>this is why you might want to take the civil society argument a bit more
>seriously than you do, doug. and no, not the crap that tikkun dishes out
>and whoever else you were on about last summer. there *is* something to
>be said for CS because, in its absence and in the absence of a public
>sphere, people turn to the state as a remedy for every ailment.
I take the civil society argument very seriously, which is why I'm against it. Or, more precisely, the kind of civil society crap so fashionable with liberal philanthropists and Third Way philosophers. It is a realm ruled largely by capital, both of the monetary and cultural/symbolic sort, with absolutely no democratic accountability and minimal disclosure. This kind of civil society meshes perfectly with the limited government model bequeathed us by our Founding Fathers, and just the kind of thing that the World Bank and Ford Foundation are trying to foist upon the "developing" world.
What some South Africans call a working class civil society is another beast entirely, something I'm entirely for. But that's not a real live option in the U.S. right now.
Doug