ABSTRACT
The modem concept of 'civil society', its association with the specific property relations of capitalism, is a variation on an old theme. The very particular modem conception of 'civil society' is something quite distinct from earlier notions of 'society'. The concept of 'civil society' is being mobilized to serve many varied purposes that it is impossible to isolate a single school of thought associated with it; but some common dominant themes have emerged. One of the principal charges levelled against Marxism by the advocates of 'civil society' is that it endangers democratic freedoms by identifying Western 'formal democracy' - the legal and political forms which guarantee a free space for 'civil society' - with capitalism: 'civil' — 'bourgeois' society. The replacement of socialism by an indeterminate concept of democracy, or the dilution of diverse and different social relations into catch-all categories like 'identity' or 'difference', or loose conceptions of 'civil society', represent a surrender to capitalism and its ideological mystifications.
