"Civil society is thus the site where the State, as representative of the universal interest, subsumes the singular interests that are extraneous or foreign to its order. In this sense, civil society is the space of the formal subsumption, the site where the State mediates, disciplines, and recuperates the social antagonisms foreign to its rule.
As the postmodern and communitarian theories we have examined suggest, however, the State no longer engages social forces foreign to it through the institutions of civil society. This passage is obvious when we consider the fortunes of the institutional trade union, the most prominent element of civil society in Hegel's analysis. In many respects, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, institutional labour unions did constitute a fundamental point on mediation between labour and capital, and between society and the State. Collective bargaining mechanisms held a priveliged position in the establishment and reproduction of the social contract. ...Institutional labor unions and the affiliated parties served the dual purpose of providing an avenue for workers interests to influence the State ... and at the same time deploying the discipline and control of the State and capital throughout the workforce. In recent years, the dialectic between the State and institutional labor and also the mechanisms of collective bargaining have gradually faded from the scene. ...In the society of the real subsumption this dialectic no longer holds the central role, and capital no longer needs to engage labour or represent labour at the heart of production. Social capital appears to reproduce itself autonomously, as if it were emancipated from the working class, and labour becomes invisible in the system. What is subsumed is really a simulacrum of society, produced by the State itself. ...The State of real subsumtion is no longer interested in mediation but separation, and thus the institutions of civil society as sites of the social dialectic gradually lose their importance. Not the State, but civil society has withered away!
...Certain popular interpretations of Gramsci, for example, still view civil society as the space of liberation and the space from which to rein in and control the oppressive powers of the State for 'popular' or 'socialist' ends. Gramsci's work is seen in this context as a development of the Hegelian conception of civil society that emphasises not only the economic but the cultural exchanges that are opened in this realm. Gramsci's is not, however, a linear development of the Hegelian conception, but one that effectively inverts the Hegelian relationship between civil society and the State, so that civil society will no longer be subsumed within the State, but rather exert its hegemony over the State apparatus and thus corral the State within its rule. The Hegelian subordination of civil society to the State is stood on its head so that the State is is preserved but now subordinated to the plurality of interactive interests in civil society. The resulting political pluralism would be a sort of cultural-ideological free market of social forces that thrive on the dynamics of exchange, while maintaining the structure of the State now subordinated to the popular will.
Leaving aside questions about how well this interpretation corresponds to the central thrust of Gramsci's thought, it should be clear, both from our theoretical discussion and from analysis of the practical state of affairs in our world, that this reformist political vision is properly speaking utopian. There is no space, in other words, no topos on which it can exist. ...civil society no longer exists; the State no longer needs it as the terrain either to mediate and recuperate social antagonisms or to legitimate its rule. More precisely, in fact, if civil society can be said to exist, it does so only as a virtual projection cast within the circularity of the autopoietic State system, while real, antagonistic social referents that are external to the State are excluded by methods of avoidance."
Negri and Hardt, _Labor of Dionysus_.