Doug, there is a difference between spin and reality. I agree that most of the civil society *talk* is crap, or more precisely, a bunch of academics and spin doctors selling their intellectual commodity for grants and sinecures. What they write is mostly "wishful thinking", normative stuff based on little or no empirical data.
For some, however, (including myself) "civil society" simply denotes voluntary, civic and self-help organizations collectively. I hate the the acronyms susch as NGO, NPO or Third sector because they refer to neo-classical ideology that divides the economy into the "private " and "public" sectors, depneding on the kind of goods they produce. Nonprofits, ngos etc. are supposed to be alternative to government producers of public goods. So instead of using those ideologically charged terms I prefer "civil society" which seems to be more neutral, but it is not perfect either. In my recent writings on the subject I propose still another term as an alternative: social proximity organizations (which is grounded in institutional organizational theory).
The bottom line is that this class of ogranizations includes a wide variety of entities, from kkk to jobs with justice or labor unions. Clearly, some of these entities are deplorable but others are not. Their main value lies in the ability to mobilize people for political action (a proposition well supported by empirical research on social movements) - which is generally a good thing, even if we may not support the goals of that action.
I guess the only people who have problems with pluralist approach to mobilization are the people who belive thattheir is the the only true way to the glorious future, all other paths are deviations from the only true path, the only true revolutionaries, the only true patriots, or the TINA volks if you will.
To conclude, if we want to see vibrant social movements and public discourse - we should pray for civil society, i.e. a multitude of civic organizations, because they are one of the few forces capable of mobilizinng and organizing people for such movements and discourse. What are the other alternatives? Elections? Corporate cult events such as sports, rock and roll and fan clubs? Religion?
wojtek