Post-Civil Society

Discussion

Michael Hardt

Hardt says that the notion of civil society, first formulated by Hegel, and then reformulated by Gramsci ("civil society re-absorbs the state until it disappears"), and Foucault ("the immanent state produces civil society, from which it is not separate"), no longer applies. This is, because the institutions that formed its backbone, are everywhere in crisis.

For Deleuze, these disciplinary methods based on identity and position, have been replaced by control mechanisms targeted at anonymity and mobility, such as monitoring and polling, and molding through the media.

The subsumption of labor is at first formal, when capital takes existing forms of concrete labor, under its control. Real subsumption of already abstract labor starts when capital itself invents new production methods. Labor is then no longer seen as constitutive, but as a product of capital. Hence the state is no longer interested in the discipline and education, only in control. It no longer produces civil society

(Source: Michel Bauwens' reading notes; original source unknown, but likely from Multitude magazine)