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The term ‘civil society’ was used by writers such as Locke and Rousseau to describe civil government as differentiated from natural society or the state of nature. The Marxist concept derives from Hegel. In Hegel, civil or bourgeois society, as the realm of individuals who have left the unity of the family to enter into economic competition, is contrasted with the state, or political society. For Hegel it is only through the state that the universal interest can prevail, since he disagrees with Locke, Rousseau or

Adam Smith that there is any innate rationality in civil society, which will lead to the general good. Marx uses the concept of civil society in his critique of Hegel. Marx uses civil society in his early writing as a yardstick of the change from feudal to bourgeois society. Civil society arose, Marx insists, from the destruction of medieval society. Previously individuals were part of many different societies, such as guilds or estates each of which had a political role, so that there was no separate civil realm. As these partial societies broke down, civil society arose in which the individual became all-important. The old bonds of privilege were replaced by the selfish needs of atomistic individuals separated from each other and from the community. The only links between them are provided by the law, which is not the product of their will and does not conform to their nature but dominates human relationships because of the threat of punishment. The fragmented, conflictual nature of civil society with its property relations necessitates a type of politics, which does not reflect this conflict but is abstracted and removed from it. The modern state is made necessary and at the same time limited by the characteristics of civil society. The fragmentation and misery of civil society escape the control of the state, which is limited to formal, negative activities and is rendered impotent by the conflict, which is the essence of economic life. The political identity of individuals as citizens in modern society is severed from their civil identity and from their function in the productive sphere as tradesman, day-laborer, or landowner.

Although Gramsci continues to use the term to refer to the private or non state sphere, including the economy, his picture of civil society is very different from that of Marx. It is not simply a sphere of individual needs but of organizations, and has the potential of rational self-regulation and freedom. Gramsci insists on its complex organization, as the ‘ensemble of organisms commonly called ‘private’ where ‘hegemony’ and ‘spontaneous consent’ are organized. He argues that any distinction between civil society and the state is only methodological, since even a policy of non-intervention like laissez-faire is established by the state itself. The metaphors he uses to describe the precise relationship between the state and civil society vary. A fully developed civil society is presented as a trench system able to resist the incursions of economic crises and to protect the state. Whereas Marx insists on the separation between the state and civil society, Gramsci emphasizes the inter-relationship between the two. The state narrowly conceived as government is protected by hegemony organized in civil society while the coercive state apparatus fortifies the hegemony of the dominant class. Yet the state also has an ethical function as it tries to educate public opinion and to influence the economic sphere. In turn, the very concept of law must be extended, Gramsci suggests, since elements of custom and habit can exert a collective pressure to conform in civil society without coercion or sanctions.