume I showed that civil societies had first risen entwined with modern states.