ABSTRACT
The separate social sciences emerged in the nineteenth century out of a recognition of the distinction between the state and society. This distinction has never been an absolute one and has always been phrased in a number of different ways; public/private, politics/economics, state/market, law-legal order/mores-moral or normative order, and most sweepingly collectivist/individualist in the contrast between socialism and capitalism. Socialism as an ideal “alternative society” standing in sharp contrast to the image of capitalism as a bleak unchanging order of exploitation, inequality, and meretricious glitter has probably been irreparably damaged. The death of socialism also spells the end of regarding “capitalism” as the sole or major defining feature of advanced or postindustrial societies from which the other major features of their culture and social structure are held to derive. Recognition of the state/society distinction is inherent in political democracy based on universal suffrage coexisting with persistent social and economic inequalities.
