ABSTRACT
It will be helpful at this point to consider an alternative set of values to those generally found in the guild milieu. These may be called liberal or bourgeois values; I shall use the term 'civil society' throughout this book to refer to the complex of ideas and practices described in this chapter. As soon as one starts looking at guild or communal ideas in the Middle Ages, one cannot fail to be impressed by the widespread incidence of this alternative. Briefly, the values of civil society comprise, first, personal security in the sense of freedom from the arbitrary passions of others, and freedom from domination in general. This involves freedom (or security) of the person from violence, and of private property from arbitrary seizure. But these, it would appear, can only be maintained if legal process is credibly and successfully enforced as an alternative to physical force, in settlement of disagreements, and in redressing wrongs committed by violence. This leads to the notion of legal rights (whether or not so called), both in the sense of the right to sue in court on equal terms with anyone else - legal equality - and in the sense of claims, for example to property, recognized and upheld by the law. This complex of ideas was present in medieval Europe, at least from the thirteenth century, notably but not exclusively in towns. It played a formative part (as will be seen later) in political thought, sometimes alongside guild ideas, sometimes in place of them. Civil society overlaps with the concept of exchange, which also connotes equality of status between parties. To describe this complex of ideas, I have used 'civil society' in preference to other available shorthands (such as 'liberal values' or 'bourgeois ideology'), because it is not much used today and therefore has a more neutral connotation. It does, however, have the slight disadvantage that it was used from the later Middle Ages to the nineteenth century to mean, approximately, political association (which we today call 'the state'). It also acquired a specialized meaning in Hegel as a society in which people peacefully pursue their own ends (büche Gesellschaft:see p.203); and again in Marx (from whom it has often been translated back into English as 'bourgeois society'), as meaning that, and also the ethos and institutions favourable to capitalism (since Marx called Xenophon an exponent of civil society, the concept was not closely tied to the capitalist epoch). But, in the great majority of cases, this earlier usage was sufficiently non-specific to 33allow (it is hoped) the term to be used here in the sense outlined, without confusion. No specific parallel is intended with the usage of Locke, Adam Smith, Hegel or Marx.
